by Susan Sey
He was going to have to fix this, he thought with a mental sigh. Lord knew he didn’t want to. He wanted her aware of him, as achingly, exquisitely conscious of him as he was of her. But he couldn’t ask that of her, no matter how sweet a balm to his ego. He’d tangled her into this wretched disaster of thwarted passion and impending doom; he’d be the one to cut her loose.
“Liz,” he said, leaning lazily on the vowel. “Darling.” Drawing a cloak of breezy superiority over his true self was usually as easy as breathing. Why was it so hard tonight? He forced himself to saunter over to her, to flick a careless finger over the curve of her down-turned cheek. “Aren’t you going to kiss me?”
She looked up at him, and he realized that he’d miscalculated, badly. Because her eyes weren’t snapping with temper, as he’d intended. Instead, they were a dark, serious blue, and he fell helplessly into them. He didn’t move, couldn’t move, as she reached up with slow, deliberate intent and threaded her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. She laid her lips against his with a sweetness that all but shattered his heart. It certainly cracked his control.
When she drew back, he tried to breathe again but found that his lungs had gone temporarily off the job. He stared at her. God, how did she do that? Make each kiss an unexpected revelation?
“Why?” he asked. It was all he could manage.
“I wanted to,” she said with a lopsided smile that put the finishing touches on the wreck of his heart. “Plus I figured you should know what you’re saying no to.”
He shook his head slowly. “What we are, the two of us, it just can’t happen. You know that, don’t you? We’re too different. The proverbial oil and water.” He felt his lips twist into a ghastly approximation of a smile. “It’s like howling for the moon, Liz. We want, but it’s no good. Taking would be suicide, for both of us.”
“Oh, please. I asked you to sleep with me, not marry me.” A hot spark snapped in her voice and temptation roared up inside him to meet it. “It was a very nice offer, if I do say so myself. An offer you refused. Unless you’ve changed your mind?”
For an endless, suspended moment, he wavered. Wanted.
“No,” he said finally. “I haven’t.” He turned on his heel and headed for the door.
LIZ HUNKERED down in the ductwork that reverberated with the thump of the music next door, two-way radio in hand, ready to move any and all transmitters upon Goose’s instruction. She tried desperately to focus on the work, but it would take Patrick a few minutes to fight his way through the crowd, and until then, she was left with nothing to occupy her but the bottomless well of sorrow that had opened up in her chest the instant she realized that she’d kissed Patrick O’Connor for the last time.
Not that losing him was a shock. That had been the plan all along, hadn’t it? She couldn’t keep him. Of course she couldn’t. She’d never even considered it. But until she’d been blindsided by this towering sorrow, she’d never stopped to ask herself why not. Turned out, it wasn’t because of what he’d done or who he was. It wasn’t even because of her job, or how laughably their careers would combine.
It was because she was afraid.
She was willing to give him her body without restraint, but her body wasn’t enough. No, he wanted more. He wanted her to fling open her mind to him, too. He wanted to touch her thoughts, know her emotions, see her heart, and the very idea opened a yawning pit of terror inside her. She’d worked too hard and too long to untwist whatever her father had twisted in her to risk handing her heart to another dangerous man.
But she’d allowed herself one last kiss. Something to remember. And she’d paid for it. The bleak, dazzled wonder in his fallen-angel face would haunt her for the rest of her life.
She squeezed her eyes shut, forced herself to focus on the work. Work would save her. Heal her. Just like always.
FOR THE second time in as many days, Patrick found himself being led deep into the thumping bowels of a dance club by a fledgling criminal mastermind posing as a disc jockey. The same kid, he reminded himself, who’d opened negotiations by allowing the most dangerous man of Patrick’s acquaintance to beat him unconscious. What the hell was he doing here?
A smile twisted his lips that was part self-mockery, part startled discovery.
He was here because the two women he loved—his sister and Liz—had asked it of him. Simple as that. Apparently, that’s how love worked. He shook his head, as if to settle the awkward realization better into place. He knew he loved Mara—she was his sister, for crying out loud. But Liz? He loved Liz?
