He continued looking at Hagen, watching for any signs of a return to consciousness. Cole rubbed his knuckles with his other hand. “Nice to know my time in the gym wasn’t misspent.”
Despite the danger, Elizabeth had discovered that the physicality had excited her. She was beginning to suspect that watching Cole shelling peas would have excited her. “You keep this up, you can go into a whole new line of work. Cole Williams, mercenary.”
“Retired,” he added. As far as excitement went, he preferred his between the sheets—with her. Crossing over to where Hagen’s weapon had fallen, Cole used his handkerchief and picked up the gun. He examined it, just lightly touching the trigger. There appeared to be nothing wrong with it.
He looked over toward Elizabeth. “You do something to this, Gypsy?”
She was bending over Hagen, checking the pulse in his throat. The man was very much alive, just knocked out.
“I might have temporarily frozen the metal in place. Why?”
He laughed, shaking his head. The woman was at least part witch. Maybe more than just part. “You’re one of a kind, Gypsy.”
No, she thought, rising to her feet, she wasn’t. But now wasn’t the time to tell him what Dani had recently told her. That there were more people like them. More people who could do extraordinary things. No, that kind of a bombshell was for another time.
If there was going to be another time, she amended. But she and Cole had had enough excitement for the night.
She looked at the unconscious man on the floor. “What do you want to do with him?”
Cole’s personal code of trust had been violated. He wasn’t so naive as to think that just because he’d trusted someone, they were blameless, but this was going to take a bit of adjusting to.
Was he wrong to trust her, he wondered.
Was he ever going to be rid of that feeling of uncertainty?
“That’s for the police to decide,” Cole finally told her.
She thought of Hagen’s part in the switch. And of what he might know about her. After all, he was an investigator. Wouldn’t it stand to reason that he might investigate someone he didn’t care for in order to get them out of the way?
“What if he talks?” she asked.
Cole had already considered that. “What’s he going to say? That he was paid by MacFarland to steal the original before it reached my gallery? That he was coming to take the original back in order to ransom it back to MacFarland?” His eyes met hers. “After all, we’ve got the whole thing on tape.”
He’d surprised her. So, he’d caught on to that, too, had he? “You disabled the security system,” she pointed out innocently.
He’d begun to anticipate the way her mind worked. “And you turned the camera back on when he turned up at the gallery.” Taking his cell phone out, Cole was pressing 9-1-1 on his keypad. He nodded at the camera that had been placed over the doorway to his office. “I saw the red recording light go on.” Anticipating her or not, she still managed to astound him. “You know, you really are an extraordinary woman.”
Extra-ordinary, she thought. It could be taken so many ways. “You don’t know the half of it,” she laughed, using the same phrase she’d used earlier.
His response was still the same, except that this time he said it out loud. “No, but I intend to,” he promised before turning away from her.
The dispatch had come on the line.
Elizabeth felt as if she was riding on the highest cloud in the sky the entire trip back to his house. It had taken the better part of two hours to get everything moving in the proper direction. Hagen had been arrested for attempted robbery and attempted murder. She had no doubt that Cole’s former chief investigator would try to plea bargain his way out of a lengthy jail sentence by offering up MacFarland and his part in it.
From what she’d managed to glean in a short time, MacFarland’s dealings did not bear up to close scrutiny. It looked as if Cole was going to be short one hell of a thorn in his side.
“I guess he won’t be here with his appraiser tomorrow when the statue is crated up to send back,” Elizabeth commented as she allowed Cole to help her out of the car. Tension danced through her body. It was an entirely different kind of tension than the one she’d experienced earlier this evening. This one had Cole’s name written all over it.
Make love with me one more time, Cole.
“Too bad,” he mused. He unlocked the door and they walked in. “I was kind of looking forward to seeing the look on MacFarland’s face when the appraiser told him that the statue was real.”
Taking off her shawl, she dropped it over the banister. “Maybe if you know someone in the police department, you can be there when they come to arrest him for fraud and whatever else Hagen has to offer up about him. That expression should be priceless.”
Yes, he thought, it should be. Almost as priceless as her expression was when they made love. “MacFarland’s not clean.”
She grinned. “Not like you,” she agreed, running her fingers through his hair. Missing him already. “I like a clean man.”
He locked his arms around her, as if to keep her from escaping. As if he could. “Tell me more.”
“Uh-uh.” She wiggled out of his grasp, but didn’t move away too far. “A girl’s gotta have her secrets. Otherwise the mystery’s gone.”
He laughed dryly. “If you ask me, you’ve got more than enough secrets. The mystery about you, Gypsy, is never going to be gone.”
He was making it sound as if it wasn’t over, she thought. As if they had a world of tomorrows before them. But that was just wishful thinking on her part. And wishful thinking didn’t make it so.
What she had, she knew, was tonight, and she was going to make the most of it.
Moving back toward him, she wrapped her arms around Cole. “You do know how to turn a girl’s head,” she murmured, turning her face up to his.
