A hell of a plan.
It held up all the way to Miranda's apartment.
But when she opened the door, raised a tear-stained face to his and sobbed, "Oh, O'Neil," as if his name was a prayer, when his arms closed around her and he felt her tremble as he drew her close...
When that happened, Conor knew he wasn't going anywhere until he'd solved a puzzle named Miranda.
Chapter 9
Conor was here.
He was here, and his arms were around her, and she was safe.
Miranda burrowed against him like a frightened animal, letting his heat, his scent, the hardness of his body encompass her. The coppery taste of fear was still in her mouth but she knew she was safe. Safe, because Conor had come.
It was crazy and she knew it, but it was his name she'd invoked moments ago, when she'd come home and found the horror that awaited her.
"Conor," she'd cried, closing her eyes to the scraps of paper that had fallen to the floor, and then the doorbell had rung and, like the answer to a prayer, he was there.
It made no sense but then, after last night, nothing made sense. An icy chill ran through her blood as she imagined the unknown hands that had gone through her clothes, the unseen head that had left its imprint on her pillow. And now there was this, the hideous picture and the sickening note...
A whimper rose in her throat, and Conor's arms tightened around her.
"Miranda, what is it? What's happened?"
She wanted to tell him but she couldn't. Her teeth were chattering and if he let go of her, she knew she would collapse. Her legs felt as if somebody had stripped out the bones and muscle and left behind nothing but jelly. The only thing she was capable of was clinging to him while the breath shuddered in and out of her lungs.
"Talk to me, dammit!"
His voice was rough. He clasped her shoulders, tried to hold her out at arm's length and look at her, but she wouldn't let him. She shook her head, tightened her hold on the lapels of his jacket and dug in harder.
"Hold me," she whispered, "just hold me. Please."
He hesitated, and then his arms folded around her again. She gave a long sigh and slumped against him.
* * *
God, what was this all about?
Conor had seen fear before, even terror, but nothing that came close to this. Miranda was shaking from head to toe. Her heart was racing so fast against his it felt as if it might burst from her chest. Her skin was icy cold and her face, in the quick glimpse he'd gotten, was the sickly white that warned of shock.
His jaw clenched. If someone had touched her, if the sick-ass son of a bitch who'd gone through her underwear had so much as laid a finger on her, he'd—he'd—
He blanked his mind to the pictures racing through his head. He had to keep his cool and restore hers before he could figure out what to do next but hell, he'd never known how to deal with crying women. His ex-wife had been a weeper. Every time they'd tried to sort things out, every time the sorting-out had ended in a blank wall, Jillian had wept buckets while she accused him of being heartless but the truth was, her sobbing was beyond him to comprehend.
His mother had never cried. Kathleen Margaret O'Neil had dealt with every emotion, from joy to sorrow, by assuming a stiff-lipped countenance and hurrying off to St. Michael's to light candles to her favorite saints and yet here he stood, his arms filled with a bawling female who wanted his comfort, not her God's, and who was clinging to him as if he was a rock set in the middle of a storm-tossed sea.
Conor shut his eyes. Slowly, his hand lifted. He stroked it down Miranda's hair, then over her shoulder.
"It's okay," he said, "it's all right."
He went on stroking her, whispering to her, saying whatever came into his head, and after a while she wasn't shaking as hard and her heart slowed to something approximating normal. Still, she stayed where she was, in his arms, her face buried in his throat, and it was amazing, how good it felt to have her there.
She must have been out in the snow because her hair was damp and cool. And it smelled of something soft and feminine, violets maybe, or roses. He wasn't very good with flowers and he'd never paid attention to perfume except to know that you could always send a woman a bottle of Chanel if you wanted to say an easy good-bye but whatever it was Miranda smelled of, was wonderful.
