by Rebecca York
I know. You were so upset.
She tried to pull away from the aftermath, when she’d closed herself in her room, weeping with impotent indignation, but she couldn’t shut off the memory until the scene had run its course.
She was open and vulnerable in a way she had never been before.
And while she was so unguarded, she wanted him to know something.
I didn’t have anything to do with Evelyn’s death.
I know. I think I was using that as an excuse to put distance between us.
Thank you for admitting that.
She had never been so certain of another person’s truthfulness, and she knew it was the same for him, too.
The physical contact, the arousal opened the gate between his mind and hers in a way she had never imagined. Not with anyone.
She had been afraid. The fear receded because she knew that he wanted her to trust him. More than he wanted to make love with her. That knowledge made her heart squeeze. He was a tough guy on the outside. But inside…she knew him better than anyone else in the world, because it was impossible to hide the tender core of his soul that he was afraid to reveal.
She wanted him to know how much that meant to her, but she didn’t have to tell him. The knowledge was there for his taking. His alone.
When he wrapped his arms around her and leaned back on the sofa, she came with him, sprawling on top of him the way she had in his office. Last time she’d been fighting what she felt. Now she was free to admit she loved the way the length of her body fit against his, starting with the way her breasts molded against his broad chest and moving downward to the erection wedged against her middle.
She let herself feel it and at the same time reached out to know what it was like. For him.
She felt the pleasure radiating from that part of his body as it filled with blood and became hard, the pressure building toward an explosion.
“That’s how it is for a man,” she murmured, knowing he was doing the same thing, tapping into the sensations of her woman’s body. Secret sensations that she didn’t know how to describe.
Tingly, he supplied. Needy. Ripe.
Ripe! That’s a guy word.
She smiled as she said it, with her lips and inside her mind.
He stroked one hand down her body, pressing her closer as he cupped his other hand around the back of her head and brought her mouth to his, lightly at first and then with more urgency.
Urgency they shared.
Never before. Never like this.
I know.
She made a small sound as he deepened the contact, and she drank in the masculine taste of him.
Her mind and body were flooded with sensuality. And something else. Pressure that bordered on pain in her head.
“It’s not all good,” she whispered.
“It will be.”
A man’s response. He shifted them to their sides, then cupped his hand around her breast, rubbing his thumb back and forth across the hardened nipple.
Not like this. I want to make love with you for the first time in a bed.
Where?
At the back of the loft.
Her head was pounding, the pain competing with her arousal.
She wanted to tell him to slow down. Or was that what she really wanted?
He climbed to his feet and helped her up. It was dark in the room now, and she felt disoriented.
Of course, he knew that.
“I’ll turn on the light.”
He crossed the room and flipped the switch.
“Hold it right there,” a rough voice said.
She whirled to confront the man who had been in her shop. The man Jake had knocked out. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been lying unconscious on the floor. Then he’d managed to get free and disappear, leaving a pool of blood behind.
Had he hidden outside and followed them here? However he’d found them, he stood in the doorway, a gun in his hand.
It was hard to think over the pounding in her head. The pain was worse than it had been moments ago.
“Now I’ve got you both, and you’re going to be very sorry you messed with me,” he said.
Cold fear was like a glacier in the pit of Rachel’s stomach. This man had already tried to handcuff her. Then Jake had come in and hit him over the head. Now he was back and roaring mad.
The guy kept his distance, looking from Rachel to Jake and back again. He picked up the gun Jake had left on the table and put it in his own waistband, but somehow he’d acquired a second weapon.
She stood where she was, desperately trying to contact Jake the way they’d done before. Maybe together they could do something. A few minutes ago they’d been inside each other’s minds, but they’d been touching intimately and she was sure that had made the difference.
They were separated by nine feet of space, and there was no way she could achieve the kind of contact that they’d had on the sofa.
She saw the strained expression on his face and knew he was trying to reach out to her. But it seemed he couldn’t do it, either. His thoughts just weren’t available to her. Maybe the headache had wiped the ability away.
“We’re not taking any chances,” the man with the gun said. “First you’re going to tie up your lover boy. Then I’ll cuff you, and he can watch the questioning.”
“Stay the hell away from her!” Jake growled.
“I don’t think you can do much about it, smart guy.”
He looked around the room and spotted a table and two wooden chairs.
“Pull out one of the chairs,” he said to Jake. “And sit down so your girlfriend can tie you up. Move slowly, and don’t try anything tricky.”
As a sliver of hope bloomed inside Rachel, she struggled to keep her face a mask of fear. If she and Jake were going to do anything…mental to get away, they’d have to be touching, and their captor had just given them the opportunity to do that.
Jake was still glaring at the guy, but Rachel had come to know him very well, and she sensed the defiance in his eyes.
