“In that case you’re going with someone else. I’m out.” He nodded curtly and turned to leave.
“Mr. Dias!” she cried as he opened the door. “Don’t be so hasty. We can discuss this, can’t we? I’ll pay you more than your normal rate—whatever you want.”
He glanced over his shoulder and nailed her with a smoldering look. “You could never meet my price, Ms. Witherspoon,” he said. “Trust me.”
With that he shut the door and was gone, leaving Randy to stare after him in shock. “Well, excuse me,” she murmured softly.
Taking one deep breath, she summoned the intestinal fortitude that had taken her all the way from the poverty of her childhood to this high-rise office. If any woman had ever pulled herself up by her bootstraps. Randy had. She’d worked two or three jobs, supporting her ailing mother and putting herself through college at the same time, all in the pursuit of a better life. Diligence had brought her this far. Diligence and a burning desire to succeed. It was the American way, her mother’s dream, and to Randy’s way of thinking, a West Side kid’s only shot at success. Nothing had come easily, and because of that, she was used to putting her mind to something and then getting it, one way or another.
At the moment her mind was on Geoff Dias.
She walked out of her office and into the hallway just in time to see him disappear through the exit door to the stairway. Of course, a soldier of fortune wouldn’t take the elevator, she thought sardonically.
She caught up with him three floors from the bottom, no easy task in high heels and a short skirt. “I hope you don’t think you can dismiss me so easily,” she told him, fighting to catch her breath and keep pace with him at the same time.
He continued down the stairs at a good clip, apparently determined to do exactly that—dismiss her.
“Because that would be a mistake,” she warned, speaking to the back of his massive shoulders and his streaming gold hair. Randy was a tad impatient by nature, and if she had little tolerance for being dismissed, she had even less for being ignored. Of all the arrogance! He wasn’t even going to speak to her.
She reached out to touch him and jerked her hand back as he stopped on the landing. He glanced back and scorched her nearly senseless with a hot, proceed-at-your-own-risk stare. “‘Easy’ isn’t the word that comes to mind in your case,” he said.
“What word does come to mind?”
“Coward, maybe?” He started down the next flight.
“Coward? What’s that supposed to mean?” Randy followed in hot pursuit, aware that it was the second time she’d been called a coward that day. First kiddingly by Barb, and now by him. Although Randy admitted to having her share of character flaws, she had never considered cowardice one of them. She’d always had to fend for herself, to fight for her dreams. She’d come a long way, but it had never been easy, and the risk of failure had always been great. “Are you going to explain yourself?” she asked.
“Probably not.” He loped down the remaining flight, taking the steps two at a time, then shouldered open the exit door and rushed through.
Randy determinedly followed him, and let the door crash shut behind her. She found herself in an alley she barely knew existed, staring at a chrome monster of a motorcycle. Blinking in the bright sunlight, she tried to get her bearings. She still felt a little woozy and disoriented, probably from that drink he’d given her.
Geoff Dias swung a long leg over the gleaming black motorcycle and settled himself in the leather seat. With his long hair glinting gold, he looked like a Nordic god of warfare caught in the wrong time period. But the heated message in his gaze was anything but warlike. It said he could take her on the ride of her life if she was woman enough to climb on behind him.
Randy was certainly woman enough, but she had a long-standing aversion to motorcycles, and that included the men who rode them. As dearly as she’d loved her mother, Edna had harbored a weakness for just such men, beautiful losers and handsome rogues, men who caroused, couldn’t hold a job, and often survived by living off lonely, susceptible women.
Every one of them had a get-rich-quick scheme, and Edna’s romantic nature was so strong and her need to believe so great, she’d fallen for it every time. She’d died tragically young, in her late forties, of a congenital heart ailment, but Randy had always maintained it was love that killed her. She believed her mother had died of a broken heart.
“Did you follow me down here for the exercise?” Geoff asked. “Or did you have something in mind?”
