“You’re not a prize, Williams,” she told herself out loud. “But you have other assets.” She smiled because she was content to be herself and not a raving beauty depicted in so many magazines.
Brie halted at the entrance to the living room. Linc lay on the couch, too long for it, his knees drawn up beneath the pale yellow quilt, which barely covered his lower body. Her gaze moved to his naked torso, dark-haired chest and broad shoulders. Last night, she had lain on that magnificent chest. In sleep, Linc looked vulnerable, and an ache seized her. His beard shadowed his features, making his cheeks more hollow than they actually were. The dark growth gave him a powerful look, and she trembled. Brie longed to walk over, kneel down and gently trace each of those lines that life had etched in his face. She suddenly wanted to talk at length with him and ask about each one, and how it had gotten there. She wanted to know him better.
With a shake of her head, Brie wondered if moon madness was upon her. Never had any man shaken her to the core as Linc did whenever he looked at her with those thoughtful blue eyes of his. Each time, Brie felt as if he was gazing past all the walls she had erected and was clearly seeing her. But there was something else in those eyes that held secrets, and it bothered her. Tucking all those warm and disturbing thoughts away about Linc, Brie forced herself to switch to work mode. Much had to be done today—and that wasn’t including possible haz-mat calls. First, coffee. And then she’d get Linc up.
* * *
The aromatic smell of coffee pulled Linc from his sound sleep. He grimaced, his back in a knot because of the lumpy cushions he slept upon. He barely opened his eyes. At first, he didn’t believe what he saw. Then he forced himself to concentrate. Brie was standing in front of him, a welcoming smile on her lips, holding out a cup of coffee to him. He stared through his spiky lashes at her soft, pliant mouth, and a stab of yearning surged through him. He wanted to kiss her, to feel just how lush her red, inviting lips really were. His brain fogged and he blinked again.
“There’s no secret to how a woman gets you to wake up,” she said, placing the mug of coffee on the lamp table near his head. “It’s six-forty, Linc. Time to get up.”
Linc watched her turn with that feline grace that fed his hunger for her. She looked so damned good in that dark blue one-piece uniform. How did any man she worked with keep his hands or his eyes to himself? The scent of the coffee delighted his nostrils, and he inhaled deeply. Brie sure knew how to cater to him. For no particular reason, a lopsided smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he levered himself into a sitting position. He pushed unruly strands of hair off his brow and gratefully took the mug in his hands, cradling it reverently. He owed Brie one for her thoughtfulness.
After an eye-opening cold shower and shave, Linc felt semihuman. For the first time, he wore the dark blue one-piece haz-mat uniform. Last night, he had sewn on the required patches with needle and thread he found near the sewing machine. Of course, the red thread didn’t match, but he didn’t care. The silver name tag went over his right breast pocket and the silver badge over the left one. Linc felt strange when he stared at himself in the mirror. In reality, he was a government agent and had his real badge stashed away in his apartment in D.C. It was odd to be undercover and assuming a law-enforcement identity. It didn’t dissolve the fact that Brie believed in what he was, and the misrepresentation ate at him. Maybe on another case, where there was clear demarcation between himself and those committing an obvious crime, it wouldn’t bother him at all. Today it did, in a very deep and disturbing way. Brie could be a killer. He had to erect those guards to protect his life and continue to play the game with her. But where did the game begin and end? The lines were blurred, and Linc felt uneasy.
He ambled to the kitchen, cup in hand. Brie was sitting at the table, chin resting in the palm of one hand, studying a clipboard before her. Soft waves of hair caressed her brow and framed her cheeks. He thought she looked beautiful, but he kept his heated, simmering comments to himself.
“Good morning,” he said, heading to the coffeepot on the counter.
Brie met his greeting with a crooked smile. “I keep wondering what you’ll be like when you have to take a call in the middle of the night.”