The guy had a coil of rope under his jacket. He tossed it toward Rachel. When it landed on the floor, she stood staring at it as if she was afraid of what was coming next.
She was afraid, but not for the reason he assumed.
“Pick it up!”
She bent and picked up the rope, then walked stiff-legged toward Jake.
“Tie his hands behind him. And no playing around this time. Or I will shoot.”
She made a sound of protest, then walked in back of Jake, who slung his hands behind him.
Kneeling, she grabbed his wrist. For a moment nothing happened, and she worried she was too frightened to activate the link between them.
Then she heard his voice in her head.
Rachel!
Thank God. What are we going to do?
Work together.
“Don’t just kneel there. Tie him up,” the guy ordered in a grating voice.
She wound some of the rope around Jake’s right wrist, striving to keep the connection with him when her heart was pounding so hard that she could barely think.
She caught a mental picture that she knew wasn’t her own thought. A picture of the man rushing across the room and smashing his head into the window. It was so vivid that she glanced up to make sure the guy was still holding the gun on them.
Help me.
I don’t know how.
Neither do I, but we have to get that picture into his mind. Unless you’ve got a better idea.
She didn’t.
Bending her head so her face didn’t show, she pretended to work on tying Jake.
Help me send him the picture.
How? I don’t know!
She caught the frustration in Jake’s inner voice.
Just see it the way I’m seeing it and blast it toward him. Like you’re throwing a baseball.
Was there a hope in heaven of that working? It had to! Because once they were restrained, the man with the gun could do wh
atever he wanted to them.
She had never tried to do anything like what Jake was asking. Not in her life. But she did her best to follow his lead. It was like feeling around in the dark looking for a needle she’d dropped on the floor, and she had no idea where it was.
When she made a frustrated sound, he answered, It’s our only chance.
The mental warning galvanized her. They had to get away from this guy, or he was going to do something horrible—to both of them. As he’d done to Evelyn.
She thrust that terrible thought from her mind. All that mattered was getting away, and Jake had given them a way to do it, if they could pull it off.
With every shred of will she possessed, she focused on the picture Jake had given her—of the man rushing across the room and slamming his head into the window. At the same time, as she drilled the picture into her brain cells, she tried to aim it toward their captor.
When she dared to glance up, she saw that his face had turned pale. At least he must be getting the image. But was he going to act on it?
Everything you’ve got, Jake whispered in her mind, and she felt the resolve pouring out of him. She could see drops of moisture on the back of his neck as he strained to do the impossible.
No, not impossible, because they were doing it.
“Quit stalling,” the guy said, but his voice had taken on a strangled quality.
Because she knew he couldn’t see what she was doing, she stopped working with the rope so that her total attention was on the mental mission.
The gunman looked toward the window, then back at Jake.
“What…are you doing?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“You’re putting thoughts in my head.”
“How could I do that?”
“I don’t know.” He raised the gun. “Stop it. Stop it right now or you’re going to be missing a kneecap.”
Fear leaped inside Rachel, and she lost her focus.
The guy’s expression changed. Suddenly he looked more confident. Addressing her, he said, “Finish what you’re doing.”
“I will,” she whispered through gritted teeth as her resolve strengthened. Jake was right. They could do this—because they had to.
Grimly, she poured her will into the picture that Jake had conjured up.
The guy looked from them to the window again. Then he steadied the gun on Jake.
“It’s you. You’re doing this.”
In that terrible moment, Rachel knew he was going to pull the trigger.
Chapter Six
Desperate to get Jake out of the line of fire, Rachel pushed the chair over.
He had caught her intention and rolled away as he hit the floor. She went down, too, sprawling on the rug.
But the gun followed Jake.
Rachel struggled with every shred of resolve to make the man aim away.
The window image. The window, Jake shouted in her head.
She was torn, but she did what he asked.
In the next second, the man swung the gun toward the window and fired. She goggled at the unexpected response, but he was already running toward the shattered glass. He crashed against it, screaming as shards tore into his flesh.
Jake scrambled up, charging after the guy, but he was already through the window. They were on the third story, but he fell only half a story—to the roof at the back of the next building.
Rachel saw him hit the roof, then right himself. The gun was still in his hand. Cursing as he turned back toward them, he started to fire, but Jake had already pulled her away and pushed her to the floor.
A stream of bullets whizzed over their heads.
“Stay low.”
They crawled across the floor, toward the opposite side of the room.
“Grab your bag.”
Her bag. She’d forgotten that she’d packed some clothing only an hour before. That seemed like a thousand years ago. Getting out of here alive was the important point, but she grabbed the bag as she passed.
The shooting had stopped.
“He could have gone around front,” Jake whispered as they reached the ground floor.
In the distance she could hear the wail of a siren. Apparently someone had called the police in response to the gunfire.
