by Donna Ball
The door from which the small pool of light escaped was marked Assistant Manager, and in smaller letters, S. Monterey. Cassidy pushed it open slowly and very carefully.
A small lamp cast a circle of yellow light over the desk but left the rest of the room in shadows. It was just as well, for C. J.'s attention, in those first crucial moments after entering the room, was completely riveted on the desk—and the exquisite creature who was asleep there.
Her head was resting on the desk, cushioned by one slender, outstretched arm. A cascade of fine, pale gold hair curtained her shoulders and cast a gentle half-crescent shadow over her face. Her porcelain-white skin reminded him of a painting by one of the old masters, so delicate and translucent that it seemed to be illuminated by another worldly source.
A faint sleep-flush tinged her cheeks pink, and beneath the veil of her eyelids he could see the soft movement of dreams. Her lashes were dark and tipped with gold, resting like feathery wings against her cheek. Her lips were unpainted, slightly parted with the soft, even rhythm of her breath, a smooth natural flesh-pink that was delicately moistened at the corners. The arm on which she rested her head was her left one; the fingers were slender and graceful like the rest of her, slightly curved in the relaxed posture of sleep.
Her fingernails were manicured into a curved feminine shape and decorated with a frosty flesh-colored polish; she wore no rings at all. A small watch on a cameo bracelet was her only ornamentation, and it suited her perfectly.
An angel, C. J. thought, and for one long and thoroughly enjoyable moment he was completely entranced. In his profession he often came upon the unexpected, but few surprises were as pleasant as this. He had done a good night's work; he rewarded himself by allowing a few moments to simply drink in the scene.
But as he stood there, bemused by the shape of her softly parted lips, the half-moon shadows her lashes cast on her cheekbones, the silken fall of hair, he was tantalized by an impulse that he knew immediately would be impossible to resist. Since entering the hotel twenty-eight minutes ago, C. J. Cassidy had stolen eight thousand dollars in cash, jewelry worth another ten thousand, the security code, computer passwords and restricted files in several key departments, along with enough miscellaneous credit cards, keys and checkbooks to disrupt their owners' lives for weeks to come. Why not add a kiss to the list?
He crossed as silently as a panther to the desk, and stood behind the light so that not even the shadow of his presence would disturb her. Once he had been known to have the lightest touch in the business; he could divest a man of his watch or his wallet in the time it would take someone else to think about it, and be gone in a heartbeat, leaving not a trace to mark his passing. He took his kiss in the same way. As smooth as a whisper, he leaned over her. Her scent, warm and faintly humid and tinged with jasmine, enveloped him. With the very tips of his fingers, he lifted a strand of hair away from her face and bent his head to hers.
It was more of a blending of breaths than a touch, an inhaling of essence, a slow delicious savoring of promise, as rich with sensual appeal as the moment one first tastes a fine rare wine, letting its aroma sink into the pores and intoxicate before the first drop is drunk. He could feel his pulse pound as he moved closer, for the risk was great and the danger an essential part of the excitement. He parted his lips and pressed them over hers lightly, so lightly it was more of a thought than a deed. By the time she stirred, sighing a little in her steep and shifting her head more comfortably on her arm, he was gone.
Savannah disentangled herself from the shroud of a strangely erotic dream with great reluctance. She was not usually the type to linger in slumber or become befuddled by dreams; when she awoke, she did so with a clear head and instant awareness, no matter what time of the day or night it might be. She knew, for example, even now, that she had fallen asleep at her desk approximately three hours ago and that she really needed to wake up and go home before the morning staff found her like this. And that was exactly what she intended to do, but she had been working sixteen-hour days for the last two weeks and she was exhausted; she deserved a few more moments to linger in the pleasant glow of the dream, to taste the warmth of his kiss on her lips. As soft as the press of a petal against her flesh, yet heated with an underlying strength barely restrained, tasting of wintergreen and a definite, distinctive masculinity...
Savannah opened her eyes and there he was, rifling through her filing cabinet.
Her heart gave such a lurch of alarm that for a moment she couldn't even react. There was a strange man in her office at three o'clock in the morning and it was obvious he was up to no good. Yet all she could think about was how tall he was, how appealingly his dark hair curled over the back of his white turtleneck and what an attractive picture his slim figure presented from behind.
Over the turtleneck, he wore a casually cut silk jacket and European-style trousers of a similar fabric. His hands were long-fingered and lithe as they moved silently over her file folders, and for the longest moment Savannah couldn't seem to drag her eyes away from those hands. She felt again the brush of a fingertip cross her cheek and tasted wintergreen on her lips.
But that was ridiculous. In the past three weeks, there had been half a dozen burglaries in the hotel and she was very possibly looking at the man responsible for them. She kept her purse in that file drawer, and it had been locked when she fell asleep.
Even as she watched, he found her purse and opened it, and Savannah was galvanized into action. In a single motion, she pushed away from the desk and lunged for the only semblance of a weapon the room offered—a brass umbrella stand by the door. Snatching it up like a club, she declared, "All right, mister. Hold it right there. Now turn around. Slowly."
He did so.
