Breathless

by Nancy Warren

  Oh, but why did he have to be the sexiest guy she’d met in ages? Why did her body have to pick now to remind her how much she loved sex?

  Well, if she couldn’t say no, she could at least turn this into a game. Games had rules, finite playing periods, and weren’t to be taken seriously. Besides, she loved games. She had a feeling the dishy detective did, too. Maybe having sex while pretending not to was juvenile, but it was the best insurance she could think of to stop anyone getting serious. Besides, if he was busy inventing places other than the bedroom for sexual encounters, he’d be too busy to fall in love with her. And, she had a feeling they could both use some fun. Giving him her best you-can-do-better-than-that look, she said, “Use some imagination.”

  OH, IT COUNTS, BLAKE said to himself, watching her drive out of the garage. He relived the feeling of her body spasming around his thrusting fingers, heard her muffled yells of satisfaction. Oh, yes. That sexual interlude in the closet definitely counted.

  He wouldn’t have believed, from everything he knew about her, that she’d be so wildly and noisily responsive. He liked to see a woman enjoy herself, and if he was the one pushing her buttons, there was a little boost to his male ego that he was big enough to admit.

  He’d driven her crazy, just as she’d driven him half-mad, her body straining instinctively to mate with his. Now why would a woman who so clearly loved sex be so skittish about taking their intense mutual desire to the next logical stage? Sophie’s claim they were working together had been flimsy at best. Now she was throwing up new roadblocks to prevent him getting close to her. Why? It was a puzzle he was determined to solve, and a game he looked forward to playing.

  Use your imagination, she’d said. He had no problem following that instruction. Those teasing words suggested it wasn’t only clothes cupboards that didn’t count. If he assumed everywhere but a regular bedroom “didn’t count,” his libido could have free rein. He was already dreaming up new places not to have sex with Sophie.

  As he made his way to his own vehicle, he was restricted only by the bounds of his imagination, the law and the more hampering problem of a broken leg. Luckily, he was a fast healer. Already he was able to walk on the cast with almost no pain, but he’d keep up the pretense of the crutches. He liked appearing harmless to anyone who might be watching Phil’s replacement.

  He hoped they’d get something good from the phone taps that had been installed in the chairman’s office, just as he hoped to find Phil’s original computer. It hadn’t taken him longer than an hour to discover his was brand-new, with no hidden memories to be dredged up.

  He was neither a pervert nor a nervous Nelly, but in spite of Sophie telling him not to follow her home, he did, as he had been for days.

  He couldn’t have said what impulse had originally propelled his vehicle to take the same route, staying far enough back that Sophie wouldn’t be aware he was tailing her.

  He simply couldn’t help himself. He was a cop. His job was to keep people safe. If he was being a little overenthusiastic in his current mission, nobody need ever know about it. He liked to see Sophie safe in her apartment before heading home to his own place.

  There were a dozen shortcuts she could have taken to get home quicker, but tonight, as always, she took the most obvious, and therefore the most congested route. The poor woman was so direction-challenged she took the same familiar route to and from work every day.

  He shook his head, wondering why that struck him as so endearing.

  He followed her through jammed traffic, red lights and busy intersections with a CD of Don Giovanni keeping him company until at last they approached her apartment. Her seventh-floor window was dark. He’d wait until the lights were on and she’d had time to make sure everything was as it should be, then he’d head home.

  He watched her taillights disappear into her underground parking garage. Experience told him that in three or four minutes the lights would go on in her apartment. Without conscious thought, he checked the time: six forty-eight. He kept his eye on her dark window, his inner clock running.

  A minute passed. Maybe half of another minute. He rolled his shoulders, tight from hauling himself around on those damned crutches.

  Unfortunately, the cast wasn’t for mere show. He’d begged and badgered, but he still couldn’t shave so much as a day off the five weeks the doctors had incarcerated his leg.

  He wiggled his toes aggressively. He knew what happened to a leg that was immobilized for five weeks. The muscles shrank, that’s what happened. They’d take off the cast and a pale white noodle would emerge, slimy and shrunken, all the muscle gone.

  It wasn’t vanity that had him scowling, but the feeling that he needed all his muscles, as well as all his wits if he had a hope of doing serious damage to the Black Dragons.

  In spite of his mental whining, he was fully aware that almost two minutes had passed since Sophie’s car had entered the underground garage. A couple of minutes more and she’d be home.

  He settled back, letting the Mozart wash over him. Right about the four-minute mark her lights went on. He passed another minute or two out front, until he felt certain all was well chez Morton, then eased away from the curb.

  CAFFEINE. NEED CAFFEINE. Sophie’s system began sending unsubtle messages to her brain the next morning at the office. She imagined heavy smokers experienced something similar with nicotine fits. As soon as eleven o’clock drew near she began to get twitchy. If she went past the hour her hands would start to tremble and by half past she’d have the beginning of a headache.

  She hadn’t slept well last night, torn between horror that she was essentially acting as a spy in her own camp, and wishing Blake were there to finish what they’d started.

  Since the office coffee fluctuated between bilgewater and tar, sometimes an intriguing combination of the two, she’d taken to running across the street to a family-run café.

