by Laura Leone
"Get up," Catherine said to Derrick.
Kevin watched a woman who was pushing a baby stroller go into a building down the street.
"I said get up."
"Goddamn," Derrick muttered. Kevin heard him lurch to his feet. "Goddamn!"
A delivery truck pulled away from the curb. A street musician was playing the violin. Two men in business suits walked past him. One of them paused to toss a dollar into his case.
"Last week, you embarrassed a client," Catherine said coldly. "Today you exposed a client to the police."
"It wasn't fair to give my regular to him." Derrick's injured lower lip made the sentence a trifle hard to understand.
"Shut up!" Catherine snapped.
There was a small crowd gathered outside, staring at this building.
The alarm, Kevin realized. Of course. People in the street would have heard it. People in Canada had probably heard it.
In a neighborhood like this, and with the brass sign on the front door indicating that this was a consulting firm, it would never occur to anyone out there that a couple of very expensive prostitutes in here had just lost their heads and thrown down with each other like street boys.
Even that street boy out there surely didn't guess the truth.
That street boy who...
Kevin blinked and looked harder, then snorted.
That street boy who's trying to pick pockets.
"Now what happens?" Derrick asked, his speech barely comprehensible. That injured lip would soon swell up like a balloon.
Gosh, that's gonna hurt in the morning, Derrick.
"I'll have to give it some thought," Catherine said.
She was in an awkward position, Kevin knew. Derrick had worked for her for four years. He knew too much to be cut loose in this frame of mind. Even Catherine couldn't entirely protect her clients from an angry ex-employee who knew as much as Derrick did.
Luckily for her, though, Derrick was too stupid to realize the leverage he had. Right now, he was mostly afraid of losing his job. All that money, more than guys like he and Kevin could make any other way, and all they had to do was make the clients happy. Derrick was one of the ones who thought he was swimming in honey and couldn't understand why Kevin had tried so hard to get out.
Staring down at the crowd gathered outside, where that street kid was still prowling, Kevin waited for Catherine to take control again. She wouldn't let a loose cannon like Derrick roll free of her supervision. Instead, she'd punish him enough to bring him in line and to make the others wary of crossing her as he had—but much more subtly than Kevin had just made them wary of crossing him. In the end, Derrick would remain on the payroll, albeit at reduced pay and under the yoke of discipline. Much like Kevin. Only Derrick would be grateful.
"I was doing you a favor," Derrick insisted to Catherine, lisping a little now. "He's trouble. He's always been trouble. You should have let him take the fall. And you should have let him take it two years ago."
Kevin didn't give any sign that he was listening, but his heart pounded a little harder. Even he sometimes thought he was crazy to push her as he had.
"You want to talk about Kevin?" Catherine asked.
"I'm just saying... You shouldn't have given him my reg—"
Kevin turned to see what had suddenly made Derrick utter a high-pitched choking gasp.
Oh, that's what.
Catherine had Derrick by the balls. Literally.
Now that's got to hurt.
"You want to know why Kevin's worth trouble to me?" Catherine prodded, her voice even and friendly.
Kevin saw half a dozen people watching her with riveted fascination. Except for the lawyer, who glanced at his watch.
"Do you know what a woman really wants in a man, Derrick?" Catherine asked. "No, of course you don't. Let me give you a hint. It isn't washboard abs, broad shoulders, perfect skin, or a big dick. A woman wants a man who's intelligent, Derrick. Who can use his head. Who can figure out what she needs."
She must have squeezed harder, because Derrick flinched a little and made a pretty awful noise.
"Kevin is my number one boy, Derrick, because he's smarter than you. In fact, if there five of you, he'd still be smarter than you. Do you think you understand now?"
Derrick nodded, his face contorted with pain. When she released him, he slumped and sank slowly to the floor again.
Kevin whistled. "And here I was thinking you were going to be more subtle than I was."
