by Cindy Dees
It burned off a little of her frustration at Greer but didn’t scratch the surface of her fury at Thomas Rowe. How dare he interfere with her career like that? How dare he kill a great story in the name of not liking media attention? He could take his privacy and shove it!
Speaking of privacy, she bypassed the concierge and headed for the bank of elevators that would take her to the luxury suites at the top of the hotel. She got out one floor shy of Rowe’s and made her way to a stairwell at the end of the hall. Taking note of the big red signs warning that opening the door would sound an alarm, she pulled out the fanny pack of emergency toys she’d grabbed while she was at home last night. A quick run around the edge of the door with the tip of a knife, a few strips of aluminum between electrical contacts, two wires and four electrical clips later, and the door opened without a peep.
She shook her head. Some security.
She ran up the stairs lightly, repeating the process of disarming the alarms on the next stairwell door. Twice while she was working on it, the shadow of footsteps interrupted the band of light passing under the door. She timed the third pass, shaking her head again. Somebody was patrolling the hall at even intervals of two-and-a-half minutes. Picturing the L-shaped hallway on the other side of the door, she timed forty-five seconds after the next guard pass and cracked open the door. She peeked out. The guard was about ten feet from turning the corner. The second he disappeared from sight, she slipped into the hall and sprinted to the end door on the right.
With a glance at her watch, she knocked on the panel. She had about twenty seconds to wait for an answer. Antsy, she knocked again, watching the seconds tick off on her watch. Dammit, the guard would be rounding that corner again any second! She couldn’t wait any longer. She raced back to the stairwell and slipped into it just as a dark form rounded the corner. Rowe wasn’t home. Perfect. She could let herself in and look around, see what she could learn about him.
She caught her breath while the guard finished his circuit of the hall and passed again, headed away from her. Plastic card wired to lock-picking gizmo in hand, she timed her stairwell escape again. Three. Two. One. Go!
Another light-footed run down the thickly carpeted hall to Rowe’s door. This time she didn’t bother knocking but immediately slipped her electronic pick into the lock. In no more than five seconds, a little green light flashed on above the door handle. Gripping tightly, she turned it. And opened the door.
She slipped inside and paused just at the door. The living room was dim, floor-to-ceiling panels of blackout blinds obscuring most of the early-morning light. She glanced around quickly. No movement. Four closed doors led off the sunken living area. She eased toward the one from which Rowe had emerged yesterday morning for their interview. Time to give the jerk a little wake-up call.
His bedroom door eased open silently under her hand. Crouching, she slipped inside low and slow, easing the door shut behind her once more. It was darker in here, and she paused for two full minutes to let her eyes adjust. A long lump in the bed would be Tom asleep, the covers pulled up high around his ears.
He was a big guy. Strong. She’d need to subdue him fast before he could fight back. She eased forward staying low, sticking to the deepest shadows along the walls, until she was no more than four feet from the bed. It was a big bed, and he was sleeping toward the middle.
In a single leap, she pounced, landing astraddle…
…a puffy set of feather pillows with no substance at all. As she crashed through the pile to the mattress, a single curse had time to pass through her mind before her training kicked in. She rolled hard and fast, flinging herself to the side, which turned out to be a good thing as a black-garbed figure landed where she’d been just a millisecond before.
Paige had rolled off the bed, landing in a crouch with her feet under her. She sprang up, reaching fast for the switchblade in her fanny pack. She flipped it open and settled it comfortably in her hand. The assailant wore a black stocking mask and rolled off the foot of the bed to face her.
“What have you done with Tom Rowe?” she snarled.
The man didn’t answer, but advanced, hands low and in front of him in a trained fighter’s stance.
“Tell me, dammit. If you’ve hurt him…so help me…”
She leaped, on the attack.
All Medusas were intensively trained not to be passive females, not to sit back and wait for the bad guy to attack. It was the fatal flaw of most women in violent situations. They let themselves be the victims and failed to take charge.
