So this, she thought, was how babies got made. The only wonder was that every square foot of the earth hadn’t been filled with children eons ago.
Ryder let out a contented sigh as he withdrew from her. Lisa wondered if there were a delicate way to ask him how soon they could do this again.
He untangled his legs and scooted back. Several inches, but it felt like miles. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a virgin?” he said.
Chapter Five
Ryder waited for Lisa to tell another lie. He couldn’t imagine how even a practiced faker like her could devise a convincing untruth for giving a stranger her virginity. Why did he still long to trust her?
Too edgy to hold still, he gripped the edge of the counter, pulled himself up and limped over to finish showering. When he emerged, he surveyed Lisa as she sat brooding in a tangle of black hair and olive skin. If only she weren’t so impossibly beautiful, he might be able to think straight.
No doubt she found it easy to manipulate people, he reflected unhappily. The way she’d apparently done with him. “Well?”
“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to know,” she said. “How often can people do that?”
“Do what?”
“What we just did. Have sex,” she said. “Do we have to wait an hour or something?”
“You mean like swimming after eating?” He shook his head. “Lady, I’m not about to get sidetracked. Why on earth would you pick a stranger to—”
Another complication struck him. “We didn’t use protection. Were you lying about being on the pill? Even if you were, these days, heaven knows what risks you ran. We both ran.”
“You aren’t in danger. My health is fine.” Despite the wet floor, she rose gracefully. Like a nymph, he thought, and could have punched himself for such a ridiculous notion. “I took your medical history, remember?” She reached for a white towel.
“I could have lied.”
“Why would you? You thought I was a nurse.”
“Because, although I suppose you already know this, some people lie all the time.” Ryder winced as his ankle, which had been behaving itself, resumed throbbing. He held tight to the edge of the shower stall, but refused to make any further concessions to weakness. “They like being in control, and keeping other people in the dark is one way to accomplish that.”
Lisa stopped in the act of wrapping the towel around her waist, sarong-style. “You mean me?”
“You see anybody else around here who’s stretched the truth like bubble gum?”
“I haven’t stretched anything. I lied outright.” The white terry cloth brought out the velvet of her skin, and, infuriatingly, she had left herself naked from the waist up. Against his will, Ryder’s body began springing to life again. “Lisa! Answer my question!”
“There is a man I’m trying to escape from, but he isn’t a baron,” she said.
“And—let’s see—he’ll leave you alone if you can prove you aren’t a virgin?” Ryder said.
“Well, no.” He was glad she hadn’t seized on that obvious pretext.
“You just wanted to find out what sex was like before you shackled yourself to someone, let me guess, rich and powerful and acceptable to your parents?”
“Absolutely not!” Her eyes flashed green fire. “I don’t intend to marry him at all.”
“I have good news—you don’t have to.” Ryder grabbed a blue towel and yanked it around his own midsection. “It’s a free country. So is Argentina, last I checked.”
He stuck the end of the towel into place and lifted his hands. With scarcely a slither of warning, the terry cloth dropped to the floor.
“You didn’t pull it tight enough,” said Lisa.
“Maybe you could show me.”
She raised one eyebrow. “I’d be happy to. But you haven’t answered my question.”
“What question was that?”
“How long do we have to wait before we do it again?”
He couldn’t believe her nerve. Worse, the longer he stared at her bare breasts and lively face, the quicker his body readied for a rematch. In his present state of undress, that fact would soon be obvious. “Decades,” he said, and hobbled out of the bathroom.
She followed on his tail. “Are you angry?”
He tried to snatch his clothes off the floor and twisted his ankle painfully. “Pick that up for me, will you?”
Lisa scooped up the garments, scarcely seeming aware that she was still half-nude. Ryder took the chance to examine her breasts with more objectivity than had been previously possible and decided they were perfect.
“My girlfriends told me guys like to have sex,” she said as she handed them over. “I didn’t think you would mind, you know, doing it.”
