Damn.
Alex searched on. There were shoes—one pair of sensible shoes, three pairs of ridiculous ones—surprisingly few cosmetics, some toiletries, some very nice jewelry—chains dripping with diamonds, pearls, emeralds. She bad probably cleaned out the safe before she left. He didn’t want to think of the man who’d given them to her, the one who beat her.
Finally, in the bottom of the bag, he found her wallet. She had about two thousand dollars in cash, a whole slew of credit cards, a checkbook and a driver’s license. According to it, her name was Regina Richardson, of Dallas, Texas. For the hell of it, Alex pulled out his cell phone and dialed Directory Assistance in Dallas, found she had an unlisted number, which proved nothing at all, but he felt marginally better knowing a woman with her name and her address existed, at least as far as the phone company was concerned.
He looked longingly at his laptop, thought of the databases he could hack his way into and what they might tell him. Nothing, he told himself. Not if she was a professional. He knew how easily information could be manipulated, planted, altered.
He could hack his way into the phone company, the state agency that issued her driver’s license, her bank, her creditcard companies, and maybe if he followed the trail long enough, he’d be satisfied she was who she claimed to be, or maybe he wouldn’t. If he did what he normally did—dialed through the cell phone with the modem, into a back door at one of the universities and accessed the Internet through their accounts set up for faculty and students—probably no one would ever be able to trace the calls. Probably.
It was all a risk. Every blasted thing. And in the end, he’d probably go with his gut feeling about her—that she was simply a woman in trouble—and he would do what he could to help her. So what was the point in searching?
Alex frowned. She was a complication he definitely didn’t need.
Just a little bit longer, he told himself. He’d figure out what to do, and be done with this whole mess. Maybe he would get out alive, and maybe he wouldn’t. He’d accepted that now. He’d know he’d done his best.
In the meantime, he had to figure out something to do with her.
Alex fixed himself something to eat, had a warm beer—jeez, he hated warm beer—and walked around outside the cabin. The quiet closed in on him, worse than before. The absolute stillness, the loneliness. In the entire three months he’d been here, there hadn’t been another human being in this cabin. Other than trips into Red Rock for groceries and cool beer, and three brief trips to Dallas, he’d been all alone.
He’d never expected it to be this hard—to be alone. As much as he worried about who Geri really was and what she was doing here, he was already dreading the moment she left and he would be alone again.
Which had him wondering exactly how she might leave, which had him eyeing the bike. Just in case, he did a little work on the engine, disabling it. They were miles from civilization, and it was already hot as hell in the daytime. He didn’t relish the idea of having to hike out of here, should she decide to steal his bike and take off.
He probably shouldn’t let himself go to sleep, either, even if she did seem dead to the world. He could work, he decided. He could always work.
So he did, until he was bleary-eyed and glancing longingly at his bed. It was his bed, after all. She was out cold. He wasn’t going to do anything with her out cold like that. She’d probably be uneasy when she woke up and found him there beside her, but hell, she’d cried herself to sleep beside him in his bed. Where would she expect to find him when she woke up?
Alex took a shower—a long, cold shower. He was drying off when he heard her voice, crying out in the night, with the kind of fear that sent shivers through him.
He thought for one ghastly moment that he’d been found, that someone had gotten into the cabin, looking for him, and had found her instead. He grabbed the gun he kept in the drawer beside his computer and went charging into the room, his heart thundering, finding nothing but her whimpering in her sleep. Then he stood there, dripping wet, stark naked, scared half to death, with a gun in his hand.
“God,” he muttered, his heart thundering.
He was so tired of this, and he just wanted to go home. Not the lab. Not the apartment he kept but hardly used. Home. He wanted to see his sisters, his nieces and nephews. They could crawl all over him and the baby could spit up on him and pull his hair and drool. They could yell and cry and watch him do silly tricks, little sleights of hand that always delighted them.
He wanted to see his father, maybe even his stepmother. He wanted to visit his sister Kelly’s grave, one more time.
He wanted everything to be normal again. Or maybe for the first time. He wanted a life outside his work. For so long, there had been nothing but work, and he saw clearly now that it had been a mistake, that he missed everything else. If he got out of this mess, he was going to make some changes.
He looked down at the woman in his bed. She had to make some changes, too. And dammit all, he was going to do what he could to help her. There had to be a way. He couldn’t send her back out into the world all alone.
She was still whimpering and crying a bit in her sleep, still agitated. It must have been some nightmare. He could just imagine what her nightmares were made of, and he knew what he had to do.
He sat down on the side of the bed, stowed the gun between the mattress and the box spring. Then he lay back on the bed and gathered her to him. She didn’t put up any resistance. He lay on his side, holding her easily, finding she had a disturbing way of simply fitting against his body, as if they’d been made from the same mold, two halves of a whole. He didn’t think anyone had ever before fit against him so well.
She curled into him, all warmth and softness, with hands that clutched at him, a face that nuzzled against the side of his neck, tears that fell against his chest. He couldn’t believe she’d fought so hard earlier against the urge to cry, couldn’t believe how astonished she’d been by his claim that all women cried. He didn’t think any of them ever felt they had a choice in the matter, except Geri.
