HEART OF MIDNIGHT

by Fiona Brand

  "That day I saw you in the park, I walked away for a good reason. You were safe and with your grandfather. I had just got a lead on where Harper had gone to ground, and I had to go after him."

  "You wanted vengeance?"

  His expression was almost completely immobile, stark and implacable, the kind of look she imagined a front line soldier might have, or a cop. "What I wanted," he said softly, "was my brother back. The next best thing was – is – justice."

  "And did you find … justice?"

  "Harper is still free." Gray's voice was cold, his sunglasses a frustrating barrier that served to emphasise his almost inhuman control. "Last week we tracked him to his lair. He got away, but amongst the documentation we recovered we found your photo. I'm still hunting him, Sam, but now he's involved you. What I told you in your office this morning is true. I want you back, but I'm also here to protect you."

  To protect her? For the second time that day she wondered if she had heard right. She couldn't conceive of why anyone, let alone a murderer, would be after her. She had never done anything wrong. She'd never even had a parking ticket!

  "Aren't you going to ask me why?"

  A chill struck deep inside her as she realised that Gray was deadly serious, that the man who had murdered his brother had her photograph. The thought of a stranger having a photograph of her was disturbing enough to make her stomach clench with alarm, but a killer? "Why?"

  "Because Harper knows you're mine."

  The flat statement was as stark as Gray's expression, and it shook her as nothing else could. Sam stared straight ahead, at the timeless, unchanging familiarity of the cemetery while she grappled with a situation that was beyond anything she had ever experienced. She was floundering helplessly, out of her depth, and at the same time shaking with a slow burning rage at what this man, this Harper, had done to Gray and his family. To Sam, life was unutterably sacrosanct and fragile; that anyone should want to take a life was almost inconceivable.

  Clumsily she screwed the cap back on the bottle of water and placed it on the floor of the cab. She reached into her bag and felt around for her car keys. The keys were cold and sharp against her skin, and the illusion of control they gave her was just that, an illusion. Her tidy life had careened sideways and gone wildly out of control. She was being followed. She needed protection from a murderer – a shadowy man who had her photo, but who she wouldn't recognise if she passed him in the street. She could get in her car and drive, but even then, she would be followed and marshalled in the direction Gray wanted her to go. On top of the helplessness and rage, she now felt pursued, herded.

  Gray made no move to touch her. "If you want to go anywhere, one of us will have to go with you."

  "And if I want to be alone?"

  "It won't be for long. A week. Maybe two."

  "You're going to catch him." It wasn't a question, it was a demand, and the answer was in Gray's eyes – a ruthless determination to bring his brother's killer to justice.

  Sam climbed from the truck. She heard the slam of Gray's door as he followed her.

  "You forgot your jacket."

  She fumbled with the keys, almost dropping them. Finally she got the door unlocked, tossed her jacket and handbag on the back seat, and opened the door wide enough to help dissipate some of the heat that had built up inside. When she turned around, she almost slammed into Gray's chest. His hands settled on her arms, glided up to her shoulders.

  He had taken off the sunglasses and slipped them into his shirt pocket. Without the lenses, there was nothing to shield his essential nature from her. A raw shudder swept her. She'd thought that looking into his eyes was like looking into the heart of midnight; now she knew just how deep that darkness went.

  He cupped her neck, his thumbs stroking along her jaw. "I shocked you," he said roughly. "I should have found a better way to tell you."

  "I doubt there is one." And if she had any sense, she would pull away from Gray's touch now. His expression was bluntly possessive and male, completely centred on her, and she knew he wasn't going to let her go easily this time. He had staked a claim on her; in primitive terms, he had marked her as his territory, pledged to protect her. But despite her fear and confusion, the helpless rage, she wasn't capable of walking away from him.

  What she had just learned had shaken her, but in a strange way it had pushed her closer to Gray. She had never thought she would feel protective of him, but she did. His brother had lost his life, but Gray had been hurt, too – brutalised by the very manner and senselessness of his brother's death.

