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  “More respectable,” Rifat pronounced the words with a fastidious inflection, “than brokering the arms passing between belligerents. Although,” he went on with the merest of sighs, “I ask myself occasionally, Ceci, when a rare philosophical mood strikes me, why it's acceptable for some to sell arms and not others?”

  “You mean the deceit of defining arms sales as ‘maintaining national security'?”

  “That wonderful, benign phrase was what forced the third-world nations into the arms business in self-defense; they were being held hostage to powerful nations' whims of diplomacy. Although the small nations' inroads into arms manufacturing is tolerated, because they don't put enough product on the market to matter.”

  “While the large nations maintain the fiction of ‘national security' as a motive because they're selling to everyone, and even a five-year-old knows that's unethical,” Ceci said.

  “But if you're an independent broker, you're cutting into some country's profits, so you're criminal.”

  “When in fact it's simply an interpretation of whose bottom line is losing money to people like us. And all the noisy rhetoric and byzantine definitions are simply so many words-a smoke screen to hide all the profitable transactions and deceit.”

  “Ah, yes, deceit… life's basic ingredient, along with the profit motive.” The general began stacking the photos with swift precision, impatient suddenly with the false righteousness so prevalent in arms sales. “Luckily my brief fits of piety are rare,” he briskly said, looking back up at Ceci. “I look forward, then,” his eyes were devoid of any trace of sentiment, “to confirmation-say in ten days-that the girl is in your hands.”

  “Perhaps two weeks. But Minneapolis is a quiet city, insulated by its geography, untouched by terrorist alarm.” Ceci's tone was lazily confident. “The assignment will be without obstruction.”

  CHAPTER 23

  L ate that night in the warm shambles of the bed, restfully content, Molly and Carey talked. Carey wanted to get married immediately. He had a film scheduled in Australia next, and would be gone a year. He wanted them to go there as a family.

  “My business…” Molly said. “A whole year?”

  Lounging on his side, he reached out to touch the gentle curve of Molly's waist as she sat beside him. “Get someone to watch it for you.”

  She looked at him incredulously. Watch it? Did he think it was a Springer spaniel? “I can't,” she said. The Design Center was her baby, had been her sanity, her passion, her pleasure for six years. And now, this second launching was only coming into its own. He couldn't ask her to simply walk away and leave it, and she told him so.

  He stared at her in the soft, illumination of the bedside lamp for one of those long, brooding moments, and then replied, “You're right, Honeybear. That was selfish of me. We'll resolve this somehow.”

  And Carrie needed some time to get to know him, she added. Even though he was her natural father, she couldn't abruptly marry a man her daughter had seen for the first time a few hours ago.

  He rolled over on his back then, raked his fingers through his hair, and lay, arms stretched above his head, staring at the ceiling. After long moments, he finally spoke, his voice calm, though his eyes were electric, charged with his own special kind of raw energy. “Okay, Honeybear,” he said quietly. “We'll do whatever you want, but I'm marrying you this time. One way or another. You work out the details, the scheduling. Just let me know where and when.” He smiled then, mitigating the intensity of his gaze, softening the harshness of his features. “You're the boss, ma'am, on all the wedding arrangements.”

  “If it wasn't for… my employees,” Molly murmured, “not to mention the mortgage payments,” she added in a small apologetic voice, suddenly aware how contrary the tenor of her refusal. “And the Midwest Wholesalers Show scheduled for August, I'd race you to the altar,” she finished in a whisper.

  “I know, sweetheart.” His voice was soft, matching the dark splendor of his eyes. “Forgive my impatience, but after ten years-” He sighed, the hard muscles of his stomach rippling in a tiny flurry of movement. “Oh hell… come here.” His large hand circled Molly's wrist, and he tugged gently. “We'll iron out the timetable later.”

  He held her in his arms, and she wondered how she'd survived so long without him. Too much had happened too swiftly tonight to unravel all the complexities. It was enough to hold Carey close and know they had a future together; it was enough to simply feel the warm, tangible, blissful security. Molly fell asleep to the slow, steady rhythm of Carey's heart beneath her ear, like a gentle lullaby.

