One of These Nights

by Justine Davis

  “Funny, we could never get it to work on you,” Hugh observed. “We tried to get you to travel more, to take up an art of some kind, or at least to consider something more exciting as a career. But you weren’t buying any of it.”

  Juliet laughed. “But we’re just his parents, after all.”

  “I’m not like you. You know that. I have to be who and what I am.”

  Ian’s voice had the tone of an old refrain, and she wondered how many times he’d said it. Sam began to see what it must have been like for Ian, growing up with these two. And what it must have taken for him to stand fast in the face of their efforts to change him. There was steel beneath that shy exterior and a kind of courage that was no less strong for being quiet.

  “Samantha, I’m so glad we decided to stop by before we catch the red-eye for Monte Carlo, or we might have missed the chance to meet you,” Juliet said effusively, but with such warmth Sam couldn’t doubt the enthusiasm was genuine.

  “Thank you,” Sam said, marveling more than a little at this couple’s Old World charm despite Ian’s advance description. They really, truly liked people, she thought. “Ian’s told me about all your travels.”

  “While he’s the complete homebody,” Hugh said.

  “I seem to recall a few stamps in my passport during my misspent youth,” Ian said dryly.

  “Well, that’s true,” his father agreed. “We did drag you hither and yon a bit, didn’t we?”

  “For all the good it did.” Juliet smiled indulgently at Ian.

  “You were always happier to get home than to go.”

  It was clear that while they might not understand their very different son, they loved him dearly and accepted him the way he was. She wondered if Ian realized how precious that was.

  “Of course, you could always come with us this trip. Bring Samantha,” Hugh added with a devilish glint in his eye.

  Ian opened his mouth and then shut it again, as if biting off whatever he’d been about to say. And Sam thought she saw that faintest brush of color again. She couldn’t blame him, the attack was coming as predicted, just from a different quarter than he’d expected.

  “Oh, darling, you know Ian doesn’t want to go to Monte Carlo.”

  Hmm, not only was his mother not joining in the attack, Sam thought, she seemed to be interceding for her son. Juliet glanced at Ian before looking at Sam. “He simply refuses to live up to our name,” she said, her tone teasingly dramatic. “He doesn’t gamble with anything. Money, time…or emotions.”

  Spoken too soon, Sam realized as Ian’s mother fired that round with motherly accuracy, judging by Ian’s wince. Then Juliet went on before Ian could say a word.

  “Can you believe he’s ours? Or is it that we’re his?”

  “They say things skip a generation,” Sam said, trying for tact as they all sat down.

  Juliet laughed again. “Yes, they do, and he is a bit like his grandfather.”

  “We adore him,” Hugh put in, “we even admire him, but how we ever had such a staid, methodical child I’ll never understand.”

  “There’s lots to admire,” Sam said. She sensed Ian go very still but went on without pause. “And while his process maybe be methodical, the way his mind works, the leaps of intuition he can make, is anything but. It takes an…eccentric mind to do what he does. He must have gotten that from you.”

  Both his mother and father looked startled, then thoughtful, and then, finally, with smiles that fairly warmed the whole room, they nodded.

  “You’re absolutely right,” Hugh said, clearly delighted.

  “I’d never thought of that,” Juliet said, equally cheered.

  If possible, Ian’s parents were even more charming as they spent a pleasant evening. Juliet put together an elaborate meal—they’d stopped at the market, she told Sam, knowing all too well their son’s idea of preparing a meal—and insisted that Sam stay and join them. After a glance at Ian netted her a flatteringly pleading look and a quick nod, Sam confessed that cooking wasn’t in her repertoire, either, and accepted gratefully on condition that she be allowed to clean up.

  She was glad she had, the dinner of luscious lemon and dill-buttered salmon, fresh asparagus and crusty bread, with a tart, fruity sorbet for dessert, was the best thing she’d had in ages. She made certain she told Juliet so repeatedly and refused to let the woman even pick up a dish when the meal was over.

