TO HOLD AN EAGLE Page 15

  She knew what a man like Linc would need, and it certainly wasn't a woman like her. He deserved a lot more than the little she had to offer; a man like Linc could have a willing female body at a snap of his fingers. He could have had her, even without the snap of his fingers. But she saw now, now that she knew the kind of people Linc was used to, how futile and silly her offer had been. He'd been kind, she thought miserably, in not laughing at her.

  "—you all right?"

  Linc's voice cut through her doleful thoughts. "I'm fine," she said hastily. "I … I'd like to take that bath, if it's all right."

  "Oh." Linc glanced at Shiloh. "I sort of promised—"

  "Of course," Shy said briskly, standing up. "Come on, Chandra."

  Chandra hesitated. Shiloh was reacting with generous courtesy, but Chandra couldn't rid herself of the idea that it was all for Linc's sake. Then Shiloh smiled at her, a warm, encouraging smile, and her doubts wavered.

  "I know what it's like to take those skimpy little showers on board a boat. We'll get you into a nice, hot, bubble bath up to your neck. You can soak to your heart's content."

  Chandra stood up, returning Shy's smile tentatively. "I think I'm already in hot water up to my neck, but the bubble bath sounds wonderful."

  Shiloh looked surprised for an instant, then her smile widened into a grin, a grin whose sincerity Chandra couldn't doubt. "Let's go then."

  Chandra followed her meekly, casting only a brief glance over her shoulder at Linc. He smiled, and her heart began that little tumble. Then he gave her a broad wink, his mouth quirking up at one corner in a way that made the wink even more intimate, and she thought she could feel her heart begin to quiver. Quickly, before he could read her silly emotions in her too readable face, she turned back and followed Shiloh down the hall.

  Shy handed her a thick, teal green towel from a cupboard in the hallway. "And here's a washcloth, too."

  "Thank you," Chandra said, reaching up instinctively to touch the short ends of her hair.

  "Did you just get it cut?"

  Chandra blinked, startled.

  "I recognize the feeling," Shy said with a smile. "I wore my hair long for years, until I realized I was spending hours on it that I could be spending doing something else, and having a lot more fun. It took a while to get used to it after I got it cut."

  Chandra looked at the shiny, dark auburn mass that was only an inch or so longer than her own shorn locks. "It's lovely."

  "So is yours. The color is beautiful, and I like the length." She led Chandra to the bathroom. "You'll get used to it, I promise."

  "I hope so. Daniel … he liked it long."

  Understanding flashed in Shiloh's clear green eyes. "All the more reason to have it cut," she said.

  Chandra felt herself starting to smile. "I thought so. So I just hacked away."

  "You did it yourself?"

  Chandra colored. "Almost. Li— Your brother helped me even it out."

  "Linc?" Shiloh lifted a brow as she opened the bathroom door. "Well, that's a talent I never knew about."

  Chandra followed Shy into the small but brightly cheerful bathroom. It was, as was the rest of the house, a haven of color and light.

  "Must be that sailor's eye," Shiloh went on as she busied herself setting out soap and shampoo. "I wouldn't let Con anywhere near my hair with scissors in his hand. Not that he would, of course."

  Chandra watched Shy bustle around for a moment. She seemed so open, so approachable, not at all like the tough, cool image Chandra had built of her. After a moment, Chandra worked up her nerve to speak.

  "I'm sorry I got you all into this."

  "You didn't," Shy said briefly as she reached in a cupboard and brought out a small hair dryer. "Your husband did. And he deserves the worst we can bring down on him."

  "Maybe he does," Chandra said slowly, "but that certainly doesn't mean you have to do it."

  Shiloh straightened up, and turned to face Chandra. "If we don't, who will?"

  Chandra just stared at her. She was so calm, so matter-of-fact, as if they were discussing some minor transgression, not a man who'd killed once and tried to kill again.

  "I don't understand," Chandra finally said, shaking her head in wondering bafflement. "This is dangerous. If we're right, Linc is planning to meet with a murderer!"

