"Eventually."
"What do you mean, eventually? Those men killed Jim, and they almost killed me—"
"Your friend's not dead," Becker interrupted. "He'll be fine. You'll be fine. But I need a few more days."
She shook her head. "But—"
"I'm not going to blow three months of work just to get your pretty little ass out of here."
"But—"
"Don't ask me to throw away everything I've done to this point because you were foolish or unlucky enough to stumble onto Darryl's drug deal."
"Can't you sneak me out of here and make it look like I escaped?"
Becker shook his head. "I don't think so. Darryl would come after you for sure. If I keep you close, if we … make them think you don't mind being close, I think I can keep you alive until I'm done here."
"You think? How comforting."
"It's the best I've got right now."
She studied his face for a moment, the lines and the tense set of his jaw. Should she tell him who her father was? Maybe not. Wouldn't make any difference, and he might think she was trying to use the family name to get him to change his plan and get her out of here tonight, his three months' work unimportant in the light of her father's public and political stature.
"Is Becker your real name?"
He shook his head.
"Are you going to tell me your real name?"
He sighed. "Boone, but don't use it outside this room. For the duration, I'm Richard Becker."
"Is Boone your first name or your last?"
"Does it matter?"
Jayne sighed. She could feel her body relaxing, unwinding, ratcheting down. She'd survived. With this man's help she'd continue to survive. "I'd like to know."
"Boone Sinclair, private investigator, ma'am." He offered his hand.
Jayne cautiously took it. "Jayne Barrington."
The threat momentarily gone, Jayne saw Boone in a whole new light. The strength that had been menacing became consoling. His dark good looks were suddenly interesting, rather than intimidating. They shook hands briefly, Boone's big hand gentle around hers, the contact unexpectedly comforting.
"Jim's really not dead?"
Boone shook his head. "Darryl winged him. He's lost some blood." A smile flitted across a hard face. "I think your friend fainted."
A shiver worked down Jayne's spine. "I thought he was dead."
"Don't worry," Boone growled. "You'll be out of here and comforting him in no time."
She shook her head. "No. In truth, I barely know Jim." She settled her eyes on his, dark and deep and unreadable. "Blind date."
"How did you end up on Springer Road?"
"We were on our way to a party and got lost." She couldn't believe her luck. If Boone Sinclair hadn't been there, if he hadn't rescued her, she'd be dead now. Her grandmother would say that Boone was an angel sent to save her. That it had been no accident that he'd been there, working undercover. She smiled.
"What are you grinning about?" He dipped his head and looked into her eyes. "You're not going to lose it on me, are you?"
Jayne shook her head. "No. It's just that … you don't look at all like an angel."
"Trust me," he said in a low voice. "I'm not."
She tried not to stare at his bare chest. He didn't seem to mind at all sitting here, half-naked, broader and more muscled than an ordinary man. "What are you doing here? I didn't know private investigators could do undercover work."
That got a half grin out of him. "I didn't say it was legal."
Jayne pursed her lips slightly. As a politician's daughter, she'd lived all her life under a microscope. Every detail, every decision, every move properly scrutinized. She couldn't even leave the house without carefully checking her clothes, makeup and hair. To disregard the law with a smile … she couldn't even imagine.
Boone frowned. "I see you don't approve."
"It's just … I'm sure you have your reasons." In truth, she didn't care why he was here. Just that he was.
"I do."
Jayne sighed. Boone had been honest with her. It was the least she could do for him.
"My father—"
"Can't we leave Daddy out of this?" Boone said again.
Jayne looked him in the eye. "I don't think so." He waited for her to continue. Eyes steady, chest bare, dark hair hanging over his shoulders. "My father is a United States senator. From Mississippi," she added. "Augustus Barrington."
He remained silent.
"Jim and I were on our way to a party given by a potential supporter who might go a long way in aiding my father financially should he decide to run for … a higher office."
Boone didn't so much as move. Did he even breathe?
