The old broomstick she had left jammed among the rocks was still there, weathered silver and hard as stone. She grabbed the stick, poked it into the overhang, and waited. No furious rattling sound came from the gloom at the back of the cave. She poked again just to be sure; rattlesnakes loved the little cave as much as she did, which was why she had stashed a broomstick nearby after she discovered the cave as a girl.
When she was sure she was safe, she pulled herself over the lip of the hidden cave. Wedging herself out of sight was harder now than it had been when she was eight or even twelve. Despite her slender appearance, there was a lot of her to conceal. The cave had been a skinny child’s hiding place, not one designed for a woman five feet seven inches tall in her bare feet.
Lying on her side, she brought her knees up to her chin and hugged her legs back against her body until only the scuffed toes of her shoes poked out. As for the rest, her dusty jeans and dark-blue denim shirt blended right into the shadows.
Breathing hard, she looked down at the cabin just in time to see a man get out of a dusty silver Mercedes SUV. He glanced around, then called something that could have been her name.
She didn’t answer.
He called again.
This time Serena was sure it was her name. It didn’t make her feel any more like answering. As she hadn’t told anyone that she was coming here, she had to assume that she had been followed.
It wasn’t a comforting thought.
Silent, motionless, she watched while the man walked slowly around the house, zigzagging as though he was looking for something in particular. She had time to notice that he was a rather tall man, certainly too big for comfort. He also moved too easily, casually vaulting a wall here and leaping down an embankment there, landing lightly, and searching, always searching, the ground.
Whatever he was looking for, it didn’t take him long to find. He went back to his SUV, took out some rough country shoes, pulled them on, and started up the faint trail that led to the cave. Very quickly he vanished into a crease in the land.
Serena waited, almost afraid to breathe. If he was following her trail, in about a minute he would appear in the open spot before the ravine.
She saw him in much less than a minute. His long legs devoured the ground at a frightening pace. His eyes searched the granite wall as though he sensed she was hiding in one of the dark pockets scattered across the crumbling face of the cliff.
Instantly she began planning her escape route. If he attempted the tricky climb up to the cave, she would scramble up to the top of the wall and then over and into the next ravine, which led to the back of the cabin. It was the short way down. She would be in her car and gone before he was halfway up the wall.
“Serena? Are you all right?”
When she didn’t answer, he started up the broken cliff as though it was a walk in the park. His speed and coordination scared the hell out of her.
The cave had become a trap.
She shot out of the darkness and lunged at the crumbling wall that stood between her and a safe route back to the cabin. She was only a few feet from the top of the wall when a piece of rotten granite crumbled under her foot. Suddenly she was skidding, falling, turning. She threw her arms out wide, trying to catch something that would stop her fall.
Powerful hands clamped around one flailing wrist. Then she slammed up against the wall with enough force to knock her breath out. Even so, she would have kept on sliding if it hadn’t been for something at her back, wedging her against the rocks.
That something was a man. A big one.
“I hope the pages are in a safer place than you are,” he said in a rough, deep, impatient tone.
Serena froze, wondering if she was hearing the voice of her grandmother’s murderer.
And her own.
Chapter 14
Are you all right?” Erik asked the woman whose back was to him as he pressed her into the cliff.
Serena made a stifled sound that could have meant anything.
“When you didn’t answer my call,” he said, “I thought you might have wandered off and gotten hurt. DG can be a real bastard to climb.”
With a wild shudder, air returned to Serena’s lungs. She breathed hard and deep until she trusted herself to say, “Who are you?”
“Erik North.”
“The manuscript appraiser?”
“Yes.”
Thank God. He wasn’t a stranger. Not exactly. Which meant that she was probably safe.
Probably.
Relief turned her bones to sand. She took a broken breath and sagged against the rock face without even noticing its rough surface.
Erik felt the difference in her, as though strings had snapped and she could barely hold herself upright. He tightened his grip and leaned into her, holding her upright with his own body.
She went rigid and would have fallen all over again if it hadn’t been for the hard length of the man pinning her to the rocks.
“Easy, Serena. I’ve got you.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” she asked through locked teeth.
He laughed. The puffs of air disturbed some of her soft, flyaway hair at the side of her face. He was so close that he could admire the burning shades of red and gold in her loose braid, sense her heat, feel each breath she took. He could all but taste her. If he wanted to do that, all he had to do was nose aside the unusual, quite beautiful, scarf she was wearing loosely around her neck.
The thought of doing just that appealed to him. He didn’t know which would be softer, the scarf or the luminous skin. He did know that he was going to find out. Soon.
Wryly Erik was glad that Serena wasn’t a mind reader; she would have been clawing away at the cliff again, trying to escape him. His climbing skills were up to the chase, but he wasn’t sure hers were. As he had pointed out, DG was treacherous stuff to climb on, especially if you were in a hurry.
“Can you stand, or did you turn your ankle?” he asked.
Odd sensations had rippled over her when his laughter stirred against her skin. At some elemental level, that laugh was familiar to her. That voice was familiar to her. Like the pages. Like the fabric that had slipped up her neck as though to protect her face from the cliff.
