by Wendy Haley
Headlights bloomed as a car turned the corner in front of her. The duty light on the roof tagged it as a taxi. Rae crossed the street with a casualness born of years of process serving.
A man got out of the cab. A thrill of anticipation ran up Rae’s spine. She knew that body language, the set of the narrow shoulders, the way the man carried his head.
Peter Smithfield. Even in the dark, he looked smarmy.
She slid into the entryway of a nearby souvenir shop and watched as Smithfield retrieved a gym-type bag from the back seat of the taxi and paid the driver.
“Gotcha,” she muttered.
She touched the fanny pack, feeling the crinkle of the papers inside. Just like the Boy Scouts, Boudreau Professional Process Service was always prepared.
Peter Smithfield walked swiftly inside. The condo building was one of those with a minuscule lobby, unlocked at night because the elevator and the stairs had to be accessed with a key. Once Smithfield got on that elevator, he’d be a much tougher target.
Rae sprinted down the street. Pushing the lobby door open, she saw the elevator doors just closing.
“Damn,” she muttered. “Damn, damn, damn.”
Then she shrugged. It paid to be philosophical about such things—especially when there was another way. She pulled her locksmith’s tools out of the fanny pack and started work ing on the stairway door. First, she slipped the slender pick into the keyhole, then a moment later followed with the tension wrench.
She bit her lip, concentrating on the delicate job of manipulating the cylinder. It took finesse to pick a lock.
Keeping the lightest possible tension on the wrench, she slid the pick in and out an almost infinitesimal distance as she fiddled with the pins inside the cylinder. A little more...just... Click.
“Yes,” she whispered.
A shadow fell across the lock as someone stepped between her and the light. She whirled. And found herself staring into a pair of furious ice blue eyes.
“Hello, Rae,” Gabriel said.
There was no trace of the man who’d made love to her so tenderly such a short time ago. This was all cop, and an annoyed cop, to boot. His gaze flicked to the lock. Her picks still stuck out of the key opening, mute betrayal of her actions.
“Hi,” she said.
“When were you going to mention that Peter Smithfield was staying here?” he asked.
“Never,” she said.
Gabriel stared at her for a moment, assessing her defiance. “Tell me something, Rae. Do you have the summons with you?”
“Don’t leave home without it—that’s my motto.”
Gabriel’s expression didn’t budge. No matter how deeply Rae searched, she could find no softness in him, no chink in that smooth, hard cop’s face.
A strange empty feeling settled in her chest, unbidden and most unwelcome. For one blinding moment, she wished she were still up in that hotel room with his arms around her and none of this had ever happened.
Then she remembered who she was and what she had to do. Her chin came up automatically. “I’m just doing my job, MacLaren,” she said. “You ought to know that score.”
“Oh, I know it, all right,” he growled, reaching past her to pluck the picks from the lock. Eyeing her speculatively, he slipped them into his pocket.
“Hey!” she protested. “Those are mine.”
“I’m impounding them.”
“Oh, yeah? When can I have them back?”
He smiled without any humor at all. “When they’ve finished going through channels. You know how channels are.
“I’ve got to admit, you really are one dedicated woman,” he continued. “No rain or snow or dark of night is going to keep you from doing your job. And especially not—”
“It wasn’t like that,” she said.
“I suppose you just had to go for a walk, hmm?”
“Well, yeah.”
Gabriel was furious. Making love to her had touched his soul in a way he’d never experienced before. He’d wanted it to be as special for her. Instead, it had just been another of her games. She’d intended to distract him, and she’d done it damned well.
She’d used him.
It shouldn’t matter. He’d come into this ready to use her. In vice, he’d been used, he’d been conned, he’d been betrayed every way there was. But Rae had left his bed to pursue Smithfield, and that didn’t sit well at all.
With a growl of frustration, he took out his cellular phone and flipped it open. “MacLaren here,” he said to the detective who answered. “I need to talk to Eddy.”
“What are you doing?” Rae asked.
