by Lynne Silver
“You heard the officer,” Valerie said.
“Val, I live in a loft upstairs. No walls, remember? Where will Lance sleep?” She shot her friend a quelling look to stop this plan at once, but Val was full-steam ahead.
“He can sleep on your couch, and you could move that screen over or something,” Valerie prattled on, completely unaware, or purposely ignoring, the eye beams of death Ari sent her way. Good God, tipsy, concerned best friends should be illegal. Although, now that she looked closer, Val’s wineglass remained nearly full. Yikes, had she downed nearly a whole bottle of red herself?
She could tell Val was not going to let this drop until everything was the way she wanted. She could capitulate now, then renege once Val and Jason left in their separate cars, sending Lance home in a taxi, even if it took hours to get one to her door. Georgetown on a Saturday night was not known for taxi availability.
“Ari, please do this as a favor to me,” Valerie said. “I won’t be able to sleep tonight if I’m worrying about you alone here with a crazy person out to get you.” She stepped closer to her husband, who wrapped her in his arms.
Ari tried to ignore the twinge in her chest at the sight of Jason nuzzling Val’s hair. And she definitely ignored his whisper about how they’d stay occupied if Val couldn’t sleep. If Lance stayed here, she certainly wouldn’t get any sleeping done, and thoughts of how they could keep busy flashed hot, disturbing images into her mind, such as Lance pulling off his shirt and hammering up more of her paintings. She paused at the image of sitting in his lap and feeling his lips on her scalp.
She gave a shake. What was happening to her? She was happy as Sadie, Sadie single lady, and didn’t want what Val and Jason shared. Why the sudden craving for comfort and the presence of a permanent man in her life? It must be her vandalized art gallery or the wine. Definitely the wine.
She glanced over at the ruined painting. Maybe it wouldn’t be terrible if Lance spent the night. He was a professional, after all. He was probably used to guarding women in their bedrooms. All recent presidents and most politicians were married, according to her recollection.
“Fine,” she said. “You can stay.”
“Thank you,” Lance said rather snarkily, and pushed off the floor to a standing position. He winced as though his leg pained him. She wondered how he’d injured it.
“Excellent.” Valerie clapped her hands once as if everything were settled, and also prepared to leave. “I’ll call tomorrow on my way to work.” She gave a final cheek kiss, and gathered up the trash and her husband. Then they abandoned Ari.
Chapter Three
How the hell had this happened? Stuck in the modern-day Marie Antoinette’s art gallery. Lance was pissed at Jason for getting him into this situation, even if Arianna was even sexier in person than on TV. Man, when she’d been lying on the floor, her skirt had ridden up, giving teasing glimpses of her upper thighs. He also knew he wasn’t being fair. No one had asked him to stay here. He’d been the dummy who’d volunteered.
“Well? Are you coming?” Arianna stood on the bottom step ready to turn the lights out to the gallery. She didn’t even pretend to be grateful that he was staying here to protect her.
“Fine, but can we get some things out of the way first?”
“Fine. What?” She stood like a ballerina and suddenly lifted one leg, balancing the flat of her foot against her opposite calf, and held her stilettos in one hand by the pointy heels.
Yoga? Was she doing yoga while talking to him? All sorts of dirty images of an extremely flexible Arianna flashed through his mind. She’d flirted with him, but he needed to remember that for a girl like her, flirting was like breathing. She didn’t mean anything by it, and he had to remember to stop flirting back.
“Do you know where your father is?” he asked in a rush.
Her foot came down with a bang. “You can leave now.” Her wide eyes narrowed and her posture looked as if she’d taken a sucker punch.
He took a step after her on the stairs. “I have to ask, you know. Please understand my position. I’m a goddamn Secret Service agent. It’s my job to ask. Imagine if it got out that I was protecting the daughter of a fugitive who knew where said fugitive was.”
“Imagine it,” she said in a monotone.
“So you don’t know?”
“No, I don’t have a clue. Valerie broke the news to me that my dad skipped town. I have not spoken to him since this whole mess of an investigation began. He told me he’s trying to protect me by keeping me separate,” she said, her voice lowering on each word till she whispered the last.
