Dangerous to Know

by Merline Lovelace

  The buzz of the telephone sent a rush of pleasure though her veins. That had to be Adam. With his basket of goodies. She went back inside and caught the phone on the third ring.

  “Yes?”

  “This is Special Agent Harrison, Mrs. Grant. A Mr. Stoney Armstrong just stepped off the elevator. He’d like to speak to you.”

  Maggie didn’t hesitate. “Of course.”

  In the blink of an eye, her excitement sharpened, changed focus. The woman whose senses had tingled at the thought of a private tête-à-tête with Adam transitioned instantly into the skilled, highly trained agent. Her mind racing with various ways to handle this unexpected contact with a prime suspect, Maggie lifted her left hand.

  “Thunder? Thunder, do you read me?”

  When he didn’t respond, Maggie guessed Adam was still in the shower. As soon as he got out, he’d pick up on her conversation with Stoney and join her—if the circumstances required it. Actually, she thought, it might be better if Adam didn’t appear on the scene. She’d be able to draw Stoney out far more easily without another man present, especially one he might consider a rival.

  Quickly she dimmed the lights and retrieved the small gold lipstick Special Devices had included in her bag of tricks for this mission. As she tucked the tiny stun gun in the bodice of her gown, she wondered briefly if it was powerful enough to take down a man of Stoney Armstrong’s massive proportions, as Special Devices had claimed.

  If not, and if necessary, she’d bring Stoney down herself. He’d be unarmed, she knew. He couldn’t have passed through the highly sophisticated security screens with a weapon on his person. She’d handled bigger men than him in the past.

  When a knock sounded on the door to her suite a few moments later, she was ready, both mentally and physically, to face a possible killer.

  If Stoney Armstrong harbored any deadly intent toward Taylor Grant, he didn’t show it. His tanned cheeks creased in his famous studio grin that, for all its beefcake quality, was guaranteed to stir any woman’s hormones. Perfect white teeth gleamed, and his Armani tux gaped open to reveal a broad expanse of muscled, white-shirted chest as he leaned one arm negligently against the doorjamb.

  “Hello, Taylor.”

  “Hello, Stoney.”

  “I’m a little early.”

  “So I noticed. Come in.”

  He strolled into the penthouse, looking around with unabashed interest. The glass wall drew him like a magnet. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he strolled out onto the terrace.

  “It’s something, isn’t it?” he murmured, his eyes on the endless sweep of lights against a now-velvet sky.

  “It is,” Maggie agreed.

  His mouth twisted. “Hard to believe a thin crust is all that separates the glitter and glamour from the tar pits underneath.”

  His subtle reference to the La Brea tar pit, the famous archaeological site in the center of the city, wasn’t lost on Maggie.

  “You sound as though a few saber-toothed tigers might have crawled out of the sludge,” she commented softly.

  If OMEGA’s information was correct, those predators were circling Stoney Armstrong even now, about to close in for the kill.

  His broad shoulders lifted. “Hey, this is Tinseltown. Saber-toothed tigers do power lunches every Tuesday and Friday at Campanile.”

  Turning his back on the dazzling vista, he leaned his hips against the rail.

  “God, you look great, Taylor. Sort of sleek and well fed, like a cat or a horse or something.”

  Stoney did a lot better in a tender scene when he used a script, Maggie thought sardonically.

  He leaned against the railing, ankles crossed, hands in his pockets. With the breeze ruffling his gold hair and his tux gaping open to reveal a couple of acres of broad chest, he looked pretty well fed himself.

  He cocked his head, studying her face. “It can’t be all those raisins and sunflower seeds you put away that gave you such a glow. Is it this guy Ridgeway?”

  When Maggie didn’t answer, his smile twisted a bit.

  “I saw some pictures of you two in the afternoon edition of the Times. Christ, I wish I had your publicist. Those were great shots. Especially the one where you were getting out of the limo.”

  Maggie had rather liked that one herself.