She felt wonderful, too, all warm and soft in his arms. Her breasts were pressed to his chest so that he could feel their rounded firmness. Her impossibly long legs and sweetly rounded hips were snug against his. Her waist, under his hands, was slender. Her back was long and straight and each time he stroked the length of it, he became aware of the almost imperceptible tilt of her pelvis.
Conor shut his eyes. Damn you, O'Neil, don't get a hard-on now! But he would. He would, if he held her much longer, if she went on nuzzling his throat, breathing her warm breath against his skin, clinging to him as if he were the only man in the world and she the only woman.
"Shh," he said, "it's all right, baby, it's all right."
* * *
Baby? Had he really called her baby?
It was such a silly word, an affectation, really; she'd never liked hearing men call women baby, not even in those old Humphrey Bogart-Lauren Bacall movies Jean-Phillipe was so fond of.
And yet, when Conor said it, it sounded altogether different. It sounded like a word of comfort, a reminder that she was a woman and he was a man and that he would protect her. Which was ridiculous. Stupid, really. She didn't want looking after, didn't need it.
Certainly not.
She shuddered, took a step back, and Conor's hands wrapped around her shoulders. He moved back, too, and looked down at her.
"Better?"
She nodded. "Yes."
"Tell me what happened."
His tone was calm and reassuring, but there was an intensity about him that was almost palpable. His eyes were dark, the pupils so enlarged that for one absurd moment, she wondered if she might fall into them and drown as she almost had last night, in the heat of his kiss.
"Miranda?"
She took a deep breath and returned to reality. "Someone sent me something."
He thought of the note that had been sent to Eva and knew right away that a woman, especially one as strong and determined as Miranda, wouldn't verge on collapse over a cryptic message culled from a half-forgotten philosopher.
"Where is it?"
She shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself. "Over there, on the floor where I dropped it."
He looked past her. A cream-colored envelope lay on the polished wood floor beside a folded sheet of paper and what looked like a page torn from a magazine. He went to where the stuff lay, stooped to pick it up, and felt a red flood of rage surge behind his eyes.
The magazine page was an advertisement. It was a full-length photo of Miranda in what he supposed was classic modeling pose. She stood with her head up, her hands on her hips, her legs slightly apart and a look of sultry sexuality on her face. She wore a skimpy T-shirt that hung to just below her breasts and a pair of skin-tight jeans that rode low on her hips.
Someone had drawn heavy black circles around her breasts, marked the center of each with a red X, and then torn a jagged slit between her navel and the juncture of her thighs that ended in a blob of something crimson.
He couldn't think. Hell, he couldn't breathe. The mutilated photo made him want to kill whoever had sent it, whoever had done this disgusting, terrifying thing to Miranda. He stood almost paralyzed by the emotions coursing through him, telling himself to calm down, that he wouldn't be able to do anything until he got himself under control.
When he felt his breathing begin to return to normal, he opened the folded sheet of notepaper. It was familiar: Eva's note had been written on what was almost certainly the same stuff, and the handwriting and the ink rang bells, too. But the message sure as hell wasn't the same.
It was three lines long, and in French.
As-tu passé une nuit blanche?
; J'ai la tringle pour toi.
Je te baiserai et je ne brûle pas les étapes.
Shit. It might as well have been written in Sanskrit. He spoke French pretty well. A couple of semesters of college French, a weekend immersion course sponsored by the Committee and a posting in Paris had done the trick. He could order a meal, deal with the snootiest of sommeliers, hold his own with any of the nut-cases who thought Paris was just one long Grand Prix racetrack. But reading this note was something else. He could make out most of the words, all right, but putting them together into something that made sense was another story.
He looked at Miranda. She had stopped shaking but her face was still drained of color. He thought of going to her, taking her back into his arms and kissing the warmth back into her flesh.
Stop it, he told himself fiercely, and forced his attention back to the note.
"Did you spend a white night?" he translated, and frowned. "I have a something-or-other for you. I'll kiss you and..."
"It says, 'Did you have a sleepless night?'" Miranda said.
