Conquer the Memories

Chapter 1

“I’m telling you, Craig, you could make it in politics. Energy is still the public’s favorite subject, particularly since the latest crisis in the Middle East. With the handle you’ve got on oil shale…”

“I hear you, sir.” Above the elderly ex-senator’s shoulder, Craig Hamilton spotted his wife. For an instant, all he could see was a single splash of bright emerald through a zigzag path of dark business suits and broad shoulders. That particular shade of green was not his favorite color. “You’ll like the dress when you see it on,” Sonia had told him.

Actually, he didn’t. As he got a better view of Sonia, Craig decided that the neck of the dress annoyed him-there wasn’t any. Sonia had a beautiful throat, long and white, her delicate collarbones framing the hollow that always pulsed when she was excited. So vulnerable, that ivory flesh. And just above the silky green fabric, anyone could see the rise of her breasts.

She laughed suddenly, her springy black curls dancing around her cheeks. Three men from the press surrounded her, but Craig could still catch the sparkle of her animated aquamarine eyes from two dozen feet away.

Now that he thought about it, the whole dress annoyed him. The gown was just a little too much like a game of show-and-tell. The way the sneaky little slit showed off her legs every time she took a step, for instance. And no, not another soul in the room could conceivably tell from the design of the dress that she was braless, but Craig knew. He happened to have…been there when she was dressing.

“You’ve got the money,” former senator Rafe Bradford continued, “and, more important, you’ve got the power. People listen to you, Craig. Why, in my day, I’d have sold my soul to get the kind of public support you already have.”

Craig snagged a glass of champagne for the older man from a passing waiter. He didn’t bother to contradict anything Bradford said, although privately Craig knew he’d prefer digging ditches to a political career any day. But the ex-senator had once been a friend of his family’s, and the man was old and lonely.

“Everyone in this room knows you were the principal adviser to the Senate subcommittee on shale oil…”

The sash on that damn dress drew in her waist, accenting its tiny proportions. And Sonia had a way with her eyes that captivated everyone, including the press. Craig’s mouth twitched as he watched her effortlessly charm Andrew Roth, the most cynical of national news commentators. Roth had called this national conference defining the new relationship between energy and ecology a scam; he claimed the “relationship” was a contradiction in terms and always would be. Sonia was setting him straight. Roth’s bald head was bobbing up and down…

“Not that it’s any of my business, but you have that little ranch-and people do love a man with a feeling for the land. A self-made man. Oil shale always had a bad press until you tackled it with that new extraction process of yours. We’re all hungry for a way to get out of our dependency on foreign oil, as long as it’s not at our own expense. And you could use that expertise of yours to help us do just that, son.”

The four long tables covered with white linen where the conference dinner had been served stood empty now. The featured event of the evening had been Craig’s keynote speech. But this type of gathering didn’t wear well on him. Not that he wasn’t committed to the subject matter. Having found an ecologically acceptable method of extracting oil from shale, he was more than willing to share his ideas, if not his trade secrets. The three-day conference had been well attended by political figures and bankers and oil people, and that pleased him, too. The purpose of the gathering was to draw members of opposing factions together-but he hadn’t anticipated the political machinations that were going on. Financial games, power plays, people using the conference to serve their own ends…manipulation of that sort made him grit his teeth.

Sonia would have chided him for his characteristic lack of patience, if she’d seen him. At the moment, she was giving a hug and kiss to Warren Radley, a senator who could use his strong influence to persuade the government to fund shale-oil research. Warren’s eyes soulfully followed the sway of Sonia’s emerald hips as she wandered away from him. Next, Sonia offered a quick, chilly handshake to Barker Cole, an oil man notorious for raping the land. She didn’t like him. Cole was certainly the more prominent of the two men, but that cut no ice with Sonia. She liked Warren because he was sensitive about being only five foot four and because he raised Irish setters. Cole, she’d told Craig often enough, could sink himself into the nearest pit.

“Use of power, son. Use of power is everything!” Rafe Bradford exhorted. But Craig’s thoughts were still on his wife.