Randy felt a bead of moisture trickle into the cleft between her breasts and realized her whole body felt warm and flushed. “Actually, there is something you can clear up for me.”
“Such as?”
“Were you born arrogant, Mr. Dias? Or do you have to work at it?”
His slow smile could have dropped a charging rhino in its tracks, assuming the rhino was female.
“It’s probably genetic,” he admitted. “Like your temper.”
“My temper? A moment ago I was a coward, and now I have a temper?” She hesitated as another vague glimmer of recognition took hold. There was something familiar about him—the way he held himself, his facial features—that plucked at a distant chord of memory. Why hadn’t she noticed that before?
“And by the way, why did you call me a coward?” she asked. “You don’t even know me.”
He leaned forward on his bent knee. “Are you saying you aren’t one?”
“What? A coward? Of course not.”
“Care to prove it?”
The quickest way to prove her courage at that point would have been to decorate his big, strong jaw with a palm print. The thought alone gave her a stirring of satisfaction.
“You’re smiling?” he said in that dangerously soft voice of his. “What’s that all about?”
“Trust me, you don’t want to know.” Randy would have loved nothing better than to turn around and stroll out of Geoff Dias’s life forever. There was just one thing preventing her. She needed him, dammit. He might be the only man who could find her missing fiancé.
“Couldn’t we discuss this like two rational adults?” she asked, brushing dark hair from her face and straightening her navy blazer jacket.
“Discuss to your heart’s content. I’m not going anywhere”—he glanced at his gunmetal-black pilot’s watch—“for the next sixty seconds.”
Lord, he was exasperating. She could feel her blood rushing with the urge to commit some sort of grade school terrorism, like kicking the fender of his bike. Worse, it annoyed her that he’d so easily found—and pushed—her panic button. With her professional success she’d come to pride herself on being coolheaded and pragmatic. She’d tried very hard to cultivate those traits and to leave behind all traces of her difficult childhood, including her impatience and her quick temper.
“All right,” she said evenly, “let’s discuss this. The problem is simple enough. I want to go, and you don’t want me to. What if I agree to let you run the show? You can call the shots. The instant you think it’s getting dangerous, I’ll get on a plane and come home. How does that sound?”
“Crowded. I work alone.”
“Mr. Dias, you’re being unreasonable. I’m not asking to work with you. I just want to be there. I’m not the type who can sit home and wait. After all, it’s my fiancé who’s—”
“No deal,” he said, cutting her off.
Randy felt the sharp sting of frustration. “Well, then, what do you want?” she asked. “What would it take to persuade you?” It was the wrong question, of course. She knew that the minute she asked it.
Dias settled back on the chopper, looking negligent and cocksure of himself as he made a leisurely pass over her dress-for-success outfit with his eyes, taking the deluxe tour this time. His gaze darkened, heating the strategic darts and seams, burning her flesh right through her clothing.
“Oh, yes, that,” she said. “I suppose if I were to lift my skirt, show a little thigh, promise some action—”
“Now that you mention it,” he agreed softly.
Randy glared at him. She couldn’t believe he was serious! The silence between them stretched taut until it vibrated.
“You lied, Ms. Witherspoon,” he said finally.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You said you weren’t a coward.” With that he twisted the ignition key, released the clutch, and gave the kick-start pedal a couple of quick pumps. Rising up, he stomped it hard, and the engine roared to life like a snarling, snorting beast. The message was clear. Geoff Dias was history.
Randy’s heart began to pound. It hardly bothered her that motorcycles frightened the life out of her, or that he was about to ride off into the sunset, leaving her in the lurch. It was that one damn word that rang in her ears. Coward!
Spurred on by her own quickening pulse and the sexy challenge in his green eyes, she walked over to his rumbling bike, rested the toe of her spectator pump on the fender and drew up her slim navy skirt. Staring him straight in the eyes, she unhooked the lacy black garters hidden beneath her eminently sensible outfit.
