The youth—for certainly he couldn’t have, been more than fifteen or sixteen—cast a hunted look over his shoul der. Following his glance, Gabriella saw a small crowd converging on the car. She heard the distant wail of sirens coming closer.
So did the boy. “Start burning rubber, lady!” he snarled. “I’m in one hell of a hurry.”
“Certainly. Where would you like me to take you?”
Amazed, she realized that although her hands were shak ing, she’d voiced the question with all the aplomb of a duchess offering afternoon tea to a titled guest.
Her uncouth passenger seemed equally taken aback, though only briefly. Mouthing an obscenity, he brought the cold steel terrifyingly close to her throat and grasped a rough fistful of her hair. “You want to see your old man again, hang a right at the intersection and head for the freeway. And save trying to be funny. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not laughing.”
Still in a trance, she shifted gear and followed his in structions to the letter. Tires squealing, the big car surged forward just as flashing lights appeared in the distance.
- CHAPTER TEN
KEEPING his attention where it belonged—namely on the three overseas clients currently poring over spreadsheets and tossing around figures which ran into millions—was difficult when the only movie playing in Max’s head was Gabriella.
Saying goodbye had been a lot tougher than he’d an ticipated. At the last, he’d been swamped with doubts. The uncomplicated future he’d thought he wanted shone less brightly. No matter how he added them up, those things he’d always considered important suddenly weren’t enough to hold the fabric of his life together.
The idea that he might be losing his taste for business was shocking enough, but the real eye-opener was, he didn’t much care. For years, he’d been driven by ambi tion, thrived on success, treasured the freedom which al lowed him to go wherever and whenever the greatest chal lenge presented itself.
But how many awards did a man need before he knew he’d climbed to the top? How many rivals did he outbid before his competitive spirit lost its edge?
As for the highly touted freedom—what the hell did that amount to if, at the end of it all, the only thing he had to come home to was a penthouse so devoid of life that it too often felt more like a tomb than a home, and the only person who even cared whether he lived or died was the assistant who planned his itineraries and penciled in his appointments?
Which brought him to his other big problem. Willow.
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Distracted, he rolled back his chair and went to the cloth-draped table at the far end of the boardroom where coffee and pastries were laid out.
I should have insisted she pack up and have done with, instead of agreeing to let her work out her month’s notice, he thought irritably, pausing before a highly polished cof fee urn—silver, probably, but it didn’t make the stuff in side taste any better, so who the devil cared! She’ll be undeifoot every time I turn around, trying to make herself indispensable and prove I can’t do without her.
As though on cue, she appeared at the door and with ostentatious stealth made her way to where he stooped over the table, stirring cream into his coffee.
“Sorry to intrude,” she whispered, her breath leaving an unpleasantly damp cloud over his ear, “but you have a visitor.”
“Not now,” he snapped in a low voice. Cripes, had she lost her mind, interrupting negotiations at such a crit ical stage? Just because he was somewhat disenchanted with business at the moment didn’t mean he was ready to watch the last six months’ work get flushed down the drain!
“l’his can’t wait, Max. There’s a police officer outside, a Detective Janssen, and he’s very insistent on speaking to you in person.”
“Police?” He snapped his mouth closed on the word and cast a furtive glance around, glad to see he hadn’t been overheard and that the clients were still engrossed in the graphs and blueprints spread out in front of them.
Sensing something untoward must be afoot though, his vice president joined him at the coffee table. “What’s up?”
“Seems I’ve got the police breathing down my neck on some matter.” Max shrugged, more annoyed than dis
turbed. “Hold down the fort while I check it out, okay? We’ve pretty much covered the main points here anyway, so run the video on the Indonesian project if I’m not babk before you wrap up, and I’ll join you for lunch in the executive dining room.”
Making his excuses to the clients, he then followed Willow out of the room. “If this is about an overdue parking ticket, someone’s head’s going to roll!” he warned her, striding down the hail to his office.
“If it were that minor, I wouldn’t have interrupted the meeting,” she said reproachfully. “But I got the impres sion it was something rather more serious than a traffic infraction.”
Eyeing the plainclothes officer waiting by his desk, Max decided she was probably right. “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” Detective Janssen began, once the introductions were out of the way, “but there’s been an incident involving an automobile registered in your name.”
Gabriella had taken his car to the airport! The first tendrils of fear spiraled through Max’s bloodstream. “In cident?” he repeated hollowly. “Or accident?”
• “Your car was stolen, Mr. Logan, and used as The get away vehicle in a botched attempt at armed robbery.”
Reaction set in, leaving him light-headed with relief. Gabriella was famously careless about locking up when she parked the car. Couldn’t even recall where she’d left it, half the time. Once, she’d come out of a shop on south Granville and spent an hour looking for it before discov ering it had been towed away because she’d left it in a restricted zone. Remembering, Max almost smiled. “Is that all?”
Janssen regarded him gravely. “Not quite, I’m afraid. Did you loan your car to anyone this morning?”
“Yes. My wife used it to take her parents to the air port.” He did laugh then. “I hope you’re not implying she tried to stick up a bank!”