“That wasn’t the part I’m objecting to.” He removed the soggy bandages from his ankle, tossed them to her and dressed quickly. “It’s the other part.”
“The, uh, fib?” she asked.
“Fibs, plural.” He fastened his jeans. “Poke around in the medicine chest and see if you can find a first aid kit, will you?” It occurred to Ryder that, since she hadn’t recognized a can opener, she might not know what a first aid kit looked like, either. “It should be a white box with a red cross on it.”
With a nod, she vanished into the bathroom. “If it’s not in the cabinet, try under the sink!” he called.
As rustling and clicking sounds emerged, Ryder did what any other red-blooded American private investigator would do. He went into the living room and opened Lisa’s purse.
It was styled of soft gray leather, with no designer name visible. He examined the contents: a small silver comb and brush; an embroidered makeup kit; a small vial of perfume from which wafted the scents of springtime and mystery. Upon opening the sleek wallet, he found several thousand dollars in American money and a smaller amount in Euros. Also a debit card with no name on it and a prepaid phone, neither likely to be traceable.
There was an international driver’s license in the name of Lisa Schmidt, with an address in Zurich, Switzerland. No sign of a passport. Perhaps she’d left it in the safe at her hotel.
This whole situation was strange. Somebody could be setting Ryder up, but for what—blackmail? He was neither married nor a politician, and deflowering a virgin by mutual consent was no crime. Maybe one of the men he’d captured over the years hoped to hurt him. But how?
They couldn’t have known, he reflected as he returned Lisa’s papers to her purse, that she would awaken feelings he hadn’t suspected he was capable of. Like tenderness. And protectiveness. And an irrational wish for her to stick around for a while.
“Ryder?” Lisa, still half-naked, stood radiating anxiety as she watched him replace her purse on the coffee table. “What are you doing?”
“I wish I’d found your passport,” he said. “This driver’s license might be fake.”
“Why do you care?” Her eyes had gone wide and vulnerable. Her hands gripped the first aid kit so tightly, he feared the thing might crack.
“Are you working for someone?”
“No.”
“Do you have an ulterior motive?”
“Yes, but it doesn’t concern you.”
“Excuse me?” If he could bottle the sincerity in those emerald eyes, Ryder reflected, he could make a million dollars as a con man.
“Did you ever want something in your life to be flawless? Just once, so you could hold it in your memory forever?” As she spoke, Lisa sat on the coffee table, opened the first aid kit and pried the cover off a roll of bandages.
“No.” Ryder plopped his leg on the low table without much grace. The thud sent needles of agony shooting through his ankle.
“I guess you wouldn’t have to, because you can keep searching for whatever you want until you find it,” she went on as she placed his ankle firmly in her lap and began wrapping it. “But my life isn’t usually within my own control. However, this one thing, this first time, I wanted to have my way.”
&nbs
p; “You think I should be honored that I was chosen to deflower you?” Ryder growled, struggling to disregard the scent of flowers wafting from her hair. “Without my prior knowledge or consent, I might add.”
Lisa worked with smooth proficiency. “I apologize. I thought you would simply enjoy having sex and wouldn’t care why you got it.”
Her explanation for her behavior almost rang true. But Ryder was not the sort of man to be satisfied with “almost,” particularly when other discrepancies kept cropping up. “How is it that you can wrap an ankle like an expert when you couldn’t even open a can of soup?”
“I did volunteer work at a hospital,” Lisa said. “It was the only activity my parents would allow.” Expertly she ripped off the end of the bandage and fixed it in place with two strips of adhesive. “There!”
“Good as new,” he grumbled.
She put away the bandages and shut the kit. “Ryder, make love to me again.”
“Why? Wasn’t that perfect enough?”
She laughed. “Too perfect. I want more.”
“But I’m betting not enough to stick around very long.” He wondered why he’d said that. Ryder didn’t care to have anybody sticking around.
