Convincing Alex

by Nora Roberts

  “No game.” She flashed a smile that was as feral as a shark’s. “I’m a paid consultant. Your lady hired me.”

  “The hell with that.” He paused a moment, studying her bruised eye. “Bobby do that?”

  Rosalie angled her chin. “I walked into a door.”

  “Sure you did.” He did care. Bess might have been surprised at how much he cared. Rosalie certainly would have been stunned. But he also knew there were things that couldn’t be fixed. “You’ll want to watch your step.”

  “I don’t make the same mistake twice.”

  He turned away from her, his hands balled into fists in his pockets. “McNee, I want to talk to you.”

  “Oh, just shut up.” She didn’t bother to look up as she counted out bills. “Can’t you see I’m trying to figure the tip? There you go.”

  “Thanks, lady.” The delivery boy tucked the bills away. “Enjoy your dinner.”

  “There’s enough for three,” Bess stated, turning toward Alex. “But you’re not going to stay if you’re rude.”

  “Rude?” The single word bounced off her ceiling. He was beside her in two strides. “You think it’s rude for me to ask you if you’ve lost your mind when I walk in and find you’ve invited a hooker to dinner?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Out.”

  “Damn it, Bess…”

  “I said out.” She gave him a hefty shove toward the door. “We went on one date,” she reminded him. “One. Maybe I entertained the idea of something more, but that gives you no right to come into my house and tell me what to do and who to talk with.”

  He grabbed her hand before she could push him again. “One has nothing to do with the other.”

  “You’re right. Absolutely right. What I should have said is that I run my life, Detective.” She snatched her hand away so that she could poke a finger at his chest. “Me. Alone. Get the picture?”

  “Yeah.” He wondered how she’d like a nice clip on that pointy little chin of hers. “I’ve got a picture for you.” He hauled her up and kissed her hard. No gentle touch, no finesse. All steam heat. It lasted only seconds, but he succeeded in shocking her speechless. “Things change, McNee.” Dark, furious eyes pinned her to the spot. “Get used to it.”

  With that, he stormed out, slamming the door behind him.

  “Well.” Bess took one breath, then another. Her throat felt scalded. “Of all the incredible nerve. Who the hell does he think he is, marching in here that way?” Hands on her hips, she spun to face Rosalie. “Did you see that?”

  “Hard to miss it.” Grinning, Rosalie snatched a french fry from a plate.

  “If he thinks he’s getting away with that—that attitude—he’s very much mistaken.”

  “Man’s nuts about you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Girl, that was one lovesick puppy.”

  Bess snatched up her wine and gulped. “Don’t be ridiculous. He was just showing off.”

  “Uh-huh. If I had me a man who looked at me like that, I’d do one of two things.”

  “Which are?”

  “I’d either sit back and enjoy, or I’d run for my life.”

  Frowning, Bess sat down and picked up her fork. “I don’t like to be pushed.”

  “Seems to me it depends on who’s doing the pushing.” She sat, as well, and dug right into her steak. “He sure is one fine-looking man—for a cop.”

  Bess stabbed at her salad. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

  “You’re paying the tab,” Rosalie said agreeably.

  With a grunt of assent, Bess tried to eat. Damn cop, she thought. He’d ruined her appetite.

  There was something to be said for beating the hell out of inanimate objects. Alex had always found the therapy of a pair of boxing gloves and a punching bag immeasurably rewarding. With those so easily accessible, he could never figure out why so many people felt the need for a psychiatrist’s couch.

  Until recently.

  Twenty minutes of sweating and pounding hadn’t relieved his basic frustration. He often used the gym—in the middle of a difficult case, when one went wrong, when a good arrest turned sour in court. The same ingredients had worked equally well for him whenever he’d fought with family, or friends, or had female problems.

  Not this time.

  Whatever hold Bess McNee had on him, Alex couldn’t seem to punch himself out of it.

  “So much energy, so early.”

  The familiar voice had Alex blinking away the sweat that had dripped through his headband into his eyes. His brother Mikhail, and Alex’s ten-month-old nephew, Griff, were standing hand in hand, grinning identical grins.

