Free Shades of Gray by Kay Hooper Page B

you willing for less? Do you
want
me to love only a part of you, Andres?”
    She hadn’t flinched from his harsh voice, but he flinched from her quiet one.
    Sara went on as steadily as she could. “I can’t,you know that. Not and live with you.” She suddenly wanted to cry. “I’d always be afraid of that part of you, always wonder about—about the darkness in you.”
    “Sara—”
    “It’s
there
. We both know it! You said I had to see the best of you; I have to see the worst too. I thought it was the terrorists, but you said yourself I hadn’t known the worst of you. I have to.”
    “No.”
    “Yes.” She steadied her voice with an effort. “Andres, I said I wouldn’t run away again, and I meant that. But if you won’t let me understand you—completely—then I’ll never get over the uncertainty. I’d always wonder. And I’d have to say good-bye—this time—and
walk
away.”
    He said nothing, just continued to gaze down at the hand he held.
    Sara searched his face and was conscious of a growing desperation. He’d shut her out, blocking the chinks so that nothing escaped, and she couldn’t let him do that, not now. Not when it was so terribly important. “You said that I wanted the easy answers, the simple solutions,”she said. “And you were right. I ran because there
weren’t
any easy answers. Now I know there can’t be, not between us. But there
has
to be understanding, Andres. And truth. You said that, too, that you’d have no lies between us.”
    “I’ve dug my own grave, haven’t I?”
    She felt a prickle of foreboding, an odd unease. His voice had been strange, almost lifeless, as if the metaphorical grave he spoke of yawned before him. But before she could speak, he was going on in the same tone.
    “And if you can’t live with the worst?”
    She didn’t say anything, because they both knew the answer.
    After a moment Andres lifted her hand quickly to his lips and then released it, rising to his feet. His expression was hard-held, masklike, remote. “We’ll discuss this tomorrow,” he said. His voice was even now, controlled. “You should eat. Maria’s kept something hot for you; I’ll go and tell her you’re awake.”
    Sara waited until he was at the door, then said, “Andres?” And when he half turned back to her, she said, “Tomorrow things won’t be different.”
    His expression changed then, and for a flashing instant she thought of defeat, of something beaten. Then he was expressionless again. “I know.”
    She looked at the door for a long time after he left.
    A considerable distance away from the tensions of Kadeira, a massive and dangerous-looking man moved with inherent grace through the shadowed streets of a large East Coast American city. No casual stroller of those streets would have seen him, but the petite, red-haired woman standing patiently under a streetlight spoke to him even before he left the concealing shadows and joined her.
    “Well, did you meet your mysterious contact?”
    “I met him.” Unexpectedly, Zach Steele’s deep voice was rather soft. “Anybody bother you, honey, or did that misbegotten hound pretend he was a guard dog?”
    The “misbegotten hound,” who was an Irish wolfhound, and who, at a hundred and fiftypounds, far outweighed his mistress, woofed softly in response to this aspersion on his character and thumped his tail lazily on the pavement. The redhead patted him consolingly and addressed her husband.
    “Three men passed, and all of them scraped their elbows on that wall to walk around us. Wizard smiled at them. With all his teeth. Zach, did you get answers?”
    He took her hand and they began moving down the quiet, shadowed sidewalk, Wizard pacing at their heels. “Interesting answers,” he affirmed, his deep voice still soft. Then, as if continuing an old argument, he said, “You should have stayed in New York, Teddy. This trip has been so rushed, you haven’t gotten any rest at all.”
    “I’ll rest on the jet