Sandra's Classics - The Bad Boys of Romance - Boxed Set

by Sandra Marton

  "Are you always so rude?"

  The words were out before she could stop herself. The man laughed.

  "Touché, Miss Mitchell. Look, why don't we begin again? I'll go outside, open that door, step into the office, and—"

  "And we'll be nowhere unless you tell me your name."

  "Saxon. Peter Saxon. General Casualty sent me. I'm here to check on the Winstead security arrangements."

  Sara stared at him. Some four-eyed whiz-kid, the chief had said, but that hardly described Peter Saxon. In fact, it was impossible to picture him working for something so conservative as an insurance company. The outlaw image flashed into her mind again. Ridiculous. Why did she keep thinking that? And where had she seen this man's face before?

  "When you've finished committing my features to memory, Miss Mitchell, I'd appreciate it if you would buzz your boss and tell him I'm here."

  Her cheeks turned scarlet, and she pushed back her chair and rose to her feet.

  "Just have a seat," she said stiffly. "I'll see if the chief—"

  Peter Saxon rolled his eyes skyward. "Hell, it's got to be easier to get into the Oval office!"

  "Chief Garrett is busy. I'll tell him—"

  Peter Saxon moved towards her. "I'll tell him myself," he said impatiently. His hands closed on her arms and he lifted her out of his way as easily as if she were weightless.

  "Mr. Saxon! What do you think you're—?"

  The door to the chief's office sprang open. Jim Garrett glowered at Sara, then at the man beside her.

  "Is there a problem out here, Sara?"

  Sara swallowed. "This man—this man is from the insurance company. His name is——"

  "My name is Saxon. General Casualty asked me to drop by and see you before I went out to the Winstead house."

  Garrett's eyes narrowed speculatively, as if he, too, were trying to place Peter Saxon's face, and then he shrugged his shoulders and turned towards his office.

  "Well, come on in and we'll talk."

  "Jim," Sara said quickly, "I'm sorry. I tried—"

  A lazy smile eased across Saxon's mouth. "That's all right, sweetheart," he said softly, touching his hand lightly to her cheek, "I'll tell your boss you fought like a tiger. Don't worry about a thing."

  She watched in stunned silence as the door swung shut. Her hand rose slowly to her face, and she put her fingers against her cheek. The skin seemed to burn where Peter Saxon had touched it.

  She was trembling when she sat down at her desk. Half a dozen angry retorts sprang into her mind and she wished she’d thought of them a moment before but Saxon had caught her by surprise. Anyway, she wasn't used to that kind of thing, that teasing she knew went on between men and women. Saxon had to know it; that had to have been why he had done it, just to make her feel uncomfortable.

  Voices drifted from behind the closed door. Jim's voice was loud and angry, which surprised her. In the seven years she had worked for him, she'd rarely seen him lose his temper. Now, she could hear Peter Saxon's voice, too. The laughter had fled it, and he sounded as angry as Jim.

  Sara pushed back her chair, uncertain as to what to do, just as the door to the chief's office flew open. Her boss stalked towards her, his normally florid face almost purple with rage.

  "Get me Dick Parker at General Casualty," he demanded.

  She stared past him to the doorway where Peter Saxon stood, arms crossed. The lazy, insolent smile was gone. That firm mouth was narrow with anger; his eyes were dark coals. There was, Sara thought suddenly, a look of closely controlled violence about him.

  It made the breath catch in her throat.

  "Dammit to hell, Sara, get me that number!"

  Her hands shook as she punched it in, then handed Jim the phone. She heard him snarl into it, but his words didn't penetrate. Her eyes were locked on Peter Saxon's face. Of course she had seen him before. In a newspaper? A magazine? Yes, in both places. But why? Why...?

  Garrett cursed, snarled something into the phone, then slammed it down. His breathing was rapid and loud.

  "Terrific," he said. "That's terrific. Just what I need."

  Saxon shrugged his shoulders. A smile curved across his mouth, but his eyes remained dark and cold.

  "The company thinks so."

  "So they just said. And that stupid S.O.B. Winstead thinks so, too, I suppose."

  Saxon nodded. "He says it will bring in a lot of publicity. More tickets. More money for the charity."

