He shook his head and inhaled deeply through his nose. “Listen, I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow or the day after or next week. I only know that when I’m not with you, I think about you. I’ve never wanted a woman the way I want you. And it’s not just physical.” He placed his hands on the sides of her face. “I love the smell of your skin and the tangle of your hair around my fingers. I love your courage and your tenacity.” He pressed his forehead into hers. “I love being with you, and we’re good together. And I think we’re only going to get better.”

Yes, but for how long? she wanted to ask. The thought of him alone somewhere, getting beaten and shot at, ate a little hole in her heart, but what could she do about it? She couldn’t stop him any more than she could stop loving him.

“I don’t want to let you go,” he said just above a whisper. “I’ve tried and I can’t. The thought of it twists me in a knot.”

“So, don’t let me go.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“I know.” Then she spoke her biggest fear out loud. “I’ve fallen in love with a man who puts himself at risk as if his life is meaningless. But your life means something to me, Max, and I don’t know how long my heart can stand it.”

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose. When he opened them again, his gaze was filled with passion, and he lowered his mouth and kissed her because there was nothing left to say. He was a man who didn’t make promises he didn’t intend to keep. He tore at the black robe and seemed to touch her all over at once. He worshiped her with his hands and mouth and carried her back to his bed. He made love to her again. This time more desperate than the last, almost frantic, as though, if he kept her in bed, he could keep the world away.

And it worked. Within his arms, and tangled in the sheets that smelled of him, nothing else existed. By the sheer force of his will, he kept reality at bay.

But for how long?

Chapter 16

Two days after Lola and Max broke into Sam’s house, they were questioned separately by the Baltimore police. She’d been back home for less than twenty-four hours when she’d had to place a call to her lawyer and make plans to meet him at the police station in Durham. Max and his attorney had answered the same questions in Alexandria, and since there was no evidence tying either of them to the crime, both had been cleared.

Her problems with Sam were finally over. Taken care of just as Max had predicted. He was her hero, but loving Max was both the best and worst thing that had ever happened to her. And each day that passed, she fell more in love with him. They spent every weekend together, and each hour she lost herself a little more in the pleasure of being with him. The pleasure of his hot mouth and strong hands. The solid wall of his chest against her breasts. Wrapped up in the warmth of Max, she felt safe and protected, as if nothing terrible could ever happen as long as they were together. Each time Max kissed her goodbye, his arms held her a bit tighter than the time before. Closer, as if he were trying to absorb as much of her as possible.

He hadn’t told her he loved her. Not yet. It had only been three weeks since she’d blurted out that she loved him, but she was fairly sure that he did love her. No man could look at a woman, and touch her the way Max did, and not be in love. Still, she longed to hear the actual words from his lips.

During the weekdays when they couldn’t be together, he telephoned her every night and during the day while she was at work. Sometimes just to ask if she was designing edible underwear.

“Are you hungry, Max?” she would ask.

“Yes,” he always answered. “I’m hungry for you.”

In a very short amount of time, she grew to live for and fear his calls. The sound of his voice brought a glow to her heart, even as she held her breath. With each call, she half expected that he’d phoned to tell her he was off to Bosnia, Afghanistan, or Iraq. Although, she supposed, he wouldn’t tell her where he was headed, just that he was going away.

How Max lived his life was out of her hands. Out of her control. She wouldn’t ask him to change for her. She could only hope and pray that he was in so much trouble from the Nassau fiasco that the government had taken away his decoder ring and had crossed his name out of their secret black book.

She knew he carried a pager at all times, and she hoped the government had lost his number. But deep down inside she knew it was only a matter of time before it beeped. There was no doubt in. her mind that it would happen.

It just happened sooner than she was ready, over breakfast the weekend she and Baby had driven up to see him. He’d toasted her a muffin and made coffee and they were supposed to spend the day steaming the horrible wallpaper from his kitchen. She’d brought him a photograph of her and Baby, and she’d put it in a silver frame with engraved and enameled dog biscuits. She’d brought her camera so she could take pictures of him, too. So he’d have a picture of them all together. Her, him, and Baby. Like a real family.

