Derek lit a cigarette and broodingly watched his hands tremble. Not easy at all. Grown man or not, he was finding it more and more difficult to control the desire he felt for her. He had never felt anything like this, and the strength of it had caught him off guard. Those big brown eyes—or that dress. Who knew what had done it?
She had come to him out of desperate need for his help and, with the worst timing possible, he had fallen in love.
There was probably, he thought, nothing on earth as fundamentally impatient as a man in love. It was entirely natural at such a mad turning point in one’s life to be intolerant of any delay, to be wholly resistant to the idea of cautious equanimity, and to be possessed by a primitive physical desire that had to be beaten into some semblance of submission. Or satisfied.
Entirely natural.
And to force patience at such a moment went totally against the nature of the beast. So much so, at least in his own case, that Derek wasn’t sure he could do it. Love made desire more than itself, made it a hungry need just barely under control. But for how long?
Could he manage to control his own need long enough to reach Shannon and build that vital trust? And, even then … could he get close enough to touch her heart?
Raven hung up the phone and leaned back against the desk in their suite. “Damn,” she said softly.
Josh, standing a few feet away and gazing out a window at a sunny morning, turned toward her. “I didn’t like the sound of your end of the conversation,” he noted. “Bad?”
“It isn’t good. You remember I asked a friend of mine in the police department here to let me know if anything happened near Derek’s apartment?”
“I remember.” Josh came to her, his rather hard blue eyes softening as always when they rested on his wife. “What’s happened?”
“The alarm Derek had rigged in his apartment woke the neighborhood around two this morning. Witnesses reported two men running from the building. When the police got there, they found the door forced and the place empty. No sign of violence other than the door; they were looking for people, not things.”
Josh frowned. “Two men. Then Derek wasn’t there when they broke in.”
Raven sighed. “He always has pretty good street connections wherever he is. And he told me he expected them to find him just because he was a possible danger. If he was warned in time, then he’s taken Shannon and gone to ground somewhere.”
“Any ideas where?”
Her smile was crooked. “I think I told you once that all of us secret agent types had a specialty? Well, Derek’s is the ability to disappear—thoroughly. I told him we’d help if he needed a safe house, but I’m willing to bet he has half a dozen of his own scattered around Richmond … just in case.”
Josh looked at her for a moment, then asked politely, “Just who is Derek?”
She grinned. “You caught that, huh?”
“A number of safe houses,” Josh said, “even if only broom closets, tend to run into money. How does he manage on a government salary?”
“He doesn’t,” she replied, smiling. “A few years ago, I found out quite by accident who Derek is—and why Hagen never ordered him around like the rest of us peons.”
“I was wondering about that too,” Josh confessed.
“It’s crystal clear once you know the facts. Derek, the black sheep of his family, is also the heir. And you, being a man of business, surely know the Ross-Garrett Corporation?”
After a moment, Josh grimaced faintly. “What was that he said to me during that little caper with Kelsey about it being nice to have clout? He should know, dammit.”
“Understated, that’s Derek.”
Reflectively, Josh said, “I’m glad now that I decided against a takeover bid of Ross-Garrett. I have a feeling it wouldn’t be smart to back Derek into a corner.”
“Not if you value your throat,” Raven murmured.
“He goes straight for the jugular, eh?” Josh looked at her with a gleam in his eyes. “Who would you put money on, darling?”
She returned the look with a faint smile. “Don’t bite me, but when it comes to Ross-Garrett, I’d back Derek. His grandfather built that company, and even though Derek doesn’t have much to do with the running of it, he’d die a bloody death before giving it up to anyone.”
Josh whistled softly. “Like that, is it? Then I’d say a man with those kinds of instincts can take care of himself.”
“I know.” She sighed again. “And he can take care of Shannon. But he’s involved this time, and it’s a first for him.”
“Happened fast,” Josh noted.
“You should understand that, darling.”
He grinned at her. “I seem to recall.” He leaned over to kiss her, and then straightened and looked back over his shoulder as Zach came into the living room of the suite.
“Am I interrupting again?” the big security chief asked.
Raven leaned sideways to peer around Josh. “No more than usual,” she told him gently. “We’re getting used to it.”
Zach smiled at her, then reached over the back of the couch for a set of rolled-up blueprints. “The engineer on that Kansas City job is confused about the security system,” he told his friend and employer. “I’ve got him on the phone. Are you two going out for lunch?”
Josh glanced at his wife, then said, “No. Room service.”
Zach relaxed almost imperceptibly. He half saluted them with the blueprints, then vanished into his own room.
“He still doesn’t look like himself,” Raven said softly.
“He took it as hard as Teddy did,” Josh agreed quietly. “And losing the baby was bad enough—almost losing Teddy scared the hell out of him.” He frowned. “I wish he’d stayed with her in Boston. I know she’s recovered now and wanted him here with us while she’s resting at her sister’s place, but—”
“But,” Raven finished gently, “the threats against you are a more deadly danger at the moment. If Teddy had needed Zach, nothing could have kept him from her, you know that.”
Josh agreed with a reluctant nod. “I know. But threats are fairly common, and with Zach’s security team around us, a gnat couldn’t get in here, much less an armed gnat.”