  Restless and vigilant, his passions too ardent, Carey lay awake, wanting to document and store away the precious sweetness, the sight and feel of the only woman he'd ever loved. Unlike the previous years of his life in which time and people were squandered, in which weeks and months were laid waste in lavish spendthrift destruction, tonight he was collecting and preserving the beauty and fullness of this feeling called love.

  Tonight he'd become a father, too, a thought that infused him with a riveting excitement. And several times during the night he softly spoke the words aloud into the hushed darkness. “I have a daughter,” he'd murmur, “just down the hall… in this very house,” he'd add to reinforce the reality. And he'd grin from ear to ear-no matter that he cautioned himself to anticipate less delight from his daughter when she discovered that Bart, the only father she'd known, had been replaced by a virtual stranger. No matter that he knew the possibility of rejection existed, that bonding delayed for almost nine years was a serious neglect, that his meager knowledge of fatherhood could be written in less than ten words. But he grinned in the quiet darkness, immune to problems tonight.

  From time to time he'd gently stroke Molly's tumbled hair or touch the flushed softness of her cheek and whisper, “I love you, Honeybear.” And his smile would reappear, his happiness would surge, the kind that inspired poets and songwriters to compose metaphors about tropical nights and trips to the moon on gossamer wings. And elation kept him awake all night, a happiness so profound he reached out once to touch the bedside table. The wood was solid beneath his fingers. This was not a dream.

  As the dawn sky lightened, he watched the grays change into color, sensitive to the minutest transformations, feeling like a man experiencing his first sunrise. And as the glow of the sun first slipped radiant tendrils over the horizon, bathing the summer morning in a shimmering rose, Carey kissed Molly softly near the pulse of her temple, and murmured, “I'm never going to let you out of my sight.”

  He repeated the sentiment again, immediately after she woke.

  Actually-not immediately.

  First he told her he loved her more than the President loved macaroni and cheese, and then he said he was never going to let her out of his sight.

  Smiling up at him drowsy-eyed as she lay with her cheek resting on his chest, she murmured, “Thank you for loving me obviously beyond reason, but never letting me out of your sight doesn't sound very practical.”

  “So I'm not a practical man.” There was a seriousness to his voice under the smiling answer.

  “Perhaps we could negotiate the finer points of ‘never',” Molly said, the twinkle in her eyes joyous, “to allow us both an opportunity to earn a living.”

  “Don't have to earn a living,” Carey growled, half in jest, half in earnest.

  “And then again,” Molly replied, “some of us weren't fortunate enough to have been born counts.”

  “And then again,” Carey murmured very low, looking down at her from under his thick, dark lashes, “some of us will soon be countesses.”

  Molly sat up abruptly in resentment. Carey had triggered her damnable touchy pride that had been trampled on so recently by the master trampler-Bart Cooper-and was still bruised and sensitive. “Are you implying that's enough?”

  Carey's eyes opened a fraction wider, surprised at her sudden withdrawal and equally unexpected nettlesomeness. “No,” he said after a short time, having surve
yed the faintly irascible woman beside him. “I didn't mean to imply anything of the kind.” His self-esteem had never rested on his parentage.

  “Good,” Molly crisply retorted, “because I don't care if I'm a countess or not.” She moved back another small distance as if unconscious prelude to her next statement. “But I do care very much about not losing my identity or independence.”

  “How independent do you have in mind?” he asked, not altogether sure he was progressive enough to accept some of the newer social mores where couples worked and lived apart. He was rather of the predisposition at the moment after so many years apart to keep Molly under lock and key. Rapidly discarding his moment of anachronistic irrationality, he segued instead into his most diplomatic tone and in softly reassuring words added, “I don't want your identity, Honeybear… only your love.”