  Shiloh nodded. "Believe me, he's done it before."

  Chandra paled. "I suppose he has. But still, he's your brother. You love him. And I've never seen two people so in love as you and Con, but you never even blinked when he volunteered to go along."

  "I took a husband, not a prisoner," Shy said firmly. "I can't change the kind of man Con is. I would never want to. I love him for what he is. And for what he's not, which is the kind of man who could let something like this pass without at least trying to do something."

  Chandra suppressed a shudder. How could Shiloh be so calm? How could she just accept it? She had a sudden vision of herself, watching a man she loved walk away, into danger, knowing he could be risking his life. Knowing he might never come back. Linc's chiseled face flashed through her mind, cold and stiff in death; it took all of her strength to hold back the whimper that rose to her lips.

  God, it was true. She was just like the mother who had lost her family through her inability to let them live as they thought they must. She felt a fleeting sense of sympathy for the woman; if Linc was hers, she would be the same way, making his life miserable with her fears, caging him with her terror in the face of the slightest danger.

  If Linc was hers. An impossible idea, no matter how the mere idea made her heart race, and one that she'd better rid herself of right now. He wasn't interested, he couldn't be, not in her. He'd only been being kind, trying to encourage her when he'd called her efforts to swim to shore courageous. She hadn't been brave, she'd merely been too incompetent to figure out anything else to do. And she certainly didn't have it in her to become the kind of woman Linc needed, or would want. Just the thought of calmly letting him leave, knowing he would soon be confronting a killer, was more than she could deal with.

  "How do you stand it?" Chandra whispered, suppressing another shudder.

  "You can't cage an eagle," Shiloh said simply. "They'll die, Chandra. In spirit if not in body. Then they're nothing more than a shell, the empty image of what you loved."

  "But your brother and your husband both, facing things like this, all the time…"

  "I have to let them do what they have to do, just as they let me do what I have to do." Shiloh's voice lowered, and she looked at Chandra intently. "And if it gets hard, I just have to remind myself that when eagles mate in freedom, it's for life. That freedom is the only way to hold one."

  Chandra felt the color rising in her face. Lord, had Shiloh guessed? Was it indeed written all over her foolish, open face, plain enough for even Linc to see? Or dare she hope that it was something only another woman would guess? Shiloh was certainly perceptive enough; she could have easily guessed that this forlorn stray her brother had taken in was already half in love with him.

  "Linc is like Con, you know," Shiloh said, her eyes still fastened on Chandra intently. "He has a very strong sense of duty. It may sound old-fashioned, but he's had it all his life, and it will never change, just as it never did in my father. Try and hold him back, keep him from doing what he thinks is right … and you lose him altogether."

  "Like your mother," Chandra whispered.

  "Yes. She lost my father, then her son."

  "And her daughter?" Chandra asked, watching Shy's face. Linc's sister lifted a brow, then nodded slowly.

  "Yes. Not that it mattered much to her. We never did get along very well."

  So, Chandra thought, there was pain here as well. Perhaps the redoubtable Shiloh McQuade hadn't always been so cool, so resolute.

  "Did you ever…?" Chandra's voice trailed off.

  "Did I ever what?"

  Chandra sighed, wishing she hadn't spoken at all. She already knew the answer, anyway. "Nev
er mind. You're too strong. I'm sure you've never doubted yourself."

  Shiloh let out a long breath. Then she sat on the edge of the tub. She studied Chandra for a long, silent moment; once again, Chandra thought, she was being assessed. And, no doubt, found wanting.

  "Don't you believe it," Shy said at last. "I spent most of my childhood doubting myself. Thinking that since I was the girl, I was the one who would be like my mother. I doubted my strength to become anything else. Everything I did, everything I tried, was weighed on that scale. If I came up short, it was because I was like her, not because I hadn't learned enough yet, or wasn't big enough yet, or old enough."

  "But … you know better now."

  "Yes. But after I was certain I wasn't like her, I began to wonder what it had cost me. I started to think maybe the cost had been too high, that in smothering every trace of my mother I had killed all that was soft and giving in me. I was doubting my own femininity. If Con hadn't come along when he had…"

  "So now the doubts are gone?"

