Another ripple of uneasiness went through her, only stronger this time and she fought a slow rise of panic.
When she didn’t answer, he smiled, but it was a cold, hard smile. “Okay. If you don’t want to talk about DeBruzkya, we can always go back to him.” He looked around the room. “Maybe you could start by telling me what you’re doing here. Why you’re living here. Like this.”
The question shouldn’t have startled her. She’d known he would eventually begin asking more personal questions. Risking a look at him, she found him watching her intently and felt his stare all the way to her bones.
“That’s not a difficult question, is it?” he asked.
No, she thought. He wasn’t asking the difficult questions yet. But she knew they were coming. And she had absolutely no idea how to answer any of them.
“I’m involved with the freedom movement. I get food and medical supplies to the sick children. The orphans. I raise money, collect food and toys and try to give them hope, let them know someone in the world cares.”
“You still working?”
“I wrote for the Rebelian Times Press for a while.”
“And now?”
“A few months ago DeBruzkya took control of the media, and I just couldn’t do it any longer.”
“Censorship,” Robert said with distaste.
Lily nodded, feeling the same distaste all the way to her bones. “I kept writing. About the war. About the people. The children. They’ve all got stories to tell. Some of them are quite amazing.” She grimaced. “I didn’t have an income, but by then the economy was so bad it didn’t really matter. I sent pieces to the Guardian in London and the New York Times. One thing led to another, and before I knew it I had started a sort of underground newspaper.”
He cut her a sharp look. “Jesus, Lily…”
“The Rebellion is printed weekly. For some people, it’s the only way they can find out what’s going on in their own country that isn’t fabricated by the government or part of DeBruzkya’s propaganda.”
He stared at her intently. “DeBruzkya doesn’t tolerate journalists who print the truth. He’s murdered them in the past. Damn it, Lily, he’s brutal—”
“He doesn’t know about the Rebellion.”
“Lily, for God’s sake, how can you be so naive?”
“I may be a lot of things,” she snapped, “but naive isn’t one of them.”
Rising abruptly, Robert limped to the fire. Setting his hand against the mantel, he leaned and stared into the flames, the muscles in his jaws working angrily. “DeBruzkya is ruthless. If he wants to find you, he’ll stop at nothing until he does.”
The words chilled her, but Lily didn’t let herself react. She might be afraid on occasion, but she refused to live her life in fear. She refused to let it make her decisions for her. “I’ve been careful. I write under a pseudonym. He doesn’t know I’m an American. He doesn’t know where I live.”
“I don’t understand how you can believe that, unless you’re into denial.”
“I’m not denying anything.”
“He’s a dangerous son of a bitch, Lily. Especially to the people who’ve crossed him.”
“I haven’t crossed him.”
He cut her a hard look. “I’d say running an underground newspaper in the midst of his dirty little war qualifies as crossing him. Information in the wrong hands can be a dangerous thing to a dictator.”
“It would be a thousand times worse if I sat back and did nothing.”
For the first time the layers of anger thinned enough for her to see the raw pain beneath, and she knew his concern for her was real. The realization touched her, and she felt her emotions shift dangerously.
“Why do you do it?” he asked quietly.
For the lost ones, she thought. “Because I have to.”
He contemplated her like an angry dog that had just been swiped by a unassuming feline. Lily stared back, wondering how he would react if he knew everything.
And as she gazed into the electric blue of his eyes, the endless months they’d been apart melted away like steel in a smelter. The pang of longing was so powerful that for a moment she couldn’t catch her breath. The urge to go to him pulled at her like a dangerous tide. A riptide easing a hapless swimmer into a treacherous sea.
But because she knew he represented a very real danger to her—because she represented an even bigger threat to him—Lily banished the thoughts. She could never think of Robert in those terms again. Going to him, touching him, getting too close were things she couldn’t allow herself to do. Giving in to the feelings coiling inside her might just get them both killed.
A cry from the bedroom at the rear of the cottage jolted her. She felt Robert’s questioning stare on her, but she didn’t dare meet his gaze. In her peripheral vision she saw him glance toward the rear of the cottage, and a shudder ran the length of her. For a instant, she stood there, frozen with indecision, a hundred emotions pulling her in a hundred different directions.
“Is there a child here?” he asked.