Thrill Me to Death

  In less than a second he had his Ruger in hand and was crossing the patio, scanning the doorways and windows, surveying the shadowed lawns. He circled the main house slowly, his bare feet making no sound on the damp grass as he darted in between Al Capone’s trees. Every few steps, he stopped, listened, smelled.

  He saw nothing unusual, heard the constant whir of crickets, and smelled only the sweet musk of oleander and mangoes. Heat and humidity bore down like a steam iron over everything. Wiping his brow, he returned to the back of the house, looking up to the terrace outside Cori’s bedroom.

  Was she in there? Showering? Undressing?

  His body tightened and hardened and he swore at his shitty luck in assignments.

  Not that it was the hand of Lady Luck that had sent him back into Cori’s world. No, that would be the hand of Lady Lucy. Ms. Machiavelli.

  He started another lock check of the French and sliding doors along the back of the first floor. Every one clicked and tightened at his touch, assuring him they were bolted. A guest room, the living room, the dining room, the game room, the main kitchen, the butler’s pantry, the laundry…swung wide open.

  “Damn it,” he muttered. He stepped into the utility area, moving from there to the main kitchen, which was dimly lit by the halogen bulbs under the cabinets. Granite counters and stainless steel appliances gleamed, and the aromas of dinner were masked by something like oak and vanilla.

  Furious, he headed for the office at the front of the house, expecting to find Cori working where he’d left her earlier that night.

  He crossed the main foyer and strode through the enormous living room, his path colored blue and green from a gigantic saltwater aquarium built in one wall. Around the dining table that sat more people than were in his entire family, to the entrance of the office, a room full of dead animals and dark wood.

  He waited outside the door, listening for the click of a computer key, the turn of a page, the scratch of a pen. A whisper of her sigh.

  Heat and anticipation rumbled through him as he stood stone still.

  Nothing.

  Clearing his throat in warning, he stepped into the doorway and met the eyes of a spotted-leopard rug. The room appeared to be empty.

  “Cori?” The desk was cluttered with papers and a pamphlet, a laptop humming softly, featuring a screen saver of the Chicago skyline. Why would she leave her computer on, her files out, the lights on?

  He glanced at the papers, noting a stockholder’s report with multiple sections highlighted in yellow, a spreadsheet with handwritten notes in the margin, a file marked PETALUMA MALL/SONOMA COUNTY.

  He called her name again, glanced in the bathroom, then barreled through the rest of the rooms on the first floor. He took the main stairs two at a time, pausing at the top to listen for sounds of life. A TV, music…nothing.

  He headed toward the light that spilled from the double doors at the far end of the hall. “Cori? Are you in there?”

  He waited a second, then entered. Her bed was made, the room virtually untouched. Everything was as he’d last seen it, although the pink outfit she’d worn was draped over the chaise in the closet.

  Where the hell was she?

  And then he knew. The nursery.

  Taking a quiet, slow breath, he paused before he tapped on the door to the tiny room. “Hey, kid, you in there?”

  Nothing. He pressed his ear to the door, then slowly turned the brass handle. It was pitch black and empty.

  A hot spurt of fear shot through him. Where the hell was she?

  He moved like lightning from room to room, without even pausing. He knew damn near every inch by now, and he retraced his steps, all the way back to the guest house, in the off chance she went to find him.

  He tried the garage—all cars accounted for.

  He combed the north and south lawns and finally jogged toward the dock, his imagination in way too high a gear, a sheen of sweat covering his whole body.

  The gate was unlocked. Throwing the bars back, he devoured the concrete dock in a few strides. The cabin cruiser rolled on its moorings, dark and abandoned.

  But there was a flicker of light in the cabana at the end. He moved silently toward the building, his hand on his pistol. All four walls were floor-to-ceiling glass, enclosing a room that was only a couple hundred square feet. He saw the back of a white sofa and an empty one facing it, but he couldn’t see the floor between them.