  “Got your papa out early, did you, tough guy?” Alex swung Griff up for a smacking kiss.

  Griff babbled out happily. The only word Alex could decipher in the odd foreign language of a toddler was Mama.

  “Sydney’s tired,” Mikhail explained. “She has some wheeling and dealing keeping her up at night. This one’s an early riser.” He ruffled his son’s hair. “So I thought we’d come down and lift weights. Right?”

  Griff grinned and cocked his elbows. “Papa.”

  “Your muscle’s bigger,” Alex assured him.

  “Hey, it’s the Griff-man!” Rocky, the former lightweight who ran the gym, gave a whistle and held out his wiry arms. “Come see me, champ.”

  With a squeal of pleasure, Griff wiggled out of Alex’s arms to toddle off on his almost steady legs. “Better watch out, Rock,” Mikhail called out. “He’s slippery.”

  “I can handle him.” With the confidence of a four-time grandfather, he hefted Griff. “We got things to do,” he told Mikhail. “Why don’t you talk to your brother there and find out why this is the third time this week he’s come in to pound on my equipment?”

  “Nosy,” Alex muttered. “He’s worse than an old woman.”

  Mikhail tilted a brow when Alex went back to pounding the bag. “Speaking of women…”

  “We weren’t.”

  “Why do men come to such places as this unless it’s to talk of women?” The music of the Ukraine flavored Mikhail’s voice. Alex wondered if his brother knew how much he sounded like their father.

  “To hit things,” he retorted. “To talk dirty and to sweat.”

  “That, too. So, it is a woman, yes?”

  “It’s always a damn woman,” Alex said between gritted teeth.

  “This one’s named Bess.”

  Alex’s punch stopped in midswing. Turning, he used his forearm to swipe his brow. “How do you know about Bess?”

  “Rachel tells me.” Pleased, Mikhail grinned. “She also tells me that this Bess is not beautiful so much as unique, and that she’s smart. This isn’t your usual type, Alexi.”

  “She’s nobody’s type.” Alex turned back to the bag, feinted with his right, then jabbed with his left. “Unique,” he said with a snort. “That’s her, all right. Her face. It was like God was distracted that day and mixed up the features for five different women. Her eyes are too big, her chin’s pointed, her nose is crooked.” His gloved fist plowed into the bag. “And she has skin like an angel. I touch it and my mouth waters.”

  “Mmm… I’ll have to get a look at this one.”

  “I’ve sworn off,” Alex told him between grunts. “I don’t need the aggravation. She doesn’t have all her circuits working at the same time. Maybe Rachel thinks she’s smart because she went to college.”

  “Radcliffe,” Mikhail supplied. “She had lunch with Rachel, and Rachel asked.”

  “Radcliffe?” Letting out a breath, Alex leaned against the bag. “It figures.”

  “She also told Rachel that the two of you had a…misunderstanding.”

  “I understood perfectly. Look, maybe she went to some fancy college, but you couldn’t fill up a teaspoon with her common sense. I don’t need to get involved with someone that flaky.”

  Mikhail’s bark of laughter echoed through the gym. “This from a man who once dated Miss Lug Wrench.”r />
  “It was Miss Carburetor.”

  “Ah, that’s different.”

  A smile twitched, and Alex punched halfheartedly at the bag. Working up a sweat hadn’t relaxed him, but five minutes with Mikhail was doing the job. “Anyway, we’re finished before we got started. And both better off.”

  “Undoubtedly you’re right.”

  “I know I’m right. We’d always be coming at things from different angles. Hers is cross-eyed. She doesn’t see anything the way she should.”

  “A difficult woman.”

  “Difficult.” Alex held out his hands so that Mikhail could unlace his gloves. “That doesn’t begin to describe her. She acts so mild and relaxed, you wouldn’t think you could rile her with a cattle prod. Then you point out an obvious mistake, for her own good, and she jumps on you with both feet. Kicks you out of the house.”

  Mikhail tucked his tongue in his cheek. “You’re better off without her.”

