Red Midnight (6 page)

And as she had known, she encountered the rage of a blue firestorm.

“You!” she croaked incredulously. “I don’t believe it!”

The brow twisted sardonically, the jawline shifted. “I think that should be my line,” he said dryly, very obviously straining to hold an explosive temper in check. “Good Lord, woman, I’m beginning to believe you must be some sort of a secret weapon. The ultimate cold-war tactic. One week with you, and Moscow will be promising anything.”

“Don’t be absurd!” Erin snapped, totally unnerved by the man’s appearance. It was impossible, she wanted to shriek, she couldn’t be running—literally—into him in this many places. A bar yes, maybe even an airport in the same city—But in a train to Moscow?

“Well?” he suddenly demanded.

“Well what?” Erin muttered blankly.

“No apology this time?”

Apology, Erin wondered rebelliously. No, somehow this was all his fault.

Erin unconsciously took a step backwards. “I do believe that; this time, you barged into me.”

“Oh? I don’t recall walking backwards.”

Erin-flushed uncomfortably. He had a marvelous knack for putting her awkwardly on the defensive, something she was unaccustomed to feeling.

“Why are you following me?” she demanded curtly.

“Following you?” he inquired in sardonic disbelief. “My dear Miss McCabe, trust me. For the sake of my clothing, possessions, person, and sanity, you are the last woman in the world I would consider following.”

Erin twisted her bottom lip and bit into it with irritation. “You really must be the last of the great gallants,” she snapped back.

“So sorry, Miss McCabe,” he continued with his cutting sarcasm as he gazed down at her, “but this isn’t New York. You will not find a multitude of lovesick fans following in your footsteps, willing to give all and forgive anything! You’re entering the Soviet Union.”

Erin stiffened with automatic indignation, fighting for control over a temper seldom so aroused. “I do not expect people to fall all over me and ‘forgive anything’ here or anywhere else, Mr….” He didn’t supply a name and she continued with barely concealed hostility. “And I know very well where I am going, thank you. You wish an apology? I’m very sorry I barged into you. But think of it this way—at least I didn’t get your suit this time!”

He stared at her curiously for a moment, a fathomless light in those eyes which never failed to touch her with the heat of blue fire.

“True, Miss McCabe, it was kind of you to douse the train rug rather than my clothing. Do you take care to ruin only one suit per man?”

He is incredible! Erin thought. Rude didn’t come anywhere near an adequate description.

“I don’t make a habit of ruining anything!” she declared, her voice low and smooth but clearly heated. “Please, sir, do allow me to make amends so that you needn’t feel so persecuted! I’ll be quite happy to reimburse you for any loss I caused!”

“All right,” he said unexpectedly. “I’ll take a check.”

Outraged, and admittedly unnerved, by his reply, Erin hesitated. The stranger, who was unfortunately no longer quite so strange, bowed ever so slightly and stepped back so that she might precede him down the hallway.

Erin uneasily passed him by, tangibly aware that he followed her footsteps. She could feel more than the power of his incredibly searing stare as it sizzled her back; she could feel a heat emanating from the man, a force that seemed untamed … primitive … something very raw and masculine and elemental despite the civilized and sophisticated suavity of his very contemporary and apparently restrained appearance.

The alluring scent of his after-shave seemed especially seductive when combined with his own brand of potent masculinity. Yet Erin wasn’t quite so sure she was appreciating it anymore. This man was making a wreck out of her; she was righteously infuriated, while nervous as a cat. He made her feel as if blood raced in mercury streams, as if each nerve ending were raw and exposed. She realized she was tense with excitement, quaking with ridiculous, but undeniable, subliminal fear.

She wanted to touch him; she wanted to run. And she wanted to break his neck! Never had she met a man so devoid of common courtesy—with such utterly galling nerve!

This is all absurd, she assured herself. She would write him a check for his suit, he would leave, she would avoid him until the train arrived in Moscow, she would never see him again.

Erin stopped at the door to her couchette, about to ask him to please wait just a minute in the hall. She never had the chance. He glanced into her features with a fathomless expression, twisted the handle, and ushered her into the couchette ahead of him. He followed behind her, silently closing the door and leaning against it.

