The Fall of Lucas Kendrick Read Online Free

and drew her legs up, hugging her knees as she looked out blindly.
    Josh Long had vouched for Lucas instantly when she’d called, telling her with utter conviction that she could trust Luc and that he was indeed working for a man named Hagen who ran a secretive—and secret—government agency. He did have to get into Martin Rome’s house, because the man was suspected of possessing stolen artwork purchased from criminals and paid for with illegal guns.
    Kyle didn’t doubt Long’s word, and his faith in Lucas had been expressed too firmly to be indoubt, which left her with a great many disturbing questions.
    Josh Long was no fool, and she knew from her father that he rarely erred in his judgment of men. Lucas had worked for him for “a number of years,” and there was clear respect on both sides of that relationship. It was a vote of confidence that would instantly open doors in almost all social or business circles.
    But it didn’t—it couldn’t—open Kyle’s door.
    She had closed down, put her feelings in a deep freeze, almost the moment she had looked down from her soaring glider and seen the sunlight glinting off his silvery hair. Even at that distance, his features indistinguishable, she had known it was he. And in that first flashing instant she also had known that she had been waiting for him to come back.
    It shocked her.
    For the first time in her life Kyle had cause to be thankful for a cold, distant mother who had taught her, if nothing else, to keep her emotions buried beneath a serene surface. Her motherwould have been proud of her, she thought now with a pang of bitterness. When her feet had touched solid earth and she’d turned to Lucas, she had obeyed neither of the conflicting emotional reactions battling inside her.
    She hadn’t lashed out at him in bitterness, and she hadn’t thrown herself into his arms.
    Kyle closed her eyes and leaned her head against cool glass, allowing herself to remember, trying to understand what she felt now and what she had felt then.
    Ten years ago he hadn’t seemed much older than she, although he was supposed to have been a senior. She judged him to be in his mid to late thirties now, so she realized he had been older then than he’d pretended to be. Older and charming and heartbreakingly handsome with classical features and blue eyes that were more striking than any she’d ever seen …
    She opened her eyes after a moment and caught the silver chain at her throat with one finger, drawing the plain oval locket from its resting place between her breasts. A flick ofher thumbnail opened the locket, and inside was revealed only a single polished stone. It was an opal she’d found in Australia five years ago. An opal that was blue with tiny flecks of yellow.
    Like his eyes.
    The moonlight streaming through the window picked out only the yellow flecks in the stone, causing them to gleam brilliantly but with no color, and Kyle absently rubbed the stone with her thumb before closing the locket and allowing it to slip back inside her silk pajama top.
    Darkness and moonlight obscured colors, she thought. Time was supposed to obscure memories.
    Ten years had changed him. He was broader across the shoulders, physically more powerful. His face was leaner, something under the surface of those classical features harder now, tougher. His voice was still low and curiously compelling, but there was, she thought, a shadeof remoteness in it that hadn’t been present a decade before.
    Or maybe that was just when he talked to her.
    What had he been then? she wondered now, as she had wondered since. And why had he pretended? Why had he masqueraded as a college student? And why, after a night of searing passion when she had given herself to him without reservation, had he vanished while she slept?
    Without even leaving a note …
    After the first agony had turned to numbness, Kyle had reached for any reason at all to excuse his behavior. He would have had a
reason
, she had