  Shiloh laughed. "Are you kidding? Now I've taken on a whole new set. Lord, I hope this kid's a boy, because I haven't got a clue about raising a girl."

  Chandra smiled her congratulations; Shy's open, easy self-deprecation made it impossible to stay afraid of her. "Maybe you should ask your father. It seems he did a fine job with his daughter."

  Shiloh looked startled. "That's what Linc told Con."

  "Linc is very proud of you."

  "And I'm proud of him. He's quite a man, my big brother."

  "Yes," Chandra said softly. "Yes, he is."

  Blue eyes held green, and Chandra sensed that Shiloh indeed knew exactly how she felt. She waited, expecting some kind of warning, some tactful words pointing out that she was hardly the type to attract a man like Linc, something Chandra already knew all too well. But after a long, silent moment, Shiloh merely nodded, and left Chandra to her bath. Chandra filled the tub, then lowered herself into the steaming water. And a while later, she was almost able to convince herself that her wet cheeks were from the bath.

  "Okay, out with it."

  Shiloh looked up at her brother's words. Linc watched as she dropped the magazine she'd been holding on to the table in the sun-room. As he sat down across from her he could see the cover, and knew that it was the latest copy of a sailing magazine that frequently featured her bright, colorful spinnaker sails. He also knew that she hadn't really been reading it at all.

  "Out with what?"

  Linc's mouth quirked. "You look like you did when you weren't telling me that you'd fallen like an anchor for Con."

  She made a face at him. Linc couldn't help smiling; she used to give him that same, wrinkled-nose expression as a child, whenever the fifteen years between them had temporarily interfered with communication.

  "Come on, squirt. Something's bugging you."

  She glanced toward the hallway, where Chandra was still behind the closed door of the bathroom. In the silence, they could hear Con's muffled voice from where he sat at the big rolltop desk, on the phone to someone at WestCorp, asking for whatever they could dig up on Lansing Pharmaceuticals without tipping its CEO.

  "It's Chandra, I presume?" Linc guessed.

  Shiloh looked at him solemnly. "You like her, don't you?"

  Linc stiffened slightly, leaning back in his chair. Shy smiled wryly.

  "Now you look like I did when I wasn't telling you about me and Con."

  "She's in a jam. I'm just trying to help her, that's all. You know me, the old white hat."

  "Then why do you look at her like you've been at sea for a year and she's home port?"

  Linc stiffened further, then ruefully made himself relax. His little sister had always read him too well. He should have known better than to think he could hide his attraction to Chandra from her.

  "As I recall," he said, eyeing her somewhat dolefully, "it's you who keeps telling me I need to remember there's life outside the navy."

  Shy lowered her eyes, and plucked at the cover of the magazine. "I just want you to be as happy as I am."

  Linc sighed. "I made you feel guilty when I left the other day, didn't I? Darn it, Shy, I didn't want that. It has nothing to do with you, or Con."

  "I know. Con explained it to me. How he used to feel when he'd see happy couples. So empty inside, and thinking it would never happen for him."

  "But it did."

  Shy nodded but didn't look up. Linc waited, watched her smooth out the corner of the magazine cover she'd bent. She still didn't speak.

  "You still think she's like Mom, don't you?"

  Shy looked up then, with troubled eyes. "I don't know. I did, at first, but…"

  "I know. So did I. But damn it, Shy, she fought so hard to stay afloat, and she tried to face me down with my own gun, even though she didn't have the slightest idea how to use it."

  "I know. It doesn't fit with the way she acts. So … broken."

  Linc nodded slowly. "She's had a rough life, Shy. Not materially, but… She went from a father who taught her everything has a price to a husband who taught her hers was cheap, that her only worth was her looks and her body."

  "And that's the way she sees herself?"

  Linc nodded. "It's a wonder she's got even the tiniest bit of spirit left."

  Shy was quiet for a moment, then, seriously, she looked up at her brother. "You won't help her by sheltering her, you know. By doing all this for her. By helping her run."

