by Susan Sey
She shot off the couch and stalked to him, close enough to poke a finger into that gorgeous sweater of his though she didn’t do it. Didn’t trust herself to. Something cold and dangerous leapt in the clear blue of his eyes, but she didn’t back up. She leaned in instead, that choking, unexpected rage backing up in her chest.
She couldn’t fix the world. She couldn’t protect every victim. Judging by the way Patrick’s mere presence sent her nerve endings into overdrive, she couldn’t even fix herself. But stealing—whether an heirloom diamond or a little girl’s self-respect—had consequences. Her father had died in prison without ever comprehending them. Liz refused to let Patrick do the same.
“You didn’t just take people’s things, Patrick. You stole their security. You stole their safety, their peace of mind. You stole their trust. How can you stand there and smirk about it, as if it was all one great big lark? You hurt people.”
Liz broke off, horrified at the hitch in her voice there at the end, but Patrick didn’t move. He didn’t blink, he didn’t shift. She wasn’t entirely certain he was breathing. Even his eyes were still. Whatever she’d seen move in those frigid depths was well and truly buried now, and she wondered for a split second if it had been remorse.
Then he reached out and trailed a finger down the curve of her cheek, and her rage spontaneously morphed into something else altogether. His touch was whisper light, but it sent a wave of heat over her entire body that had her knees going to butter. He tapped his finger lightly on the very tip of her chin and it gave her such a jolt that she slapped his hand away. He gave her that crooked smile that never failed to send her pulse into the stratosphere.
“Ah, Liz. I love it when you do that avenging-angel thing. Righteous and impassioned is gorgeous on you.” He ran an expert eye over her from damp hair to bare feet. “Although the robe helps. Is that Burberry?”
He reached out as if to finger her lapel and Liz slapped that hand away, too. She shoved her fingers through her damp hair, frustration and embarrassment at war in her gut.
“Christ.” She turned from him. “I don’t know why I even try.”
He caught her shoulder lightly and pulled her back into his side in a casual, one-armed hug. The kind Liz figured men gave women when they wanted to smooth ruffled feathers without spilling their martinis.
“Now, Liz, don’t say that. People like you have to try. It balances out the people like me, and Lord knows the universe demands its balance.” He gave her a final squeeze and then nudged her toward the couch. If she’d been a little quicker, or if he’d been a little less agile, she could have landed her elbow in his gut and they both knew it. He was, Liz thought bitterly, half a step ahead of her. As usual.
She plunked herself back into the corner of the couch and tucked her bare feet up under the robe. The Burberry robe. She made a mental note to set the security system the next time she wore it. Most FBI agents couldn’t afford Burberry, didn’t even know anybody who could. She didn’t like calling attention to the fact that she both could and did.
“What are you doing here, Patrick?” she asked, frowning at him.
He sent her a charming grin and gave his pant legs a little hitch as he seated himself at the other end of the curvy antique sofa she’d had reupholstered as a housewarming present to herself. The setting was patently female, but it only made him look more vibrantly male. She felt her frown deepen and tried to smooth it out.
“You might like this,” he said. “It seems the universe has dealt out a bit of my own back to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Somebody broke into Mara’s apartment today while we were up in Minneapolis.”
“Minneapolis?” Suspicion flowed cold into her chest. “What were you doing up there?”
“Shopping.”
“You were shopping? Here in fly-over country?”
He gave her a mildly chagrined look. “I didn’t say I bought anything. But, you know, it was something to do.”
She maintained a skeptical silence and he lifted his shoulders in a minute shrug. “My theory is overly enthusiastic paparazzi,” he said.
Liz cocked an eyebrow. “Paparazzi.”
“Sure. Opportunity presented itself so some ambitious photographer had himself a little unauthorized sneak and peek into my new living situation.”
“Patrick, please. This is Grief Creek, not LA.”
“A fact that has not escaped me.” He gave her a grim smile. “But my latest book came out last week, and some heightened attention from the press is par for the course. Plus all that’s missing is a stuffed bunny.”
