by Linda Cajio
“She stays,” Miles announced, taking a seat next to Catherine. Her feminine perfume swirled around him, momentarily distracting him. These emergency meetings were becoming a nuisance, but her presence did make them bearable. More than bearable.
“Lettice knows everything anyway,” Catherine added. “She was with me when Aunt Sylvia called about the meeting.” She smiled innocently. “I might have missed it if Sylvia hadn’t called. I take it the Earth Angel has struck again?”
Miles hid a smile at her subtle jab that she’d been left off the list of people to be called. His grandmother was right. With the way she was sitting forward in excitement, her slim body tensed with anticipation, she looked fully recovered. The angle at which she was leaning had her breasts just brushing the table top. Lucky table, he thought. He also had a feeling that she’d graduated from Corporate Strategy 101 a long time ago. She was working her uncle like a seasoned pro. He settled back to indulge his new favorite pastime, watching Catherine.
Byrne thrust out his jaw like a bulldog trying to exert its authority. It didn’t work. “The nut blocked up the creek near our paint factory, then called the world.”
“The EPA has found pollutants,” Sylvia added. “It seems we had an old drainpipe that was broken and leaking waste by-products.”
“It was an oversight,” Byrne exclaimed. “Hadn’t been inspected for years.”
“What’s the fine?” Miles asked, knowing the violation would be costly.
“They haven’t said yet.” He immediately changed the subject. “Now the media is really breathing down our necks.”
“Then it’s time to give a statement,” Catherine said.
“We should have done it the last time,” Miles added. She turned to look at him, and he grinned at her, feeling like they were a team. She was so close, all he had to do was reach out his hand and … He resisted the urge and went on, “Allan would have responded quickly. It’s what we needed to do yesterday. It’s what we need to do now.”
“But what do we say?” Byrne wailed.
“That we are responsible,” Catherine said, “and we will fix the ‘leak’ and ensure it never happens again.” She looked around the table at the others. There was a slight knowing smile on her face as she added, “I think we’d be even better off if we announce several specific measures for improving the environment—”
“No!” Byrne shouted.
“Then Earth Angel will strike again.”
Miles frowned. Something in Catherine’s quiet declaration roused his suspicions. It wasn’t a prediction, but rather more like … knowledge. A collage of images rose in his mind: Catherine wanting to find a codicil that would save land from becoming a strip mine, her push for environmental protection measures, her lack of surprise at the first meeting when everyone else was in a panic over Earth Angel. Accompanying the collage was the memory of boots with white stains and four hundred dollars to the Green Earth Society.
No, he thought, shaking the ridiculous notion out of his head. He believed the Earth Angel was someone at Wagner, but to even consider Catherine was ludicrous. She might be headstrong, but she wasn’t foolish.
She rose from her chair. Miles knew she was about to make a grand exit. He liked this part best.
She again looked around at all of them. “This company must respond and must show good faith to the public concerning this latest incident. Otherwise we’ll see Wagner Oil bankrupt. If that’s what you want, then be stubborn. But I guarantee you won’t stop the Earth Angel that way.”
She shoved back her chair and walked out of the room. Lettice slowly rose from her own chair, smoothed out her skirt, then strolled out behind her patient. The Queen of England and Princess Diana couldn’t have made a better exit, Miles thought.
If only his suspicions hadn’t come back with a vengeance.
The iron had never been so hot, Catherine thought as she crawled under the fence. Her arms were trembling from the effort of pulling her body forward. This night promised as little sleep as the previous two. But she had to keep up the pressure.
Uncle Byrne was about to get a demonstration of the Earth Angel’s power. The result should be heavenly.
Inexplicably, the idea of heaven instantly brought Miles to mind. She tried to shake off his image, but her brain refused to turn him loose. The way he had taken care of her when he’d thought she was sick had touched her more than she cared to admit. He had supported her at that meeting too. Both meetings. All of it was so unexpected … and she was so confused about him.
One thing she wasn’t confused about was the way her body reacted to him. Having him next to her at the conference table had been almost too distracting. She had barely kept her concentration. Worse, she had found herself looking at his hands at every opportunity and remembering them on her body. Her breasts ached even now …
“Dammit!” she muttered, sitting up. She refused to think of him again, then she wondered why he hadn’t come by that evening. He’d said he would.
She swore again, realizing how quickly she had broken her vow. She had better start concentrating on her objective for the night. She raced for it, a small blockhouse on the edge of the refinery. The night shift didn’t work out this far, and the guards wouldn’t be around for another thirty minutes. She wondered if they even knew what the blockhouse contained. She doubted her uncle remembered the emergency plant-closedown systems, established in case of a fire. But her uncle had reduced safety checks and crew to a bare minimum, and this little place was now overlooked.
“Ah, well,” she murmured as she reached the little brick building. She used a key on the rusty lock and slipped inside. The door clanged shut behind her, and she whirled around. Fear shot through her at the thought that she was locked in. The key only worked from one side. She tested the knob and sighed when it turned.
