She watched in slow motion as he ran his finger down the length of her sleeve. Even through the thick terry her skin tingled.
“As for not touching you.” He shook his head. “I’ve been dying to touch you since the first second I laid eyes on you.”
He lifted the finger that had just stroked her arm and pointed over his shoulder toward a door she hadn’t noticed behind him. “This suite has two bedrooms. My suitcase is in there. I didn’t want to put any pressure on you.”
He took off his glasses, and when he looked down at her she was hit with the full impact of those stormy, suddenly serious eyes. “I don’t live here, Kat. I’m based out of Miami where my gallery’s growing like a toddler. I get to Cairo maybe three, four times a year on buying trips or when a colleague calls with something of interest. I wasn’t planning on coming back until the fall.”
She took a breath, because the air was suddenly hot and sultry, and she had a strange feeling maybe she’d jumped to the wrong conclusion way too fast.
“That dinner we had? The one where you were convinced afterward I didn’t want to see you again? Furthest thing from the truth. I suggested we go for a walk because I didn’t want to take you home, and once we got to your flat all I could think about was dragging you against me and kissing you senseless. I would have given up my left arm to go upstairs with you, but I forced myself to leave instead, because I didn’t want you to be a one-night stand.”
One-night stand? Oh no. “Then…why am I here now?”
His gaze ran over her face, down to her lips and back up to her eyes. “Because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since that night. About how soft your skin is, about how sweet you smell, about the sound of your sexy voice. Just the memory is enough to drive me mad.”
Her toes curled against the carpet.
“I have to be in Barcelona in three days,” he said. “I have a mountain of paperwork from my last trip that I never finished, and I left a buyer high and dry to fly out here last night. I don’t have time to do the normal dating ritual of dinner and a movie and an ‘I’ll call you’ goodnight kiss. I brought you here today because I wanted time alone with you so we could get to know each other better before I have to leave again. To find out if this spark between us is real or imagined. And my bags are in that room because I didn’t want you to feel pressured to do something you weren’t ready for.” His voice deepened. “But don’t for one minute assume I’m not dying to get inside you in any way you’ll let me right this second. Because I guarantee you’d be wrong.”
Liquid slid through Kat’s veins, then pooled in her stomach until she felt like she would burst. “And, um, what did you discover?”
His brows drew together to form a slight crease between his gorgeous eyes. “About what?”
“About us. This spark. Is it…is it still there after I made a fool of myself a few minutes ago?”
One side of his mouth curled in that sexy half grin, the one she’d been itching to lick off his face through their whole dinner. “Oh yeah. Definitely there for me. What do you think?”
She finally drew a breath. “I think if you don’t kiss me soon, I’m going to die.”
His arms were around her so fast, she gasped. And when the long, lean line of his body came into contact with hers, she knew she’d been wrong. He was hard as stone and very obviously aroused.
Warmth spread between her thighs, and even as she berated herself for being a fool, her heart jumped in time with his pulse.
He leaned down, but he didn’t kiss her. His mouth hovered over hers until she thought she’d scream. She curled her fingers in his dress shirt, trying to draw him closer.
“This is going to be complicated,” he whispered.
“The good things always are.”
He brushed his thumb over her bottom lip, sending sparks of desire straight to her center. “I’m not looking for a one-nighter with you. Fair warning, Kit-Kat, I want a whole lot more.”
Oh, so did she. She barely knew him, but one thing was clear: he was going to change her life.
His lips settled over hers, gentle at first, but with growing urgency. As his tongue slid into her mouth and desire exploded in her core, she responded with everything she had in her.
When they were both breathless and his mouth finally parted from hers, she slipped her hands up into his hair and stared into his smoldering eyes, knowing there was no going back for her. “So, um, you showed me my room but not yours. I’m curious what the rest of this suite looks like.”
His answer was a lusty groan followed by strong arms sweeping her off the floor to carry her across the room.
CHAPTER TEN
Present day
Northern Pennsylvania
It had to be the longest night of his life. Or the longest few hours to daylight.
Take your pick, Pete thought. Shit in one hand, piss in the other. Either way he looked at it, the end result was still the same. Every muscle in his body twitched in time to the second hand on his watch as dawn inched closer.
In the shower, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the night he’d ignored the God-given gift of common sense that had kept him alive for thirty-two years and gone after Kat at her tomb. Dammit, he should have stayed away. If he’d thought with his big head that day instead of his little one, none of this would ever have happened.
Scowling at the memory, he finished showering and reluctantly emerged from the bathroom only to find the tiny apartment empty. He suspected Kat was in the adjacent garage, but he wasn’t interested enough to go searching for her. And to be honest, he was relieved at the silence. His brain was still working around everything she’d told him.
Yeah, well, he wasn’t about to go overanalyzing any of that now, was he?
But he still had questions. Like how the hell she’d gotten the jump on him and why his face looked like it had been used as a battering ram recently.
With a towel wrapped around his waist, he pawed through the small closet next to the kitchen. He didn’t feel as sick to his stomach anymore, but his brain was still pounding away at his skull, and he knew this time it wasn’t due to sedatives or any alcohol he’d consumed earlier but from reality crashing down around him. Pulling out a pair of worn jeans and an NYU sweatshirt, he frowned.
