Daria didn’t notice. Her eyes shining with love, she hurried to Peter and took his hand. “The doctor said you’re going to be fine.”
Peter, pasty white, spoke as if talking hurt his throat. “Elizabeth?”
Daria jerked. “No one told you?”
Peter shook his head.
Ryker kept his position against the door, which her parents kept trying to open. Outside, they were demanding that the guard do something.
Daria ignored the commotion and told Peter the sad news. “Elizabeth swallowed the entire piece of candy.”
“But—” Peter croaked.
“She didn’t make it, Peter.” Daria scooted onto a corner of the bed, sat next to her brother and smoothed back his hair. “I’m sorry. I know you and Elizabeth had become good friends recently. I’ll…miss her, too.”
Peter turned his head away from Daria and closed his eyes, shutting her out, keeping his pain to himself. Either he wanted to grieve in private, or he’d turned away from Daria because he blamed her. Ryker wasn’t sure. But Daria had a stricken look on her face that made Ryker leave his position at the door to go to her side.
He placed a hand on her shoulder. “Peter probably needs to be alone now. We should go.”
Peter didn’t say a word. After several moments of tense silence Daria stood, her entire body trembling.
Before Ryker could say more, her parents burst back into the room. Rudolf’s face was red with anger. Shandra had a wildness in her eyes, almost a madness that kept Ryker prepared to defend Daria if she decided to do something foolish like attack.
Shandra looked at Peter lying so still on the bed with his eyes closed and used words like a weapon. “The police should never have let you in here. What have you done to my son now?”
Daria didn’t answer. She didn’t look at Shandra or her father. With her head high, she let Ryker take her out of the hospital and didn’t say a word during the walk to the garage where they’d left her car.
She didn’t protest when he took the keys to her car from her trembling fingers and helped her into the passenger seat. He drove. She didn’t ask any questions. She didn’t seem to notice that he’d taken complete control of where they were going.
Ryker thought it odd that she hadn’t cried. She hadn’t raged. She was too quiet, keeping her emotions all balled up. Obviously she didn’t want to talk. Or perhaps, she couldn’t. Not yet.
So he gave her time to come to terms with everything that had happened today. He’d let her unwind at her own pace. Sometimes silence could be healing. She sure didn’t need to make the extra effort to reassure him that she’d be fine. He knew she would recover. She was strong.
Ryker didn’t think twice about where to take her. She would want to go home, to the soothing retreat she’d built in the middle of the steel city. So he drove straight to her penthouse, wondering all the while what he’d do if she didn’t snap out of her silence. He’d come to care for Daria Harrington in a very short time. And right now he was willing to do anything to comfort her.
DARIA OPENED HER purse, but couldn’t find the key to her front door. A moment of panic set in before she recalled the key now hung from a string around her neck. Her overreaction to the problem only proved how horrible her day had been.
After she finally unlocked the door, hopefully without Ryker noticing her high state of tension, she stared at the new security system in dismay. A red light blinked a thirty-second countdown. She had twenty seconds to enter her code before the system automatically alerted the police to an intruder.
And her mind went blank. “I can’t remember the damn code.”
“No big deal.” Ryker reached over her shoulder and punched it in, then locked the door behind them.
Daria didn’t know why she hated other people to see her weaknesses, but she did. Probably it went back to her childhood and having to be strong to win her father’s attention. Before she understood that he ignored her simply because she was female, she’d deliberately cultivated the habit of controlling her feelings, of exhibiting strength in the face of a crisis. However, the strain of holding everything together had her on a short fuse.
Ryker had a way of soothing the raw edges of her stress. He didn’t rag her about forgetting the code. He didn’t force her to talk or try to distract her.
The plants inside her apartment should have calmed her. But the greenery reminded her of the loss of Elizabeth and the horror of almost losing Peter, too. She felt as though someone had taken her safe world and tossed it into a pit of garbage, throwing in evil elements that had grabbed hold and wouldn’t let go. Evil that she couldn’t fight. Evil that stalked her with relentless determination and that left her shivering with cold.
Daria didn’t think she’d ever feel warm again. She considered taking a sauna or a hot whirlpool bath, but she felt like glass about to shatter and only the comfort of human arms would keep her world glued together. She turned around to find Ryker watching her carefully, as if he expected her to break down. And she wanted to, desperately wanted release from the emotions pummeling her.
Why was asking for his help so difficult? He couldn’t read her mind. She had to force the words through her lips. “Hold me?”
She didn’t have to ask twice.
He wrapped her in his arms, drawing her against his heat. She inhaled deeply, drawing his masculine scent straight into her lungs and absorbing his essence into her pores. Could he sense that leaning into his embrace made her feel less isolated? Less alone.
Ever since Fallon’s death, Daria had missed her daily chats on the phone with her sister. She’d missed sharing the responsibility of the business, but most of all, she’d missed having someone to talk to, someone to whom she could speak her mind without first considering the impact of her words. Fallon had loved Daria unconditionally, loved her for her strengths and her weaknesses, her good points and her bad.
