by Cindy Dees
“What’s wrong?” he asked quickly.
“I’m attracted to you, too.”
He stared down at her for a moment and then laughed shortly. “Last time I checked, nobody ever died from that.”
“Did you talk to Romeo and Juliet and get their take on it?” she retorted dryly.
He laughed again. “Stay right there. You’re shivering again.” He strode over to the walk-in closet and came out with a blue ski sweater that had white snowflakes running up the arms and across the shoulders.
She shrugged into the surprisingly light and warm garment. “Angora?” she asked in surprise.
“Yup.”
“I suppose you like the feel of it against your skin,” she accused.
“As a matter of fact, I do,” he retorted. “Is that some kind of crime?”
She shook her head and followed him into his tiny kitchen. “It’s no crime. Just surprising. You do like your creature comforts.”
He shrugged as he poured milk into a pan and commenced shaving chocolate into it.
“Good lord. Homemade hot chocolate?” she exclaimed. “It’s two o’clock in the morning!”
He gave her a slow, sexy smile and his gaze drifted down her body and back up. “Anything worth doing is worth doing right, don’t you think?”
She took back her assessment that this man would be a selfish lover. Revised estimate—this guy would be a relentless lover. In his pursuit of excellence in all things, he’d pleasure a woman until she screamed or collapsed or both. Her nether extremities tingled, and the feel of his hands supporting the weight of her breasts sprang to mind. She mumbled something inane and sagged in relief when he turned back to the stove to stir the hot chocolate. In a matter of minutes, he’d served up two steaming mugs.
“Let’s go sit in the living room. I’ve got a fantastic view.”
She followed him, watching as he pulled open the drapes. She gasped. In front of her rose a snow-covered mountain, reflecting moonlight off its silvery surface. Big, fat snowflakes fell in lazy silence, a thick curtain of white in the night sky. No wonder Dex’s couch was parked awkwardly in the middle of the room facing the window!
They sat down, and he reached under the coffee table to pull out a quilt that he tucked around their legs. Then he handed her one of the mugs. “Be careful not to burn yourself. It’s hot.”
She murmured back, “It won’t be the hot chocolate that burns me.”
He took a sip from his mug and stared outside at the mountain for a long time before he said, “I don’t get involved with women. Ever.”
She waited for more. Besides, what was there to say in response to a line like that?
“And I would never consider getting involved with anyone I work with.”
She laughed. “Considering that you’ve worked with only men for the last decade, I’d have to say that’s a good thing.”
He grinned reluctantly. “You know what I mean.”
She sipped the creamy hot chocolate. God, it slipped down her throat like silk. She moaned her pleasure and took another sip, savoring the richness on her tongue before reluctantly letting it slide down her throat. “You’ve ruined me for instant hot chocolate forever, you brute!” she groaned.
He chuckled. Another silence fell. The snow was falling more quickly now. Maybe the big snowstorm the forecasters had predicted days ago was finally here.
“So, what am I going to do with you?” Dex asked.
She tore her gaze away from the spectacular view outside and turned it on the spectacular view beside her. He was exasperating. Prone to arrogance. More than a little chauvinistic. Too smart for his own good. A godlike physical specimen. Funny. A great cook. Challenging. Interesting. Honorable to the core. Sexy.
Man, was she in trouble.
Chapter 15
“I don’t know what happens next,” she finally answered him. Darn it, she was shivering again. This time it wasn’t shock or cold. It was something else altogether. And she had no intention of putting a name to it.
“Come here.” He looped an arm over her shoulders and pulled her close to his side.
Her arm naturally fell across his hard waist and her head landed on his equally powerful shoulder. They sat there like that for a long time. Finally she raised her head and looked up at his lean profile. “How about we just take this one step at a time and see where it leads? In another week you won’t be my boss anymore. We’ll both go back to Fort Bragg and we can figure it out from there.”
