He’d tried. He’d stopped by that little desk in that alcove, picked up the phone and hit seven seven seven, but no matter what he did or said, the answer was always the same. Miss Carter was busy elsewhere.
The hell she was. Miss Carter was avoiding him.
Gray shoved back his chair, scribbled his room number and his signature on the bill, and left the coffee shop. Enough was enough. He was tired of thinking about what he’d done, tired of cursing himself…tired of wishing he could turn back the clock and still be seated in that dark little bar, with Dawn smiling shyly at him. He needed to do something to clear his head. A change of scene, maybe. It would help his sanity, if not his disposition.
Someone stopped in front of him. Preoccupied with thoughts of Dawn, Gray muttered “Excuse me,” and tried to move past but the man moved with him.
“Excuse me,” he repeated, the words taut with impatience.
“Baron.”
With a rush, his thoughts returned to the here and now. Keir O’Connell stood before him, looking as if he’d been carved out of stone.
“I’m busy,” Gray said sharply.
“I want to talk to you.”
“Another time.”
“Now.”
Gray narrowed his eyes. O’Connell looked the way he felt, frustrated, angry and dangerous. This was just what he needed, a go-round with a man he hadn’t liked before he’d even met him. Nothing that had happened since they’d shaken hands had changed his mind.
“Yeah, well that’s too bad. I’m in a hurry.”
“I noticed.” O’Connell’s voice was as cold as the look on his face. “This won’t take long.”
They were toe to toe and eye to eye. If I swung now, it would be over before he knew what hit him, Gray thought, and the very insanity of the idea made him take a steadying breath. He gave a quick nod and followed the other man through the lobby, to an unmarked door. O’Connell took a key card from his pocket, inserted it in a slot, and the door opened onto a small, sparsely furnished office.
Gray stepped inside. O’Connell followed, and closed the door behind him.
“Nice,” Gray said tonelessly, looking around at the desk and couple of chairs. “Too bad they won’t give you a real office but then, I guess you’d need to have a real job for that.”
“Sit down.”
“You give me one more order and I’ll stop being polite and tell you what you can do with it.”
The men glared at each other. Gray took a deceptively casual stance, legs slightly spread, hands loose at his sides. It was something he’d picked up studying aikido. He’d ridden New York subways at night and strolled dark Manhattan streets but he’d never felt the need to be ready for whatever was coming the way he did, right now.
“What do you want, O’Connell?”
“What do you want? That’s a better question.”
“Well, this is great.” Gray flashed a quick, lazy smile. “Is that what you wanted to discuss? Hey, I’m easy. A million buck payoff from one of those slots would be a cool start but since I have the feeling you’re going to say you can’t tell a machine what to do, we’re done talking. I have better things to do than stand here, playing games with—”
Keir wrapped a hand around Gray’s arm as he turned toward the door. Gray jerked free, his smile gone and his face close to the other man’s.
“I’m going to tell you this one time,” he said softly. “You touch me again, ever, and I’m going to rearrange your face.”
Tension, taut and delicately balanced as the web of a spider, crackled between them. Slowly, deliberately, Keir took his hand from Gray’s arm.
“Why are you in Las Vegas, Baron?”
“None of your damn business.”
“You’re wrong, buddy. It is my business. I run this place. If I think you’re bad news, you’re gone. So let’s start again. What are you doing here?”
“Amazing.” Gray leaned a hip against the desk and folded his arms. It was a safer posture; it would keep him from what he wanted to do, which was put his fist into Keir O’Connell’s face. “Such personalized service. Do you provide it for all your guests?”
“It’s a simple question. Why not answer it?”
“Sure. I’m here on vacation.”
“Don’t hand me that crap. You’re the kind that goes native on some Caribbean island nobody else ever heard of when you want to take it easy.”
Close. Gray decided not to show his surprise and, instead, smiled with his teeth. “Good guess. I’ll be sure to tell that to my travel agent. Should make it easier for her to figure out where to send me in the future.”