“Goddamn hand-me-downs,” he mumbled. As if the situation weren’t bad enough, he had to actually wear Slade’s clothing.
Muttering curses at no one in particular, but with no other options, he pulled on the jeans and refused to think about the fact he was going commando in another guy’s pants. He tugged the sweatshirt over his head, found a pair of wool socks in a basket on the shelf and pushed his feet into a pair of hiking boots in the bottom of the closet.
“Oh, this just figures.” He bent down and shoved his foot around as he tied the laces as loose as possible, the whole time glowering at the size tens that were—just his luck—one size too small. When he stood up too quickly, his head spun, and a wave of nausea hit him hard.
Food was a good idea at this point. Soak up the drug, sober up his head. He turned for the small kitchen only to find most of the contents were frozen foods and packaged meals.
He didn’t have the patience or inclination to actually cook right now, so he pawed through the cupboard until he found a jar of peanut butter and decided that was better than nothing. As he pulled a frozen loaf of bread from the freezer, he couldn’t help wondering when the hell Slade had been here last. The guy was probably off on ops half the time, but you’d never know it by looking at the supplies he kept on hand. Or maybe he’d left the agency and been in hiding with Kat all these years.
That thought was enough to send the blood roaring to Pete’s head. Not going there. None of my business anyway.
With more force than necessary, he grabbed two slices of frozen bread, slapped peanut butter on one and smashed them together. One bite told him his stomach wasn’t going to like the combination, but he figured, screw it. Anything was better
than this drugged-out feeling.
After he choked down the sandwich and polished off a cola, he went back to the closet, found a gray parka that looked like it would fit his shoulders and tugged a black wool cap over his head. He shoved a pair of fingerless gloves into the coat pocket, then searched the closet some more. A little metal box up on the top shelf drew his attention.
He pushed propane canisters to the side, reached for the box and pulled it down. The locking mechanism on the front was child’s play, really. Just enough to deter a kid or a halfwit. Frowning, he carried the box into the closet-sized kitchen, set it on the counter and dug through the drawers until he found a metal skewer.
Not a pick, but it’d work in a pinch.
It took him longer than he’d have liked to pop the lock, and he knew his buddy Rafe would have laughed his ass off if he’d been watching, but the end result was still the same. The lock gave with a soft click. Pete tossed the skewer on the counter, lifted the lid and let out a low whistle when he looked inside.
At least one damn thing was going his way. The 10mm was high end and probably the most expensive thing in the whole apartment. He lifted the black metal, turned it from side to side and checked the chamber. Like an old habit, he pocketed one magazine, snapped the second into place, then tucked the firearm into the back waistband of his jeans.
And as he did he had a sudden flash of doing the same damn thing time and again, in a lot shittier places than this.
He’d been in tight scrapes before. A man in his line of work ran into shady characters in some of the worst corners of the world. It went without saying that the poorest and least policed countries had the biggest treasures and the greediest suppliers, and he’d capitalized on that fact over the years. Sure, his business was pretty much on the up and up now, but six years ago, when he’d met Kat? That was another matter entirely.
Since he didn’t want to think about anything remotely related to Kat, he ran a hand over his face, scratched his jaw and wished like hell for a razor.
Metal banging around in the adjacent garage echoed through the room. He eyed the clock on the wall in the small living area. 5:15 a.m. The sun would be up in a few hours. He couldn’t hear the wind whipping against the building anymore, and he hoped that meant the mother-f-ing storm had finally passed.
Pete looked at the ratty sofa. If he were smart he’d lie his ass down and get an hour of shut-eye before he had to go outside and dig himself out of this mess. He’d need all his energy so he could make tracks back to civilization as soon as it was light.
More banging drifted to his ears. Followed by a curse.
He bit back the eloquent French retort that jumped to his lips and glared toward the garage door. And knew he wasn’t getting any sleep now or anytime soon. He was about to make matters worse.
He stepped into the garage only to be greeted by a familiar view that socked him hard in the gut. The hood of the rusted Ford he’d planned to use as his escape vehicle was up, and Kat was leaning over the thing doing God-knows-what to the engine. What stopped him wasn’t the fact she was tinkering with his only means out of this hellhole, but that she’d changed into jeans, her heartshaped ass filling out the worn denim as if it were a second skin.
And staring at her there, light from an unshaded bulb highlighting each and every curve, he had a sudden memory flash: pressing his lips to the twin dimples on her lower back, running his hands over the smooth skin of her gorgeous backside, clutching her hips tight with his fingers as he sank inside her from behind and bent to kiss her neck.
Warmth he grudgingly recognized as arousal speared him in the stomach, drifted lower until he had to shift his feet around to relieve the pressure in his groin. And that was when he realized his body obviously wasn’t up to speed with his brain quite yet. The little man in his pants didn’t know sex with her was no longer an option.
He clenched his jaw and fought back the arousal that only pissed him off more, then unleashed all that pent-up anger on her. “Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing now?”