"My disappearance is going to cause an uproar," she went on. "A big one. My father will do his best to get every government agency available on the job. So we have until morning. Maybe."
Boone ran one hand through his hair and let loose with an even viler string of profanity than before. He didn't look at her, but stared at the floor and the wall and the window as he cursed.
"Mr. Sinclair," she chided softly, censure in her soft voice, "do you mind?"
He fixed his gaze on her again and responded succinctly with the most foul of forbidden words.
Jayne tightened her lips. "You know, there are other words you can call upon when you're upset."
"Really," he drawled.
"Darn or drat or a good doggone work just as well."
He grinned at her, insolent and amused. And again muttered what seemed to be his favorite word.
"Or fudge," she said lightly. "I have, on frustrating occasions when no one is about, muttered an 'oh, fudge' myself."
"Oh, fudge," he growled.
"See?" She smiled. If nothing else, she did know how to get men to do as she wished. It was a gift. "That works just fine, doesn't it?"
Boone left the bed quickly, his back to her as he retrieved his T-shirt. Good! He was going to get dressed. As fine a specimen as he was, his bare chest had become quite distracting.
"Here," he said, turning and tossing the garment to her. "Put this on."
Jayne caught the shirt, then held it cautiously between two fingers. "I'm perfectly comfortable in my own clothes, thank you. Besides—" she sniffed "—you've worn this, and it hasn't been washed."
Boone pressed the bridge of his nose between two fingers, as if he had a headache coming on. "In less than a week I should be done here. Three months of work, down to a matter of days, and now this. I can keep you alive, but you have to listen to me. You have to let me do what I do best."
"What's that?" Jayne whispered.
"Lie." He dropped his hand and glared at her. "As far as Darryl and those two idiots of his are concerned, you and I are hot and heavy."
"Hot and heavy?" She took an unsteady breath. "You just … you dragged me away from the car back there … and you kidnapped me. What kind of woman would willingly become intimately involved with a man who literally dragged her to his … his cave as if she were nothing more than…"
Boone's raised hand silenced her. "I know," he said. "But we're looking for two things here. One, we want to keep them away from you."
Jayne shuddered.
"You wear my clothes, you stick close to me at all times, we spend a lot of time right here in this bed." He took an unsteady breath of his own. "You're mine. We make it clear that you're mine. The guys know that if they try anything funny, they'll have me to contend with."
And Boone Sinclair looked as if he would be awe-inspiring to contend with.
"Two, we want to keep you alive."
"Definitely." Jayne nodded emphatically.
"If they think you're going to keep trying to run away, one of them is going to get antsy and … do something drastic."
Kill you. Boone didn't say the words, but Jayne knew what he meant.
"So you stick to me," he said, as if he didn't like the idea at all. "You lie low, keep your mouth shut, and in a few days I
deliver you home."
She still didn't know why Boone Sinclair was here. He could get them both out of this horrible place whenever he wanted, she had no doubt of that. So why didn't he? What was so important that he would risk both their lives? "You never did tell me why you're here," she said softly.
"No, I didn't."
"If I'm going to have to … pretend to like you and all that, shouldn't I know?"
He pinned his eyes to hers again. Oh, he had a way of looking at her that made her arms tingle and her toes curl. She unconsciously raised her arms to hug herself, to chase away the unexpected chill.
"No," Boone finally said, and then he left the room, slamming the door behind him.
* * *
Chapter 3
« ^ »
A night of sleeping on the hard floor did nothing to improve Boone's disposition. He had planned to ask Jayne if she minded sharing the bed—platonically, of course—but she'd been sound asleep by the time he'd returned to the room last night. Asleep! She either trusted him completely, a frightening possibility, or she had no self-preservation instincts whatsoever. Neither option was good.
If she'd come awake in the middle of the night and found him sleeping beside her, she probably would have come off the bed screaming. Which wouldn't have necessarily been a bad thing, now that he thought about it. The occasional cry in the night was probably expected.