O-kay then. Not speaking with her dad. A point in her favor, he guessed. “Sorry, but I had to ask.”
“I know.” Weariness crept into her tone. “I’m sick of everyone assuming I’m like him, or now people will assume I’m hiding him. I’m not.”
“Sorry. Come on. Let’s go upstairs. You look exhausted.” He came from behind her and plucked the shoes from her hands. She had such tiny feet, and how did she walk in such high heels? No wonder her calves had such defined muscles. Her body language spoke of defeat and sadness, and his regret about staying changed subtly. For all her lighthearted behavior, Arianna Rose was holding a plateful of troubles. It was his civic duty to help in any way he could.
They made their way up the narrow flight of stairs to an open space with bright splashes of color on the painted white brick walls. A large bed with Moroccan-looking quilts dominated the space. A potter’s wheel stood in one corner with gray dried clay flaked all over it. “Wow, this is a pretty amazing apartment.”
“Thanks.” She gestured to the couch hidden by piles of unfolded clothes. “Make yourself at home, but you don’t need to do this, you know. I have an alarm. I’ll be fine.”
“Jason and Valerie are friends. Consider this my favor to them. Plus, it’ll be a long wait for a taxi. I don’t have a choice tonight, do I?”
“No, not unless you feel like walking back to Arlington, which I wouldn’t recommend on your bad leg.”
He shifted to turn away from her, feeling off-balance at having his physical vulnerability on display for her. He was a Secret Service agent and was tasked to protect people, and being injured made it seem as if he were the one in need of protection. “What did the police say when they came?” he asked, his law enforcement training taking over, and to distract from his current gimpy self.
“They told me to sweep up and call my insurance company.” She went to some open shelves against a wall and riffled through piles till she unearthed a faded blue towel and some blankets, which she tossed at him.
He caught the pile of linens. “That’s it?” Annoyance at the local police fired him up.
“Oh, wait. They also said to suck it up since it was probably an angry victim of my father’s venting some steam.”
“They didn’t take the threat on the painting seriously?”
“Not really. Why? What would you expect them to do?”
It was a true lapse in police work and unprofessional behavior to let public opinion of Arianna’s father sway their investigation into a crime. “They should park a cruiser outside your door. Even if it’s empty, it could deter a lot of threats. Or they—”
She cut him off with a sexy smile. “Well, I have you here now. I’ll figure something else out tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow you should go to a hotel, or I guess I could stay another night until you can arrange for a private security company,” Lance said, making a hasty promise, which may or may not have been decided by his dick, which had been standing at attention on and off since entering the Rose Art Gallery a few hours earlier. “And I can call a friend on the force to have him send over a surveillance car.”
“Please don’t feel obligated. I’ll manage. I have for the last year, and besides, the guy got his point across by defacing my gallery. Do you think he’ll come back and attack me?”
His heart gave a tiny shift at the telling nature of her statement. She’d mentioned she h
adn’t spoken to her father since the investigation began. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to realize her father had abandoned her to the shark-infested waters of public opinion and the FBI.
“I think I should stay until you can hire a professional company,” he said. “Do you want to gamble your safety on hoping he doesn’t return? Besides, I’m on leave from work until my thigh heals, and I’m going crazy on my couch watching old Law & Order reruns. You’ll be doing me a favor.”
“Seriously?” she asked, doubt lingering in her eyes. “You don’t have anything better to do?”
“Seriously,” Lance said. “I’ll need to head to my physical tort—therapy Monday morning, but I can call in a favor, have a police cruiser parked outside your door. Or you can hang out at the PT. Read a People or something.”
She pursed her lips. “Okay then, if you’re sure. I can drive you to your apartment tomorrow for you to pick up some clothes.”