“You don’t know a damn thing about gambling.”
“Is that a prerequisite for a stay at the Desert Song?”
Keir could feel his gut tightening. A couple of hours ago, he’d agreed with Dan Coyle that they’d keep a low profile, not let Baron know they were watching him. That seemed like a fine idea until he spotted the man in the lobby, his face grim, his eyes cold. He’d thought of how the girls at Special Services were becoming concerned about Dawn, of how she’d phoned in sick yesterday as well as today when she wasn’t sick at all. He’d talked to Cassie, who said Dawn was home with a virus, but made it sound like a white lie.
It all added up to the fact that this man was trouble.
“You’ve got a smart mouth, Baron, you know that?”
“And you’ve got a nose you like to stick where it doesn’t belong. This discussion is—”
“What’s your interest in Dawn Carter?”
“That’s definitely none of your business.”
“She’s my employee.”
“Is that all she is, O’Connell? Or is this interview even more personal than I thought?”
“I’m told that the lady made her position clear,” Keir said, ignoring the barb. “She doesn’t like you.”
“Really.”
“She’s tired of having you around. She wants you to stop bothering her.”
Gray was sure that was true, but he had no intention of letting Keir O’Connell deliver the message. “She can tell me that herself, if she wants.”
“She doesn’t have to. I’m telling you for her.”
“Why? Are you afraid of competition? What’s your problem, O’Connell? Are you afraid that if a woman looks at another man, she’ll discover you aren’t much?”
Keir made a grab for Gray. Gray sidestepped quickly and blocked the move with his forearm.
“Don’t,” he said softly.
The men glowered at each other. Then, slowly, each took a step back.
“If I were you,” Keir said quietly, “I’d cut my vacation short and go back where I came from.”
“Isn’t it a good thing you aren’t me, then?” Gray said, with a tight smile.
He could feel the adrenaline pumping as he brushed past O’Connell, wrenched open the door and headed across the lobby and out the front door. O’Connell didn’t follow him, which he’d half expected. It was just as well. He didn’t need the hassle a street brawl would produce, especially if he was still going to make an attempt at talking to Dawn.
The valet brought his car around. Gray dropped a bill in the kid’s hand, tried not to growl at the bright smile and “Have a nice day” crap. He headed north for no better reason than that traffic seemed lighter in that direction. Still, it was stop-and-go all the way out of the city. Eventually the road opened up and he stepped hard on the gas. The car shot ahead, as if it were as glad to be free of the constraints of neon and concrete as he was.
Gray drove aimlessly for more than an hour, his eyes fixed on the distant mountains bulking up over the straight-as-an-arrow road. There were cars heading into town but only a few heading out and he passed them quickly. After a while, they were just dots in the mirror.
Except for a couple of tractor trailers going in the other direction, he was alone on the road.
It made him feel better. Less constrained, less angry. Funny, he thought as he eased back i
n the seat and flexed his hands lightly on the wheel. He was a creature of the city, at home and content in New York’s concrete and glass canyons, but Vegas made him uncomfortable. Too many lights, too many structures that looked as if they belonged in an amusement park. Too many people, hell-bent on having fun, or pretending to.
Dawn seemed out of place in that setting. It was easier to imagine her on that Arizona mountaintop, the wind in her hair, the sun on her face. There would be no Harman in the picture but there would be a child, a shadowy little boy huddled just behind her…
Gray cursed and goosed the car up to ninety. There was a turnoff ahead and a gas station looking lonely on the intersection of Nowhere and Noplace. He slowed, took the turnoff and found himself on a two-lane dirt road with no traffic and no signs of life. Perfect, he thought.
After a while, he relaxed again.
Somebody had once told him the Nevada desert was depressing as hell. An alien landscape, the guy had called it, but Gray decided he kind of liked it, the open space in all directions, the occasional cluster of cacti huddled together as if for companionship, and the massive piles of boulders that looked as if they’d been dropped from the sky with no plan in mind.
The land was forbidding and barren but it had a hard, powerful quality he admired. For the first time in days, he began to relax.