“On the contrary. Whoever was driving your car this morning was taken hostage in the incident.”
The blood roared in Max’s ears. Unthinkingly, be grabbed a fistful of the man’s shirtfront and shook him like a dog with a rabbit in its jaws. “What do you mean, she was taken hostage? What the devil are you trying to tell me?”
The detective calmly pried himself loose and straight ened his tie. “According to witnesses, she appeared to argue with the suspect, even though he threatened her with a knife. It’s likely he wanted the car and she refused to give it up.”
“She did what?” Max dropped into his chair, his heart free-falling in horrific slow motion.
“She refused to turn over the keys. So he took her with him. She was last seen driving south over the Oak Street Bridge, with him holding the knife to her throat.”
All at once, Max felt as if he were swimming in thick, gluey oil; as if the whole, ugly world were closing in and squeezing the life out of him.
Just that morning, she’d kissed him. He’d tasted her incredible mouth, felt her long, lithe body pressed up against his, looked into her shimmering green eyes. And told himself he was well rid of her, when what he should have done was tell her that she was right. He was a cow ard! He didn’t have the guts to face up to his feelings for her.
And now some half-crazed thug on the run had her— and just what he planned to do with her when she’d out lived her usefulness made Max’s blood run cold.
“I realize this is shocking news, Mr. Logan,” Janssen
said sympathetically, “but if it’s any comfort, we have roadblocks set up. They won’t get far. And with her be hind the wheel instead of him, the odds are that excessive speed won’t be a factor.”
That was supposed to comfort him, when a maniac was holding a knife to her lovely throat? “I’m hardly con cerned about a speeding ticket right now,” he ground out hoarsely.
“Naturally not. ‘What I mean
t to say is that safety—” But whatever slim comfort the detective had been at to dish up next was interrupted by the chirping of hi cell phone. Pacing to the window, he unclipped the instrument from his belt and answered.
The few words he spoke we too low to be overheard but the conversation was mercifully brief and when he turned again to Max, his face looked a little less somber. “Good news. The car’s been found and the suspect ap prehended.”
Max could barely bring himself to ask, “And my wife?”
“She’s being brought in also.”
“In?” he barked. “In where? To a hospital? A morgue?”
“To police headquarters, Mr. Logan. She appears not to have been harmed. If you like, I can take you down there to be with her while she’s questioned.”
“Oh, I’d like,” he said grimly. In fact, there were a number of things he’d like, and right at the top of his list was a raging need to see for himself that she hadn’t been hurt. Then he’d like to spank her delectable backside for being such an idiot! .
Yet when he was led into the room where she waited, he sagged in the doorway and simply feasted his eyes on
the sight of her perched on a bench next to a police woman, and sipping tea out of a paper cup.
When she saw him, she put the tea aside and slowly stood up, looking for all the world like a kid about to be punished for stealing from the cookie jar. “I’m veiy sorry, Max,” she said, all big stricken eyes and quivering mouth. “I’m afraid your car’s a bit the worse for wear but I’ll pay for the repairs.”
“You’d better believe it,” he said thickly, covering the distance between them and sweeping her into his arms. “I’m going to take every last cent out of your beautiful hide!”
Then, to his eternal shame and embarrassment, he started bawling like a kid. Fat, sloppy tears dripped into her hair. And as if that wasn’t humiliation enough, great jarring sobs took him by surprise and tore through him.
He wished he could fail between the cracks in the floor! He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried, but he thought it was when he was about four and found a dead squirrel in the driveway of his parents’ house.
He hadn’t cried at his mother’s funeral fifteen years later, or when his father drank himself to death within six months of her passing, because grown men didn’t cry. They coped at all costs. They kept their feelings bottled up inside and went toe-to-toe with the whole world before they’d allow anything to break them.
“Jeez, Gabriella, the things you do to me,”. he mut tered, struggling to get a grip on his emotions.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, and he realized she was sobbing into his shirtfront. And shaking like a leaf.
Blinking furiously, he fished a handkerchief out of his breast pocket, blew his nose, and wrapped his arms more firmly around her. Seeming to decide she was superfluous
to the reunion, the policewoman let the door click shut behind her as she left the room.
Grateful for the privacy, Max led Gabriella to the bench and pulled her down on his lap. “It’s over, sweetheart,” he murmured unsteadily. “I’m here, and you’re safe.”
She hiccuped softly and buried her face against his chest, and for a while there was no need for words. It was enough that they were together. Enough that he could run his hand up and down her spine and know she was in one piece. Enough that he could feel the pulse beating beneath her jaw, and feel her rib cage expand with every breath.
Eventually she grew calmer and lifted her head to shoot an embarrassed glance his way. “I must look a mess!”
“You look like something the cat dragged in, and you’re the most beautiful sight in the world,” he mur mured, his gaze scouring her face. Then he saw the angry red welt on the side of her neck; touched it with the tip of his finger and saw her wince. “And I’m going to kill the bastard who did this to you.”
“Oh, Max, he’s just a boy and he was so frightened.”
