She didn't care who he was or what he did or where he would be a year from now. The promise that had been between them from the first moment they met was about to be fulfilled. All she cared about was how it would feel to spend the night in his arms.
#
A shoulder.
In the lexicon of erogenous zones, shoulders ranked pretty low. But when the shoulder belonged to Joanna Stratton, it was a different story altogether.
The sight of Joanna with her oversize jade sweater slipped down over one shoulder was more erotically powerful than anything Ryder had ever encountered. Her silky black hair brushed the top of her collarbone in startling contrast to the pale perfection of her skin. It wasn't hard to imagine how she would feel beneath his hands.
"Well?" she asked. "Is my shoulder blade bruised?"
As he pulled the sweater lower in the back, he tried to gain control of his fantasies. The subtle curve of her waist promised pleasure beyond imagination. "Not that I can see."
"No bullet wounds?" Her voice was soft, a trifle husky. Her skin was hot and he could smell desire in the air around them.
"No bullet wounds." The urge to bury himself in her warm and willing body was growing harder to deny.
Forcing himself to look away, he met her eyes in their mirrored reflection and in it, found a temptation greater than the one he'd overcome.
For this time he saw not only Joanna in her infinite beauty; he saw them both. He saw the way she looked against him, woman to man. He wanted to surround her, engulf her, lose himself and be found.
There was a rightness to it that went beyond the moment, a rightness that extended into the future and beckoned him forward to a place he'd never been.
There was no force on earth now that could stop what had been set in motion the first moment he looked into her eyes.
#
The tension in the tiny bathroom was almost unbearable and Joanna knew she had to do something to break the spell. If she stood there one moment longer, she would turn around and offer herself up to him on the altar of desire – an absurd notion, but a heartbeat away from becoming reality.
"Well," she said, her voice strangely husky as she broke eye contact in the mirror, "let's have some brandy."
He said nothing. She could still feel the heat of his gaze. The ache in her body was almost unbearable.
She went to tug her sweater back into place but the touch of his hand on her bare shoulder stopped her.
"Ryder?"
Gently he slid the other side of the sweater down as well until she was bare to the tops of her breasts. A violent surge of passion reared up inside her, causing a path of fire to blaze outward from her belly. He cupped her breasts beneath the silky sweater and her legs trembled so that she had to lean back against him for support.
She watched him as he kissed the side of her throat and the shoulder that had been hurt in the scuffle. His hazel eyes, dark with desire, never wavered from hers.
"Look," he said, his breath warm and moist against her ear.
Before she could think, he slipped her sweater down to her waist. His hands looked so dark, so large as they spanned her rib cage and inched toward her breasts. There was a rawness about his desire, a fierceness that she'd glimpsed the night before but turned away from. This time there would be no escape.
The woman in the mirror was a stranger. Her face was flushed; her eyes glittered with excitement. It was the face of a woman ready for her lover, a side of herself Joanna had never confronted in quite this way.
She closed her eyes against the wildness building inside her. Her body was opening and flowering, dark and sweet and wet with longing for him.
"No," he said, nipping at the lobe of her ear. "Watch, Joanna. Watch how your body responds to me."
He lifted her breasts in his hands and the fever in his touch matched the fever burning deep inside her body. All boundaries, all rules, all inhibitions vanished.
It was impossible to tell the hunter from the prey, for his need to control matched her need to surrender to that control . . . just this once.
She placed her hands over his and lightly ran her fingers over her nipples, watching the fire in his eyes snap and blaze.
Don't say anything, she thought. Don't analyze, don't worry, don't ask for permission. She wanted him to make love to her right there, right then, and force everything from her mind but the pursuit of ecstasy.
What was happening was primal, a sensual game of the oldest kind, and for once in her life she wanted to understand how it felt to throw caution to the winds and play with fire.
She didn't care how badly she might get burned.
#
Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. And, now that it had, Ryder wondered how he'd managed to live without it.
The second he and Joanna shed their clothes – and with it, their everyday selves – he found out that sex for its own sake ran a poor second to what was happening between them.
He couldn't control his powerful response to her nearness and he didn't want to. Yet, for the first time in his life, he felt unsure with a woman, awkward and uncertain as if he were sixteen years old and just starting to explore the mysteries of sex.
She was tracing the pattern of hair on his chest with the tip of her tongue. His body raged with desire for her, burning hot and hard and ready. Gently he took her hand and brought it to his erection.
Her eyes widened but she smiled and said nothing. Her fingers wrapped around him and her long slow strokes made his stomach knot with the effort to keep from coming. His hand slid down over her belly; his fingers tangled in the silky black curls, then ventured farther until they found the hot, wet, secret spot at the top of her thighs. He parted her gently with his fingers, then let her close around him, her body pulsating to the inner rhythm of life.
She exhaled in a sigh, a long voluptuous sibilance that he felt throughout his body. Suddenly his own desire receded, replaced by an urgent need to satisfy, to pleasure, to worship.