“A stuffed bunny?”
Patrick lifted a shoulder. “Mara can’t say for sure, but the baby was making an unholy racket over it and it didn’t seem to be in any of the usual locations. So either Grief Creek has an evil bunny thief at large or there’s an ambitious photographer out there with exclusive pictures of my luggage and a new cuddle bunny. You pick.”
Liz treated him to a cool-eyed stare. Paparazzi, her ass. She was ordering surveillance for Mara and the kid the second Patrick walked out her door. She didn’t care what he knew or didn’t know, what he thought he was doing here. When it came to Villanueva, Liz wasn’t taking any chances.
“Either way,” Patrick said, “Mara’s spooked. She’s worried that my less-than-law-abiding past is coming back to haunt me.”
“That can happen when we don’t fully put the past away,” she said. And she ought to know. She’d given two decades of dedicated effort to the cause of leaving her own past behind.
“For goodness’ sake, Liz. I’ve been clean for years now.” Patrick spread his hands, all innocence with just a whiff of ironic amusement. “I recognize that there’s a certain poetic justice to my reporting a break-in, and if it were just me, I doubt I’d even be here. But then it’s not just me, is it?” The amusement died out of his eyes as he leaned forward, that beautiful face of his going hard and cool. “It’s Mara and her child, too. And I’ll be damned if I let you and your lofty ideals put their safety on the back burner because you don’t approve of what I am.”
Liz held his gaze for a long, stony moment, then said, “Was.”
“Excuse me?”
“Was,” Liz said again. “You said ‘what I am,’ but I believe you meant to say ‘what I was.’ Being so squeaky clean these past years and all, surely you didn’t mean to imply that you haven’t changed.”
He went still for an instant, as if struck, then a flicker of amusement softened the harsh lines of his face. He draped an arm over the back of the couch between them and turned to face her more squarely. It put him just a touch farther into Liz’s personal space than she found comfortable, though she’d be damned if she’d give him the satisfaction of seeing her edge away. His fingers danced over her shoulder and skimmed the ends of her damp hair, sending a jolt of electricity over every inch of skin she possessed.
“I didn’t steal my girlfriend’s car to go for a joyride over state lines, Liz,” he said. “I was a thief.” His eyes were cold as ice, but they burned as they traced the edges of her face, her hair, her body. “I was designed for theft the way thoroughbreds are designed for speed. It’s in my bones, my flesh. It’s what I am. And a few years on your side of the law doesn’t erase that.”
Liz felt his words thud into the vulnerable center of her being, prayed they didn’t take root in the fertile soil she knew they’d find there. She’d worked her entire life to prove that a person could change, and she hated that he could so easily accept—hell, embrace—that his tendencies defined him. She shifted away from his touch, from the oddly gentle fingers playing havoc with her nerves.
“You were a career criminal,” she said simply. “An accomplished one. Some might even say brilliant.” Patrick inclined his head humbly and Liz narrowed her eyes at him. “You say you aren’t anymore, and there’s no evidence to make me suspect that you’ve backslid to any significant degree. But you’re also a virtuoso liar, and that gives me p
ause. Makes me wonder if you know more than you’re telling me about this little break-in of Mara’s.”
He lifted a brow. “Why would I lie to you about this?”
“I don’t know, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t.”
“I could be, I suppose.” He smiled. “But I’m not.”
She wondered if that was true. Did he really not know that Villanueva was back in the States, that he was a likely suspect in today’s little break-in? If he knew Villanueva was back, she couldn’t tell from looking at him. Then again, he’d once been a world-class poker player. He’d made his living—the legitimate part of it anyway—keeping the truth of his intentions off his face.
So she couldn’t afford to give him the benefit of the doubt. Particularly not when she was still vibrating from his touch like a plucked guitar string. Her objectivity was already perilously close to compromised where he was concerned, and she’d need every trump card available to keep the reins of this case firmly in her hands.