But her sister had been killed. Murdered. And the loss stayed with Daria every waking minute. And now in the span of two months, she had lost her best friend. Almost lost the brother she loved.
Somehow Daria’s life had swung way out of control. She couldn’t count on people she knew being alive tomorrow. She couldn’t count on holding on to her business. She couldn’t even count on not going to jail.
His arm around her, Ryker led her through the plants in the foyer and she spied a cat leaping for cover. “I was captured during a mission in Panama,” he began.
She had no idea what he was talking about or why he’d started telling her this story out of the blue, but his words drew her out of her own depressing thoughts. She hadn’t known he’d been captured.
“It wasn’t the bad food or daily sessions with the T-man—”
“T-man?”
“T was short for torture. I had information that they wanted.”
Daria strode beside him, leaning into the comfort of his solidity. “Why didn’t you give them the information they wanted?”
“Because too many good men would have died.”
Ryker had never talked about his past to her before, and she was curious about him. Besides, learning about him was so much preferable to thinking about her problems that she suspected he’d deliberately brought up the conversation to distract her. His tactic was working.
“The food inside the prison wasn’t fit for man or beast. Clean water, sanitation and medical care were nonexistent. I was undercover, a kite.”
“A kite?”
“It means that if you’re caught, your country cuts the string and all ties. I was on my own and could expect no official help from the authorities.”
She knew better than to ask about the mission. “How long were you in prison?”
“Several weeks. I missed my family.”
“You’ve never spoken about them.” Except the mother he’d lost at a young age and a father, an alcoholic.
“We’re trained not to mention anything personal that can come back to hurt those we love. My father died of cirr
hosis of the liver when I was twenty-two. I have an older brother, Donald, who is married and has three kids, and a younger sister, Lucy, now a lawyer in Chicago.”
“Are you close?”
“We were tight as children, especially after Mom died, but later, after I joined the service, we drifted apart. But when I was in that prison, I had lots of time to think. What I regretted most—besides getting caught—was that I hadn’t kept in touch. Now I see Donald and Lucy whenever I can and we talk frequently on the phone.”
They strolled through her home, and she led him toward the heated tub that pulled her like a flower to the summer sun. “I keep swimsuits for guests over there.” She pointed to a closet with robes and towels. “How about sharing a whirlpool and you can finish your story?”
“Sounds good.”
She hoped the change in location wouldn’t alter his loquacious mood. She changed quickly and entered the tub. The water warmed her flesh, but couldn’t take the chill from her bones.
She had a great view of him when he exited the bathroom. His bare chest was broad, softly dusted with curly black hair that tapered in a V down to his flat stomach. For a man who sat in front of a computer for most of the day, he had surprisingly well-formed muscles—and lots of scars.
From the T-man? She’d noted how lightly he’d skipped over that part of his story. Obviously, he’d endured much, but he had survived.
He eased into the bubbling water with a sigh, leaned back and closed his eyes.
“Don’t you dare go to sleep on me.”
He opened his eyes and the heat in them made her catch her breath. He wasn’t sleepy. His look was hot, seductive, revealing that sleep had to be the last thing on his mind. But just as clearly, he was determined not to make the first move toward her.
“Why did you tell me about being in prison?” she asked, wondering why he’d picked that part of his history to share with her.
“I was in a cell with ten other men. Luckily I spoke Spanish, but I was the only American. We didn’t exactly bond.”
And he hadn’t exactly answered her question. She suspected he was telling her the cleaned-up version and had vastly understated the horror of the conditions.
“Although none of us thought we’d ever see our families again, everyone feared that talking to me would bring down the wrath of the guards. And I figured that any of them could be a plant to get me to talk, a way to force me to break my silence.”
She finally understood. “You were surrounded by people, but were alone.”
“I figured that after the T-man was done with me— I wouldn’t live to see another day.”
She shuddered, and she moved to the seat next to him, letting her hip brush against his. At least she wasn’t yet locked in a cell and she had Ryker to talk to. “It sounds like it was hopeless, but you’re here.”
“Harry saved me.”
Harry? She looked at him in surprise. She hadn’t known that the men had worked together or even known one another. “How did Harry save you?”
“He tried bribing the authorities and threatening the warden.” Ryker grinned. “But when neither tactic worked, he broke me out of prison and disguised me as a nun.”
At the image of Ryker in robes, Daria grinned. Especially after she’d seen his magnificent body, which matched the very male heat in his eyes. Yet, acting the perfect gentleman, he hadn’t done more than hold her to comfort her.
Now he sank into the water, leaned his head back against the rim, closed his eyes and extended his arms out to both sides. With his elbows bent, his hands rested lightly on the pool’s edge in a totally relaxed position.
It figured. She finally wanted him to do something and he ignored her.
Daria no longer felt like keeping herself separate and apart. She no longer wanted words of comfort or even silence. She wanted a physical connection, all that he could offer. Up until this moment, she’d thought she wanted to be held, cuddled. But now, sitting alone with Ryker in the hot whirlpool tub, remembering the power of his kiss—how his lips on hers in the hospital had ever so briefly flushed anger and fear from her thoughts, she’d changed her mind. Her life might be falling apart around her. She’d already lost Fallon, Harry and Elizabeth. Peter blamed her for his almost dying. Her father and his wife hated her more than ever. She might go to jail. Lose the business. She seemed to have no control over her destiny.
