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Rachel smiled and removed her hand to pick up her wineglass. “I don’t see how you could consider it anything else, considering you may be reassigned at any time. Even if you aren’t, I’ll be leaving on vacation soon and probably won’t be back for the rest of the summer.”
He didn’t like that; it put a small dent in his ego that she wasn’t willing to hang around for as long as he was there. “Where are you going?”
“The Keys. I’m going to stay with a friend and do some research in the area. I was planning to stay there until I have to come back to teach a night course in Gainesville when the fall quarter starts.”
Anyone else would have asked her about the course she was teaching; Ellis scowled at her and said, “Is your friend male or female?”
J
ust for a moment she entertained the appealing idea of telling him to take a long walk off a short pier, but it wasn’t her plan to antagonize him, not yet. She still wanted to get some information out of him if she could. So instead she gave him a cool look that told him he’d gone too far and said calmly, “A woman, an old college friend.”
He wasn’t stupid. Arrogant and conceited, but not stupid. He grimaced in a way that was meant to be charming, but left her cold. “Sorry. I overstepped myself, didn’t I? It’s just that—well, from the moment I saw you, I was really attracted, and I want to get to know you better.”
“There doesn’t seem to be much point in it,” Rachel pointed out. “You would be leaving soon, anyway, even if I hadn’t planned my vacation.”
He looked as if he’d like to refute that, but he’d told her himself that he moved around a lot. “We may be around for another couple of weeks,” he said sulkily.
“Tying up loose ends?”
“Yeah, you know how it is. Paperwork.”
“Is it just you and Agent Lowell?”
He hesitated, habit too deeply ingrained in him to make it easy for him to talk in any detail about his work. Rachel held her breath, wondering if his ego would prompt him to try to make up for the ground he had lost by being too personal. After all, it was inherently flattering when someone asked about your work. It was a way of getting better acquainted, of asking innocent questions that still denoted interest. She was interested, all right, but not in Ellis.
“There are nine of us actively investigating,” he finally said. “We were all chosen especially for this job.”
Because they were unscrupulous? She gave him a wide-eyed, ego-stroking look. “It must be really big to have that many men working on it.”
“As I said, we’re the active investigators. We can call on about twenty other men for backup if necessary.”
She looked suitably impressed. “But you think it’s a dead end?”
“We haven’t turned up anything, but the top man isn’t satisfied yet. You know how it is. People behind a desk think they know more than the men in the field.”
She sympathized with him and even made up a few tales to reciprocate, edging the conversation away from his work. If she probed too directly and too often it could rouse his suspicions. Talking to him made her feel unclean and anxious to get away from him, as far away as she could. The knowledge that he would try to kiss her, probably even try to talk her into bed, filled her with sick horror. There was no way she could tolerate his mouth on hers even for a moment. Even if he wasn’t a total snake, which he was, she couldn’t have kissed him; she was Kell Sabin’s woman, a fact that had nothing to do with will or determination. It simply was.
She forced herself to chat for another hour, smiling at the appropriate moments and forcing down the increasing urge to gag. He was almost more than she could tolerate. Only the thought that Kell could use any information she got out of Ellis gave her the will to stay. When their dishes had finally been cleared away and they were taking their time over coffee, she put out another feeler. “Where are you staying? This isn’t a tourist area, and motel rooms can be hard to find.”
“We’re actually spread out down the coast,” he explained. “Lowell and I are sharing a room at this dinky little motel, Harran’s.”
“I know where it is,” she said, nodding.
“We’ve been living off fast food since we got here. It’s a relief to get a decent meal for a change.”
“I imagine so.” She pushed her coffee cup back and looked around the restaurant, hoping he’d get the message that she was ready to go. The sketchy details she’d gotten would have to be enough; she simply couldn’t sit there with him any longer and pretend that she liked him. She wanted to go home and lock the door behind her, closing Tod Ellis and his cohorts out of her life. Kell was there, waiting for her, and she wanted to be with him, even though she was uneasy about his mood. He had been coldly silent when she left, his rage barely controlled. He had wanted her to play it safe and let all the risk fall on him, but Rachel could quit breathing more easily than she could stand by without doing anything while he was in danger. He wasn’t used to his commands being ignored, and he didn’t like it one little bit.
For his own reasons Ellis wasn’t loath to leave a little early. Rachel imagined that he thought the remainder of the evening would be spent in a more physical manner. He would be disappointed.
She didn’t talk much on the way home, both reluctant to have any more to do with Ellis than necessary and because her thoughts were increasingly taken with Kell, though he’d never been far from her mind all evening. Her heartbeat suddenly lurched and her blood skittered through her veins, making her feel flushed and dizzy. The fierce lovemaking they’d shared that afternoon should have clarified their relationship, even if only on that basic level, but it hadn’t. Kell had looked at her so oddly afterward, as if she wasn’t what he’d expected. Despite his anger with her when she refused to do what he told her, on some deep level he had seemed even more self-contained than ever. He was a difficult, unusual man, but she was so acutely sensitive to him that every faint nuance of his expression, which most people wouldn’t notice at all, seemed to shout at her. Why had he looked at her like that, then withdrawn? Why did she feel farther from him now than she had before they had lain locked together in writhing heat?
Ellis turned onto the private road that ended at her house and a few minutes later pulled the car to a stop in front. The house was dark, but she hadn’t really expected it to be any other way. Kell wouldn’t advertise his presence by turning on lights.
They got out of the car, and as Ellis came around to her side they heard that low snarl. Joe, bless him, didn’t miss anything.
Ellis visibly jerked, the sudden alarm starkly etched on his face in the ghastly light from the car’s open door. He stopped in his tracks. “Where is he?” he muttered.
Rachel looked around but couldn’t see the dog. He was black and tan, with the classic markings of a German shepherd, so his darkness made it difficult to see him. The snarls placed him slightly to her left, close to Ellis, but she still couldn’t make him out.
