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Forget Niema Jamieson; she was too shattered to play a role right now. She reached down into who she really was, Niema Burdock, and found that the two women were much the same. Had John planned that deliberately, made Niema Jamieson’s history so close to her own so she was essentially playing herself?
But it was Niema Burdock who gathered her dignity around her, turned, and walked quietly away. No histrionics. She made her way back up the path toward the patio and saw that Ronsard was indeed standing just outside the ballroom doors, watching them. With the bright light behind him, she couldn’t read his expression, but she braced herself and approached him.
He was silent, looking down at her. She met his gaze, inwardly flinching at the cynical disillusionment she knew she would see there, but instead all she could find was concern. Her lips trembled, and suddenly tears blurred her vision.
“Oh, God,” she whispered. “How?”
Ronsard extended his arm to her and she took it, and he walked her back inside as if nothing had happened. He didn’t appear to hurry, but still their progress across the crowded room was mercifully fast. Her fingers dug into his arm as she clung for support. Her legs were shaking. Her entire body was shaking, fine tremors rocking her muscles.
A sumptuous buffet had been set out in another room, with tables set for those guests who wished to eat there, or they could take their plates out onto the patio or into the pool courtyard. Ronsard settled her at one of the empty tables and went to the buffet, where he loaded two plates and brought them back. At a signal from him, a waiter appeared with two glasses of champagne.
“I noticed earlier you weren’t drinking,” he said. “Try it; my champagne is infinitely superior to that swill the prime minister served. Besides”—he gave a crooked smile—“you need the sedative.”
She drank the champagne and ate the strawberries on her plate. He cajoled her into trying the delicious pate, too, though her throat kept t
hreatening to close.
“I see I was too much of a gentleman,” he said, amusement rich in his voice and eyes. “I should have simply grabbed you and kissed you, overwhelmed you with my animal magnetism. But really, my dear, that isn’t my style.”
“I—I didn’t think it was mine, either” She could barely speak.
“One can never predict chemistry, though somehow we always underestimate it.” He patted her hand. “And now I’m going to do something I have never thought I would do. I’m so astonished at myself I may never recover.”
“What?” Ronsard’s humor had a steadying effect on her. So she had responded to John with a shattering intensity—that was what she was supposed to do. It was part of their scheme. John wouldn’t, couldn’t, know that there hadn’t been anything deliberate about her response, that for a few searing moments she had been lost in the physical pleasure she had been trying to resist since the moment John Medina had reappeared in her life.
“Mr. Smith—”
“He told me his real name,” she broke in, rubbing the spot between her eyebrows, partly to shield her expression and partly because tension was beginning to give her a slight headache.
“Then . . . you know he wouldn’t be using a pseudonym if there wasn’t good cause. He isn’t a celebrity, my dear; quite the opposite. Every law enforcement agency in the world would love to have him in its custody.”
She stared at him while she pretended to work it through. “He—he’s a terrorist?” Her voice was almost soundless.
Ronsard let his silence answer for him.
She drank more champagne, but that didn’t loosen the knot in her throat. “He’s the only man I’ve kissed since my husband—” Five years. Five years since Dallas had died, and she hadn’t been able to feel even a flicker of response to any of the very nice men she had occasionally dated. She hadn’t been able to let any of them kiss her, not because it felt like a betrayal, but because it hadn’t seemed fair to them to pretend even that much. The lines between role and reality had blurred again, with Niema Burdock speaking, trying to work her way through what had happened to her in John Medina’s arms.
“I can’t stay here,” she said, surging to her feet. “I’m going to my room. Louis—”
“I understand.” He rose too, his handsome face full of concern. “I can’t tell you want to do, my dear; the decision is yours. But make it with all the facts in your possession, and no matter what your answer is, I’ll always cherish your friendship.”
God, how could he be so nice in so many ways, and still be what he was? The puzzle of Louis Ronsard wasn’t any closer to being solved than it was the day she met him. But for all the vividness of his character, she was losing her focus on him, had been from the moment she saw him walking toward her with John beside him.
Blindly she groped for his hand, squeezing it hard. “Thank you,” she said, and fled.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
It was three A.M. when she saw the curtains by the balcony doors flutter. Niema was lying in the dark, unable to sleep, waiting for John to appear. She didn’t hear anything; there was only that small flutter to signal his arrival, then his black shape silhouetted against the faint light coming through the glass behind him.
She sat up and tugged her robe, the most substantial one she had, more tightly around her. The room was dark and he couldn’t see her any better than she could see him, but she felt she needed every bit of protection she could muster. He crossed the room with eerie stealth and accuracy, approaching the high four-poster bed. He leaned over and put his mouth against her ear. “Have you swept the room?”
“I checked it when I got here,” she whispered back. “I figured if the place was wired, it was part of the security system rather than a patch job. It’s clean.”
“Mine wasn’t.”
“Permanent or patched?”