He dropped to his knees before her. Her woman smell, of heat and sex and life, filled his head. Clasping her hips with his hands, he showed her all he could not say.
#
Stop.
He had to stop. Another minute, another instant of this glorious madness and she would shatter into a million pieces.
Surely no one could reach heaven and live to tell about it.
When he dropped to his knees before her and pressed his mouth against her skin, a violent shock of unbridled desire raged through her body and made her cry out. He didn't stop, didn't look up, but she felt his soft laughter against her even softer flesh and the pleasure he gave her multiplied.
Finally she could stand no more and she, too, dropped to her knees and told him what she wanted.
Nothing in Joanna's life had prepared her for this. No lover, no fantasy, no midnight dream had come close to what was happening right now, right there, on the shiny parquet floor of her mother's apartment. Not even in the arms of her husband, Eddie, whom she had once loved with the single-minded intensity of the young and innocent, had she ever felt such an overwhelming urge to abandon herself to pleasure.
And when Eddie betrayed her, her need for control had increased until she approached each budding romance with the cool logic of a warrior planning battle strategy.
Logic, however, didn't stand a chance against Ryder O'Neal.
He was everything she didn't want or need; raw and dangerous yet capable of a tenderness that made strong women like Joanna Stratton willingly throw caution to the four winds of fate.
But nothing was forever – she knew that all too well.
Soon her sabbatical would be over and she would follow her career to another city, another assignment, and he would move on to another love. She was old enough and wise enough to know that her dreams of a different life were as fragile as a crystal snowflake.
All she had was this one fleeting moment in paradise and, for once in her life, this one moment was e
nough.
Chapter Thirteen
While Ryder and Joanna were discovering each other, Alistair Chambers was discovering that drinking alone wasn't nearly as enjoyable as it used to be.
After dropping Ryder off, he had headed over to the Russian Tea Room where he dined, oblivious of the celebrities perched in the front booths like so many rare birds on display. He contented himself with a table in the back and vodka.
Lots of vodka.
This whole business with Ryder was taking its toll on him. Last night when Holland Masters had made it crystal clear that she wouldn't mind spending the night with him, Alistair had been too distracted by his worries to take her up on her generous offer.
He shook his head bemusedly. Was old age creeping up on him more quickly than he thought? There'd been a time – and not too long ago, at that – when he would have walked barefoot across fire to bed a woman as lovely as Ms. Masters.
But this whole business with Ryder preyed heavily upon his mind. The boy didn't know what he was getting into, leaping off into real life like this.
The boy needed direction. He needed control. He needed –
Oh, bloody hell. What was the use? If Ryder managed to break away from PAX, Alistair had no doubt he'd be successful in any undertaking he chose to pursue. The world needed genius such as he had to offer; the fact that the genius was slightly unpredictable was a small price to pay.
Alistair drained his vodka. He felt like a father watching his favorite son leave the nest. Ryder was no longer the young boy Alistair had recruited into the organization. He was a grown man who had the right to move on. A grown man who had the right to build a new life.
And that brought Alistair right back to square one.
Out there away from PAX's protection, Ryder was fair game. There were any number of hostile governments eager to tap into a source as limitless as Ryder O'Neal and able to devise some very clever ruses to do it.
Ruses that might include a long-dead woman like Kathryn Hayes, who could easily get behind Ryder's defenses and find out a hell of a lot more than she had any right to know. It was a fact of life in America that few people took the elderly seriously. A hostile government could have a field day with that.
Old age, he thought as he flagged down Ivan, his Cossack-clad waiter with the Flatbush accent, for another drink. It was a terrible thing. It could set the mind wandering down strange paths and make a man pass up pleasures no sane man would decline.
He glanced at his watch. There was still time to call Holland. Dinner at Le Plaisir would go a long way toward mending fences.
And maybe over dinner, during a lull in the conversation, he could ask a few questions about mysterious – and very much alive – Kathryn Hayes.
#
In the Carillon, high above the homeward-bound city traffic, Joanna and Ryder were slowly coming down to earth.
Ryder was leaning back against the pillow and Joanna's head rested on his chest. Passions had been banked for the moment and the intimacy forged by their lovemaking now strained against the fact that they were virtual strangers.
But, of course, they weren't strangers. Not really. Through the eyes of Kathryn Hayes, she'd seen a side of him that belied the good-looking, fast-talking exterior. The kindness he'd shown to her while she was in her Kathryn disguise was as real as the beautiful color of his hazel eyes. Long before he knew Joanna Stratton existed, he'd found time in his life for a woman who could offer him nothing but friendship.
And yet, when she was Joanna, he was everything she'd been avoiding all these years, the one man who could rip past her caution, push past her boundaries, force her to take a good long look at the arid landscape of her life. The one man who could make her fall in love.
No one had ever made her feel this wild, this free. She couldn't stop what was happening between them any more than she could hold back the dawn. What she was feeling for Ryder was as elemental as the wind that blew outside the window and just as impossible to control.