“Won’t you take me the way I am?” she asked.
Oh, yes, he would. He’d take her on the couch. On the floor. In the kitchen—no, scratch that, it was still a mess. “Come here,” he said. “Let’s see if we can’t make it just a little more perfect.”
*
Lisa had never imagined there could be such pleasure in the world. And it wasn’t only physical. She had never suspected that she would want to yield to a man so completely, nor that he could also yield to her. Ryder had a gift for holding her, studying her, teasing her, that exceeded even her dreams.
As they dozed side by side later that evening, she admitted silently that this discovery of what could happen between a man and a woman was completely unexpected. How could she abandon such a precious thing?
Pensively, Lisa regarded the man in bed with her. He lay amid rumpled covers, with one arm thrown across his forehead. Shadows and moonlight brought out the classic lines of his cheeks and nose. Suppose she did have Ryder’s baby. Was it fair that he would never know his child? Or that the child would never have a father?
What if it resembled him so strongly that, every day for the next twenty years, Lisa found herself staring into searching brown eyes, a reminder of her deception and of this brief happiness? What if she spent the rest of her life wishing she’d never left Ryder?
Maybe she shouldn’t. She caught her breath. She’d never had such a rebellious thought before in her life. Scarcely daring to believe what she was considering, she assessed the ramifications.
It would be wrong to disappear, leaving her parents distraught. But, as Ryder had said, Lisa did have the freedom to reject their choice of a husband and to live her own life. With him? Would that be possible?
He was different from anyone she had known. Her parents would never accept him, but then, he would probably never accept them, either.
The prospect of disappointing her family wrenched at Lisa. She wouldn’t do it just for her own selfish pleasure. Still, as Ryder had made clear, he was no object to be used and discarded. Unintentionally or not, a chain of events beyond his control had brought her into his world and perhaps started his baby growing inside her. If he had truly fallen in love, he had a claim on her equal to that of her parents.
Her return flight to Paris departed New York late Monday. In order to catch it, she would have to leave here early that morning, the day after tomorrow. She had one day, Sunday, to decide the course of her future. Not a long time to assess his true feelings or hers, but it would have to suffice.
With a sense of infinite danger and possibilities, Lisa ran her hand down Ryder’s shoulder and across his chest. Stirring in his sleep, he smiled to himself. Lover. Husband. Life’s companion. Was it possible? She could scarcely wait to find out.
*
Boris could not believe his bad luck. A private card game with a group of Japanese businessmen had sounded like easy pickings. It had been—for them. They had peeled him like a banana. Why had no one told him they were Yakuza?
Now he was in debt to two sets of gangsters. Then Lothaire called to say that Miss De La Pena, using the name Lisa Schmidt, had caught a connecting flight to Denver, rented a car and disappeared.
“There has to be some record of where she is!” Boris snapped. “Find it!”
“No credit charges from America have been posted, but I have made a few discoveries,” Lothaire replied coolly. Despite his youth, he was rarely disconcerted by Boris’s bad temper. “Prior to her departure, she received a package from Geneva. The return address was that of Win Hoffer, the cameraman who shot your video.”
“What?” Boris could make no sense of this.
“The maid believes that his girlfriend, a Canadian woman, is a friend of Miss De La Pena’s,” Lothaire continued smoothly.
“What was in the package?”
“A fashion magazine,” he said. “That is all she saw, but there may have been other items. Also, Miss De La Pena went to a pharmacy near the château, and afterward the maid saw an ovulation kit in her bathroom.”
“An ovulation kit?” Boris knew nothing about such female devices. “What does it mean?”
“I will contact Mr. Hoffer,” said Lothaire. “For a price I think he will tell us anything he knows. Also, I have learned the flight on which the young lady will be returning from New York. It departs on Monday night.”
“Let’s hope she’s on it,” snarled Boris.
“I do not believe in hope,” said Lothaire. “I believe in preparation.”
