C.J.'s Fate C.J.'s Fate C.J.'s Fate

by Kay Hooper

  “You know better than that.” She sighed. “My father and uncle went into business together before I was born. The company grew steadily, and they incorporated, making sure that control remained in their hands. When Daddy died, his shares were left to Siri and me, with the voting stock going to my uncle. And when he died, he left everything to us—mostly to me. Since Siri follows my advice, and since we own the majority of stock, I—more or less—own the company.”

  “What kind of company?” he asked slowly.

  C.J. sighed again. “We make video games, and computers…electronic components for aircraft and spacecraft. We’re diversified,” she ended brightly. “The company’s growing by leaps and bounds.”

  “I’ll bet,” he said, obviously thinking of the booming computer industry. And then he started to laugh.

  Encouraged by this light-hearted response, C.J. offered hopefully, “I really don’t have much to do with the day-to-day running of the company; I just have to worry about major decisions.”

  “What’s the company’s name? I may have heard of it.”

  Sure that he had, C.J. answered hesitantly. “It’s called Ben-Car Electronics. For my father and uncle—Ben and Carter.”

  His eyes widening, Fate whistled softly. “That’s one of the best-known electronics firms in the country.” His expression was unreadable.

  Growing more uneasy, C.J. said, “I promised my uncle that I’d keep it in the family. He—he knew that he was ill a long time before I did, and he set everything up very carefully. I’m not stupid about business, but I don’t much like it, and he knew that. He fixed things so that I wouldn’t have to get very involved in the company. I have some very good financial advisors, and they take care of things for me.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, apparently noting her uneasiness, then grinned. “I really lucked out, didn’t I?”

  Relieved, but still dimly worried that his pride might have taken a battering, she asked, “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Mind?” He appeared to chew that one over for a moment. “I’d have to be crazy to mind, wouldn’t I?” Then he laughed again. “Tell you what—I’ll provide the necessities, and you spring for the luxuries. How’s that?”

  With a weight off her mind, C.J. leaned closer to him and slipped her arms around his neck. “Sounds like a workable partnership to me,” she said.

  “Glad you agree.” He started to nuzzle her throat. “Anything else to hammer out, or are we agreed on all major points?”

  Trying to concentrate, C.J. found it impossible. “I…think that about covers it,” she murmured huskily. “Anything else is bound to be minor, and we can work it out later.”

  He lifted his head to give her a look of mock seriousness. “Is that bed comfortable?”

  “It sags in the middle,” she answered with equal solemnity.

  “The better to hold you close, love.” He rose to his feet, holding her easily and looking down at her with a glinting smile.

  C.J. wasn’t about to find fault with his obvious plans for the rest of their day…and night. “Better put more wood on the fire,” she advised in a helpful spirit.

  Fate carried her over to the bed, calmly dropped her into the middle of it, and then headed for the wood stacked in the corner.

  “Well, thanks!” she laughed, bouncing once and then sliding inexorably into the quilted depression.

  “You’re welcome,” he responded politely. Having placed three logs on the fire, he came back to the bed and stood beside it, staring down at her. His dark eyes took in her position on the bed—flat on her back with her hands folded over her stomach and an expression of saintly patience on her face as she all but vanished into the bed’s sagging middle—and sighed. “What is this, an invitation to ravishment?” he asked courteously.

  “Don Juan,” she announced, “couldn’t ravish somebody in this bed. Fate, this is not going to work: if my weight does this, yours’ll make it neatly fold in the middle!”

  “Then we’ll have to do something about that, won’t we?” Briskly, he got to work, bringing logs from the corner to place beneath the sagging springs. Meanwhile, C.J. pulled herself from the quilted valley and unmade the bed, shaking the covers out briskly before remaking it.

  “Never know what might have crawled in there,” she told Fate darkly as they finished their tasks.

  “I know what’s about to,” he responded, coming toward her.

  “You’re an insatiable man,” she observed severely.