He rolled up and peered over the edge of the mattress to find Jayne still sleeping. She hadn't put on his T-shirt as he'd told her to. She slept in a silky white slip. He hadn't known women still wore slips! All he could see of the undergarment were the straps, one of which had fallen off her shoulder, but last night he'd caught a glimpse of white against the thigh that had escaped from beneath the sheet on his bed. He'd covered that thigh, feeling a little guilty for enjoying the sight so much, and Jayne hadn't tossed the covers off in the night. If anything, she caught the covers to her more tightly and securely than she had last night, hiding there beneath white sheets and the twisted green comforter.
As he watched, her eyes fluttered, opened, latched onto his and went wide with terror
Jayne Barrington, demure Southern belle and his unwilling hostage, sat up, bringing the sheet with her. "Oh, no, it wasn't a nightmare," she said breathlessly. "You're … you're real."
"Not the response I usually elicit from women I spend the night with," Boone grumbled.
She took in the makeshift pallet on the floor, and her frightened expression softened. "You could have slept on the couch in the other room."
"You could have left room for me on the bed, so I wouldn't have to sleep on the … darn floor."
Her lip actually curled. "I don't think so."
Annoying as she was, the girl recovered quickly. "So, what's next?"
"Make me breakfast?"
She looked as horrified as she had at the prospect of sleeping with him. "I don't cook!"
"Of course you don't," he muttered, coming to his feet.
She quickly covered her eyes. "You're naked!"
"I am not!" Boone glanced down at the underwear he wore, a pair of baggy silk boxers that were, by his standards, modest.
She did not drop the hand from her eyes, protecting herself from the sight of his scantily clad body as she continued in a much calmer voice. "Nearly naked. Don't you have a pair of pajamas?"
Boone stared at her and shook his head. "No."
"Maybe you could get some."
He laughed at the absurdity of the suggestion. "I don't think so."
Jayne sighed and finally lowered her hand, but she didn't look at him. Her eyes were turned to the window and the morning light that broke through the sliver of a part in the curtains.
Boone heard a footfall in the hallway outside the bedroom door. When he raised a finger to his lips, Jayne nodded her head and pursed her lips. She was spoiled and rich, a debutante who had no business here, but she was quick, he'd give her that.
He grabbed the corner post of the headboard.
"Not again," Jayne whispered.
Boone shrugged and began to rock. Jayne lay down on the bed and covered her face with the sheet, squealing softly but appropriately when he reached down to pinch her lightly on one gently curving, sheet-covered shoulder.
* * *
Jayne had brushed off Boone's suggestion that she wear one of his T-shirts and cinch up an old pair of cutoff denims, and dressed in her own clothes. Blouse and skirt, anyway, and shoes. No hose, no jacket, but she had retrieved her pearls from the bedside table and put them on, and she'd brushed her hair. Fortunately one of the hooligans had collected her purse from the Mercedes. Her cell phone was gone, of course, but she had her own brush, as well as a small amount of makeup. Very fortunately the criminal who had reached into the car for her purse hoping for a nice wad of cash hadn't recognized the name Barrington on her driver's license, a name her father had made well-known. In truth, she had done nothing on her own accord but to uphold the family name and play hostess for the sociable Senator Barrington when he asked it of her.
She plopped a large plate of bacon and eggs on the kitchen table, and the four men present stared suspiciously at the offering.
"The bacon's not done," Marty grumbled.
Doug picked up the strip nearest him, an almost black piece of bacon that had gotten away from her and turned dark before her very eyes. "This one is."
"Bacon's not good for you, anyway," Boone said as he reached for the spoon Jayne had left in the scrambled eggs, took a huge spoonful and dropped it onto his plate.
Darryl grumbled, but he filled his own plate, too, and the four men began to eat. They each took a bite. Three men spit half-chewed eggs back onto their plates.
Boone swallowed, grudgingly. "Sugar, hand me the salt."
