by Desiree Holt
“I’ve actually been with the ambassador for some time now.” The frost in the woman’s voice shot through the connection. “May I take a message?”
For some time now? Dad, what the hell is going on?
“Yes. You can tell him I’m on my way over and I need to see him.”
“Oh, I’m afraid that’s impossible. He’s—”
“Make it possible. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
Maddie slammed the phone shut, grabbed her purse and made a beeline to the elevators. The day that should have started with warm feelings and erotic sex was deteriorating into something that made fear skitter like a feather down her spine.
She fidgeted in the cab during the ride to Ambassador Sommers’ offices and was ready to take someone apart when she stormed into the building. In the foyer she took a moment to calm herself. Screaming never got her anywhere with her father, and she really needed to find out if he knew anything that could help her. Arthur Sommers was plugged into nearly everything in Washington. If something weird was going on and Dan was involved in it, there was a good chance he’d know about it.
Maddie was sure the woman who came forward to meet her was the unknown assistant. Tall and thin, Caroline had perfectly toned blonde hair swept up in a chignon and makeup that looked as if an artist had applied it. Maddie wondered where her father had found her and how long she’d been around. In the two years since her mother died, he’d pretty much avoided a personal life.
Or maybe he hadn’t, and just had not bothered to confide in her.
Miss Thin and Tall held out a slim hand. “I’m Caroline. You must be Madison.”
Maddie shook her hand unenthusiastically. “I’d like to see—”
“No problem.” Caroline moved her lips in a brittle smile. “He has a very tight schedule today but he said to show you in as soon as you arrived.”
Maddie and her father had never been demonstrative with each other, and had grown further apart in the past two years. Their hello kiss was perfunctory, their greeting lukewarm.
“I know you wouldn’t come here if it weren’t something out of the ordinary,” he began. “What is it you think I can do for you?”
“Right to the point, aren’t you?” She snorted. “All right. I won’t waste time. Dan Foreman, the planning consultant in the Speaker’s office, seems to have disappeared. You have your finger on the pulse of everything in this city. I want to know what you’ve heard.”
“Are you sleeping with him?” Sommers asked bluntly.
Maddie felt her face flush but she didn’t look away. “That isn’t important. We work together in Trask’s office and it isn’t like him to just vanish.”
“So you’re not just chasing a fleeing lover?”
She turned, disgusted and angry, wild to ask if her father knew she had slept with Dan last night. But that was a little too miraculous a feat, even for omniscient former CIA operative Arthur Sommers. Oh, god. She should have known better than to come here. “Never mind. Thanks for all your help.” She rose to go toward the door.
“I met him several times,” Arthur said, matter-of-factly.
Maddie stopped cold and turned around. “Did you, now. And?”
“I don’t like him. There’s something very shady about him. Whatever’s happened to him, good riddance. Don’t get your skirts dirty looking for him.”
Insulted and appalled at her father’s bald words, she bit off a curse. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means exactly what I said. Now please excuse me. I have a meeting to prepare for.”
Standing on the sidewalk outside, Maddie had to stifle the urge to sit down on the steps and give in to tears. She shouldn’t have expected anything except what she got. She and her father shared equally low opinions of each other. Even if he knew something, she should have realized he’d never tell her anything.
Baffled by the situation and lack of information, she walked the six blocks to the Metro and climbed on the next train. At Union Station, when she climbed out of the car to change lines, she decided to go upstairs instead. She’d cool down before she went back to the office. She’d have some lunch and a big fat drink at her favorite pub. Threading her way up the escalator and along the corridor, she was disappointed when she arrived that the place was crowded. Sighing, she scanned the booths and tables, hoping somehow she’d find one empty.
What she found pleasantly stunned her. Waving at her from the other side of the room was a very familiar figure. She and Nicole Welles had been roommates in college. Now, ten years later, they kept in touch by email and with visits spaced too far apart. Nikki lived in Texas and her visits to Washington were rare. What was she doing here now?