Raven slipped her arms around his waist. “Well, we’ll be heading back to New York in a few days. In the meantime, if Derek does ask for our help—?”
“Then we give it,” Josh said promptly. “If he hadn’t acted so quickly in England, I would’ve had to fall flat at your feet in Red Square.”
“The logistics would have been tricky,” she agreed with a solemn nod.
He kissed her. “Indeed. And, speaking of logistics, is there anything along those lines we can do for Derek?”
Raven looked innocent. “He said he didn’t want us getting involved. Said it rather fiercely, as a matter of fact.”
Josh eyed her. “Oh, he did, did he? Just because I don’t want to take over the man’s company doesn’t mean I’m going to let him push me around.”
“I thought you might say something like that, darling,” she murmured, smiling.
Derek didn’t give Shannon a chance to withdraw completely from him that day, though she would have. He gritted his teeth and managed to control his unruly impulses, concentrating on closing the distance between them as unthreateningly as possible. Considered by others a nerveless man, he was fast discovering that his supposedly nonexistent nerves could come alive because she smiled at him, and that his heart had developed a disconcerting habit of stopping suddenly whenever he touched her.
And he touched her often. Sharing the duties of cooking breakfast in the small kitchen provided opportunities, and he didn’t hesitate to take advantage of them, whether it was a guiding touch on her shoulder or a firm hand around hers to demonstrate the proper way to flip a pancake. He forced himself to be as casual as possible, matter-of-fact, but he was also firm and quite deliberate. He was still gauging her reactions very carefully, trying to move slowly.
It hadn?
??t taken very long at all for him to realize that there was no lover waiting somewhere in the background; a large part of Shannon’s reaction to his touch was sheer surprise. The light, flirtatious conversation of the night before, conducted in darkness, had not prepared her even to consider that Derek’s casual touches meant a very personal interest.
And even though he’d intended to keep everything on an impersonal basis as long as possible in order to gain her trust, that restless male part of him that loved and wanted began to get the upper hand. It wasn’t a conscious decision that his touches began to linger and his voice drop to a new lower note, and he wasn’t even aware of it until he saw her increased surprise and wary confusion.
And by then he wasn’t sure he could stop it.
A distraction presented itself when Derek made a few calls, checking out Civatech with one friend and asking another to find out what he could about the company’s director of design, Adam Moreton. Shannon was restless while he made those calls, wandering around the loft as if she couldn’t settle in one place. Derek watched her, wondering if the restlessness was because the calls had reminded her of the danger again, or if his own behavior had unsettled her.
She was limping.
“Anything?” she asked when he cradled the receiver at last.
“We may know something later today,” he told her.
“Can they find us here? Those men?”
Derek hesitated, then answered truthfully, “Anyone can be found with enough time. But it’ll be damned hard for them to find us here. Shannon, is your leg bothering you?”
She immediately stopped moving, sitting down on the second step leading up to the platform. “It isn’t hurting.”
She had stopped, he thought wryly, with almost the length of the room between them. Hardly a good sign. “That isn’t what I asked.”
Shannon seemed to become fascinated by the tight cuff of her gold silk blouse, pulling at a button methodically. “It isn’t bothering me,” she murmured.
“Then why were you limping?” He lit a cigarette, more to keep his hands busy than anything else.
After a moment, she said tightly, “I limp. I can’t help it.”
“You only limp when your leg hurts and when you start thinking about it. You said it didn’t hurt. So why were you thinking about it just now?”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were limping.”
Shannon pulled harder at the button.
He sighed softly. “It must be those big brown eyes. You’re getting to me now, and there’s no sign of a red dress.”
She shot him a quick, startled look. “You don’t have to say things like that.”
“I thought so,” he said quietly, watching her. “Not only don’t you believe me when I say you’re beautiful, but you honestly have no idea how much you really are getting to me. Are you afraid of it, Shannon, or do you just not believe it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said unsteadily, bewildered by him and by the turmoil of feelings inside her. She wanted to touch him, wanted to laugh or cry, or do something insanely reckless.…
Derek leaned forward to stub out his cigarette in an ashtray on the coffee table, paying strict attention to the task. “God knows I don’t want to scare you,” he said in a low voice. “You’ve been scared enough. And hurt enough. But I want you to understand—and believe—that you are a lovely, desirable woman, and that I want you very much.”
Shannon couldn’t breathe, but didn’t think it mattered. Her heart wasn’t beating either, and then it was pounding erratically. He was several feet away in a large room, but she thought she could reach out and touch him. She could see individual golden hairs on his forearm and the curious flecks of color in his dark eyes. She could see the faint white line of tension around his mouth, and the tautness in his jaw. He was sitting back on the couch, turning his head to look at her, and his smile was lopsided, almost casual.
But there was that tension around his mouth. And had there been a faint tremor in that beautiful deep voice of his?
“No,” she said huskily, unable to look away. “Men don’t want me.”