Of course he did, he thought bitterly. He’d uprooted it and flung it aside time and again, but whatever he felt for her had refused to die. In his experience, only love—and hate—were so remarkably persistent.
“Here we are,” the kid said, pushing through a battered door into a tiny, dank office. A bare bulb hung down from the ceiling, but it was unlit. The glow from three different computer monitors provided enough light for Patrick to follow the kid inside and wedge himself between a laser printer and a scanner while the door creaked closed behind him. The kid reached up and screwed in the bulb, bathing the tiny space in a harsh, yellow glow.
There was nobody in the room but the two of them. This was it, Patrick knew. Every job had a similar moment, the point from which there could be no veering from the set course. The second this kid acknowledged on tape that he was the counterfeiter, the card had been played. There was no taking it back. Patrick would just have to find a way to convince Liz to use the knowledge in the kid’s best interest.
He was too much a pro to hesitate over the moment. He stepped calmly into the scenario he’d planned, tossed the DJ a skeptical look and cocked a brow. “Oz, I presume?”
Oz treated him to an ironic little bow. “At your service.”
“Wonderful.” Patrick let his tone sour. “Just wonderful. You’d better be as good as I’ve heard. Because if I bring a sixteen-year-old DJ to the set and he’s not a fucking counterfeiting wunderkind? Well, let’s just say it’ll be unpleasant.”
Oz’s face darkened, and he took a quick step toward Patrick. His massive shoulders blotted out at least two of the computer monitors. “First of all, I’m better than you’ve heard. Better than you’ve ever seen or can imagine. And second, I’m not sixteen.”
For an instant, Patrick didn’t move. He stayed slouched casually back against a desk, let the kid loom over him, his face like a thundercloud, his fists clenched with adolescent temper. Then he leaned into the kid’s face and said with quiet menace, “I know exactly what you are. You look like a man, but you’re just a boy who thinks that a great big brain and a set of brass balls makes you a hardened criminal. You think I don’t recognize you?” He laughed lightly. “Please. I was you.” He gave the kid a critical once-over. “Fifteen?”
The kid’s shoulders slumped. “God. Seventeen.”
Patrick nodded philosophically. “Okay. It’s not ideal, but by the time we hit production, you’ll probably be eighteen. I can work around it if what you show me is worth the hassle.” He glanced at the jumble of high-tech equipment crammed into the tiny space, then back at the kid. “Feel free to dazzle me.”
Oz’s face brightened, and he suddenly looked exactly like the teenager he was in spite of the man-stubble on his jaw and the unholy breadth of his shoulders.
“Yeah, okay,” he said. He rustled around in one of the myriad stacks of junk that littered every available surface. “It’s all about the paper.”
Patrick nodded as if he’d never heard it before and settled in for the show.
TWO HOURS later, Patrick held an extremely convincing hundred-dollar bill in his hand. He snapped it just to hear the crisp sound of new money. The kid was good. Goose would wet herself.
“It’s not bad,” he said. “Not half bad.” He glanced around the cramped space. “But surely this isn’t where you usually work. You hardly fit through the doorway.”
Oz grinned at him, shoved a handful of unwa
shed hair out of his eyes. “No, this is a great workspace. Nobody comes down here and the club’s noisy enough to cover up any racket I make.”
“Still. You can hardly keep all your supplies here, and if you were operating on a larger scale, you’d need a place to assemble the bills, to dry them.”
“This is a big building. Plus, the owner likes me.”
“You know the owner?”
“Sure. Interesting guy. I pay cash for office space and he looks the other way when I need to spread out my product.” Oz glanced at the humming printer. “This is a good batch,” he said. “You wanna hang around and get some more hands-on experience?”
Patrick laughed. “I don’t think so. You want an assistant, you’ll have to hire yourself one. I don’t work cheap.”
Oz grinned. “I already spotted you a hundred.”
“Consider it an investment in your future,” Patrick said, and Oz laughed delightedly. He probably wouldn’t be so thrilled if he realized that the future Patrick was steering him toward was quite a bit different than the one he’d planned for himself.
