She put her hands against his chest and shoved him out of the way to stalk from one side of her kitchen to the next, nervous energy radiating from her.
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “You shoved your way into my house and dragged me away with you the other night. You made me talk about things I didn’t want to talk about, because you think you know what’s best for me and because, at the moment, you happen to think you want me. And while you’re thinking of nothing but what you want, your friend Rudy sees us together and thinks there’s something between us. And now I’m stuck in this awful mess? There’s this awful man after me, and I can’t even live in my own house. I’m getting paranoid, too. I could have sworn someone followed me home today—”
“Someone did, Amanda. Someone from the office,” he said. “You don’t think I’d let you be alone right now, with Rudy knowing where you live? Maybe even where you work?”
“You had someone follow me?”
“Of course I did. This is real, Amanda. The potential for danger is real. I’m sorry I dragged you into this. I’m sorry I tried to help you and made things worse. But I can’t change what’s happened. All I can do now is minimize the risks in any way I can. By having someone follow you home, checking your locks, arranging for a security system. The most important thing I can do is to never leave your side from this point on, until we resolve this mess with Rudy.”
“Oh, no,” she said.
“I’m sorry. That’s the way it has to be.”
Her face fell, her expression bleak. “Couldn’t someone else—”
“Rudy thinks you and I are lovers,” he explained. “He won’t think a thing about me being here, or you being at my place.”
“I could just leave,” she said. “Couldn’t I just leave?”
“Where would you go, Amanda?”
“I don’t know. Home, maybe? Kansas. My parents’ house?”
“And risk drawing them into danger, as well?”
She shuddered. He saw it, felt it, tightened his grip on her arms and fought the urge to pull her to him and wrap his arms around her. She’d liked it in his arms. She’d felt safe there. He knew it. She’d told him so.
“You think Rudy would take things that far?”
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I can tell you that even if you wanted to go, I wouldn’t let you. Not by yourself.”
“Oh, God,” she said.
“I’m sorry if that scares you, but you have to be careful, and for now, you have to be with me.”
“Oh, God,” she said again.
“Look, if you’re worried about something happening between the two of us…” Josh closed his eyes, squeezed her arms and then backed off, letting her go. He didn’t like this. Didn’t like it one bit. But he didn’t see that he had a choice. He’d gotten her into this. It was his fault. “I’ll back off.”
“You don’t know how to back off. And you’re still playing with me.”
“I’m not playing,” he insisted. “I want you. Not anyone else. Just you.”
“Josh—”
“I know. You don’t believe me. Well, I don’t suppose it matters for now. Because I’ve got work to do, and if you and I have to share the same house, we can do that. I can wait for the rest of it.”
“The rest of what?” she said.
“You and me.”
“Josh, there is no you and me.”
“There will be,” he said. “It’ll be good, Amanda. I promise. You’re still feeling a little uncertain because of Rob. You’re still beating yourself up for trusting him, and you’ve forgotten all about enjoying life. But I can fix that. We could have a good time, you and I.”
“You just want to go to bed with me,” she said dryly.
“Is that an invitation?” He grinned, unable to help himself. It was, after all, his nature to flirt and he needed to lighten the mood. “Because, if it is—”
“You want to go to bed with every woman you meet.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Josh—”
“Okay, with a lot of them. I admit it. It’s not exactly a crime, Amanda.”
“No, it’s not that. It’s just not the way I am. It’s not the way I was raised, and it’s not going to happen, Josh.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want it to.”
Josh weighed his options, not liking any of them but seeing no alternative. He had to make her a promise, a promise he would keep. Still, eventually she would be in his bed. He knew it.
“Sounds like we need to make a deal.” He went back to the stove before he ruined their dinner and before he touched her again. “We can stay here or at my place. Your choice. But we’re going to be living together for a few days.”
“That’s a deal?”
“Hey, I’m letting you pick the place. Where do you want to stay?”
Amanda hesitated. “Does Rudy know where you live?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. He definitely knows where you live.”
“And you think we’d be safer at your apartment?”
“I know so. I’m on the fifteenth floor, and the whole place is wired.”
“Oh.”
She was giving in. He could feel it. “There are two bedrooms, Amanda. There’s even a lock on the spare bedroom door.”
“Locked doors don’t seem to give you much trouble.”
He grinned. “Barricade the door, if it makes you feel better.”
She frowned. “I’ll think about it.”
“Fine,” he said, the model of agreeability. He could back off, at least until he fed her, and let her think she had a choice. People tended to cooperate so much better when they thought they had a choice.
Still sounding wary, she asked, “What else do you think we need to do?”
“We drive to work together. We drive home together. You don’t go anywhere, outside of the office or my apartment, without me. Just for a few days. You can stand my company for that long.”
“Okay. What else?”
“I won’t touch you,” he volunteered. He could do that, if he had to.
“Really?”
He turned around, one hip pressed against the kitchen counter as he eased his weight back against it, trying to look more relaxed than he felt. “Look.” He held his arms up in front of him, palms flat, fingers spread wide. “No hands. Promise.”
She frowned. “What about the rest of you?”
