by Linda Cajio
After he’d climbed into the driver’s seat and started the Trans Am, she swiveled to face him.
“I am not a klutz,” she said. “But I think you’re a jinx.”
“Me!” he exclaimed. “That armor came apart in your hands, not mine. And I wasn’t the one sitting in shrimp mold making a spectacle out of myself. And I certainly wasn’t the one who had to be rescued from the reporters.”
She pushed her glasses back up her nose. “That was the first time anything like that happened to me, and it was also the day I met you. In fact, whenever something happens, I’m with you. Now, how do you explain that?”
“I don’t,” he muttered.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her stony expression. “Look, Diana,” he said in a gentle voice, “let’s just forget about the armor and everything else, okay?” He tucked a strand of silken hair behind her ear. “After all, we were together this afternoon without experiencing a single unexplained phenomenon. No disasters with the camera, no getting stuck in the helmet, no exploding computers.”
Diana swallowed as his fingers tenderly brushed against her cheek. It wasn’t fair, she thought. Of all the men in the world to suddenly have this sizzling reaction to, it had to be Adam. Why him? He was the wrong man, plain and simple. Adam Roberts was dangerous. And it had nothing to do with his connection to Starlight Software. He was just dangerous as a man.
Somehow, too, she always managed to look like a female Barney Fife around him. Hardly the cool professional that she was. That armor coming off had been embarrassing enough, but then she had made things worse by accusing him of being a jinx because she had done something dumb. She groaned silently. In less than five minutes she had completely shredded the in-control-woman image of the afternoon. She should have said no to dinner, but she had really thought she could handle it. Dumb Diana, she berated herself. She’d been lulled into a false sense of security, and she should have known better.
“Peace, Diana?” he asked, his deep voice rumbling over the racy whine of the car’s engine.
“Peace,” she agreed. It was easy to say, she thought. She wouldn’t be seeing him again after tonight. There was no reason to. Her curiosity was dead concerning his probable mission for his brother’s company. And her curiosity about him in other ways was too aroused.
“Now let’s find a decent restaurant,” he said, smiling at her.
“Fine,” she replied, telling herself that to refuse would only be ridiculous at this point. Mentally crossing her fingers, she vowed not to touch a thing.
It wasn’t until after their dinner at another restaurant that Diana realized Adam had never brought up business at all. In the relaxed atmosphere, without a single piece of medieval memorabilia in sight, she’d again forgotten the real purpose of his pursuing her acquaintance. Instead, she had just enjoyed his company, enjoyed being with Adam the man. They’d even laughed and teased each other about the Tapestry Room incident.
Now, as he parked his car in her darkened drive, she wondered when he would get around to dropping the proverbial other shoe. Maybe he’d been trying to catch her off guard with all this friendly companionship. Maybe, by some miracle, he actually thought she wouldn’t be quite as easy to persuade as her nerdy-hermit image indicated. No, she was reaching for a dream on that one, she admitted. Fortunately, her amnesia had only been temporary. Good thing she was in the programming business, because she would have made a lousy James Bond.
“Time for all good princesses to be back in their castles,” Adam said as he helped her out of the car.
She smiled at him. “Thank you for dinner. The lasagna was delicious. And thank you, too, for playing Sir Morbid, Adam. I know I took up a good deal of your time, so let me pay you for it.”
“You don’t owe me anything. It was an experience I wouldn’t have missed.” He chuckled dryly.
“But I insist.”
Without answering, he took her elbow and guided her across the drive and up the steps of the deck. Diana grinned at herself, thinking that Adam had all the instincts of a chivalrous knight. She hadn’t had so many doors opened for her in her life. Still, she would pay him for his time. She didn’t like the idea of owing anybody for anything. And in Adam’s case, not owing him was imperative. She certainly couldn’t leave herself open to any machinations he might try on Starlight’s behalf. If the Starlight people wanted her games, they’d have to play fair and go through Angelica.
When they reached her front door, she started to fish in her purse for her keys. Adam laid his hand over hers, stilling it.
“There is one payment I want for services rendered,” he said softly.
She lifted her head and stared at him as his voice sent warning tingles up her spine. She forced herself to stay cool and collected.
“Oh?” she asked, hating the telltale squeak in her voice.
“I only want one kiss from the princess.”
Before she could put a safe distance between them, his mouth settled firmly on hers. In desperation she jerked her head back. He only smiled and, threading his fingers through her dark hair, pulled her to him again.
His lips were warm and gentle, creating similar feelings inside her. Diana slowly relaxed, and her eyelids fluttered closed of their own accord. His mouth fitted itself to hers and exerted more pressure, parting her lips. His tongue rubbed against hers, boldly persuading her to submit to his possession. Almost timidly, she stroked back. The sensations running through her veins suddenly intensified, becoming hot, fierce waves pounding against her skin. She clutched at his shoulders as if for an anchor, her fingers digging into them. His mouth slanted hungrily across hers, his arms becoming iron bands around her back as he pressed her against the length of his hard body.
She felt her whole being jolt in response, and, as she helplessly kissed him back, she knew she never wanted the spinning and swirling to stop. But they did.