A hand whipped around Sonia’s waist, dragging her close for a friendly peck. Her aquamarine eyes turned the identical shade of emerald of her dress. Sonia was made on affectionate lines, and affection offered freely was one thing; a stolen touch was another. She treated Ferrel Romnay to a stare that would have frozen Popsicles on a ninety-degree day, and to hell with Romnay’s banking influence.

Craig did his best to smother a grin, as well as to swallow the urge to turn the man’s nose inside out. Sonia could take care of herself. She’d told him so a thousand times.

Craig controlled an inner wince as John Smith and his wife crossed Sonia’s path. Perhaps they would discuss the weather? But no, Sonia had taken Ferona Smith’s March For Clean Air as a personal attack on Craig. Sonia had a low tolerance for professional do-gooders who took up causes without doing their homework on them first. As she warmed up to the subject, her skin took on the flush of coral, and her chin tilted just that little bit upward.

His wife, Craig thought idly, certainly wasn’t shy. She undoubtedly knew more of the people at the conference than he did-because of her bubbly friendliness in most instances. She had to be one of the most spectacularly beautiful women…

“Hamilton?”

Craig’s eyes pivoted directly back to the former senator’s. “I’m sorry. Sir?”

“You’ve been kind to listen,” the older man said gruffly, and motioned in Sonia’s direction with a sparkle of humor in his tired gray eyes. “Perhaps, though, you ought to go over there and rescue your better half?”

“Perhaps,” Craig agreed gravely, “that would be wise.”

It wasn’t so easy to travel the twenty-five feet to Sonia’s side. For a man who eighteen years earlier had been orphaned with no property save a bankrupt ranch in an obscure corner of Wyoming, he’d certainly come a long way; there was no counting the number of people who went out of their way to talk with him now. Having made his mark in Cold Creek-a town few people here had even heard of-Craig was still occasionally amused that anyone from Washington should go to such trouble to seek him out at this gathering. He was a private man, without the slightest interest in earning public acclaim. Actually, the only thing on his mind at the moment was collecting Sonia and getting the hell out of here.

Some sixth sense told Sonia that Craig was approaching. It was strange, but somehow she had only to intuit his proximity and her every feminine instinct was aroused. For the hundredth time, she thought idly that it was really very difficult not to be proud of him, even if she did have to bully him into coming here.

She didn’t have to spot him to know the look of him, wending his way through the crowd, a boyish shock of brown hair on his forehead, a disgracefully all-American smile catching every woman’s eye. He moved in lithe, lazy motions, with an easy sensuality that never betrayed tension. Tell me your secrets, said those brilliant blue eyes. If one looked closely enough, one could see the crow’s-feet around those eyes, and the experience and character in his strong features that bespoke his thirty-five years. He was five foot ten, but he carried himself like a man of six-eleven. Naturally, people cornered him to talk. People envied his self-assurance, his vitality…

Sonia wasn’t a bit prejudiced.

Well, a little, perhaps. Her husband had a few glaring faults. She generally treated those carefully. For instance, since she planned to be married to him for all of her next thousand lives, she figured she still had plenty of time to convince him that it was okay to take an occasional laurel for who he was and what he’d already done with his life.

In the meantime, she’d been watching him. He liked being in Chicago about as much as he’d liked spending six months in Washington last year-which was not at all. Cities turned him off. He hadn’t let it show, however, during his talks at the conference and the speech tonight. And after dinner, when a dozen prominent men were all but flag-waving to get his attention, he’d offered his time to Bradford, such a lonely old man these days.

Long, firm fingers closed on her waist from behind, and Sonia glanced up with a private smile for her husband, his mere closeness making her eyes light up like Fourth of July sparklers. The half frown on his forehead was there and gone before another soul could have noticed. Sonia, immediately perceptive, ended the argument with Ferona as Craig’s arm circled her shoulders.

“What’s wrong?” she murmured as she found herself inexorably led away from the crowd. Just outside the hotel’s banquet room was a darkly paneled hallway filled with coatracks and all but empty of people.