Josh cocked his head to the right and laughed. “What other parts are you worried about, Amanda?”
She blushed, a soft-pink flooding her cheeks. He studied her for a long moment, wondering one more time exactly what it was about her that he found so captivating.
She wasn’t the most striking woman he’d ever met. There was nothing about her features that stood out in his mind. He had a bad habit of thinking of women as body parts, which were often the most interesting parts of the women he knew. He liked full, rounded breasts, curved in exactly the right way. Long legs in high heels and stockings. He liked hair he could touch, a woman who wasn’t always worried about him mussing her up. He liked a soft, subtle scent, skirts that were just a tad too short. He liked soft, clingy clothes, not necessarily tight, but clothes that showed off a woman’s shape, that fueled his imagination.
Amanda definitely fueled his imagination. There was something quietly pretty about her. Sweet. Innocent. Real. That was it, he supposed. Amanda was real. There was no pretense to her, nothing fussy or phony, either.
He looked up to find her looking at him, as well, had an inkling that she’d been every bit as caught up in studying him as he had in studying her. Josh grinned, thinking this was going to be just fine. And then he realized with a start that he had no idea where the conversation had gone or how long they’d been standing here staring at each other.
Something about him promising to keep his hands off her, he recalled. He could do that, he supposed. He could wait for her to come to him. The idea had infinite appeal. They would ha
ve days together, days and nights. There was a delicious intimacy to be found in sharing a confined space with a woman, when he wanted that level of intimacy. He seldom did. But right now he could hardly wait.
“What in the world are you thinking about?” she asked.
“That I can keep my hands off you if I have to.” And then he remembered. They’d been talking body parts. “You didn’t tell me, Amanda. What other parts are you worried about?”
She frowned, considered the point quite seriously. “Your mouth,” she said. “Your lips. Are you going to keep your lips to yourself, Josh?”
He opened his mouth to answer her, to say something smart, something a bit wicked. But he was still caught up in the sight of her, still thinking of all sorts of things he’d like to do with her. Unbidden came an image of him holding up his hands in mock surrender, but leaning over her, touching her with nothing but his mouth, his lips, his tongue, kissing all those places he longed to kiss. He could see himself teasing her, keeping his word of sorts, could hear himself saying, Just my mouth, Amanda. Nothing but my mouth.
“What are you thinking?” she said, sounding way too innocent, bewildered even.
Desire slammed through him. Josh turned around, too quickly, not watching what he was doing, catching the handle of the skillet, nearly upsetting it and its contents. As it was he had to reach for it any way he could. He grabbed the broad, rounded bowl of the skillet and managed to put it to rights. It settled against the stove with a bang, only a little of the contents splattering out onto his forearm, his fingertips singed from their contact with heated metal.
“Oh, no,” Amanda said, at his side in an instant.
Josh swore. He was never clumsy.
“Here.” She grabbed him by the arm and tugged him over to the sink, turning on cold water and shoving his hand under it. “Try this.”
“It’s not that bad,” he reassured her. “It’s better, just with the water.”
Still, she held his hand in place, her body soft and yielding, his hard and hurting just thinking about her, about his mouth on her.
She’d looked at him as if she had no idea what he was thinking. She was a sheltered, small-town girl from Kansas, and he wondered just how conventional her experiences had been. How did nice boys from Kansas handle themselves in the sack with a woman like her? Were the lights always out, the covers pulled up over both of them, so there was nothing at all to see? Had they rushed her, so intent on getting from point A to point B that no one had ever lingered over her body? Exploring? Lips trailing over every inch of that delicate, soft skin of hers?
Would she be shocked if she knew what he’d like to do? Explore her with nothing but his mouth? Tasting, teasing, tormenting? It would take hours to do it the way he wanted.
“Damn,” Josh said.
“I know,” she sympathized. “You should have just let it go, Josh. We could have found something else for dinner.”
Josh laughed a bit. She honestly didn’t have a clue, although when she crowded in beside him to inspect his hand, she came dangerously close to finding out exactly the direction his thoughts had taken. He was hard as a rock. Even the pain in his hand hadn’t distracted him enough to change that.
“I’m all right, Amanda,” he said, thinking it would be a good idea right now if she stopped touching him, especially since he hadn’t gotten her moved into his apartment yet. He didn’t want to shock her, and he had a feeling the effect she had on his body would indeed shock innocent little Amanda.
“We need to get something on those burns before they blister,” she said, shoving his hand back under the water.
Now that she mentioned it, it did hurt. He stood, unprotesting, with his hand under the water while she fussed around him, gathering a bit of ice in a bowl, filling it with water, sitting him at the table and putting his hand in the blessedly cool water.
“Better?” she asked.
“Yes. Thanks.”
She foraged through her cabinets for first-aid supplies. She took this so seriously, worked so intently over his hand and his arm. He found it utterly appealing in the end, Amanda taking care of him. He didn’t remember having anyone fuss over him so. Certainly not his mother, not even the no-nonsense nanny, particularly over such a meaningless injury. He liked having her do it, in a way that had nothing to do with the little sexual thrill that came from having her close. She had kind hands, every bit as soft and as gentle as he imagined, hands that slathered his with salve and bandaged with gauze.