Fixing her attention on the series of pipe valve shutoffs, she began the task of spinning them closed. She almost didn’t have the strength to turn the big cast-iron wheels and struggled with the screeching metal. By the time she was done, she was shaking from head to toe. At least the second part was easy. She turned the smaller knobs on the system with a quick twist of the wrist, knowing they would trigger the shutoffs for this whole side of the plant. Instead of traveling through the piping system to the tankers on the river, the oil would stay safely in the tanks. They’d look everywhere for breakdowns before somebody remembered this.
“Ah, well,” she murmured again, and walked to the door.
She opened it … and was face to face with Miles.
Five
“You—!”
Miles got as far as the first word in his furious tirade before Catherine burst out of the building.
“Not now, you idiot!” she whispered fiercely, shoving him out of the way as she ran past him. “The guards are coming!”
He stumbled backward, astonishment and outrage racing through him as fast as she was racing away. Somehow, he hadn’t expected her to make a break for it.
To his further shock, she suddenly whipped around, dashed back, grabbed him by the arm, and yanked him forward. “Do you want to get caught as the Earth Angel? Come on!”
Miles ran automatically, her urgency overriding everything for a few vital seconds. Then he stiffened to a halt.
“Wait a damn minute!” he exclaimed.
Still holding his arm, Catherine was spun around automatically.
“Are you crazy?” he demanded. “How the hell can you do this to your own company? And just what the hell did you do? I want answers, and I want them—”
“Miles, not now!” She was gasping for breath. In the glare from the floodlights, her eyes were wide and filled with genuine fear. She spun back toward the fence fifty feet away and ran, calling over her shoulder, “The guards will be here any second! After we get out, I promise to explain. Now, will you come on!”
He took off after her, determined to get her back to undo whatever damage she had done. He could not believe she was the
Earth Angel. He had sat in his car and watched her house all evening, still not believing his suspicions. He had seen her car back out of her garage at midnight, still not believing. And he had followed her to the refinery, under the fence, and to that little building, still not believing what his eyes were seeing.
She reached the fence, lay on her stomach, and scooted under the bent links in the blink of an eye. Leaping to her feet, she lifted the jagged ends even higher. “Come on!”
He set his jaw, then squirmed under the fence, feeling the galvanized steel scrape his back and legs. If his Saville Row suit survived all this, it would be a tribute to his tailor. The moment he stood up, Catherine grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the darkness beyond the refinery’s perimeter lights.
As soon as they were swallowed by the night, she let go of him and ran even faster. He instantly realized that now she was trying to escape from him. He leaped toward her, taking her down to the uneven ground.
They hit it with a thud. As she yelped and struggled against him, he scrambled up until he was literally lying on top of her back, stretching her arms up above her head and effectively pinning her underneath him. She bucked and jerked futilely, and he rode her out. He couldn’t quite ignore the primitive surge of conquest at her writhings, and struggled to remember this was about Earth Angel and Wagner Oil, and not about him and Catherine. Finally, she was still, her chest heaving with her exertions.
“Get off!” she gasped. “You weigh … a ton.”
He lifted his body slightly to ease his weight … She instantly slid sideways, nearly getting out from under him. Cursing, he flattened himself on her again, his hips pressed tight against her derriere. His thigh was high between hers. He could feel the most intimate part of her …
“You’re breaking your promise to explain,” he said, desperate to shatter the sensual spell.
“So what?”
“Catherine, don’t play games with me,” he said wearily. “Clearly, you’re the Earth Angel doing her little bit to save the world and thumb your nose at your family, all at the same time. Now what little bit did you do tonight in that building?”
“Nothing.”
“Catherine.”
“I never got a chance to do anything! You came along too fast. Okay?”
He wasn’t that stupid, and it annoyed him that she thought he’d buy her story. At least she hadn’t denied she was the Earth Angel. He would have felt even more insulted if she had.
“If you don’t tell me,” he said, “I swear I’ll drag you back into the refinery and stand over you until you fix whatever you’ve done.”
She twisted her head to look at him. “Are you nuts? There are guards all over the place! I was lucky to get in and out of there once. And Miles, I don’t think you want to be caught with the Earth Angel. Or haven’t you thought about that yet?”
He admitted to himself that he hadn’t. He also admitted he wouldn’t even want to begin to explain his presence, or hers, to brawny security guards. “All right. We won’t go back in. Just tell me what you’ve done, and I’ll see it’s corrected, somehow.”
She snorted. “I told you I didn’t do anything!”
He sensed he wouldn’t get any information from her. She was too ready to be a martyr for the cause. Her first two escapades had been embarrassing but harmless. It looked like he would have to trust that this one was the same.
He remembered his overwhelming concern that morning when he’d thought she was alone and ill. Fury shot through him as he realized she must have been damming up that creek, not lying feverish in her bed. There he’d been feeling all … She had played him for a fool. Unfortunately, a deserted field in the dark was no place to force a confession. He had to have one answer, though.
“Just tell me why, Catherine.”
“Why what?”
“Why you are doing this?”
“Why am I doing what?”