She slashed high with her knife, and when the man threw up his arms to block it, she swept low and fast with her foot, clocking the assailant in the ankle with the heel of her shoe. His leg collapsed from under him and he staggered against the bed, rolling across it and regaining his feet. Damn, this guy was hard to knock down!
She pressed her attack, flailing at him with fist and blade, darting in and out, always pushing forward, keeping him on the defensive. She spotted a splash of white on the floor behind him—the bed’s satin sheets had been ripped off sometime during their fight. She redoubled her attacks, driving the guy back a step. Another. One more and then…
The guy jumped back from a particularly vicious stab of her knife at his gut. He landed on the slippery satin, and his feet shot out from under him. Before he’d even hit the floor, she pounced, landing on his chest, her knife blade at his throat.
She growled. “Talk. What have you done with Tom Rowe?”
The man beneath her shook.
“Answer me!”
Still nothing. Cautiously she sat up, still sitting on his chest, the knife still biting dangerously into his flesh. With her free hand she reached up and tore off the mask. A thin line of red sprang up under her blade and a trickle of blood ran down Tom Rowe’s throat.
She hissed, “I should kill you where you lie.”
He grinned up at her unrepentantly. “Why, Miss Ellis. I never knew you cared so much about me.”
“Gah.” She shoved off of him in disgust, planting her hand in his solar plexus as she pushed up.
He coughed hard and sat up slowly while she paced the room in agitation. Adrenaline flowed through her veins like wine, heady and intoxicating. She needed to do something. Hit something. Run a few miles.
Tom spoke from right behind her. “God, I feel great. We need to do that more often.”
Paige didn’t stop and think. She just reacted. She turned and buried her fist in his stomach as hard as she could.
But what she didn’t count on was him being prepared for it. His stomach muscles were contracted into a steel washboard that her fist all but bounced off of. He grabbed her wrist and gave it a quick twist, and in the blink of an eye she was plastered against his chest, her arm twisted up to her shoulder blade, pinned high behind her back.
His eyes blazed down into hers, every bit as charged as she felt.
She swore at him, a stream of the worst invectives she could muster. And he laughed. She yanked against his grip and only earned a shooting pain through her shoulder joint. Wincing away from it, her body slammed into his full on. Belly to belly. Chest to chest. And, oh, God, groin to groin.
Her adrenaline surged anew, fueled this time by a powerful, if completely inexplicable, rush of lust. What the hell was wrong with her?
“Aah, aah, aah. Not so fast, hellcat. Why’d you break into my suite?”
“You killed my story, you jerk.” Fury rolled through her all over again at that fact. It was her career, her reputation, he was wrecking if she didn’t break the big story first.
He laughed down at her. “Yeah, and what are you planning to do about it?”
Her gaze narrowed. “You may have stopped me today, but I’ll finish what I started and slit your throat one of these days. When you least expect it, I’ll be there and there won’t be a damned thing you can do about it.”
She rode the wave of her anger, vaguely aware that she was reacting out of all proportion with the moment, but
too high on adrenaline to care.
He laughed again. Darkly. “Try it, and I’ll break your neck.”
“Yeah, like you did such a great job of that a few minutes ago. I had you. My blade. Your neck.”
“I took it easy on you in the fight. I wanted to see how mad you were. And what moves you had. Truly, you’re not bad for a girl. I think Gretchen could take you one-on-one, but still. Not bad.”
That did it. She snarled low in her throat and tore free, shoulder pain be damned. And oddly enough, he let her go. She stood a few feet from him, panting in her struggle to keep herself from clawing his eyes out.
“Why on earth were you masked and hiding in your own bedroom?” she demanded.
“Call it healthy paranoia. Someone just tried to kill me. If you were me, would you be sleeping in your own bed and just waiting for someone to come kill you?”
God, she hated it when superior logic made hurting someone moot. It was an effort, but she rolled up her emotions in a little ball and set them aside.