Conor looked at her. Her voice was calm and color was coming back into her face but in a way that made her look feverish. She swallowed; he could see her throat working and he knew that whatever was coming next wasn't good.
"It says..." Her mouth trembled. "It says, 'I have a hard-on for you. I'm going to f-fuck you, and I won't be in any r-rush...'"
Conor crushed the note in his hand. The rage he'd fought against moments ago swept over him like a tidal wave, peaked and receded and left him taut with a deadly purpose. He knew, in that instant, that he would find and destroy whoever had sent this to her.
"So much for your locksmith," Miranda said, and gave what he figured was supposed to be a laugh.
Her words stunned him. He stared at her as she turned away and then he went after her, caught her arm and spun her towards him.
"What?"
"I said—"
"I heard what you said. What the hell's wrong with you, Beckman?" He saw the surprised look on her face, heard the barely controlled fury in his own voice, and welcomed it. That was fine. It was what he needed, something to fix on, something that was a lot safer than whatever it was he'd been feeling from the moment he'd walked in here tonight. "Are you telling me you got home, found the goddamn door was open, and went strutting on through it?"
"Of course not!"
His hand tightened on her arm. He felt the soft, yielding silkiness of her flesh beneath his fingers and in some distant part of his brain he realized he was hurting her, but he didn't give a damn.
"Let me tell you something, lady. Maybe you lead such a jaded existence that you think a little run-in with a fruitcake might be fun but it wouldn't be, I guarantee it."
"Wait a minute, O'Neil."
"No," he snarled, hauling her onto her toes, "no, you wait a minute! You come home, find the door standing open, what you do is get your ass out of here. You got that, Beckman? You move as fast as your little feet will go and you scream your fucking lungs out!"
"For God's sake!" Miranda wrenched her arm free, slapped her hands on her hips and glared up at Conor, her face flushed with anger. "I hate to burst your bubble, but I am not the ditz you think I am."
"No?"
"No."
"Listen, baby—"
"And do not call me baby! It's a disgusting term and I don't like it!"
"Yeah. You're right. Stupid is a better name for you. How could you be so dumb?"
"You want to talk about dumb?" Miranda stabbed a finger into his chest. "Dumb is you, going off like an alarm clock before you've got the facts. I'm the one that came home to find this—this thing waiting for me."
"The fact is," he said, shoving her hand aside, "the lock Cochran put in couldn't have been opened by anything short of plastique. But did that stop you from strolling in here like a sheep to the slaughter when you found the door open?"
"I didn't find it open."
"Hell, no, it did not, you just..." He stopped and glared at her. "You said the door was open."
"Try listening instead of lecturing, okay?" Miranda blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. "I came home. I unlocked the door. I found an envelope lying on the floor just past the threshold. All I meant when I said that about the lock was that it had never occurred to me that whoever's paying me these little visits wouldn't be stopped just because he couldn't get past the door."
Her momentary show of bravado slipped. Her voice quavered, and she turned away and snatched up Mia, who'd been weaving between her legs and meowing. Conor felt his anger drain away, too. His hands clenched and he shoved them deep into his trouser pockets, fighting the desire to go to her and try to comfort her again.
"Well," he said gruffly, "that's something, anyway."
She looked at him. "Meaning, I'm not the complete jerk you figured me for?"
"You've got things to learn, Beckman. Coming home after dark, all by yourself, isn't clever."
"Here we go," she said wearily. She put the cat down, made her way into the kitchen and hit the wall switch. Light flooded the room. "We went over this before, remember?"
"Taking off and disappearing without checking with me this morning," Conor said, following after her, "wasn't much better."
Miranda spun towards him, her face a study in disbelief. "Without checking with you? You've got to be kidding."
"Do I look as if I'm kidding?"