“You up for phase two tomorrow?” Oz asked as Patrick stuffed the hundred into his pocket.
“I’m always up for a learning experience.”
“We’re going shopping.” He looked up from his work to cast an assessing eye over Patrick’s imported Egyptian-cotton shirt and custom-tailored trousers. “For cheap and tacky shit. You going to be able to handle the stress?”
“Punk,” Patrick said mildly.
Oz laughed. “It’ll be worth it, trust me. The first time you buy twenty bucks’ worth of junk with a fake hundred and pick up eighty untraceable, genuine American dollars in change, you’ll thank God for cheap and tacky shit.” He grinned. “I’ll pick you up at Brightwater’s, ten o’clock.”
Patrick let himself into the hallway and threaded his way back through the labyrinth of corridors, leaving Oz to tinker happily with his latest batch. Nostalgia warred with guilt. If he’d been bounced out of the life at seventeen by some rich asshole, he wouldn’t have thanked the guy, Patrick knew. Not at the time. He might now, though. A few years, a few close calls, a few ugly dents in his stone-cold heart changed a guy’s perspective.
But nobody had stepped in, and there was no changing history, was there? He could only work with the present as it stood. And right now, things weren’t looking too bad. He was making serious progress toward solving Mara’s counterfeiting problem and closing Liz’s case. He’d pay off Villanueva next, hopefully before Liz dragged him into custody and pissed him off some more. Then he could get back to the safety of sunny California. Forgetting Liz always seemed easier there, somehow.
He reentered the nightclub, where the crowd was still writhing to the endless mix Oz had left thumping. He negotiated the dance floor with only a few minor inconveniences, mostly of the groping variety, and let himself out the rear exit and back into the brewery. He could have gone right to the van and let Goose raise Liz on the two-way, but he wanted to see her again. Wanted to explain a few things before the information stored in the recorder on his hip was officially downloaded in FBI and Secret Service files.
PATRICK WAS safe. Liz knew the instant he’d hit the club doors because Goose had raised her on the two-way, given her the okay to gather up the receivers. Liz shoved aside the ridiculously powerful surge of relief and started the long dirty crawl through a couple hundred yards of ductwork. There were about a dozen receivers to retrieve, receivers that had kept Patrick safe under the FBI’s watchful gaze that evening. She’d just snagged the last one when Goose had tagged her again.
“Our boy’s coming your way, Brynn. Debrief and upload the audio to the network, will you? Good luck. I’m out.”
The two-way was clipped to the back of her jeans and she didn’t bother to reply. Goose didn’t seem to care what designation SAC Bernard gave Patrick—in her mind, he was Liz’s source and she left him in her hands whenever possible. Liz cursed softly and shimmied her way back through the ductwork to the open vent on top of the desk. She landed with a muffled thud about six inches from Patrick’s hip.
“Still working in the dark?” he asked.
She climbed off the desk and put a few more feet between them. “Yep. Law-abiding citizens don’t do paper trails like this one.”
“Liz.” He clucked gently. “So suspicious.”
She let that go with a shrug. She was suspicious. So what? Being suspicious was her job, and she was damn good at it. She swiped at the cobweb that trailed from her hair and resisted the urge to flip on the lights. She wanted to see him, to assure herself that he was undamaged. It was a weakness she had no intention of indulging. “No sign of Villanueva?”
She heard the desk creak as he eased off it. He was nothing more than a vague impression of motion in the dark, but she could feel his approach. The air went supercharged, her skin supremely sensitive to every current and drift. “No,” he said. “Oz seemed to think that letting him beat the crap out of me once was enough to discourage any further attempts to wire up.”
Liz snorted. “Cocky.”
“No, just young. Listen, Liz, about that—” He broke off abruptly, and Liz froze. She’d felt it, too. A whisper of air swirled around them, the back draft from an opening door somewhere nearby.
“Christ,” she muttered, and grabbed Patrick by the elbow. She didn’t even wonder that she knew exactly where to grab to get it, either. At this point, she was so finely attuned to his body, she could probably lay her hands on him blindfolded in the middle of an open field. She hauled him across the tiny office and onto the wide open factory floor.