He snorted as he poured himself another cup. He turned, saw that her cup was empty and poured her another one. Settling himself at the table near her elbow, he drank in Brie’s radiant face. “You’d better have that quart thermos filled to the hilt with coffee before we leave or we’ll both be in big trouble,” he joked. Linc couldn’t hold back the compliments that he wanted to give her. It seemed the more personal he became, the more she dropped the walls she hid behind.
“I never realized a woman could look so good without makeup,” he told her in a husky voice.
Brie stared in shock for just a second, caught off guard. “Why, thank you.”
His smile tore at her senses. “You’re welcome. This coffee sure hits the spot. You make a good cup, lady.”
She colored prettily and pretended to concentrate on the task before her. “Strictly self-preservation, believe me. I can’t seem to get started without it, either.”
He rubbed his jaw, content to share the quiet of the morning with her. “I wonder if it has anything to do with the stress of our jobs? High stress means a lot of adrenaline flowing. Coffee’s a natural upper when you’re running low on adrenaline.”
“Makes sense. Trauma junkies always have their fix of coffee or cigarettes,” Brie observed.
He gave her a wry look, thinking how much a good night’s sleep had erased the shadows beneath those lovely green eyes of hers that glimmered with flecks of gold. “Healthwise, coffee is the lesser of two evils.”
“Amen,” Brie agreed fervently.
“You sleep okay last night?” he asked after a few moments.
She nodded, her heart picking up. “Yes. Thank you for tucking me in last night. I was dead to the world.”
“It was a pleasure, believe me,” Linc said, meaning it. He saw her cheeks turn pinker, and smiled more broadly.
“Stop enjoying my discomfort so much, Tanner. Few people get to see me sacked out on a chair.”
“I thought you looked kind of nice sleeping in it.” He slid her a wicked glance. “I had considered waking you up like Sleeping Beauty.”
Brie pursed her full lips and barely held his gaze. How many times had she wondered what it would be like to feel his strong mouth against hers? Brie tried to ignore the yearning in her body. The man carried secrets. Until he showed all of himself to her, Brie had to try to combat her attraction to him. “The day I’m Sleeping Beauty is the day Miss Piggy will win the Miss America contest,” she told him archly.
Linc started to laugh but stopped when he realized she was serious. “Well,” he drawled, “guess I’ll have to prove to you that in my eyes, you’re a Sleeping Beauty and not bacon on the hoof.”
Brie rose, unable to stand his closeness. She went to the counter, hoping to hide her nervousness. “Jeff should be here any minute now.”
“You start at seven every morning?”
She automatically went through the motions of making beef sandwiches for three people. She had to do something, anything, to quell her nerves. “Take a look at the clipboard. It’s a list of companies we’ve got to check. At the bottom are the classes Jeff and I will be giving to the various fire departments in our quadrant this week.”
He dragged the clipboard over to him. The number of companies listed was staggering. “I was wondering what you did with your spare time,” he groused.
She put a sandwich into a plastic bag and set it to one side. The world beyond the curtained window was stained with a lovely apricot dawn. “If we don’t get any haz-mat calls, we can make all of them this week.”
“But you always get calls.”
“Sometimes we get a quiet week.”
“My luck won’t hold.”
She smiled absently, placing a bag of potato chips and a jar of sweet gherkins into a hug
e grocery sack along with the sandwiches. “I’m not Irish, either, so you can count on at least one haz-mat incident.”
Linc perused the list with more than a little interest. Brie was efficient and organized. Each company had been checked at three-month intervals. He twisted his head to the left, watching her work. A blanket of contentment washed over him. What would it be like to wake up every morning with Brie? The idea was tantalizing. “On an average, how many haz-mat calls do you get a week?”
“Three.”
Linc groaned.
“Now, that may include something as simple as checking out old chemicals in a high-school biology department to a full-scale incident. Saturday was considered a full-blown incident.” She shrugged her shoulders and added three bright red apples to the sack.
“What are you doing? Preparing to feed an army?”
“No. Just two men who have the appetite of growing boys, is all,” she answered blandly, setting the bag on the table. She went over to the coffeepot and filled her battered aluminum thermos.
“You make lunch every day?”