She gave him a bland look. "It just seemed like too much trouble."
Kevin shrugged and went back to gazing out the window while Catherine told someone to help Derrick into one of the bedrooms, then suggested the rest of the gathered group return to their business. Not everyone did, though. A couple of them dawdled, hoping there'd be an epilogue to the melodrama.
Meanwhile, that kid in the street, Kevin noted, was smart enough to have chosen a perfect time and place—a dense crowd of people with their attention fixed on this building—but he wasn't much good at the actual mechanics of picking pockets. Kevin, who'd been a pickpocket himself in the bad old days, watched his technique with a critical eye.
He saw the kid miss several easy opportunities, then nearly get caught by someone else, thereby drawing enough attention to himself that he'd have no more chances with this crowd—which now started to disperse.
Ah, youth. Kevin shook his head.
"You should put something on that eye," Catherine suggested, coming close to him now.
He pulled away from the hand she raised to his face. "Later."
"You can't meet Gayle Thompson in..." She checked her watch. "...less than three hours. Not like this. I'll have Jolie call Trevor."
"Gayle Thompson? Oh, right." The client from Australia. Dinner and conversation, maybe a little sight-seeing.
Catherine added, "I'm sure Trevor will be happy to help. You've filled in twice for him, after all."
He shrugged. "Fine. Whatever."
"I'm very sorry this happened, Kevin." Her voice was soft and warm. "The arrest, I mean. I know how you must have felt in—"
"I really don't want sympathy or commiseration from you. My sense of humor is strained enough as it is, right now."
"I won't let this mess get any bigger," she assured him.
"Good," he said. "I'm leaving now. It's been fun, but let's not do this again any time soon."
"Is there anything you need?"
He glared at her, shook his head, then headed for the door.
"Kevin," Dryden said, "I've got a meeting in thirty minutes, so I don't have time to take you to your car now. If you'll give me your keys and your address, you can just take a cab straight home, and I'll have someone deliver your car tomorrow morning."
"No," he said. "I'll get it myself."
"But you look like you need—"
"He doesn't want us to know where he lives," Catherine explained dispassionately. "He thinks he can keep his work and his life separate from each other. You see, he's not always smart."
Okay, he was in a bad mood, he felt like hitting back.
So he paused in the doorway and said to Catherine, in front of her expensive lawyer and several of her employees, "I just noticed. You've had this place redecorated since the last time I was up here to fuck your brains out." He nodded. "It looks good. Love the drapes."
#
Only when he was outside in the sunshine did he really start to feel the pain. He'd been too keyed up to notice it before. Now it made up for lost time.
Jesus, Derrick hit hard. He was bigger, heavier, and stronger than Kevin, and he must spend four hours a day working out. (Well, he certainly didn't spend any of the day improving his mind, anyhow.) So if he'd had either a little skill or else the element of surprise, Kevin would probably be dog food now.
Gosh, what a rewarding day. He'd given a fifty minute massage and a forty minute fuck to a woman who'd treated him like furniture. Next, he'd been busted, frisked, cuffed, verbally humiliated, an
d locked up. His eye was throbbing like his head might fall off his shoulders, and he had assorted aches and pains. And now he got to compete for a taxi in rush-hour traffic so that he could go collect his car from the scene of his arrest.
If things kept going this well, he'd be the victim of a drive-by shooting before sundown.
Someone suddenly careened into him. Kevin staggered, clutching the smaller person as they both tried not to fall down.
"Oops! Sorry, mister."
"No problem kid," he said absently. "Just calm down, okay? Where's the fire, what's the hurry? All that stuff."
"Yeah, right, whatever." The teenager brushed past him.
Insolent, smart aleck brat.
Kevin shrugged his jacket back into place and kept looking for a taxi. As if he had a hope in hell...
Shit.
He reached in his pocket.
Goddamn it!
His wallet was gone.
That was the same kid he'd seen working the crowd earlier.
