Anne Stuart's Out-of-Print Gems

by Anne Stuart

  He might even marry her. He’d never considered marriage, but having spent forty-eight hours with the cranky Ms. Molloy, he could see it would definitely have its advantages. He’d discovered an absolute craving for brownies. And for Suzanna Molloy.

  He wondered idly how much convincing she was going to need. She was very, very bright—that was part of what drew him to her. He could simply state the obvious advantages of a union, and if she were as sensible as she was intelligent, she’d agree.

  In his experience, women were seldom sensible. Even the best and the brightest of them, and Suzanna fitted or even transcended that category. She might be just as likely to throw his well-planned suggestion in his face.

  He leaned back, staring out into the darkening sky. Maybe he’d simply have to seduce her into complying. It had certain appeal. If it hadn’t been for the damned clock, he would already have accomplished just that, and there’d be no more arguments about who was going to sleep where.

  Or maybe, just maybe, he was better off keeping his distance. Suzanna affected him as no other woman had. Enough so that he was sitting over his microscope, staring out into the twilight like a lovesick calf instead of working. He needed to concentrate. He needed to stop thinking about Suzanna. And the surest way to do that was either to get rid of her or to sleep with her.

  If he was truly sensible he’d opt for the former.

  But then, good sense had never been his forte. He’d spent his life following his intellect, his instinct, his inclination. And while this time those three things had parted company, he was going to go with instinct and inclination. He was going to make love to Suzanna Molloy so thoroughly that he wouldn’t even need to think about her for days.

  And then maybe he could solve the riddle of the mutated green slime, and just what it had done to him.

  Six o’clock came with damnable regularity, one of the few constants in a world gone awry. He sat back when the first cramp hit him, cursing under his breath, tensing against the pain. It rippled through him, cold and blinding, and then he was gone.

  He rose, furious with himself for wasting so much time when he could have been working. Of the hours since they’d been back at the house, he’d spent the vast majority dreaming about Suzanna’s legs, wrapped around his back. And while there was nothing he wanted more than to go in search of her, to see just how limber those long, beautiful legs were, now wasn’t the time to do it. Even if she couldn’t see him, she could feel his touch, and he didn’t think she was ready to do it with the Invisible Man.

  What he needed was more brownies. He stepped out into the living room as quietly as he could, closing the door behind him. There was no sound from Suzanna, and he glanced up at the loft. A light was burning against the encroaching darkness, but he could hear the evenness of her breathing, the quiet steadiness of her heartbeat. She was asleep.

  The brownies were gone. He considered heading upstairs after her, then changed his mind. Instead he threw himself down on the sofa, propping his head on his arms. He listened to the steady thump of her heartbeat, concentrating on it, feeling his own heart beat in rhythm with it. He let himself drift, then slide into the sleep he’d been resisting.

  HE WOKE WITH A START, the darkness all around him, and then he heard the sound of the shower.

  He lay on the sofa, imagining her in there, water sluicing down over her skin. He wanted to go in and lick the water off her.

  Instead he waited for her, listening.

  For once fate was kind to him. The door opened, and Suzanna stepped out, her eyes searching the living room warily. She was wearing nothing but a towel. A towel that was definitely too skimpy for her tall, wonderful body, and she clutched it to her like a lifeline as she tiptoed across the room, heading for the stairs. And then she stopped, startled, like a doe caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.

  “Damn it, are you in here, Crompton?” she demanded furiously.

  “Guilty.”

  Her face swiveled toward the sofa and the sound of his voice. “Close your eyes.”

  “You trust me?” The thought amused him.

  “Enough to close your eyes if you say you have.”

  “I’ve closed my eyes,” he said promptly, honestly.

  The tension in her body lessened slightly, and she scampered across the room, towel trailing behind her, and raced up the stairs to the loft, and out of sight.

  “Thank you for being a gentleman.” Her stiff voice floated over the edge of the balcony.

  “My pleasure,” he murmured. “But to be perfectly fair, I ought to tell you I can see through my eyelids.”

  The book came sailing over the balcony, landing dangerously close to his head. He rolled out of the way in time, and he found himself grinning like an idiot. It was just as well she couldn’t see him. She’d probably slap the smirk off his face.

  “You know, Molloy, you’re going to give Armstead’s and Osborn’s goons a run for their money when they show up here,” he drawled. “You just need to improve your aim.”

  She leaned over the balcony, glaring. The T-shirt she’d pulled on read I Love My Attitude Problem, and her wet hair hung down like something out of a fairy tale. “At least I’ll be able to see what I’m aiming at,” she snapped back. And then there was a sudden, stunned expression on her face. “What makes you think they’ll find us?”

  “They will. It may take them a while, but they have resources at their disposal that effectively destroy any secrets we might hope to have. They’re going to find us, Suzanna. And they’re going to try to kill us.”

  Her face was already pale, but even in the shadowy light he could see the ashen color increase. “Why would they destroy America’s secret weapon? Don’t they have a use for you any more?”

