'Lily?' Ryland rested his hip against the bathroom door-jamb, her gown still crumpled in his hand. She hadn't looked at him once since they'd raced out of the hotel. Not one single time, as if she couldn't bear the sight of him. She couldn't have hurt him more if she'd plunged a knife in his gut. 'You might as well just understand something right here and now. This is what I do, what I've been trained to do, damn it!'
She didn't look at him, staring straight ahead. Ryland stepped closer. He was going to have an ulcer before he ever got a commitment out of her. He could see the ugly black and purple bruise forming high up on the back of her shoulder. 'Are you listening to me?' The harsh rage was gone from his voice. 'I'm not letting you go because you saw me doing something that was necessary. You may as well know I won't. It's a stupid reason for you to give up on us.' He brought the red material up to his face, rubbed it against his jaw. He wasn't going to lose her.
Ryland had no idea how it had happened or when it had happened, but she was so firmly entrenched in his heart, in his soul, he couldn't breathe without her. When she still didn't answer, just sat there with steam curling her hair and tears falling into the water, he sighed heavily, the anger draining out of him. 'Don't cry, honey. I'm sorry I had to kill him.' His voice was very low and controlled. 'Please stop crying, you're tearing my heart out.'
'Get a clue! I'm not crying because you had to kill him, Ryland. I'm sorry he's dead, but he was trying to kill us both. I'm crying for you. I have no idea how to help you.' Embarrassed, she threw water on her face to cover the tears.
He was silent, studying her averted face. 'This is all for me? You're crying for me?' That was what she did. Turned him inside out with a few sentences. What was he going to do with her? 'Lily, don't do that. You don't need to cry for me.' Where his stomach had been in hard knots, now there was a warm glow. He felt like she'd handed him a Christmas present. No one had shed tears for him in a long time.
Lily heard the note in his voice. Happiness. She felt it in the room in spite of the weight of the guilt he was feeling. That little note allowed her to breathe again.
She turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. Her long lashes were spiked. Beads of water ran down her soft skin, to the tips of her breasts. In spite of the bruises, she was an alluring sight sitting there. Her hair tumbled and curled in the steam. Water bubbled and brushed lovingly at her body. She took his breath away. Stole his heart. She
'I can't think when you look like that, Lily. Why did you have to be so beautiful?' He didn't mean physical beauty, but he couldn't separate one from the other. He was sick at heart with what he'd done. He didn't think the blood of a friend could ever be washed from his hands but somehow her tears had managed to do it. Ryland stared at her, in the middle of what looked like a crystal palace, a princess he didn't deserve but was going to keep.
'I wish I was beautiful, Ryland. You make me feel beautiful.' Her vivid blue gaze drifted moodily over his rugged features. 'How could you think I would blame you for saving our lives? I feel what it cost you. I felt it when you did it.'
'I saw your face. You wanted to save him.' He blinked away the tears burning unexpectedly in his eyes. His throat felt raw with pain.
'I saw yours. I wanted to save him for you.' She reached out her hand to him. Waited until he took her fingers and settled on the edge of the Jacuzzi tub. 'We're connected somehow. And you're right. It doesn't matter if my father found a way to manipulate the attraction between us, I'm grateful you're in my life.'
Ryland brought her hand to his mouth, nibbled on her fingers, resisting the urge to gather her close. She humbled him with her generosity. 'Does your shoulder hurt?' He leaned forward to brush a kiss against the vicious bruise.
'I'm fine, Ryland. What about your ribs? Arly said he cleaned the scratch but you know knife wounds are notorious for infections.' She sounded anxious, not at all his perfectly calm Lily.
He knelt beside the tub, reached beneath the bubbling water for her calf. He began a slow, deep massage, working her knotted muscles with infinite gentleness. 'Don't worry, Arly scrubbed it with some kind of foul-smelling stuff he called bug juice. It burned like hell. Nothing could be alive, not even the tiniest germ.'
'When I was a child, he swore by that stuff. I think he makes it up in the laboratory like the proverbial mad scientist. Every time I fell down, he swabbed it over my knees and turned my skin a very ugly shade of purple.'
