HEART OF MIDNIGHT

by Fiona Brand

  "Thanks a bundle." Sam got out from between stiff lips. "Don't forget to put cream in my half. I really hate straight coffee."

  Damn him, she thought a little desperately. Why hadn't he gotten fat? Or ugly? A beer belly would have taken his edge off nicely. But nothing so convenient had happened. Gray was six foot four inches of raw male power that looked more like Delta Force than Office Desk.

  He came to a halt in front of her, his shoulders successfully blocking half the room. His gaze swept her, as alarming as the gleam of light caressing a blade. "Nice suit."

  "It's my executive stress outfit," she said shortly. "When I put it on, all the black makes me feel really ruthless."

  "What did you have for breakfast?" he murmured. "Nails?"

  Sam lifted her brows, disdaining to reply.

  He didn't wait for one. "I need to talk to you," he demanded bluntly. "In private."

  Sam's heart jackhammered in her chest. She didn't have any problem identifying the cause; it was fear, pure and simple. Only yesterday she had been sure she was over Gray, that she had successfully cut him from her life, and now she knew that wasn't so. All he had to do was walk into a room and she instantly became more vulnerable than she ever wanted to be. Deliberately, Sam transferred her attention back to her briefcase, unloaded the last file and clicked the case closed. She frowned when she discovered her fingers were trembling. "The meeting's about to start."

  "Jack's running the meeting."

  Her eyes widened. Jack McKenna and his team were the only ones who were supposed to come in the first place. "So why are you here?"

  "The usual reason. Looking after the interests of Lombards."

  "No. Why are you here? As you so aptly pointed out, Jack McKenna is running the meeting. He does the hotel takeovers and makeovers."

  Gray's gaze moved around the room. She realised he was constantly doing that, and unlike McKenna, he wasn't looking at the cracks in the plaster, he was studying people. "Maybe I came to see you."

  Sam didn't bother to hide her incredulity. "After seven years? I don't think so."

  "I do have a reason, but I'm not going to discuss it here."

  Sam suppressed a shiver at the bleakness of his tone and wondered again just what had happened to change Gray so radically. Then she registered what he had actually said. He had a special reason for coming, and it could only be to do with the hotel. Suddenly the possibility that the Royal would be completely demolished and they would all be out on the street without jobs was a chilling reality. "If you're here to give us bad news, then I'd appreciate knowing as soon as possible. My staff, and some of the long-term residents, are … naturally concerned."

  "But you're not."

  She stiffened. "I don't have as much to lose."

  He shoved his hands into his pockets, parting the lapels of his jacket. The gesture was restless, oddly uncertain, the small silence that followed more eloquent than words, and suddenly Sam knew. He was going to fire her.

  The blow was unexpectedly stunning. She thought she had been prepared for dismissal. When she'd taken the job she had planned for it.

  Now the thought of leaving filled her with dismay. She didn't want another job, even though she knew she could get one. At the Royal she had found friendship and loyalty, a fragile sense of family when she'd been more alone, more adrift, than she had ever been in her life.

  Her chin came up. If she was going to be fired, so be it. She wouldn't whine, but she wasn't about to take it lying down, either. "I want this job, but I do have other prospects. If you're going to fire me, then just say so."

  "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" There was a hint of a snap in that rough voice. "Why, Sam? When you went to the trouble of getting this job?"

  For a moment Sam couldn't breathe. Gray had shifted uncomfortably close to a truth she had only just realised. Taking this job had been more than a simple purging of the past. She had thrown down a gauntlet. She had wanted Gray to acknowledge her existence, if nothing else. If he fired her, so much the better; then all links really would be severed.

  "I'm supposed to be at this meeting," she said, ignoring his question. "If you're going to fire me you can do it here and now. I don't need to be alone with you to hear bad news."

  "The hell with the meeting," he said impatiently, the low register of his voice carrying.

  Conversation in the room faltered, then stopped. If this was Gray's version of low-key and private, Sam decided, he was about as subtle as a hand grenade. The only compensation was that McKenna now had something else to occupy his mind besides the rotting plaster.

