James, Stephanie (16 page)

swallowed and wondered if he might be dead.

“I see you found the gun. Good. Bring it here, Tabby.” There was a sense of exaggerated patience in his

tone which thoroughly annoyed Tabitha. This was all his fault in the first place! Wordlessly she went

forward and handed over the gun. As soon as he had it in his hand, Dev sheathed the sword in the cane

with a small movement of his finger on a hidden button. Then he leaned against the ebony stick with a

stifled groan.

Tabitha resolutely ignored the sign of pain. Never again was he going to deceive her with his small,

insidious tricks! Her chin came up and her eyes narrowed. “Now what?” she asked aloofly.

He slanted her an assessing glance. “Now we get rid of these two. I suppose you’d better go back to

the hotel and get some help. Have them call the local police. I’ll have to explain all this to the authorities.”

Obediently Tabitha swung around, grateful for any excuse to depart the violent scene.

“Tabby?”

She glanced back warily. “What?”

“If you couldn’t remember which way we had gone into the maze, how did you find your way out from

the center so quickly?”

She shrugged. “I remembered something I read somewhere about how to escape from mazes.”

He stared at her in surprise. “What’s that?”

“You put your hand against the wall and never lift it off. That way you don’t go over the same territory

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twice.” She couldn’t keep a tinge of pride out of her voice even though she was still furious and resentful.

“Tabby, that’s just an old myth! If that’s the technique you used then you were merely very lucky!” Dev

growled.

“An old myth? But, Dev, I’m something of an expert on old myths, remember? And on the whole I’ve

found them to be much more reliable than modern lies told by modern men like you.” Without waiting for

a response, Tabitha turned back toward the hotel.

Damn! Dev thought, it’s going to be a long night. He glared down at Waverly. “You’re to blame for all

this, you stupid bastard. Why the hell did you have to get so damn greedy?”

Waverly, wisely sensing that his luck had already run out, kept his mouth shut.

The island police, spiffy in their summer-weight, khaki uniforms, arrived twenty minutes later. Tabitha did

not return with them.

By the time Dev had explained the situation, put through a call to Delaney from police headquarters and

managed to extricate himself from the sticky scene, he was not in a good mood. Delaney had taken the

whole thing much too cavalierly as far as Dev was concerned.

“You’ve still got the magic touch, Dev,” Delaney announced cheerily from the other end of the line. “I

told you that you did.”

“The old touch, my ass. I nearly got killed, Delaney. What’s more I nearly got my woman killed. I was a

fool to let you talk me into this. Oh, hell, why am I standing here in this nearly one-hundred-percent

humidity trying to reason with you? You’ve got a one-track mind.”

“That’s how I got where I am. Plus instincts, of course. I’ve got good instincts, too, Dev. Just like you.

We’re two of a kind.”

Dev closed his eyes in disgust. His leg was aching again. He wondered what the odds were of getting

Tabitha to massage it for him. “Listen, Delaney, we can argue this out later. The ship sails in forty

minutes, and I’m going to be on it. I’ll make the delivery when I return to the States. In the meantime, try

to keep creeps like Waverly out of my way, will you? This was supposed to be a trouble-free assignment

designed to help me get my feet wet again as I recall.”

Delaney laughed. “See you soon, Dev. Enjoy the rest of your cruise.” He hung up the phone before Dev

could think of a suitably cutting response. So much for Washington, D.C. types. Bastards. Now it was

time to go back to the ship and deal with Washington, state of, types. Sweet, little tabby cats who had

had their fur ruffled the wrong way.

He would soon stroke Tabby back into a warm and purring mood, Dev promised himself as he took his

leave of the somewhat confused island police. “Don’t worry, someone will be along soon to pick up

Waverly and good, old Eddie there,” he assured the chief. “Just keep them under lock and key until then,

okay?”

“Of course, Mr. Colter, we are only too anxious to cooperate. But we would like a few explanations,”

the balding, middle-aged man informed him with a frown. He was a good cop and he didn’t like

confusing situations caused by visiting Americans. Americans were always confusing, it was true, but this

instance was a bit more annoying than usual.

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“The gentleman who arrives to take charge of these two will be happy to explain everything,” Dev said

smoothly. Damned if he was going to hang around and make excuses. The first priority was to get back

to the ship and find Tabitha.

She was probably hiding in her cabin even now, nervous and anxious and full of questions. He’d rather

answer her queries than those of the chief of police, Dev decided, flagging down a taxi.

Poor Tabby. She had been through a lot this afternoon. Actually, he owed her a favor. If she hadn’t

made that move against the guy with the gun, things might have been far more complicated than they had

been. Dev smiled to himself as the cab whisked him back to the docks where the tender boats were

making their last runs to the ship. She had plenty of spirit, and she’d kept her head when the chips were

down. He realized he couldn’t wait until he had her back in his arms.

He would explain everything, and then he would make sweet love to her until she had forgiven him for

the upsetting afternoon. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that she
would
forgive him. How could

someone as compassionate and gentle as Tabby Graham refuse to accept his apologies? It was only a

matter of time before he once more had her in the palm of his hand. Dev relaxed a little at the thought.

But sweet, compassionate, gentle Tabitha Graham was not in her cabin. She was, in fact, nowhere on

board the luxury liner. And the huge ship had sailed before Dev, grilling everyone from the lowliest

steward to the captain, discovered that Tabby had returned to the liner only long enough to collect her

things from the stateroom.

Then she had left once more, heading for the island airport, where she had caught the first plane back to

the mainland.