She seemed to fit so perfectly against him. “It’s not your head I’m interested in right now.”
“Oh?”
“Not that I don’t appreciate a smart woman,” he qualified, lightly combing his fingers through her hair. “But there’s been something I’ve been dying to do all evening.”
She could feel it again, that quick heating of her blood, that racing of her pulse. There was nothing like it. “And that is?”
“This.”
Cole placed his hands on her shoulders and slowly moved the shimmery material down along her arms. It fell away from her flesh with a sigh, which in no way compared to the one of contentment that escaped his lips when he looked at her.
She was nude to the waist.
He had a feeling that if he moved the fabric down along her hips, he would discover that she wasn’t wearing anything at all beneath her dress.
The very thought had him growing harder, wanting her. She’d been in his bed every night from the first time they made love, but each time had left him wanting more, living both in the moment and in the anticipation of the next time. Because each time seemed to be better than the last. And not as good as the next.
How was that possible?
His brain swimming, he wasn’t up to untangling the philosophy. All he wanted to do was separate her from the shimmering cloth and bring her to him.
His hands spanned her waist, making her stomach do flip-flops. She didn’t understand it. She could remain utterly cool and calm in a life-and-death situation, such as the one she’d experienced tonight. Yet the very touch of this man had her quaking inside, desperate to mold her body to his.
Desperate to have him want her.
She drew her breath in as he moved the material down away from her hips. Everything within her tightened like a harp about to be strummed.
She heard him catch his breath. And loved the look in his eyes as they slid over her body. Making her burn for him.
“I see you didn’t waste any money on underwear.”
Her smile was beguiling and she knew it. “I didn’t want to max out your
card.”
He lost himself in the fragrance along the column of her neck. She felt, as well as heard, his words. “Very thoughtful of you.”
She could feel her eyes drifting shut as pleasure closed in around her. “I try.”
And then Cole didn’t want to talk anymore. Didn’t want to do anything but feel the taste of her lips, feel the soft yielding of her body as he filled it.
He kissed her over and over again. Kissed her throat, her face, her hair, the plain above her breasts. He touched her everywhere, stroking, caressing. Possessing.
It wasn’t enough. Cole began to doubt it ever would be.
It was getting increasingly difficult to hang on to her thoughts. “Don’t you think we should go upstairs?” The question came out in a rush.
“No, I gave the housekeeper the night off.”
And then there was no time to talk, no breath with which to say anything else. He stole it all away from her. Cole lost it himself. Lovemaking with her was far too taxing, far too consuming, to waste even the tiniest bit of energy on anything else.
Her head was spinning as he reduced her to a mindless, pulsating mass of desires and needs.
There was just enough of her intuition left to let her know that she had done the same to him. Elizabeth gloried in the triumph as something akin to a frenzy swooped over her.
She was barely aware of tearing away Cole’s clothing, of throwing herself into a full-body assault of him that involved every inch of her.
She touched, she caressed, she conquered, using her tongue, her teeth, her hands, the very skin along her body as she rubbed it against his. She was going to make him hers.
Or, at the very least, make him remember her for the rest of his days.
“Hold it, Gypsy,” he gasped, wrapping his arms around her to stay the assault for a moment. “This isn’t a contest.”
She raised her head, her hair a swirling velvet curtain on either side of her face. Her green eyes danced as she looked at him.
“I know. For it to be a contest, you needed to have stood a fighting chance.”
He laughed as he sealed his mouth to hers.
And then he took her. Took her before he had no energy left with which to do it.
Her muffled cry against his mouth empowered him and he drove them both up to the place they’d craved from the first moment.
Anthony felt completely drained. Tired beyond any words. But he also felt relieved.
Jeremy was going to be all right.
The man’s hold on life had proved to be a great deal more tenacious than it had first appeared. He was not about to go gently into that good night, Anthony thought cynically. But it was at a cost. Although, until yesterday, he’d thought of Jeremy as invincible, he couldn’t think of him that way anymore.
It grieved him.
Whoever had done this to his teacher, his surrogate father, was going to pay. Even if he hadn’t sworn that to Jeremy, he had to himself.
No one was going to harm anyone he cared about ever again.
He fumbled for his apartment key, his mind locked into the past. If he’d found a way to stop his father, his mother might have still been alive today. At the very least, she would have lived longer.
That thought haunted his nights, invaded his days. There was no way that he was about to allow anything like that to happen to Jeremy or his sisters. He couldn’t live with the burden of that.
He should have killed the two thugs where they stood; it wouldn’t have been a difficult matter for him. He could do things like that. Destroy at will if he wanted to. And those two thugs had been less than vermin. He would have felt worse stepping on a spider.
But he’d been so worried about Jeremy, he hadn’t been thinking straight. And the two men had escaped. To what end? Would they be back?
He made up his mind to find them before they found Jeremy again.
But he needed rest. Rest to recharge, to come up with a viable plan.
Finding his keys, he let himself into the apartment and reached for the light.