  A pinpoint of light flickered momentarily, maddeningly out of sight. Was she hiding? Was someone else?

  Weapon drawn, he curled one finger around the handle of the sliding glass door, and slid it carefully so that it didn’t make a sound going over the track.

  Someone was on the other side of that sofa, on the floor. He stepped into the cool air, purposely scuffing his foot in warning. “Who’s in here?”

  “I am.”

  Raw, rough relief coursed through him. He came around the sofa and found her sitting on the floor. A tiny flashlight propped next to her illuminated an extensive game of solitaire spread out in front of her.

  “Cori, what the hell are you doing?”

  She looked up, her eyes a little red, her features drawn. Her gaze dropped slowly over him, then she looked back up and half-smiled, a familiar mix of surrender and warmth in her eyes.

  “I’m trying to beat the devil.” Her gaze turned dark. “But he’s really on his game tonight.”

  He fell onto the sofa as the adrenaline gushed through his veins like a waterslide. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered. “I thought something happened to you.”

  She slapped a card on an ace pile. “Something did,” she said, so quietly he could barely hear her.

  Every defense was down, her emotions had lost control, and she was tired. Classic conditions for a good interrogator to pluck out the truth.

  “Wanna tell me about it?” he asked softly.

  She nibbled on her bottom lip and studied her cards, then dealt three more, scanning the field of play without moving her head. She let out a soft breath, and dealt three more. Then three more. She flipped the final set down to her side and held up her empty hand.

  “I guess. The devil has me but good.”

  Max braced himself. “Then it’s time to talk.”

  She scooped up the cards and slapped the deck on his thigh, her hand hot through the thin cotton sleep pants he wore. “No, it’s time to play.” Her look was pure challenge. “Deuces are wild.”

  She’d lost her mind—Cori could think of no other explanation for issuing the invitation.

  Max sat, crossing his legs Indian-style, like hers. The position pulled the drawstring pants tight over his thigh muscles and all but dared her to look between his legs.

  She willed herself not to, instead lingering on his chest. Bare, magnificent, cut with muscles, dusted with a rough patch of dark, curly hair. God, she loved that chest. Loved to lay her cheek right in the middle and count the beats of his heart. Loved to thread her fingers through that hair, following the straight line over the ridges of smooth stomach muscles that used to clench, then relax, at her touch.

  And below that…

  A twisting ache coiled low in her belly.

  “You want to deal or size up the competition some more?” He didn’t hide the amusement in his eyes.

  “You deal.”

  He made a bridge and fanned the deck with practiced ease, looking around the cabana. “So is this your secret hiding place?”

  “One of them.”

  He glanced at the end table, narrowing his eyes to read the title of the book she’d left there. “I remember that about you. You like to find…spots.”

  She smiled. “Guilty.”

  As he shuffled, she studied him in the shadows of the flashlight beam. His cheekbones formed hollows darkened by stubble. She instantly remembered the scratch of that beard on her cheeks, over her breasts, between her thighs.

  “Feels different down here,” he observed, looking around again. “Not so glitzy as the r
est of your place.”

  “I decorated it,” she said, as though that explained the lack of glitz. She looked impatiently at the deck. “Are you ever going to deal those?”

  “When I’m ready.” He divided the deck, and shuffled some more. “Are you down here in the dark because you listened to my warnings?” he asked.

  She picked up the flashlight, repositioning it so it wasn’t washing him in an artist’s light. “I’m trying to be a good client for you,” she said, feigning an agreeable voice.

  “Principal,” he corrected. “We refer to the person we’re guarding as a principal.”

  “We? How many Bullet Catchers are there?”

  “It varies. Some are permanent. Some are consultants. There are a few guys I work closely with.”

  She shifted, the marble floor hard under her bottom. But she didn’t suggest they move to the sofa. There was something too intimate, too familiar, about playing cards with Max on a sofa. Or a bed. Or, like they once had, on the roof of his Chicago apartment on a hot summer night. “Are all the Bullet Catchers like you?”