His coal black hair was brushed away from a high forehead, his cheekbones were sharp, his lips full, his eyes smoky gray. His lower face was shadowed by the ghost-beard that was common to many dark-haired men and—in Savannah's opinion at least—added approximately thirty points to his sex appeal, which was already well above average. A hint of a rueful smile deepened one corner of his lips and he leaned his shoulder against the file cabinet with a negligent ease that managed to look both endearing and insolent.
"Curses, foiled again," he said mildly. "And here I was planning to leave you as silently as I came, with nothing more than sweet dreams to remind you of my visit."
Savannah swallowed hard. Surely he couldn't mean.. .he wouldn't have. ..she had only dreamed that kiss. Hadn't she?
"Who are you?" she demanded. "What are you doing here?"
The rueful smile deepened. "That would seem rather obvious, wouldn't it? At the moment, I appear to have been caught in the act and am being held at bay by a woman wielding a weapon of..." He cast a faintly puzzled glance toward the umbrella stand, and finished simply, "indeterminate origin. At the very least, the graceful exit I had planned is completely spoiled. At the most..." Again he cast a dubious glance toward the umbrella stand. "Well, while I wouldn't exactly call that a deadly weapon, I would venture to say you could do some serious damage with that thing if you put your mind to it. And I'd say that just about sums up my situation, wouldn't you?"
For a moment, Savannah just stared at him, fighting the lure of his sensuous, mesmerizing voice. He certainly didn't sound like a burglar, or look like one, for that matter—as though she would know what a burglar was supposed to look or sound like. Still, she wanted to believe the best. Flexing her fingers around the base of the umbrella stand, she demanded cautiously, "What were you doing with my purse?"
He lifted an eyebrow. "Trying to steal it, of course."
And that eliminated whatever doubts she might have had. Her heart began to thump rapidly again. So here she was, having single-handedly captured a self-confessed criminal, alone in her office at three o'clock in the morning with nothing between herself and disaster except a brass umbrella stand, and what was she supposed to do now?
Savannah eyed the telephone on the desk a good f
our feet away from where she stood, then looked back at him. Again she tested the weight of the object in her hands, but who was she kidding? All he had to do was walk past her and out the door; she couldn't stop him unless she attacked him in cold blood and that was something she knew herself to be completely incapable of doing.
The trick was to make sure he didn't know that.
"Stay right there," she warned him, edging toward the desk and hoping her voice sounded steely edged and threatening. "Don't move."
“Wouldn't think of it," he murmured, his expression perfectly bland.
She reached the desk without taking her eyes off him, but then came the tricky part—balancing the umbrella stand in one hand while trying to hold the receiver to her ear and dial with the other hand, and all without losing her tentative advantage over the criminal who lounged so casually against the filing cabinet across from her. With less grace than determination, she managed the maneuver and punched out the three digits that would connect her with the security office.
The phone was answered on the second ring, and relief left Savannah's knees weak.
She did not let that show in her voice, however, as she snapped out, "This is Savannah Monterey. I've captured an intruder in my office. Get a security team up here right away. And call the police."
The intruder lifted a finger to attract her attention. Such was his natural air of command that Savannah actually waited to hear what he had to say.
"And the manager," he suggested. "Don't forget to give him a call. He'll want to be in on this."
Greg Walker, the hotel manager, lived in the penthouse and was accustomed to being awakened in the middle of the night for emergencies. Savannah herself had never called him for one, but she had never had an emergency like this before. And it was true— Greg Walker would want to be notified immediately of this development.
Without taking her eyes off the man on the other side of the room, she said into the telephone, "Ring Mr. Walker's suite and tell him what's happened. And get someone over here now.''
She dropped the receiver into its cradle and backed away from the desk. Suddenly, the eight feet of carpet and three feet of desk that separated her from the dark-haired criminal did not seem to be enough. He smiled and glanced at his watch, marking the time. Savannah noticed with narrowing eyes that it appeared to be a very expensive watch. And what kind of burglar could afford an Italian-cut silk jacket, anyway?
The answer came back to her with mocking overtones of logic: A very good one.
It was then that she noticed he kept the fingers of his right hand closed, obviously hiding something. A weapon? Or more likely, her wallet? After all, his hands had last been in her purse.
"What have you got in your hand? What are you hiding?"
He opened his fingers and glanced at the contents as though he'd forgotten what he was holding.
"You stole that from my purse, didn't you?" she declared, outrage rising.
He gave her an utterly enchanting smile. "Guilty," he confessed. "Would you like it back?"
"Put it on the desk," Savannah ordered. Instinctively, she took a step back as he approached. "And don't try anything funny.”
Very carefully, moving with exaggerated deliberation, he placed the pilfered object on the edge of her desk. It was a foil-wrapped chocolate kiss. Savannah always kept a handful of them in her purse in case of an emergency; she was something of a chocolate addict and didn't like to risk being too far away from the source of her greatest comfort.
She raised her gaze from the incriminating evidence of her weakness to his dancing eyes, and a peculiar tingling feeling attacked the pit of her stomach. She supposed he couldn't help it if he didn't look like a criminal, but for heaven's sake, why couldn't he at least act like one?