He looked up at the sky. "I don't believe the day I'm having."
Chapter Six
Sara was lost in her work when the storm commenced. The first clap of thunder made her jump out of her skin. The second killed all the electricity in the building and shut down her computer in mid-sentence.
"Damn!" She rose and looked through the French doors. Thunder, lightning, and torrential rain. "Oh, great."
It was a sign of how much Ryan had conditioned her to his passions that, after Sara gnashed her teeth furiously over her lost work, her next thought was for his bird. He'd left Mrs. Thatcher on the balcony this morning.
Sara ran out into the rain, crossed the balcony, opened Ryan's French doors—his had a lock, but he'd stopped using it ever since Sara had become his pets' secondary caregiver—and then grabbed the bird cage with both hands to wheel it inside.
Mrs. Thatcher bit her.
"Ow!" She moved her hands, finished rolling the cage inside, then ran back to her apartment to look for a flashlight.
Had she unpacked a flashlight? She was pretty sure she owned one. She just couldn't remember having seen it lately. What about candles?
Sara suddenly recalled the lengthy list of household supplies she'd been meaning to go purchase this week. And heading the list? Candles, of course. Ryan had warned her that the electricity sometimes went out in this building.
Exasperated, Sara opened her front door, stepped out into the hall, felt for the banister, and began making her way downstairs. As hazardous as these stairs were under normal conditions, descending them in the dark was positively suicidal. However, since turning around and going higher again didn't hold much appeal, she kept going down.
When she reached the bottom step, she let herself out into the pouring rain—naturally, she had not thought to bring an umbrella—and circled the building to climb the front porch and knock on Lance's door. Hard. Several times. His doorbell didn't work (of course), so she tried shouting. Nothing.
Lance was not home, damn him.
Lance was never home! Sara had seen her landlord once since moving here back in July.
Cold and wet and discouraged, she circled the building again to commence the precarious climb to her apartment—and nearly screamed when she bumped into Ryan coming home from the other direction.
"Ryan?" she blurted.
"Shit." He flinched as if he felt an impulse to run and hide.
"What happened to you?" she cried, stopping him as he tried to turn away from her.
His jaw was slightly puffy, there was blood at the corner of his mouth, and the whole area around his left eye looked awful—swelling and darkening.
"Nothing happened to me." Perhaps realizing that sounded less than convincing, he amended, "I was mugged."
"My God! And you're soaking wet!"
"So are you," he pointed out, dabbing at his lip.
"I'm just damp. You're drenched." Not that the difference really mattered. "Did you come home on foot?"
He shook his head, then winced. She suspected he had a killer headache, given that eye. The mugger had landed a hell of a blow.
"I caught a bus," he said. "I had some pocket change left. The sky opened up just as I got out. Naturally."
"Where's your car?"
"It's a long story."
"Why didn't you call me?"
"Can we go inside?"
"Oh! Yes. I'm sorry."
Bludgeoned and soaking, he still didn't forget his manners; he opened the door and gestured for her to precede him.
"The electricity's out," she warned him.
"Of course it is," he said wearily. "It's been that kind of a day."
When she started leading the way upstairs in the dark, he reached for her, pulled her close to him to stop her from ascending, and said, "Wait. Where's your flashlight?"
"I came down without one."
"Candle?"
"No."
"You came down these stairs in the dark? Jesus, Sara, are you trying to die young?"
"Just hug the wall," she advised.
"Wait. I've got..." She heard him searching his pockets. A moment later, a lighter flared in the flickering darkness.
"Better than nothing," she admitted.
"I'll go first." He took her hand. "What's wrong?" he asked when she hissed in momentary surprise.
"Your damn bird bit me." It still stung.
"Oh." He gentled his grip but didn't let go. "I'm sorry." His fingers caressed her palm, then he lightly rubbed her knuckles with his thumb. "Come on." His voice was soft as he pulled her near and led the way. She followed, staying close to him... and felt painfully aware of being close to him.