“Was he really! Well, I was bloody terrified!”
“He made a mistake, and I know what that’s like. You .start out with something small and before you know it, things have snowballed out of control, and it’s too late to put a stop to them.”
He rolled his eyes in disbelief. “You’ll be ‘telling me next you feel sorry for the little creep.”
“I do.” She touched her forehead to his. “When I first met you, all I wanted was to kiss you. But the better I got to know you, the less I was satisfied with just that, so I tried to seduce you; and we both know where that led.”
“The two situations hardly compare.”
“Don’t they?” She reared back a little and inspected
him soberly. “Didn’t you feel you’d been taken hostage by me and coerced into a situation you didn’t want?”
“For crying out loud, Gabriella...!” He leaned his head against the wall and clapped a hand to his brow. “Listen to me. This kid is ruthless enough to wield a knife, rob a store, and take a helpless woman prisoner. In my book, that makes him a criminal. A menace to decent society. And I’m going to have them throw the book at him for what he’s put you through this morning!”
She drew her thumb over his mouth. “The way you’re carrying on, anyone would think you cared about me.”
“Jeez, woman, I love you!”
She stared at him, her eyes wide green pools of shock, while the words bounced off the stark walls of the room and ricocheted back to haunt him. “What did you say?”
Pretty shaken up himself, he stared right back. Having this conversation take place in an interrogation room at the local cop shop hardly fit his idea of romantic ambi ence, but the moment was right, and he’d put off baring his soul long enough. “I love you,” he repeated sheep ishly.
He kind of thought she’d tell him she loved him, too. After all, she’d been implying it long enough! Instead, she slid off his lap and put a safe six feet of space between them. “No, you don’t. Not really. You’re just grateful and relieved that I’m not hurt.”
“Oh, I’m a lot more than just that!” He shoved himself off the bench and stalked her across the room. “I came close to losing you this morning, and I’m not talking about us going our separate ways or leading separate lives. Out of the blue, I was confronted by the very real possi bility that you could have been killed—that there’d be no going back to try again, no making up and starting over.
No occasional long-distance phone calls just to touch base. No more you.”
He swallowed, afraid his emotions were going to seize up and make an ass of him again. “I couldn’t handle it, Gabriella. It’s as simple as that. So maybe you’re right, and I don’t love you. But if that’s the case, then please explain to me why I didn’t want to wake up tomorrow knowing you might not be part of my world anymore. Tell me why I felt as if someone had blown a hole clean through my heart.”
Detective Janssen poked his head around the door and spared her having to answer. “If you feel up to it, Mrs. Logan, we’d like to get a statement from you.”
“Of course.” She swayed across the room with that inbred elegance that had captivated Max from the first. “Go back to work, Max,” she said, over her shoulder. “I’ll be fine by myself.”
“Like hell, you will!” He caught up with her in three strides flat. “I’m staying here to take you home when you’re done, and that is not something that’s up for dis cussion.”
Max had closed the wooden shutters over the windows, leaving the bedroom full of pale, filtered light. The pillow beneath her head was cool and smooth, the light quilt covering her, soft and clean.
The boy’s hand had been filthy, his nails bitten down to the quickr.
“Try to sleep,” Max had said, stroking the hair off her face and dropping a kiss on her forehead. “We’ll talk later, have a quiet dinner together. I’ll order something in, open a bottle of wine. But right now, you need to get some rest.”
“Stupi4 rich cow,” the boy had spat, when she’d tried
t
o persuade him to give himself up. “What do you know about living on the Street? When was the last time you picked through a back alley Dumpster to find something to fill your belly?”
“Take her home,” the kind detective had said, after she’d given her statement. “She’s in shock, but otherwise okay. We don’t need to keep her here.”
Max had led her out into the warm blue afternoon, one arm firmly around her waist. A shiny new Lincoln Continental stood in the parking lot. Opening the door, he poured her into the front seat. Even went so far as to buckle her into her belt, as if he really did care about keeping her sale.
“Where did you get the car?” she’d asked listlessly.
“I leased it. Made a call while you were busy with Janssen and arranged to have it waiting for us after you’d given your statement.”
“Some ride you got here,” the boy had said enviously, running his hand over the car’s rich leather upholstery. “Bet you just take it ailfor granted, though. Anything you want, your old man goes out and slaps down the money, and it’s yours. Easy come, easy go, right down the line.”
“You don’t have to take me to the penthouse,” she’d told Max, knowing how he probably hated the idea now that the whole horrible business with the police was over, and he’d seen for himself that she was okay. “I can stay in a hotel.”
He’d stopped with his hand on the ignition key and stared at her. “If that’s meant to be funny, sweetheart, you should know I’m in no mood to be entertained.”
“Oh, what a coincidence!” she’d gasped, involuntary peals of laughter streaming from her mouth and filling the plush interior of the car with ripple alter ripple of merri
ment. “That’s more or less what that poor young boy said when I asked him where he wanted me to take him.”
“As far away as I can get from this lousy place.”
“But what about your mother? Won’t she be worried? Won’t she wonder where you are?”
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