He threw a five at the shocked cashier and raced out with a dollar’s worth of ammonia. Opening the passenger door, he pried the plastic cap off the bottle with his teeth, and swung the acrid stench under her nose.
She spluttered. Thank the heavens for crazy Malcolm mother-in-laws. Conan waved the bottle again, and Dorrie rolled her head back and forth on the high back of his leather seat.
When she started coughing, he capped the bottle again. He would have left it in the parking lot, but he had a suspicion the remedy might come in handy. He recapped the bottle and stored it behind the seat.
He massaged her hand as she came around. “Dorrie? Do I need to take you to the emergency room? Are you hurt? You’re scaring the shit out of me, I hope you realize.”
His insides lurched at the winning sight of her lips curving upward. He didn’t know if the smile was for him or if she was dreaming. He couldn’t help hoping that beam of sunshine was for him. He told himself that was because after all they’d been through, he deserved that reward, but he was pretty certain he was lying to himself. He had a knot in the pit of his stomach that he’d never experienced even when being tugged into the undertow at Waimea.
“If you don’t speak soon, it’s the emergency room for you, Miss Franklin,” he warned.
“No,” she murmured, finally stirring to hug Toto, who was licking her face again. “Food,” she added, a small V forming between her eyes.
Remembering women complaining about blood sugar plummets, Conan dug in his glove box and found a bag of peppermints. He peeled off a wrapper and slipped one between her lips. “What kind of food?”
“Protein. Carbs. Famished,” she said around the candy. She finally opened her eyes and met his gaze. “I’ve never done that before.”
He would translate protein and carbs into steak and potatoes but he figured cheesy pizza was more her style, and there was a restaurant in this same block of shops.
He had the insane urge to pick her up and carry her there, but that was probably because he wanted all those tight curves in his arms again. He had his own reaction to racing blood, but it wasn’t sweets he craved. One kiss hadn’t been enough.
“Never done what before?” he asked, holding her hand to help her out and hoping she could stand on her own. “Never kissed me before?”
Her fingers fluttered like a restless bird against his rough palm, but he refused to let her go, and she let herself be pulled from the car. She swayed. He held on until she was certain she was steady. Then he kept her hand in his anyway. Just her scent aroused him, and he was aware of her in ways he couldn’t grasp. Yet.
She still clutched the damned dog, but at least she was awake and looking around.
“Embarrassed myself so thoroughly,” she replied with what sounded like puzzlement. “I think I’d like to pretend none of that happened, and we’re just out for a Saturday night drive.”
“Not happening, babe,” he said, marching her off to the pizza place. “I saw you fly. That simply wasn’t human.”
“I can’t fly,” she said flatly, but she didn’t release his hand as she examined the outdoor tables. “I’m pretty good at t’ai chi, but I’m a worker bee, not an athlete.”
Dorrie saw Conan’s skepticism, but she couldn’t explain what she didn’t understand herself. She was pretty certain she’d been holding on to that piece of cliff until he’d arrived, that she had literally prevented the earth from falling by pulling together the energy she experienced and holding it grounded to the tree. And she was so exhausted and hungry, it felt as if she’d actually performed that superhuman effort. That could easily be her mother’s melodrama speaking. But she was glad she had Conan’s hand to keep her grounded.
She was more than glad. She was tingling from head to foot from his kiss alone. If she let herself remember how his arms and chest had felt, how his strength had held her together…she’d be a puddle of wax. Maybe it was a reaction from the adrenaline rush, and she was too weak to fight her attraction to him.
“I saw you floating,” he said firmly. “The cliff fell out from under you. I almost had a heart attack. And then you were flying through the air, clinging to that tree—which fell into the ocean as soon as you released it. If that scene had been in a movie, I would have rolled out of my seat, laughing at the impossibility.”