  He tilted her chin, as if he had somehow divined her moment of capitulation. Her lids drooped against the glare of the sun. His head lowered, and the delicious coolness of his shadow replaced the glare; then his mouth angled over hers, stifling a sound that was suspiciously like a whimper as she clutched at his waist and opened for him. His tongue was hot and muscular, slightly rough; it curled around hers then plunged deep, and seven years shimmered into oblivion.

  The kiss was raw and sensual, and so needy that her whole body clenched around a shaft of desire that actually made her go weak at the knees. A low, drawn-out moan rose from the pit of her belly, almost smothered by the pressure of his lips.

  He withdrew his mouth with reluctance, still nipping at her lips, as if he couldn't get enough, either. Dazed, she made no move to pull back, to think through just what she wanted from Gray and whether or not she should be setting limits. With that one kiss she had tacitly surrendered, and he knew it. Setting limits now would be like tying up a tiger with a piece of string and expecting it to stay.

  He cupped her face with his palms. His expression was hard, intent, his beautiful mouth damp and blatantly carnal.

  "Sam," he said on a guttural note.

  Her hands shifted to his chest. He was still wearing the same shirt he'd had on that morning, and her breath caught in her throat as she tried to comprehend the passage of time since then. It felt like several days had passed – more, a year, a lifetime. The woman who had watched Gray take off his jacket in her office this morning had been naive in a way she now found hard to credit.

  In the space of a few hours she had been fundamentally changed; every part of her life had been tipped upside down and rendered unrecognisable. The only constant she had been left with was her inner sense of herself. And Gray.

  Gray. Her head still whirled with what he had told her, the implications battered at her like rising waters pummelling at a floodgate. She had wondered how he had spent the last seven years, and now she knew. He had lived them in darkness and isolation, searching for a killer. The thought hurt her. She knew about darkness and isolation, but violence was completely alien. No wonder he had become so grim and cold. He had been out in the cold, literally. "Damn you, Gray, why didn't you tell me?"

  His fingers moved through her hair, he pulled her close, hugging her against him. "I couldn't," he said simply. "How could I ask you to share something like that?"

  "I would have wanted to know."

  He tilted her head, his gaze locked with hers. "You know now."

  Because he had been forced to tell her. Because somehow she had got tangled up in the serpentine coils of violence that bound him. It wasn't good enough, but for now she had to accept it. She understood his need for control, to hold the darkness in, to stop it permeating everything, even if she didn't like it.

  Her hands moved reflexively on his chest, and she felt the tight, hard points of his nipples through the cloth of his shirt, felt the shudder that wracked his body at her touch. His breath came in sharply. With a rasping sound that was half curse, half supplication, his hand closed on her nape, and he lowered his mouth back to hers.

  His mouth was fierce, almost brutal with need. Sam wound her arms around his neck and held on, a part of her glorying in his loss of control, that in this, at least, he was vulnerable. His mouth shifted to her jaw, the tender skin of her throat, starting shivering streamers of fire with each caress, and she forgot abo
ut anything but the demanding heat of his mouth on her skin, the rough glide of his hands. Her head lolled back, the sun heavy on her closed lids.

  Gray had pushed her up against the car; now his weight pinned her in place. She arched against him, almost mindless with delight, instinctively rubbing against the muscular planes of his chest to ease the unbearable tightness in her breasts. The heated metal of the passenger door burned through the lightweight material of her skirt as his thigh nudged between hers, forcing her skirt to ride up. The weave of his pants rasped against the sensitive flesh of her inner thighs, the hard ridge of his sex pressed into her belly. He moved his hips once, twice. A hoarse groan rumbled from deep in his chest, and he swore with a soft violence that barely penetrated the haze.

  "Damn," he muttered, as he eased himself away, his hands lingering on her waist as he steadied her. His gaze was hot, still fierce, but his voice was unexpectedly gentle. "We can't do this here."

  Sam blinked, still swamped by the battering sensuality of the kiss.