“But I’m guessing he won’t wait around for the cops,” Jake added.
Still, he peered cautiously around the door frame before stepping out.
“Come on.”
“Where?”
“Away from here.”
He led her down the street at a trot. They’d just turned a corner when patrol cars with flashing lights pulled up in front of his building. Uniformed officers leaped out and charged the door.
“Police. Open up.”
When no one answered, they rammed the door open.
Rachel winced. “What about all those antiques?”
“I’ll get my assistant, Patrick, to secure the place later. Meanwhile, we’d better get out of the area,” Jake muttered, ushering her down an alley.
“We still don’t know who that guy is,” Rachel said as she trotted alongside him.
“We’ll find out. We can call him by his fake name, Eric Smithson, for now.”
“How did you think of the window thing?”
“I don’t know. It just came to me while I was staring down the muzzle of his gun. I figured that getting him focused on hurting himself was the only way we could escape.”
She glanced at Jake, then away.
“I didn’t know we could do anything like that. I didn’t know anybody could do it.”
“Neither did I. We almost couldn’t, even with the connection we’ve got.” He turned toward her. “We have to strengthen the bond between us. Make it more certain so that we can count on it when we need it.”
Rachel was still trying to process what had happened.
“Was he watching us?” she asked, hearing her voice go high and thin.
“You mean on the sofa?”
“Yes.”
“Probably. Does it matter?”
“I’m embarrassed.”
“He almost killed us and you’re embarrassed about being seen making out?”
“It was…private.”
They were several blocks away. Jake stopped walking and backed into the shadows, pulling her with him. She came willingly into his arms. The heat that had flared between them blazed up as he brought his mouth down on hers for a hot, frantic kiss that celebrated their escape and promised to take up where they’d left off.
She let her mind open to him. Let him see all the fear that she’d pushed aside.
You were very brave.
Did I have a choice?
Not if we wanted to escape. Speaking of which, I think we’d better get out of the city.
I think that’s right.
He kept her hand in his as he started walking again, the pleasant buzz of connection simmering between them. Not the headache, thank the Lord. She remembered a trace of it from their first touch. Now it only seemed to come when they were on the verge of real intimacy, when the mental images were coming fast and furious.
They turned into an alley with rows of garages. As she looked at them, she knew where he was going to stop.
“I guess we’re not stealing a car,” she said as the picture of a late-model Mercedes filled her mind. It was Jake’s.
“I have vehicles in several locations around the Quarter.” He gestured toward the garage door. “This one’s kind of a tight fit. Let me drive out before you get in.”
He pulled the car into the alley, then used the remote control to close the door behind him.
When she joined him in the front seat, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes, but she couldn’t stop a heated scene from flickering in her mind. He was thinking about pushing back his seat, pulling her into his lap, making love to her right there.
Guy thoughts.
“This mind-reading stuff is a little inconvenient,” he muttered.
She laughed. “I guess we’ll have to work on—” she raised her shoulder “—a shield.”
“How?”
“Do I know?”
He pulled out of the alley and headed across the river into Orleans Parish. Classic rock was playing on the radio. One of the Creedence Clearwater Revival tunes she liked. She was letting the music distract her, when the song stopped abruptly.
“We interrupt our regular programming with an announcement from the New Orleans police concerning a pair of fugitives—Jake Harper and Rachel Gregory. Harper is a New Orleans businessman. Gregory is a French Quarter tarot card reader.”
“Fugitives?” she gasped.
“Wanted for questioning concerning a murder at the Bourbon Arms Hotel yesterday. Earlier this evening they apparently participated in a shoot-out at a warehouse owned by Harper.”
Jake cursed under his breath.
Rachel struggled to drag air into her lungs. “They think we killed Evelyn Morgan? But we weren’t even there.”
“They didn’t exactly go that far. We’re wanted for questioning.”
“But why?”
“The guy could have left some evidence that makes the cops think we’re involved.”
Her voice rose in outrage as she continued, “Then he shoots up your warehouse, and that’s our fault, too?”
“I’d say he’s done this kind of thing before and he knows what strings to pull.”
“A real pro.” She clenched her fingers on the armrest. “So he’s still after us. And we can’t go to the police for help because he’s framed us.”
“I think we already agreed not to get the police involved.”
“That was before he attacked us a second time.”
Jake sighed. “We’ve got to figure out who he is and why he came after us. And who Evelyn Morgan is really.”
He slowed when he reached the outskirts of a small town and pulled into the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. “What are you doing?”
“Making a call.”
“Is it safe?”
“If I keep it short, I think so. I need to talk to my assistant.”
A man picked up on the first ring, and his voice was loud enough for Rachel to hear.
“Jake! The cops are after you. It’s on the news.”
“I know. I didn’t do it.” He laughed. “Well, they all say that, but in this case, it’s true.”