  Sam stepped pointedly away from Gray. She was generally quiet and well-behaved, which fooled quite a lot of people, but beneath the manners instilled in her by years of private boarding schools and a guardian who would have been more at home in the last century than this one, she could be as stubborn as rock when she chose. She chose now. "I don't take orders well, and I don't want to be close to you."

  "But then, we don't always get what we want, do we?" Sam controlled her almost panicked need to escape, but Gray didn't attempt to touch her; he simply waited. Along with everyone else in the room.

  Sam drew an impeded breath and stalked to the door. Gray strolled along beside her as if nothing untoward had happened.

  A kitchen hand pushing a tea trolley cast them a curious glance as Gray opened her office door and stood aside for her to enter. Sam didn't see that she had any choice in the matter, even if his manners were a little late in showing up.

  "I'm not usually such a Neanderthal," he murmured as she swept past.

  Sam dropped her briefcase beside her desk. "Only when you want your way. I bet you gave your mother a hard time."

  "I gave her holy hell, but then, so did Blade and Jake—"

  The abrupt cutting off of his sentence drew her attention. His tone had been close to warm, almost teasing; now his expression was back to grim.

  He closed the door and crossed to the window to stare out at the odd, brassy light of another summer storm rolling in from the coast. The sun was still shining, but it had already started to rain.

  "Damn, it's hot in here." He took off his jacket, tossed it over the back of a chair, then unfastened the top buttons of his shirt, as if he disliked the constriction of a collar. "So, are you going to tell me why you took this job?"

  "I needed to work. I saw the position advertised and applied."

  "There were other positions available. Better ones."

  She tore her gaze from his broad back. In the heavy humidity, the thin weave of his shirt was already clinging to his shoulders, the deep indentation of his spine. "I wanted this one."

  "Why?"

  "What difference could it possibly make to you?" He turned to face her, and her gaze was instantly drawn to the open V of his shirt and the crisp dark hair that grew there.

  His expression was brooding. "You've never married."

  She stiffened at the abrupt change of topic. "I thought we were talking about my employment with Lombards."

  "When you walked out on me," he said softly, "I came after you."

  Sam's head jerked up. If he had wanted to shock her, then he had just achieved his purpose.

  "I found where you were living. I watched you walking in the park with your grandfather."

  Sam's mind shifted, telescoped. She remembered the day. It was not long after she had come out of hospital after losing the baby. Gramps had dragged her out for a walk, insisting she needed fresh air. They had spent a quiet hour in the park, soaking in the sunshine, smelling the damp earth and the flowers, listening to the birds. She remembered seeing the back of a man's head, experiencing another one of those stark, transfixed moments of almost-recognition, followed by her decision in that moment to stop looking, to stop expecting Gray to simply walk back into her life. "I think I saw you," she said blankly. "Why didn't you…?" She stopped, shaken by what she'd been about to ask.

  His eyes narrowed, and he took a step toward her. "You want
ed me to come after you."

  The flat certainty in his voice burned through the hazy recollection like hot sun striking through mist. In that moment she couldn't mask her shock that she had hidden something so basic, so intrinsic to her character, from herself. When she had left Gray, she had run – like every woman since Eve – in the hope that he would give chase. She had been confident that he would come after her, if only to see how she was. The fact that he hadn't had altered her perception of him completely. Now she had to readjust. He had checked on her, even if he had chosen not to approach her.

  "I couldn't come after you straight away." He touched the scar at his throat. "I was in hospital for this and a couple of other … complications. When I came around after surgery, they had me strapped down." His mouth twisted. "It was hardly necessary. I was as weak as a baby. Even so, if I could have managed it, I would have walked out of hospital then and hunted until I found you. How's that for primitive?"

  Sam wondered briefly what the other "complications" had been. "Obviously not too primitive for you to overcome. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it has been seven years."

  The instant the words were out of her mouth, she knew she should have ignored the temptation to goad him.