She knew this man.
The certainty was as shocking as feeling her footing give way had been a few moments before.
“Are you sure you’re Erik North?” she asked hoarsely.
“Positive.”
She didn’t know how to say that he didn’t fit her idea of an appraiser of medieval illuminated manuscripts and she didn’t want to say anything as stupid as Don’t I know you from somewhere? So she asked the question that had been bothering her since she first saw him. “What are you doing here?”
“Trying to figure out if you can walk or if I’ll have to carry you.”
“You can’t. I’m too big.”
Laughter stirred against her neck again. The scarf lifted on a bit of breeze and floated back to brush over Erik’s lips. Smiling, he nuzzled the soft, clingy cloth in return.
“Niall is a lot bigger than you,” Erik said, “and I had to pack him out of the Santa Rosa Mountains once.”
“Niall?”
“Later. Or do you really want to exchange life histories while we cling to this rock pile by my fingernails?”
Without warning the granite beneath Erik’s left foot crumbled. His foot slid, searched, but didn’t find solid ground. He jammed his hands into cracks and crevices, clenched his fingers into fists, pinned Serena hard with his hips, and waited.
Nothing else gave way.
He probed cautiously with his left foot until he found a crevice that supported his weight. When he was secure again, he silently congratulated himself on taking the time to change his shoes before he followed the faint trail he had picked up. On rocks like this, city loafers were about as useful as Rollerblades.
“Are you all right?” Serena asked, shaken.
“Yes.”
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She stared at the big fists that were wedged into rough cracks in the wall. “That looks uncomfortable.”
“It is. But it beats the hell out of falling. Hold still while I change my grip.”
He removed first one hand, then the other from the crevices, and flexed his fingers. Some of the skin smarted and burned. He had expected that. Blood welled from several cuts, but not enough to interfere with getting a secure grip. Slowly, confidently, he shifted his weight so that he could hold her safely against the rock without crushing her.
For Serena, the intimacy of his body moving against her was unnerving. She kept her mind off it by watching while he selected two more handholds. There was nothing random in his choices, nor in the muscle and sinew that flexed to take the new load.
“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” she asked.
“Scared a woman so much that she nearly killed herself trying to get away from me? No, this is a first.”
She smiled despite the residue of fear and adrenaline lighting up her blood. “I meant climbing rocks.”
“It’s my hobby. But usually I’m dressed for the occasion.”
For the first time she noticed the soft maroon cloth that was rolled up to his elbows. Expensive fabric from the look of it, but not as fine-grained and supple as the golden masculine skin that was only inches from her face. Sun-bleached blond hair gleamed along his arm. Blood trickled down the back of his hand.
“You’re hurt!”
“What?” He glanced at the trivial cut and wished he knew Serena well enough to ask her to kiss it better. From where he was, her mouth looked capable of healing, among other things. Much more interesting things. “That’s not even big enough to call an ‘oww-ee.’ “
She laughed, surprising both of them.
Erik let out a silent breath. He liked the feeling of her moving against his hips. He liked it way too much. If he didn’t start thinking about something else, he would be pole-vaulting down the damned cliff.
“Do you want to go up or down from here?” he asked almost roughly.
“Up is easier.”
“I know. I just wasn’t sure if you did. Ready?”
“Wait. Let me test my footing.”
Silently he endured some more of her subtle wiggling while she put weight on first one foot, then the other.
She slipped.
Reflexively he pinned her against the wall again with his hips.
“Slow is better,” he said.
“I’m trying.”
“Very trying,” he said through his teeth. She wasn’t meaning to, but her little movements had made him hard.
“If you hadn’t come up the wall like Spiderman with his feet on fire and scared me to—” she began.
“As my friend Dana would say,” Erik cut in, “ ‘Shut it.’ You can chew me out later.”
“Is that a promise?” she retorted.
“Yeah. Right after you thank me. Guess which one I’m looking forward to?”
As Serena moved to find a better position, she felt the unmistakable hardness of an aroused male pressing into the cleft of her buttocks. Her breath came in a strangled gasp.
“Don’t panic,” he said neutrally. “It’s a simple physiological reflex. It will go away as soon as your tight little butt stops rubbing against my crotch.”
“Give me more room and it won’t be a problem,” she shot back.
He bit back some hot words and eased away from her. This time she managed to stay upright without slipping. His mind was grateful. His dick wasn’t.
“All right?” he asked.
“Fabulous,” she said sarcastically. “I can finally stop licking the cliff.”
He couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t get him in more trouble than he already was. He eased farther away from her, but not so far that he couldn’t grab her if she slipped again.
Without a word she began climbing up the jumbled rock face. Now that she wasn’t trying to flee, she could choose her route for safety rather than speed. She went up with only a few minor slips and one fast scramble.
He followed. Rock climbing with a major woody was something he had never tried before. He would be happy if he never did it again. He glanced into the small cave as he went past it. All he saw was an old, weathered broomstick. She hadn’t left anything else behind—pages from the Book of the Learned, for instance.