Maddie made her way across the restaurant to where Nicole was standing beside a booth. The two women hugged.
“Oh, man,” Nikki said. “You’re the last person I expected to see here. How lucky could I get? Come on. Sit down.”
When they were both seated in the booth and had given drink orders to the waiter, Nikki leaned across the table. “So how did you happen to pop into this place just at this moment? Congress is in recess. Aren’t you closing up shop and getting out of Dodge for a few weeks?”
“Trying to,” Maddie admitted, avoiding getting into a story too long and complicated for a brief reunion with an old friend. “A better question is, what are you doing in D.C.?”
“Well.” Nikki played with her silverware. “You know I started my own private investigation and security agency in San Antonio.”
“Yes. With two other women you’ve known for years.”
Nikki nodded. “One’s a former cop and the other is the greatest cyber expert you’ll ever find.” She grinned. “We call ourselves Nemesis.”
“Ooh.” Maddie gave a mock shiver. “Sounds ominous to me.”
“We take only high profile cases. That’s what I’m doing here, just winding one up.” She smiled at Maddie. “You still having fun as chief cook and bottle washer for the Speaker of the House?”
Maddie smiled with little joy. “Same job. Same place.”
“So what are you doing hanging out in Union Station? You gotta have things hopping at your office right now. That new transportation bill, for one thing.”
Maddie bit her lip. Should she tell Nikki? What could she lose? “I have a problem,” she began. “It has to do with a man in our office. A consultant.”
She told Nikki everything, carefully omitting the details of her scorching evening with Dan. She spread her hands, palms upward.
“All but one of his phones go to voice mail. One is disconnected. All just this morning. No one in the office has seen him. It’s as if he didn’t exist. The Speaker acts as if it’s nothing and my dad thinks I should just drop the whole thing.”
Nikki studied her a minute. “Is he the type to go on a bender? Take a lost weekend?”
“No.”
“The type to let someone get the better of him physically? Drop him in a dark alley?”
Maddie chortled. “No!”
Nicole examined Maddie. “The type to leave without kissing you goodbye?”
Maddie stared at her friend and whispered, “No.”
“Okay, then. Hear me. For as long as I’ve known you, I’ve never known you to be an alarmist. So I agree with you. Something’s going on here. And I don’t think your Dan is just a planning consultant.” The waiter had appeared with their drinks. “So let’s drink some of this good alcohol and you can start from the beginning. Maybe I can help you.”
Chapter Five
The hours of work after her lunch with Nicole raced by. Like snails. At six-forty-two, Maddie shot up from her chair and made the excuse of a headache.
Julia frowned at her. “It’s not like you to be sick. Can’t I give you an aspirin?”
“No thanks. This one’s a blinder, Julia. I need sleep.” And some sanity before Nicole arrived to spend the night and talk more about Dan Foreman’s disappearance.
Grabbing u
p her purse, Maddie spoke briefly with the communications director about a major press release due out tomorrow. Then she zipped down a stairwell, through the magnetron and Capitol guards and out the side door. Walking beyond the ugly concrete road barriers that had appeared after 9/11, she donned her sunglasses against the brilliance of the late sun and inhaled the humid air of Washington in July. Flinging her suit jacket over her shoulder, she decided to stroll west toward the Mall.
The tourists had retired for the day. The worker bees in the Capitol, Senate and House office buildings were emerging from their cocoons. Like her, coats off, sunglasses on to protect from the light of day they rarely saw, they hustled to Metro stops or into bars. Some disappeared into restaurants near Constitution Avenue. She hadn’t walked like this in months—and Krav Maga workouts at the gym didn’t compare.
