Fight Fire With Fire.
Page 39
The earrings were hot. Just like him.
He looked like the kind of man who had a tattoo. Nothing colorful. Something black and meaningful. She wanted to see it. Too bad she couldn’t just ask.
Interpersonal interaction had so many taboos. It wasn’t like science where you dug for answers without apology.
“Lana?”
The stranger had a strong jaw too, squared and accented by a close-cropped beard that went under, not across his chin. No mustache. His lips were set in a straight line, but they still looked like they’d be heaven to kiss.
Not that she’d kissed a lot of lips, but she was twenty-nine. Even a geeky scientist didn’t make it to the shy side of thirty without a few kisses along the way. And other stuff. Not that the other stuff was all that spectacular. She’d always wondered if that was her fault or the men she’d chosen to partner.
It didn’t take a shrink to identify the fact that Lana had trust issues. With her background, who wouldn’t?
Still, people had been known to betray family, love and country for sex. She wouldn’t cross a busy street to get some. Or maybe she would, if this stranger was waiting on the other side.
The fact that she could measure the time since she’d last had sex in years rather than months, weeks or days—which would be a true miracle—wasn’t something she enjoyed dwelling on. She blamed it on her work.
However, every feminine instinct that was usually sublimated by her passion for her job was on red alert now.
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By the time his guest returned, freshly showered and shampooed and dressed in his things, Simon had thrown together a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, coffee, and toast. He didn’t immediately turn around and greet her but focused on piling the food on paper plates, digging into his box of grub for sugar and powdered cream.
Concentrating on what was simple kept him from facing the complications that came attached like baggage to Michelina Ferrer. It was a different sort of baggage than what he’d been dealing with the last few weeks, but her being here was still going to weigh heavy on his mind.
Dealing with Bear and Lorna and the property would be enough to try any saint. Add King to the mix, and, well, Simon’s patience wouldn’t pass the first test. And now he had a mystery on his hands, a crime that needed more explanation before it would begin to make sense.
That was the only reason he finally turned around, the only reason he lifted his gaze from the food he carried to the woman standing in the frame of the kitchen doorway toweling dry her dark hair.
Her face was the same one he’d seen on Page Six, on magazine covers, on TV. The same one from his billboard. The same one . . . but not.
Her skin was scrubbed clean. She wore nothing glossy on her lips, nothing colored and glittery on her eyes, nothing to smooth out her cool ivory skin. She had freckles on her nose, two small red zits on her chin.
And her eyes were sad and scared, not sassy or sultry or seductive. A big problem, her eyes. An equally big one, her unbound breasts beneath his gray T-shirt, the curve of her hips and thighs in his long-legged briefs.
He set the food on the table, cleared his throat, went back for the Styrofoam cups filled with coffee and for plasticware. He didn’t turn back toward her until he heard her sit, the chair legs scraping across the worn linoleum, the creak of the wood beneath her weight.
The table hid most of her body. He could still make out the shape of her breasts, the fullness, the upper slope that made him wonder about the weight he’d feel beneath. But there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to avoid her face, so bare and exposed, or her eyes.
He had to look at her to get her story. He had to watch her expression, see the truth, her fear, find out how much she knew or had guessed or thought about what had happened. This is what he did—gathered information, ferreted out intel, zoned in on the pertinent details, used it all to come up with a plan of action.
He needed one. Desperately. One that had nothing to do with her body being naked under his clothes, one that addressed the fact that she was Michelina Ferrer. And she was miserable, frightened, and lost.
He couldn’t help it. He feared that juxtaposition—what he knew about the celebrity versus what he sensed about this woman with her armor washed away and fearing for her life—was going to make it hard to keep this job from turning personal.
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Jo breathed in slowly through her nose. What had she just agreed to? Seeing this man every day? She pulled in another slow, even breath, telling herself to shake off her reaction to this man’s proximity.
Sure, he was attractive. And he had—a presence. But she wasn’t some teenage girl who would fall to pieces under a cute boy’s attention. Not that cute was a strong enough word for what Maksim was. He was—unnerving. To say the least.
But she wasn’t interested in him. She decided that quite definitely over the past two days. Of course that decision was made when he wasn’t in her presence.
But either way, she should have more control than this. Apparently should and could were two very different things. And she couldn’t seem to stop her reaction to him. Her heart raced and her body tingled, both hot and cold in all the most inappropriate places.
“So every morning?” he said, his voice rumbling right next to her, firing up the heat inside her. “Does that work for you?”
She cleared her throat, struggling to calm her body.
“Yes—that’s great,” she managed to say, surprising even herself with the airiness of her tone. “I’ll schedule you from 8 a.m. to—” she glanced at the clock on the lower right-hand of the computer screen, “noon?”
That was a good amount of time, getting Cherise through the rowdy mornings and lunch, and giving him the go ahead to leave now. She needed him out of her space.
If her body wasn’t going to go along with her mind, then avoidance was clearly her best strategy. And she had done well with that tactic—although she’d told herself that wasn’t what she was doing.
“Noon is fine,” he said, still not moving. Not even straightening away from the computer. And her.
“Good,” she poised her fingers over the keys and began typing in his hours. “Then I think we are all settled. You can take off now if you like.”
When he didn’t move, she added, “You can go get some lunch. You must be hungry.” She flashed him a quick smile without really looking at him.
This time he did stand, but he didn’t move away. Instead he leaned against her desk, the old piece of furniture creaking at his tall, muscular weight.
“You must be hungry too. Would you like to join me?”
She blinked, for a moment not comprehending his words, her mind too focused on the muscles of his thighs so near her. The flex of more muscles in his shoulders and arms as he crossed them over his chest.
She forced herself to look back at the computer screen.
“I—I don’t think so,” she said. “I have a lot to do here.”
“But surely you allow yourself even a half an hour for lunch break.”
She continued typing, fairly certain whatever she was writing was gibberish. “I brought a lunch with me, actually.” Which was true. Not that she was hungry at the moment. She was too—edgy.
“Come on,” he said in a low voice that was enticing, coaxing. “Come celebrate your first regular volunteer.”
She couldn’t help looking at him. He was smiling, the curl of his lips, his white, even teeth, the sexily pleading glimmer in his pale green eyes.
God, he was so beautiful.
And dangerous.
Jo shook her head. “I really can’t.”
He studied her for a moment. “Can’t or won’t. What’s a matter, Josephine? Do I make you nervous?”
Jo’s breath left her for a moment at the accented rhythm of her full name crossing his lips. But the breath-stealing moment left as quickly as it came, followed by irritation. At him and at herself.
She wasn’t attracted to this man—not beyond a basic physical attraction. And that could be controlled. It could.
“You don’t make me nervous,” she said firmly.
“Then why not join me for lunch?”
“Because,” she said slowly, “I have a lot of work to do.”
Maksim crossed his arms tighter, and lifted one of his eloquent eyebrows, which informed her that he didn’t believe her for a moment.
“I don’t think that’s why you won’t come. I think you are uncomfortable with me. Maybe because you are attracted to me.” Again the eyebrow lifted—this time in questioning challenge.
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