by Dawn Ryder
“About that…” Celeste caught sight of herself in the defogging mirror. Her eyelids were heavy and her lips swollen. “Who’s paying for this? You or Nartan?”
“Ummm…I’m not sure.” Sabra answered. “Nartan owns the lodge, so it’s possible he’s just writing it off as a favor to Tarak.”
“He’s here.”
“What?” Sabra’s voice sharpened.
Celeste bit her lip to contain the tremor trying to leak into her voice. “A little warning would have been appreciated.”
Sabra clicked her tongue. “Excuse me, Celeste, but I need to go kill my husband. Or at the very least impress upon him the dangers of setting up my best girlfriend.”
“You do that.”
Celeste snapped the phone shut and tossed it onto the bed.
Her knees were still weak.
The puddle of green satin in the trash can caught her eye and ignited her temper. She flipped open her phone and dialed the number to Nektosha Industries’ private planes.
“Good evening, Ms. Connor. How may we help you?”
“I’d like to return to Southern California. Immediately.”
She could hear the soft sound of keys being depressed on a terminal. “I’ve got a crew that can be airborne in half an hour.”
“Thank you. I will be ready.”
She killed the call and yanked on a pair of jeans. Within ten minutes, she had her clothing shoved back into her suitcase. She made it down to the desk as someone drove up in the all-terrain golf cart.
“Sorry to see you leave, but at least the mountain has come out to send you off.”
Celeste turned around to see Mount McKinley in all its glory. The sun was just going down, casting a ruby glow over the snowcapped peak. It was a shame she hadn’t had a chance to meditate with such an amazing view as inspiration, but for a moment, the sight shoved aside the massive boulder of regret sitting on her chest. She climbed into the private aircraft and sat near a window so she could watch as the plane took off. The moment she felt the aircraft leave the ground, she sunk back into the seat and felt the devastation rip into her.
She knew better. Really, really knew better.
***
Nartan struggled to maintain his composure. The health inspector was in the mood to draw out his visit. He ambled through the kitchen, selecting various personnel for lengthy discussions during the peak dinner rush. Orders were backing up and tempers were running short as Nartan tried to keep the man on track.
By the time the inspector left, Nartan was close to sending his fist into the man’s face. Instead, he turned to find his head room steward waiting for him.
“Did you deliver the order?” he growled.
“Your guest in the Denali suite has departed. The front desk says she left in a Nektosha private jet.”
Nartan checked his watch and cussed in Apache. Two fucking hours!
Of course she’d run.
What bothered him the most was how strong his impulse was to give chase.
He should have been relieved.
He turned and made his way to the suite. He pounded on the door just once before using his master key to open it. Two steps inside and he knew she was gone. The wardrobe doors were open, granting him a view of the empty interior. The bed was crisp and clean, the sheets turned down but undisturbed. A used towel was dropped on the bathroom floor, a few wet puddles remaining on the surface of the marble tile. There wasn’t a personal item left.
The trash can caught his eye, the dress lying there abandoned.
Maybe he should thank her. There were certainly plenty of times he’d enjoyed knowing his liaisons didn’t expect anything further from him.
Right now, that thought made him feel like shit.
Like complete shit.
***
Her butt really was numb by the time Celeste made it back to Southern California. She wished her feelings would join it.
She wasn’t going to get that lucky, it seemed. As she made her way to the curb and flagged down a cab, she fought back a wave of bitterness.
Honestly, she’d known what sort of man Nartan was the moment she’d first set eyes on him. Dark, controlling, and impossible to resist. He was a danger zone for any woman who had even a scrap of decency. The type who played high-stakes games and went after sexual interests with the same zeal. She’d known, so there was no reason to become emotional. It was time to look on the bright side.
Caspian was no longer the last man in her bed.
Well, on her table.
She felt her cheeks burn and drew in a shaky breath. Focus, she ordered herself. At least the sex had been good.
Okay, it had been mind-blowing.
Another bright little thought.
She paid the cab driver and dug her house keys out of her bag. Everything inside her house was familiar, like a good friend welcoming her back. She locked the door behind her and reengaged the security system.
Yeah, that was familiar too.
The need to watch her back. Her ex-husband was an art collector, and she had been one of his prized possessions. He wasn’t a man used to having his toys taken away. He thrived on control, and she felt the days ticking away to when he’d be free to torment her again.
She’d handle it. Because she had to.
At least Nartan had made sure she didn’t need to do anything about him. That should have gone down in her book as another good thing.
But it didn’t.
***
When her alarm clock went off the next morning, she decided she was pathetic.
She’d been up for the last two hours.
She rolled out of bed without even thinking about sleeping the better part of the day away.
Pathetic.
At work, her boss poked his head out of his office when she passed by on the way to hers.
“Did a grizzly bear kill you up in Alaska, and now your ghost has decided to haunt our hallways?” Marcus Flynn asked from her doorway with his usual brassy, navy yard tone. There was no hedging around the topic. When Marc wanted to know something, he went ahead full throttle right past personal boundary lines.