He’d come here to solve a problem. Instead he’d created a mess.
Gray frowned and tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. What would he tell Jonas? How would he explain his lack of information? He’d scared Dawn off and learned nothing he hadn’t known before he got to Vegas.
Who was he kidding? He’d learned more about Dawn than he’d wanted to learn, and none of it would help his uncle reach any kind of decision about whether or not to include her in his will. He knew that she had a softness to her smile and to her soul, that she was more beautiful than any woman had a right to be, that he was having a hard time remembering he was here on Jonas’s behalf.
And that she had abandoned her own flesh and blood.
How could he be attracted to someone who had done that? He’d always chosen women with care. He knew men who would bed a woman strictly because of how she looked. He prided himself on asking for more than that. A woman he slept with had to be bright. She had to be kind and giving. Hadn’t he broken up with a model he’d been dating because she told him she’d abandoned her cat when she moved into a new apartment that didn’t permit pets?
Oh, yeah. He’d dumped a woman who had abandoned her cat and now he was hot for a babe who had abandoned her kid. It made no sense. He wanted Dawn. Hell, yes, he wanted her. Wanted to taste that soft mouth and gently nip that lush bottom lip, to touch that soft skin that looked as if it would have the texture of silk. He wanted to cup her face in his hands, raise it to his, watch her eyes turn to midnight-blue as he lowered his mouth to hers. He wanted to tunnel his hands into that spill of red-gold hair, feel it fall over his hands as he kissed her, to slip his tongue into her mouth until she whispered his name, clung to him, begged for his possession…
Gray shifted in his seat. He was hard as a teenage kid with a copy of Playboy. Next thing he knew, he’d be…
What was that?
A car was coming toward him. It was a Ford, an old model, one you didn’t see much anymore. It was the same model as the car he’d almost creamed on Las Vegas Boulevard. The same color, too.
He felt an uneasy sense of d;aaej;aga-vu. How many times in just a few days could a man see a car like that? Gray let up on the gas. The car drew closer and the sense of unease grew stronger. It sure as hell looked like Dawn’s car.
Was it a mirage? Another few seconds, he’d be able to see the driver…
It was a woman. Gray stiffened. No. It couldn’t be. But it was. He saw the mane of read hair, the pale face…
“Dawn,” he whispered, and he put his car into a hard, quick U-turn and hit the horn.
He saw her head jerk up. She was looking into her mirror, trying to see what was happening behind her. He hit the horn again and, even though she couldn’t possibly hear him, shouted her name.
She went faster.
Of course she’d go faster. She didn’t know who it was, zooming up on her tail, honking the horn like a madman. She wouldn’t recognize his car. What were the odds that a woman alone on an empty road would obediently pull over and stop when a car started following her? Would she figure the motorist behind her was trying to tell her something important? Or would she think he wanted to hurt her and try to outrun him?
Gray hit the gas, pulled abreast of the old Ford and tapped the horn.
“Dawn,” he shouted, “it’s me.”
She looked over, saw him and her face turned into a mask of terror. Her car shot away from his. Gray cursed and put his foot to the floor.
They flew down the deserted road at sixty, seventy, eighty miles an hour, Gray slamming his fist on the horn, Dawn pushing the old Ford beyond anything it had been made to endure. He knew he could get more speed out of his car and he thought about zooming ahead and angling it across the road…
Was he crazy?
Sanity returned in a rush. The way things were going, they’d both end up dead in a heap of twisted metal. He slowed down and fell in behind her. Dawn kept up the speed. He didn’t. The last thing he wanted to do was encourage her to go on driving so fast.
The road was straight. He’d have no trouble following her back to Vegas, if that was what it took, though he couldn’t imagine her old clunker could keep this up forever.
* * *
Her car couldn’t keep this up forever.
It was rattling and groaning, and Dawn had given up looking at the speedometer because seeing the needle hovering at eighty had to be an hallucination, but she couldn’t slow down, wouldn’t slow down. She didn’t want to deal with Gray, not out here in the middle of nowhere.
