Meaning her. Elizabeth raised her chin defensively. “I’m hardly a sheep.”
Damn it, didn’t she understand? She was out of her element here. “You are to MacFarland. The way he was looking at you—”
She cocked her head, looking at Cole. Waiting. “Yes?”
Huffing, he moved around Elizabeth. Right now he needed distance between them. Just having her in front of him was clouding his thoughts, heating his blood. The thought of MacFarland even so much as touching her enraged him.
“He was already dissecting you and having you for lunch.”
Yes, no doubt about it, Elizabeth thought, Cole was beginning to sound just like Anthony. All right, so she didn’t look like a woman who made her living wrestling alligators, but that didn’t mean she could be snapped in two like a twig, either. She’d taken care of herself in more than one situation.
“I’m not that digestible,” she assured him, “and I’m not that easily devoured.” Because she found herself talking to his back, she moved around to face him. “Trust me, you underestimate me.”
He didn’t like the images he was getting. MacFarland was going to want to have her the second she walked across his threshold. “You’re going to be alone with him in that big house.”
She struggled to keep her grin from her lips. Williams was jealous. Wow, who would have thought it? “He has servants.”
“Who are paid to look the other way,” he pointed out heatedly.
She placed her hand on his arm, her voice soothing. “Look, this is all part of the plan. We need to be sure that we’re right about this. I go and plant a few tiny cameras around his lovely barn of a mansion. They hook up into his main surveillance cameras and maybe, if we’re lucky, we can see or hear a few things before the big party next Saturday so we can get our hands on the statue before he figuratively gets his hands on you.”
That was something else that wasn’t working for him. “MacFarland isn’t just going to let you play pin the camera wherever you want to.”
“No,” she agreed lightly. “But a lady has to powder her nose sometime. Maybe even a few times if she’s been drinking.” She second-guessed the look in his eyes. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to subtly pour the drinks out. I don’t plan to get the slightest bit tipsy around MacFarland.”
All right, so maybe she could hold her own against the man. But Cole had another concern to address. “They’ll see you planting the cameras.”
He’d shown her the cameras she was going to be using earlier. “They’re hardly larger than microchips.”
She was missing the point, he thought, annoyance vying for control of him. “You still have to place them where they won’t be seen, which means getting on your knees, or doing something out of the ordinary that’s bound to make red flags go up.”
They’d already decided that they needed to plant several cameras in strategic places in order to hack into the main surveillance system at the mansion. Once that was accomplished, if the Rodin statue was on the premises somewhere, they would be able to locate it and set plans in motion to remove it back to the gallery.
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful you are,” Cole told her. “If MacFarland finds out that you’re trying to get back the statue so that I can hand it over to him, you’re a dead woman.”
The smile on her lips annoyed him even further. “Figuratively speaking?” she asked playfully.
“Maybe not.” This wasn’t a game, damn it, but she was treating it as one. “Forget it, it’s a bad plan.”
“It’s a very good plan.” The look on his face told her that he was calling it off. And it was his show. But suddenly she wasn’t willing to let him do that. Not if it was because he was worried about her. Why did all the men in her life think she was so incompetent? “What about your reputation?”
He took hold of her shoulders. The thought of shaking some sense into her head crossed his mind. “I’m not about to keep my reputation at the risk of having someone hurt. It’s too high a price.”
Her mouth would have fallen open if she hadn’t exercised extreme control over her muscles. Williams was being sincere. He was willing to risk having his reputation challenged because he didn’t want to take a chance on getting her hurt or worse.
Elizabeth looked at him for a long moment, debating her next step. Very few people knew what she was actually capable of. Mentally, she ticked them off. There was Dani and Anthony, of course, and Jeremy. That was all. A very small circle of confidants. She’d always been careful not to let anyone else see what she could do.
Maybe it was time to widen the circle by one.
She needed one more piece of information before she made up her mind. Watching his face carefully, confident she could catch him in a lie if it came to that, she asked, “Are you easily freaked out?”
He narrowed his brow. “No. Why?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she made a request. “Get out one of those cameras.”
He had no idea where this was going, but he took one of the cameras out of the center desk drawer and placed it on top of the desk. “Okay, now what?”
Instead of picking it up, she left it there. “Where do you want it?”
“What?” He didn’t particularly want the camera anywhere. It was to be planted in MacFarland’s mansion, not here.
“Pick a place,” she told him evenly. “Where do you want me to put the camera?”
Cole had no idea what she was trying to accomplish. All he knew was that he felt annoyed and frustrated. There were feelings bouncing around inside him, colliding, crashing, leaving him bewildered and shell-shocked, and he didn’t like it one damn bit. He waved a hand dismissively around the area. “I don’t know.” Because she continued looking at him expectantly, he finally said, “Put it on top of the computer.”
“All right.”