  “I thought maybe they were posed,” he said, “like the ones you used to do for me, but…”

  “But?”

  “But after seeing you two together, I guess not.” He paused, his eyes on her face. “You used to look at me like that, Taylor, and not just for the cameras. What happened to us? We used to be so good together.”

  Maggie gave silent thanks for Taylor Grant’s frankness about her relationship with this man. “What we had was good, Stoney. Very good. But it wasn’t enough for either one of us.”

  “I know, I know. But, hey, we’ve both changed a lot since then. Our needs have changed. I mean, when we were together, you were governor and I was being courted by all the big studios.”

  “It wasn’t our professional life that got in the way.”

  He raked a hand through his hair, destroying its casual artistry. “Yeah, I know. You were still hurting from your husband’s death, and I was paying alimony to two ex-wives. You didn’t want emotional ties, any more than I did. But that was then.”

  “And now?”

  The tanned skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled as he gave her a rueful grin. “And now you’ve got this guy Ridgeway prowling around you like a hungry panther, and I’m paying alimony to three ex-wives.”

  No wonder Taylor had enjoyed this man’s company so much during their brief time together, Maggie thought. For all his absorption with himself, Stoney had a disarming charm when he chose to exert it.

  “We could be good together again, Taylor.”

  “What we had was right for that moment, that time,” Maggie said softly, echoing the vice president’s own words. “But not for now. Not for the future.”

  “Why not? Just think about it. You might decide to go for top billing in the next election. You’d make a hell of a president. Together we’d make an unbeatable team. Just think of the publicity if I hit the campaign trail with you. Hey, look at the press Barbra Streisand got when she campaigned for Clinton.”

  Maggie bit the inside of her lower lip, not wanting to be the one to break it to Stoney that he possessed neither the star power nor the political acumen of a Barbra Streisand.

  “Taylor…”

  He closed the small distance between them. Maggie kept her smile in place as he leaned forward, planting both hands on the balustrade on either side of her, but her mind coldly registered his vulnerabilities. With his legs spread like that, he’d left himself wide open to a quick knee to the groin. His outstretched arms gave her room to swing her hand at the side of his neck or to shove a fisted thumb into the bridge of his nose.

  When she looked up into his eyes, however, Maggie knew she wouldn’t need to exploit those vulnerabilities. In three years of living on the knife-edge of danger, she’d learned to trust her instincts, and every one of those instincts told her this man was no killer.

  “Stoney…” she began.

  “I want you, Taylor.”

  Water dripped from Adam’s hair and rolled down his back as he yanked a pair of black dress pants off the hanger on the back of the bathroom door.

  “It won’t work for us, Stoney. Not now.”

  Maggie’s voice, soft and too damned sympathetic, drifted out of the watch on the marble counter. His jaw working, Adam tugged the slacks up over still-wet flanks.

  “I need you.”

  Stoney delivered the line with a husky, melodramatic passion that set Adam’s teeth on edge. Christ! No wonder the man couldn’t get a part in anything except B-grade action flicks.

  “Give me another chance. Give us a chance.”

  “It’s too late.”

  “No. I don’t believe that. I’ll prove it!”

  “Stoney, for Pete’s sake!
”

  Maggie hadn’t requested backup, Adam reminded himself. She obviously wanted to play this one alone. But her muffled exclamation propelled him out of the bathroom, bare chested and still dripping.

  He was halfway to the door connecting their suites when a note of panic entered her voice.

  “Stoney! You’re too heavy! You’re—Watch out!”

  Her shrill yelp of terror sent Adam racing for the glass doors leading to the terrace. A knife blade of fear sliced through his gut when he saw Armstrong bent over the stone rail. A single sweep of the terrace showed no sign of Maggie anywhere.

  “I…I can’t…hold…you!”

  Armstrong’s agonized cry seared Adam’s soul.