  Jim slammed his hand against Sara's desk. "And you, friend, probably love every minute of all this. Hell, I'll bet you're eating it up."

  Peter Saxon raised an eyebrow.

  "It's—interesting."

  The police chief laughed unpleasantly. "Interesting? Giving you this job is like asking a fox to guard a henhouse."

  Saxon's eyes met Garrett's. "Their reasoning precisely." The cold, quick smile came and went again. "What better way to protect the chickens than to ask the fox's opinion of the henhouse?"

  Jim's lip curled in disgust. "Listen, Saxon, you may have conned General Casualty, you may have conned Winstead, you may have conned your parole officer..."

  Sara drew in her breath. "Parole officer?" she whispered.

  "...but I wasn't born yesterday. And if you think I'm going to turn you loose in that house tonight—"

  "It's not your decision, Garrett. Winstead and the company want me there. I'm the man who chose the security systems."

  Jim laughed coldly. "Right. The icing on the cake.” He turned to Sara. "Anybody needs me, call me on my mobile. I'm going to accompany Mr. Saxon while he checks out the Winstead house."

  "You have appointments later. And—"

  "Mr. Saxon's my only appointment today. I'm going to stick to him like glue. And tonight—" The chief's eyes narrowed. "Damn," he muttered. "Tonight's impossible. How am I going to supervise my men and those private cops Winstead hired, and still stay with Saxon?"

  Saxon's smile was icy. "You can spare me the hospitality, Garrett. I don't need an escort."

  Jim stabbed his finger at Sara. "You're working tonight," he said curtly.

  Sara blinked. "What?"

  "You're going to that damned party."

  She shook her head. Nothing that was happening made any sense—this least of all.

  "I told you, I'm not. Thank you for asking, but—"

  Jim Garrett slammed his hand against her desk so hard that she jumped. "Dammit, this isn't an invitation, it's an order. Give Saxon your address."

  Her eyes widened with bewilderment. "What? What are you talking about? I don't—"

  Saxon laughed softly. "What a nice guy you are, Garrett. You're fixing me up with a date."

  "Chief..." Sara's voice caught; she cleared her throat and began again. "Chief, please, what's going on? What are you talking about? I don't understand—"

  "Mr. Saxon is General Casualty's idea of a security expert, Sara." Jim's voice was thick with displeasure. "Would you like to tell her your credentials, Mr. Saxon?"

  Peter Saxon's brown eyes narrowed. "No," he said softly, "I wouldn't want to spoil things for you, Garrett. Why don't you tell her yourself?"

  Jim put his hands on his hips. "He's a con."

  Sara stared at Peter Saxon in disbelief. He made her a mocking bow.

  "An ex-convict, Miss Mitchell. I paid my debt."

  The chief of police snorted. "He served sixteen months on a four-year term, Sara. Hell, they should have locked him away forever. He's got a list of thefts as long as your arm."

  "I was charged with one count of burglary. The rest is all conjecture."

  Sara let out her breath. "Yes!" she whispered. "Your face—I remember now." She looked at him and swallowed. "The papers called you—they called you the "Thief of Hearts". They said you—you stole jewels from women you—you'd..."

  Saxon laughed. "Hearsay, Miss Mitchell." A quick, sexy smile curved across his mouth. "Believe me," he said softly, "I've never taken anything from a woman that she didn't gladly of
fer."

  Sara's heart stumbled against her ribs. It had all come tumbling back. The gushing headlines, the swirl of gossip—Peter Saxon, born to wealth and power, had been caught making his way across the dark rooftop of a Sutton Place townhouse with a fortune in emeralds in his pocket. The circumstances of the theft had convinced the police he was the man who had committed a series of breathtaking thefts.

  But they could prove nothing. It had even been difficult to get the woman whose emeralds he had stolen to testify against him. She was a well-known society beauty; she and Saxon had moved in the same circles. She'd claimed that she had been in bed, asleep, when the thief entered her bedroom, that she knew nothing the prosecution could use. The papers had made much of that.

  Peter Saxon's voice was a purr. "You have such an open face, Miss Mitchell. I can tell everything you're thinking."

  Sara blinked, met the laughter in his eyes, and looked at her boss.