“As you’ve said to me on more than one occasion, mind your own beeswax.” Hearing his partner’s voice, he switched conversations. “Eddy, I’ve got our friend Smithfield down here at the Garden Towers Condominiums.”
His gaze drifted to Rae, and memories began to slide through his head. Soft memories. Sensual memories. Memories he had no business having. He gave himself a mental shake and returned to Eddy. “The condos are right across from the Tropical Breeze Hotel. Right. I need you to come pick him up. No, can’t bring him in myself. Complications.”
Damn, but Rae was beautiful, he thought. Her mouth was still swollen from his kisses, and her hair gleamed like rich chestnut silk beneath the light. She had been the most incredible lover, the wildest, most responsive woman he’d ever known. And even at her wildest, she’d engendered such tenderness in him that his heart felt as though it might not be big enough to contain it all.
Tenderness, however, had been misplaced. He’d been a fool many times in his life, but never like this.
“Got a place to put him?” he said to his partner. “Good. See you in fifteen minutes.” He closed the phone.
Rae saw her chance slipping away. “You’re putting him in protective custody,” she said,
“Yup.”
“Come on. Just let me serve papers on the guy, and then I’ll be out of your hair forever.”
Everything inside him rose up in protest at the thought of losing her forever. He didn’t like it. If he could have cut this weakness out of his heart with a knife, he would have done so. And despite that, he wanted to take her back to that hotel room and make love to her all over again. Instead, he had no choice but to hold tightly to his anger as a shield against his feelings for her.
“Honey-child,” he drawled, “until I have orders otherwise, you’re not going to get near Peter Smithfield for five seconds, let alone five minutes.”
“Damn it, MacLaren—”
“A couple of hours ago, I was Gabriel,” he said.
Rae didn’t want to remember the exquisite lovemaking. She didn’t want to remember how he’d made her feel things. do things, she’d never imagined before. “That’s not an issue here,” she said. “Peter Smithfield is.”
“You’re really something, you know that?” he said, laughing in spite of himself. “Absolutely one-track. Just sit tight until my partner gets here, and then I’ll decide what to do with you.”
Rae crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him resentfully. The tense silence seemed to go on forever. Finally, two men came into the building. One was tall and skinny, with a hangdog face and shark’s eyes. The other was short, wiry and Latin, with eyes the color and hardness of obsidian.
“Hey,” the tall one said.
“What’s shakin’, MacLaren?” the Latin one said, his gaze traveling over Rae like a pair of overbold hands. “Peter Smithfield looks a hell of a lot better in person than in his mug shots.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Gabriel said, scowling because he didn’t like the way DeZuniga was ogling Rae. “Rae, meet my partner, Eddy Drake, and this is Saul DeZuniga. Gentlemen, Rae Boudreau.”
Eddy nodded. DeZuniga gave Rae another once-over, then shifted his black gaze to Gabriel. “You are in trouble, man.”
Gabriel grunted ill-naturedly. “Peter Smithfield is upstairs. Apartment... Which apartment, Rae darling?”
“T
hree-C.” she said without hesitating.
Eddy bobbed his head and jerked his thumb at DeZuniga. Both men loped upstairs.
Rae leaned one shoulder against the wall and watched Gabriel. His eyes were impenetrable. Search as she might, she couldn’t find the slightest clue as to what he might be thinking.
The two detectives came back down.
“He’s not in 3C,” Eddy said, pinning Rae with a hard stare.
“Oh,” Rae said. “Two-C?”
Both men looked at MacLaren. After a moment, DeZuniga shook his head. “You are really in trouble,” he said.
They went back upstairs. Gabriel moved so that he was out of sight of the stairway door, yet still blocking the path to the outer door. She wasn’t sure if he were making sure Smithfield didn’t run—or she didn’t.
Actually, he had a right to be cautious, for her insides were jumping like a cat in a camp fire. She’d clung to her defiance because that was the only way she knew how to do things, but in her heart, where it really counted, a cold dread had begun to grow.