  He didn’t stop to think, didn’t allow himself to feel. In a blinding burst of speed, he tore across the terrace and reached over the railing to grab the wrist Stoney held in one huge paw. The instant Adam’s right hand clamped around Maggie’s wrist, his left swung in a vicious arc. His fist smashed into Armstrong’s jaw with the force of a pile driver.

  The brawny movie star crumpled without a sound, but Adam didn’t even flick him a glance. All his attention, every ounce of his concentration, was focused on the woman who dangled forty stories above the Avenue of the Stars, held only by his bruising lock on her wrist.

  “I’ve got you,” he grunted, his neck muscles cording.

  Maggie twisted at the end of his arm, her bloodred gown billowing around her flailing legs.

  “I…can’t…get a foothold!” she gasped.

  “You don’t need one! Dammit, don’t twist like that!” Bent double, Adam kept his left arm anchored around the railing. The rough stone took a strip of flesh off his bare chest as he leaned farther out. “Just grab my arm with your other hand. I’ll pull you up.”

  Maggie’s fingers clawed at his, then crept up to fasten around his forearm. With a surge of strength, Adam dragged her up and over the railing. Holding her upright with an iron grip, he raked her with a fierce, searching look.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I…” She sucked in a huge gulp of air. “I will be. As soon as you…stop crunching my bones.”

  His adrenaline raging, Adam ignored her attempt to shake loose of his hold. “What in hell happened? Didn’t you anticipate his attack?”

  “Attack? He didn’t attack me.”

  “He pushed you off a rooftop!”

  “Adam, he didn’t push me! He was just trying to make love to me. We sort of…overbalanced.”

  She stopped tugging at his iron hold on her wrist and managed a shaky grin. “I guess you could say he swept me off my feet.”

  It was the grin that did it. That exasperating, infuriating lift of her lips. For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, Maggie was laughing while fear pumped through Adam’s veins.

  With a low sound that in anyone else might have been mistaken for a snarl, he wrapped her manacled wrist behind her back. A single flex of his muscles brought her body slamming against his. His other hand buried itself in her hair.

  “You’re forgetting your role. I’m the only man who’s going to make love to you during this mission.”

  Maggie’s eyes widened. She stared up at Adam, stunned as much by his unexpected force as by the way he held her banded against his chest. His black hair fell across his forehead, damp and tangled and untamed. His eyes glittered with a savage intensity. The muscles of his neck and shoulders gleamed wet and naked and powerful in the dim light.

  He was close, so close, to unleashing the power she’d always sensed behind the steel curtain of his discipline. The realization sent a thrill through every fiber of Maggie’s being. But at that moment, she wasn’t quite sure whether the thrill she felt was one of triumph, or anticipation, or uncertainty.

  “Adam…” she began, her voice husky.

  She stopped, not knowing whether she wanted to soothe this potent, powerful, unfamiliar male or push him past his last restraint.

  They hovered on the edge, each knowing that the next word, the next breath, could send them over.

  To Maggie’s intense disappointment, the next breath was Stoney’s.

  Groaning, the star pushed himself up on all fours, then lifted a hand to flex his jaw.

  “Damn, Ridgeway,” he muttered. “I hope to hell you didn’t break my caps.”

  Chapter 7

  Still banded against Adam’s body, Maggie didn’t see the look he sent the aggrieved star. But it was enough to keep the man on his knees.

  “If you touch her again, Armstrong, I’ll break more than your caps.”

  Stoney blinked, as startled by the controlled savagery in his voice as Maggie herself had been a moment ago.

  “Hey, man, I get the picture.”

  “You’d better.”

  When Adam stepped away, Maggie felt the loss in every inch of her body. She also saw the blood smearing his bare chest for the first time.

  “Adam, you’re hurt!”

  “It’s just a scrape,” he replied brusquely, yanking the star to his feet. “Go call Kowalski. I’ll entertain your friend here until she arrives.”

  Denise and two other security agents came rushing into the suite a few moments later. The senior agent turned ashen when she saw the front of Maggie’s gown.

  “Are you all right, Mrs. Grant?”