  “You’re telling me.” Alex tossed his gloves aside and flexed his hands. “Who needs unreasonable women?”

  “Men.”

  “Yeah.” With a sigh, Alex sent his brother a miserable look. “I want her so much I can’t breathe.”

  “I know the feeling.” He punched his brother’s sweaty shoulder. “So go get her.”

  “Go get her,” Alex repeated.

  “Put her in her place.”

  A dangerous light, one Mikhail recognized, flickered in Alex’s eyes. “Her place. Right.”

  “Hey!” Mikhail called out when his brother strode off. “The showers are that way.”

  “I’ll catch one at the station. See you later.”

  “Later,” Mikhail agreed. He wandered off to find his son, wondering how soon he would meet this unique, unreasonable woman without common sense.

  She sounded perfect for his baby brother.

  Bess was never at her best in the morning, and she suspected anyone who was. Her alarm was buzzing when she heard the pounding on her door. She’d been ignoring the first for nearly ten minutes, but the incessant knocking had her dragging herself out of bed.

  Bleary-eyed, pulling a skimpy silk robe over an equally skimpy nightshirt, she stumbled to the door. “What the hell?” she demanded. “Is it a fire or what?”

  “Or what,” Alex told her when she yanked open the door.

  Struggling to focus, she dragged a hand through her hair. The robe drooped off one shoulder. “How’d you get up here?”

  “Flashed my badge for the security guard.” After closing the door behind him, he looked his fill. There was a great deal to be said for a sleepy woman in rumpled white silk. “Get you up, McNee?”

  “What time is it?” She turned away, following the scent from her coffeemaker, which was set to brew at 7:20 each morning. “What day is it?”

  “Thursday.” He followed her weaving progress through the living area and into a big white-and-navy kitchen. There was a huge arrangement of fresh orchids on the center island. Orchids in the kitchen, he thought. Only Bess. “About 7:30.”

  “In the morning?” Blindly she groped for a mug. “What are you doing here at 7:30 on a Thursday morning?”

  “This.” He spun her around. The taste of her mouth, warm and soft from sleep, had him groaning. Before she could think—he didn’t want either of them to think—he slipped his tongue between her lips to seduce hers. Her body went stiff, then melted, softening against his like candle wax touched by a flame.

  Through the roaring of his blood, he heard the crash as the china mug she’d held slipped from her fingers and smashed on the tiles.

  Was she still dreaming? Bess wondered. Her dreams had always been very vivid, but this… It wouldn’t be possible to feel so much, need so desperately, in a dream.

  And she could taste him. Really taste him. A mingling of man and desire and salty sweat. Delicious. His mouth was so hot, so unyielding, just as his hands were through the thin silk she wore.

  She could feel the cool tiles beneath her feet, a shivery contrast to the heat roaring around her. Under her palms, his cheeks were rough, arousingly rough. And she heard her own voice, a muffled, confused sound, as she tried to say his name.

  “I have to wake up,” she managed when his mouth left hers to cruise over her throat. “I really have to.”

  “You are awake.” He had to touch her—just once. However unfair his advantage, he had to. So he cupped her breasts in his hands, molding their firmness through the silk, brushing his thumbs, feather-light, over straining nipples. “See?”

  She’d never been the swooning type, but she was afraid this would be a first. “I have to—” She gasped, for as she’d started to step back, he’d swept her up into his arms. A skitter of panic, completely unfamiliar, raced down her spine. “Alexi, don’t.”

  He covered her mouth again, felt her trembling surrender. And knew he could. And could not. “Your feet are bare,” he said, and set her on the counter. “I made you drop your cup.”

  Shaken, she stared down at the shards of broken crockery. “Oh.”

  “You have a broom?”

  “A broom.” She was awake now, wide-awake. But her mind was still mush. “Somewhere. Why?”

  He was making her stupid, he realized, and grinned. “So I can clean it up before you cut yourself. Stay there.” He walked to a likely-looking closet and located a dustpan and broom. Because he was a man whose mother had trained him well in such matters, he went about the sweeping job quickly and competently. “So, have you missed me?”