Ryan...
After a dozen steps, he drew in a sharp breath and the lighter went out. She supposed he'd burned himself.
"Ryan?"
"It's okay."
She touched the hand holding the lighter, meaning to offer to carry it—but he flinched away. She'd felt the roughness there. "What's wrong with your hand?"
"Nothing."
She realized what must have happened. "You fought back?"
"Let's get upstairs."
The lighter illuminated the staircase again, and they made it the rest of the way up. She followed him into his apartment without thinking. He let her follow, without protest or acknowledgement, as if he expected it.
Macy was whining and panting, distressed by the storm. Ryan spoke to him soothingly while Sara went to put the night cover over Mrs. Thatcher's cage, since the bird was making a racket. When Ryan lit two candles on the stereo cabinet, she took one.
"I'll be right back," she told him.
By the time she returned from her apartment a few minutes later, he had lit half a dozen candles, and his living room was bathed in a warm golden glow while steadily falling rain drummed on the roof. No more thunder and lightning; the worst of the storm had passed.
Ryan had removed his wet clothes and put on a pair of gray sweat pants. A towel hung round his neck, and he rubbed at his damp hair with one end of it. He wore no shirt.
Sara briefly closed her eyes and called on her composure.
He was putting down the telephone with his other hand. "No answer," he said. "Lance isn't home."
"You have his number?"
"Oh, that's what you were doing downstairs in the rain." He looked at her armful of first aid supplies. "All right, before I let you near me with that stuff, I'm entitled to know: Do you have the slightest idea what you're doing?"
"Please. I'm a mystery writer. I've watched autopsies."
His brows arched. "Not the reassuring answer I was looking for."
"I'm not splinting a bone, Ryan, just patching up some cuts and bruises. Sit down."
He sat in the leather easy chair. She sat on the arm and held a candle up to his face.
"Will I live?" he asked.
"It's too early for a prognosis."
"Ow."
"Sorry." She dabbed around his injured eye with damp cotton, to
make sure the area was clean. Then she gave him a cold pack. "Hold this over your eye." As he did so, she asked, "Have you talked to the cops?"
He flinched. "The cops?"
"Yeah." When he just stared at her, looking dumbstruck, she prodded, "You know. About, oh, being mugged, for example?"
"Oh!" He looked strangely relieved. "No."
"No?"
"No."
"Ryan." It was so self-evident, she didn't quite know what to say to him. "We have to call the cops."
"No!" He stopped her when she tried to rise from the arm of his chair.
"What do you mean, no?" When he didn't respond, she asked, "Is it because you fought back?"
"Um..."
"Did you hurt the other guy?"
He sighed. "Okay. Straight up. I wasn't mugged. I got into a fight."
"You got into a fight?"
"Yeah."
"You don't..." To cover her confusion, she started washing the blood off his face. Tending him. Caring for him. "You don't seem like a violent person."
"I'm not. These were special circumstances."
"Do you know the other guy?"
"Yeah." He sounded depressed.
She reached for his hand and studied it in the candlelight. The knuckles were bruised and bloody, some of the skin torn. As she gently cleansed it, she asked, "So what does he look like now?"
Ryan gave a soft puff of amusement, which she gathered meant the other guy looked worse; but he didn't answer her.
"Well, you're not badly hurt, thank God. There'll be bruises for a while, but swelling will be your main problem." She broke out two more cold packs, resting one on his right hand, then holding the other against his jaw. "Thoughtful of you to provide me with a chance to use all this stuff Miriam gave me."
"And to think some people," he said, "are doing boring things like dinner and the movies this evening."
"Each to his own."
She was way too close to him. To that hard expanse of ever-so-lightly furred chest, those bare shoulders, that smoothly muscled stomach. Too close to the beautiful, bruised face in need of healing. Too close to the troubled eyes which avoided hers right now.