by Anne Stuart
“Finish,” Mia begged.
“I’ll never be finished with you,” Jack muttered. “Come again.”
“N—” Yes! Sparklers and rainbows. Shooting stars and fiery waterfalls. Jack could still make Mia’s earth move.
She came again, riding that last blast of sensation along with Jack, who finally surrendered and gave himself up to his own climax.
A moment later, she struggled to steal a breath, to regain her equilibrium. He held her, just held her against him, as her rioting nerves settled to a simmer and her brain went back on line.
Jack petted her breasts and stroked the sensitive skin on her belly until she managed to find a little breath and her legs could support her. A shiver ran up her spine as the silk of her dress slithered down her legs.
She blinked. The couple on the bed were dressing. Good old Don Juan had livid red scratches on his chest and his shirt bunched in his hand.
Where was he going to find something to wear—
Mia froze.
CHAPTER SIX
“WE’RE IN HER CLOSET. Remember?” Jack whispered against her ear, guessing her thoughts. The guy walked by their hiding place and opened the door of the gentleman’s closet on the far side of the bathroom door.
He felt the tremors that still shook Mia’s body. Good. He pulled her against him and she rested her head weakly against his chest. If they were in bed now, she’d curl into him, her arms and legs tangled with his.
After sex with Mia had always been better than sex with any other woman. He stroked a hand up her arm, then cupped her hot cheek in his hand. She bowed her head and he felt the featherlight kiss she deposited in his palm, all the way to his toes. A shudder of animalistic, male pride wracked his body. It mattered that Mia was satisfied. No, more than satisfied—spent. Shot. Satiated.
He’d risked his future happiness getting Mia to come with him tonight. Sallye, bless her devious romantic heart, had been terrific in setting up this blind date.
Hell, he had needed Mia to get into the safe. But there were other operatives at the agency who could’ve done the job. It was neither difficult, nor dangerous, so any of them would have done. Except none of them was Mia.
Damn it, he ached from missing her. Everything about her. Not just the spectacular sex. He missed her quick, pithy retorts and her bone-deep sense of fair play. He missed how tight she was with money, and how generous she was to those she loved. God. He’d missed the entire Mia Rossi package.
Hell, he even got on great with her mother and her sister, Domino. Family was everything to Mia. That had to count for something.
Life with Mia had been perfect. But perfect scared him. Emotional crap scared him. Anything he wanted as badly as he wanted Mia could be taken away from him in a heartbeat. Every cell he possessed seemed confident that Mia was the one woman designed specifically for him. It was right, it was honest. Correction—she was honest. He was—what? A living lie? A man made up of half-truths and wishful thinking?
Jack tightened his arms about her, feeling the unsteady beat at the base of her throat slow back to normal. They weren’t going anywhere until the other couple left the room, but Jack didn’t give a damn. Now, for these few quiet, precious moments, he could hold her in his arms. Could inhale the subtle orange blossom scent of her hair, and delight again at the feel of her soft silky hair brushing his chin.
Had she believed him when he’d told her about his real past? Was that dirt-poor screwup someone she could love? And more important, if she could, would she choose to stay? It was a risk he’d been loathe to take the first time around. But this was his last chance to catch the gold ring.
In a few minutes he’d check the all important disk, and then he and Mia would straighten themselves up and go downstairs. They’d have a pleasant dinner, a little dancing, and then he’d take her home. Home to his place. His stomach clenched at the thought of convincing Mia that he truly had been that foster kid before becoming the Jack Ryan she thought she knew. He’d given her a little of the information on the phone when he was pretending to be Davis Sloan—and she’d changed the subject. Jack was tempted— No. He wouldn’t lie to her. Not this time.
He’d filled his bedroom with dozens and dozens of the pale yellow roses Mia loved, and had placed groupings of slender white candles around the room. A bottle of her favorite French chardonnay was chilling on ice, and he’d stocked up on chocolate-covered strawberries, hideously expensive and out of season, but one of Mia’s favorites. She’d bitch about the expense, but she’d be happy, too.