  He chuckled, a low, rumbly tone that made the hair on the back of her neck rise and fall. “No one’s like me. But one of them is Dan Gallagher. You remember him?”

  “Your friend from Pittsburgh? Of course I remember him.” Dan’s startling green eyes and rapier sense of humor were unforgettable. “Wasn’t he an FBI agent?”

  “He’s a security specialist, and he still does a lot of undercover work.” A hint of a smile deepened those hollows; Dan was one person who could always make Max smile. “He brought me into the Bullet Catchers.”

  “When was that?”

  “A while ago.” He leveled the deck on the marble floor with a crack that sounded like a door, slamming the subject closed. Then he held the cards to her. “Wanna cut?”

  She tapped her fingernail on the top card, the way she always did. I trust your shuffle.

  “You keep any chips down here in your haven?”

  She laughed lightly. “No. I only play solitaire.”

  “Cash?”

  “Not on me.”

  He dealt one card to her, slow and deliberate, facedown. “I don’t play for fun.”

  “Yes, you do.” Her heart thumped a tattoo on her rib cage.

  “You mean strip or favors?” His sexy half-grin sent a wicked craving straight up her middle, like liquid fire. “Too conventional. It always ends up the same.”

  Yeah, horizontal.

  “I have a new game for you,” he said, dealing the next two cards. “We’ll play for answers. The winner gets to ask anything. Loser has to answer.”

  She took her cards and fanned her hand open. “So no one gets naked or sweaty.”

  “Guess that depends”—he raked her with an evil, teasing look—“on what you ask. No topics are off limits.”

  “Some topics are off limits,” she volleyed. “I’m not going to answer personal questions.”

  “Then you better win.” He checked his cards. “This is five-card draw, but you know that.”

  She pulled a pair of eights and some junk. His expression was as blank as a dead man’s.

  “How do you keep that straight face?” she asked.

  “No questions unless you win. Rules of the game.”

  “Fine.” She flipped out the three useless cards and set them down. He handed her three new cards, including another eight. She bit her lip, but consciously let no muscle move in her face.

  Yet she must have given away her triplets, because he zipped his cards together and folded. “Ask away.” He shifted on his haunches.

  “Are you uncomfortable on the floor?”

  “Nope.” He scooped up the cards and held them out to her. “Your deal.”

  “Hey, that wasn’t a question.”

  “Sounded like one to me.” A smile threatened, an infinitesimal rise at the corner of his lips. Once, long ago, she could coax a full smile from him with just a look or, even better, a touch. Back then, she could make him laugh. That deep, sexy, from-the-heart sound that rolled over her and made her weak and dizzy and in love.

  She shuffled, cut, and started the deal, but her concentration was waning fast. In her fingers, she held a pool of black and red, picked a few lousy cards and folded.

  “Can I take a bye on a question?” she asked.

  “Sure. I’ll buy your shirt.” He didn’t even blink, but a tiny glint in his eyes gave away the joke.

  She laughed and shook her head. “Never mind. Ask me something. I have nothing to hide.”

  His quick look surprised her, but then he asked, “How’s your mother?”

  Why, of all the stupid questions, would that one twist her heart a little? Because when Max got nice, she got…gooey. “She’s fine. Got a job at Paramount Studios as an assistant to an assistant to an assistant. Still only wears purple. Temporarily single after her fourth divorce. Well, fifth. But twice to the same guy, so we only count it as four.”

  He nodded and dealt again. She concentrated and won easily, this time with a juicy full house.

  “My question.” She pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around them, enjoying the fun of their play. Max’s gaze slid over the skin revealed by her denim shorts, as warm as if he’d touched her. That would be a whole different kind of fun.

  She forced herself to focus on a good question. If she could ask Max anything, what would she want to know?

  Have you thought of me every single day?

  Have you ever been in love again?

  Did you let my dad take that shot on purpose?

