Blamed

by Edie Harris

  Getting him checked in with the security desk was a simple matter, though she cringed internally to see him use the name Preston Barnes on the sign-in sheet. “I didn’t realize you hadn’t burned that alias yet,” she murmured as they made their way down the Grand Stairs toward the staff and faculty offices.

  “Technically, yes, Preston Barnes is a dead alias. I have a new one ready to go, but...it’s not quite time yet.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means exactly what you think it means—the timing’s off.” He pocketed his gloves as they stopped in front of the office door bearing her own alias. “Beth Bernard. You’ll need a new name too.”

  “Sounds a little premature to me.” Unlocking the door, she hit the wall switch and ambient recessed lighting glowed to life within the small office that had been assigned to her when she was made Assistant Curator of Impressionist Art. While no family photos were present—for obvious reasons—Beth had managed to make the space her own, with a print of Magritte’s The Lovers on the wall behind her head and a trio of two-foot-tall copper sculptures on square onyx pedestals situated opposite the desk next to a guest chair. “I like being Beth Bernard.”

  “Fine,” he said curtly. “You like being Beth Bernard. But she will cease to exist unless we protect Beth Faraday. After today, you can’t risk coming to work until the hit on you has been handled.”

  The sight of Vick shrugging out of his winter coat, shoulders rolling gracefully, had her pausing. He was...he just...the way he moved... Unf. Teeth clenched as inconvenient wanting surged, she stowed her purse in the bottom desk drawer and draped her coat along the back of her ergonomic chair. “Handled, huh? And just how do you propose to do that?”

  “How much personal time do you have at your disposal?”

  “Um, probably three weeks. I had to take time off when I—”

  “When you had the flu last month, I remember.” When she glared at him, he simply shrugged and lowered carefully into the guest chair, his wound making him stingy with his movement. “The sooner you get used to the fact that I’ve had you under surveillance, the easier these conversations will go.” He gestured to the computer blinking to life. “Take vacation. Tell your boss it’s a family emergency. Do what you have to do to look after Beth Bernard’s future.”

  Anger simmered. She was sick and tired of all these bossy men coming into her life, telling her what to do and how to do it, and God help the pair of them—Vick and Tobias—if they pushed their alpha-male protectiveness of her a step too far. What they did, she allowed them to do. The sooner Vick figured that out, the better.

  A cheerful blond head appeared in her doorway. “Beth! I have been waiting for-ever for you to get in and tell me about your date with—” A curvy body followed the head until the Art Institute’s associate director of educational programming stood framed in the door, staring in at Beth and her shadow. The woman’s glowing green gaze swept over Vick. “Hello. You are...not Mark the Sous Chef.”

  Vick’s grin bordered on flirtatious as he rounded the desk to offer his hand. “Can’t say that I am.” And his fake American accent was back in place. “Preston Barnes. I’m Beth’s neighbor.”

  “Pepper Bailey.” Shaking Vick’s hand, Pepper raised her fair eyebrows to near-comical heights. “Beth, you said nothing about a handsome neighbor. Geographic proximity is the first thing you should look for in a date.” She shook her head sadly, sunny curls shifting over her cardigan-clad shoulders. “Mark the Sous Chef would never have made the cut had I known about Preston the Hot Neighbor.”

  Propping a hip against Beth’s desk, Vick crossed his arms. “So you are responsible for setting Beth up with her date last night?”

  “Responsible is such a strong word,” Pepper sniffed, fluffing her hair. “But she was going to say no, and it’s a crime for a girl like Beth to be single in this city, don’t you think, Preston?” Eyelashes batted shamelessly up at him.

  Vick had no trouble picking up on Pepper’s obvious prompt. “Absolutely criminal,” he agreed. “I’m glad to see you’re on the case, but I have to admit I’m a bit disappointed you thought...what was his name, again?”

  “Mark. The Sous Chef,” Pepper provided helpfully.

  “Right. Mark the Sous Chef.” Leaning in conspiratorially, Vick lowered his voice to an intimate murmur. “You thought a prissy little boy like Mark could keep a woman like Beth satisfied?”