Jack appreciated the finer things in life. Contrary to his bio, nothing had been handed to him on a plate. He’d had to work hard for what he had. Had to struggle to maintain the lifestyle while he clawed his way to the top of the financial heap. Money was to be spent, and he did. He wasn’t going to apologize for enjoying the finer things in life. And he didn’t have to divulge his real background if he didn’t need to. That part of his life had been buried. Obliterated. Thanks to Uncle Sam. And penny-pinching Mia, who had often gotten on his case at the way he’d spent his money, would’ve felt a whole lot different if he’d ever admitted that he’d been even poor as a kid. But he hadn’t wanted her pity.
There’d never been any reason for him to dig up the corpse of who he’d once been.
Until now.
He glanced at his watch. Barely nine. They’d be home, hopefully in bed, by eleven.
The small closet was warm, redolent with their lovemaking. He’d never forget this moment. They were on the cusp of something big. Something wonderful.
It was almost a shock to hear someone speaking not three feet from where he and Mia stood.
“Can’t we hang around longer?” Don Juan asked in a sulky voice as he came out of the other closet pulling on one of his host’s shirts.
“No. Hurry up, for heaven’s sake! My husband thinks I went out for a smoke!”
“We sure were smokin’, weren’t we, baby?” He slung a cocky arm around the woman’s shoulders.
Before he could dive in for another kiss, she shoved him away. “You forget yourself.” She finished buttoning her dress and turned to fix her hair in the mirror over the dressing table. “Go down and warm up the car,” she told him without turning around. “I’m ready to leave now.”
“Will I see you later?”
“Yes. You’ll be driving me and my husband home. Other than that, I’ll let you know when it’s convenient.” She walked over to the window and pulled aside the heavy velvet drape. “Damn. It’s started to snow. Go down now. I’ll follow in a few minutes.”
Jack tracked the guy across the room, watched him unlock the door, then open and close it. One down, one to go.
“Lunkhead,” the woman said in a fond voice as she straightened the bedspread, then fluffed the pillows. With one last tweak to the dust-skirt, she seemed satisfied and she, too, left the room.
Silence throbbed around them for several seconds after the door closed behind her. He used those seconds to hold Mia, but dropped his arms the moment she stepped away.
She pushed open the doors and stepped into the brighter light of the bedroom. “I’ll use the bathroom while you check the disk. Then we can split.”
“Yeah,” he said easily. “Sure.” You’re not getting rid of me quite that easily, precious. Hang on, it’s going to be one helluva ride.
At the door to the bathroom she paused to look at him over her shoulder. “What just happened between us, didn’t prove—or change—anything.”
Jack found that slitty, snake-eyed look of hers sexy as hell. He had it bad. “Then you’re deaf, dumb and blind, darling,” he told her with silky menace. “That proved everything.”
“That’s always been your problem, Jack. You honest to God believe that sex is the answer to everything. Purse?” She held out her hand. Jack slapped the small clutch he’d stuffed in his pocket earlier into her palm. “You’re too obtuse even to know there’s a question.”
He walked over and locked the bedroom door aga
in. This time he shoved a chair under it. “I know the question, sweetheart.” He turned back to face her across the room. “I’m just not sure you can take the answer.”
“Neither am I,” she said quietly as she stepped into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.
For a second Mia leaned against the bathroom door without turning on the light. Stupid, stupid, stupid. What on earth had she been thinking? Sex with Jack Ryan? In a closet of all places? She shook her head, then pushed herself away from the door and fumbled in the dark for the switch.
Soft, flattering lighting flooded the opulent bathroom. It wasn’t particularly flattering to her. Her hair stood up like a startled cockatoo, her blush was completely off one cheek, and her mascara had run, making her look like a raccoon. Most attractive.
Mia conducted an intense monologue under her breath as she straightened her clothing. First things first. She had to remove her bra and put it on again. How the hell had it been turned inside out while she was wearing it? Her unlucky thong was gone. Better check the floor of the closet. She didn’t even remember Jack removing it. She met her own eyes in the mirror as she combed her hair. She looked as though she’d had wild, wonderful sex, for God’s sake!