“No, I just came home early and decided not to burn my vacation days,” Celeste answered as she tucked her purse into her desk drawer.
Her ex-JAG boss was still very fit, even if genetics had let him down when it came to hair. He’d responded to his rising hairline by shaving his head. It made him look like more of a badass, as if the tattoo on his forearm wasn’t enough. Marcus crossed his arms and leaned against the doorway. “You have three months on the books. I was happy to see you taking some of it.”
The hint hung in the air between them.
“Thanks for the warm welcome, boss.” She put her hands on her keyboard and hoped he’d shove off.
Marcus’s eyes narrowed, warning her of an incoming cross-examination.
“Don’t,” she warned him.
One of his eyebrows rose.
Celeste pointed a slim finger at him. “Don’t put on the JAG face. You’re a civilian now. Which means I can argue with you.”
Marcus bared his teeth and bit the air in front of him.
“Sorry, we work together.” Celeste answered his silent “bite me.” As usual, Marcus had his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. His upper body was still in prime condition, despite his discharge from the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. Baring his forearms was cutting loose as far as her boss went, but Celeste didn’t judge him too harshly. After all, twenty years in a JAG uniform would make bare forearms pretty laid back by comparison.
“Tell me with a straight face that you have nothing you’d like to get off your desk, and I’ll leave,” she challenged him.
Marcus snorted. “Guilty as charged. But you shouldn’t make this place your home just because I’m a suc
ker for hard-luck cases.”
“You like the buzz of winning the fight for the underdog.”
“That’s what I said.”
Her boss abandoned the door frame and returned to his office. His law firm wasn’t in some upscale part of town because Marcus had a soft spot for servicemen who needed legal services on a budget. Sometimes, that budget was only a handshake and a promise of payment when they could scrape it together. If ever.
Celeste loved her job.
Oh, it never would have suited Caspian and his ideas of what his wife should be doing. Every aspect of her life had been expected to enhance his image. She’d taken extreme pleasure in leaving the law firm she’d worked for during her marriage. Marcus took on real problems, not petty quarrels between socialites and their husbands of the moment. She wanted to practice law where justice was served, not the whim of those who only wanted to escape retribution for their crimes and had the money to do it.
She signed into her computer and dove into her inbox. Lunch was a sandwich at her desk, and by the end of the day, she was almost feeling normal. Total immersion in her job had its uses.
“Hi-yah!” Marcus yelled from his office at four thirty. “Get your tail going before Master Lee comes calling on me.”
Celeste signed off and grabbed her purse. She paused in her boss’s door frame. “Master Lee doesn’t even know I’m back.”
Marcus looked at her over the top of his monitor. “I’m out of here in twenty myself. Can’t get soft in my old age. Meeting Chunky for a run on the beach.”
“You guys have the weirdest taste in names.”
Marcus grinned and rubbed the top of his shaved head. His buddies had taken to calling him Whiteout.
Celeste offered him a two-finger salute before heading down the hallway. The office was neat but furnished with only the basics. She was one of eight lawyers. The office had only three assistants but she didn’t care. It was satisfying work, even if she’d taken a pay cut when she signed on. She didn’t miss the top-shelf life-style.
The Denali dining room flashed before her eyes, and she conceded that she did miss some things. Fine dining was one of them.
But that only soured her mood, because one of her favorite restaurants was off limits now. Angelino’s was one of her favorite brunch spots too. She slid behind the wheel of her Corvette and pouted. She might need to go into full mourning for the Malibu cliff-top restaurant.
Southern California traffic was teeming as she made her way across town to the martial arts studio where she trained. Pulling around back, she parked and grabbed her gear bag before opening the back door. One of the junior masters poked his head out of the back room to see who was arriving. His eyes widened with surprise.
“Vacation got canceled,” she offered before disappearing into the women’s locker room.
No, you chickened out…
Maybe, but sometimes picking your battles really was the wiser course of action. When it came to Nartan, she couldn’t trust herself, so engaging him was a bad idea.
The studio was full of kids in white uniforms. They all had on different-colored belts, and their parents waited in the seating area as the kids trained. As the evening progressed, more advanced students arrived. By the time Celeste made it home, she was completely exhausted. Her own training was hard, but teaching younger kids held unique challenges that mentally wiped her out.
Kids needed to be motivated, and that was a lot harder than just snapping at them to stand still. Her own classes made sure her legs felt like noodles from fatigue. The brisk pace kept her mind from having time to kick in and distract her with Nartan. Another reason why she loved her martial arts training: the focus needed to do it kept her from going insane from her memories.
She punched in her security code and was welcomed into her small townhouse by a chirp. Once through the door, she tapped in the second code and heard another chirp to let her know the perimeter was armed.