Elizabeth took in a deep cleansing breath, then let it out. She made no move, held her body rigid, her eyes sealed to the camera. She really didn’t need to look at it. Strict concentration on the small chip was the actual key to moving it, but it helped her focus if she stared and she wanted this over with as quickly as possible. Speed, she knew, was going to be of the essence once she was inside MacFarland’s house.
“I don’t understand—” Cole began.
Without looking in his direction she held her hand up, silencing him.
The protest forming on his lips faded.
The chip had begun to move. On its own.
It moved slowly, as if guided by invisible fingers. Leaving the table, it rose into the air until it finally settled on top of the computer.
“Now I really don’t understand,” Cole whispered softly, as if afraid to disturb some unseen force within the room.
The only force in the room was standing next to him.
Hardly breathing, he drew his eyes away from the chip and looked at Elizabeth. Who the hell was she? “How did you do that?”
“I don’t know,” she replied quite honestly. “I just did.”
Cole shook himself free of the eerie feeling that had zipped along his spine. “C’mon, there has to be some kind of trick behind it.”
She looked at him with the most serious eyes he’d ever seen. “No, no trick. I’ve always been able to move objects.”
She was playing him for a fool, he thought. What annoyed him most was that he couldn’t figure out how. “Yeah, most people can, but they usually use hands. Or wires, or—”
Elizabeth slowly moved her head from side to side, negating anything he might suggest. “No ‘or,”’ she replied quietly.
Cole caught himself leaning against the desk, trying to steady himself. This wasn’t something that he could easily accept. And yet, she’d done it. “And you’ve always had this ability?”
She nodded. “For as long as I can remember. I found out about it when I was very, very young.” She saw that he was waiting for details. Well, she’d started this, she thought, she might as well give him a little more. “I was in my crib
and there was a bottle of juice on the table. My mother was busy tending to one of the others—”
He couldn’t believe he was listening to this, and yet he couldn’t bring himself just to dismiss it out of hand, either. “Others?”
“I’m a triplet.”
Up until this moment, he’d thought of her as being one of a kind, unique. Maybe it was because he no longer had a family of his own that he’d attributed the same set of circumstances to her. But obviously he’d been wrong. “There’s more like you?”
She grinned. Did he realize there was a small note of, if not horror, then shock in his voice? “In a manner of speaking. They can do other things.”
He liked to think that he had an open mind, but this was getting harder and harder to absorb. “Go on,” he urged when she’d stopped.
“I was thirsty, she was busy. I remember staring at the bottle, and the next thing I knew, it was in my hands. I was eighteen months old.”
That in itself sounded impossible. His earliest memory was when he was four and on the beach, playing with his sister.
“Maybe your mother handed it to you.”
Elizabeth shook her head. She knew what she knew. “I remember the surprised look on my mother’s face.” A small smile curved her lips. “A little like the one on yours right now.”
He would have accused her of lying, but he’d seen it for himself and there was no way she could have rigged it. “What else?”
Her eyes narrowed in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“What else can you do?” He enunciated the question very carefully, not at all certain he knew what to feel about the woman standing before him. “You don’t move through walls or anything like that, do you?”
She laughed as she shook her head. “You’re confusing me with the X-Men. No, I don’t move through walls. I also don’t grow hair and howl at the moon when it’s full. There is a basis for telekinesis, you know.”
He knew a little something about telekinesis. “Most of it’s been proven to be fraud. Parlor tricks.”
“This is no parlor trick.” His reluctance to believe her irritated her. “It’s how I got into the gallery that first night. I made the padlock open.”
It sounded incredible, and yet it made more sense than anything else. “That’s why the alarm didn’t go off. The lock was wired so that the lightest touch, the slightest pressure against it would have caused it to go off.”
She held up her hands to underscore her point. “No touch, no pressure. Just mind over matter.” She looked at him for a long moment. Finally, she ventured to ask the question that had been echoing in her mind, the one that had made her keep her secret to herself even when she’d been tempted to share it. “Horrified?”
“No, not horrified. Stunned, maybe,” he admitted. He realized there was probably nothing she could do that would actually horrify him. “This is something I’m going to have to work at wrapping my mind around.” As he said that, he took a step back.
He was backing away from her. No matter what he said to the contrary, he was horrified. Telling him had been a mistake. She’d done it to assuage his concerns and now there wasn’t anything she could do to retract what she’d told him.
She gave a half shrug. “I just wanted you not to worry about me.”
The fact that she could bend spoons or move microchips didn’t alleviate his concerns. “This is still a dangerous game you’re about to get into.” He made up his mind. “You’re not going in alone.”
“I have to.” He couldn’t come in with her; that would ruin everything. “Otherwise, MacFarland’ll suspect something. He’ll be on his guard.”