  Maybe she really should learn how to cook.

  At an hour when most people their age would be thinking about going to bed, Hugh and Juliet were getting ready to leave for the airport. And Ian couldn’t help feeling a bit relieved; as parental visits went, this one had been fairly painless.

  Because of Samantha, he thought.

  “You have some long flights ahead of you,” Samantha said with a note of concern.

  “We’ll sleep on the plane,” Juliet assured her with a smile.

  “We’re quite used to it,” Hugh put in.

  Ian loaded his mother’s bag—she couldn’t stop for even a few hours without unpacking a bag, he told Samantha—into the trunk. Hugh and Juliet drove off in a long flash of red car, waving gaily, with a goodbye toot of the horn as they went.

  “They’re quite something,” she said as she and Ian stood in the driveway, watching the taillights fade. “Everything you said and more.”

  “Yes.”

  “Not to mention rather exhausting,” she added.

  Gladness rippled through him; he should have trusted she would see that there was more to it than just their charm. She was too perceptive, too sharp to miss the undercurrents. He grinned at her. “That they can be.”

  She grinned back. “Let’s go finish cleaning up the disaster area. Is there a pot or pan she didn’t use?”

  “That’s my mom,” he said, holding the front door for her. “Leave no utensil unturned.”

  “But it was worth it,” Samantha said, almost prayerfully.

  He laughed. They worked companionably together, until the mess was cleaned, the pots and pans shining and re-hung on the rack and the dishes in the dishwasher. Then a glance at the kitchen clock made Ian grimace.

  “It is late, isn’t it?” Samantha said.

  “And it feels later,” Ian admitted while rubbing at his neck; he always tensed up around his parents, but this, too, wasn’t as bad this time.

  Because of Samantha, he thought again.

  And as he walked her to her door, he knew he had to tell her.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  She unlocked her door, reached in to flip on a light, then turned to look at him. “I should be thanking you,” she said. “I haven’t eaten like that in ages.”

  “But I haven’t been so relaxed with my parents around in longer than that.”

  She smiled. “I enjoyed it. Even the buffer zone part.”

  That she knew exactly what he’d meant came as no surprise.

  “What you said to them tonight, about what I got from them,” he began, then hesitated. At the time he’d felt oddly comforted by the quickness and the earnestness of her intervention. Now he was simply very aware of the powerful feelings her words had roused in him. Especially the words that had so stunned him. There’s a lot to admire….

  At last he stumbled on.

  “They’ve never looked at me like that before. Like they didn’t just love me because I’m their son, but like they were proud of me.”

  God, how pitiful can you get, he thought. Thirty-two years old and you’re still trying to make your parents proud.

  “I’m sure they always have been, but if tonight’s the first time you’ve been sure, you’ve had a long wait,” Samantha said softly.

  She was looking at him, something so warm and understanding in her eyes that he couldn’t help himself. He took a step toward her, expecting her to pull back. She didn’t, she just kept looking at him in that same way, her mouth curved in a slight smile. Holding his breath, he lowered his head.

  He kissed her. Gently, tentat
ively, but in no way the same kind of peck on the cheek Rand had given her. No, he had her lips beneath his, soft, warm, sweet. He could taste her, could feel the heat of her, and his body came to alert in a rush.

  Like a man awakening after a long illness, the new awareness was almost painful. Yet it was a sweet, aching pain, one he wanted more of, as if it would shock him into being alive, really alive, for the first time in longer than he could remember.

  Samantha shifted slightly, not really pulling away, but yet enough to make him realize he was getting too lost in this, that he was asking for too much too soon. He drew back, wanting to look away yet knowing it would be cowardly.

  He struggled for something, anything to say that wouldn’t sound inane. He couldn’t think of a thing, not when his body was demanding he return to this delightful activity he’d too long neglected.

  And then, again Samantha saved him.