She never got the chance. His pager went off during his second cup of coffee as he was feeding Baby a hunk of bran muffin. Across the kitchen table, their gazes met and she knew. This was it.

Wearing nothing but a pair of white boxer briefs, he rose from the table and walked to the office at the back of the townhouse. The second Lola heard the door shut, her stomach turned and she felt sick. Her head pounded and her heart raced. Her chest felt as if it were caving in, and her gaze flitted here and there around the kitchen. On his coffeemaker, blender, and the magnet bottle opener stuck to his refrigerator. On the wallpaper that would not get replaced.

When Max emerged once more, he carried a duffel bag and his rucksack in his hands. A grim line twisted one corner of his lips, confirming her worst nightmare. Even before he opened his mouth, she knew what he was going to say.

“I have to go, and I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

She picked up Baby, then rose to stand before him. “When or if, you mean.”

“We’ll talk when I return.”

She shook her head. Since the beginning, she’d wondered what she would do when this moment came, and now she knew. “I can’t do this, Max. I love you, but I can’t live like this. I won’t be waiting for you when you get back.”

“Don’t do this, Lola. We can make this work.” He set the bags on the floor and moved toward her.

She put out her free hand and stopped him. “No,” she said, even as her heart told her to throw her arms around his neck and hang on. To hang on and never let him go. “I don’t understand why you have to go,” she said, her voice surprisingly calm. “Only that you are going. I won’t ask you to stay, Max. I won’t ask you to stay for me. I would never ask that of you. Besides, I know you wouldn’t anyway. And that is something I don’t understand. Maybe because I love you. Maybe because you really don’t love me,” she said, facing the very real possibility that he didn’t love her. That she wanted it so bad, she’d read more into his soulful kisses than he felt. Than he would ever feel. “Maybe if I were a stronger person, I could watch you walk away, not knowing if you’ll get beaten or tortured or shot. If you’ll die in a Third World country, all alone. Without anyone to hold your hand.” Her voice caught and she shook her head. “I’m not that strong, and I won’t go through this time after time so that you can go off and feed whatever need you have that makes you risk your life for people you don’t know and a government who had you arrested for a crime you didn’t commit just so they could get rid of you.”

“Don’t leave like this, Lola.” He ran his fingers through the sides of his hair. The agony in his gaze cut clear to her soul. “We’ll talk when I get back. Please stay.”

“Say something to make me stay.”

He took a breath and let it out slowly. His hands fell to his sides. “I love you.”

No fair. Those were the three words she’d been waiting to hear. Now they shredded her heart and left her bleeding inside. She was almost sure he’d never said them to another woman before, but they weren’t enough. She felt sorry for him. Sorrier for herself. Sorry for the life they would not have together. “I deserve more. I deserve a man who loves me enough to want to grow old with me.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Yes, it is, Max.”

“No!” His hands at his sides clenched into fists. “You’re asking me to give up my life for you. You’re asking me to turn myself into someone other than who I am.”

“I’m not asking you to do anything. I am telling you I love you too much to watch you kill yourself.”

“I’m not going to die, Lola.”

“Yes, you will. Maybe not this time, but you will. And I won’t live my life wondering if today is the day.” She looked one last time into his beautiful blue eyes and forced herself to leave the room, leave Max standing in his kitchen, telling her he loved her, and begging her to stay. Walking away from him was the most difficult thing she’d ever done.

With her dog held to her chest, she walked upstairs into Max’s bedroom and grabbed her Louis Vuitton overnight bag. As her breaking heart urged her to stay, to stay because living with him under any circumstance was better than living without him, she quickly dressed. She half expected to hear the sound of Max’s footsteps coming up the stairs to tell her he’d changed his mind or to ask her again to stay with him. They never came.

Before she left, she glanced about his bedroom one last time. At the double bed with the plaid spread. On his dresser sat a single photograph of him and his father standing on a crumbling porch, an old rosary hanging off one side. Beside it, the picture she’d given him of her and Baby. It was sad and lonely, and she turned from the room and walked down the stairs. Max was in the parlor, looking out the front window onto the street.