It wasn’t until she’d released the silky black nylon and was drawing it seductively down her thigh that it began to dawn on her what she was doing. Good Lord! A spur-of-the-moment striptease for a biker in a back alley? Her hands were trembling and she was damp all over. What in the world was in that drink?
Too proud to back down, she kicked off her shoe, whisked the damn nylon off, and tossed it at him.
Geoff caught it, laughing, and brought the sheer black silk to his face as if to inhale her female scent.
Randy’s heart was pumping furiously as she stepped back from the bike. She felt as if she were coming out of some kind of hypnotic trance. Her behavior was wildly at odds with the conservative, professional image she’d worked so hard to achieve. “What have you done?” she asked him. “Drugged me? Is that why I followed you down here? Is that why I’m undressing in an alley?”
“Maybe you’re undressing because you’ve got a fatal yen to get hot and sexy on the back of a great big bike.”
“I beg your—”
“Sweetness, if you’re begging for something, it’s not my pardon.” With that he tucked the nylon stocking in his vest pocket and revved the engine.
Trembling in places she’d forgotten she could tremble, Randy watched him roar down the alley on his bike and disappear from sight. The image of the gleaming motorcycle and his flying hair sent another frisson of awareness through her. Where had she seen him before?
She glanced down at her stockingless, shoeless foot and shook her head in disbelief. Not an hour ago she’d been interviewing him in her office. How had she managed to get herself in this condition? She could still see his vibrant green eyes and the irresistible challenge they harbored. She could see Geoff Dias as clearly as if he were sitting on the bike in front of her, taunting her with his lazy, let’s-get-it-on grin.
Starting toward the scuffed pump she’d kicked off, she felt a stirring of the competitive instincts that had always seen her through do-or-die situations in the past. By the time she had her shoe back on and her skirt smoothed down, she was more determined than ever to change his mind. It’s not over until it’s over, Mr. Dias, she vowed silently.
Two
AT TWENTY-EIGHT RANDY didn’t think of herself as sheltered, especially having grown up in the streets of Los Angeles, but there were still a few things in life she hadn’t experienced. One of them was the sacred male confines of a workout gym, complete with a boxing ring and sweaty bare-chested men wearing mouthpieces, gloves, and little else.
Not that she wanted to experience a men’s gym. She wouldn’t have been sitting in her car parked across the street from one right now if Geoff Dias hadn’t been inside. In their interview the day before, she’d learned he ran an agency called Stealth International in downtown L.A. She’d pulled up across from his small office this morning, just in time to see him stroll out the door in faded gray sweats and then stroll into the gym next door. Her curiosity piqued, she’d been watching for another glimpse of him ever since. That had been a half hour ago.
“I suppose I’ll have to go inside,” she murmured, aware that women on the streets were fair game in this part of town. It wasn’t too far from the neighborhood where she’d grown up, but things had deteriorated even further in the years since she’d been gone. She glanced down at the length of leg her wraparound dress revealed. Was a miniskirt safe under the circumstances? she wondered, letting herself out of the car.
She had the answer the moment she entered the sacred confines. She might as well have been dancing naked and clanging castanets, the way the boys whooped and whistled.
Reluctant to encourage them in any way, Randy hesitated a few feet inside the door and quickly scoped out the place, looking for someone safe to approach. She was hoping for a manager type, one of those grizzled old-timers who were supposed to hang out in seedy gyms according to late-night movies, but no such luck. The only two men in the place who weren’t ogling her were in the boxing ring, trying to commit assault and battery with their bare feet.
Kickboxing, she realized, immediately intrigued by the fact that Geoff Dias was one of the boxers. She edged away from the rogue’s gallery of leering males, hoping if she ignored their horseplay they’d realize she wasn’t interested in “snapping their jockstraps,” or any of the other equally lewd things they were suggesting.
A spot near the watercooler gave her a better view of the ringside action. Dias was good, she admitted, watching him spin and kick. Fast too. He struck with the velocity of a lightning bolt, his timing instinctive. There was a split-second hesitation, highly charged, followed by an electric arc of the body, a flash of limbs and sinew.