“I’ve watched you these past couple of years,” she said slowly. “I’ve seen the life you live. The mansion, the women, the cars, the clothes. Everything’s gorgeous, but from what I can see, you don’t own a single thing you couldn’t walk away from in a pinch. If you’re not planning to chuck it all for the life of crime that’s apparently in your DNA, why do you live like that?”
He drew back from her slowly. It was satisfying to finally score a point, but Liz felt his retreat more keenly than she’d have liked. Or admitted to.
“Why, Liz,” he drawled. “You’ve been spying on me?”
She rolled her eyes. “What, you thought you could agree to reform and we’d just take your word on it? We’re the FBI. If we didn’t take a second to figure out where a guy with your background was coming up with the buckets of money you’re making, we wouldn’t deserve the badge.”
He lifted a single brow, mocking, ironic. “I don’t even use a pen name.”
“I didn’t say we had to look very hard.”
He sighed and patted her knee. “Just keep an eye on Mara and the kid, will you?”
Then he rose to his feet with a feline grace that even a Swiss finishing school had been unable to instill in Liz, and left without another word. Liz blinked. The gun was still disassembled on the coffee table, Return of the Jedi still murmuring along on the TV, her hair still damp from the shower. If it wasn’t for the hum in her blood, the vital, thrumming awareness of her entire body, she might have thought she imagined the whole episode.
She jumped violently when a shrill beep ripped through the stillness of her empty house, then cursed under her breath when she realized it was only Patrick.
The bastard had set her security system for her on his way out. She didn’t even want to know how he’d figured out her pass code, and she wanted even less to dwell on the little kernel of warmth that glowed in her belly at this small act—however subversive—of protection.
She’d devoted her entire adult life to protecting the world at large. How long had it been since somebody had tried to protect her?
Chapter 5
POOR LIZ, Patrick thought with reluctant fondness. She just wasn’t good at relaxing. Even the other night, when he’d caught her all wrapped up in that delicious indulgence of a bathrobe, soft, damp, clean, smelling like soap and heaven, she hadn’t been sprawled on the couch, watching her TV, letting her brain go to hell after a tough week. No, even then she’d been cleaning her gun with an efficient, meticulous grace, the way another woman might touch up her nails.
Waiting to find out why she and her pet felon had been called into her boss’s office first thing Monday morning had to be killing her.
She wriggled in the chair beside him and tried to look like she wasn’t checking her watch for the fifth time in as many minutes. He gave her no more than thirty seconds before she opened her mouth to take charge.
At ten seconds, she spoke. He grinned into his lap.
“SAC Bernard,” she said, her voice earnest and sober, “respectfully, we’ve been waiting for Agent di Guzman for nearly ten minutes. I suggest we begin—”
“We’ll wait,” Bernard said, and his tone made it perfectly clear that the point was nonnegotiable. As far as Patrick could tell, there wasn’t much about SAC Bernard that was negotiable. Everything about him—words, suit, hair—was precisely correct, properly colorless and utterly lacking in imagination. Patrick could see how a cop like Liz had flourished under the supervision of such a man.
He wondered about the woman in her, though. She’d channeled her boundless energy and passion into her work, but she could hardly keep it clamped down and properly behaved all the time. Not an idealist like Liz. A couple of clashes with an unreasonable bureaucracy and it was bound to come unleashed. What happened to the cop when it did?
She pressed her lips together and folded her hands into her lap in a semblance of patience. Patrick sent her a winning smile, which she ignored entirely. Another two minutes before she tries again, he thought. Tops.
Barely thirty seconds had passed and Patrick was thinking of revising his estimate downward when Bernard’s admin knocked discreetly. “Agent di Guzman,” she murmured and ushered nearly six feet of glorious, sun-kissed Latina into the room.
Agent di Guzman, Secret Service, strode across the office on yard-long legs helped out by a couple inches of skinny heel. Her hair was a swinging bob of black silk, her skin a smooth expanse of café au lait. A conservatively cut suit the exact color of a good cabernet sauvignon nodded at good taste while doing nothing to conceal some impressive curves. Liz could learn a thing or two about living the good life within the rules from this woman, Patrick thought.