  “They’ve got two problems. One, they know that I’m not going to work for them any longer. As long as they left me alone, gave me plenty of money, then I was reasonably content. They would have gotten their hands on whatever I discovered in the long run, so they may as well foot the bill and let me work in comfort. And two, they don’t realize that they don’t have complete documentation of my work. If they did, they wouldn’t risk harming even a hair on my head.”

  “What is it?”

  He was getting a crick in his neck, staring up at her. “What is what?” he asked testily.

  “What are you working on?”

  “You’ve been trying to find that out ever since you snuck into my lab. I’m really not interested in playing Romeo and Juliet. Come down from your perch and I’ll tell you.”

  She looked wary. “I’m not sure if I believe you.”

  “What have I got to lose? We may both be dead tomorrow. You might at least know what you’re dying for.”

  “I have no intention of dying,” she said, coming down the stairs, keeping her face averted from his general direction.

  “Just as well,” he said. “I have no intention of letting you get killed.” At least, not if I can help it, he added to himself.

  She paused at the bottom of the stairs, her head cocked to one side, as if she were listening. “And what if you can’t help it?”

  Her echoing of his thoughts unnerved him for a moment. “You forget,” he said in a passable drawl. “I’m Cinderman. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive…”

  “Not that I noticed,” she said, edging her way over to the sofa. “You’re strong, but I haven’t noticed you being particularly fast. As for being able to leap tall buildings…”

  “Don’t be so literal.” He started to move closer, slowly, silently, not wanting to scare her away. He wanted to be near her. To look at her, the high cheekbones, warm brown eyes, the erotic, touching vulnerability in her wide mouth. He wanted to see whether she was wearing a bra or not, he…

  She crossed her arms across her chest, glaring at him. “You’re still avoiding my questions, Crompton. What are you working on?”

  He wasn’t about to
tell her it was something even more powerful than cold fusion. She wouldn’t believe him, and the more she knew, the greater her danger. If she understood the details of bi-level molecular transfer, she’d be—

  “You’re crazy,” she gasped. “There’s no such thing as bi-level molecular transfer.”

  He gave up trying to sneak up on her. He crossed the room in three swift, noisy strides, clamping his hands down on her shoulders and swiveling her around to face him. Not that she could see him. Which was just as well. He’d probably only scare her if she could read his expression. “What did you say?”

  There was no way she could miss the quiet menace in his voice but as usual, she didn’t let it cow her. “I said, there’s no such thing as bi-level molecular transfer. You know as I do that it’s a fairy tale, a mad scientist’s fantasy. The sort of thing that kept Merlin busy. It doesn’t exist.”

  “It does.”

  He’d managed to shock her into silence. It was only temporary, of course. “Even you aren’t that smart, Crompton,” she said weakly, but he could see she believed.

  “Why do you think they call me America’s secret weapon? I’ve developed something so powerful, so legendary, that the world as we know it would be changed forever if it gets out.”

  “What do you mean, if it gets out?”

  “The good folks at Beebe don’t even realize what they’ve got under their nose. They think it’s cold fusion, and they’re willing to kill for it.”

  “Bi-level molecular transfer would make cold fusion seem as archaic as an A-bomb. But what about the practical applications? Surely you can’t have gotten that far?” She still seemed stunned by the magnitude of his discovery. As she should be. He released her arms, and she sank down on the sofa.

  “What good would it be without practical applications? Proven theory is all fine and good, but you have to be able to make it work.”

  “And you can make it work,” she said in a hollow voice. “Exactly who are the folks at Beebe? You said they would have gotten their hands on it sooner or later, so you decided to work for them. Who are they? They’re not organized crime, or Uncle Vinnie would know. Are they CIA? The government? What in God’s name is Beebe Control Systems International?”

  He considered walking away. She wouldn’t be able to find him, make him answer questions he’d never answered before. Even if she could see him, she wouldn’t be able to do that.

  But the damnable thing was, he wanted to tell her. For the first time in his life, he wanted to talk to someone about the convoluted world he’d been living in.

  “Beebe stands for BB. Big Brother. And that’s exactly who supports and owns Beebe. You’re wrong about organized crime. The board of BBCSI is composed of some of the most powerful people in the country. They’ve got Mafia, they’ve got four-star generals. FBI, CIA, the far right. All the most power-hungry, paranoid groups that make up this country’s power elite.”

  “I thought the cold war was over.”

  “You thought wrong. At least, it’s not over as far as these people are concerned. They’re convinced the Russians are just biding their time, stockpiling weapons. They think the sooner they can nuke the Middle East out of existence, the better. They’re looking for some nice clean way to gain control over the world, and then they can make their own rules.”

  “And you went along with that?” she demanded, obviously horrified.

  He shrugged, but of course she couldn’t see that. “I didn’t pay much attention to who was paying the bills. The same kind of people are in charge, whether you work for the government or academia. You just learn to keep your secrets.”

  “Have they got yours?”

  She could be a liar, he thought coolly, dispassionately. She could be a plant, a practiced actress hired by Osborn and his crew to ferret out his secrets. If he told her the truth, trusted her, he could be signing not only his death warrant, but the fate of the world, as well.