Trapped on board until the ship reached its next destination, Dev spent the evening alone in his cabin

with a bottle of whiskey. After every swallow he glared at the ebony cane which concealed the bit of

microfilm in a hidden compartment in the handle.

It had been a damned Washington, D.C. type who had designed that cane.

Turkeys.

Dev took another swallow of whiskey and made up his mind. He was going to get as far away from

Washington, D.C. as soon as possible.

Seven

«^»

Aweek after her return to Port Townsend a rare fury still smoldered in Tabitha’s heart.

Devlin Colter had used her.

Every time the thought of being used crossed her mind, Tabitha experienced another blazing surge of

anger. Never had she known any emotion as fierce and violent as the rage she had felt since that fateful

afternoon in the maze.

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No, that wasn’t strictly accurate, she was honest enough to admit a few days after her return. There had

once been another kind of emotion that had flared just as wildly and had been just as rare. She had

learned of the other fire the night she had seduced Dev.

Passion and anger. She had never known the meaning of either as she did in the wake of her experience

with Dev Colter. Seven days after her escape from the island, Tabitha concentrated fiercely on the anger.

The memory of her own passion was far more disturbing and better left alone as much as possible. She

threw herself back into work at her shop, The Manticore.

Dev had toyed with her, played a game of pretend. Tabitha gritted her teeth every time the realization

went through her mind. She would be unpacking a carton of books and find her fingers trembling with

fury as she tried to wield the knife she was using on the cardboard.

Or she would be thumbing through her beautiful collection of bestiaries and come across a picture of a

dragon. The sight of it would cause her to snap the book shut with a brutal movement.

A game of make-believe. Why had he indulged such a silly pastime? Just because he thought she made a

good cover for his activities? Because he had been bored? Because she had been the one to get him out

of that alley and he had felt a fleeting gratitude?

None of the possibilities was pleasant, and none of them did anything to soothe her fury.

God, what a fool she had made of herself! How he must have laughed to himself that night when she had

set out to seduce him by plying him with drinks and tales of the mating habits of the animals in her

medieval books! The red stained her cheeks once more as she remembered that awful night.

Ten days after her return home, Tabitha was shelving new paperback mysteries in her shop when the

memory of her own passion danced, unbidden, once more through her mind. This time her hand stilled in

the act of placing a book in the rack.

This time her fingers didn’t shake with fury and humiliation.

For a long moment Tabitha simply stared unseeingly at the book in her hand, her face revealing the

absorption of her own thoughts. Damn it, she had known passion, real passion that night. She had

thought herself in love, and she had set out to seduce the man of her dreams.

Whatever else you could say about that embarrassing and infuriating evening, she had been successful.

She had made love to her dragon and even if he had been secretly laughing at her, he had responded.

There could be no doubt about that! she reminded herself feelingly. And he hadn’t been the only one

who had responded. Her own reaction had been deeply, startlingly fulfilling; unlike anything else she had

ever known.

It was true that she had been making love to a myth—a man who didn’t really exist except in her own

imagination—but she had done it rather well. Yes, damn it, she
had
done it rather well. Dev Colter might

have been amusing himself with her, or he might have been deliberately using her, but he had been

satisfied that night, she would stake The Manticore on that small fact.

Tabitha’s gentle mouth twisted wryly as she shelved the last of the mysteries and headed back toward

the front counter. If only he had been the man he had pretended to be: a wonderfully vulnerable,

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sensitive, shy man who had needed her. How perfect it all would have been.

The chiming of the bell on the door broke into her morbid reverie. With an effort of will Tabitha forced

herself to remember that she had a business to run and that meant summoning up a pleasant welcome for

potential customers. The young couple who entered looked like the professional, browsing type but one

never knew.

“We saw the poster of the phoenix in the window and wondered if you have a copy for sale?” the man

inquired politely. His girl friend, her long hair in braids, looked hopeful.

“It’s a beautiful poster,” she said quickly.

“I’ve got several in stock,” Tabitha informed them, striving for a gracious tone as she delved under the

counter to find the rolled up, plastic-encased posters. “Take your pick. Phoenixes are popular with

artists.”

The young couple pored over the various paintings and sketches of the mythological bird, most of which

depicted the creature in the classic pose of rising from its own ashes.

“I think this one would look good on the living room wall,” the young woman finally announced

decisively. “It’s got all the right colors for that room.”

Idly Tabitha glanced at the poster that had been selected. “You picked one of the more accurate

paintings,” she approved. “A lot of analysts think the phoenix was probably a purple heron which got

sacrificed to an Egyptian sun god periodically. The bird in that painting looks nice and purple.”

“Our interior designer would call it mauve,” the young man said, grinning good-naturedly. “Okay, we’ll

take this one. When we get it framed, it’s going to be fabulous.”

Tabitha nodded, dutifully writing up the transaction and handing over a rolled copy of the elegant poster.

As the couple turned to leave the shop she began re-rolling the rest of the phoenix collection. There was

quite a variety in the artwork, some of which had been commissioned by Tabitha herself specifically for

sale in the shop, but all of the art showed a regal bird gloriously reborn after a fiery death. The pictures

struck a responsive chord in her own mind.

She, herself, had gone up in flames that night she had seduced Dev Colter. What were the odds that, like

the phoenix, she, too could be reborn?

The tantalizing thought came and went in her head all during the long afternoon. Whenever the shop door

opened, it interrupted some variation on the teasing possibility of becoming a different woman. Damn it,