The wicked amusement in his eyes charged the air with an expectation that was entirely inappropriate, and the moment between them went on far too long. When she heard the noise in the hall, it was all she could do to keep from sighing out loud.
The door to the receptionist's office burst open and a voice shouted, "Ms. Monterey! Are you all right?"
The burglar glanced at his watch again. "Two minutes, twenty-seven seconds," he murmured. "I can't say I like that."
Savannah tore her scowling gaze from him to the outer office and answered, "In here! Hurry, for heaven's sake!"
He said, "Ms. Monterey, is it? I assure you, you are in no—"
But he very wisely broke off and stepped back when the door was flung open and two uniformed men burst in. When he saw they held guns, he—also very wisely—lifted his hands to the height of his shoulders.
Savannah lowered the heavy umbrella stand to the floor with profound relief and leaned against the wall weakly.
"Are you all right, ma'am? Are you hurt?"
She allowed herself one moment to reflect upon how much danger she might have been in and another moment to compose herself. Then she straightened her shoulders and replied briskly, "I'm fine. I think we've caught our burglar, gentlemen. This man broke in here-"
' "The door was unlocked,'' he interrupted.
Savannah ignored him. "Picked the lock on the filing cabinet and was going through my purse."
"Is that right, mister?"
The perpetrator gave a modest little shrug.
One of the security guards took a step toward him, and he raised a warning finger.
"I believe," he said, "your security manual instructs you to wait for the police."
That rankled the guards. "Who the hell are you telling what to do?"
"Maybe you ought to take a second look at who's holding the handcuffs, mister!"
"Not to mention the guns," replied the suspect, "which is something else we'll have to—"
"Hold it, men, he's right!" Savannah had to raise her voice to make herself heard over the din that ensued, and for a moment she thought the two guards would rush him. She wasn't sure whose safety she was most concerned with, that of the guards or their smooth-talking prisoner. "The situation is under control, and your orders are to wait for the police."
The two guards reluctantly acknowledged her authority, although Savannah noticed they seemed to be holding their guns at an even more menacing angle, and they did not back off. Savannah only hoped the object of their surveillance would give them no reason to exercise their very limited and well-defined rights of restraint.
Apparently, the thief was no more anxious to get bloodstains on her carpet than Savannah was, for he did nothing but cock his head toward the faint sound of sirens coming from the window and comment, "And here they come now. There, you see, gentlemen, there was absolutely no reason at all for the theatrics. As a matter of fact— "
"What's all the bloody commotion? This had better be damn good, Monterey! Do you know what time it is? Do you know what happened to the last person who woke me at three o'clock in the morning?"
Savannah winced, not from the content of the words but from the sheer volume. The voice, which boomed through the corridors and was fully capable of waking anyone unfortunate enough to be sleeping on the bottom three floors, could only belong to one man.
Greg Walker was just under six feet tall and quite a bit over three hundred pounds; he was as formidable in person as his voice implied. Someone had once remarked upon his resemblance to Henry VIII which had resulted, for better or worse, in Greg's growing a beard to match the part. He stood at the threshold of Savannah's office wearing a voluminous white shirt with unbuttoned French cuffs over dark suit pants and a scowl that would have made a linebacker think twice. Utter silence seized the room.
And then the burglar said politely, "Good morning, Mr. Walker. I'm sorry for the disturbance, but it couldn't be helped."
Walker's thunderous expression faded into something closely resembling astonishment as he turned his gaze on the intruder. "You," he said, and his voice picked up amusement mixed with admiration as he added, "By God, you did it, didn't you?"
"I did," he agreed, and then cast a
wry glance at Savannah. "Although not entirely successfully, I have to admit. Your assistant manager was a bit more alert than I had anticipated. However..." He started to reach into his pocket, then addressed the two guardsmen with an upraised eyebrow. "With your permission, gentlemen?"
Greg Walker made a brusque gesture with his wrist. "For heaven's sake, put those guns away. This is not a bloody western, you know."
Looking very reluctant indeed, the guards did as they were ordered, though both of them kept a wary eye on their former prisoner as he reached inside his jacket and withdrew a slim manila envelope.
"Yours, I believe," he said, passing the envelope to Walker.
Greg Walker looked into the envelope and then back at the thief. His expression was a mixture of amazement and outrage as he removed a watch. "That's my Rolex! And my ring! And..."
Dark anger suffused his face and then drained, leaving it a somewhat sickly green as he fingered the remaining contents of the envelope. "These papers were in my wall safe. There were negotiable bonds in there...."
"Still there," he assured him. "As are the computer security codes and your personal banking information. I used a passkey," he added. "I could have just as easily changed the key codes through the computer but decided that wouldn't prove anything we don't already know."
He reached into his pocket again and withdrew several more envelopes, passing them out one by one. "The contents of the hotel safe. Deposit boxes 133, 441 and 816. The contents of the cash drawer. Please count it."
Greg Walker looked like a man who was being repeatedly punched in the stomach, and each envelope he accepted was a new blow. Savannah knew how he felt. Her head was reeling and she had to hold on to the desk to support her weak knees. She opened her mouth to demand an explanation but only a croak came out. And then a new voice was added to the din of her thoughts.