"I wasn't expecting this," she said softly, tracing the pattern of hair on his flat belly.
"I was." He rolled over and drew her into his arms. The pressure of his body against hers was a powerful reminder of the wonders they'd found together. "It was inevitable."
"Nothing's inevitable," she said. "We make our own fate."
His laugh was rueful. "I don't think so, Joanna Stratton, because if we did, we would have run like hell from each other."
"You're very sure of yourself."
"I'm a student of human nature," he said, feathering light kisses along her throat. "I recognize a fellow gypsy when I see one."
Did he also recognize the longing hidden in her heart? The need for the permanence she'd trained herself to believe impossible? How could this intimate stranger see so much and reveal so little?
She leaned on one elbow and looked down into Ryder's beautiful hazel eyes.
"Who are you, Ryder O'Neal?" she asked softly. "Who are you really?"
She had taken off her disguise.
Now it was his turn.
#
Trapped.
She had him trapped.
He either came up with the story of a lifetime or he blew his cover with PAX forever. She deserved the truth – and the thought of leveling with her was tempting – but the consequences for people he cared about were too high. He was still a part of the organization. If he'd learned nothing else from Alistair, he had learned to protect his own.
"I no longer believe you're a spoiled rich kid." She gestured toward the gun on the floor outside the bedroom door. "What is it you're really all about?"
The idea was on him in a flash. "I'm a private investigator." Thank God for an adolescence spent watching Mannix and Perry Mason.
She stared at him. "As in Magnum, P.I.?"
Not a bad comparison. Selleck had done pretty well with it. "Guilty as charged."
"A private investigator with a broken leg?"
"It happens." He thought about his ungainly tumble from the ski lift. "Occupational hazard."
"No offense, but you don't seem the type."
"None taken." He paused a moment. "What do you mean, I don't seem the type?"
"You're too flashy. Too noticeable." She drew her fingernail lightly cross his belly. "Too good-looking to disappear in a crowd."
He felt unduly pleased. "Thanks."
"Don't let it go to your head." He could almost see her donning her emotional armor once again, as if she were afraid that by giving her body, she would give up her self as well. Although she might not believe it, he knew Joanna Stratton was a woman not very likely to lose control of herself or a situation.
"Where does that dapper Englishman I met fit in? Is he your boss?"
Not in this fantasy. "We're partners."
"Fifty-fifty partners?"
"Sixty-forty." He grinned. "My favor."
Joanna kept her eyes trained on his, absorbing every nuance of movement. "So what are you doing here? Are you on a case?"
This was getting ticklish. She had more questions than he had answers. "I've been recuperating," he said, turning on his side and facing her. "Remember the broken leg?"
She looked down at his right leg. "Your cast! It's gone."
"Very observant, Joanna. How else do you think I managed to sweep you off your feet?"
She laughed. "I'd make a lousy detective, wouldn't I?"
"You have other talents."
"We won't discuss them."
"As incredible as those talents are, they're not the ones I meant." He laughed at the look of disappointment on her face. "Your Kathryn Hayes disguise was flawless. You'd be an asset to any agency."
"Is that a job offer?"
He wished it were. Lifetime, guaranteed employment. He started to make a flip remark to cover his deeper feelings when the seed of an idea began to blossom.
For weeks he'd been trying to think of a way to help Rosie Callahan in her battle against the landlord's harassment, but fear
of getting too involved made him content himself with installing new locks and giving unsolicited advice.
The viciousness of the attack on Joanna/Kathryn had pulled him into the situation, like it or not. If those bastards were going to play hardball, he was going to give them a game they'd never forget.
"I was only teasing, Ryder," Joanna was saying, moving toward the other side of the bed. "I have more assignments ahead of me than I care to think about. I didn't mean to put you on the spot."
"Maybe I do have a job to offer you."
"I'm listening."
He moved closer. "You'd be helping a friend."
"I'm all in favor of helping friends."
"It might be dangerous."
"I don't mind a touch of danger."
"It might take more than one try."
"I'll stay here as long as I have to."
"The only reward is in doing the job right."
"Money isn't everything."
"We'd be working closely together on this."
The corners of her mouth twitched with a smile. "I've worked with worse."
"Long hours, intense concentration." He paused. "Night work."
She didn't look away. "Whatever the job requires."
"There's one catch, though."
She waited for the punch line.
"You'll have to dress like Rosie Callahan if it's going to succeed."
"Nothing kinky, O'Neal. I draw the line at perversion."
Her soft laugh curled itself around his ear. "That's exactly what I was talking about."
"I think you have the wrong idea."
"You're the one who told Kathryn she had a great body, Ryder."
"She does – I mean, you do." He groaned and pushed his hair off his forehead with the back of his hand. "Damn, I wish I had a tape of everything I said to Kathryn."
"Don't worry. I can refresh your memory."
"I'll bet you can."
"We're getting off the track. I want to know about this job offer."
He rolled over on his back and pulled her on top of him. The fact that he could still form a coherent sentence amazed him.
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