  Whether it was his diplomatic words or his soothing voice or the outstretched hand he offered her, Molly smiled suddenly, then sighed. “I guess I overreacted,” she quietly said, and touched his open palm lightly in a tiny, tentative gesture that conveyed both her love and uncertainty. Paradoxically at that moment she seemed very vulnerable, like the Molly he'd known long ago, but also imbued with a quiet, resilient strength developed in the years he'd been away.

  Carey didn't make any sudden moves, although his fingers ached to close over hers and pull her close. He understood her struggle for independence better for having known her in her youth. Unlike Molly, he would never have married someone simply because the invitations had been mailed out, but she had for all her own reasons and with the ache of their youthful parting a never-to-be-forgotten pain, he quietly said, “You didn't overreact, Honeybear. I was using the wrong words. They were thoughtless, flip, and irrelevant, okay?” He had never apologized to a woman before outside of the casual disclaimers normal courtesy required; he had never seriously questioned his own selfishness. His dark eyes were trained on Molly's face as if gauging the success of his apology. “Although,” he went on slowly, his explanation as much for himself as her, “my feelings are relevant… and powerful.” His voice was very low, as though he held those powerful feelings in check. He didn't dare tell her how intensely he needed her, how he loved her with proprietory indiscretion. It frightened him at times… that sort of urgent wanting. And Molly's newfound freedom might be too fragile to stand the unleashed assault of his compelling need.

  “If my divorce hadn't been so ruthless…” She smiled ruefully. “It left scars. Sorry.”

  Very slowly Carey's fingers closed over Molly's small hand. “I'm sorry, too.” And he was. For not being there to protect her from Bart Cooper's predacious demands.

  “That's why my independence is so important to me. I want to be in control of my life.” She was still sitting straightbacked and assertive, but her beautiful nude body gilded by the morning sun was blatantly distracting, an ultrafeminine assertion of supple curves and yielding softness. “And I'm probably overexaggerating this all out of proportion.”

  She was talking to a man who had had the opportunity to indulge his independence most of his life. “I hear you loud and clear, sweetheart.” One tanned shoulder rose in a negligent shrug. “Look, you can have a prenuptial, nuptial, postnuptial contract down to the color of the bath towels if it'll make you happy. I don't want to take anything away from you, Honeybear, I only want to give.” He was offering her carte blanche with a mild, gracious courtesy.

  He lay powerfully lithe on her bed, undisturbed by her exacting requests and less than eager assent to his marriage plans, relaxing against the turquoise striped sheets as though he hadn't been absent from her bed for ten years. His muscled, athletic body was dark, tanned by the same sun that had shone on her but in other faraway places. She had only just found him again; it was sheer folly to make demands. He was too wonderful to chastise. Perhaps she was a fool to inflict her high-strung requirements on this golden-haired, dark-eyed, attractive man. “I don't deserve you,” Molly murmured, touched by his compassion, her eyes glistening with emotion.

  “Yes, you do, and I deserve you. We deserve each other after ten bloody years of sacrifice to some damn god of misrule who sent those wedding invitations out before I had a chance to make you mine. But I'm going to make you mine this time, Honeybear, if it takes a bushel of sweet-talking and every йcu in my Swiss bank accounts.”

  “Why are you being so accommodating?” Her question was half-teasing, laced with suspicion left over from all the glossy pictures seen of Carey Fersten with the beauties of the world.

  “I'm always accommodating,” he murmured in a deep growl which offered potentially diverse choices.

  “Is there a catch?” Her teasing was lighthearted now, all weighty concerns over identity and independence discarded. “Is there a payment due for all your congenial accommodation?”

  “Not anywhere on God's green earth, sweetheart,” he cheerfully replied, and then his dark lashes lowered so that he looked at her from under their lacy fringe. “At least,” he whispered very low, “nothing you can't handle.”

  Joyous and full of laughter, she fell on him and he welcomed her with open arms, his heart spilling over with love. Tumbling like young puppies they exchanged teasing kisses and words of love until their kisses altered, leading to other, more time-consuming pleasures.

  And it was sudden shock that brought her sitting upright from soft layers of lethargy an hour later, the harsh buzzing of the alarm followed by shock. “Yipes,” she cried. “Carrie's breakfast!”