He gazed down at her, and his eyes were pools of black shadow. “I can’t promise you a wedding ring. I don’t know where this will go.”
She shrugged. “I can’t wear rings in the field anyway. Safety hazard, you know.”
His arm tightened around her shoulders.
“No strings, Dex. For either one of us. I just don’t want whatever’s meant to be between us to pass us by. Life’s too short to wait for the next time around.”
He grunted. “No kidding. Have you lost any friends in the field yet?”
She leaned forward to knock on the wood coffee table. “Not yet.”
He sighed. “You will.”
She knew it to be true. She only prayed when the time came it wasn’t one of the Medusas—or him. She watched the hell Vanessa went through every time Jack went out on a mission. Viper was quietly a wreck until he got home. Of course, Scat wasn’t worth a hill of beans when Vanessa was out in the field either, according to his teammates.
Did she really want to set herself up for that kind of misery? Thing was, she’d seen the way Jack and Vanessa looked at each other when they thought no one was watching. They practically breathed each other in. What they had wasn’t love. It was Love. Capital L. She could do with a little misery to get a whole lot of that, she supposed.
She said slowly, “Tonight, when those guys were on top of me, pounding on me, and I thought I might die,” he drew her closer against his chest and he seemed to surround her even more completely, “I had a weird thought.”
“How weird?” he murmured into her hair.
Oh, my, that felt good. Yup, he’d be an incredible lover. He’d take his time and do it oh so right. She hesitated and then plunged ahead. “I thought I didn’t want to die without kissing you first.”
Nope, the man was not the slightest bit slow on the uptake. His hands speared into her hair and he shifted until she was lying back against the end cushions.
“I would never deny a dying woman her last wish,” he said just before his lips touched hers.
It was better than death. This was the fast train straight to heaven. She arched into him, into the haze of heat and wet and lust that exploded around her. His mouth tore away from hers, almost as if he were startled.
“Again,” she demanded.
He came back for more, lifting her to him, sucking lightly at her lower lip, pressing into her until her mouth opened for him and it felt like her heart was going to fly out of her ribs. Okay, this was not lust. This was whatever came beyond lust. Instant obsession, maybe.
She looped her hands around his neck and ran her tongue around the edges of his mouth experimentally.
“Holy cow,” he breathed.
She laughed, that is, until he stopped it with his own mouth, drinking in her joy and turning it into fire. His body felt like fresh steel beneath her hands, hot and eager. She tugged at his hair until he lifted his head. She laughed again and leaned forward to kiss the column of his neck. The muscles jumped beneath her tongue. “You taste like whiskey. Single malt. The good stuff, of course,” she added.
“Of course,” he replied. “Twelve-year-old Glenfiddich Reserve.”
“Honey, you’re a Glenlivet 1964 Cellar Collection.”
He pulled back to stare down at her. “Where did you hear of that? I’ve only seen it in Dublin. Ran about a thousand bucks a bottle.”
She smiled up at him. “I’m a woman of many passions. And I happen to like a fine whiskey.”
Keeping eye con
tact with her, he lowered his mouth to hers once more. This time he sipped at her delicately, licking and plucking at her lips, tantalizing her until she felt on the verge of shattering. His gaze bored into her all the while, raising the level of the kiss from sexy to incendiary. Women were not supposed to have orgasms from kissing. This was nuts. A little voice in the back of her head taunted, Yeah, but this is Dex. ’Nuff said. She sighed and let the zinging pleasure tingle through her.
“Armagnac. 1900 Gelas et Fils. That’s what you taste like.”
She mumbled against his mouth, “I don’t know that one.”
“When we get home I’ll pour you a glass.”
“And what does a bottle of this stuff run?”
He laughed against her mouth. “About two thousand dollars a bottle.”
The sensation of his stomach contracting against hers with that laugh galvanized her. Oh, yes. She wanted a lot more than a couple of kisses out of this man. But not now. Not when they were working together and had to get up in the morning and make a police report. Not when she had to act professional and call him sir.