“Yes. Most of the time we’re nowhere near a McDonald’s or Wendy’s. And if we get a call, no one feeds you during the hours you’re working. You can’t just shimmy out of your gas suit and drive down to the nearest fast-food joint and order a hamburger, then get back to the site.”
Linc’s eyes glimmered. “Pity. No wonder you’re so skinny. You starve to death out there in the field. Jeff’s built like a toothpick, too.”
She laughed. “Don’t worry, Linc, I’ll make sure you’re well fed.”
“How did you know the way to my heart was through my stomach?”
“Oh, please,” she said in an exasperated tone. “You’re as obvious as a charging bull elephant, Linc.”
He was rather pleased with the analogy. He watched her make another pot of coffee. “Thanks,” he murmured.
Brie cocked one eyebrow. “I wouldn’t be taking it as a compliment if I were you.”
There was a knock at the back door and they both turned. Jeff waved and came in, dressed in his uniform. Before he was able to get out his greeting, the phone on the wall rang. Linc saw Brie’s face close as she walked over to answer it. Jeff raised his hand in greeting and zeroed in on the grocery bag.
“Bad news,” Jeff warned Linc in a conspiratorial tone, motioning toward Brie.
“Why?”
“The chief knows we meet over here at Brie’s at seven sharp every morning. If something serious is up, he calls us here.” Jeff grimaced. “It’s gonna be a bad week if we’re gettin’ called by the chief this early.”
Linc turned his attention to Brie, who was leaning against the wall, her features sober as she talked in a low voice. What was up? he wondered. Finally, she hung up the phone, her lips thinned.
“Jeff, that was the chief. You’re to drive down to Reynoldsberg right now.”
“What?” he crowed in disbelief.
Brie came to the table, pulling out three beef sandwiches and an apple. “Yeah,” she answered in a clipped tone, anger in her voice. “Jim McPeak’s partner, Bob Townley, just got slapped into the hospital with injuries from that train derailment near Englewood.” She met Jeff’s widening eyes. “You’re heading south, Laughlin, so close your mouth and take this for your lunch. Where you’re going, you’re going to need it.”
“But I haven’t finished my training,” he protested.
Brie tried to control her anger. The chief had already boxed her into a corner by forcing Tanner on her. Now he was taking her right hand away from her. “It doesn’t matter, Jeff,” she said patiently. “Come on, I’ll walk you to your truck. There isn’t time to waste right now. McPeak needs you.” I need you, she thought angrily. Tanner knew nothing of procedures except as a fire fighter, which didn’t mean much. Brie wanted to slam her fist into something just to relieve the frustration she felt. Saxon was taking advantage of her, and they both knew it. Why couldn’t he have taken one of the other qualified people in Quadrant Two or Three?
Linc watched Brie leave, feeling her fury. He got up, picked up the grocery sack and headed out the door to the white whale. Minutes later, she appeared with Homely Homer in her cage, a jar of baby food and the thermos in the other hand.
Wisely, Linc said nothing as he opened the back door of the truck for Brie. She gently set the cage in a corner, holding it in place with a black rubber strap. She stepped out and he shut the doors and locked them. Until the pigeon was able to fly and hunt for its own food, Brie took the bird with her every day.
“Get in, I’ll drive,” he told her.
Brie glowered at him as if deciding whether to rip his head off or simply chew him out with a choice expletive.
“Come on,” he coaxed. “The mood you’re in, you’ll get us killed.” He saw Brie’s eyes lighten and she lifted her chin, taking a deep breath.
“You’re probably right,” she muttered. “Okay, you drive.”
Once on the road and heading toward their first stop, a chemical company outside Canton, Linc broke the brittle, icy silence. “For whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry this happened, Brie. I know I’m not much use to you— yet. If I hit the manuals hard this week, maybe I’ll be able to relieve you from some of that load you’re having to carry all by yourself.”
Brie’s features softened, and she glanced at him. “Don’t mind me, Linc. Every once in a while I need to sulk like a child and get it out of my system. Coffee?”