He laughed quietly. “Really, you’re very good. Better self-control than I expected from you.” She wasn’t that good. Her simmering fury broke free again. “I swear I’m going to hurt you—”
He cut her off. “You hungry? I gotta say, I’ve worked up quite an appetite.”
He turned away from her and strolled toward the bathroom, tossing over his shoulder, “Order up some breakfast for us while I’m in the shower. I’ll be out in ten.”
And on that note, the door closed behind him.
The lock clicked.
She grinned at the door, her rage broken in an instant. Ha. She’d made him lock his door. Not bad for her first ever real fight. She spun and headed for the living room and the hotel phone. After all, she wasn’t done giving him a piece of her mind about interfering with her job. And she was hungry. The man might as well buy her breakfast.
Hmm. Maybe they had hemlock on the menu. Or a little arsenic.
Oh, no. The two of them were far from finished.
Chapter 6
Tom emerged from his bathroom, toweling his hair dry, half-surprised that she hadn’t picked the bathroom lock and attempted to murder him in the shower. So, Paige was worried about him, was she? Worried enough to go crazy and try to kill the guy she’d thought had hurt him? Warmth seeped through him at the memory of her rage on his behalf. It wasn’t often that someone else went to bat for him like that. He was usually the guy who took care of people around him.
Wearing nothing more than a towel slung around his hips, he poked his head out into the living room. Sonofagun. She was still there. Standing in front of the windows, whose blinds she’d pulled back. Sunrise was pouring in, outlining her in a nimbus of rosy light that matched the color of her gloriously tangled hair. It would look that way if they’d made passionate love all night, he’d bet.
She spun to face him as he strolled into the room, her hands flashing up into a defensive position in front of her.
He tsked. “You’ve got to work on hiding that reflex. Once you finish your military training, the key is to hide all of it. Don’t let your enemies know you’ve got it. But if your hands keep whipping up like that, you’ll give yourself away to every bad guy in the room.”
She scowled, but said nothing. Odd. Usually, she talked nonstop.
He asked, “You wanna take a shower? You’re close in size to Gretchen. I can have her send up a change of clothes, if you want.”
“I don’t want,” Paige snapped. “Let’s get one thing straight right now. Don’t mess with me or my work again. I’ll stay away from you, and you stay away from me. Got it?”
He grinned lazily and threw the towel he’d been using on his hair around his neck. He walked over to the window, maybe eight feet away from her, and gazed out at the idyllic scene below. “Small problem with that. I have to attend the conference and you have to cover it.”
She shrugged. “It’s a big hotel. I’ll just make sure to be where you’re not.”
He glanced at her, amused to catch her staring at the towel sagging low on his hips. She turned her head away sharply, and if he wasn’t mistaken, that was a blush climbing her averted cheek.
“So tell me, Paige. May I call you Paige? After all, you’ve jumped into my bed and we’ve had our hands all over each other now.”
She didn’t deign to reply, so he pressed on. “Tell me. Why did you go ballistic when you thought I was some assassin who’d killed me?”
“I didn’t go ballistic,” she retorted indignantly.
“Really?” he drawled. “I’d hate to see you really lose it, then.”
She glared and again retreated into silence.
“Not gonna answer, huh? Guess that means I get to draw my own conclusions.” He grinned and leaned a shoulder against the thin aluminum post between a bank of windows, facing her full-on. “How very interesting.”
She rolled her eyes.
Man, she really was working hard not to rise to the bait. Must’ve shaken herself up with the violence of her first combat adrenaline rush. It had been all he could do not to act upon his own and throw her down on the bed and have his way with her. She would never know how hard it had been to walk away from all that crackling energy and the blatant invitation for sex that had been clinging to her in a red-hot haze. He hadn’t locked the door to keep her out of his shower. He’d locked it to keep himself in.
Her spine stiffened in sudden resolve. “I think we understand each other, Mr. Rowe. I think it might be best if I leave now.”