  She only had the one addiction, so she liked to make the most of it. Every day, just before eleven, she grabbed her refillable stainless-steel mug with the bank’s logo on it and made the short trek across the street.

  Traffic was moderately busy midmorning, but not busy enough to tempt her to walk a half block to the lighted intersection and crosswalk. With a quick glance both ways, she jaywalked. Well, jayjogged to be absolutely specific.

  “Hi, Sid,” she said to the coffee jockey with the bright green spiked hair. She’d long ago stopped asking for the usual. She just handed him her mug and watched him fill it with dark, rich French roast. Her nostrils quivered with pleasure at the scents of coffee, cinnamon and freshly baked carrot cake in the small café.

  Sid handed back the warm mug and she took a long, life-restoring drink, just this side of scalding with enough caffeine to jump-start a corpse. “Ah,” she said. “Perfect. See you tomorrow.”

  Back outside, she waited impatiently for a grumbling garbage truck to lumber past, then, with another quick glance right and left, stepped off the curb.

  It was a beautiful autumn day with sun sparkling off the windows of downtown high-rises, heavenly after a week of nonstop rain.

  Even as she trod briskly back across the street she sipped again, enjoying the dark smoky taste of the coffee.

  What alerted her to danger she couldn’t have said. One second she was swallowing coffee, enjoying the sun on her face despite a chilly breeze, and thinking ahead to the quarterly report she’d work on when she got back to her desk, and the next second she felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck.

  Everything seemed to happen in slow motion and she felt as though she were watching herself from outside her body. She swung her head to the right, coffee mug still pressed to her lips, and saw a car speed toward her. It hadn’t been there when she stepped off the curb, but like some vengeful monster it roared toward her now, black and deadly.

  Her feet felt cemented into the roadway as the thing flew at her. She cringed, waiting for the honk, the squeal of brakes, for it to swerve into an empty lan
e, but it did none of those things; instead, it seemed as though the sedan picked up speed, almost as if it was trying to run her down.

  As her panicked mind took in that fact, her feet finally accepted the frantic messages from her brain.

  Move, move, move.

  She took one forward running step, heard a scream in the distance, and, instinctively knowing she had only one chance, launched herself toward the safety of the sidewalk as though she were diving toward the deeper water in the middle of a swimming pool.

  For a timeless spell she was airborne, flying, waiting, with a sickening dread, for the impact of the car hitting her. Then, tucking her head and putting her hands out in front of her, she hit the dirty gray sidewalk.

  The diving fall onto concrete had a surreal familiarity to it, only this time there was no Detective Barker to break her fall.

  Even as the pain shot through her hands, wrists, knees and hip she felt the whoosh of air and the heat of the car, smelled dust and grease and exhaust and heard the terrible screech of tires as it roared away.

  Stunned, she glanced behind her, unable to believe the driver hadn’t stopped. If anything, the car was going faster now. It turned, fishtailed round the corner and was gone.

  “Jerk!” a woman’s voice yelled. “Sophie, are you okay?” The anxious words seemed to come from far away and she had to force herself not to roll into a fetal ball and start wailing.

  “Edna. Hi.” She greeted the retail investment advisor shakily.

  Was she all right? So much of her body ached that the only thing she could be certain of was that she wasn’t dead. Dead couldn’t hurt this much.

  Something warm and wet pooled round her hip and thigh. Blood? Had she severed an artery? Was she bleeding to death and in too much shock to feel pain? But, when she stared down, the pool of liquid was dark brown and as runny as water. It wasn’t until she saw her silver coffee mug lying on its side with the black plastic lid beside it and breathed in the pungent odor of French roast that she realized she was sitting in a puddle of coffee, not blood.

  Edna was squatting by her side, patting her shoulder as though frightened to do more damage. “I can’t believe that jerk didn’t stop. Should I call 9-1-1?”

  A small crowd was gathering and, as her initial pain faded, she felt foolish and embarrassed sprawled on the sidewalk like yesterday’s trampled newspaper.

  “No. I’m all right. Can you just help me up?”

  “We should call the police. That driver was crazy!” With Edna’s help, she struggled to her feet. One of the curious spectators handed her her coffee mug and she murmured her thanks.

  Slowly they made their way into the bank building with Sophie gritting her teeth to keep them from chattering. “I thought you were going to be killed for sure,” Edna exclaimed, which did not help calm Sophie’s nerves. The minute they entered the building, Edna made a huge fanfare, telling the story to everyone she met on the way to the elevator.

  Sophie did her best to shush the woman, but most of her energy was focused on holding it together. Her gray dress pants clung to her with a sticky wetness and once the doors closed on them, the elevator smelled like the inside of a dirty coffee cup.

  While Edna rattled on, Sophie mentally calmed herself. She was fine. It was her own fault for jaywalking across a main street when sunshine blinded drivers. She’d have to get into the habit of using the lighted crosswalk.

  “Are you all right?” Gwen rose from her desk, eyes widened, as Sophie appeared and Edna was only too happy to explain once more, in a louder-than-necessary voice, how she’d come to look this way. She ended the recital with, “Sophie was almost killed!”