She blinked in confusion when slowly, almost reluctantly, he lifted his lips from hers. He didn’t let her out of his embrace, though. Instead he tucked her cheek against his chest and rested his chin on the crown of her head.
“Obviously the Brothers Grimm left out the good parts of their fairy tales,” he said in an amused voice. “Or else they never passed the censorship committee.”
“What censorship committee?” she asked, snuggling closer to the heat of his chest. She could hear his heart beating under her ear.
“The guys who cut the pow out of the princesses’ kisses in the fairy tales.”
“Oh.” Diana didn’t know what else to say. She was astonished that he’d evidently been as affected by the kiss as she had.
“This is getting too … comfortable,” he said. “Get your keys out, princess, and unlock the drawbridge.”
“Please don’t call me that,” she said while fumbling through her purse again for her keys.
“Seems to me you’ve been qualifying for the role lately.”
Her face heated in embarrassment as she finally pulled her keys from the purse. They instantly slipped through her fingers to the deck. Diana calmly looked around for the nearest rabbit hole to climb into. Adam certainly seemed to bring out the klutz in her, she thought.
He bent and picked up the keys. Handing them back to her, he quipped, “Looks like I’m on a rescuing roll.”
“I just didn’t want you to lose your touch,” she replied, refusing to allow her mortification to show.
He took her right hand, gently spread her fingers back, and dropped the cool metal keys into her open palm. Then he closed her fingers around them but didn’t release her, and she looked up at him in puzzlement. Even in the dark shadows she could see the smile playing across his mouth.
“Some princesses never know when to stop,” he said.
She resisted the urge to ask him what he meant, sensing she was better off not knowing. She pressed the shut-off sequence for her burglar-alarm system, then unlocked the front door.
Turning back to face him, she said, “Th
ank you for your help, Adam, and for a lovely evening. Good night.”
He leaned forward and kissed her swiftly. “That was a bonus for overtime.”
“Good night, Adam,” she said firmly, and stepped inside.
Leaning back against the oak door, she breathed a sigh of relief. Adam Roberts was too contradictory and confusing, she decided. He’d hypnotized her, too. Somehow he’d managed to keep her relaxed and make her like him more and more. He’d soothed all her inner qualms about him with his no-pressure companionship. And he had practically drugged her with that kiss. He certainly was taking his time before he moved in for the kill.
Her contrary heart protested that she was condemning the man on only a rumor in Jim Griegson’s column. She wondered for a moment if she could be wrong about him. He had never once attempted to make a deal for his brother or Starlight Software. In fact, he hadn’t mentioned them at all that night.
Maybe he wasn’t involved in his brother’s company, she thought. Maybe their first meeting had been coincidental, and not deliberate, as she’d suspected. Maybe he was just a man with a chivalrous soul, willing to help out a woman in need. That, at least, made more sense than his participating in some elaborate plan to get her games for his brother’s company.
She sighed again and rubbed her temples, willing away all thoughts of computer skullduggery. It didn’t matter whether Jim’s rumor was true or false anyway. Adam hadn’t asked to see her again. Services had been rendered in full, and that was all she’d wanted from him in the first place.
She ignored the little voice inside her that said he had rendered them very well.
Four
Exhausted, Diana leaned back in her padded swivel chair to ease her cramped, aching muscles. She was dimly aware that her clothes—the sweater she’d worn to dinner with Adam and the jeans she’d changed into after she got home—felt a bit grubby. She pushed her glasses up on the top of her head and rubbed her bleary eyes, then surveyed the picture of Adam on her computer’s monitor screen.
She smiled. Although it had taken hours to repaint his face carefully with the computer’s electronic paint program, the results were exactly as she’d hoped. Adam’s face was still Adam’s face. Well, sort of. At least it didn’t look like Richard Nixon.
She rubbed her eyes again, wondering what time it was. She realized she must have worked through the night, since sunlight was filtering through the heavy curtains on the glass doors. She knew from past experience, though, that it could be any time of day.
“I lose more weekends this way,” she muttered good-naturedly.
Deciding to take a short break, she rose from the chair and stretched her arms over her head. As her body creaked and protested, she acknowledged she had been working much too long. But she had finally picked the different expressions she wanted for her game and had actually begun the painting-over process. The game was nearly done.
And in the hour’s worth of continuous tape of Adam that she’d analyzed, she’d never once seen even a nuance of an expression that said he was anything more than a man playing knight for a day.
She groaned, remembering how many times she’d caught herself just staring at one of the pictures of his face, and how she’d had to force herself to think of him as work. But after what she’d seen—or rather hadn’t seen—she was more confused than ever about Adam. Was he involved in some scheme to get her to sell to Starlight, or wasn’t he? She’d been trained to think in a logical, sequential manner, and that training was useless for this. She just didn’t know how to approach the problem. If she ever saw him again, maybe she should just ask him … but would she believe a denial?
She groaned again, wishing she’d had more experience with men—
“Intruder alert! Intruder alert!” a metallic voice intoned, shattering the quiet of the workroom. Klaxons blared and a calliope of dogs began barking viciously.