He nodded. It was considerate of her to think of his personal needs and offer to help. The time they’d spent talking during their pizza and wine picnic had shown that she wasn’t totally the selfish brat he’d thought earlier. She was Valerie’s best friend, which gave her a lot of points. Then again, sometimes people held on to childhood friends out of loyalty, even if they’d grown up into not such nice people. But Arianna was smart, funny, and willing to laugh at herself. She was totally different in person than he’d imagined. Knowing she had a personality to match her pin-up girl body was fuel on the fire of his attraction.
“Thanks. I’ll need that. I don’t have that much ammo on me,” he said. She frowned at his mention of a gun, but if he were to do his job properly, it was necessary. Sure, he was trained in hand-to-hand combat, but with his healing leg, it was in everyone’s interest for him to be carrying.
“I’m heading into the shower. The TV remote is somewhere under that mess on the couch. No Law & Order please,” Arianna said with a smile, “or America’s Most Wanted.”
She disappeared into the bathroom, the only private room in the apartment, and Lance attempted to get comfortable on the sofa after moving the piles of clothes to some empty shelf space. He did his best to ignore all thoughts of what was happening in that shower. He didn’t think about the water sliding over her body, or her hands soaping up her breasts, and he definitely closed his mind to all thoughts of her bared sex. He didn’t want to know if she had a landing strip of hair or went Brazilian, and did his best not to picture a tiny trim triangle of reddish curls.
To block all visual fantasies of Arianna in the shower, he got into professional mode and headed back downstairs to check the back door lock and wooden board over the broken front window.
He was a freaking Secret Service agent. Guarding people through all moments of their lives, both private and public, was part of the job. He shouldn’t be this distracted. Then again, most First Ladies in recent memory had not looked as hot as Arianna.
Once his security tasks were done, he headed back upstairs and flicked on the television, almost snapping the remote in half with his force. Law & Order. Figured. He flipped quickly to the news to check if there was any more information about the Stanley Rose case or Arianna’s gallery vandalism. Nope, some Washington football player had been arrested down in Miami and the reporters were having a field day analyzing how it affected the team’s starting defensive lineup.
The water ceased rushing through the pipes and within a minute Arianna opened the bathroom door, releasing steam and the scent of grapefruit into the apartment. A fluffy white terry robe wrapped her up, hiding her curves, and Lance inhaled deeply at both the scent and sight of her.
Their gazes met, and there was a weighty silence in the room as she caught him looking at her wet body. With obvious effort, she noted the television noise and asked, “Any more news of my gallery?” Nothing of her father.
“No, it was sports news.” He kept glancing toward Arianna perched on her bed, rubbing some white lotion into her smooth, toned legs. He made a decent pretense of watching the television, but a good percentage of his brain power was following her hands stroking up and down the soft skin. God, was she purposely teasing him? She couldn’t be that clueless that he would take another bullet in the leg for a chance for his hands to be the ones rubbing lotion, right? She was either that clueless, or a tease, or…and this was his favorite possibility: she was sending sex signals. Maybe she was feeling the attraction, too.
Lance allowed the distraction for long pleasurable minutes then refocused on his real purpose for this little sleepover. Security. To fill in the heating silence, he asked, “Have you lived here long?”
She looked up, pausing her lotion strokes midway up her thigh. “About a year, but the gallery only officially opened two months ago. It took a while to get a decent collection to show.”
“Is it what you’ve always wanted to do?” He knew nothing of art but was curious about the kind of work and dedication it took to run the place. He’d apparently asked the right question, because Arianna popped off the bed and came over to the couch. Her eyes shone, and she almost glowed with enthusiasm as she began to answer his question.
“I’ve always loved art, and even dreamed of becoming an artist myself. I went to Oberlin to study painting…” She trailed off for a moment, lost in thought.
Lance studied her delicate features as she relived her past. Everything on her face was delicate and pleasing, except her lips. They were full and lush. He could picture them puckered in a kiss. “And what happened?”
“My teachers were not encouraging. They felt I lacked the elusive X-factor in talent. Said my work was banal.” Her glance skittered to the wall where a variety of colorful paintings hung.
He frowned and gave the paintings a more intense inspection. “Are those your work?” She nodded. “Arianna, there is nothing ‘banal’ about you or your paintings.”
She smiled up at him. “Thanks. I think.”
