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Staring at John now, the pieces of the puzzle that had been laid into place clicked. There was no suspicion, no coincidence. She knew. With the heart of a woman who had only loved once in her life, Bailey knew who her lover was, and she knew he would never reveal himself to her.
So many years alone. She remembered those first weeks after he had “died.” She had existed in a place of such dark grief that she hadn’t known if she could pull herself out of it. She had only just recovered from her parents’ deaths. Hell, she hadn’t even recovered, but Trent had helped her to focus, he had helped her to live again. Then he was gone.
And now he was back.
She had to blink back the tears at the feeling of betrayal, even as she wondered if she wouldn’t have done the same. When he had informed her that Warbucks had been behind Trent’s death, he had been telling her why he had left.
He’d had no choice. Warbucks wouldn’t have rested until he was dead. There would have been no safety for him, no way for him to escape the powerful reach of the criminal whom no one could identify and therefore no one could watch or catch.
And Trent alone wouldn’t have been in danger. Anyone he loved, anyone who could have been used as a weakness against him would have been in danger.
“Ralph Stanford was in the ballroom at the time of the shooting,” he told her as he paused at the bottom of the bed. “Greer is still searching for him, but I’d say we’ve lost the trail for tonight.”
“Whoever it is will try again,” she stated. “There’s a lot of money hiding in this deal. They won’t like losing out so quickly.”
The house party would pull the players into place. Whoever or whatever Warbucks was trying to maneuver, this would allow him to place everyone in a con
trolled area where he could watch and wait.
“Last year, Raymond Greer hosted this same party at the same time. It coincided with the sell of a list of agents working a delicate operation in Europe. Two weeks later, those agents were dead,” he told her.
“Operation Seascape,” she murmured. “The agents were in place to watch and track a terrorist cell that was using England’s coast to smuggle in people, supplies, and weapons. They were waiting for the arrival of one of the organization’s leading generals when that list was sold.”
John nodded. “The general made it into England, and he was lost after that. He’s still on the move rather than neutralized as he should have been.”
It wasn’t the subject that was truly on both their minds. Bailey could feel the tension, the emotions that swirled in the air around them, that infused them, that burned inside her chest with the force of a wildfire.
Tears threatened to fall as her heart actually ached with the knowledge of everything she had lost, everything she couldn’t have. She wanted to be in his arms, she ached to feel him against her, and yet a part of her refused to bend or to ask for what she needed most.
“I’m going to shower.” He moved away from the bed and turned toward the bathroom. “We can talk later.”
Later. There was always later.
She watched as he disappeared into the other room, noting the stress in his voice, in his shoulders. There were still so many things that she didn’t know about him, that she hadn’t known about him five years before.
They’d had so little time together. Not nearly enough time to know everything they needed to know about each other.
She lay in bed and stared at the ceiling as she heard the water in the shower turn on. She imagined him stepping beneath the spray, water pouring over his body.
She didn’t want to imagine.
Flipping the blankets away from her body, she moved from the bed and on silent feet entered the bathroom.
Shedding the long T-shirt she had worn to bed, she watched through the shower doors as he put his head back and let the water run over his face and head. His dark blond hair plastered to his head and neck. Water streamed over his hard, muscular body, giving it a golden sheen that tempted her hands to touch.
She watched, simply watched as he kept his back to her, poured shampoo into his palm, then replaced the bottle before working the gel through the thick strands of his hair.
Thick, heavy lather streamed down his back and buttocks, sliding down like a lover’s caress before slipping to the floor of the shower.
Bailey reached out, touched the glass as though she could actually feel the warmth of his flesh, and felt the need exploding inside her. Just to touch him, to taste him, to kiss the bronzed flesh and feel the flex of muscle beneath. To feel him against her, inside her.
She licked her lips as he stepped beneath the water once again, the suds flowing down his body, disintegrating beneath the force of the water as she slid the shower doors open.
He had known she was there. She watched him tense as she entered the cubicle and glimpsed the heavy length of his erection.
Warm flesh met her palm as she reached out and touched the flexing muscles of his back. His head lowered beneath the spray, one hand reaching out to brace against the wall.
“Wrong time, Bailey.” His voice was rough, guttural. “Go back to bed, baby.”