“You’re not much on action flicks, I take it?” She chose an empty table near the railing where she could tie up Toto, tucking her muddy skirts under the table, out of sight. That she’d terrified him so thoroughly tumbled loose a barrier inside her. She wasn’t certain how to react.
“I like them real,” he agreed.
Real. She didn’t know what that was anymore. Had that kiss been real? No one had ever kissed her with such passion. It was hard to imagine it from a man who didn’t know the world existed when he fell inside a computer.
Dorrie ran her hand through the terrier’s fur, but the dog didn’t seem in the least fazed by their experience. Toto licked her fingers, and she thought perhaps she ought to wash, but she didn’t want to stand on her own just yet. She pulled a package of antibiotic washcloths from her purse.
Even in his muddied t-shirt and jeans, Conan looked like the most stable, the most sane, the strongest person she’d ever known. And she’d still managed to rattle him. Badly. She could tell by the way he kept pushing his hair from his face and scrubbing at his five o’clock shadow. She’d bet a month’s salary that he normally never noticed his hair, or he’d get it cut more often. She was starting to understand the damned man.
Without waiting for niceties, he waved a waitress over and ordered a pitcher of beer, breadsticks, and a large pizza with everything on it. And Dorrie didn’t argue. She’d eat a chair leg if she didn’t get food soon.
She’d burned a whole lot of energy doing something.
She’d feel a lot better if Conan wasn’t looking at her as if she’d just walked on water. Maybe she could convince herself it had been that kiss.
It had been one helluva kiss. Dorrie could almost believe she’d gone weak-kneed because of it. He’d held her as if she’d mattered, kissed her until the stars came out, and she really would like to try it again—after she calmed down.
So now she had to look at her new landlord as…what? Boyfriend potential? Not happening. She’d end up on the streets pretty fast that way. She’d never had a man stick around for long, especially after she pulled off one of her weird stunts—like holding a cliff together with the force of her will.
Conan wasn’t running away, and she’d just performed the strangest feat of her entire life.
Chapter 12
Conan didn’t question her while he made certain she ate every bite. He even offered her the last pizza slice. Dorrie recognized that this courtesy was not normal for a computer geek who lived inside his head.
Of course, she also understood from the intensity of the zigzag energy pouring off of him that holding his tremendous curiosity in check might eventually shatter his patience.
She wanted Conan to keep looking for Bo. He might not if he decided she was nuts and not worth his time.
Although that kiss held promises and problems above and beyond the usual.
Rubbing her brow, she made mental lists to pull together her cracked brain. She called the police to wall off the property so no one else would wander in there.
Dorrie wanted her Prius with her precious possessions, but she still didn’t have the energy to argue over it. If she believed in tradition, she was Conan’s slave because he saved her life. Damned good thing she was half Irish and rebelled against tradition.
Conan remained politely silent as they drove back to his place.
But something had evidently changed between them. Once they were parked in the garage, he took her arm to escort her into the house as if he performed that gentlemanly function all the time. She knew better. He’d barely even known she existed until now.
“I won’t break,” she informed him when he even took Toto’s leash
.
“Yeah, but I might,” he said dryly, letting the dog use his patch of dirt before shutting up the garage. “I’ve tried to look at what happened from every angle, and it still comes down the same—you held the cliff together and you flew.”
Oh dear, that was not a conversation that would come out good. Dorrie tried to laugh it off, but she didn’t have the stamina. She simply shot him a look that warned him to back off. “Don’t push me off any cliffs to see how well that works.”
“I think it’s time we talked about your family’s special abilities.” Instead of leaving her on his first level and escaping to his aerie, Conan dragged her toward the stairs. “You do realize that almost every client you’ve personally chosen has a dead file, don’t you? Want to talk about that instead?”