  Beth watched as unflappable Pepper Bailey, who had apparently been a sassy tart in a past life, turned pink. “Tell me, Preston—what’s a big, handsome man like you doing in an itty-bitty office like this?”

  Enough. “Didn’t you hear?” Beth’s voice was positively saccharine as she glared at the pair of them. “It’s Take-Your-Neighbor-to-Work Day. First he’s going to watch me follow up on some emails, then we’re going to take a tour, and, if he’s a good boy, he’ll get a lollipop before I drop him off at the playground.”

  Pepper pursed her lips, as if she were fighting laughter. “You think a lollipop will keep this man...satisfied?”

  Why Beth had expected more loyalty from the first female friend she’d ever had was a mystery. Clearly, no woman was immune to the obvious charms of Raleigh Vick, even when he was pretending to be Preston Barnes. “If I give you a lollipop, will you stop talking and go away?”

  “Yes.” Pepper extended a perfectly manicured hand. “Gimme.”

  “Too bad. I only have Tic Tacs.”

  The hand didn’t waver. With an amused sigh, Beth yanked open the top desk drawer and surrendered her emergency stash of orange-flavored breath mints. “There. Now leave.”

  “Hmmph. I can see when I’m not wanted. Preston, lovely to meet you. Beth...if I say ‘don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,’ promise you’ll do it all anyway.” Shaking the Tic Tacs like a poor man’s maraca, Pepper two-stepped backward through the open door and down the hall to her own office.

  A smile teased the corners of Vick’s mouth, and his gaze when he turned his attention to Beth was filled with curious warmth. “You know, I knew you’d developed a cordial relationship with Ms. Bailey.” His voice had returned to normal. “But I didn’t realize ’til now you had actually become friends.”

  Immediately defensive against the surprise in his tone, Beth frowned. “Yeah, so? I can make friends.” Though it had been touch and go in her first few months at the museum. Initially, her position was only a three-month maternity cover, and while Beth’s desperate desire for normalcy had her longing for a girlfriend or two, she couldn’t risk developing an attachment to someone at the museum, not if she was going to be job-hunting in short order. But as it turned out, her unused master’s degree had paid dividends, and the intensity with which she’d thrown herself into her work had impressed the Art Institute’s head curator. By the time the cover term ended, Beth had already signed a contract for a permanent position.

  That was the day she had finally realized she was officially out of the Faraday life. It was also the day she’d bitten the bullet and invited Pepper Bailey out for happy-hour cocktails to celebrate.

  The warmth hadn’t left Vick’s eyes. “I know you can make friends, darling. You’re smart and funny and kind, and I can’t imagine anyone not wanting to be your friend. What I’m saying is, I’m glad you have a friend. A real friend who has nothing to do with your past.”

  Beth was glad about the exact same thing, not that she felt inclined to agree with him. A strange shortness of breath had washed over her during his exchange with Pepper. It made her anxious. Anxious and stabby. “I hate the name Preston, by the way. Preston is the name of a guy who gets biweekly manicures and irons his underwear.”

  “No, please, don’t hold back,” he deadpanned. “Tell me how you really feel.” Then he grinned conspiratorially, looking delighted to be sharing a joke with her.

  Damn the man for making her
want to smile when she was peeved with him. “Preston is a total tool, don’t even lie.” Clicking closed the calendar application on her computer screen, she pushed back from the desk and stood. “There. Vacation time taken. Now what?”

  Vick straightened, her already-small office abruptly seeming a hell of a lot tinier. “I was promised a tour, yes?” The flirtatious gaze he’d previously leveled at Pepper was now turned on Beth, full force, and her lungs decided to stop functioning. “It’s on the agenda for Take-Your-Neighbor-to-Work Day, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Remind me at the next staff meeting to strike that holiday from the books.” Without a word, she strode from behind her desk out into the hallway, knowing he would follow her. Because that was what Vick did, wasn’t it? He followed her.