Ryland laughed. 'That's the stuff, all right.' He felt her wince beneath his massaging fingers and gentled his touch even more. 'Tell me about Ranier. What do you think?'
'He was telling me the truth,' Lily said. 'I was so relieved. I've known him most of my life and I'm not certain I could have taken it if he had been involved in a plot against my father. Apparently, he received none of the messages my father sent him. Not his letters, or his emails, and not the phone calls. Interestingly enough, the general's aide is a brother to Hilton, the man Colonel Higgens sent to keep an eye on me.' She reached under the water, gripped his wrist. 'General Ranier was suddenly very worried, as if he were connecting dots to something. I think there's been a security leak for a while and he's suddenly putting two and two together.'
'Maybe. If there's been a problem with a leak, they wouldn't advertise it. The investigation would be internal. No one would suspect Colonel Higgens. His record is impeccable.
I certainly preferred in the beginning to believe it was your father betraying us all. And General McEntire… it's still difficult to believe that he would be involved in selling out his country. It's a nightmare, Lily. This entire thing has been a nightmare.'
'Do you think Cowlings was a plant? Someone Colonel Higgens placed in the program? I remember when I read his file, he scored low on most of the criteria for psychic ability. I thought he was allowed in because Dad wanted to see if the enhancement would work on someone with little or no natural talent. And it did.'
Her voice had slipped back into her professional, completely interested tone. Ryland knew immediately the discussion had gone from personal to clinical. Instead of annoying him, it made him want to smile. 'He might not have been telepathic, but he certainly was able to take command of an inanimate object. That was really great.'
'Lily, you did destroy your father's original notes on the experiment, didn't you? He wouldn't want it repeated.'
The cramps in her leg were slowly beginning to ease under his ministration and the hot water. Lily breathed a sigh of relief and sank deeper into the bubbles. 'Dad thought the experiment failed,' she pointed out.
'Only at first,' he said calmly. His fingers itched to shake her. 'He suspected someone had sabotaged it and he still felt strongly enough to tell you to get rid of his work. You have to honor that, Lily. You can keep the tapes of the exercises in case you need them for the other women when we track them down, but the rest of it, you have to destroy so this is never repeated.'
'It was brilliant, Ryland.' She sat forward, her blue gaze alive with interest. 'What he did was totally brilliant from a purely scientific standpoint.'
'I volunteered, Lily, the men and I, but you and the other little girls had no choice. What Peter Whitney did to you was totally wrong from a humanitarian standpoint.' Ryland's strong fingers encircled her ankle, gave her a little shake. 'Think how you felt, Lily, seeing those little girls. Seeing yourself. Think how those women feel now and what they must have gone through all these years. And my men, how they are going to have to guard themselves for the rest of their lives to keep from ending up in an institution. Yes, from the standpoint of a military operation, with the help you're giving us now, the experiment may have been a success. It was very cool, by the way, to be able to divide my energy and fight Russell Cowlings even while I was working with the other side of my brain. But the point is, we have to function as a group. Those without an anchor to draw the excess energy away from them are always going to have problems living a normal life.'
'I know, I know. But Ryland…'
His grip tightened. 'There are no buts, Lily. These men and the women deserved a normal life. They want families. They have to support those families. They don't have your money and this fancy house to help provide a sanctuary for them to live in. I can't believe you're even contemplating the idea to continue.'
Lily gave a small sigh. 'I'm not, Ryland. I'm really not. I can't help but find it interesting and rather brilliant.' She ducked her head. 'I can hardly bear the thought of giving up anything that was my father's. Especially his handwritten notes. They make me feel like he's still here with me.'
His hand tangled in her hair. 'I'm sorry, Lily. I know it hurts to lose a parent. You didn't have a mother and I didn't have a father. We're going to make interesting parents when we have children.'
She laughed, dispelling the shadows in her eyes. 'I wouldn't know the first thing about children.'
Ryland leaned over the edge of the tub to kiss the top of her head. 'That's all right, honey, you can always get