  “Good night, Ian,” she said, rescuing him from having to say a thing. “See you in the morning.”

  He nodded mutely, and when she went in and closed the door, he stood there for a moment, lost in a tangle of emotions. And in his head rang his mother’s words to him, spoken while Samantha was safely in the kitchen.

  “Hang on to this one, Ian. She’s special.”

  He knew that all too well.

  But he also knew she wasn’t his to hang on to.

  “You,” Sam said to herself as she paced the bedroom floor, “have lost your mind.”

  What the hell had she been thinking? It wasn’t like she hadn’t had practice turning away unwanted good-night kisses, albeit not much lately, since she’d been working for Draven. But she’d done it countless times before, managing on occasion to even do it gracefully. So was a great home-cooked meal all it took to sap her defenses?

  She shoved her hands into the back pockets of the jeans she’d changed into, turned on her heel and started back across the room, trying not to focus on the one word that explained everything. The one word that made it all clear, including just how much trouble she was in. She tried, but she wasn’t very successful in ignoring that the operative word here was unwanted.

  Unwanted kisses.

  Those were the ones she turned away. She did it instinctively, automatically, without even having to think about it. But with Ian she hadn’t. And it had been just as instinctive. She hadn’t deflected that tentative, almost shy kiss she’d had more than enough time to dodge, hadn’t even thought about it. Even though she sensed Ian wouldn’t have persisted had she done so.

  And I would never have felt that lovely heat, she thought.

  She spun around once more, unable to quite believe it, but less able to deny that she had felt that rush of sensation when Ian had kissed her.

  When she realized her pace had increased almost to a run, she stopped dead in the center of the room. She made herself walk sedately to the window seat and take up her familiar post. She drew her legs up and crossed them in front of her. It had been a long time since she’d used the meditation technique Draven had taught her—it had been a long time since she’d needed it—but she needed it now.

  She consciously tightened every muscle in her body, then relaxed them. Then she started again, working from her feet upward. Tighten, relax, tighten, relax….

  Okay. So she’d made a mistake, allowing that to happen. So she should have rebuffed him, as gently as possible.

  She hadn’t. As Draven said, you can’t go back, it’s the here and now you have to deal with.

  So deal with it.

  She lost track of her progress and had to start at her feet again.

  She would treat it as if it had been a friendly, casual, good-night kiss, a thank-you kiss even, brought on only by his gratitude for her being there while his parents visited. She would treat it like that and go on as if nothing had happened, as if—

  Her own thoughts brought her up sharp, her exercises forgotten.

  What if nothing had happened? What if the reaction had been all one-sided? On her side? What if he’d felt nothing more than what she was proposing to pretend? What if that was all he’d meant to do, thank her for a few hours’ moral support?

  Sam shook her head at the sickly feeling this idea gave her. Then her sense of humor reasserted itself, and in a bemused tone she asked rhetorically, “So, just when did you become so irresistible that any man must fall in love with one kiss?”

  She laughed aloud, then glanced out the window, to send Ian a silent apology.

  There was someone breaking into his house.

  She hadn’t heard a vehicle. A quick glance told her there wasn’t a strange one within sight on the street. There appeared to be only one person. Dressed in dark clothing. At the downstairs front window that led directly into the living room Ian used as an office.

  She ran halfway down the first set of stairs, then went over the rail and dropped down to the lower landing. Two steps more and she was running toward the back of her house and the slider onto the patio.

  She nudged the door open until she could squeeze through. Moving as fast as she could while staying silent she headed toward Ian’s home.

  Stay upstairs, Ian. Stay safe.

  In the darkness she crouched in the even darker shadow of the honeysuckle. She’d never turned on any lights inside, so her eyes didn’t need a lot of adjustment time, and she quickly spotted the figure still working at the window. He had the screen down, and was going at the window itself with a pry bar of some kind.