Kat’s head hit the top of the hood with a crack that echoed through the garage and sent stars firing off in her line of vision.
She bit her tongue to keep from swearing and jerked away from the engine block. Rubbing the back of her throbbing skull, she glanced behind her and saw Pete, freshly showered and smelling just as good as she remembered, looking more pissed off than a chained pit bull.
“I asked what you think you’re doing,” he barked.
Okay, his shower hadn’t done much to improve his mood. His tight shoulders were bunched for battle in that worn gray sweatshirt. Deep frustration lines marred his forehead beneath that black wool cap covering his hair. He had one heck of a shiner around his eye which, for reasons Kat couldn’t explain, made him look that much more dangerous and sexy as hell.
He clenched his jaw as he waited for her to answer, and her gaze dropped to his mouth.
Yeah, that sweet and tempting mouth that had kissed her silly before was now set in a grim line. He was downright ticked she was anywhere near the vehicle he planned to use as his escape.
Escape. Right. That was exactly what he planned to do. And from the looks of it, sooner rather than later.
“I was just checking to make sure it runs,” she said as she massaged her scalp.
He eyed her like he didn’t believe her, then moved to examine the engine himself. Careful to step around her so their bodies didn’t come close to making contact.
Definitely still pissed. Although at the moment she wasn’t sure why he thought he had the market cornered on that emotion.
She waited while he pulled the dipstick out and checked the oil level. She held the rag out for him as a peace offering, but he ignored it, instead wiping his grimy hands on the thighs of his jeans.
Oh right, not his jeans. Marty’s jeans. No wonder he was in an extra-foul mood.
He walked around the side of the truck without speaking, climbed behind the wheel and started the ignition with the keys she’d left in the cab. His eyes narrowed on the dash. Then he killed the engine and climbed back out. “There’s less than a quarter tank of gas. How far to the nearest town?”
“Keeneyville’s about ten minutes down the road. In good conditions. But there’s only one gas station, and it might be closed due to the storm.”
“Great.” He perched his hands on his narrow hips and glanced around the garage as if considering his options.
She touched the medal at her chest and thought about her own. She’d found the gas cans Marty had mentioned on the phone, but there still wasn’t enough fuel for two vehicles to get out of here, and considering the weather, the limo was pretty much useless at this point. It had barely made it the last ten miles to the farm when the snow had been seriously piling up. So that left the truck. She needed to get to Philly, and he wanted out of this garage.
Indecision warred within her as she bit her lip. She really wanted to tear into him for being such a dick but knew that wouldn’t get her anywhere. So she tried for sweetness instead. “I know where we can get some fuel, but I’m going to need a favor from you first.”
He slowly turned her direction with eyes that could have burned a hole right through her and felt like they had. Refusing to shrink from that look, she shifted her feet and lifted her chin in defiance. So he was ticked at her. So she’d lied to him. So what? He’d done some pretty awful things, too.
“Oh, this should be good,” he muttered, crossing his arms over his chest and spreading his feet wide in an aggressive stance. “Lay it on me. I’m all ears. What could I possibly do to help you out, Kat? Please. Tell me. I’m dying to help.”
No, not just a dick. Now he was being a complete asshole. She refused to drop to his level. “I need to go to Philadelphia.”
“And that impacts me how?”
She glanced at the pickup.
Understanding dawned in his eyes. “In this truck.”
She nodded.
“M
y truck,” he said again.
“The limo won’t make it in this snow. And besides, there’s not enough gas for both vehicles to leave here. So…I was thinking we’d go together. I can’t leave you out here stranded without transportation.”
“Generous of you.” His brows dropped low. “Why do you need to go to Philly?”
She hesitated, sure this would only make things worse, but really, what were her other options? “I made a call. A friend of a friend has agreed to help me. Us, if you want. But we have to get to Philadelphia first.”
“A friend,” he said with guarded suspicion. “Someone with the government?”
“Something like that.”
He studied her a beat. “Your friend of a friend wouldn’t happen to be an acquaintance of Slade’s, would he?”
She bit her lip. “Maybe.”
“Maybe,” he repeated. Then he shook his head, disgust running across his face. “No, I think definitely. You just wanna keep rubbing my nose in it, huh?” He turned away to study a shelving unit across the room.
“It’s not like that,” she said quickly.
“I don’t care what it’s like,” he said sharply. “All I want right now is to get the hell out of here.”
His tone was straight and to the point, but his body language belied something else: frustration, anger…jealousy?
Definitely not the latter. Not after the way he’d walked away from her so easily all those years before. “Pete—”
A loud popping pierced the quiet. Metal blasted off metal in a long series of bursts that sounded like a garage full of cars backfiring all at once. Wood panels on the exterior wall across the room cracked and split with an echoing thwack.
One minute Kat was standing on her feet ready to dig her heels in over their transportation situation, the next Pete dove for her, taking her down hard on the cement floor. Her back and shoulders took the brunt of the fall. Her skull cracked against the unforgiving concrete. A wooden shelf behind them splintered as bullets ripped it to pieces. A can of nails flew up in the air, raining bits of metal down around them.