As if he’d plucked the very thought out of her brain, he said quietly, “When the Olympics are over, I’m taking you on vacation. Someplace where we’ll be alone. My family owns a beach house.”
“Where is it?”
“On a private island.” He winced and continued, “That we own.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Dang, you really did want to make a difference if you walked away from all that.”
He dropped a kiss on the end of her nose and sat up, dragging her with him. “I won’t be inheriting a dime of it, so don’t get your hopes up. My old man cut me out of his will the day I joined the army.”
“Believe me, Dex. I wouldn’t put up with you for the money.”
“Gee thanks,” he growled as he tackled her and tickled her backward once more. Or at least he tried to. She put a nifty thumb lock on him and forced him to twist his whole body into it to keep his thumb from popping out of joint. With a shove of her shoulder he fell over onto his back. She pounced on top of him.
“Uncle,” he laughed. He added threateningly, “This time.”
She laughed down at him. “This is going to be an interesting relationship.”
She savored having this man on his back between her knees, and only reluctantly swung her leg off of him and stood up. “And you may walk me home this time.”
He rolled to his feet in a single easy, powerful movement and looked down at her in the dark. “It wasn’t like you had any choice in the matter.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “Chauvinist.”
“Bra burner,” he retorted.
She shook her head in horror. “Not me. Clearly all those feminists in the sixties were A-cuppers who never jogged. I like my bras, thank you very much.”
He grinned. “Let me get us coats.”
He walked her home in the deep quiet of the snowstorm, and a blanket of white accumulated quickly in their hair and on their eyelashes. There was no wind and the snow fell like petals of cherry blossoms in the spring. Even a simple parking lot was breathtakingly beautiful. A few inches of snow already covered every horizontal surface. Dex took her keys, opened the front door and spun inside in a combat crouch. Even though the police had obviously come and gone, he flipped on the light switches and searched her place from top to bottom. Not a mouse could’ve escaped his scrutiny.
Finally, he declared, “All clear. When I leave, I want to hear those locks turning.”
“Yes, sir,” she responded crisply and completely irreverently.
He glared at her. “Get used to it. I care about you.”
She glared back at him. “All right. I will.”
Their scowls dissolved into grins and Dex said, “I gather you’re not going to take well to me ordering you around after we leave New York?”
She patted his cheek as he stepped close to leave. “Bright boy, Thorpe. There’s hope for you yet.”
He snagged her around the waist and planted a fast, hard kiss on her mouth before turning her loose. “Get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Nearly a foot of snow was on the ground by the time she got out of the police station the next morning. Detective Picconi was a nice guy in a nerdy sort of way, and he assured her they’d do all they could to apprehend her intruders. She assured him equally sincerely that she had no expectation that they’d catch the guys.
She was on her way back to the Olympic village, driving down a narrow, one-way street that could barely accommodate her subcompact little car when, out of nowhere, a dark sedan came barreling at her head-on. The guy was going the wrong way!
She looked around fast. Nowhere to go. The street was narrow, clogged with vehicles parked down both sides. Quickly, she jammed on the breaks and yanked hard on the steering wheel. The little car squealed its protest and whipped around in a one-eighty J-turn. She stepped on the accelerator. The tires spun, then caught in the snow, and the car leaped forward. It fishtailed wildly and she fought the wheel until she brought the vehicle under control. The sedan turned a corner behind her fast and disappeared.
She pulled into the first available parking space and sat there, breathing hard. That was not an accident. That car had been gunning for her. Not the action of an innocent driver going the wrong way down a one-way street. What the hell was going on? First last night, and now this! Very carefully, she drove the rest of the way to the Olympic complex. She walked into the ops center, and her knees still felt wobbly.
Dex took one look at her and steered her into his office. He shut the door behind him. “Sit,” he ordered. She took his desk chair and he perched on the edge of his desk.