  Linc grimaced. "But she's so scared "

  "I know. But if you cater to that, she'll really wind up like Mother. She'll be totally helpless and clinging. And she'll literally wind up an anchor around your neck."

  "So what do I do?" Linc said, unable to stop the sharpness that came into his voice as Shy voiced the fears he'd been fighting himself. "Just walk away and leave her on her own?"

  Shy smiled ruefully. "I think we both know you're incapable of doing that." Then, her tone earnest, she went on. "Linc, listen to me. You've always said I had good instincts about people, and that I should trust them."

  "It's true. You do."

  "I know it is. Con proved that. If I'd gone with my common sense instead of my instinct, I would have thrown him out on his cute little butt the minute I found him here."

  Linc couldn't help grinning. "I'll have to tell him what you think of his backside."

  Shy grinned back. "Believe me, he already knows. In detail. But I'm serious, big brother. About Chandra, I mean. If there's the tiniest bit of spirit left in her, like you think there is, you'll smother it if you do everything for her. Even if she really does have some strength at the core, it doesn't matter if she doesn't know it, if she doesn't believe it. You've got to let her find out for herself. Let her learn to believe in herself."

  "And if she doesn't?"

  Shy shrugged. "Then you're right back where you are now. But you can't prop her up forever, Linc. Even if you wanted to. Sooner or later she's going to have to stand on her own two feet."

  "I don't know, Shy," Linc said, for once not meeting his sister's intent gaze. And he wasn't sure if he was answering her advice, or her implication about forever.

  Chandra paced the deck of the Shiloh II restlessly, huddling against the early evening chill in the jacket Shy had loaned her. Linc glanced up from the file he was reading to look at her. Even though she was only a few feet away, she seemed utterly alone. And tiny. And fragile. And in that moment it seemed impossible to him to do what Shy had said he must; let her learn to stand alone.

  With a smothered sigh he went back to the folder in his lap. It, and a small package, had been delivered this afternoon, just before they'd left the house to come back to the marina, by a special WestCorp courier. One of the benefits, he'd teased Con, of being the boss of security. Con had rolled his eyes and handed him the file with a gruff "Shut up, Uncle Linc." Linc had just grinned, especially at the appellation.

  "You don't have to leave, you know," Shy had put in then. "You're both welcome to stay."r />
  "Thanks, little one," Linc said, hugging his sister, "but I don't want you and Con connected with this, at least not yet. I need somebody free and clear in case I need help later."

  Grudgingly, Shy had concurred, although she looked dubiously at both husband and brother, as if she still suspected them of trying to protect her because she was pregnant. Linc knew the fact that she was right had been obvious in the glance he exchanged with Con, but fortunately Shy had been getting Chandra the jacket she now wore, and hadn't seen it.

  "I'm going inside," Linc said finally, after he found himself watching Chandra more than reading. "We're running out of light."

  He went, leaving her free to decide if she would follow. He thought she would; in Shy's white cutoffs, she was nearly shivering. And after a moment, she came in, too, closing the hatch after her. He lit one of the lanterns over the main table and sat down with the file Con had given him. Chandra began to pace the small cabin, slowly, as if she were just wandering idly. Yet Linc could sense her tension, could see in her face the intensity of her thoughts.

  Small wonder, he thought. Realizing that her husband is a murderer, and that she was supposed to have been his next victim, wouldn't make for calm deliberation. He went back to the file, wishing he had more of a financial background so that it would make more sense. It took every bit of his attention to wade through the details, trying to get a complete picture, and he was startled when the sudden, loud growling of his stomach broke his concentration.

  "I guess that means you're hungry," Chandra said from the galley, where, Linc only now realized, she had been for some time.

  "No," he said, getting to his feet and walking toward her, "it means that smells fantastic, whatever it is."

  She smiled, a shy little smile that made him want to hug her, before she went back to stirring the contents of the big aluminum pot. "It's just a sort of stew I made up out of that canned crab and the vegetables that were left. And some rice I found."