  Gray closed the distance between them so fast she barely had time to catch her breath. His hands curled around her upper arms, his face was so close to hers that her stomach tightened in anticipation of that sinful mouth gliding against hers.

  The kiss didn't happen. She could feel his breath, warm and damp on her lips, almost taste the coffee he'd had for breakfast and the toothpaste he'd used afterward. Her hands were spread against the unyielding warmth of his rib cage, and she could feel the slam of his heart against her palm. The desk was a solid barrier behind her, Gray a solid wall of muscle in front of her, his thighs easily corralling hers.

  Sam knew that if ever there was a time to cut and run, this was it. Her conviction that Gray's interest in her was fleeting and based only on physical desire had just crashed and burned. There was nothing fleeting about the sombre intensity of his gaze. His eyes were hot and dark, pulling her in so deep that she felt as if she had been summarily jerked off balance and, if she wasn't careful, would fall right into him.

  Abruptly he lifted his head, but instead of backing off entirely, he caught her hands in his and raised her fingers to his lips. The hot stroke of his mouth was subtly shocking. The force of his sensuality boiled up, engulfing her like a wave of heat spilling from a furnace.

  "I'm late, and I apologise," he muttered in a low, dark purr. "But I'm here now. And you're right, I didn't come on behalf of Lombards. And I'm sure as hell not here for this old wreck of a hotel."

  His gaze shifted to her mouth, and her lips tingled and burned as if he had kissed her long and hard. "I came for you, Sam. I want you back."

  Chapter 6

  Lightning flashed. Sam flinched, both at Gray's words and the hot, bright flare of light. Thunder reverberated drowning out the sudden heavy downpour of rain. On cue, the hotel's lights flickered, then dimmed, before returning to normal.

  The door was flung open. Milly strode in. "Now that weasely McKenna is gonna can us for sure! Why, oh why did we have to have a storm now?" She stopped, her eyes enormous in her thin face.

  Sam blushed as she became instantly aware of how the situation must look. She was backed up against the edge of her desk, and Gray was all but on top of her. He still had hold of her hands, and even though he had shifted his attention to Milly, the taut, heady sensuality that had pinned her in place still hung in the air, as tangible as the frustration that burned briefly in his gaze.

  Sam tugged to free her hands. Gray let her go immediately, making it look like she'd wanted to hold hands with him. He backed off a step, but his expression had "later" stamped all over it.

  She slipped sideways along the desk, breathing a sigh of relief when she was at what she judged a safe distance.

  Milly's gaze was fixed on Gray's chest. There were crease marks on his shirt where Sam had clutched at it, and an extra button had come unfastened, revealing some major male real estate and an intriguing expanse of dark hair. He looked rumpled and dangerous and sexy, like he had just had a woman crawling all over him.

  Sam stared fixedly at an invisible point over Gray's right shoulder. "Are you going to put your jacket on?"

  "Yes, ma'am," he drawled, managing to make it sound as if he'd taken his jacket off at her order in the first place.

  Sam glared at him. His lashes drooped, and, as unexpectedly as the sun bursting from behind a big, black storm cloud, he smiled back, a heavy-lidded, sleepy smile that took her breath and made her chest tighten.

  Sam decided that one had "later" written all over it, as well. Gray had said that she was the reason he was here, that he wanted her back. Her mind reeled from the concept, rejecting it. She was almost certain she hadn't heard right. Somewhere along the way she had missed a vital piece of conversation that would put that statement in a more acceptable context.

  None of this was in the internal script she had prepared.

  He wasn't supposed to want her.

  And, Lord help her, she wasn't supposed to want him.

  Milly cleared her throat. "The power's out in the kitchen, and the chef's threatening to put a meat cleaver through the fuse-box. Sadie Carson says the roof is leaking all over her dragon plants."

  "Sadie lives on the second floor."

  Milly cleared her throat again, her eyes wide and meaningful, as if she didn't want to say the real problem out loud.