Someone grabbed him from behind.
An arm snaked around his throat, choking him just enough to immobilize him. He felt something hard being pressed into his spine.
A gun?
“Don’t give me any trouble,” the voice growled. The voice came from above him. Whoever this was, the person was taller than he was.
A blow to the head was coming next.
Anthony sensed it. Knew it. Whoever this was wanted him alive, not dead.
The next moment, he used his assailant’s weight against him and threw the man to the floor. He’d wrenched the gun out of the man’s hand, but the heel of the man’s boot clipped him across the temple as he went down.
Dizzy from the blow, Anthony took a second to pull himself together.
It was all the time his attacker needed.
When Anthony finally threw on the light, he saw that he was alone. Whoever had attacked him was gone.
And with him, the reason for the attack.
All he had to go on was Jeremy’s warning that someone was looking into his and his sisters’ pasts.
Which meant that they all might be in danger.
Why?
There were no answers for him.
Frustrated, Anthony locked the door and went to tend to his wound.
Chapter 15
Cole turned his face toward hers. “I didn’t know a person could be this exhausted and still be alive,” he confessed.
They were in his bed together and he’d lost count of the number of times they’d made love through the night. True to form, each time had been better than the last, more rigorous than the last. It still astounded him. He wouldn’t have thought that was possible. But with Elizabeth, all things seemed possible.
He smiled at her. “You wear me out, Gypsy.”
“That’s the general idea.”
Her voice was hardly above a soft whisper. Even depleted of all energy, he found it incredibly seductive. He had no way of knowing she was speaking so softly because she had hardly any energy herself.
It was the middle of the night and darkness was pervading all the corners of his room. He wanted to see her, just to look at her because he hadn’t the strength to do anything else.
Turning from Elizabeth, he reached for the lamp by his bed, only to have it go on before his fingers brushed against the switch. He stared at the lamp for a moment, getting his bearings.
He glanced at her over his shoulder. “That was you?”
She laughed at the slight note of uncertainty in his voice. “That was me.”
Cole shook his head as he turned back to Elizabeth. He slipped his arm around her and drew her close to him. The warmth of her skin whispered along his body.
“I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to you doing that.”
There he went again, phrasing his words so that it sounded as if he meant for the two of them to be together beyond the night.
Maybe he did, she thought. After all, there was no reason to end this just yet. They were both consenting adults, consenting to have a good time.
And that was all this could be construed as, she insisted. A good time. It couldn’t be anything else to her because it wouldn’t be anything else to him. Pretending otherwise was just that, pretending. She hadn’t the power to make him fall in love with her, the way she knew she had fallen for him.
Even if she did, even if fate or nature had given her the ability to bend people’s wills to her own, she wouldn’t have done it. Because then she’d never know if Cole was with her because he wanted to be or because she wanted him to be.
She sighed, curling up against him, taking comfort in the feel of him against her. In a way, she supposed it wasn’t unlike the situation that Cole was constantly in, wondering if people liked him for himself or for the money he had, the position he had.
He raised himself up on one elbow and brushed the hair back from her temple. She seemed to be a million miles away. “Yo
u look lost in thought, Gypsy.”
Lost, that was a good word for it. That would be the way she’d feel once they went their separate ways. Lost. But right now she was here and so was he. And she’d always believed in making the very most of what she had.
“I am.”
He pretended to glance around at all the surfaces in the room. “Anything moving?”
Mischief in her eyes, she grinned as she dipped her hand beneath the sheet and brushed her fingers along his thigh. “You tell me.”
He caught his breath as he felt her fingers feathering along his body, touching him intimately. Making him respond. He could have sworn he was spent for the night. And here she was showing him that there was still more firepower left.
“Damn, but you are good.” He laughed. “I think you could make a dead man want you.”
“I’m not interested in a dead man,” she murmured. Shifting, she brought her face next to his and lightly traced the outline of his lips with her tongue. “I’m interested in a man who’s very much alive.”
It was the last thing she said for a while. Because he’d stolen her breath away again.
Cole reached for her even before his eyes were opened. Reached but didn’t find her.
Opening his eyes, he found that he was alone in his bed. A quick pass of his hand told him that the place beside him was cool. The scent of her body was just barely clinging to the sheets.
A sense of urgency shot through him with the speed of espresso coffee, jolting him completely awake. Rising quickly, he pulled on a pair of slacks he got from the closet and went looking for her.
The same sense of urgency had now ushered in a feeling of pending loss. He couldn’t put his finger on the reason behind it, just knew it was there.
Maybe he’d been spending too much time with her.
No such animal, he told himself.
Cole hurried to her room. Reaching it, he didn’t bother to knock. Instead, he threw open the door. Elizabeth was fully dressed. There was a suitcase on her bed. The one she’d brought with her when she’d first arrived. She was just flipping the locks closed as he entered.
He felt as if he was standing on the bridge of the Titanic, watching the iceberg approach. “What are you doing?”
Immovable Objects Page 17