“Not particularly.” He’d already mentioned the dead files, and she’d looked at the files he’d pointed out. She’d chosen every one of those clients. She didn’t want to be told they’d been murdered like her mother because of how she’d chosen them. That was one more burden than she was willing to bear. Maybe, when she was feeling stronger…
She dragged her feet and looked longingly toward the downstairs bedroom. It had been a long, long day, but the hour wasn’t that late. And the whole purpose of hiring Conan was to find Bo and maybe figure out who hated her badly enough to undermine everything she’d ever done—which was kind of a new perspective she was testing out.
It was better than believing one of her staff was murdering clients for their pitiful checks.
Glancing in despair at her dry but still muddy clothes, she reluctantly followed him up the stairs. Toto, the deserter, chose not to weary himself and trotted off to his food dish. Aware that her springy hair had lost all control and must look like a haystack, she gave up any pretense that she was heading for a romantic encounter.
Except she was entirely too conscious of how Conan’s big hand encompassed hers now, and how he’d held her as if she were special, and treated her with real concern. Usually, she could ignore men because they gave off energies she preferred to avoid. But Conan…
His energy practically demanded attention, like a child leaping up and down yelling look at me! Her own body hummed a happy tune in his presence.
So she restlessly paced his studio or office or whatever he called his beautiful, messy front room while Conan pulled up a chair at his desk, donned his black-rimmed computer glasses, and began fielding messages.
“I had to talk to my brother while you were flaking out on me,” he said as his fingers flew over the keyboard. “I have to give him a story to keep him and his wife from driving down here. Give me something good. Low blood sugar doesn’t cut it.”
She rather liked the irony of the arrogant security genius being afraid of big brother’s interference.
She began straightening his overflowing bookshelves, stacking loose papers into the expandable file folders from which they’d apparently fallen. Feng shui wasn’t just about decorating. It was a means of straightening out one’s life, starting with the material and working toward the spiritual. She’d given up explaining anything long ago, when all it earned her was puzzled looks or a pat on the head as if she were an idiot.
“Heightened adrenaline,” she suggested. “Like when people lift cars to rescue loved ones. People are capable of far more than they realize.”
“Yeah, I know that.” Conan continued typing, still waiting for an explanation.
She gathered the black and dark green files and moved them to his skills and wisdom sector. She really needed her compass but she had a good sense of direction and the bagua squares worked well in this house. While she was at it, she rearranged a fake zebra skin rug, setting it in his career sector, by the stairs. She needed to enhance his skill energy to find Bo.
“Why the devil do you keep doing that?” he asked, glancing up. “I’ll never be able to find anything again.”
“Yes, you will, once you become accustomed to the system. I’m amazed you aren’t suffering pounding headaches and that you have any clients left. The energy in here is stagnant.”
“Pippa tells me I’m sleep deprived and deserve headaches. You’re telling me my filing system gives me headaches? A psychological diagnosis, perhaps, but not precisely medical.”
“One could argue kinetic,” she said absently, tapping her lip with her finger and debating rearranging books by color, but even she had limits. “Modern civilization has distanced itself from the earth’s energy. We know there is a gravitational pull and a lunar effect, but we no longer feel those things as our ancestors once did.”
He stopped typing. She figured he was staring at her as if she were crazed. She was used to it. She waited for him to dismiss her silliness and change the topic.
“You not only sense energy, but you’ve trained yourself to react to it?” he asked with a very large dollop of doubt in his voice. Well, so much for expecting him to be like other men and turn the conversation back to himself.
She shrugged, keeping her back to him. “My health and that cliff have little to do with Bo and your brother. You’ve had all day to work. Have you found any relevant information in government computers yet?”
Conan startled her by wrapping his arms around her waist from behind and resting his square jaw on her head. She hadn’t realized he’d left his desk. Damn his zigzag energy.
She liked being enveloped in all that maleness. He smelled like soap and dirt, too real for comfort. She needed to resist relaxing into his solidness, but after the day she’d just had, she’d far rather lean into his strength.
“This is about you, Dorrie,” he gently reminded her, “whether you want to believe it or not. It was your tires that were slashed, your clients and your brother who have gone missing.”