Something snapped inside him at her evasion. He was all too aware of the softness of her body and his need to have the upper hand with her, at least once. Muttering a curse under his breath, he pulled her to her feet and strode toward his car, keeping his arms wrapped tightly around her. Her feet dragged and stumbled, but he didn’t stop.
“Miles, what are you doing?” she snapped, struggling against him.
“Taking you home.”
They reached the two cars parked off the road by a pillar of the freeway overpass. He frowned at both of them, then made a decision. With one hand, he loosened his tie and whipped it off, somehow managing to keep Catherine pinned to his side. He used the strip of silk to tie her wrists together, both of them fighting all the way. Roping a two-ton Brahma bull had to be easier, he thought.
“I promise I won’t run away again,” she said when he was finally done.
“I suspect that promise is as good as the one about explaining everything once we got away from the plant.” A devil rose up in him, and he pulled her closer. Raising her bound arms, he looped them around his neck. Her body pressed intimately against the length of his. He grinned. “This has great possibilities.”
“Do you feel all nice and macho now?” she asked, glaring at him.
He backed her against his car. “Don’t tempt me, Catherine.”
Her gaze never wavered. Even in the darkness he could sense the challenge radiating out of her. That coupled with the feel of her body against his was almost too much for his willpower. She would kill a weak man, and she damn near broke him. He sensed their anger would quickly turn to passion for both of them if he so much as kissed her now. But afterward, she would absolve herself with the excuse that he’d overwhelmed her by being “macho.” He wanted Catherine, but not now, not like this.
He ducked his head out from under her hands, his chin brushing along her breasts. Her nipples were diamond hard even through the sweater she was wearing. He wondered how stupid he could be, then opened the passenger door.
“Get in the car,” he said between clenched teeth.
“But what about mine?”
“I’ll have someone pick it up.”
“But—”
He pushed her inside, then locked and shut the door. Once in the driver’s seat, he started the car and backed it out onto the dirt road.
“All right,” Catherine said. “I’ll play prisoner until we get to my house—”
“My house.”
He liked the way she gasped.
“I am not going to your house,” she announced.
He grinned. “Who’s driving?”
“Miles, this is ludicrous!”
“No more ludicrous than your being the Earth Angel. You have been playing a dangerous game, and it’s going to stop before you get hurt. I’ve decided that tonight was Earth Angel’s swan song. And you’ll be staying with me so I can ensure it.”
She gasped again, this time in pure outrage.
He smiled to himself.
Life definitely had its moments.
Catherine watched Miles as he pulled the curtains shut in his study, then checked the messages on his answering machine. His dark hair, usually so stiffly brushed back, was tousled by their fighting, and the front locks fell across his forehead. She realized she was getting a glimpse of what he’d looked like as a young boy. She turned away quickly, refusing to admit how endearing he looked. Considering how he’d treated her, the last thing she should be feeling was attracted to him. She yanked on her hands once more, but he’d firmly tied them to a drawer of his filing cabinet, forcing her to sit on the floor with her back to the cabinet.
“You have no right to do this!” she told him for what seemed like the hundredth time.
“I suppose not,” he agreed. “But you had no right to do whatever you did at the refinery.”
“Come on, Miles,” she said, trying a wheedling tone. “You don’t really mean this. Think of what the neighbors would say if they saw this.”
He smiled grimly. “They’d say hurrah for taking care of public enemy number one.
”
She scrunched her backside around on the Persian carpet and licked her lips. Her body was sweaty, her clothes were filthy, and her hair was hanging in stringy hanks around her face. If she was going to be stuck sitting on the floor tied to a filing cabinet, she ought to be comfortable. And clean.
“Can I take a shower?” she asked.
“Anytime you want,” he said. “Of course, I’ll have to wash you. You won’t be able to do it properly with your hands tied. I’m ready, willing, and very able to help you.”
“Thank you, but no,” she said curtly. “Miles, this is absolutely ridiculous.”
“Probably. But I can’t let you loose to play Earth Angel anytime you please. And you’ve already proven I can’t trust a promise from you.”
She made a face. “You can’t keep me here forever.”
“The thought is appealing.” He sat down on the floor next to her, and every muscle in her body tensed at his closeness. “You’ve been having fun poking at the family because they won’t listen to you. But sooner or later, you’ll go too far and somebody will get hurt. And that someone will be you.”
She stared at him. He sounded so sincere, as if he really cared about what happened to her. She shook her head sharply, tossing away the silly thought. His “concern” was no doubt motivated by fear of the scandal that might erupt if the press found out she was Earth Angel. The headlines would be a corporate and personal embarrassment to him.
“Are you going to turn me in to Byrne?”
“Hardly.” He chuckled dryly. “I think you wouldn’t mind that at all right now. No, you’ll be my guest for a while—at least until you confess what you’ve done tonight.”
“I already told you—”
“And I don’t believe you.”
She set her lips together and just gazed at him, silent.
“How lovely to have you with me for an extended stay, Catherine. I’m hungry. Catching earth angels sure works up an appetite. Want something?”
She shook her head, privately deciding to go on a hunger strike until he let her go. A day of watching her starve ought to send him into a panic. He’d release her in no time.