  Thankful Ian had at least been wary enough to apparently lock the windows to his office, Sam inched forward carefully. She heard a sound, and the dark figure began to make movements that told Sam he was giving up on prying and had taken to cutting the glass itself.

  Prepared, she thought. Not just an impulse break-in. Not that she’d thought for a moment it was.

  She held her breath, waiting. It would be better if she caught him actually in the act of entering the house. Made the case more solid. Not that she’d be calling the police until after she’d gotten some information out of the guy. Josh would want to know who exactly was behind this, and she intended to find out for him. But most important, she would stop him before he got anywhere near Ian; the thought of Ian hurt or worse spurred her heart rate into high gear.

  She saw the man’s arm move, saw him stretch, and knew he had gotten through and was reaching for the lock. She moved forward, gauging the distance between them, planning her move for the moment he was awkwardly straddling the windowsill. Barely a dozen feet between them, she could cover that in—

  Some finely honed sixth sense warned her. She spun. Saw the dark shape coming at her. Dodged right. She wasn’t fast enough, or he was faster than she’d expected. A heavy, strong arm came around her, holding her fast, then pulling her back in the shelter of the honeysuckle.

  She struggled, knowing from the sound of wood sliding over wood that the man at the window had gained entry. And this had to be his accomplice, holding her back until he got what he was after. She was letting Josh down, letting Redstone down. She’d been so worried about Ian’s safety that she’d become too focused.

  Ian’s safety. If she was taken out of the game, he was a sitting duck.

  So she would just have to make sure that didn’t happen.

  She drove back with an elbow. Connected with a solid wall of flesh. Heard a grunt.

  “Take it easy!”

  A familiar voice, impossibly, coming from the man who had stopped her. She shook her head, certain she’d been thinking of him so much she’d somehow manufactured that sound in her mind.

  She twisted to one side. Looked up at the man holding her back.

  It was Ian.

  She went still for a moment in disbelief. Then the need for action rushed back in. She was standing here while the very thing she’d been waiting for happened. Doing nothing. Watching as the man climbed into his office, seeing his shadow as he spent several minutes at each computer and then began to search each desk and table, rifle e
very drawer.

  She twisted against his grasp once more. “Let me go!” Her voice was harsh with the effort to keep it low.

  “Just wait,” Ian whispered back, never loosening his surprisingly strong grip.

  She could break free. Easily, in fact. But to do it she would have to risk injuring him. And while at this moment she wasn’t sure what he was up to, she knew she didn’t want to hurt him.

  So instead she stood doing nothing as the burglar came back to the window, slipping a small box into his pocket before swinging a leg over the sill and sliding back to the ground outside. Then he was out of sight, and moments later they heard a car at some distance, leaving the area with a squeal of tires.

  She pulled free at last and whirled on him. “What was that for?”

  “You looked like you were going to tackle that guy.”

  He said it so calmly, as if a thief hadn’t just made off with work that was, from what she knew, irreplaceable.

  “I was. I could have stopped him. Did you want him to get away with your work?”

  He drew back slightly, frowning. “He didn’t.”

  “But that was a box of disks he stuffed in his pocket.”

  “Yes. But it wasn’t my work. It was a dummy set of disks. I put them in a locked box on the computer desk. Only thing locked up in the room.”

  Which would naturally lead the thief to assume that was the important thing and grab it.

  “Lots of data,” Ian added, “and it looks real, but it’s not. They won’t find out until they get fairly deep into it.”

  “And the real disks are…?”

  “Under the kitchen sink, in the dishwasher soap box.”

  She blinked. And couldn’t think of a single thing to say. For all her admiration for him, she realized she had underestimated Ian Gamble. Not only was he tougher—he’d absorbed her struggles without an ounce of give—but he was also less naive and more clever than she’d given him credit for.

  A lot more clever, she thought as he took a step back from her, an expression of shock dawning on his face.

  Shock, and realization. Her heart sank.

  He knew.