So it suddenly seemed crucial to her to take control of one part of her life. She wanted him. And she wanted to have him her way. She wanted to be in charge. Take back a measure of herself that had been lost in the last two frustrating months.
And once she made the decision to go forward, she found the wracking tension in her shoulders ease, replaced by another kind of tightness in the pit of her stomach.
She wanted to make love to this man. She wanted the intimate bond, but she didn’t quite know how to go about letting him know.
Daria knew Ryker well enough to realize that he wouldn’t make a move on her—not if he thought she was vulnerable, which in so many ways she was.
So she would have to convey her change of heart. She didn’t expect he would refuse her. But then why did her tummy flutter? Why did her nerves feel stretched and raw and taut? Why was her pulse roaring in her ears so loudly that she could barely think?
Daria wasn’t inexperienced, just out of practice. She boldly placed her hand on Ryker’s thigh. When he didn’t react, didn’t change expression, her heart thundered in her chest.
Ever so slowly, she ran her fingers up the outside of his leg, and down the inside, each movement light and suggestive. Beneath her palm, his corded muscles twitched. And Ryker sucked in a breath. But he didn’t open his eyes and he didn’t reach out to touch her.
“Please, don’t move,” she requested.
“Okay.”
Hmm.
She considered him like a feast spread before her. Where did she want to sample first? With a nibble on his lips? A bite on the shoulder?
For the moment, she savored his long eyelashes and the arrogant line of his nose. She appreciated his sharp cheekbones offset by full lips, and his muscular neck that sloped to broad shoulders and a powerful chest that had her fingers itching to touch.
She floated from her position by his side to face him head-on, and decided that although he might be attractive as a sculpture, she wanted to disturb his equilibrium the same way he did hers.
Gently, she parted his thighs and kneeled on the seat between his legs. He didn’t resist, didn’t open his eyes, but the quick beat of the pulse in his neck told her that he was very aware of her presence.
Placing her fingertips on his temples, she skimmed her fingers down his cheeks, explored his ears and dipped to his throat. He’d shaved that morning, yet the lightest of stubble had already regrown, tickling her palms. She smoothed the tip of her index finger over his lips, outlining them. He nipped at her flesh with his teeth and she placed the tip of her finger into his mouth, grinning when his breathing grew progressively more ragged.
Her breasts already ached for the freedom to float free of her swimsuit. She almost gave in to the urge to strip. But she wanted him naked first. She wanted him as vulnerable, as open to her as she would soon be to him.
First she intended to familiarize her skin with his. Ryker’s shoulders had fascinated her from the moment they’d met, and she smoothed the ridged musculature with light sweeping strokes that teased her palms with subtle friction. In contrast to her softness, his body was firm and warm. Warmer than the water. Warm enough to radiate heat through her hands, straight to her core.
At her boldness, at her enjoyment in discovering his sensitive places, her breasts ached and her nipples hardened into tiny buds that poked through the thin material of her swimsuit. She ignored her response, letting her imagination run wild as her hands roamed freely over his chest.
Impressed by his physique, her mouth went dry. Her voice came out husky. “You know what I’m going to do to you?”
“What?”
“I’m going to rub my breasts against you. Would that be all right with you?”
His hands tightened around the rim. “That would be…fine.”
With a knowing grin of satisfaction, she told him exactly what she intended to do before she moved. “I’ll have to part my legs.”
He groaned. Trembled. But didn’t move.
And she’d never felt quite so sexy. After changing her position, she became aware that his sex had grown hard, strained beneath the swimsuit, and she found the idea of him ready and waiting for her a complete turn-on.
She straddled his hips, pressing lightly against his erection, knowing she could tease all she wanted and the tiny scrap of swimsuit between her legs would prevent him from going further than she was ready to permit. Though admittedly, she was ready to permit quite a lot. Then she leaned forward and brushed the tips of her breasts against him in a circular motion, like a cat in pursuit of a pleasurable caress.
And he groaned again, back arching to close the distance between them, chest muscles straining to feel more of her. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing to me?”
“Is that a complaint?”
“No, just a question.”
The water swirled around them, giving her freedom to move, to gyrate her hips without breaking the friction of her chest against his or halt the delicious sensations coursing through her. When she leaned forward to kiss his mouth, she intended to go slowly, lightly, but she couldn’t hold back.
She discovered that the wait had increased her craving for his mouth. Her tongue tangled with his, mimicking the movements of her hips, until she’d wound her arms around his neck, threaded her fingers through his thick dark hair and plastered herself against him.
The thin material that separated their bodies had become a barrier. She craved the feel of his skin next to hers. Reaching down, she slipped her hands inside the waistband of his trunks. He lifted his hips, and she slid the material to his knees before returning to her former position.
Defending the Heiress Page 11