“Are you out of your mind?” she asked her reflection. Apparently yes, she was. She’d not only allowed Jack to make love to her—but she’d enjoyed it. And oh boy, how she’d enjoyed it. Staring at the rumpled woman in the mirror, Mia let her mind drift to those last few moments in the shadows when Mrs. Whozit and her trained stud had been setting the rhythm that she and Jack had followed. To those few shining moments when the whole world had been wrapped around her and buried within her. To the flash of rightness she’d felt as Jack’s climax echoed her own.
“Oh, man.” She glared at the ceiling and told herself she was the Champion Moron of the Century. “Wonder if there’s a trophy?”
She used the facilities, then dug in her small clutch for emergency cosmetics to make herself halfway presentable. Not for Jack, of course. She didn’t care if she looked like a startled raccoon for Jack. After all, he was the designer of her dishabille. But she did have to exit through the party guests downstairs.
She had to wipe off the smudged mess she’d made of her lip gloss and reapply it. She realized her hand was shaking.
He made her nuts. Crazy. Insane.
Her body ached. She wanted him again. Worse. She was tempted to take him back on his terms—hell, any terms. How was that for pathetic? Or maybe she’d move up her wedding timetable. Get married in spring instead of midsummer. Date more often. Two blind dates a day—maybe three.
She’d find someone—anyone—who could light up her insides and make her laugh. Someone like Jack.
There was no one like Jack.
There never would be.
Glancing around the bathroom hoping to find another exit, Mia spotted the window. It was a nice big picture window covered in swaths of silky voile— Oh, she was tempted. Climb out of the window, just as she and her sister had done as teenagers when Sallye had grounded them. Nothing to it.
She gave it a moment’s consideration. Clambering up onto the side of the tub, she looked outside. Sure they were two stories up, but there was a balcony, sort of. She could probably make the jump down without breaking anything vital.
Nah, it was snowing out there.
Breaking a leg was one thing. Lying in the snow in agony until someone found her frozen corpse was something else altogether.
She pushed open the bathroom door to find Jack standing in the middle of the room, holding a small, handheld computer. He didn’t look anything like a mess. He looked as suave, sophisticated and handsome as he had half an hour ago when they’d slipped into the closet.
Another annoying thing about him, Mia thought sourly. Perhaps she should move to Alaska. Or Siberia. She’d miss her mom and Domino, but on the plus side there’d be no Jack—
“Please tell me that’s the disk we were supposed to find,” she said as she walked into the room, her brain still playing with possible escape routes. Maybe Tahiti? Bora Bora? Somewhere hot. Yes, somewhere hot and sultry.
Jack was hot and sultry.
Damn.
It all came back to Jack.
“Yeah, this is it.” He held up the innocent looking, but highly sophisticated, custom-built PDA to show her the list of names and numbers on the display, then closed it and tucked it into his breast pocket. “In fact, I do believe we have something even more compelling here than we first suspected.”
“Good,” Mia said briskly. She didn’t work for Uncle Sam anymore, but she was happy they had what Jack had come for. Now she was ready, more than ready, to split. “Let’s get the hell out of Dodge.”
“Mind if I use the bathroom first?” Jack asked laconically.
“Be my guest. I’ll go downstairs and say my goodb—”
“Running, Mia?”
That stopped her. “I don’t run.”
“You always run. You ran the first time we had a minor disagreement. You ran like hell when you realized what we had.”
“And what was that?” she asked tightly, forgetting the trivial and zooming in on the crux of the matter. “Interesting sex? A job we could do together?”
“That and a whole hell of a lot more. Let me go in here, and then we can trot downstairs for a little champagne, a waltz or two—”
She folded her arms. “You got what you came for. Leave it at that.”
“No, Mia. I didn’t get what I came for. Not yet. Stay put. I’ll be right back.” And he shut the door.