  “I haven’t given you a thought.” She blew the hair out of her eyes. “Hardly.”

  “Me either.” He dumped the shards into the trash, replaced the broom and dustpan. “How about some coffee?”

  “Sure.” Maybe that would help her regain her normal composure. As he poured, she caught a whiff of him over the homey morning aroma. “You smell like a locker room.”

  “Sorry. I was at the gym.” When he handed her the coffee, she sat where she was and sipped. Half a cup later, she was able to take her first clear-eyed look at him.

  He looked fabulous. Rough and sweaty and ready for action. The thick tangle of hair was falling over a faded gray sweatband. His face was unshaven, his NYPD T-shirt was ripped and darkened in a vee down the chest, his sweatpants were loose and frayed at the cuffs. When she lifted her gaze back to his, he smiled.

  “Good morning, McNee.”

  “Good morning.”

  He skimmed a finger over her thigh. She was sensitive there, he noted. He could tell by the way her eyes darkened and the pulse in her throat picked up the beat. “I’m not apologizing this time.”

  “You should be.”

  “No. I’m right about this.” He put a finger over her lips before she could speak. “Trust me. I’m a cop.”

  He could have all but seduced her in her own kitchen before her eyes were even open, but she had a point to make. Closing a hand over his wrist, she drew his hand away. “My personal decisions, whether they have to do with my professional or my private life, are just that. Personal. I’ve been making those decisions, right or wrong, for a long time. I don’t intend to stop now.”

  “I’m not going to see you hurt.”

  “That’s very sweet, Alexi.” Softening a bit, she brushed a hand through his hair. “I don’t intend to be hurt.”

  “You don’t know what you’re dealing with. Oh, you think you do,” he continued, recognizing the look in her eyes. “But all you know is the surface. There are things that go on in the streets, every day, every night, that you have no conception of. You never will.”

  She couldn’t argue, not with what she saw in his face. “Maybe not. I don’t see what you see, or know what you know. Maybe I don’t want to. My friendship with Rosalie—”

  “Friendship?”

  “Yes.” The expression on her face dared him to contradict her. “I feel something for her—about her.” With a helpless gesture, Bess set her cup aside. “I can’t possibly explain it to you, Alex
i. You’re not a woman. I can help her. Don’t tell me it’s a fairy tale to believe I can save her from the streets and what she’s chosen to be. I’ve gotten that advice already.”

  “From someone with at least half a brain,” he surmised. “I had no idea this had gotten so out of hand. You said you wanted to talk to her for background stuff for your story.”

  “That’s true enough.” But Bess remembered the bruise on Rosalie’s face too well. “Is it so impossible that I might be able to make a difference in her life? Has being a cop made you so hard you aren’t willing to give someone a chance to change?”

  He gripped her hands, hard. “This isn’t about me.”

  “No,” she said, and smiled. “It’s not.”

  He swore and let go of her to pace to the coffee maker. “Okay, point taken. It’s none of my business. But I’m going to ask for a promise.”

  “You can ask.”

  “Don’t go out on the streets with her. Don’t go anywhere near Bobby’s territory.”

  She thought of the man with the silver hair and the vicious eyes. “That I can promise. Feel better?”

  “I’m not through. Don’t let her up here unless you’re sure she’s alone. Meet her down at your office, or in some public place.”

  “Really, Alexi…”

  “Please.”

  She said nothing for a moment, and then, because she could see how much it had cost him to use that word, she relented. “All right.” Bess scooted away from the counter, then opened the bread drawer. “Want a bagel?”

  “Sure.”

  She popped two into the toaster oven before going to the refrigerator for cream cheese. “There’s something I should tell you.”

  “I’m hoping there’s a lot of things.”

  With a puzzled smile, she turned back. “I’m sorry?”

  “I want to know about this personal life of yours, McNee. I want to know all about you, then I want to take you to bed and make love with you until we both forget our own names.”

  “Ah…” It didn’t seem to take more than one of those long, level looks of his to make her forget a great deal more than her name. “Anyway…”

  “Anyway?” he repeated helpfully as the toaster oven dinged.