He didn't. He looked furious but that was fine with her because she was getting angry all over again, and that was a lot better than being scared. Who was Conor O'Neil to give her orders? Being toyed with by some crazy was bad enough. She certainly didn't need a stranger, bought and paid for by Eva, to watch over her like some kind of unwelcome overseer.
"Let's put it this way, O'Neil." Miranda folded her arms and gave him a look composed of equal parts disdain and dismissal. "It'll be a cold day in hell before I check in and out with you or anybody else."
"How about showing some common sense, then? Or is that too much to ask?"
"How's this for a display of common sense?" Miranda pointed to the door. "Get out."
"You don't order me around, Beckman."
"Who the hell do you think you are, O'Neil?"
She shrank back as he strode towards her but there was no place to go. It was hard not to look cowed when your shoulders were pinned to a wall and a man who was all muscle and anger was towering over you, but she tried.
"Maybe you haven't quite grasped what's happening here, Beckman."
"Maybe you haven't figured out that I want you gone."
A muscle tightened in his jaw. "Listen, baby—"
"I told you not to call me that."
"Yeah, you're right. Pig-headed suits you better." Conor leaned towards her, his eyes flashing. "Five minutes ago, I came through the front door and you threw yourself at me as if I was the last stagecoach out of Deadwood."
"I did not."
"You sure as hell did."
They stood toe-to-toe, glaring at each other, and then, without meaning to, Miranda laughed.
"The last stagecoach out of Deadwood?"
Conor's mouth twitched. "What can I tell you? I've always been a sucker for old Westerns."
"You've got no taste," she said, "you know that?"
But she was smiling, and after a couple of seconds, he smiled, too.
"Listen," he said, "how about we start from the top?"
She nodded. He stepped back, picked up a chair, swung it around and straddled it.
"You left here early this morning."
"Uh-huh," she said. She pulled a chair out from the table and sat down opposite him.
"I came by around nine and you were already gone."
"You came by?"
"Yes."
"What for?"
"To check out the lock. And to lay out some ground rules until I can figure out what's going on here, but I was too late. You'd taken off."
She sighed, propped her elbow on the table and rested he
r chin on her fist.
"I went out for breakfast."
"Where?"
"I went to..." Two spots of pink rose in her cheeks. "To this little place off the Champs Elysées."
"Has it got a name?"
She shrugged. "What's the difference?" What was the difference? So what, if she let him know she liked McDonald's? Nobody knew that except Jean-Phillipe, but it wasn't exactly a state secret. "Just a place, that's all."
"That's a long way to go for a croissant."
Miranda shrugged again. She stood up, went to the cabinet above the sink and took down the fixings for coffee.
"I had breakfast with someone."
Conor felt his stomach knot. "The Frenchman," he said tonelessly.
"His name is—"
"I know his name. Jean-Phillipe Moreau. Okay. So, you and he had breakfast together in some trendy little place whose name you can't remember."
"McDonald's." The word blurted from her lips. Damn, she thought, but now that it was out she looked at him, her chin tilting in defiance. "We had breakfast at McDonald's. And after that, we went to his place."
Nothing about Conor's expression changed, yet she could almost feel the sudden tension in his big body. She knew what he was thinking, but so what? Her reputation—her supposed reputation—didn't embarrass her. On the contrary, it pleased her. She worked hard at maintaining it. Jean-Phillipe, ever the armchair analyst, said she did it to get even with Eva but Miranda knew better. She just liked having people whisper about her.
Then, why was she having such trouble with this conversation?
"Maybe you want to take notes," she said. "Breakfast, then we went to his place, then—" She looked at him over her shoulder. "You won't really need all the details, will you, O'Neil?"
No, Conor told himself, hell, no, he didn't need the details. His brain was on overload already, grinding out X-rated scenes guaranteed to never make it past any censor.
"How long has the Frenchman been your lover?"
"That's none of your business."
"Is he the only one? Or does he just have the inside track?"
Miranda turned around. "I just told you, my private life is none of your business."
Until You Page 16