“So you listened to your blowhard professors and gave up your own passion, to help other people make a living as artists?”
A flush covered her cheeks, as if she were embarrassed at what some would deem cowardice. “I didn’t give up my passion. I redirected it. Spotting and nurturing artists is a talent, and I’m damn good at it. I still create art. Sometimes.”
He swiveled to look at the potter’s wheel then refocused on her. “Where are the pots or bowls or whatever?”
“Sadly, there’s no room for a kiln in here.” She spun her arm around the room, making the robe slip a little, revealing the curve of her breast. “I throw the pots then wet the clay back down.”
Lance’s body went from on-notice to fully-at-attention at the sight of her bared breast. Shit, he was not going to survive twenty-four hours with this woman without doing something stupid. He pulled the blanket over his lap and stretched out. “I’m going to call it a night,” he said, faking a yawn. “Long day, right?”
“Um, okay?” She looked disconcerted at his abrupt shift, but stood up and went to the bathroom and returned a minute later clad in her pajamas.
“Good night,” she said, settling under the covers across the room.
“Night,” he said, unable to think of anything good about sleeping on a lumpy couch with an erection all night.
Ari rolled onto her side for the millionth time that night. She wondered if Lance was having any more luck sleeping on the couch. She didn’t think so if the noises emanating from his side of the room were any indication.
Oh, God, his thigh. She should have thought more about his injury. How in the world would a six foot two man sleep on her small sofa, especially with a bum leg? He probably needed to stretch it out.
This was ridiculous; she was not getting any sleep tonight. If Lance weren’t here, she’d give up, flip on the lights, and head to the potter’s wheel. A one-second brain flash of her as Demi Moore and Lance as Patrick Swayze entered into her mind but she shook it off as the one a.m. crazies.
“Lance,” she whisper
ed. “Lance.”
“Hmmm?” A male grumble rose from the couch.
“Are you awake?”
“Sorta.”
“Switch places with me.”
“What? Why?” He sat up.
“I can’t sleep knowing I put an injured man on the couch. An injured tall man.” She struggled to see his face in the dark, but could only make out shadows of his form.
“I’m fine. Go back to sleep.”
“No.” She hopped off the bed, taking her pillow with her.
“Arianna, I won’t be able to sleep knowing I kicked a beautiful woman out of bed in her own apartment.”
He’d called her beautiful. She shouldn’t let his words warm her insides, but still, his compliment brought a smile to her lips. “Oh, I know. We can share the bed.” She turned back and crawled under the covers, her stomach jumping at the thought of Lance in her bed. Not that anything was going to happen. Well, nothing much. She wouldn’t be completely opposed to a little snuggle or if their feet brushed against each other.
“Hell no.” His refusal came way too quickly for her liking.
“Why not? Will your girlfriend be jealous? It’ll be purely platonic. Bring some of those blankets over here and roll them down the center of the bed. Problem solved.”
“I don’t have a girlfriend, but I…”
“Tempted? I promise to keep my hands off you,” she said, smiling that he didn’t have a girlfriend and knowing she’d have to sleep on her hands and have at least ten blankets dividing them to keep from rolling into his welcoming masculine heat. She’d already revised her opinion that he was a jerk. Lance was proving to be way more superhero than jerk. His willingness to stay and protect her went a long way toward softening her resistance to him.
“Will it shut you up?” He stood up from the couch. Each of his footsteps coming closer mimicked the pounding of her heartbeat.
“Yep.” She scooted close to the edge of the bed and lay back down. When his weight sank one side of the mattress, she rolled, then scooted back to the side. His warmth seeped through, offering her a comfort she hadn’t felt in the ten months since her nightmare began. It would be so easy to inch closer, and let her hands wander over his body, but she reminded herself he’d bolt if she got bold. He’d made it clear he was fighting the attraction between them. Silly man. Why not take what she was offering? Then she froze and wondered what exactly she was offering. She was off relationships and Lance wasn’t a one-night stand kind of guy. Looked like she’d be sharing a bed with a man and not having sex—a first.