  “I certainly am.”

  C.J. slid her arms around his waist and tilted her head back to look up at him as he drew her close. “Please note that I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” she added.

  “That’s good, because I’m not about to let you go, pixie,” he said unevenly, bending his head, his lips teasing hers apart.

  He didn’t take advantage of her immediate response, but continued to tease and torment. He kissed one corner of her mouth and then the other, his tongue lightly tracing the sensitive inner skin of her lips. His hands framed her face warmly, preventing her from ending the gentle torture.

  She pressed her body against his, moving sensuously with the knowledge he had taught her. Her hands probed beneath his sweater, pulling the tail of his shirt from the waistband of his slacks and finding the firmly muscled flesh beneath it.

  Fate groaned softly and abruptly discarded the teasing, taking her mouth in a surge of fiery hunger. His tongue searched and probed and possessed, joining with hers in a blazing encounter.

  And then he suddenly put her away from him, informing her in a hoarse voice, “If you don’t get out of those clothes right this minute, I’m going to tear them to bits, and you won’t have a thing to wear back to the lodge.”

  “Oh, that would never do.” With deliberate slowness, she began to remove her clothes one article at a time, folding each item carefully and placing it on the chair closest to her. By the time Fate had rapidly, carelessly, discarded his own clothing, she was down to panties and bra. He wasted no time in ridding her of the delicate scraps of satin and lace.

  “Look what you did,” she scolded breathlessly.

  Fate dropped the ruined tatters to the floor. “I warned you,” he said, immediately sweeping her into his arms and placing her impatiently on the turned-down bed.

  C.J. giggled as his weight came down beside her. “Next time I’ll pay more attention.”

  “Or strip faster.” He buried his face in her throat, lips moving hotly against soft skin. One leg trapped her restless ones as his hands began to wander hungrily. “Lord, you drive me crazy! Lovely pixie. I love you so much….”

  Nearly mindless with desire, C.J. nevertheless distinctly heard two more words whispered against her flesh, and those words caught her full attention. Locking her fingers in his black hair, she pulled his head up, demanding, “What did you say?”

  “That I love you,” he murmured, kissing her.

  But his darkly passionate eyes held a boyishly gleeful expression, and she wasn’t deceived. “I love you, too, and what else did you say?”

  He kissed her again. “Nothing much…Clementine Josephine.”

  Dazedly, she murmured, “He guessed. He finally guessed.” Then the full import of his gleeful look sunk in. “No, he didn’t guess; he knew! Who told you?”

  “I’ve known all along,” he told her, nibbling lightly on her lower lip.

  C.J. struggled to ignore the distraction. “Fate—I want to know how you found out my name!”

  He sighed. “I have other things on my mind right now, Clementine Josephine.”

  “Tell me!”

  Sighing again, Fate propped himself on one elbow and rolled his eyes toward the heavens. “Somebody tell me why I’ve gotten myself engaged to a shrew,” he implored tragically.

  “Fate!”

  “Probably,” he murmured, and then relented at her threatening look. “All right. When I called my soon-to-be partner in Boston last week, I asked him to look up your
birth certificate for me. He did, and told me what your name was when I called him back last Wednesday. Satisfied, shrew?”

  “Was that legal?” she asked suspiciously.

  He looked wounded. “Certainly it was legal.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Strangely enough, that doesn’t surprise me.”

  “And you’ve been guessing about my name all along, you deceitful lawyer! Was it fun?”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”

  She sighed, then gave him a guarded look. “Well, now you know my shameful secret. If you want to back out of the wedding, I’ll understand.”

  “I think your name’s adorable,” he said, once more leaning over to explore her throat. “And I wouldn’t back out of the wedding if your name was Genghis Khan.”

  “My word, the man’s besotted!” she cried in delight, her arms stealing back around his neck.