Alex tightened his arms around her. She was trembling, and he thought about trying to wake her up. He settled for trying to soothe her, instead. He ran his hands over her back and shoulders once again. His shirt was riding up around her waist, and somehow one of his hands ended up beneath the fabric, against her skin. How did he always find his hands on bare skin?
His body was reacting just as he knew it would, but he firmly put that out of his mind. Geri started sobbing great, gulping sobs that tore at his heart, too, and he held her closer, whispered in her ear. “Shh.”
“Don’t,” she cried.
“Don’t what?” he asked.
“Don’t die.”
“I’m not going to die,” he said. Not if he could help it.
“Dan,” she said, helplessly, hopelessly. “Don’t you dare die on me.”
Dan, Alex thought. Who the hell was Dan?
Alex woke slowly, shifting and sinking into the delicious warmth of the body next to his, knowing it must be a dream—one he wasn’t ready to surrender just yet.
He was lying on his side, the entire front of his body pressed against the back of hers. Her head was pillowed on his arm, and his face was so close to hers. His arm was around her waist, his palm pressed against her bare stomach, his fingers splayed wide against her skin. There was a smoldering heat low in his belly. He could hear her moan. Alex nudged her hair aside and bit into her neck, feeling shivers running down her spine. He slipped one of his legs between hers, his arousal hard and swollen as he pressed his lower body against hers. At the same time, his hand slid upward, beneath her shirt, until he found her breast, took the weight of it in his hand and rubbed his thumb across her nipple.
She turned her head to his. His mouth found hers, and he kissed her urgently again and again. Soon their bodies were rocking back and forth against each other. So close, he thought. Another minute, another second, and he would slip inside her.
“Geri,” he whispered.
She stiffened in his arms, and that was when he knew he wasn’t dreaming at all, and no longer was she.
Looking bewildered and angry and absolutely speechless, she stared up at him. Alex groaned. She was in bed with him, pressed up against him, her body all soft and wet and willing, eager even. For him. She couldn’t deny it.
He brought his hand to her cheek, needing to touch her, to hold her face steady so he could look into her eyes and she couldn’t look away. “Geri.”
She took a breath. “Please don’t touch me.”
He stiffened beside her, saying “Sorry,” although he wasn’t sorry at all.
He was furious. Five seconds ago, she’d been crawling all over him. He’d slept with her practically on top of him, draped over him as if she didn’t have a bone in her entire body, all warm and soft and willing. He could have sworn she had been more than willing for this to happen. And now she looked at him like he’d attacked her and intended to finish the job.
“I don’t force myself on unwilling women, no matter what the provocation,” he said.
“‘Provocation’?” She enunciated it so carefully. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Lady, you’ve been all over me, all night. You slept on top of me, your arms around me, your legs tangled up in mine. One minute I touch you and you practically purr, and the next you look at me like I’m some kind of maniac.”
He watched as soft color flooded her cheeks when she clutched the sheet to her breasts and took in his bare chest. Her gaze dipped lower, to where the sheet pooled around his waist. He wasn’t wearing a stitch, and she seemed to have just figured that out.
Something he could have sworn was shyness crept into her eyes.
It couldn’t be, he told himself. A woman who pranced in red leather around seedy bars in Texas couldn’t possibly be shy. Of course, he wouldn’t have expected her to blush so easily, either. Neither had he expected to find the bruises on her body or to have her curl up against his back and nearly fall asleep on the bike. He hadn’t expected her to let him hold her while she cried, and then sleep in his bed all night through, either.
All in all, she was one very surprising woman, and if she was lying—if somehow all of this was a lie—she was very, very good at it. It wasn’t a lie, Alex told himself. Bruises didn’t lie. Her fear wasn’t a lie. Her shyness? He sighed. That didn’t fit. No way. Maybe nothing about her did. Maybe nothing about this whole situation did, but he knew one thing—he damned well couldn’t afford to lose himself in her this way.
“I started this?” she retorted.
She lifted her hand, gesturing toward him, her gaze dropping for a second to his lap. Then color flooded her cheeks once again and her gaze came back to his, guilt seemingly eating her up inside.
“Started it? Yeah,” he said, then forced himself to be fair. “But believe me, I was more than willing to finish it. Damn, I still am.”
Geri’s breath was still coming fast and hard. “What happened? I mean... What else?”
He rolled onto his side and propped himself on his elbow so he could watch her, because he wasn’t so angry now, and he liked to look at her. Because he thought the conversation was about to get very interesting.
“You were exhausted,” he said. “You fell asleep, and I guess the bed isn’t big enough for the two of us. Or maybe you’re just a snuggler.”
“‘Asnuggler’?”
He imagined he might have called her a hooker and gotten the same kind of sneer out of her. She couldn’t stand the idea of snuggling up to him in bed? Not just that, she seemed outraged by it.
“Geri, are you trying to tell me you don’t snuggle with anybody else but me?” he teased.
“No, that’s not what I’m trying to tell you at all. Why do you do that, Alex? Always manage to twist things all around?”
He shrugged, thinking it was way too easy to get a rise out of her.