"Salt!" Jayne said, turning around and heading for the kitchen counter. "I forgot all about the salt."
"We figured that out for ourselves," Doug said under his breath.
"There's no need to be rude," Jayne said as she placed the saltshaker on the table, directly in front of Boone. "I'm not a cook, you know. If you don't like what I made for breakfast, you can just quietly walk away and either go hungry or make your own breakfast."
Darryl, the man who had shot Jim, narrowed one eye. He still gave Jayne a major case of the shivers. She didn't think it was simply his large size that frightened her. He'd shot and intended to kill Jim; he would have shot her without a second thought, without a twinge of conscience. Boone she could handle; the boys who giggled like teenage girls when they thought of sex she could handle. But Darryl … Darryl was much too frightening for her to even consider handling.
"If she's going to stay here, she's going to pull her weight," Darryl said.
"She will," Boone replied. Without warning, he grabbed her and pulled her onto his knee. "She does," he added suggestively.
Jayne tried to stand; Boone held her in place. She knew what he was doing and she knew why. That didn't mean she had to like it. "Not now," she chided. "I have dishes to do. The kitchen is a mess." She tried again to stand, and got only a few inches off his knee before he pulled her down again. She landed with a thump on his rock-hard thigh.
"I didn't bring you here to do dishes," he said in a voice low enough to be meant for her alone, loud enough to carry to the other three, who ate newly salted eggs and picked at their bacon looking for properly cooked segments. "Doug and Marty can do the damned dishes."
"Don't curse," she said primly.
Boone tightened the arm that encircled her waist and pulled her back. "Don't tell me what to do." With that, he nudged aside her hair and pressed his lips to her neck. She couldn't help it; she let out a squeaky breathless cry.
Doug giggled. "She is a squealer, ain't she, Becker. Doesn't that get on your nerves? All that howling?"
"No," Boone responded, his mouth still against her neck.
"I really should do the…" Something wet trailed across the back of her neck. His mouth … his tongue.
"Dishes."
Jayne wasn't tough, she wasn't prepared for a situation like this one, and yet at the moment she felt as if she had absolutely no control. None. The world was spinning, she didn't know what would happen next … and she was just along for the ride. She hated that, rolling along with no say in the matter, a man's hands on her body and his mouth on her neck giving her inappropriate and unexpected and unwanted chills. Another man watched, ready to kill her at the slightest provocation. Two other brainless hoodlums looked on, amused.
Boone said that what he did best was lie. It was a game. A deadly one, but a game all the same. If she was to play, perhaps she could gather her wits and play. What would it take to garner a bit of control? Some semblance of order?
She grasped Boone's wrist and forcefully moved it aside. She stood, removing her neck from his lascivious attentions. When he reached out, she very deftly moved out of his way.
"For goodness' sake," Jayne said as she took a step that carried her just out of his reach. "You are incorrigible." They were supposed to be intimate, and while she knew very little about intimacy, she did know that the woman in such a relationship possessed a power of her own. "All night," she said, turning to face Boone as she backed toward the sinkful of dirty dishes. "And into the morning. What do you think I am? A … a…" She didn't have to work hard to manufacture a sniffle.
"You should be able to keep your hands to yourself for five minutes. Five minutes! Is that too much to ask?"
Boone lifted two finely shaped dark eyebrows. "You didn't complain last night."
"I did!" she said indignantly. Then she remembered his words, what it would take to keep her alive, and she blushed. "At first."
"This is better than a soap opera," Doug said with a grin.
"Do the dishes," Boone finally said, his voice low and his eyes dark.
"You do the dishes!"
"I thought you wanted to do the dishes!" Boone sounded truly frustrated.
"God, now they sound like my parents," Marty said with a shudder, pushing away from the table.
Darryl slowly rose to his feet, shook his head, clenched and unclenched his meaty fists. Doug popped up, too, not wanting to be left behind.
IN BED WITH BOONE Page 3
