Read Online Darkness before the Dawn by Anne Stuart - Free Book Online

tangled affair to his own end.
    That must have been the problem, he’d told himself more times than he could remember. He couldn’t get her out of his mind because it wasn’t over. He’d walked out on her with unfinished business between them. And because they hadn’t settled it, he’d been unable to get on with his life. But that would be over, soon. And then maybe he’d get rid of the aquamarine eyes that haunted him.
    In the meantime, maybe remembering wasn’t such a good idea after all. Nor was lying alone in an empty hotel room thinking about her. He needed to be out among people; he needed distraction. He moved from the bed, headed toward the telephone, then stopped. There was no one he could call, no one he wanted to call. He was trapped, waiting. As he’d been waiting six years. With a silent curse, he turned back to the brandy.
    She was getting drunk. It was a pleasant enough feeling, Maggie thought, sipping at the Scotch and smiling at the darkened living room and the sleeping figure of her sister. Hell, she deserved to get drunk—she’d faced the ghost of her past and survived. Randall Carter, in the flesh, was something she’d assiduously avoided for so long, it had become second nature to her. Then he’d shown up, the skeleton at the feast, when she was least expecting it, asking questions about grapefruit marmalade. Fancy he’d remember that, she thought,shifting around in the chair with careful deliberation, not spilling a drop of her umpteenth drink. Why would he remember it after all those years?
    The apartment had been small and squalid. Randall had left the Mercedes on a side street, where Vasili would pick it up and return it, no questions asked. They’d made it down the narrow, depressing streets and up the three flights to their room without running into anyone. And there Randall had abandoned her, with nothing but the hot plate, chairs, and the bed, while he went off and met with the underground.
    If the thirty-six hours by Jim Mullen’s side had seemed endless, these were even more so. She sat in the sturdier of the spindly chairs, staring out the window into the depressing streets of Gemansk, and tried to stay awake.
    In the end it had been a useless battle. She crawled into the bed, just for a few moments, and then exhaustion took over, followed by a deep, drugged sleep.
    She would have been fine without the dreams, she told herself later. She’d done a great job of fending off Randall, of ignoring the insidious attraction that he’d been trying to feed. But dreams pay no attention to common sense, and she lay on the sagging bed in a cocoon of sleep, prey to the erotic fantasies of her subconscious mind. The dream was so different from any of the unpleasant sexual realities she’d experienced that she awoke, flushed, sweating, completely aroused, to hear the sound of a key in the thin panel door.
    It had been dark in the hideout. Fitful light filtered in from the streets, and through the thin walls and ceilings Maggie could hear footsteps, voices, babies crying. Randall stood in the doorway, illuminated by the dim light bulb from the hall, and for the first time since she’d known him, he wasn’t wearing one of his impeccable suits. He was dressed like the workers on the street, in rough clothes and work shoes; his black hair looked longer and scruffier around his head, setting off the Slavic cheekbones. He shut the door behind him, plunging them both into semidarkness, and he came across the room tothe bed, dumping a bag on the rough little table as he moved. He still had that peculiar grace of his; it would have set him apart from the workers of Gemansk, but she had little doubt that he’d corrected that in public. She lay on the bed, bemused and unmoving, as he approached her.
    “I’ve brought you some clothes,” he said, and his low, rich voice danced along her nerve endings. “Vasili will be by after midnight with some food. Until then, there’s nothing we can do but