She was acutely aware of the window in his door that the men outside could look through. “Someone just tried to ram my car.” Quickly, she relayed the details of what happened.
He swore under his breath. “I suppose I can’t talk you into locking yourself in a nice, safe, padded vault until this whole thing blows over, can I?”
She smiled up at him. “Sorry. I’ve got a job to do.”
“Who was it?” he asked. “What’s your gut saying?”
“Probably the same thing your gut is. It was the guys from last night.”
“Why do you think they’re coming after you?”
“Because I’m Anya Khalid’s bodyguard. And it’s a hell of a lot easier to get at me than it is at her. She’s tucked away in the Olympic village with all its high-tech security measures.”
“Which is where you’re about to be, too,” he said grimly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I want you on Anya around the clock from here on out. These people are getting too damned aggressive for my taste.”
“For mine, too,” she replied dryly.
Startled, he smiled down at her. “You can sleep on the pull-out bed in Anya’s room.”
“She’s not going to like it.”
He shrugged. “Tough. It’s not her call.” He leaned over and stabbed at the intercom on his desk. “Hobo, get all the Medusas who aren’t guarding Ms. Khalid in here, will you?”
In a few minutes Aleesha, Misty and Karen walked into the ops center. Aleesha drawled, “What ’choo be needin’ mon?”
Dex said tersely, “Two of Lazlo’s Chechnyan pals were inside Isabella’s apartment when she got home last night and jumped her.”
Her teammates looked equal parts appalled and furious.
Dex continued, “And they just tried to run her off the road. I need something on these guys. Follow them. Catch them jay-walking for all I care. But give me a reason to bring them in and hold them.”
Misty said regretfully, “First, we’re going to have to find them. They’ve moved out of the house they were staying in.”
Dex stared. “When?”
“They left sometime early this morning. All their cars are gone, and their razors aren’t sitting in the bathrooms anymore. The FBI crew on watch last night wasn’t equipped
for the snow and left about 5:30 a.m. They went down to the corner and sat in their car to watch from there. The next shift came on at 8:00 and reported that the Chechnyans had left. We just got back. There’s no sign of life at the house.”
“How the hell did they get out?”
“Apparently there’s a back way. We’re guessing it was a lane of some kind that was covered with snow. You’d have to know it was there to find it. And, at the rate it’s snowing right now, it got snowed over again before we went looking for it.”
Dex was silent for a minute. “Pick up surveillance on Lazlo and see if he leads you to them. Surely he’ll get in touch with his family.”
The three women left and Isabella looked up at Dex. “Whatever’s going to happen is picking up speed. I can feel it.”
He nodded grimly. “Me, too.”
Isabella spent the next twenty-four hours following Anya from her room to the skating rink, back to her room, to the cafeteria and back to her room. And, for variety, they went to the gym and then back to her room. The girl was meek and obedient. Probably figured the 24/7 Isabella leech was some sort of punishment for her little excursion to New York City. Which was just as well. There was no need to scare the girl with how aggressive her would-be attackers were becoming.
The day of the ladies’ short program competition dawned. Thirty girls would skate tonight, and only twelve would advance to the finals in two days. In the late morning, there was a knock on Anya’s door, and Isabella opened it to reveal Judy Levinson, the wonder seamstress.
“Is Anya here?” the woman asked. “Her coach said she had time for a fitting.”
Isabella frowned. She thought the white costume was finished and delivered yesterday. It should be hanging in Liz’s closet right now, hidden under a warm-up suit. She stepped back to let the woman enter.
“Anya, dear,” the seamstress said, “I watched a recording of your long program, and I couldn’t resist working up a little something for you for the finals. You don’t have to wear it, of course, but I thought I’d show it to you.”
She unzipped the garment bag and pulled out an absolutely stunning costume. It was a flesh colored bodysuit with long sleeves, long legs, and a high neck, covered in crystals in every shade of yellow, orange, and red. It shimmered like a fiery sunset as the fabric moved in the woman’s hands.