There wasn’t anything she could say that would get him to change his mind. “I’m going to be nearby. I want you to carry an open cell phone on you so that if something goes wrong—”
In a way, this was rather sweet, she decided. Anthony had always ordered her around, told her what to do. Cole was being thoughtful. “You’ll come riding in like the cavalry.”
“Something like that.”
She smiled and her eyes crinkled just a bit. “I think I might like that.”
When she smiled like that, it hit him dead center and made him forget all about being cautious. “Does it work on people?”
He was jumping around again. “Does what work on people?”
“Your talent, your gift, your—” At a loss, he waved his hand. “Whatever you call it.”
She grinned. “I call it Max,” she teased. Actually, beyond telekinesis, she’d never really referred to it as anything in particular. Just her way. “And I’ve never tried to move anything that was alive.”
“Probably wouldn’t have to,” he speculated. He could feel her pull even as he stood there. “You can make them come to you without having to exercise mind control over them.”
She didn’t want him getting the wrong idea. “It’s not mind control.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Lightly, he combed his fingers through her hair. He could feel himself becoming aroused. “You keep attracting me—”
She could feel the air standing still in her lungs again. He kept having that effect on her. “Ever think that just might be one of those things that happen between men and women?”
“Crossed my mind.” Cole ran the back of his knuckle slowly along her cheek. The brush of her skin against his made him catch his breath. “But I’m not usually attracted to a business associate.”
She smiled up at him. “First time for everything.”
“Yes, you might have something there,” Cole told her with a smile just before he slipped his hand into her hair again.
Tilting her head back, he brought his lips down to hers.
Movements began within him, within her, that had absolutely nothing to do with telekinesis and everything to do with the feelings between a man and a woman who found themselves utterly and hopelessly attracted to each other.
Chapter 9
He was draining her. Draining all the energy out of her body and replacing it with a need so huge, so boundless, it threatened to burst out of her and take over the entire room.
Elizabeth dug her fingertips into his shoulders, channeling the tension she felt. She tried desperately to regain some semblance of control before she just gave herself up to Cole completely without so much as an effort to hold on.
Because she wanted to.
Wanted to finally feel that dizzying rapture she’d heard called lovemaking. Beneath the carefully orchestrated, sophisticated facade she wore, she believed in every silly little love song, every romantic movie, every passage she’d ever read within a book that talked about the magic that went along with wanting someone.
Because she knew magic was real.
She felt it in her veins. How else to describe the things that she could do?
Mysterious things that defied explanation were possible. Magic was possible. And she wanted to feel the magic.
If only she could feel it and still somehow be in control. Because control, so newly found, meant everything to her. She wanted the power of her own independence, wanted to be the mistress of her own destiny, and this man, this feeling, this rush threatened to sweep it all away from her.
“I want you,” Cole murmured against her lips as she began to draw away.
She let her eyes close as she absorbed the sensuousness of his words. If her heart beat any harder, it was going to take off on its own, break the sound barrier as it went.
Elizabeth opened her eyes and looked at him. His face was less than an inch away from hers. It took her a moment to gather herself together, to try to form words when all she wanted to do was cry, “Yes!”
“I know,” she finally said, just barely succeeding in keeping the sigh from escaping.
They were standing so close, Cole could taste the words sliding along his lips. He’d left himself open, vulnerable, and that wasn’t good. He’d never done that before.
And wasn’t about to ever do it again.
; It didn’t change the fact that what he’d told her was true. He wanted her. Wanted her in the best, in the worst way.
“But?” he prodded, hearing the word silently follow the others.
She gave him the best excuse she could manage at the moment. “But I have to concentrate.”
Cole tried to discern if she was being serious, or if this was her way of flirting. “You don’t have to levitate me.”
“No, I mean about tomorrow. I think I should get some rest.” Before I forget all about being level-headed and just jump your bones.
That was what she was afraid of, that she was a victim of freshly unleashed hormones. There was no more Anthony to grab her by the arm and drag her away every time her interest was piqued.
And she had to remember there were consequences for every action.
Something warned her that the consequences here were far from minor. For one thing, her heart was in danger of being forever lost. Lost to a man who probably thought nothing of sleeping with a different woman every week. Carefree or not, that wasn’t what she wanted. That was too few strings to satisfy her.
Cole leaned ever closer, till only a breath separated them. “Can you rest now?” he said on a whisper.
The safe, expedient thing would have been to say “yes,” but it had too flippant a ring. It would have also been a lie.
Elizabeth looked at him for a long moment and finally admitted, “I don’t know. It won’t be easy.”
No, it certainly wasn’t going to be that. Urges continued to nip insistently at him. Urges he struggled to resist. Elizabeth was right and he knew it. Right because she needed her rest if she was going to be any good to him tomorrow. And if what was on the brink of happening between them happened, there’d be no rest for either of them until way into dawn.
And she was also right because if he made love with her now, while he felt this way, who knew where it would lead? Emotions could escalate, explode, and he couldn’t risk that happening.
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