Her first stop was the kitchen for some pain reliever. But she smiled with satisfaction as she swallowed a couple of capsules. Training was her choice of drug. It gave her a high and made sure that she’d sleep through the night. She headed up the stairs. A short shower later, she collapsed on her bed in an old T-shirt and pair of sleep shorts. It was a routine that served her well, giving her little time to think about men.
Except that Nartan Lupan showed up in her dreams.
Chapter 4
Saturday arrived with too many free hours for her taste. Celeste rolled out of bed early because the summer heat was going to make housework a bitch by midday. She left her old T-shirt on and only added a bra and cutoff jeans that had several splotches on them where bleach had hit the fabric. She used a clip to hold her hair on top of her head and added a headband to keep the shorter strands out of her eyes.
August in Southern California was always blistering.
Yeah, that’s why you booked an Alaskan vacation…
She indulged herself in a moment of self-pity as she imagined how cool the glacier tour would have been, both figuratively and temperature-wise.
Celeste started on the windows first. She pulled her ladder out of her garage and climbed to the second story. She fit her key into the lock on the artful but sturdy floral iron screens she had fitted over the windows to secure them. Swinging one out, she began to deal with the dirty glass. The sun was baking the back of her neck by the time she finished the corner bedroom and climbed down.
“What are you doing?”
She jumped back and blinked like a simpleton at Nartan. He looked up the ladder and back at her gloved hands. It took a moment for it to sink in that he was actually there.
“You’re a lawyer, Celeste. Haven’t you ever heard of a cleaning service?”
Dealing with his memory was a lot easier than facing him. He had on a pair of jeans that fit him too well for her comfort. She was already noticing details about him—how dark his hair was, how much she wanted to run her fingers through its length. Her damned hormones were kicking into overdrive at the sight of him. Her world tilting off center.
Shit! The guy was her personal form of crack.
She pulled one of her gloves off. “Excuse me. Is there any reason why you feel you have the right to make observations concerning my life choices?”
He pulled his mirrored sunglasses off, and she was instantly caught again in his powerful gaze. The way the man struck her was so bloody unfair. Awareness rippled through her, like the lights turning on in a dark warehouse. Where she had thought there was nothing but empty darkness, there were now a thousand different areas of interest.
His lips rose, just the slightest amount at the corners. “I’ll be happy to remind you if you’ve somehow forgotten.”
She hadn’t.
His memory had kept her company last night. Not that she planned on admitting it to him. Dealing with her own fickle reactions was trouble enough.
“Maybe you should go check your cell phone.” It was a low blow, but she needed a shortcut back to reality before she lost her head again.
His teasing demeanor vanished. “That was poor timing on my part. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t sweat it.” She meant it as a brush-off and tried to walk by him, but he reached out and caught her elbow. The contact was jarring, snapping her back into the vortex of need and arousal that had been the cause of her downfall in Alaska. There was something about him that was sinfully hard to resist.
Celeste pulled her elbow away and faced him. “I don’t need this, Nartan. It’s been a week.” She hadn’t meant that last part to slip out and ground her teeth together after hearing it.
She sounded pathetic. Marking time like a jilted prom date.
“It might have been piss-poor timing, but I was trying to run a business. I couldn’t break away until yesterday. Alaska runs on its own timetable.”
“You don’
t owe me an explanation.” She managed to soften her voice. “You didn’t seduce me.” She turned and walked around the corner of her house and opened the back door.
But Nartan followed her right inside her kitchen, making it shrink. “I should have.”
She froze. Not because of the words he choose but because of the tone of his voice. He was sincere and it touched her deeply.
“I lost my head.” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against her kitchen counter, making it clear he was settling in.
She opened her mouth but a snappy retort seemed beyond her grasp. “Likewise.”
Satisfaction flickered in his eyes. It warmed her insides, sending them into a soft churning that horrified her with just how intensely he affected her.
It would be so simple for him to become her habit.
“I would have called, but that would have entailed asking Sabra for your number since yours is unlisted and you didn’t give a number to the lodge with your registration.”
She didn’t care for how much she liked hearing that he’d at least tried to reach out to her. A ridiculous amount of pleasure bubbled up inside her, forcing her to press her lips together before she ended up smiling like a simpleton.
“I didn’t think you’d appreciate me asking Sabra.”
“Well, we have that in common. ’Cause you know she’d tell Tarak you asked for it.” She didn’t need any witnesses to how much of a failure she was at ignoring him. But her lips twitched just a bit as she shared a moment of common ground with him.
He tilted his head to one side, offering her a sheepish grin. “That too. Tarak has a memory like a steel trap.”
She was caught up again in how easy it was to talk to him. Like stepping into a bubble where a kindred spirit waited. Their gazes met and his grin melted as his jaw tightened. She felt the shift between them, that undeniable pull toward each other that overrode every scrap of reason she had. Celeste took a deep breath and started tugging one of her work gloves off. “But it doesn’t explain how you found my address.”
“You used a credit card at Angelino’s in the past.”