The only good news was that she was on her way back from the Rocking Horse Ranch, not heading to it.
She looked in the mirror. Yes! He’d slowed down and fallen in behind her. She was losing him! Who would have thought it possible? All she had to do now was make it to the gas station on the corner where the road intersected the highway. There would be somebody to help her.
By the time she reached the station, her car was making ominous noises. Dawn shot a look into the mirror. Gray was far behind her. She pulled into the station, threw open the door and ran to the office.
“Help,” she yelled, “somebody, please, help…”
She skidded to a stop. There was a hand-lettered sign taped to the glass. A sob broke from her throat as she read it.
Sorry, it said, Closed Sundays.
Sorry? Dawn began to laugh. “Sorry,” she said, “they’re sorry…”
A car roared into the station. She spun around. It was Gray.
“Dawn,” he said, as he stepped onto the asphalt, “listen to me…”
She hesitated, and he thought he had half a chance, but he was wrong.
“No,” she whispered, and she took off, racing into the raw, endless expanse of desert that stretched behind the station.
Gray shouted her name again and she ran faster. She was quick but he was quicker and he began to gain ground. He could hear the breath pumping in and out of his lungs.
“Dawn? Dammit, don’t run away. I won’t hurt you.”
His promise didn’t slow her down. If anything, it seemed to give her the impetus to speed up until, finally, she began to falter. He pushed harder, got close enough to grab her by the shoulders, and he spun her toward him. She gave a little cry and struck out at him. A couple of blows landed on his jaw, one hard enough to rock him on his heels, but he caught both her wrists in one hand and clamped them against his chest.
“Don’t,” she sobbed, “please, don’t.”
Her eyes were wide with fear and shiny with terror. Gray knew he’d never rest until he’d killed the man who had put that terror into her.
“Dawn,” he whispe
red, and then he did what he’d dreamed of doing since the day he’d met her.
He bent his head to hers and kissed her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SHE tasted sweeter than he could ever have imagined, and her mouth was even softer than it looked. Honey, he thought, as the blood pounded in his ears, honey and silk…and then he stopped thinking and let himself sink into the kiss.
For a moment, a heartbeat, she let him. At least, that was what he thought, that she’d wrapped her hands around his wrists to lift herself to him, that she’d tilted her head so his mouth could more readily, greedily, angle across hers…and then his brain kicked in instead of his hormones and he realized that the woman he was kissing with such hungry need was fighting for her freedom.
He took his mouth from hers, lifted his head and saw fear shining in her eyes. No. It was much more primal. It was terror, and it turned the hot rush of desire in his blood to ice.
“Dawn,” he said, but she was beyond hearing. She was making little sounds that he thought might have been words, digging her fingers into his wrists, gasping for breath as she struggled wildly against him. His first impulse was to take his hands from her face as proof he wouldn’t hurt her, but instinct told him she would run the second he let her go. The last thing he wanted to do was go after her again and bring her to earth like a hawk taking down a dove.
“Dawn,” he said softly, “baby, I’m not going to hurt you. I swear it.”
She shook her head wildly as he slid his hands to her shoulders, held her as steady as he could without using any pressure, until she stopped trying to twist away from him. Slowly her eyes cleared and focused on his. She took a breath that shuddered from her body straight through his hands and as she did, he felt a rage so razor-sharp that he understood, viscerally, what he’d never understood before, despite all his years as a defense attorney.
Sometimes the need to kill was so all-consuming that it swept aside everything a man knew of logic and law.
Harman had done this to her. Harman, her husband. He had taken this woman and ripped out her soul.
She was trembling now, breathing in quick, shallow gasps. Gray stroked his hand down her back and she stiffened but he went on doing it, gentling her with his touch and with soft whispers, words he’d have used to comfort a frightened child or an injured animal. He felt the tension start to ease from her muscles. Carefully, slowly, he drew her to him until she stood in the curve of his arm, her body just brushing his.
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