“I can’t speak for all men,” he said quietly. “But I’d hate to think so many were morons. This man wants you, Shannon. I don’t want to take advantage of what’s happening in your life right now, but you had to know. I couldn’t have hidden it much longer. You could see that, couldn’t you? It’s why you were limping. Because I couldn’t hide what I was feeling, and you couldn’t believe it. Damn that distorted mirror,” he added without heat.
He was right: she couldn’t believe it. Men didn’t want her. And for a man like Derek to say that he did … no, she couldn’t believe it.
“I could prove it to you,” he said, still without moving from the couch. “But if I started loving you, I’d never be able to stop.” He wanted to tell her that “loving” was a literal term, but knew she wouldn’t believe that either. “And you’d believe it was just an appetite I wanted to satisfy, that it didn’t matter which woman was in my bed. You’d hurt yourself for no reason, and that would hurt me.” He drew a deep breath. “Which is why I’m sitting here hurting in other ways while trying to convince myself that I’m a grown man and I can’t always have what I want.”
Shannon cleared her throat carefully, and wasn’t surprised when her voice emerged shakily. “You seem to have me pretty well figured out.”
“I wish that were true.”
“It’s just—propinquity.”
“No,” he said, as if he’d expected just that argument from her.
“It doesn’t make sense,” she whispered.
He smiled another crooked smile. “It’s the only thing that does. The situation is impossible, the timing is lousy, and I want you.” Evenly, he added, “I shouldn’t have to say this, but after what you’ve gone through it’s only natural for you to look at this situation with suspicion. So I’ll say it. Trite as it sounds, I don’t mix business and pleasure, Shannon; in my business, it’s stupid, and it’s dangerous. This is a first for me. Also, I have never in my life believed that any woman should pay off a real or imagined debt to me in bed.”
Shannon looked hastily back at her sleeve and plucked at the button again, feeling heat suffuse her face. The man was a magician, a warlock. He always knew—
“That is what you were thinking, isn’t it?” he asked gently.
After a moment, she said huskily, “It was the only thing that made sense.”
“You don’t have a very high opinion of yourself, but we knew that. Now we know you don’t think much of me either.”
“That isn’t fair,” she whispered.
“Probably not.” His voice was suddenly clipped, remote. “I’m finding it a little difficult to look at the situation objectively. I know you’re hurt, Shannon. I know you’ve been hurt a long time. What your life’s done to you makes me mad as hell—and not only because of what it’s done to you, but also because of what it’s going to do to us.”
She cleared her throat. “What do you mean?”
Derek sighed. And his voice lost the hard remoteness, deepening and going rough when he answered. “You’re as wary as a little stray cat, afraid to be touched, suspicious of every outstretched hand. Too proud to reach out yourself, far too certain you’ll receive a slap instead of a welcome. You were like that before this whole thing started. And now it’s worse. You’ve lost your home, you’re being hunted by deadly people. And I’m a stranger. If you were afraid to trust before, you’re a hundred times less likely to trust now. Especially a stranger. Especially a man who says he wants you.”
“I said I—I trusted you.”
“You trust me to know best how to handle the situation with Civatech. You trust me to know when to run, and where to run. But you don’t trust me as a man, Shannon. And I’m afraid we aren’t going to have very much time to build that bridge. I’m afraid, too, because I want you so much. And, because we’re in the situation we’re in, mor
e or less trapped together, I’m afraid I’ll rush you, overwhelm you. You’re confused and scared, and God knows I don’t want to take advantage.”
Shannon drew a deep breath. “So what are you saying?”
Derek reached for a cigarette, lit it. He wasn’t looking at her now, and his voice was still rough. “I’m saying there’s no easy solution. I’m not going to stop wanting you, no matter how many times I tell myself I can’t have what I want. But I’ll try to control it. And the situation with Civatech will likely get much worse before it gets better, until it’s over for good. Time won’t stand still for us; there’ll always be that threat. Until it’s over.”
She hesitated. “You’re saying you want me, but we won’t—won’t—”
“Make love.” He made the words evenly spaced and distinct. “That’s what I’m saying. The timing is lousy, and I won’t do anything to add more fear and confusion to your life. When all this is over, when your life is stable again and you can think clearly, then we’ll see how you feel about it. You could decide I’m the last man in the world you’d be attracted to. But I want you to make the decision. I don’t want you to feel rushed—by me or by the circumstances.”
He looked at her then, his expression serious and his dark eyes intent. “Do you understand, Shannon? I can’t help wanting you; but whether or not you really want me is a decision you won’t have to make until you have the time and peace to think it through.” Promises, he thought, and wondered if he could keep this one. Wondered if he’d sacrifice his sanity to keep this one. “All right?”
After a moment, she nodded hesitantly. “All right.”
“Just don’t be afraid of me.” He hoped his smile didn’t look as strained as it felt. “And don’t be afraid of what I feel for you.”
Shannon’s nod was more hesitant this time, almost a cross between a nod and a head-shake, reflecting her confusion. Her gaze skittered away from his. She didn’t know what she felt, but if there was fear it was lost in the turmoil of a dozen other emotions. Her throat was tight and scratchy, and her heart beat with a slow, heavy rhythm, as if some internal pressure delayed every beat. Her skin felt flushed, tingling as if her nerve endings were closer to the surface now.