  In minutes, a small crowd had assembled in her office. Everyone from Mr. Forsyth to the internal mail guy filled the room exclaiming and fussing over her. She wanted to cry with the shaken-up pain of shock, instead she tried to calm the impromptu gathering.

  Edna recounted the story once more, with all the relish of someone who lives a quiet life. “The car swerved toward her, I swear it. I lost five years off my life. How Sophie wasn’t killed, I’ll never know.”

  “It was just the sun in the driver’s eyes,” Sophie insisted with a forced smile. “Thanks for helping.” She shot a glance of appeal to Ellsworth, who, pale and worried, was patting her shoulder as though to ensure himself she was still in one piece. Once she had his attention, she flicked a glance at Edna and widened her eyes. Get her out of here!

  He nodded slightly, acknowledging her message and seemed to pull himself together. “Edna,” he said jovially, “thanks for bringing Sophie back to her office. I know you’ve got work to do, we’ll take care of her from here.”

  “Well, if you ask me, the police should be called.”

  “Did you get a license number?” he asked the older woman sharply.

  “Gosh, it was going so fast…no.”

  “Would you recognize the driver again?”

  “Well, certainly. He was wearing a woolen hat, pulled low, big sunglasses and…” She glanced at the faces all watching her, and dropped her chin. “No,” she said. “I guess I wouldn’t.”

  It seemed to take the wind out of her sails and she allowed Ellsworth to escort her to the elevator. Sophie could hear her excited voice right up until the elevator arrived.

  “I’ll lay you odds the entire building knows within half an hour,” Gwen said.

  Ellsworth returned alone.

  “Thanks,” Sophie said, sending him a tired smile.

  He didn’t return it. “She’s right, you know. We should call the police.”

  “Ellsworth, you know how Edna dramatizes things. The sun was in the driver’s eyes. He couldn’t see me, that’s all.”

  “Well, you should at least go home.”

  “I’ll drive her home,” a most unwelcome voice said from the doorway. Where had Blake come from? If there was one person she’d as soon not have heard about her escapade, it was him. His voice was as calm and decisive as though he owned her, which had everyone turning to stare.

  She almost groaned aloud. A frown pulled his brows together and, with his hands shoved in his pockets and his body filling the doorway, he looked like—actually, he looked like what he was. A cop. Not an assistant account manager in Personal, Private Banking.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked before she could stop herself. Then, before he gave them both away, she let her eyes scan the half-dozen executive floor staff crowded in her office. “More questions about your pension?”

  He shrugged, seemed to pull himself in, like an actor changing roles, and then gave a damned good impression of a bewildered new recruit. “I heard you got hurt. Now I’m here, I might as well drive you home.”

  She started to glare at him then realized she couldn’t do it without causing an even worse fuss than the one already swirling around her.

  “That’s not necessary,” Ellsworth said, sounding mildly affronted. “I can drive Sophie home.”

  Blake shrugged. “I’ve got the time.” His voice was mild, but the glance he shot Sophie, which only she could see, was insistent. If she didn’t ride home with him, she’d only have to deal with him later.

  Suddenly she was fed up with them all. “I don’t need anyone to drive me home. I’ve got work to do. I’m staying.”

  Ellsworth looked patronizing, Barker barely contained.

  Her knees throbbed, her ankle was grazed and the wet coffee-scented wool of her slacks was cool and sticking uncomfortably to her hip and thigh. “Oh, all right.” She glanced at Barker. “I’ll take an early lunch. I need to change my clothes. But I’ll be back this afternoon.” She glared around in case anyone was inclined to argue with her.

  No one was.

  She strode out of her office as though her entire body didn’t ache, and pretended not to notice all the worried faces behind her gesturing to Barker to keep her at home for the afternoon.

  She considered swinging round for the satisfaction of catching them at it, but in truth she f
elt shaky and a little frightened from her near miss with the front end of a speeding car.

  Maybe spending the rest of the day at home wasn’t a bad idea.

  Why she chose Barker over Ellsworth as an escort she couldn’t have said. Shock, probably. Also, she knew he’d browbeat her sooner or later, tell her it was all her fault, probably issue her a ticket for jaywalking. She might as well get it over with.

  They were silent on the way to his car. Edna had been much more solicitous, she thought sourly as she limped on her own to Barker’s car and slid into the passenger side.

  Blake tossed his crutches in the back and eased himself behind the wheel.

  He pulled out of the garage and into traffic and she couldn’t help but notice how often he glanced into the rearview and side mirrors as though checking to see if they were followed. Must be some cop habit he couldn’t turn off.

  He didn’t say a word.

  Not a single word.

  Not as they drove to her apartment, not when he ignored her flustered thanks and repeated assertions that she could manage from here. He didn’t bother with the crutches as he escorted her right into her building. She tried once more to say goodbye outside her door and he shook his head.

  He merely raised a brow and waited until, with a huffy, “Fine!” she let him in.

  The door no sooner closed than he rounded on her. “Did you see the driver?”

  She laughed. It was a nervous, frustrated sound. “You sound as hysterical as Edna. I crossed without looking properly. The sun was in the driver’s eyes. He probably didn’t see me.”