  "You're crazy, Jim," she said flatly. "I'm not—"

  "Are you afraid of me, Miss Mitchell?"

  Her chin lifted and she turned towards Saxon.

  "No," she said coldly.

  Jim Garrett nodded. "That's my girl. Just don't let him out of your sight, Sara. Wherever he goes, you go."

  Saxon grinned. "Ah, the possibilities, Miss Mitchell."

  The police chief's face hardened. "I don't want this creep out of your sight."

  The smile fled from Saxon's lips. "Don't push me, Garrett," he said softly. "I'm here on business. Legitimate business. If you don't like it, take it up with Winstead and the insurance company."

  The portly chief of police stared into Peter Saxon's hard eyes for what seemed forever, and then he swallowed and looked away. A chill raced along Sara's spine, and she knew that what he had seen in those smoky brown irises frightened him as much as it had frightened her.

  "Give him your address, Sara. He'll pick you up at seven."

  "Jim, please, you can't ask me to do this. I—"

  Garrett waved his hand in dismissal, stepped into his private office, and slammed the door closed. In the sudden silence, Sara and Peter Saxon stared at each other.

  "I'm not going with you," she said.

  "You're going." His voice was flat, as sharp as the snap of a whip. "I'm supposed to be in the Winstead house tonight. If you're not with me, stuck to my side like glue, as your boss so graciously put it, I'm going to have him sauntering after me, and that’s going to make my job twice as difficult."

  Sara's chin lifted. "I don't give a damn, Mr. Saxon. Your problems are not my—"

  She gasped as his hands closed on her shoulders. The sudden press of his fingers was like steel.

  "Are you afraid I'll steal your jewelry, Miss Mitchell?" His voice was soft, his words a teasing caress.

  "Don't be ridiculous. I haven't any jewels—"

  He smiled wolfishly. "Are you afraid I'll steal something else, then?" The taunt brought a rush of color to her cheeks. Saxon laughed. "You're the one who brought my nickname into the conversation, sweetheart." His eyes moved slowly, insolently over her, lingering on her unpainted lips, moving to her breasts, which were falling and rising rapidly beneath the bulky sweater. "Hell, it might be interesting, Sara." His gaze rose to meet hers; she saw a sudden blaze of light deep within the brown depths. "Very interesting," he said softly.

  The breath caught in her throat. She felt her whole body begin to tremble, as if she were standing in the wind that blew with increasing strength outside.

  "Stop it," she whispered. "You have no right..."

  His hands tightened on her. "You are afraid, aren't you?"

  What she was afraid of was that he’d hear her heart hammering.

  "No," she said quickly. "Why should I be?"

  Peter Saxon smiled crookedly. His eyes darkened until they were like brown velvet, and he drew her to him.

  "I don't know," he said softly. "Suppose you tell me."

  Sara cried out as his head dipped towards her. "Don't," she said, but it was too late. His mouth took hers.

  His lips were cool, assured. She could feel his hands spread on her back, feel the heat of his fingers and palms burn through her heavy sweater. Her hands balled into fists as she raised them and forced them against his chest.

  "You pig," she whispered against his mouth. "You—"

  Later, Sara would wonder if everything that happened during the next endless days could be traced to that moment. If she hadn't fought him, if she had simply let him press his unwelcome kiss against her closed mouth, would it all have ended before it began?

  She would never know. She would know only that her whispered curse gave him access to her parted lips, that when his mouth took hers again, she felt the sudden, silken brush of his tongue.

  She froze for a moment, stunned, and then a heat so intense that it was beyond anything she had ever known, even in the privacy of her dreams, swept through her.

  Her body seemed to become boneless. She trembled in Peter Saxon's arms; her hands opened and spread on his chest, her fingers curling into the leather jacket for support. She heard herself whimper softly, heard him make an answering sound deep in his throat, and then his arms tightened around her and he gathered her to him so closely that she could feel the muscled hardness of his body pressing against hers.

  In that long, sweet moment, time stopped. Then, with a suddenness that left Sara gasping, his arms fell away from her.

  She opened her eyes slowly and stared at him. His face was pale beneath its tan; she wondered if he was as staggered by what had happened as she was.