  Glancing down, Maggie discovered that Adam’s blood had darkened the flame red chiffon to a deep wine. “I’m fine. I just fell on the terrace. Well, off the terrace, but…”

  Denise paled even more. “You fell off the terrace?”

  “Stoney, er, got a little carried away. We overbalanced, and Adam came to the rescue.” She gestured toward the glass wall, and the two figures on the terrace.

  Denise turned, her eyes rounding at the sight of the president’s special envoy, his naked chest streaked with blood, his slacks riding low on lean hips.

  With a less-than-gentle shove, Adam propelled Stoney through the open sliding glass doors, into the suite. The two agents with Denise leaped forward to grab the star’s arms.

  Indignant, he tried to shake them off. “Hey, watch it!”

  “Get him out of here,” Adam ordered.

  “Take Mr. Armstrong downstairs to interrogation,” Denise instructed the others. “I want a full statement in my hands as soon as you get it out of him. And, Harrison—”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Keep him away from the media.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The senior agent pulled herself together as she swept the room. Her keen gaze took in the open connecting door between the suites before returning to Adam. Maggie caught a flicker of something that might have been feminine awareness or even admiration in Denise’s eyes as they skimmed his lean torso, but it disappeared immediately when she caught the icy expression on his face.

  “Where were you?”

  Both women stiffened at the whipcrack in Adam’s voice. Denise because she’d never heard it before, Maggie because she’d heard it several times. The furious man who’d slammed her up against his chest was gone. In his place was the Adam Ridgeway Maggie knew all too well.

  “Downstairs,” the agent responded tightly. “Conducting a final walk-through.”

  “Just what kind of security screens have you set up, Kowalski? How did Armstrong get past your men?”

  Maggie stepped into the fray. “Hold it, Adam. Stoney didn’t get past them. I told them to send him up.”

  Two equally accusing faces swung toward her. Adam’s could have been chiseled from ice, but Denise’s was folded into a frown.

  “Was that wise, Mrs. Grant? After Armstrong’s stunt in the lobby this afternoon?”

  “I thought so,” she replied coolly.

  Adam didn’t say a word, but Maggie could see he was not pleased. She fought back a small surge of irritation. She wasn’t used to justifying or explaining her actions in the middle of an operation. To anyone.

  As quickly as the irritation flared, Maggie suppres
sed it. Adam was her partner on this mission. She owed him an explanation of Stoney’s presence in her suite, but she couldn’t give it in front of Denise.

  “We’ll conduct a postmortem after the banquet,” she told the agent with crisp authority. “Right now, I need you to go across the hall and get Lillian.”

  Denise firmed her lips, then reached for the phone. “I’ll call her.”

  “I’d prefer you go get her. I don’t want her hearing about this over the phone and becoming all upset. You know how overprotective she is.”

  It was a feeble excuse, and they all knew it, but Denise dropped the receiver back into its cradle.

  “Fine. I’ll go get Lillian. And we’ll conduct a thorough postmortem after the banquet.”

  The door shut behind her, and a small, tense silence descended.

  Adam was the first to break it, his tone frigid. “I think we need to review our mission parameters.”

  “I agree.”

  “This is supposed to be a team effort, remember?”

  Maggie’s jaw tightened, but she kept her voice level. “I tried to contact you after I told Security to send Stoney up.”

  “After? It didn’t occur to you to contact me before you told them to send him up?”

  “No, it didn’t. I saw a target of opportunity, and I took it.”

  “Try coordinating your targets with me next time.”

  The stinging rejoinder lifted Maggie’s chin. “I don’t operate that way. I won’t operate that way.”

  His eyes narrowed dangerously. Maggie had never seen that particular expression in them before—not directed at her, anyway. But she didn’t back down. Her gaze locked with his, unwavering, determined. There was more at stake here than operating procedures, or even her job. Far more. She knew it. Adam knew it.

  “You shouldn’t have tried to handle this situation alone,” he said, spacing his words. “It was too dangerous.”