  “I’m not a liar,” she said. “You can trust me.”

  He considered it for a moment. And then deliberately made the first step. “They only have half of them. Jackson was copying my research during the last few months—I had a safety lock on the system that recorded every time security was breached, and who did it. But I kept a great deal of my research separately, with me.”

  “Where?”

  He smiled, a wintry smile that she couldn’t see. “On a CD disk. It looks like an audio disk instead of something for the computer. The only way you could tell it was a ROM disk was if you tried to play it on the stereo.”

  “Would it destroy the disk if you did that?”

  “Why? Are you thinking of going back to my apartment and finding the rest of my research? The boys at Beebe are very eager to get their hands on it. You could be a very rich young woman, set for life. If they didn’t decide to kill you, as well.”

  “Stuff it, Cinderman,” Suzanna snapped. “I don’t deserve that. And it’s not necessarily the smartest thing you’ve ever done. It’s got to be that Neil Diamond CD. Anyone with any brains would wonder what you’d be doing with something like that. Someone could break into your apartment, take it, and you’d be up a nasty creek without a paddle and they’d have the power to change the world, and probably not for the better.”

  “Not really.”

  She peered through the gathering darkness, but there was no way she could see him. He held very still, keeping his breathing quiet, not wanting to give away his presence. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean there’s a crucial piece of the puzzle missing, both from my research in the computers back at Beebe and from the CD ROM.”

  “And where is that piece of the puzzle?”

  “In my brain.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she shot back. “You can’t rely on memory for something that important.”

  “I can. I have a photographic memory. You’d be amazed at the stuff I have crammed into my brain.”

  She rose, staring in the direction of his voice, and he wondered coolly whether now was the moment of truth. Whether she would tell him who and what she really was, and what she wanted from him. Had he been wrong to trust her?

  “Damn you,” she said in a low, furious voice. “How dare you?”

  “How dare I what?” He was momentarily astonished.

  “How dare you question who and what I am?” she said, stalking toward him. “I’ve let you drag me to the back end of beyond, do your disappearing act, lie to me, then treat me like you trust me, when all the time you’ve been standing there thinking I’m some kind of penny ante Mata Hari, out to steal your secrets and then cut your throat. If I could only see you, I’d be more than happy to…”

  She walked right into him, and his hands came up to capture hers. Before he could think about what he was doing, he did what he’d been wanting to do. He pulled her into his arms and put his mouth on hers, silencing her.

  She didn’t fight, even though he could feel the rage and resistance in her body. She stood there in the circle of his arms, letting him kiss her, and she felt cool and still against his heat.

  Her lack of response should have been a deterrent. It only increased his determination. He used his tongue, sliding along her lower lip, and she opened her mouth for him, reluctantly, and her arms moved up around his waist as she softened against him, absorbing his warmth, absorbing his need, until she was suddenly kissing him back. Her hands clutched at him tightly, and her heart was pounding fiercely against his.

  He reached up and cupped her face, his fingers sliding into her shower-damp hair, and he pulled her away and stared down at her. “One question, Molloy,” he said in a raspy voice, only slightly breathless.

  She closed her eyes and became very still, waiting. “What is it?”

  “How long have you been able to read my mind?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Suzanna tore herself away from him. Her lips were hot, burning, from the feel of his mouth against hers. Her skin was on fire, itchy, a
nd yet she only wanted the feel of his body against hers. Only the touch of his flesh would soothe her.

  She turned her back on him, staring out into the gathering darkness. “I hate trying to talk to you when I can’t see you.”

  “How long have you been able to read my mind?” The question came again, inexorable, and she knew there was no escaping it. She wasn’t quite sure why she wanted to.

  “I can’t read your mind,” she said. “I can hear thoughts. And it’s only been since we came back from the ridge.” She turned and looked back at the empty space where she assumed he was standing. “I don’t like it.”

  “I can’t say I’m any too crazy about it, either,” he drawled. “What am I thinking about now?”

  “If I could find you I’d slap you,” she said. “You’re thinking about my breasts again.”

  “That might just be a logical guess. Try again.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, opening her mind. And then she shook her head. “It doesn’t work.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I don’t seem to be able to control it. Errant thoughts filter through, when I least expect it, but if I try to reach out for your mind, I just get a blank. Let’s face it, Mr. Spock I’m not. There’s no Vulcan mind-meld for me.”

  “Maybe if you touched me.”

  “No, thank you,” she said sharply. “It unnerves me enough as it is.” She ran a hand through her damp hair, taking a deep breath. “What time is it?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t see my watch.”

  She was cold. It seemed at times that the only way she would ever get warm was to be near him. And yet that was a danger far greater than anything she’d imagined so far. Freezing to death was a dreamy, painless way to go. Death by fire was terrifying.

  And yet, like a moth, she was drawn to the flame. The heat of her possible destruction beckoned to her, and she didn’t know how much longer she was going to be able to resist.

  She heard his swift, pained intake of breath, and for a moment she didn’t realize what it signified. He rematerialized slowly, fuzzily at first, and she forced herself to watch him.