She didn’t like this reality. She preferred the world she and Gabriel had created up in that hotel room, a place of tenderness and caring, of pleasure shared. And that scared her. She’d managed to keep her head above the sea of emotion that plagued so many people. Now she’d fallen off the lifeboat, and she found she’d forgotten how to swim.
She found herself watching Gabriel He looked like a tiger standing there, she thought, all lean, powerful muscle and masculinity. When he hooked his thumbs in his belt, making the muscles writhe on his forearms, her mouth turned dry. When he shifted to one side, pulling his shirt tightly against the ridged hardness of his abdomen, her pulse began to race.
Oh, boy, she had it bad.
Finally, Eddy and DeZuniga returned. Each had a grip on one of Peter Smithfield’s arms. Rae came up on her toes, tempted almost beyond reason to serve Smithfield then and there. But she glanced at Gabriel, and the look on his face convinced her to stay where she was. She wasn’t afraid. Deep in her soul, she knew Gabriel wouldn’t actually hurt her. But a cop had a lot of ways of punishing someone without flailing a rubber hose, and she was sure Gabriel knew most of them.
There was also the fact that he’d caught her breaking and entering. He hadn’t mentioned it, exactly, but she was sure it had occurred to him that he could arrest her right here and now. She shot him a glance, and found him looking at her with a self-satisfied expression on his face. He knew exactly what she was thinking, the rat. Rae had to struggle against the urge to challenge him, to see if he’d really do such a thing to her.
Of course he would. He was a cop.
Better to wait and hope for another chance at Peter Smithfield. But oh, it was hard! She wasn’t used to backing off. Her chest heaved with frustration as Drake and DeZuniga led the gambler toward the street door.
“He was in 4B,” DeZuniga growled as he passed Gabriel. “We had to knock on every damned door in the place.”
They hauled Smithfield out. Rae crossed her arms over her chest and waited to see what her lover would do next. He smiled at her. It wasn’t a very nice smile.
“It’s just you and me now, Rae,” he said.
That surprised her. “What do you mean?”
“Peter Smithfield is no longer an issue between us, so it’s time to stop playing games.”
“No longer an issue?” she repeated incredulously. “I’ve got his wife and kids living with me because he doesn’t give a tinker’s damn whether they have a roof over their heads or not, or whether they’ve got enough to eat—”
She broke off as he strode toward her. For a moment, she considered bolting up the stairs, but after one glance into his eyes, she realized he’d only come after her. She had the feeling that he’d come after her if she ran to the ends of the earth.
A daunting thought. And a stirring one.
He loomed over her, all hard-honed muscle and icy blue eyes. As always, his presence sent shock waves of reaction through her body. She felt her breathing change, her blood heat.
“Now,” he said, his voice low and intimate, “let’s make sure you don’t find a way to interfere until they’ve got Smithfield safely stashed.”
“Huh?”
Without looking away from her, he reached to flip the inside latch on the stairway door. It swung closed with a soft snick Rae felt down to her toes. If there’d been any hope of escape, it was gone now. She had the feeling, however, that escape had been closed off since the moment she’d first met this man’s gaze:
Still, no one controlled Rae Ann Boudreau. No one made her back down. With a defiant smile, she offered her wrists for the handcuffs. Instead of the cold touch of steel, however, she felt his warm, callused hand close around her wrist.
“I’m not going to arrest you,” he said. “I’m just going to keep you out of trouble for a couple of hours.”
Her nostrils flared. “What do you mean?”
“Come on, Rae,” he said.
“Come where?”
“Back to the hotel room.”
No. Uh-uh. Not there. She resisted his tug on her wrist. Before she quite realized what was happening, he tossed her over his shoulder and carried her out into the street. By the time she’d gotten her wits back, they were nearly at the hotel entrance.
“MacLaren!” she barked. “Put me down!”
He ignored her. Rae was not about to give him the satisfaction of struggling, so she hung there quietly and resentfully, plotting a variety of ways to get revenge.