“It occurred to me…” Craig paused as someone unexpectedly entered the hallway and stopped to exchange a word or two. When they were alone again, he wrapped both his arms around Sonia’s shoulders and enclosed them both immediately in their own private cocoon. In Sonia’s line of vision were Craig’s stiffly starched white shirt, his spring-weight black suit jacket, the shock of brown hair on his forehead and those Paul Newman blues of his. No one else. Nothing else. “It occurred to me,” he repeated gravely, “that we haven’t made love in nearly three days.”

She stared at him blankly before a small, slow smile curved mischievously on her lips. “We aren’t a wee bit bored with this gathering, are we, Mr. Hamilton?” she murmured.

“We have done our duty, Mrs. Hamilton.”

She shook her head. “There’s still a line of people in there wanting to talk to you when they get the chance, and you know it.”

“You talked to all of them. I don’t need to.”

“They’re expecting-”

He shook his head. “If you’ll remember correctly, Mrs. Hamilton, we had some very different plans for these three days in Chicago. A little shopping, a little time alone together. You wanted to see that art fair. Instead, I haven’t even had breakfast alone with you, and you’ve been asleep long before I could escape the crowd at night. I’ve noticed it before, lady. You are a very, very good sport.”

“I am,” she agreed impishly, “very, very good.”

“And I think it’s time to skip out and cut up a little.”

“Oh?”

Craig’s thumb idly traced her cheekbone. A very high, delicate cheekbone. He was tremendously fond of those bones. And those incredible deep-set green-blue eyes, always so full of emotion, so sensitive to his every mood. She had a tiny black beauty mark at the nape of her neck and wore her curly black hair just long enough to conceal it. He loved that mark, too. And the legs that could have been a dancer’s…she was all leg, he told her often. She regularly apologized for being so misshapen.

She was wearing her cat’s smile at the moment, her eyes unspeakably demure beneath a fringe of thick, dark lashes. She knew damn well that in his eyes she was shaped perfectly. And that he was tired of people and wanted her alone, where the phone was off the hook and the door was locked against interruptions.

“First, we’re going to hear some music,” he told her huskily. “And then maybe we’ll just walk for a while.”

“Walking is what you have in mind, is it?”

“For starters.”

Sonia made a big business out of straightening his tie. Scarlet-and-black-striped, very conservative. So was his starched white shirt. Beneath that shirt his heart was beating at a very unconservative rate-and it continued to accelerate the longer her hands lingered at his throat, the longer her breast brushed just lightly against his arm. Her husband responded like quicksilver. Disgraceful, after being married four years. She reached up to brush back that wayward shock of light brown hair that had fallen over his forehead. The gesture was frankly proprietary. One of these days she was going to get him out of those starched white shirts if it killed her. She would not insist on pastels; that would be a hopeless mismatch with his character, but a simple masculine stripe wouldn’t hurt him. “It was an honor to be invited, and I really think you should be busy in there-”

“Your mother always says that busy hands are happy hands,” Craig agreed. “Mine are itching at this moment to get very busy, Mrs. Hamilton.”

“There’s just no talking to you,” she informed him.

With a lazy grin, he claimed her wrist, not wasting any more time. They quickly said the necessary goodbyes to the people Craig honestly cared for and respected, and then made their escape.

The lobby of the hotel was swarming with people; through a revolving glass door they were suddenly set free in Chicago at night. A late spring breeze whispered off nearby Lake Michigan. At eleven o’clock, Chicago’s nightlife was just getting started. Sequins and silks flashed by in passing car windows, and Sonia paused for a moment, seeing the promise of excitement in the gleam of neon lights. She no more valued big-city pollution than Craig did; they both loved their ranch at Cold Creek with its backdrop of mountains. Tonight, though, Chicago had its own special appeal. The air actually smelled fresh, with a lingering hint of spring. Or perhaps she was just susceptible to becoming intoxicated at the idea of escaping responsibilities and people.

“We’ll go back to our hotel and change clothes,” Craig directed as they crossed the six-lane street to where their rented car was parked. “Put on something comfortable. We’ll go out and just fool around for an hour or two.”