Josh didn’t normally turn to a woman for niceness, for kindness, for caring. Not that he dated unkind women. Kindness simply wasn’t an issue. Caring wasn’t. Gentleness…well, that could be nice, at times, but he preferred a bit of an adventurous streak, of aggression, a woman who knew exactly what she wanted and how to get it.
So he found himself baffled by Amanda once again, by that odd little tug in the region of his heart when she tried so earnestly to help him. He didn’t even protest that she’d gotten carried away. His job had the potential to be very dangerous, and he’d been lucky over the years. But still, there had been times when he’d been hurt much worse than this. Burned fingertips were nothing.
“There,” she said. “All done.”
“Thank you.”
She smiled up at him, seeming more at ease than she ever had with him. That was worth a few singed fingers, he supposed.
“I guess we should eat dinner. Especially after all you suffered to save it.”
“Sure,” he said, getting to his feet.
“No, you sit. I’ll take care of it.”
Josh sat, trying to get his head screwed on the right way once again. She wasn’t touching him any longer. The pain in his hand settled down to a hard, pulsing ache. There was no more odd tugging at his heart from the sight of her worried face. He was focused, sure of what he wanted, needed. Everything would be fine.
He had days, after all. Days to bring her around to his way of thinking. He could do that, even with no hands, no kisses. He would enjoy the challenge, just as he intended to enjoy every bit of her. She would feel better. She’d smile, laugh, and when it was all over between them, he would leave.
There, he thought, relaxing a bit. He had everything figured out.
The phone rang. He thought about stopping her, cautioning her, but she grabbed it on the first ring. He saw her recoil. Then she said warily, “Mr. Olivara.”
Josh was beside her in an instant, his arm around her back as he pulled her against his side. She sank against him, with a death grip on the phone.
“Rudy,” she said. Then lied badly, “I’m fine.”
Josh told himself that it wasn’t such a bad thing having her scared. It would make her more careful, make her listen to him and do what he said. He needed her to do that so he could keep her safe.
She thanked Rudy for the flowers, then she turned into Josh’s arms, her head nestled against his chest. He stroked her hair, trying to reassure her.
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll do my best to make it to dinner.”
Josh took the phone from her trembling hand. “Rudy, we were just sitting down to dinner right now. You can talk to Amanda on Saturday, all right?”
Rudy more or less agreed. Josh was marginally polite, then hung up.
Amanda was trembling badly and clinging to him. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s all right.” In truth, it was no hardship at all to hold her this way. He just wished she had come into his arms for an entirely different reason.
“I hate this. And he scares me, Josh. He scares me so much.”
“I know, Amanda.” He stroked her hair again, liking the feel of her snuggled against him. “But you’re going to be fine. You’re going to be with me.”
She looked so sad, so overwhelmed.
“Come home with me, Amanda. Let me take care of you until this is over.”
“All right,” she said, slipping out of his arms, looking dazed and uncertain and a bit embarrassed. “I’m sorry
.”
Josh grinned. “Why?”
She shrugged uneasily, looking up at him. “I, uh—”
“No hands?” he guessed.
She nodded.
“Sorry. It’s going to take some getting used to. I tend to be a hands-on kind of guy.”
“I know, and…I’m not complaining. Not about that. It was…nice.”
Nice, he thought, trying not to grimace. He didn’t think nice was the word that came to mind when women usually thought of him.
“And it wasn’t your fault, anyway,” Amanda offered. “It was me.”
“No problem. You were frightened. If you need me, you come to me. I’ll be right here. Otherwise, I won’t touch you.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
Josh shoved his hands into his pockets and stood there. She sighed, looking tired and worn and scared. Damn, she still looked scared.
He would keep her safe and keep his hands off her, and Rudy would go back to Italy. After that Amanda would know Josh better, trust him. She would have come to depend on him. Anything could happen then.
Chapter 5
Amanda woke the next morning to the slow, silky slide of truly expensive linens against her skin, feeling a bit like a character in a fairy tale who’d opened her eyes and found herself in an entirely different world. A dangerous man knew where she lived, had her phone number, was stalking her with flowers and invitations to dinner, and Josh—who had to be the most dangerous man she’d ever met—wasn’t going to let her out of his sight for the next week.
Amanda still wasn’t sure how it happened. She’d heard Rudy’s voice on the phone, and the next thing she knew, she had her face buried against Josh’s chest, his arms wrapped securely around her. There was nowhere on earth she’d rather have been in that moment. She would have followed him anywhere.
And he’d brought her here to his apartment. All done in rich, brown leather, the walls a warm buttery-cream with dark-green accents, there was a subtle air of money to the place. He had a few paintings—probably obscenely expensive but admittedly pleasant to look at—an eclectic music collection and a sound system that had to cost more than she made in months, every gadget in the world in his neat, surprisingly tidy kitchen. She hadn’t dared to peek inside his bedroom. Heaven knew what she might find there. She’d hidden in the spare bedroom soon after they arrived last night and hadn’t come out. He hadn’t bothered her. Not if she discounted the fact that simply knowing he was there bothered her.
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