  But then that lazy smile spread across his mouth and she knew that he was laughing at her, that he had been laughing all the time. "I'll pick you up at seven sharp, sweetheart." The smile widened until it was a grin. "Wear something pretty, hmm? Something blue, to go with those midnight eyes of yours." Before she could pull away, he reached behind her and pulled the clasp from her hair. It tumbled to her shoulders and he smiled. "That's better," he said. "I like my women with their hair down."

  His insolence galvanized her. "Your women?" she said, pulling free of him at last. "Just who in hell do you think you—?"

  But her taut, angry little speech was pointless. The door to the street opened, then closed again.

  Peter Saxon was gone.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Winstead house stood at the very top of Stone Mountain. Built of native fieldstone and oak, it had been designed so that it seemed a natural part of the mountain-top. The view it commanded of the valley below would be magnificent, Sara knew. As a child, she had often walked the dirt trail that snaked up the mountain's heavily forested slopes.

  "It's too dangerous," her mother would have said, had she known of these little excursions.

  But she never knew, and Sara had loved them. Alone, so close to the sky that she felt she might almost touch the clouds, her childish imagination had turned tree-tops into turrets and she had dreamed of being a princess in a far-away land. For a child as lonely and alone as Sara, the mountain-top had been a welcome refuge.

  She hadn't walked the mountain in years—certainly not since the Winstead house had been built and the dirt trail changed into a private macadam road. The curious and the uninvited—"the great unwashed," Alice Garrett called them with a wry smile—were not welcome at the Winstead estate. A lot of speculation had gone into trying to decide what the huge mansion behind the stone walls was like. Townsfolk who worked for the jeweler dropped tantalizing hints about Swedish crystal chandeliers, glove-leather furniture, even a greenhouse that contained an indoor pool as well as a jungle of exotic orchids.

  "Just think, Sara, the next time the Women's Auxiliary meets, you and I will knock 'em dead with little tidbits about the house," Alice had said that afternoon when she had stopped by the office, and then she'd smiled wickedly. "Is Peter Saxon as good-looking as his photographs?"

  Sara had stared at the older woman. "Doesn't it bother you that the man's a crook, Alice?"

 
; Alice laughed and slipped her arm around Sara's shoulders. "You've been working for my husband so long that you're beginning to sound like him! The man works for an insurance company, dear. What could be more conservative?" She had given Sara a quick, affectionate hug. "You'll be perfectly safe—he's a thief, Sara, not a killer. Besides, there'll be lots of people at the party. What could happen to you?"

  "Nothing," Sara had said quickly, trying not to remember the way she had reacted to Peter Saxon's unwanted kiss. "But—"

  "But nothing, Sara. You're going to the party of the year with someone famous. What could be bad about that?"

  Now, staring at the dresses hanging in her wardrobe, Sara gave a deep sigh. Alice had made it sound as if she and Peter Saxon were going out on a date, but the bald truth was that this was a command performance, brought on as much by her own stubbornness as by Jim Garrett's instructions. She couldn't have refused to go with Peter Saxon—not after the challenge he had thrown down.

  "Are you afraid of me?" he'd asked, with that damnable grin on his handsome face, and then he'd kissed her and embarrassed her and...

  Sara reached into the wardrobe, deliberately pushing aside the one blue dress she owned. She pulled a beige dress from its hanger and looked at it critically. She'd bought it two years ago, to wear to Jim's and Alice's twenty-fifth anniversary party. It wasn't dressy enough for tonight, but that was fine with her. This was an assignment, nothing more.

  Peter Saxon had made a fool of her this morning. Well, tonight she would show him the stuff she was really made of. Nothing he did or said would ruffle her. He could tease her all he liked: she would simply do her job, which was to watch him as he watched the jewels.

  She looked into the mirror as she smoothed down the skirt of the beige dress. The color was too pale for her, the lines too severe. But, with her hair loose and curling from the shower, it looked almost attractive.

  "I like my women with their hair down."

  Peter Saxon's voice was as clear as if he were standing in the room beside her. Sara drew in her breath, snatched a tortoiseshell barrette from the dresser, and clipped her hair at the nape of her neck.