Mia pulled a face at the closed bathroom door. “I do not always run,” she told the clothes in the closet as she searched the floor for her thong. “Like any rational woman, I walk away quietly and with dignity when I know things have gone to hell in a handbasket— Where the hell is my underwear?”
Maybe Jack had picked it up when she’d gone into the bathroom. She heard the toilet flush and water running. Good. About time. She went over and removed the chair from under the bedroom door handle, then went and stood in the middle of the room to wait for him. Just to show him that she didn’t run. “Come on, Jackson! Get the lead out.”
“That’s my girl, always anxious for me,” he said as he stepped out.
Yes, indeedy she was. “Dream on, Romeo. Come on. Let’s— Someone’s coming again. Good God. This bedroom is like a railway station!”
They heard soft footfalls outside the door and turned as one for the bathroom. The bathroom with an emergency escape route. Too late. As the door started to open, they zipped back into the closet, which was closer.
Trapped again. In a tiny room that was starting to feel way too much like home.
If this was another tryst, Mia didn’t want to hang around to see what acrobatics these two might have planned. She shot a glance at Jack, and almost laughed out loud at the expression on his face.
Because two men had come into the bedroom.
CHAPTER SEVEN
FORTUNATELY, or unfortunately—depending on how one looked at it—these two weren’t lovers. There was no doubt that they were muscle, despite the formal black suits, white shirts and ties they wore. They spoke in rapid Afrikaans, and it was clear to Jack the latest arrivals were in the bedroom searching for someone.
It wasn’t going to take the goons long to spring the closet door and find the two someones they were searching for standing there like hookers in church.
Now, how to explain what the hell they were doing in the closet when there was a perfectly good bed not twenty feet away?
Jack grabbed her hand, pushed open the closet door, and walked into the bedroom. “Come on, honey,” he told her in a coaxing voice. “Embarrassed or not, these guys were going to find us in there.”
It was a toss-up as to who was more surprised by their sudden emergence from the nether regions of the closet—Mia or the two goons who spun around, weapons drawn.
“Whoa!” Jack said, putting up his hands even as he too
k the step necessary to block Mia’s body. The fact that they weren’t already bleeding was a good sign. It showed that these guys either wanted information, or they were actually considering his lame excuse. Mia’s stunned expression was helping in that department.
The other possibility, he quickly realized, was that they might want to avoid the messy evidence of two bleeding bodies. It couldn’t be because they were afraid of someone hearing the shots. There were silencers affixed to the muzzles ensuring that no one outside of this room would hear a thing if they did decide to use their weapons.
“What’re you two doing in here?” the one on the left demanded in a thick accent. The unibrow was a nice touch for muscle. The Heckler & Kotch USP pistols gripped in their hamlike fists gave Jack pause. These two didn’t even have to be good shots to blow him and Mia to kingdom come.
Jack’s own custom Smith & Wesson 1911 with its Hogue grip rested comfortably in the small of his back. Mia’s .22 was in the purse she held clutched in one hand. They wouldn’t even clear leather if these two decided to open fire.
So, since he couldn’t shoot his way out of this mess, Jack did what he did best—talked. And hoped to hell Mia would chime in like she always had. They hadn’t been called the best team in the business for nothing.
“Come on, guys. A little slap and tickle isn’t grounds for getting shot, is it?” he asked easily. The two men stood between them and the exit. Behind Jack and Mia were the three doors. The closet doors, and the one leading into the bathroom.
“Oh,” Mia moaned, leaning into Jack even as she pulled her purse, with the gun inside, closer to her shooting hand. She managed to look slightly embarrassed. “Can we get out of here now, Jack? I’m…not really in the mood anymore.” She shot him a fulminating glance. “I told you we’d get caught.”
“Relax, honey. They won’t tell.”
The second man, greasy yellow hair in a bouffant-on-top-long-on-the-bottom mullet, waved Mia away from Jack. “Stand over there, lady. Keep your hands where we can see them.”