Randy wasn’t surprised by his athletic ability, but he seemed too big a man for the agile grace required by the sport. Kickboxing was almost dancelike in its execution, and quite beautiful, she realized. But very swift, very lethal. As Geoff dodged his opponent’s slicing jabs and returned them, his long blond hair flowed against the motion of his body, adding to the symmetry.
Though she tried to avoid fixating as she had the day before, she couldn’t avoid the fact that he looked very nearly naked. The shorts and loose tank top he wore revealed the honed physique of someone who pumped iron, and yet he wasn’t muscle-bound. Resilience shimmered in every movement. Even the muscles of his legs rippled fluidly, like water flowing over steel.
As the sparring match ended, Randy sensed a problem between the two men, though she couldn’t hear what they were saying. Geoff turned away, and a shout of surprise went up as the other man attacked him from behind, landing a brain-rattling kick to the back of his skull. Geoff spun and lashed out with his foot, connecting with his opponent’s jaw. The man staggered, shaking off the effects, but his lip was clearly bleeding. With a howl of anger he came at Geoff again.
Geoff dodged and whirled, a dizzying blur of motion as he flew through the air. He struck the man with a kick to the side of the head and sent him sprawling against the ropes. The hostilities seemed to be over until the other boxer recovered and sprang back, forcing Geoff to move in for the kill.
Shocked by the sudden violence, Randy looked away. A shudder passed through her as she registered the sounds and smells of physical aggression. Her nerves recoiled at the sickening impact of flesh on flesh. She’d always found blood sports appalling, and boxing was no exception. Yet now, having seen Geoff Dias in action, she was more convinced than ever that he was the man for her mission. He had an instinct for violence, for self-preservation. He could protect himself, and her too.
Now all she had to do was convince him to take the assignment. And get out of this gym in one piece, she reminded herself, aware that several of the men were still eyeing her as if she were the sparring partner they would most like to go a few rounds with.
“Are you looking for me?”
Randy turned to see Geoff climb through the ropes and drop to the floor. Blood oozed from a cut
on his temple and sweat sheened his body as he walked toward her. He’d already pulled off his gloves, but he was still breathing heavily from the exertion, and she could almost see the heat rising off his brawny shoulders.
Randy’s pulse raced out of control as he came to a stop just inches from her. He even smelled of the kill—of male power and animal instincts, of steamy sweat and last night’s liquor. It was a pungent combination, still humming with the threat of physical force.
“Yes, I was looking for you,” she said, refusing to give way to the trepidation that thinned her voice. “I was hoping we could talk.”
“Talk?” He looked her over, lingering on the slit of her wraparound skirt as if considering the possibilities. “I was hoping for the rest of the striptease. Or at least a matched pair of nylons.”
There it was, that lazy, sexy smile again.
He was baiting her once more, Randy realized. He might look deadly, but that flash of emerald in his eyes was nothing more than another sexy challenge. Damn if he didn’t make her want to take her clothes off, just to show him!
“I only strip for total strangers,” she informed him sweetly. “However, if it’s nylons you need, there’s a supermarket down the street. Try support hose, queen size.”
A grin flashed—quick and cocky, irresistible. “On second thought,” he said, wiping away the moisture that was trickling down his face, “what I need is a shower. You’re welcome to come watch.”
Her grimace let him know what she thought of that idea. “No thanks, sport. I’ll just wait here.”
“Not a good idea.”
“What?”
“Waiting here. I’d advise against it.”
“Why?”
He indicated the pack of gym rats who had greeted her when she came in. “The natives are restless, and a tender little morsel like you would provide them with countless hours of entertainment pleasure. I’ve got a thought—”
“Oh, I’m sure you do, and good luck hanging onto it.” She nodded curtly and turned toward the door. “Let me know when you’re done with your shower. I’ll be waiting in my car.”
The Stealth Commandos Trilogy Page 36