  “Clearly. He’s also on the brink of insanity. I hope you’re finished talking, pixie…”

  “Well, if you have something more interesting in mind—” Her teasing words were cut off abruptly as Fate’s mouth captured hers, and C.J. gave herself up totally to the blissful wonder of his touch.

  As though it were the first time for them, his hands moved over her body softly, lavishing butterfly touches until her senses were spinning wildly. He teased and tormented, his fingers skimming lightly over her lower belly and upper thighs, always just avoiding the heart of her burning desire. His lips caressed her breasts hotly, teeth nipping lightly, tongue swirling avidly.

  She moaned and twisted restlessly, her trembling fingers shaping his shoulders, sliding down over the rippling muscles of his back, then snaking around to touch his flat stomach. Knowing, now, what pleased and excited him, she allowed her hands to tease and explore, rewarded by his harsh groan and muttered words.

  “You’re so sweet…. Lord, pixie, how did I ever exist without you? I love you so much….”

  C.J. gasped when his fingers at last found their tar get, her breath catching in her throat, and her body arching instinctively. “Fate—! Oh, please, darling…”

  He rose above her. “Darling…you turn that word to magic,” he rasped softly, dark eyes glowing down on her. And then his body moved, possessing her, making her his and giving himself to her for all time.

  C.J. felt the splintering tension building within her, holding him, moving with him. She wanted desperately to lose herself in him, to become a flesh-and-blood part of him. And for a timeless moment, she felt that it had happened. She fell into his purple eyes, into the heart of a purple star and the Indian she loved.

  She cried out his name raggedly, hearing dimly her own name torn from his throat harshly, rapture claiming them both.

  “It’s indecent,” C.J. murmured a long while later as Fate drew the blankets and quilt over their cooling bodies. “The middle of the day!…”

  “That’s the charm of it, love,” he replied in a satisfied tone, arranging her comfortably at his side.

  “Are we going to stay here all day?” she asked in a scandalized voice.

  “Do you have somewhere else to go?” he asked politely.

  “Now that you mention it…no.”

  “Well then?”

  “We’re being very lazy.”

  “Not at all. Would you like to know how many calories we just burned?”

  “You’re terrible.”

  “Don’t be sassy, Clementine Josephine, or I’ll paddle that delightful backside.”

  She sighed. “If you’re going to use that horrible name, at least use the shortened version I answered to as a kid.”

  “Which is?”

  “Tina.”

  “That’s sweet.” He kissed her forehead. “But I like the long version, too. I’ll use it whenever you get too sassy.”

  “Use it in front of anybody, and I’ll divorce you.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Do that. By the way, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you for days. The girls never did believe your parastie and laser beam story.”

  “What?” He sounded shocked. “You mean I failed?”

  “’Fraid so. Jan hit me with it the night of that damned party. They played along with it because it tickled them.” She laughed suddenly. “Now you know why the guys watched you as though they were looking for horns and a tail.”

  Fate pulled her over on top of him. “Your friends have been absolutely no help to me,” he complained wryly. “They wouldn’t tell me your name—”

  “Which you unscrupulously discovered for yourself.”

  “—and they never mentioned your company,” he finished, ignoring her interruption.

  “They told you everything else. The only things left for me to tell you were my name, the company, and that I love you.”

  He grinned up at her. “That last sounds the best. I’ll never grow tired of hearing it.”

  “Good. I’ll never grow tired of saying it. You’re a crazy, unpredictable Indian, Maestro, and I love you.” C.J. rained kisses over his face, adding seductively, “About that dream I had…”

  “How you keep harping on that dream.”

  “Well, I have to know if I was really dreaming.”

  “I’ll never tell.”

  C.J. sighed despairingly. “And I’ll never know.”

  “If you’re real good…I’ll tell you on our twentieth anniversary. And not an hour before.”

  “I’ll get it out of you before then,” she said confidently. “As a matter of fact…”

  “As a matter of face what? I don’t trust the gleam in your eyes, pixie.”