Erin moved on in, trying to appear nonchalant as she reached for her purse. “Who do I make this out to?” she inquired, adding too quickly with the need to keep talking, “Or else I do have a few American Express traveler’s checks. I’m afraid I have little left in any Scandinavian currency, and I’m sure you must know I haven’t any kopecks or rubles yet—my money was deposited in a Moscow bank to be retrieved upon arrival.”

“A check from your personal account will be just fine,” he interrupted with an obvious trace of amusement.

Erin picked up her checkbook and glanced at him with a dry assessment spurred by his tone. She lifted a brow and made no attempt to disguise a certain sarcasm as she said, “My dear sir, I’m afraid I must have a name if I’m to write a check.”

“Jarod,” he said, “Steele.
E
at the end.”

Erin began to scribble his name. Steele, she thought bitterly. Good name for the man. He was apparently as unyielding as the metal. The only more fitting name for the man would be Brick Wall.

She hesitated over an amount, and glanced at the understated quality of his garments, her gaze not reaching to his eyes, but starting from just below and sweeping downward. He didn’t appear heavy, she thought, more tall and trim, yet she had the strange feeling that the agile body beneath the suit was supple, wiry, and tautly muscled.

From the far corner of her vision, she sensed another twinge of his detached amusement in the hiking of an arched brow. “Shall I turn around, Miss McCabe?”

“I don’t believe that will be necessary,” Erin replied without humor. She affixed an amount to the check and handed it to him, oddly stretching her arm out as far as possible rather than approach him too closely. “Will that be adequate?”

He didn’t glance at the check. His stare of fire and ice locked with hers. “Most adequate.”

Erin felt encompassed by his look, as if his eyes had a hypnotically magnetic strength all their own. Was it seconds, or did minutes pass by? She only knew that as he watched her—with interest? or a very strange disinterest?—she felt as if waves of heat assailed her in a curious backlash. Her legs felt like lava. She began to pray he would leave before her knees buckled beneath her.

And then, amidst the practical joke her composure seemed to be playing with her, she came to a very chilling realization. Jarod Steele hadn’t moved; he had remained very still against the door. But for all his apparent lassitude, he had very thoroughly scanned her couchette.

He slipped her check into his pocket and inclined his head in a courtesy that she felt was mocking rather than respectful. “Spasee ba, Miss McCabe,” he murmured, the ghost of a thin smile curling the corners of his lips. “Do sveedah nya.”

He left the couchette, quietly closing the door behind him. Erin’s knees did give; luckily she sank down to her neatly made bunk. Jarod Steele, she thought. What a strange individual. And what a strange effect he had on me. No, not just me, she amended wryly. She was sure he had this effect on everyone, male or female.

Erin glanced at her fingers: they were trembling. She stretched them before her, then clenched them into fists. This was just too much coincidence, she thought. To run into the same person twice in New York City with its throngs of humanity was absurd enough, but to run into the same person while traveling on a train from Helsinki to Moscow? And obviously he knew who she was.

And yet, why would he be following her? (She was the perpetrator of the actual collisions!) It was very apparent he did not find her particularly appealing; if anything, he seemed to dislike her, or at very least find her intolerably irritating.

Erin frowned and suddenly jumped from the bed, trying to recall the Russian words he had spoken. “Do sveeda nya?” she murmured to herself, hoping she could find the pronunciation equivalent in her tourist manual. Her fingers began an industrious thumbing through the pages until she found the translation.

“Till we meet again,” she murmured ponderously. Erin tapped a finger against her chin. “We won’t meet again, Mr. Steele,” she murmured. “Not if I can help it.”

But she would see him again, she thought wryly. They were on the same train. She could avoid him only if she spent the remainder of the trip locked in her couchette.