“Uh, Liz? Where are you—”
She yanked open the door to the thermostat control room she’d spotted earlier and shoved him inside. Liz had scoped it out for herself, and she could squeeze in pretty comfortably, but Patrick was about twice her size. Fuck it, she thought, and jammed herself in after him.
Chapter 19
THERE WAS a moment of expectant silence in which Liz strained her ears for any signs of motion outside their door and tried like hell to ignore the fact that her butt was planted firmly against Patrick’s crotch. He threaded his arms around her waist, nestled himself more comfortably into the curve of her behind and whispered into her ear, his voice barely more than a breath, “You couldn’t find any place smaller?”
She stiffened, but it only pushed her more firmly against the unmistakable evidence of his growing arousal. Small is not your problem, buddy, she thought helplessly as a wave of heat crashed over her, tempting her to melt and soften for him. Only for him.
She shoved temptation aside, forced herself to summon up all those years of training. “Shut up,” she hissed. He nodded against her hair, but the arm around her waist held her firmly against the solid wall of his chest, her thighs riding intimately against his, her butt cozied up to his impressive erection. God.
Then a dull light filtered in through the doorjamb and somebody started whistling tunelessly and moving about the factory floor.
“Oz,” Patrick mouthed in her ear. She didn’t know how she could possibly hear him when the word was no more than heat and texture against her skin, but she nodded. “I was going to tell you. He has some kind of arrangement with the owner.”
Liz twisted slowly against him, tried to put her mouth in the vicinity of his ear. She could feel as much as hear Patrick’s breath catch at the friction. She knew how he felt. She’d brushed one breast against his arm and thought she was going to spontaneously combust. She kept her voice several degrees under a whisper. “How much did he print?” she asked. “How long is this going to take?”
“Not much.” She felt him shrug. “Half an hour maybe?”
She sagged against him. Christ. How was she going to survive half an hour of this? Her heart thudded into double-time when he wriggled a hand between his stomach and her back. Her indrawn breath hissed between her teeth.
“Radio,” he said softly, and her cheeks burned in the darkness.
He’d been reaching to switch off her radio so it didn’t give them away, and she’d jumped like a virgin at an orgy. He eased the radio from her waist, clicked it off and set it aside. Then his hand came up and smoothed down the hair above her ear. He was probably breathing it in, she thought. It and all the dust she’d accumulated during her travels through the ductwork. God, what if he sneezed?
But his hand didn’t stop at pushing the stray hairs away from his face. It continued down the length of her hair, slid under the heavy weight of it, lifted it away from her neck. Suddenly, his mouth was there against the vulnerable curve of her shoulder, hot, open, avid. She froze, a million messages bombarding her nervous system—surprise first, then heat, need and an indescribably powerful pleasure. It flowed into her blood like warm honey, loosening her bones, softening her resolve. A noise crept into her throat, but she was worried that it was more moan than reprimand so she swallowed it down.
His tongue touched her skin, unleashing a devastating shock wave that rippled under every inch of her skin, and the last of her resistance crumbled. She tipped her head to the side, and his mouth trailed slowly up the side of her neck to her ear. He took her lobe between his teeth and bit with exquisite delicacy. She felt it all the way into her belly, low and hot. His wide, warm hands crept up her abdomen, cupping her breasts through her T-shirt and bra, his thumbs brushing over the aching points with a lazy deliberation that had her edging toward madness.
It had to be madness, because she couldn’t find any other explanation for this new certainty that she would die without his hands on her body. Everywhere on her body.
He pulled his hands away from her breasts and a tiny moan escaped her. Nearly inaudible, but desperate and strangled nonetheless. She felt his hands tremble against her at the sound of it. She wanted to turn around, to press herself against him until every angle, every curve and every hot, secret place was open to his touch. But then he pulled her shirt free of her jeans, and those hands slid like liquid fire against the smooth skin of her midriff, streaked up to capture her breasts.