“That’s why I pay you.” In the silence that followed, Boris recalled that Lothaire’s last paycheck had bounced. “Of course, I will make good on your back wages.”
“I know you will,” said his employee.
“Once we have Miss De La Pena in hand.” Boris liked the sound of that. As he broke the connection, he felt almost cheerful, until he remembered that he had just lost over a hundred thousand dollars to the Japanese mob.
*
“Ms. Schmidt paid for her room in cash,” said the hotel clerk, who had proved amenable to a bribe in looking up a guest’s information. “There are no additional charges to her bill.”
“She arrived here alone?” Ryder asked.
“To the best of my knowledge, yes.”
“Thanks.” Giving the counter a frustrated smack, Ryder limped across the lobby. It was busy for a Sunday, with some tourists heading to the ski slopes and others wandering into the dining room for brunch.
Already this morning he and Lisa had returned his crutches to the ski lodge and accepted an employee’s offer to drop off his car at the chalet. The fact that such helpfulness was probably motivated by the desire to avoid a lawsuit over his “accident” didn’t make it any less convenient.
Once at the hotel, Lisa had gone upstairs to collect her possessions to take to the chalet. Now Ryder waited impatiently as the minutes ticked by.
Across the lobby, an elevator door swished open and a middle-aged couple emerged. Seeing no one else, he felt a jolt of concern. Where was Lisa? Had she sneaked out while he was waiting?
He wished he didn’t care so much. He also wished he didn’t have to be so uncertain of her intentions.
A second elevator opened. There she was, pulling a wheeled suitcase as she marched across the floor in high-heeled boots. Relief rushed through Ryder, yielding immediately to appreciation.
She’d replaced the soiled ski outfit with a fuzzy pink sweater over white silk slacks. It was an utterly impractical outfit for doing anything except... Well, except having her garments stripped off, which was exactly what he longed to do. But he sought much more from Lisa than she had offered him so far, and the only prospect for winning it required leaving her body alone for a while.
On her path across the lobby, her dark mane shifted
tantalizingly around her. Heads turned. An old man stopped reading a newspaper, a bell captain nearly dropped the luggage he was loading onto a cart and a teenage boy stumbled while following his parents toward the dining room. She didn’t appear to notice that they all wore the same deer-in-the-headlights expression. Ryder supposed he was wearing it, too.
“Allow me.” He hobbled forward and reached for the suitcase. After a brief frown at his ankle, she relinquished it.
His ankle throbbing at every step, he managed with all the grace of a moose in a mud hole to get himself and the suitcase out the door and alongside Lisa’s rental car. Straining to lift the heavy bag into the trunk while balancing on his one good leg, he was relieved to see the doorman hurrying toward him.
“Let me help you, miss!” Ignoring Ryder, the man rushed ahead of Lisa and held the driver’s door for her. “May I say it’s been a pleasure serving you.” She smiled and handed him a tip.
Grumpily, Ryder finished stuffing the suitcase into the trunk, slammed it and got into the passenger seat. His bad mood made no sense to him, unless he was jealous, and that possibility only added to his irritation.
“Turn right at the next corner,” he said.
Lisa switched on the ignition and eased the car forward. “The chalet’s to the left,” she said.
“We have do a little shopping.” Despite Ryder’s reluctance to put any more stress on his ankle, some purchases were urgent. Lisa might be on the pill, but he refused to rely on her word about that. “Turn here,” he said when they reached the supermarket-pharmacy.
“We’re buying groceries?”
“That, too,” he said.
She didn’t follow his drift until they arrived at the display of condoms. Thin ones, textured ones, blue ones, even packages with tattoo-style images on them. “Do you have a preference?” he asked.
Her mouth opened and closed, and she swallowed hard. For heaven’s sake, what was bothering her? And why did the young man in the next aisle have to stare at her with such puppylike adoration?
Let's Make a Baby! Page 6