“So,” she said cautiously. “That’s all we did?”
He smiled just a little, then couldn’t help but let his gaze drift lower, to that deep V-shaped opening of her shirt, which showed off the buttery soft curve of her breast so well.
“I guess we’re both snugglers,” he said. “We slept together in this bed, with our hands and our bodies all over each other, and woke up like this.”
She looked speechless for a moment, then struggled with her words. “But, nothing else happened? I mean... last night? Exactly how far...?”
Alex decided he particularly liked the way she looked now, her hair all mussed, her face scrubbed clean of all that makeup, nothing but soft color in her cheeks and her wide brown eyes studying him as intently as he was studying her.
“I think you know exactly how far this went,” he said, fighting not to smile, because the first time it had seemed to make her so nervous.
He slid his arm around her waist and hauled her up against him, managed to have one more taste of her luscious mouth before she pulled her lips from his and glared at him, pure outraged pleasure in her eyes. Her shirt was bunched up around her waist, and he didn’t have a stitch on. Between them, his erection was throbbing against the satiny-soft skin of her belly.
Just like that, he was half out of his mind with wanting her, all over again.
He let his body thrust gently against hers, found it quite satisfying the way her eyes grew even wider and her breath caught in her throat.
“If I remember correctly, we were right about here,” he said, allowing himself one more slow, heated kiss—one that had her closing her eyes and giving him one of those helpless little moans that came from way back in her throat. “I was maybe two seconds away from rolling you onto your back and sinking so deep inside you that with the next breath you took, you’d come apart in my arms.”
She exhaled a long, shuddering breath. Alex let his hand skim down her back and slip between her panties and those luscious curves of her bottom. He did what he’d wanted to do the night before—brushed his hand across her skin, memorizing the shape of her, teasing her with his touch and trying not to scare her too badly.
“That tiny little skirt of yours?” he whispered. “All I could think about when you were wearing that skirt was sliding my hands underneath it and doing this.”
He was kneading the soft flesh now, letting his hands make big, wide circles that had him teasing at the backs of her thighs, at the heated spot between them. She was ready for him. Alex knew it.
“Is that what you want, Geri?” He closed his mouth over hers one more time, sliding his tongue inside, and thrust back and forth as he rocked his body against hers.
It was like sinking, he decided. Like being sucked into a whirlpool, spinning out of control and falling farther and faster every minute. He wasn’t sure he had the strength or the will to break free.
“Part of me does,” she finally admitted, with more honesty than he’d expected from her, considering the position they were in.
“Which part?” he asked wickedly.
She gave an exasperated sigh. He let himself kiss her one more time, then pulled back just enough so he could look at her and try to figure out what was going on inside her head.
She frowned at him. “Alex?”
“Hmm?”
She looked worried again. “You don’t have any clothes on.”
He grinned. “That’s right.”
“I can’t do this,” she said, pleading with him with nothing but the look on her face—her outrageously vulnerable face. “I’m sorry, but—”
“Okay.” He sighed, somehow having known that would be her answer.
He rolled away, willing his body to relax, promising himself that he was going to have her, just once, before he sent her away. Otherwise, he’d never be able to send her away. Not now that he knew she wanted him, after all. Her body didn’t lie. She wanted him. He wanted her. They were both adults. They were alone. He’d have her. And then he’d see that she was safe somewhere. He’d forget about her. So
oner or later, it had always come to that between him and a woman. He could always forget about them.
“I’m sorry about last night,” she said. “If I led you to believe I wanted this...”
“Oh, baby. Don’t even go there.”
“What?” she said, irritated again.
“Don’t even try to tell me you don’t want me.” He put his fingertip to her lips. “Even you’re not that good a liar, Geri. Granted, you’re good. I’m afraid you’re very good. You could probably tell me the moon was made of green cheese and I’d buy it, but you’d never, ever convince me that you don’t want me.”
She looked as if she were about to spit fire, and he laughed.
“Maybe you know it’s not smart,” he conceded. “That you don’t know me, and I don’t know you. That you damned well shouldn’t trust me, and believe me, I don’t trust you, either. But I still want you, and lady, you want me, too. Bad.”
Alex waited, thinking that if nothing else, he was enjoying this little time they had together more than he’d enjoyed himself in months. He hadn’t laughed like this in ages. Maybe he’d forgotten how. She always managed to surprise him, always kept him guessing. And he loved teasing her. At the moment, she looked like she was ready to hit him. Not that she could hurt him; he outweighed her by seventyfive pounds, at least.
“Go ahead,” he invited. “Take your best shot.”
“Don’t tempt me,” she warned.
He just grinned, and he had her off-balance enough that he figured this was his best chance to ask about the nightmare. She might actually tell him the truth right now. “Geri?”
“Hmm?”
“Who’s Dan?”
She paled. “What?”
“You heard what I said. Dan.”
“I...” She swore. “I was dreaming about him, too?”
“Baby, you were dreaming about me. You were having a nightmare about him.”
“Don’t do that!” she cried.
“Do what?”
“Call me baby. I’m nobody’s baby. Certainly not yours. I’m a grown woman, and I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself—”
Spies, Lies and Lovers Page 6