  A few turns through the lower-level halls later, and they had arrived. Her key card swiped over the electronic security pad unlocked the door to the Storage Wing. She motioned for him to precede her into the space, knowing exactly what he’d see and hoping he would appreciate it as she did.

  Hoping he would love what she loved.

  Vick whistled low. “This place is...”

  “Magic. I know.” The cavernous depths of the basement storage facility held row after labeled row of artwork, dating as far back as prehistoric times through contemporary works completed as recently as last autumn. Paintings were stored in narrow white shelves situated on rolling tracks. Statues covered in protective drop cloths dotted the space in invisibly marked, equidistant quadrants. Textiles and sculptures and knick-knacks and books were catalogued, stored, and, in some cases, in active states of restoration. “I figure this is the closest I can get to the warehouse at the end of the Indiana Jones movies. Pretty damn cool.”

  “I always wondered—why art?”

  Beth was coming to realize Vick wouldn’t be satisfied until he knew every last one of her secrets. He’d known her for years, stalked her for months, but he kept demanding more. Layer after layer peeled back until there was nothing left but the vulnerable, exposed heart of her. Yet she answered him with the honesty she couldn’t seem to help but offer to him, time and again. “What’s the opposite of destruction, Vick?”

  His blue gaze singed her. “Creation.”

  She swallowed hard, palms suddenly clammy at her sides. “Do...do I need to explain any further?”

  “No.” He shifted forward, stance predatory as it hadn’t been moments earlier. “I already know I’m going to regret asking, but...of all my aliases, which did you...prefer?”

  The tips of her ears burned. “You don’t really want me to answer that.”

  “Oh, but I really do.”

  He was maneuvering her, trapping her, a tactic made obvious when her butt hit the wide marble base of a sheet-draped sculpture and she could retreat no farther. “You won’t like what I have to say.”

  “Say it anyway.”

  “Belgium.”

  “Really?” He tilted his head. “I would have guessed Cyprus, or Serbia, not the first time we met.”

  Adopting a casual pose, she braced her slick palms against the statue’s base. “It was the only instance in which I believed every word you said. I thought you were telling me the truth when you introduced yourself as James Horner, ‘accidentally’ flashing your Canadian ID when you bought me coffee.”

  “You needed the coffee.” He gifted her a lopsided smile, flashing his now-perfect white teeth to devastating effect. “And you were cute. You had those god-awful yellow streaks in your hair.”

  She sniffed. “They were highlights.”

  “They were terrible.”

  “Blame Jennifer Aniston. The woman has undoubtedly inspired millions of poor hair choices, mine included.”

  “I’ll write her a letter, shall I?” Another slow shift toward her, and she tried to hide how her breath hitched. “Doesn’t matter, though. I thought you were cute, and you, adorable little chit that you were, wanted to practice your nascent flirting skills on me.”

  “You let me,” she retorted hotly.

  “Of course I let you.” He stepped into her, until little more than an inch separated them. The heat from his long, strong body pulsed against her in rhythmic waves no doubt synchronized to his steady heartbeat. “I don’t think you quite grasp how wrong it felt, wanting you when you were only sixteen.”

  “Sixteen is a perfectly reasonable age. A ton of girls lose their virginity long before then.”

  “Except I was twenty-six at the time, and you hadn’t lost your virginity yet, had you.”

  She scowled. “That’s not even a question.”

  “No, it’s not. Because I was your first, wasn’t I, darling?”

  For a dead man, he sure had all the super-duper irritating characteristics of a living one, starting and ending with his big British mouth. “You already know the answer,” she grumbled, though she didn’t move away.

  “I was your first when you were twenty-five. Nine whole years after we first met.”

  “What is your freaking point, Raleigh?”

  He bared his teeth at her in warning. “You waited for me, Elisabeth. Even at sixteen, you felt as I did, and you decided to wait. I rewarded you for that patience, didn’t I?” One large hand curved around her throat, warm and callused and so gentle she wanted to sob. “I’ll reward you all over again, love—I’m fucking aching to. So let me.”

  She sucked in a shaking breath. “We’re not kissing again.”