He held her as if she would faint again, but he wasn’t saying anything she didn’t already know. Except—he seemed to be trusting her instead of criticizing. That wasn’t how it worked in her world, so she erected her shield before he could hit her where it hurt. “And you’d like to blame me for my father’s house falling into the ocean, too, wouldn’t you? No, I’m not that powerful, just that unlucky.”
She pulled loose from his embrace, turned around, and met Conan’s unflinching gaze. “Let me make this clear—I am a nonentity, not worth killing, vandalizing, or blackmailing.” She’d worked hard at not being noticed and preferred it that way, but that wasn’t the argument here. Conan was saying someone was setting her up or trying to harm her, and she just couldn’t see the point.
“I stand in no one’s way,” she continued. “My father has not set a plump trust fund aside for me that someone covets. I have no raging desire to run the foundation. I am a drone who would prefer to decorate houses for a living. But I promised to look after the true love of my father’s life—the Franklin Foundation. FF is a huge amount of work and not precisely the kind of high-paying position anyone in their right mind would want. I have no angry exes. My father was an orphan, so he has no family after his wealth. I could fall off the face of the earth tomorrow without causing a ripple—just like Bo.”
To her shock, Conan tugged her into his arms again. This time, his mouth on hers nearly caused her to swoon all over again.
***
Conan savored Dorrie’s surprise and the way she willingly fell into his embrace. He disliked rejection and seldom bothered with pursuit, so he hadn’t realized the visceral thrill of choosing a woman and hoping she wanted him, too. Dorrie was like a startled deer, prepared to run at the slightest sign of indifference. Apparently, he would have to make all the moves here.
He’d analyze the fact that she was no predator later. For now, he was more than happy to feel her snuggling against his arousal, fitting into his arms as if she were personally designed as his other half. That was his dick thinking, but he was willing to give his brainless parts their due.
Sensation prickled everywhere she touched him, heightening his hunger for her. She ran her hands over his shoulders and
down his biceps, and his strength multiplied to that of ten men. Her tongue in his mouth seemed to reach straight to his groin, and he swelled like the Amazing Hulk, ready to split his pants. He lifted her against the wall, and she clung to his shoulders so he could locate her breasts beneath the loose sweater and tight tank top.
She wasn’t wearing a bra. Conan groaned his delight, and she wrapped her legs around his hips and let him caress her cupcakes. She moaned her pleasure, and power surged through him.
“Now, or in my bed?” he growled, tearing his mouth away from temptation before he was too far gone to remember the niceties. The interruption was sufficient to remind him that the damned condoms were in the bedroom.
She instantly dropped her legs and shoved at his chest.
“Not doing this,” she murmured, twisting away in an attempt to escape his arms. “Not even thinking about this until we find Bo. I can’t think about sex and work at the same time. Stand back, Oswin.”
He was about to explode in a thousand ways, and she wanted him to stand back?
“I can multitask for you,” he suggested hopefully. He didn’t want to let her go, but he loosened his grip.
She still carried a fragrant flowery scent that had him drooling. She’d dabbed it behind her ears, he could tell. He wanted to bury his nose there. He thought she giggled at his suggestion, but she slipped away, anyway.
“I think we both need a rest,” she admonished. “If the price of my staying here is sex, then I’m moving out. I really, really can’t handle any more right now, and you’re way too much for me to handle. Good night.”
She thought he was too much to handle?
While he stood there, stunned and aching, she vanished down his stairs like a wraith in the night, her gypsy hair and skirts swirling around her, leaving him aroused and cursing the universe.
And she thought she was a nonentity. Was the woman mad? Did she not look in a mirror? With that explosion of glossy curls, wide tilted green eyes, and magnolia skin, she was a lethally exotic enigma straight out of a James Bond movie. Her father must have done some number on her if she really believed she was a nonentity.
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