  “I was just thinking about that lewd suggestion I woke you up with one morning.”

  “Great minds. I was thinking about it, too.” He pulled her head down, his tongue lightly tracing her lower lip.

  “Want to bet I get the truth out of you?” she whispered.

  “Oh, love,” he said softly between kisses, “did no one ever tell you never to bet against Fate?…”

  Read on for a special preview of

  the next thrilling Bishop/Special

  Crimes Unit novel, the first in

  Kay Hooper’s new

  Blood trilogy

  BLOOD

  DREAMS

  KAY HOOPER

  Now available from Bantam Books

  BLOOD DREAMS

  On Sale Now

  PROLOGUE

  It was the nightmare brought to life, Dani thought.

  The vision.

  The smell of blood turned her stomach, the thick, acrid smoke burned her eyes, and what had been for so long a wispy dreamlike memory now was jarring, throat-clogging reality. For just an instant she was paralyzed.

  It was all coming true.

  Despite everything she had done, everything she had tried to do, despite all the warnings, once again it was all—

  “Dani?” Hollis seemingly appeared out of the smoke at her side, gun drawn, blue eyes sharp even squinted against the stench. “Where is it?”

  “I—I can’t. I mean, I don’t think I can—”

  “Dani, you’re all we’ve got. You’re all they’ve got. Do you understand that?”

  Reaching desperately for strength she wasn’t at all sure she had, Dani said, “If somebody had just listened to me when it mattered—”

  “Stop looking back. There’s no sense in it. Now is all that counts. Which way, Dani?”

  Impossible as it was, Dani had to force herself to concentrate on the stench of blood she knew neither of the others could smell. A blood trail that was all they had to guide them. She nearly gagged, then pointed. “That way. Toward the back. But…”

  “But what?”

  “Down. Lower. There’s a basement level.” Stairs. She remembered stairs. Going down them. Down into hell.

  “It isn’t on the blueprints.”

  “I know.”

  “Bad place to get trapped in a burning building,”
Hollis noted. “The roof could fall in on us. Easily.”

  Bishop appeared out of the smoke as suddenly as she had, weapon in hand, his face stone, eyes haunted. “We have to hurry.”

  “Yeah,” Hollis replied, “we get that. Burning building. Maniacal killer. Good seriously out-numbered by evil. Bad situation.” Her words and tone were flippant, but her gaze on his face was anything but, intent and measuring.

  “You forgot potential victim in maniacal killer’s hands,” her boss said, not even trying to match her tone.

  “Never. Dani, did you see the basement, or are you feeling it?”

  “Stairs. I saw them.” The weight on her shoulders felt like the world, so maybe that was what was pressing her down. Or…“And what I feel now…he’s lower. He’s underneath us.”

  “Then we look for stairs.”

  Dani coughed. She was trying to think, trying to remember. But dreams recalled were such dim, insubstantial things, even vision-dreams sometimes, and there was no way for her to be sure she was remembering clearly. She was overwhelmingly conscious of precious time passing, and looked at her wrist, at the bulky digital watch that told her it was 2:47 P.M. on Tuesday, October 28.

  Odd. She never wore a watch. Why was she wearing one now? And why a watch that looked so…alien on her thin wrist?

  “Dani?”

  She shook off the momentary confusion. “The stairs. Not where you’d expect them to be,” she managed finally, coughing again. “They’re in a closet or something like that. A small office. Room. Not a hallway. Hallways—”

  “What?”

  The instant of certainty was fleeting, but absolute. “Shit. The basement is divided. By a solid wall. Two big rooms. And accessed from this main level by two different stairways, one at each side of the building, in the back.”

  “What kind of crazy-ass design is that?” Hollis demanded.

  “If we get out of this alive, you can ask the architect.” The smell of blood was almost overpowering, and Dani’s head was beginning to hurt. Badly. She had never before pushed herself for so long without a break, especially with this level of intensity.