  “Like hell we’re not.”

  “This is a bad idea.”

  “Baby, this is the best idea I’ve ever had.”

  As soon as his lips fused with hers, Beth was inclined to agree. There was no stopping the response of her needy body, her limbs having long since lost connection with her brain. All her body knew was that Vick was here, alive and well, and that she’d spent the last year of her life half-alive and struggling to breathe because she had believed him dead.

  Her fingers speared through the short ends of his hair as he licked into her mouth. Delicious, he was delicious. And necessary. Like ice water on a hot summer day, trickling over her senses to rejuvenate, refresh. In his arms, Beth came vibrantly, unarguably to life.

  What did Vick find in her arms, she wondered.

  She plastered her body against him, and he groaned at her throat as his hands fell to her bottom. “It’s been nearly two years since I had my hands on this perfect backside, so you can bet that backside I’m not keeping my hands off it now. I’m a weak man when it comes to you, Beth. Forgive me.”

  “Okay.” She tilted her head to the side, offering him greater access, whimpering when he pulled away.

  “No, Beth.” He stared down at her with an intimidating intensity. “Forgive me. I couldn’t tell you I was alive, but I wanted to. You must realize now that I very much wanted you to know.”

  “Because you wanted to have sex with me again.”

  “Yes. No.” His jaw clenched as he frowned. “There’s no separation in how I want you. Your body.” One hand skated over her curves to grip the hem of her slim pencil skirt, inching it up her shaking thighs as he pressed his lips to her temple. “Your mind.” With her skirt rucked up around her hips, his hand caressed her belly, ribs, sternum, to thumb open the top buttons of her silk blouse and splay between her breasts. The touch seared her. “Your heart.”

  “Don’t talk about my heart,” she gasped. Drowning. Beth was drowning in him—the edgy rumble of his accent, the rough possession in his hands, the sweet pulse of his hips against hers.

  Both hands cupped her face, his lips dancing over hers with each word. “It’s all I want to talk about—your heart, and how I can live within it.” His tongue licked teasingly at her upper lip. “Forgive me, Elisabeth, so we can talk about your heart. And mine.”

  “I don’t want to talk about y
our heart,” she lied. Remembering at the last second to avoid his wound, she reached for his belt buckle, shivering at the clink and rasp of metal against leather. “I’d rather discuss another part of your anatomy.” His button and zipper undone with expediency, she reached into his trousers to grasp the thick length of him. Hard and hot and silky smooth, he was a foreign weight in her palm.

  Her mouth watered with the need to explore him for hours, to feel him with her hands and mouth and the soft valley between her breasts. Oh, God, he was fascinating, and she abruptly wished she possessed more than a single night’s experience with a man, and this man in particular. She wished she knew better his preferences.

  He must have sensed her hesitation, because he covered her hand with his, pumping together over his shaft. “Like this. God, yes, just like this. That’s it, darling.”

  The ache in his voice unwound the tightly strung threads surrounding her heart, forcing her to shut him up the only way she knew how. Her free hand delved into his hair and yanked him down for a sizzling open-mouthed kiss, the slick play of tongue turning aggressive and hungry as the last of her reticence melted away.

  When she wriggled against him, lust singeing her lungs and destroying her balance, he elicited a strangled moan and removed her fingers from around that wondrously hard part of him. His hips pushed her back against the statue, leaving her half sprawled and struggling to remain upright as he rucked her skirt even higher. He swallowed hard when he caught sight of her sheer black panties above the thigh-high stockings she’d rolled on that morning.

  “Please,” she whispered hoarsely, trying valiantly to ignore the sense of déjà vu that immediately blanketed her. Begging Vick appeared to be Beth’s standard operating procedure when it came to sex, but she couldn’t make herself care. She was going to die if he didn’t do something to her, right now.

  Hooking two fingers around the lace gusset, he yanked her panties to the side. She watched his grip on his erection tighten as he groaned. “Fuck me, you’re gorgeous.” His hand moved over his cock, masturbating to the sight of her. “You going to let me inside that sweet snatch of yours, love?”