  “You’re staring at me again.” His voice was soft, no more than a breath escaping his lips.

  “Then we’re even.”

  Electrical impulses jumped through the cabana as each second dragged by. “Make it easy on yourself, kid.”

  Kid. God, she loved it when he used that nickname. It was so…protective. But the time for that kind of admission was long gone. “Tell me, Max, why’d you leave the DEA?”

  “Sucky assignments in places like Grenada and Guatemala. Hot places. Like this.”

  She knew why he’d been sent to Grenada and Guatemala. She’d been in the room with the men who’d loved her father nearly as much as she had, and they all needed to blame someone, to hurt someone for the indescribable pain caused of losing Paul Cooper. She’d given them what they needed. She’d handed them the head of Max Roper, and ensured that he’d never get any higher in the DEA than where he was. Lower, in fact.

  So, really, that was a waste of a question. She knew why he left the DEA. Because of her.

  She started the shuffle without comment. There wasn’t really any safe topic or impersonal question with Max. She won the next hand way too easily, certain he’d let her.

  “How are the Steelers going to do this year?” she asked.

  He lifted his chin, an acknowledgment of the ideal impartial question. “Going all the way again.”

  She slid the deck his way. “Ever the fan. You get to see them play?”

  “One game, one question.”

  She leaned her arm against the seat of the sofa, propping her head on her hand as he dealt. “Could be a long night.”

  He took another visual journey over her body, then glanced at the windows. Pointedly. “When are you going to get those drapes in here?”

  The implication was obvious. She stared at her cards, her pulse racing, her imagination slipping into places it had no business going. She took two cards, hoping for a straight that never materialized, and lost to his pair of nines.

  “So, Cori.” He repositioned himself on the floor again, a tad closer, his gaze direct, his voice low—the master interrogator. “Why did you stop trying to have a baby?”

  She blinked at him. “What?”

  “You said ‘when we built this house we were trying to have a baby.’ That gives me the impression you stopped trying at some point. Why?”

  She shook her head, then reached down and looped a finger around t
he back of her sandal. “Since you said I could strip instead of answer”—she flipped the shoe off—“that’s my answer.”

  He grinned. “I said I’d buy your shirt. You’re forgetting our rules.”

  “We have no rules anymore, Max.”

  “Fair enough,” he said. “Your deal?”

  She took the cards and dropped them. “I don’t want to play anymore.”

  “But I have more questions.”

  She smiled a little. “So ask them. You think we have to play poker to communicate?”

  She heard his slow intake of breath, the first sign that Max was fighting for control.

  “What I think,” he finally said, very slowly, “is that it might be hard as hell to be this close to you, for this long, and not…” He put one finger on her knee, then traced a single, burning line up her thigh. “Lay a hand on you.”

  She glanced at his long, strong finger against her bare skin. “You are laying a hand on me.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m laying a finger on you.” He spread his hand, the large span of it practically covering her whole leg. “Now I’m laying a hand on you.” He glided that hand an inch higher.

  Goose bumps rose over her skin and it felt like all her blood raced to a single, throbbing place in her body. Max swallowed, then wet his lips with the tip of his tongue.

  That would be the next sign of his losing control. God, she knew every expression, every gesture, every inch of his body.

  If she dropped her gaze, she knew she’d see his erection, ready and straining the fabric in its way.

  She did.

  It was.

  She closed her eyes as desire slammed through her whole body. “Max—”

  His mouth was on hers, harsh and hot, before she could take another breath. And when she tried, he just kissed her deeper.

  Fire whipped through her veins. His kiss was as unrelenting and arousing as she remembered, and she opened her mouth to his demanding tongue, which glided between her teeth without hesitation.

  Deep in his chest, he let out a low groan, plunging one hand into her hair while the other still burned like an iron on her thigh. She slanted her head to get more of him, clenching her fists to keep from grabbing handfuls of him and touching all that mountain of muscle. Once more, his tongue took over, slick on the roof of her mouth, exploring and tasting.