  Gray had no such difficulty. "If Sadie's getting wet on the second floor, then that means the two floors above will be getting it, too."

  "Unless it's a burst pipe," Sam interjected, struggling to concentrate on the hotel instead of her own internal dilemma, and feeling faintly ill at Milly's bombshell. A burst pipe was trouble, but not as major as the roof.

  Gray shrugged into his jacket. He shot Milly a sharp look. "Get an electrician in to look over the wiring. It's probably just a blown fuse, but in a building this age, we can't take the risk that that's all it is. Sam and I will check out the roof."

  Sam lifted her brows at the arrogant way he had assumed control of a situation she was well equipped to handle. Gray returned a bland stare that managed to convey the sheer, immovable granite backing his will.

  Not that he had to do any rewinding, Sam decided grimly. She and Milly would both do as they were told. After all, Gray owned this building and pretty much everyone in it. "I'll get the keys."

  She collected her set of keys for the top floor, which was presently unoccupied because of maintenance problems. Thunder continued to reverberate as they strode toward the lift. The rain was a steady rumble of noise.

  Gray didn't try to take her arm or touch her in any way, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she was being hurried along, herded in a direction she didn't want to go, and the cowboy with the cattle prod was prowling right alongside her.

  Gray opened the elevator doors. "After you."

  Sam entered, supremely conscious of Gray's sheer size when he joined her in the elegant but small confines of the elevator. The door grumbled closed. He punched in the fourth floor. The lift began its upward motion with an arthritic jolt.

  Gray made no comment, but Sam winced. She could feel his cool, analytical judgement, the disapproval pouring off him in waves. "It may be old, but it's reliable."

  Sam watched number two light up and mentally calculated how many more seconds there were left until she could escape the lift and the enforced proximity with Gray.

  He regarded her levelly, but Sam couldn't decide what he was thinking. That poker face he pulled could hide anything from utter distaste to indifference. The lights flickered, the motion of the lift stuttered, then stopped altogether, as they were plunged into darkness.

  Sam closed her eyes, then opened them wide, in an effort to ward off a sharp jab of panic. The panic lasted for all of a second before she managed to brin
g herself under control. She'd been afraid of the dark when she was a child. Although she had largely overcome that fear, every now and then it crept up on her and took her by surprise. Logically she knew that the fear had grown out of her immature concept of death she'd had as a child, and her fear that her parents were locked in perpetual darkness.

  Her teeth sank into her bottom lip. The similarity of this small space to a coffin was overwhelming.

  "Are you okay?" The sound of Gray's voice was a welcome distraction. "The thunderstorm must have knocked the power out."

  Sam sucked in a measured breath, a breath that didn't nearly fill her lungs.

  "Sam?" he prompted in a low murmur.

  The warm velvet quality of his voice seemed to reach out and surround her, as tangible as a touch in the disorienting blackness, making her want to shuffle closer, to burrow her head against his chest and be surrounded by his arms as well as his voice. The darkness, when she closed her eyes, would then be comforting.

  "I'm okay." Her pulse was still racing, her fingers locked into tight fists, the ring of keys biting into her palm, but the rumble of Gray's voice had somehow diffused her momentary fear.

  A dim glow lit the interior of the lift. A torch, Sam thought in disbelief. Gray had a battery-operated torch.

  She sank against the support of the wall. The relief of that small beam of light was enormous. "You've got a torch," she said, shakily stating the obvious.

  "I'm a regular Boy Scout," he murmured. "Here. I need you to hold it for me."

  Sam's fingers closed gratefully around the penlight, and instantly her fear of the dark seemed ridiculous. She marvelled at the sudden sense of control, when seconds before her heart had been pounding. She decided then and there that she was going to buy one of these little babies and keep it in her handbag. You just never knew when you were going to be caught in a black-out.

  Gray motioned her to step closer and direct the beam on the control panel. He studied the panel, then opened it and checked inside. With a grunt of satisfaction, he straightened, then simply opened the first set of doors, reached up and depressed a lever, then opened the outer set of doors.