“And then come back to get a good eight hours of sleep,” Sonia said demurely.

“Or its equivalent.”

“I was never very good at math. What is the equivalent of eight hours of sleep?” Sonia wondered aloud.

“I may,” Craig remarked, “develop a fetish for spanking. Soon.” She slipped into the car. Automatically, his thumb punched down the lock button before he closed her door. Just as automatically, when he got in on his side his arm immediately strapped her in at shoulder and waist; then, when he had her pinned like a moth, he proceeded to kiss her thoroughly. As he released her and started the engine, Sonia thought idly that Craig’s protectiveness was instinctive, something he probably wasn’t even aware of. She was.

The moment they pulled out onto the street, a small dark blue car appeared right behind them. Sonia knew Craig saw it, because he checked the rearview mirror. “Shadow” had come with the conference, and their unasked-for bodyguard thoroughly irritated her.

Emotions ran high on anything remotely connected to energy and the Middle East; she knew that, just as she knew Craig had joined the ranks of wealthy and influential men in the past few years. The conference organizers routinely provided protection for important participants, but Sonia knew Craig wouldn’t have put up with Shadow if she hadn’t been along.

When they’d been in Washington, she’d had more than a moment or two of worry when she realized how volatile certain groups could be. Mention oil and the ecologists cocked their panic guns at the same time that people with vested interests in fossil fuels got touchy. So a little prudence was called for, but Sonia certainly had no intention of living her life in a perpetual state of paranoia. She resented Shadow as she resented toothaches, and glancing back at their tail, she felt a damper clamp down on her ebullient mood.

“The conference is over. We don’t have to have him with us if we’re just going out for a few hours, do we?” she pleaded.

For a moment, she thought Craig hadn’t heard her. His foot pressed down on the accelerator as the light turned green. He adjusted the car’s ventilation to let in some fresh air, loosened his tie and weaved promptly around a driver who was straddling two lanes.

“Of course we don’t,” he said finally.

And immediately regretted that decision. He knew Sonia hated their tail, and he knew she’d guessed that Shadow was there primarily to protect her. Craig would never have put up with Shadow for himself alone, regardless of the knife someone had tried to poke at him in Sheridan, Wyoming, two years before. Sonia didn’t know about that, and never would. At the time, he’d hadn’t known whether his attacker was after his wallet or angry over his work with shale oil. It didn’t matter. Sonia did.

He couldn’t stand the thought of something happening to her.

For the past three days, though, whenever he spotted Shadow’s car in his rearview mirror, he felt like a pretentious fool. He might have a little money, and for a short while maybe he was in a modest limelight. He was still just a man, and a man who’d known how to defend himself from the time he was nine.

In protecting Sonia, however, it was unlike him to let his better judgment be swayed by impulse. He didn’t like big cities and knew the conference had received national publicity, so he had no regrets about taking on Shadow-but dammit, at the moment he just wanted to be with his wife. He wanted the freedom to make her laugh, to talk nonsense and simply play without an audience. To make love later, yes, but first to cherish a few stolen hours of privacy with her. It wasn’t as though Shadow had spent the past three days staring at them, but the few minutes they’d had alone together just hadn’t been enough.

After he parked the car in the hotel garage, Craig stalked back to have a word with the other man. Sonia waited by the car until he returned. “What’d you say to him?” she asked.

“That we were retiring for the night.”

Her chuckle was delighted; her bright eyes were sparkling. “So we get to escape from the big bad wolf?”

“Sonia-”

“Oh, Lord, what if he decides to read the paper in the lobby? We’d better sneak down to the back door.”

He shook his head ruefully, loving her bubble excitement, knowing exactly how much they both valued their privacy. “You’ve been reading too many spy stories. But if we’re going to take off like thieves in the night, we’d better change clothes.” His finger just touched her nose. “Think you could manage to look mousy and inconspicuous for a little while?”

“I’ll fade right into the shadows,” Sonia promised. Craig had so many responsibilities, particularly this past year, that she was delighted to see him shed those cares in favor of sheer mischievous fun. By the time they reached the twelfth floor, he was laughing.