  "If you keep looking at me like that," he said in little more than a guttural purr, "I'm going to forget about being sensible, and we're both going to get arrested. Are you all right to drive? I need to get you back to the hotel."

  Sam straightened, jerked away from his touch. She still felt dazed and disoriented, while Gray now looked as cool as ice. "Of course I can drive."

  "I'll follow you."

  Sam ignored his helping hand. The seat burned the backs of her thighs when she sat in it, and she began to perspire from the smothering heat. She started the car, wondering if she was fated to be slow-roasted at every turn. She met Gray's gaze with as much ice as she could manage at such short notice, but it wasn't much, considering that she had been bare inches away from being seduced against the side of her own car in a public place. Outside the cemetery where her family were buried, for heaven's sake. "Do you always get your way?"

  She glanced at the tell-tale bulge in his pants. She saw with satisfaction that he was still fiercely aroused, despite that aura of control.

  Gray caught her glance. He planted both hands on her car door and leaned down to the window. His mouth curled in a slow, wicked grin that one hundred years ago would have had dowagers calling for their smelling salts and debutantes reaching for their fans.

  "Darlin'," he drawled, low and husky, "couldn't you tell? I haven't had my way in a long time."

  Chapter 8

  Gray slipped his sunglasses on the bridge of his nose as he pulled out of the parking lot and followed Sam. His expression was grim.

  He had watched her at the cemetery for only a few minutes, but according to West she had stood staring at what must be her grandfather's grave for close on an hour.

  She had given no tangible signs of grief, unless you counted that blank lack of expression he had noted as she had walked toward him. If she had cried, he wouldn't have been able to stand it; he would have wrapped his arms around her and held her, and the hell with her objections.

  She had looked so lonely that he had been on the point of walking over to her anyway; then she had started toward him, her face as remote as a porcelain doll's.

  He frowned, shifting down and muscling out a low, red Corvette that was trying to swing into the too-small gap between his truck and Sam's car. The passenger, a young tough with a shaven head, flipped him the finger. Gray eyed him coolly, and the 'vette dropped back.

  Even staring at her grandfather's grave, Sam had managed to keep that cool reserve intact.

  Cool reserve be damned. West had said she had stood there, almost motionless, for an hour.

  Gray examined everything he knew about Sam and her family. Her parents and an aunt and uncle had died in a light plane crash – a crash in which Sam herself had been a passenger. Sam had been seven years old, and, miraculously, she had survived virtually unharmed. Her grandfather had been her last living relative. She would have had to have borne all the final rituals of his burial alone. He had been an old man, so it was likely she had had to care for him, maybe even nurse him as his condition slowly deteriorated. Gray hadn't bothered to find out those kinds of details, he hadn't had time, but he would damn sure do so now.

  The blankness of Sam's face bothered him, when he knew how much her grandfather must have meant to her.

  Knowledge struck him like a fist between the eyes, and fury channelled through him at what Sam had hidden from him, what he had been too blind to see.

  She was frightened, and the big surprise would be if she wasn't. He had seen and experienced fear in many manifestations, watched men he worked and trained with cope with it. In battle fear could be as healthy as sweat, and it kept you alive as nothing else could. Then again, he had seen it work in the opposite way, freezing men in battle, making them incapable of the smallest action to save themselves.

  He knew what it was like to feel crushing grief, but he couldn't comprehend what it would feel like to bury his entire family. What must it feel like to love with depth and loyalty, then lose not just one family member, but all of them?

  Sam shied away from intimacy because she had lost everyone she had ever loved. And that included him.

  His jaw tightened. He felt at once relieved that he had isolated the problem … and furious. Damn, he thought bleakly. It didn't take a genius to figure out how Sam would react when she found out that not only was he hunting Harper, but that Harper was doing his level best to kill him. That for the past few years he had walked a continual tightrope of danger and risk.

  That from whatever angle you chose to look at it – predator or prey – he was a man who could die any day.