When she’d been a teenager—and her family was home from some foreign posting of her father’s, her favorite activity was to escape the servants and her parents’ townhouse over in Foggy Bottom and walk the Mall. She’d take in the free museums and thrill to the dinosaurs in one, the airplanes in another and big brash florals of Georgia O’Keefe in the huge modern art gallery. When she’d gone to college north of town, she’d escape her studies and her worries about her mother’s penchant for gigolos by dropping in to her favorite haunts. When she’d first gotten a job on the Hill as a press secretary to Trask, she’d decompressed the same way. She hadn’t treated herself to the joy of it in such a long time that now she felt a pang of loss. A realization that she hadn’t been good to herself while working her ass off for Trask sobered her. Promising herself to reconnect with the things she loved and not let the job become everything to her, she smiled up at the Washington Monument and turned to search for a taxi.
When the cab pulled up to her house she paid and jumped out. Nicole would be here soon and Maddie wanted to check the guest bedroom to ensure everything was perfect for her friend who promised to help her find the man who had left her this morning. A bigger pang of loss overcame her as she inserted her key in the lock. She paused there, promising herself to find Dan. Another thing you love, Maddie?
Maybe so.
Stunned at how much she could care for a man she had known so briefly, she turned the key in the front door.
No alarm?
I did turn it on this morning.
She reached for the display panel. But the light on the panel was off.
And when she flicked on the living room lights, they didn’t work. The only illumination came from the moonlight slanting in through the slivers between the half-closed blinds.
In the darkness, she felt the sudden torrid strength of two arms clamp around her.
“Oh, no!” she breathed and years of practicing self-defense techniques kicked in. By rote, she shrugged, stepped one leg to one side and began to elbow her attacker.
“Baby, don’t! Don’t!” a warm soothing male voice crooned in her ear.
Dan?
“Shh, it’s Dan.” He clutched her closer, his hand to the elbow that she would have used to double him over. Then, he pressed his searing lips to her cheek. “It’s me, Maddie. Just me, baby. Sorry.”
“Oh, god! Dan!” Relief had her legs buckling out from under her, but he held her up, turning her toward him.
“I’m sorry, baby. I scared you, but I couldn’t be sure the one coming in was you.”
She blinked. “What? Why?”
“Your power lines were cut.”
“Cut? How? Why?”
“When I got here about an hour ago, they were out.”
“But who would do that?”
He froze. “Maddie, I—”
Her mind raced. “Someone wanted something of mine. The Matisse? My mother’s jewelry?” There was plenty of that. Her mother had an overwhelming appetite for diamonds. And Maddie had inherited every last little carat. “Did they take—?”
“No, baby. Not the painting or your jewelry. I’ve checked the house. Not anything of yours.”
That fake headache was fast becoming a reality. The clanging in her ears drowned out logic. “I don’t understand. Dan,” she whispered, her hands clutching his lapels. “What’s going on? Why are you here?”
“I hoped you’d want to see me.”
“Oh, I did. Do.” She stretched up on tiptoe to give him a welcome kiss, but when she pulled away, she noted his eyes were sad yet filled with a ravenous desire. “Dan, what the hell is going on? I thought you’d disappeared on me. That you didn’t mean anything you said. But if you’re mixed up in something bad I can help you…”
“I left you too soon this morning and there was no way I could say goodbye then. I had to come back and tell you that. Tell you why.”
Tingling at his sentiment, she searched his face. “I’m thrilled you’re here, but do I detect that sentence is followed by something like, ‘and now I have to leave’?”
He gathered her close and damn if she didn’t let him hug her, put his hands to her cheeks and outline her lower lip with his thumbs. “I have to go soon. But I had to see you before I left. Then I got here and I could tell the place had been burgled.”
She trembled in his arms. “What were they looking for?”
“Me.”
She held her breath. Stared up at him. “Why?”
“Because this was the last place where anyone could track me. In your bed.”
She pressed nearer to him. A silly smile escaped her lips. “Wow. Did they think you were still here?”
His fingers splayed up into the wealth of her hair. “One look at you and they’d assume a man would never leave your bed.” And then he kissed her, his mouth taking hers, pressing hers, caressing hers as if he’d never kissed her, never held her, never made love to her. “I hate to leave you now.”