  It was Carey's first startling introduction to fatherhood.

  CHAPTER 24

  A fter a quick shower, Carey tossed on some clothes and padded barefoot into the kitchen to join Molly and his daughter for breakfast. As he stood just inside the doorway, Molly introduced him.

  “Honey, this is Mom's friend Carey Fersten. Carey, this is my daughter. She has pierced ears.”

  Carey shifted his glance from his daughter back to Molly, surprised at the small shadow of contention in the last two words. “And you don't,” he quietly said with a smile, the taste of her earlobes sweet recent memory.

  Molly had always resisted putting holes in her flesh, and had played guardian over her daughter's earlobes, as well. Or had tried to. And while she'd raised Carrie to be independent, it often disconcerted her when she was. “She's so young,” Molly replied, sounding petulantly youthful herself for a brief moment before her jeunesse dorйe expression altered to one of resigned motherhood. “Carrie tells me pierced ears are de rigueur for eight-year-olds,” Molly added, her voice warm with affection as she looked at her daughter.

  “Are you dragging your mother into the twentieth century?” Carey inquired, his glance returning to his pale-haired daughter who was calmly gazing at him.

  “Mom's kind of old-fashioned sometimes. She used to live in a small town,” she added, as though that explained her mother's conservative spells. “You came back,” Carrie said in the next breath, changing topics with childlike ingenuousness. “I knew you would.”

  “Said I would, didn't I?”

  “Yup.” And she shoveled another spoonful of Cheerios into her mouth. “Did you and Mom make up?”

  Molly blushed. Carey smiled and said, “Yes, I can never stay mad at your Mom.”

  “Gonna be here tonight when I come home from school?”

  “Really, Carrie,” Molly interposed, embarrassed by her daughter's forthrightness.

  “I'm visiting for a couple of days. Want me to pick you up from school?”

  She nodded. “And you can drive me there in two minutes, if you want.” Carrie cast a rebuking glance at her mother. “You overslept, Mom. I'm going to be late, and Theresa's going to wonder why you haven't checked in downstairs.”

  “It's my fault,” Carey explained. “I kept your Mom up late last night… talking.” The warm hue on Molly's face was the exact shade of the rosebuds on her bathrobe, and Carey tried to remember the last woman he'd seen blush.

  “So?”

 
His daughter's pointed inquiry brought him back to earth.

  “I'll drive. You don't have to drive, Carey,” Molly rapidly declared, disconcerted by her daughter's presumption.

  “I'd love to,” he replied. I'd love to, he thought, love to drive “my daughter” to school-a simple, ordinary act he'd considered forever denied him.

  With a hesitant, “Are you sure?” to which she received a firm, “Yes,” Molly excused herself to get ready for work.

  “Do you really make movies? On location? With big budgets and extras like from… people you know?” His daughter's eager tone reminded him of his own voice when he was asking for his first car, years too early.

  “Are you really nine?” he asked, amusement rich in his voice. Even with his limited acquaintance with children, she struck him as wonderfully precocious.

  “Eight and seven-eighths.”

  Controlling an impulse to smile, he said, “That accounts for it, then.”

  “Are you going to drive barefoot?”

  “Do you mind?”

  “Georgia's boyfriend got a ticket for driving barefoot.”

  “Who's Georgia? Your mom's old friend Georgia?” he asked in the next flashing moment. “What boyfriend?” he asked immediately, as though he were guardian to a minor. Had Molly had boyfriends, too, although she'd denied it? Relax, Fersten, he cautioned in the next millisecond. This is not the middle ages. She is not your exclusive property. Oh, yeah? his possessive instincts dissented. Remember, these are liberated, progressive times, the logical voice inside his brain declared. And sense and sensibility lasted another millisecond. “What boyfriend?” he testily repeated.

  “Her lifeguard boyfriend.”

  “Lifeguard boyfriend-as in beach lifeguard?”

  “He's a little young for Georgia, Mom says.”