He stabbed the key in the lock, opened the door to their room and relocked it after they entered. “Strip,” he ordered promptly.

“Oh, Lord. Is this one of those your-virtue-or-your-money capers?”

“You have to be joking,” Craig retorted. “I’ve never seen you travel with more than thirty-seven cents in your pocket. Skin is all I’m interested in, lady.”

She slipped out of her emerald dress and tossed it to him; he tossed her his jacket. They hung up each other’s clothes, laughing. Watching her play half naked, Craig forgot ninety percent of his good intentions, particularly once they’d exchanged his shirt and her coral satin half slip. Sonia was all leg. Perfect legs, firm, slim thighs and spectacular calves, her fanny close to irresistible…and deliberately swaying in his direction, he noticed.

Her small, pert breasts were the same ivory color as her complexion, the rosy nipples sassily pointed up at him. And after knowing her for almost five years and being married for better than four, Craig’s reaction to the look of her was as instantly, blatantly physical as when he’d first met her.

Sonia’s original reaction to Craig had been markedly different. Her mother, who was generally inclined to pick up loners around the holidays, had been the one who’d found him and dragged him home for Thanksgiving. At the time, Sonia wasn’t part of the ranching community anymore; for the past few years, she’d had an apartment in Boulder and was working as a buyer for a women’s boutique there. She had a distinctly different definition of “innocent loner” than her mother did. Craig didn’t qualify. Nor had he acquired that considerable expertise of his anywhere near an oil field. Sonia knew trouble when she saw it, and had every intention of spending that particular Thanksgiving in the kitchen. It didn’t quite work out that way.

Though flamboyant in dress and gregarious with people, at twenty-five Sonia still had been reserved at the thought of real intimacy. Her mother used to tell her that she’d already worked through more men than the county had fence posts, but appearances were deceiving. Sonia appreciated a well-cast line, but she was not so naive as to let herself be taken in by one. When she’d met Craig, she could have fit her previous sexual experience in a teacup.

But he’d certainly taken care of that problem since, she thought wickedly. Poor man, now he suffered the consequences. The longer she wandered around bare-topped, the more trouble he was having getting into his jeans. Her own denims snapped, but just, designed to fit her shapely bottom snugly, molding the legs Craig was so fond of. She donned a red silk blouse without bra, left a button or two open, and vigorously took a brush to her curls…which, actually, never helped her stubborn hairstyle anyway. A quick slash of lipstick and a pair of elegant walking boots, and she turned around with a sassy grin.

“Inconspicuous enough?” she demanded.

He shook his head in sheer despair.

“What’s wrong?”

He was afraid if he gave her the list they would never leave the hotel room. His kitten looked ready to prowl, and instinctively he wanted to set off the first purrs. In the meantime, she could have worn a sign on her smile that said Vulnerable as far as walking Chicago’s streets at night went. “For starters, the opal,” he began.

She glanced at the mirror. She never took off the black opal that dangled from a gold chain on her neck; he’d given it to her on their honeymoon. The oval stone was a myriad of green-blues that matched her eyes, just as its onyx setting matched her hair. Only reluctantly did Sonia tie a scarlet-and-white scarf at her throat to cover it. “Better?” she questioned, already knowing his opinion.

Her husband didn’t approve of the fit of her jeans any more than he approved of the scarlet blouse…or the emerald dress she’d worn earlier. He approved of her naked, preferably locked in a room alone with him.

Deep inside, Craig harbored a dreadfully medieval male protectiveness and jealousy. Sonia adored him all the more because of it. It took a very special kind of man to control those intense feelings and encourage his lady to live her own life in her own way, not just follow along in his shadow. It was tough for a strong, dominant man to make a marriage of equals; Sonia was well aware that Craig worked at it.

It was absolutely necessary to give him a long, lingering kiss before they headed out into the hall, ready and eager for a few hours of privacy together in a town of some three million people. That they would find it, neither had any doubt. They only needed each other.