He grinned, giving her a tender look laced with care. “I think we both could use a shot.”
She gave an unladylike snort, unscrewing the cap of the thermos with angry jerks. “A shot of something. Damn, I’m so mad I could spit nails!”
“Let’s talk about it, then. No sense in bottling it up inside you.” Maybe he’d get a bit more information.
Brie handed him his cup then poured coffee into it. “You don’t deserve this kind of welcome into your new career slot!” She slid the thermos between their chairs, put both feet on the dash, scrunched down and glared straight ahead. “I’ll tell you, sometimes, this job is the armpit of the universe. I hate getting screwed around like this by management. They should have taken a more seasoned veteran from one of those other quadrants to help McPeak.”
“You don’t think Jeff can handle it?”
“Yes, he can handle it. He may come off carefree, but Jeff is thorough and careful. Those two things will save your neck every time out.”
“Who’s Bob Townley?” Linc wanted to know.
“Him!” Brie growled. “Bob’s long on guts and short on common sense. Sometimes I could just throttle him. I’ll lay you odds he got too close to one of those tank cars and breathed in that stuff. He’s in the hospital with lung congestion because of it.”
“How serious?”
She gave a bitter laugh. “Don’t worry. Bob hasn’t bought it yet, and he’s been in haz-mat for almost twenty years. He takes a hell of a lot of chances, but has always walked away.” Her lips compressed. “This time he didn’t.”
Linc divided his attention between the swelling morning rush hour of Canton traffic and Brie. “You might take Saxon’s choice as a backhanded compliment to you,” Linc offered, hoping to make her feel better.
Brie slid him a glare. “This better be good, Tanner. How?”
“You must be an ace at training people, or he’d never have taken Jeff over seasoned vets. That’s a compliment to you.”
He was right, Brie decided. “Just pretend you don’t know me for the next hour or two, okay, Tanner? When I get in one of these moods, I’m a brat to everyone around me. So just ignore me.”
He reached over, gently massaging her tense shoulder for a moment. “Lady, you’re hard to ignore under any circumstances.” Then he smiled. “Besides, I think you look provocative as hell when you pout.”
She gave him an exasperated look. “Tanner, you really are a pervert!”
His laughter rolled through the van. Brie tried to hide her smi
le, but it didn’t quite work. She’d never admit it, but Linc knew how to ease her anger. “You always this good at dealing with people?” she demanded tightly.
“Just people I like,” he amended, trying very hard to remain innocent-looking.
Brie shook her head and drank her coffee. “Well, for better or worse, Tanner, you and I are stuck with one another.”
“Don’t make it sound as if we’re married. I think I’m getting cold feet already.”
She met his amused blue gaze, drowning in the warmth that he was lavishing upon her. And she hadn’t forgotten when he reached out and slid his hand across her shoulder in an effort to soothe her. Hope sprang strongly in her heart as she looked at him. There was a vein of pure gold running through him, she realized. She lifted her cup toward him in toast. “I owe you one, Linc.”
He nodded, his mouth quirking in a grin. “Okay, I’ll remember that and collect soon.”
A startling coil of heat sizzled through Brie at the inference in Linc’s softly spoken words. She gave him a wry look but said nothing. “Well, the day’s off to a fine start,” she griped. “Let’s just see how far downhill this baby is going to slide.”
At nine o’clock Brie entered the office of Carter Fuel and Oil of Lisbon, Ohio, and was met by the owner, Frank Carter. Tall and lean, at thirty-five, he was a proud, handsome man. He scowled darkly from where he sat at his desk behind the counter.
“What the hell’s up?” Carter demanded, standing. “You were here just three months ago.”
Brie gave Carter a brisk smile meant to defuse his initial reaction. Many companies panicked when a hazmat official walked in to inspect their premises. “Our quarterly inspection, Mr. Carter.”
Frank moved to the counter that separated them. He looked at Tanner, and then focused his attention on Brie. “Look, this is ridiculous, Miss Williams.”
Come Gentle the Dawn Page 10