The night clerk’s mouth dropped open as Gabriel bore her past the desk. Rae was glad her hair covered most of her face.
“Sir—” the clerk began.
“We’re newlyweds,” Gabriel growled.
Rae drew her breath in, ready to protest. But his long strides had already carried them to the elevator, and the moment was lost. As soon as the doors closed, he eased her to her feet.
She might have been relieved, except for the fact that he slid her down along the front of his body, and the contact strummed every nerve she possessed. Everything in her focused on him, and the feel of his big, hard body against hers.
Her balance seemed a little off. Maybe it was because all the blood had rushed from her head when he’d set her upright. And maybe it was because of the sweltering rush of desire that coursed through her. Whichever, she found herself leaning against him, her left hand spread out across his chest.
His arm came hard around her waist, a gesture rife with possessiveness. It. was not the touch of an adversary. No, indeed. This was the touch of a lover.
Startled, she tipped her head back to look at him. At that moment, the cold, impenetrable cop’s facade cracked, and she found herself looking into a seething maelstrom of emotion. It was all laid out for her, hot and hard in his eyes. Anger, betrayal, razor-edged desire and... triumph.
He’d beaten her again. And he was enjoying it. Damn him.
It wasn’t until the bell rang to announce their floor that Rae realized that she didn’t have to stand pressed up against him. She pushed against his chest.
He held her a moment longer, his hand spread out across the small of her back. She found herself pinned in his blue crystal gaze, her very soul captured like a moth in a flame. Then his mouth lifted in a cynical half smile, and he let her go.
Silently, she waited as he unlocked the door to her room and pushed it open. Rae went in ahead of him. Her gaze immediately went to the bed.
The covers were rumpled, the pillows tossed wildly against the headboard. They had made such beautiful love there, turning the impersonal hotel bed into their own personal Shangrila.
Would those sheets smell like him? she wondered. The thought crept treacherously through her, bringing a wealth of memories with it. Memories of his urgency as he’d laid her on that bed, the feel of his hands, his mouth, his body. Her heart remembered, and her flesh. She could almost feel again the exquisite sensation of being joined with him, impaled on his passion a
nd hers.
In that bed, she had trusted him implicitly. She had given herself up totally, without restraint, borne by the faith that he would keep her safe.
Girlfriend, things have sure changed. The cynical thought seemed out of place here in this room where they’d shared so much. Then she looked at Gabriel, and revised that judgment.
Trust had vanished. All that remained was the cop and the process server, and an unmade bed. Warily, she watched as Gabriel closed the door behind him and leaned against it. His eyes had once again become cold and unreadable.
“What’s the matter, Rae?” he asked. “No wisecracks, no sassy remarks forthcoming?”
“Would you laugh if there were?” she countered
“Not when the joke’s on me.”
“What joke?”
He pushed away from the door and walked toward her. Rae found herself backing up instinctively. Not from fear. From self-preservation. That little scene in the elevator had been proof enough that she couldn’t trust herself around him.
“How long do you think you can keep me here?” she asked, sidling to the left.
He sidled with her. “Long enough for Smithfield to get stashed somewhere nice and private.”
She changed directions. So did Gabriel.
“Long enough for me to get some sleep,” he continued. “It’s business as usual in just a few hour.”
“You want to sleep?” she demanded incredulously. “You want to sleep here?”
With me. The words, although unspoken, seemed to hang like fire in the room.
“Sure,” Gabriel said. “Is that a problem?”
He’d managed to back her into a corner by now.
“Back off, buster,” she snapped. “I don’t know what’s got you on your high horse, but between the two of us, I think I’ve got more cause for grievance.”
His brows rose. “Because I ended up with Smithfield?”
“Why else?” she demanded.
“Tell me something,” he said, his voice dropping to a near-whisper. “Why did you make love to me tonight?”
Once again, she saw raw emotion churning in his eyes, emotion so fierce and unbridled that most men would have hidden it away.