As soon as Serena gained the top, she glanced toward the cabin. If she ran, she could beat him to her car. Then she remembered his speed coming up the ragged jumble of rocks and decided that he would likely catch her before she got halfway there.
In any case, she had to admit that if Erik North wanted her dead, he was going about it in an odd way.
All the same, she watched him with wary violet eyes as he topped the cliff in a coordinated rush. He could be Santa Claus and she still wouldn’t be happy about being alone in the desert with a strange man, no matter how hauntingly familiar he was.
I know him, dammit. I’m sure of it.
Maybe she had seen him in one of those ads for extreme outdoor equipment, the kind only strong, fit, and completely crazed people used.
As he walked up to her, she saw that he was even bigger than she thought, well over six feet. He moved like an athlete. His hair was every color of blond from flax to bronze. His eyes were as clear and tawny as an eagle’s. And as measuring.
She had seen those eyes before.
Erik noted the tension in Serena’s body and wondered if it was just a woman’s normal wariness at being alone with a stranger or if it was the nervousness of a crook who had a lot to hide. He didn’t like the latter idea but he had to keep it in mind.
No matter how much he wanted the pages to be real, Warrick had seen the originals and pronounced them fakes. Erik would be a fool to dismiss that appraisal simply because he had an emotional attachment to the Book of the Learned.
“Okay,” he said, looking into her wary eyes. “Where do we go from here?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“Why you followed me.”
Chapter 15
Erik stared at Serena. “What makes you think I followed you?”
“Get real. This isn’t exactly on the must-see list for sightseers in southern California.”
He smiled slightly. Even dusty, scuffed, and perspiring in the desert heat, she was unreasonably attractive to him. Maybe it was her unusual combination of red-gold hair and violet eyes. Maybe it was the intelligence and wariness in those eyes and her quick tongue. Maybe it was the curves he saw beneath her casual clothes. Maybe it was the combination of dirt smudges and pale freckles on her high cheekbones. Maybe it was the fey, almost silky scarf she wore around her neck.
Maybe it was the memory of her hips rubbing against him.
She seemed both intensely familiar to him and totally unknown. It was a disturbing combination.
He wondered if she felt it, too, or if her wariness came from the circumstances: two strangers in the middle of an empty desert, one of them male, one female. Maybe she would feel more relaxed if they were surrounded by people. His younger sisters kept telling him that he just didn’t understand how vulnerable a woman felt when she was alone with a strange man.
And maybe Serena wouldn’t be more relaxed in a crowd. Someone running a scam had lots of reasons to be nervous around the person whose job it was to see through scams.
“Cat got your tongue?” she asked coolly.
Mentally Erik shrugged. Whether her edginess came from an attraction to him, an instinctive feminine caution around strange males, or something less savory, he needed answers from her. He might as well go for broke right now, where he could run her to ground if she bolted at his first words.
“I’m a consultant for Rarities Unlimited,” he said.
And waited.
“Is that supposed to explain something?” she asked.
He almost smiled. She hadn’t flinched, hadn’t tightened, the pulse
in her neck hadn’t quickened, and the pupils of her fey violet eyes hadn’t dilated or contracted. Either she was a great actress or she really hadn’t heard of Rarities. If it was the latter, it spoke well of her innocence. If it was the former, she was a crook or simply an extremely cautious person bent on getting more information from him than she gave.
“Rarities is a collaboration of specialists,” he said. “We buy, sell, appraise, and protect rare artifacts and art.”
“For anyone who hires you?”
“Up to a point.”
“What’s that point?”
“Known crooks.”
“You only work for the good guys, is that it?” There was a cynical edge to Serena’s voice.
“What do you think?”
“I think you’d go bankrupt if you waited for saints to hire you.”
He smiled thinly. “I think you’re right. But our allegiance is always to the art, not to the client. It’s in the contract all our clients sign.”
“Meaning?”
“If it comes to a choice between the art or the client, the client loses.”
Her left eyebrow lifted in a golden-red arc. “Does that happen often?”
“You’ll have to ask Dana.”
“Who?”
“Dana Gaynor. Along with S. K. Niall, she owns Rarities.”
Serena jammed her hands in the rear pockets of her jeans and looked away from Erik’s searching bird-of-prey eyes. “Buy, sell, appraise, and protect. Well, I don’t want to buy or sell anything, but I sure could use a neutral appraisal.”
She could use protection, too, but she wasn’t about to bring that up. The way she had run from Erik North, he probably thought she was a little bit fractured. If she said she was afraid that her grandmother’s murderer might be after her, he would assume she was fractured, period. Lisbeth’s murder had been random, not particular. It said so right in the police files.
In any case, she wasn’t a piece of art to be protected. She was just an ordinary human being who was afraid she was caught in a situation that wasn’t ordinary at all.
“A neutral appraisal,” Erik repeated, watching her elegant back and partial profile. “An interesting way to put it.”
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