“Don’t go,” he blurted. “Stay. Eat breakfast.”
Her gaze snapped up to his, as surprised at the request as he was at having made it.
He continued, feeling lame and more than a little desperate. “I’m serious. Go take a shower and I’ll have Gretchen send up some clothes. And then we’ll eat.” She looked unconvinced and he reluctantly added a word he rarely used. “Please?”
She stared at him doubtfully for a moment more, weighing his request. She must have heard some sincerity in it because her posture wilted abruptly. She mumbled, “Tell Gretchen I’ve got spare clothes in the World News Network bureau.”
He exhaled hard, inexplicably relieved that she’d acceded to his request. “Will do. There are clean towels in the cupboard to the left of the shower.”
She nodded jerkily, still not entirely unwound from her snit.
When Gretchen showed up with clothes, he snatched them and hung them on the bathroom doorknob then forced himself to retreat to the living room once more. He unceremoniously kicked Gretchen out—shocking his assistant mightily—when she would have fussed over the bruise starting to form on his left cheek and the suspicious swelling of his lower lip. Frankly, the worst of it was his ribs. In keeping the blade away from his face, he’d taken a couple of well-placed body blows from Paige. He had to hand it to her. The girl could fight.
But then, all of Vanessa Blake’s girls could. He remembered Viper telling him once it was the single most common way men underestimated the Medusas. They mistakenly assumed the Medusas couldn’t handle themselves in a straight up, hand-to-hand brawl.
He fingered his tender lip. But for Paige to have gotten in two good blows to the face on him like that—he was getting out of practice. He resolved to make a trip back to Timbalo Island and put in a few weeks of training with the guys there from his old unit.
Damned if he didn’t resort to pacing as his impatience for her to join him grew. Odd. He never waited around on women like this. They always waited on his pleasure, hanging on his every word and working only to please him. Although he had to snort at the idea of Paige Ellis waiting on him hand and foot. She’d just as soon slit his throat as be caught doing that. A woman of many firsts for him, she was.
He prowled the living room as restlessly as a caged lion, glaring at the closed bedroom door about every fifteen seconds until he caught himself doing it. In disgust, he turned to the window wall, planted his feet and crossed him arms resolutely to wai
t her out. Hell, knowing her, she was in there taking her sweet time because she knew it would drive him crazy.
Breakfast had arrived and still there was no sign of her. When he was about an inch from barging into the bedroom, pounding on the bathroom door and demanding to know when she was coming out, he heard a door open behind him. He turned, and his breath caught.
Paige was dressed in a charcoal gray suit. Just a suit, but on her, it looked cool and polished and professional. She was beautiful: her makeup perfect, her hair lying in sculpted waves around her face, her expression impossibly remote. Where had the knife-wielding hellion disappeared to?
A pang of disappointment coursed through him. Now she looked just like all of the other wedding-seeking socialites who threw themselves at him endlessly.
“Is breakfast here yet?” she asked with perfect composure.
He gestured at the linen-covered table in the far corner. “Whenever you’re ready we can eat.”
She moved over to the table for two without comment and without looking at him slid into the seat he held for her. She smelled good. Like fresh cut flowers, tangy green notes mingling with sweet fragrance. He stepped away from her chair and stared at the back of her head in shock for a second before moving around to his chair. He never analyzed women’s perfume, thank you very much.
He sat down and offered her coffee, which she declined, and then poured himself a cup. He took his customary croissant while she reached for a half grapefruit and two slices of toast.
“Didn’t you work up any more of an appetite than that?” he asked. “I guess next time I’ll have to let go with you a little more, won’t I?”
Her gaze raked across him with a hint of the old fire. “There won’t be a next time, Mr. Rowe. I’m done with you.”
The words sliced through him painfully, and he frowned, startled at the sensation. If he had anything to say about it, there would be a next time. Even if it meant he had to call her boss and offer up a no-kidding interview where he actually answered questions and cooperated with her.