  *

  Sam parked in her reserved space behind the Royal. Gray's truck nosed in seconds afterward, dwarfing her much smaller hatchback. She pushed her door open, gathered her jacket and handbag, and locked the car. When she straightened, Gray was beside her. It was a measure of just how much she had changed that she calmly accepted his closeness, but something about the watchfulness of his expression made her uneasy. "Have I got something on my face?"

  "Yeah." He dipped and fastened his mouth on hers with a casual intimacy that took her breath. "Me."

  The world spun, then levelled out. Gray's hand settled possessively at the small of her back, and she found herself moving toward the rear entrance of the hotel, her mouth still tingling from the contact.

  Gray opened the back door, and they strolled into the cool shade of the hallway. When they reached the lobby, a surprising number of people were milling near the elevator. A man peeled off from the group and lifted a camera. The flash momentarily blinded her.

  "Mr. Lombard," a svelte brunette declared, materialising from behind a large palm, "is it true that you're intending to take up residence in New Zealand?"

  A confusing barrage of questions followed. Gray stepped past the young woman, his arm around Sam's waist, keeping her close to his side. Taken by surprise, Sam lost her balance, half falling against him. His arms closed around her, hugging her in close and restoring her balance. Several cameras clicked at that point. Ben and Carter appeared, and the noise escalated as they began hustling the reporters out of the hotel.

  "Who's the mystery lady, Mr. Lombard?" one of the men yelled over Carter's brawny shoulder. "Is she the reason you're here?"

  "Rumour has it you're engaged," someone else called. "Have you set the date?"

  Gray kept his arm around Sam, shielding her from the reporters as he urged her toward her office, closing the door.

  "Sit down," he ordered, but when she did so without argument, he wished she'd bit back at him as she usually did.

  She was too pale, too quiescent, and she had dark shadows under her eyes. She looked like she hadn't slept, and he was frankly worried. Sam had sustained more than one shock in the last twenty-four hours, and there were more to come. "Did you eat breakfast?"

  "I had a sandwich for lunch."

  He went down on his haunches beside her, even so, they were still eye to eye. It reminded him
all over again just how small she was. "Stay here. I'm going to get you a cold drink, and some food. If I find you've moved, I'll make you take the rest of the day off. In fact, I might just do that anyway."

  "I don't see how. You fired me earlier." Her voice was flat, almost listless.

  "I said you lose this job. I didn't fire you." Gray picked up her hands and rubbed them between his palms. They felt limp and icy cold, and that worried him even more. It was hot, not as humid as it had been earlier, but hot all the same.

  Sam watched Gray stride out the door. Her head was swimming, and she felt sleepy. Not surprising, she guessed, when she had had so little sleep lately, and the day had been both dramatic and stressful. Standing in the sun for all that time at the cemetery hadn't helped.

  Gray returned within a few minutes, a brown paper bag in one hand and two enticingly frosted cans of apple juice in the other. He set one of the cans and a salad roll in front of her, then perched on the edge of the desk, watching her with an assessing gleam that told her if she didn't feed herself, he would commandeer the task.

  It was disconcerting having Gray so close, having his attention locked on her. She sipped the juice and ate the roll, surprised at how hungry she was and how much she enjoyed the food.

  "You said you were here to protect me," she said when she'd finished the roll. "I think you had better tell me just what the protection will entail."

  "I want you away from the Royal as soon as possible. The house is ready … you can move in tomorrow." Gray began filling in the basic details of the safe house and the surveillance programme he'd devised.

  A knock on the door interrupted him.

  A slim, neatly groomed woman with dark, shoulder-length hair strolled in, a handbag slung over one shoulder. She smiled at Sam, then turned to Gray. "Gray Lombard? I'm Elaine Farrell. I was told by the lady at reception that you were in here."

  Gray rose from his comfortably propped position on the edge of her desk. He shook the woman's hand, then glanced at Sam, his expression enigmatic. "Sam, I'd like you to meet Detective Farrell. She's going to be taking your place for the next few days."