“SAC Bernard,” she said, her voice low, smooth and warm as she shook the man’s hand. Her dark eyes swept the room, lingered briefly on Patrick, then homed back in on her target.
“Agent di Guzman,” Bernard said. “Thank you for agreeing to meet at such short notice.”
She gave him a dazzling smile. “The FBI isn’t obligated to reach out on this, and we’re grateful for the help. I was glad to work it in. Would have liked to have been on time, but . . .” She broke off, let an elegant little shrug fill in the gap.
A pained looked ghosted across Bernard’s face and Liz rose to her feet. Not impatiently, but without an instant of delay. Patrick’s grin tried to widen, but he clamped down on it.
“Liz Brynn,” she said briskly, shaking the woman’s hand. “Good to finally meet you in person, Agent di Guzman.”
The woman treated Liz to the same dimples she’d tossed at Bernard. “Please,” she said. “Call me Maria.” Then she turned that dark gaze on Patrick. He felt it, certainly. He’d have to be dead not to. Those eyes were a force of nature—warm, interested, frankly sexual—but running alongside the invitation was something cool and analytical. Something that promised both sweaty sheets and an empty bed by morning.
“Maria di Guzman,” she said, the words jumbling together into a beautiful rush of syllables. “Secret Service.” She lingered over the handshake just a shade longer than was strictly polite.
“Patrick O’Connor,” he said, and had the pleasure of watching her eyes flare with what might have been anything from surprise to interest to appreciation. To his dismay, he didn’t feel any particular motivation to find out which it was. He slid Liz a bad-tempered glare. She smiled at him sweetly, then transferred it to di Guzman.
“Patrick’s the weasel I told you about,” she supplied helpfully.
“Ah.” The woman turned her attention back to Patrick. He smiled at her, slow and warm. Liz clapped her hands together with one businesslike smack, turned to Bernard and said, “So, are we ready to get started?”
“Actually, we’ve been ready for a good fifteen minutes now,” he said, and Patrick watched him exhale with relief at finally having been afforded an opportunity to remark on the lateness of the hour. He seated himself with a practiced economy of motion that Patrick found vaguely irritating and said, “Mr
. O’Connor? You have something to discuss?”
“You called this meeting?” Liz swung around in her chair to stare at Patrick, her eyes blazing. He gave her a small shrug. Knowing when to raise was mostly a matter of instinct, after all. You couldn’t learn it, you just had to know it. And after the little chat he and Liz had had on Saturday night, Patrick’s gut had been screaming for higher stakes. So he’d dialed up Liz’s boss and raised them.
He turned now to Bernard with a serious, professional look.
“I’m concerned about my ability to function effectively on this case as a confidential informant,” he said.
“You weren’t concerned two days ago,” Liz said, an angry flush burning at her cheekbones. Patrick smiled. She could chain down that passionate temperament all she liked, but skin that pale and perfect was going to betray her every time.
“I gave it a great deal of thought over the weekend,” he said with an easy smile he knew would ratchet her blood pressure a few points higher. “It’s just not going to work.” He turned back to Bernard and said, “If you want my help, you’ll have to elevate my status to that of civilian consultant, a third—and equal—party in this investigation.”
Patrick leaned back into the suddenly tense silence and waited while everybody chewed on his unorthodox request for an even playing field for this, his last dance with the FBI. With Liz.
Not that he begrudged her the moral high ground, of course. She’d earned it, God knew. But judging from Saturday night’s tirade, she was a little too certain of her superiority. And with certainty came smugness. And with smugness came carelessness. And carelessness was something neither of them could afford, not with this ravening beast of want still crouching inside him, just waiting for him to loosen his grip on the leash.
Then Liz was out of her chair, a magnificent fury blazing in her eyes. “With respect, sir,” she said, “I object to such a change in status.”