“Don’t then,” she ordered him. “Kiss me again.”
He did, backing her to the wall and plundering her mouth, his tongue tangling with hers, his teeth nipping her lower lip, his leg forcing hers apart. “I need you again.”
“Dan,” she tried for some logic, “if someone’s after you, do we have time for this?”
“We’ll make time.”
She reached down to find his cock standing tall inside his trousers. Fumbling for his zipper, she slid the thing down and pressed open the fly in his boxers. She found his long, hot length. “I want you inside me again. Before you go. Wherever.” His cock was smooth skin over steel and she massaged him, stroked him. “Tell me you have protection in one of your pockets. I have been wet for you all day. Frantic to find you.”
“Coming here,” he brushed his lips across hers, “I knew I’d need quite a few condoms.” His hand reached inside his jacket pocket and she heard the crinkled of foil.
Quivering in anticipation, she laughed. “Can I help you?”
He dived in for a hard quick kiss. “No, baby.” He pressed her against the wall and in two seconds, he had one package open and a condom rolled down his cock. In the pale light drifting through her sheer curtains, she could see his narrow-eyed concentration. And then, she was crushed in his arms once more.
He nudged aside her other leg and yanked at the button of her slacks, slipped down her zipper and flicked the pants down to her ankles. “Step out of these.” And when she did, he took hold of her panties and yanked. He put one hand to her cunt and found her clit, pinched the raw bundle of nerves and made her yelp with delight.
“I don’t ever want you to cover your sweet pussy again. I want you bare. Ready for my fingers and my mouth. And my cock. Anytime I need you. Agreed?”
“Yes,” she moaned as he invaded her wet cunt with two fingers. “Oh, yes.”
“Good girl.” He caught her up under her ass so that her legs were around his hips and pushed into her hungry channel in one swift, commanding stroke.
Her head fell back against the wall. Her body was so deliciously full of his cock and her mind was flooded with the need to fuck him. With strong muscles of her sopping wet chan
nel, she clenched his shaft in wild demand, and it was his turn to yelp.
“Oh, honey, you’ll mark me yet with this juicy pussy. Let me make us both happy.” And then he pumped her ’til she groaned and pounded her until he bit her shoulder. She gritted her teeth and keened in delight.
“Now baby, now!” He rocked her against the wall in a rhythmic pulse she savored to the last orgasmic ripple left her spent and his own shot from him in a rush.
He let her feet fall to the floor. His smiling mouth was warm and lush on hers as he rasped, “Like last night in the stairwell, our specialty seems to be standing up.”
She lifted her hands to cup his cheeks, her voice sultry from his loving. “I like you any way I can get you.”
He rubbed her nose with his. “So what if I have you on the stairs?”
Grinning, she rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “What will I do with you?”
“Tell me.” His tongue trailed down her throat. “What will you do with me?”
She undid his tie, the buttons of his shirt and slid his suit coat from his shoulders. “I’ll have you naked.” She eyed his trousers and shoes. “Step out of those, baby.”
He did as he was told, then deftly removed the condom, marched into the kitchen and returned in a flash. Digging in his pants’ pocket, he produced another foil and held it up in the air. His fervid eyes teased her and his brows arched in question.
Maddie watched him as she sat on the third step of her staircase, her shirt tails dangling between her thighs, her pussy weeping with want of another good loving.
Dan came to stand before her, his blue-veined cock now at mouth-level, engorged with need of her.
She admired his yummy offering. She fisted his rod, bent and flicked her tongue over the slit. “You are delicious, honey. And to think all this cum is just for me.”
He made a low rumbling sound in his throat. “You’d better get on with that, baby, ’cause I am dying here.”
She raised her gaze to his, the seductress in her appearing for a second astonishing time with this man who was her lover.“Let me see what I can do to help you out.”