“Omigod!” Diana gasped, startled and deafened in the same moment.
The noise was her computer’s first alarm. She forced herself to calm down, drawing in a deep breath, but her heart still insisted on pounding wildly.
Probably an animal had tripped one of the sensors scattered on her property, she thought. Charlie, her household computer, would continue the klaxons and recorded barking dogs for five more minutes before shutting itself down. Its second alarm would be triggered if and when someone actually touched one of the doors or windows. Not only would the klaxons and dogs start again, but Charlie would also call the police. If it wasn’t a raccoon or a deer …
“Just stay calm and stay in the house!” she told herself, while swallowing back her fear.
Suddenly someone began pounding furiously on her glass doors, and she screamed.
“Diana! It’s me! Adam!”
“Oh, Lordy,” she muttered, placing her palms against her heaving chest in relief.
She raced over to Charlie and, fingers flying over the keys, turned off the alarm system before it could dial the police. Then she ran to the doors, flung the curtains back, and unlocked the glass panels.
Sliding the doors open, she glared at her intruder and asked, “Why didn’t you knock at the front door?”
“When did you get dogs?” Adam asked, glaring back as he stepped into the room.
“It’s just a recording,” she said, rubbing her suddenly aching forehead. Only Adam, thank goodness, she thought.
“A recording! It sounded like the hounds of hell were after me!”
At his astonished expression, she began to giggle. “It’s supposed to scare off burglars, among other things.”
“It scared ten years off my life, woman!” he exclaimed.
“Which is what you deserve for leaving the frontdoor area,” she retorted indignantly. She couldn’t imagine why he was so annoyed, when he had been the one to set off the alarm.
His brown eyes narrowed, and he pointed a finger at her. “Which I would not have had to do if you had bothered to answer twenty minutes’ worth of pounding on that same door.”
Diana felt a hot flush scald her cheeks. She looked down at the floor and muttered, “I didn’t hear you.”
There was a silence, and she finally glanced up at him. His hands were on his hips and he was shaking his head.
“Just tell me one thing,” he said. “How did I set off the alarm? All I did was walk around the house to see if you were home.”
Becoming aware that this was Adam standing in front of her, Diana belatedly realized how awful she must look. She wished she could just press a button and magically change into Miss America. Since that was impossible, she decided the best thing to do was just act mature and ignore her appearance.
Edging away from him so she wouldn’t offend more than necessary, she said, “Only the front drive and the door are cleared for visitors. There are light sensors everywhere else, and my computer automatically assumes anyone who triggers one is up to no good, so it sounds the first alarm. It can’t distinguish between animals and people. The barking-dogs recording usually scares off the animals—”
“I’ve got news for you, honey,” Adam interrupted, grinning. “People won’t see the inside of their bathrooms for days after hearing that klaxon either.”
“Adam!” she exclaimed. “Let’s just say I went a little crazy when I built the system.”
“A little! A jailbreak from Alcatraz couldn’t have set off that much noise.”
“Why are you here, Adam?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest.
He hesitated a moment before answering. “I have to go visit a site, and just thought I’d drop by first.”
Silently Adam cursed the lame excuse. It sounded like something a teenage boy would say to a girl he had a crush on, in the hope of sounding suave and nonchalant. At thirty-four he had no business acting like a teenager.
“Actually, I came to see you,” he admitted. “Though I really should go up to Richmond today. We’ve been asked to bid on an office complex near there. Hey, is that me?”
> Having caught sight of the picture on the computer screen, he walked over to it, then stared in shock. Of course he’d seen pictures of himself before, but they always looked somewhat like the face he saw in the mirror every day. Painted over liberally, the human colors exaggerated, he now looked like an overconfident, boorish … hero. There was no other word that better described the haloed burnished-gold locks, the jaw so square that it looked ready to crack, or the gleam literally bouncing off the blinding smile.
“It’s perfect,” Diana murmured lovingly as she looked over his shoulder.
“Perfect!” He turned and stared at her. “I look like an idiot!”
“Not you, Adam,” she corrected him. “Sir Morbid. And he looks exactly like the cartoon hero he is.”
“You never told me that!”
She raised her brows. “Well, what did you think a Sir Morbid was, anyway?”
“I didn’t think he’d be a clown!”
“Nobody’s going to recognize you from that, Adam. Trust me.”
He glanced back at the screen. He did have to admit that she’d cleverly changed his original features. Maybe she was right. He never looked like that. Nobody did.
“I don’t know what I expected,” he said in a grudging tone. “Just as long as it isn’t a caricature of what you think I am.”
She patted his shoulder. “I think you’re just a mild-mannered architect who grumbles at every rescue he makes.”
“I do not grumble,” he grumbled.
“Of course not.” She yawned, covering her open mouth with one hand. “I’m sorry. What time is it?”
“About one o’clock,” he replied, suddenly realizing how pale and tired she looked. She was still wearing the heavy sweater of the night before. She’d probably had as much sleep as he had had—almost none. “How long have you been up working on this?”
“Actually, I haven’t been to bed yet,” she admitted. She glanced at the clutter on the worktable and groaned. “I hate coming off a hacker’s high.”