Erin tossed her book aside and stretched out on her bunk, slipping off her low-heeled leather boots and hugging her pillow. She was thoroughly annoyed with herself for finding Jarod Steele an incomprehensibly compelling man—especially since it had been ages since she had found the male of the species even remotely interesting. Maybe, she thought ruefully and tried to tell herself convincingly, she was merely being feminine and finding him fascinating simply because of his lack of reaction to her. She had many male friends, and all were gallant because they were friends. Nine out of every ten males she encountered socially or professionally were also gallant; their motives were highly suspect, but they were courteous nevertheless. Most had exotic sexual fantasies about the seductive Erin McCabe, and she found their innuendos both amusing and painful. Only she really knew that “Erin McCabe” was truly a myth, more fantasy than any man would ever imagine. She couldn’t go beyond a good-night kiss without feeling the chills of terror that froze her into something more glacially cold than dry ice.

Erin unconsciously began to play with the gold bands around her wrists. Jarod Steele was different. She wasn’t even sure he had noticed that she was female. No, she corrected herself. He did know she was female. She had the feeling he had been irritated enough to have given her a good slug if she had been a man. No, that too was unfair. She had a feeling that Mr. Steele would at all times have ultimate control over a very fierce temper. If he ever lashed out, it would be either because he had been provoked beyond human endurance, or because he allowed himself to do so after calculated thought.

Who was Jarod Steele anyway? she wondered. A New Yorker with a flair for what sounded like a perfect command of an unusual language for an American to master? He had to be some type of businessman, she decided. But what type of business did Americans carry out in Moscow? Damned if I know, she mused vaguely, caught in the midst of a yawn. Despite the flow of adrenaline set off by the unusual stranger Jarod Steele, the lulling motion of the train was having its effect on a body that had eschewed sleep for sightseeing for seven days and nights.

She must have dozed, because the next thing Erin consciously noted was that the monotonous motion of the train was beginning to slow down. She bolted from the bunk and looked eagerly out of her window, seeing nothing but blackness. Then a dim light became steadily brighter as the train approached a small station. She heard and felt the screeching tug as the
Moscoba
ambled to a full stop, then saw passengers hastily detraining. Curiously, she ran a hand over her tussled hair, straightened her skirt, and hopped about as she hurriedly tried to fumble back into her boots. Then she swiftly ventured into the hallway, her curiosity at a peak.

Erin was just in time to see Jarod Steele leaving his couchette—dressed now in gray tweed. He lifted a brow in cryptic acknowledgment, then proceeded down the hallway in the wake of a few others departing the train.

For the moment Erin forgot he was a self-proclaimed enemy. “Mr. Steele!” she called after him compulsively.

He paused, turning slowly back to face her, his blue icefire gaze as fathomless as ever, the wry twist of his mouth a shade cynical.

“Please,” she found herself mumbling nervously, “would you mind telling me where we are?” Erin knew he had the answer; whatever his business might be, it was evident he was no stranger to the U.S.S.R.

He stared at her for a moment, as if he were debating something behind the amused guard of his countenance. Then he sighed, like a man resigned to an unpleasant task, and brought himself back to her with a firm, long-legged stride. “We’re at the final stop in Finland before we cross the border,” he informed her. “There’s a decent restaurant here. If you want something to eat before morning, this is your last chance.”

Erin hesitated. She was starving, but suddenly fearful of leaving the relative security of the train for the unfamiliar darkness of an unknown town. And she certainly wasn’t going to attempt to inflict her company upon Jarod Steele, not when he seemed to consider her presence similar to that of a swarm of locusts.

Besides, warning bells were shrilling in her mind. One way or another, she sensed that his quiet power was very dangerous. His very control reeked of vital masculinity, the leashed force and vibrant heat of the sun.

While afraid of that dangerous power, Erin found herself shivering with excitement when he was near, trusting in his strength for a security that didn’t exist.

She wanted to dislike him, but he compelled her interest. She was gradually discovering that she was at a complete loss because she didn’t know how to handle him—she who had always known how to courteously handle people of either sex. And what was worse, she didn’t know how to handle herself.

There was valor in dignified retreat, she reminded herself, biting her lip with irritation as she found herself taking a step backwards. “Thank you, Mr. Steele,” she began to murmur.

His arm shot out and secured her elbow in a grip that was both light and firm, a sure hint of the steel evoked by his name. And like a clash of steel, his touch aroused her senses. Quicksilver flashes of both fire and ice trailed in feathered brushes from her nape to the small of her back, over and over again.