by Rebecca York
Scooping some onto a plate, she microwaved her dinner while she went down the hall to the bedroom to kick off her medium-heeled shoes and change into sweatpants and a T-shirt.
It was tempting to simply drape her slacks and the blue blouse over the back of the scarred straight-backed chair she’d painted a cheerful yellow, but she hung them neatly in the closet before going back to the kitchen and taking the plate out of the microwave. She brought the meal to the table, along with a glass of cold tea from a pitcher in the refrigerator.
The food was good. She’d asked Momma to teach her to make a lot of the dishes they’d enjoyed back home, and she and her mother had spent many hours together in the kitchen. Those were some of her best memories of her parents. No politics. No sibling rivalry. Just two women in the kitchen, cooking.
She should be hungry, but after making it through only half the food, she put down her fork. Knowing she wasn’t going to eat anymore, she covered the plate with plastic wrap and put it back in the refrigerator.
She looked toward the living room, thinking she might turn on the television and find out if there was anything new about the hostage takedown. Then she canceled the idea. Why go through it again? And maybe if she got a good night’s sleep, she’d be ready to face tomorrow at S&D.
She wouldn’t kid herself. A lot more people than the friends who’d called were going to be curious about today’s events, and she needed to think about what to say. And think about Lincoln Kinkead’s suggestion. He’d said she could talk to a therapist. It wasn’t something she would have considered on her own. But he’d made the offer, and maybe she shouldn’t dismiss the idea out of hand.
For the moment, she was still feeling shaky. She turned on the shower and got undressed. After standing under the pounding water for ten minutes, she told herself she felt better, although it was only marginally true.
Wrapped in a towel, she used the blow-dryer on her hair, then got out one of the long sleep shirts that she liked to wear. This one had a picture of a cat and a fawn cuddled up together, and she smiled at the picture before pulling on the shirt.
Before getting into bed, she took one of the over-the-counter sleeping tablets that she needed occasionally.
It helped her relax, but after slipping into bed, she lay rigidly under the covers. Finally she got up again and turned on the bathroom light, then closed the door so that only a sliver of illumination came through the crack. She hated that she needed the light, but after the ordeal of the day, she didn’t want to be in the dark. Truly, she didn’t want to be alone, but there was no one she’d feel comfortable calling this late at night.
A face drifted into her mind, Shane Gallagher’s face. She clamped her hands around the edge of the sheet, ordering herself to get him out of her mind. She barely knew him, and she certainly wasn’t going to ask him to watch over her.
She felt a laugh bubbling in her throat. No, she wasn’t going to call him.
Instead, she worked the pillow into a better position under her neck, moved her shoulders to get comfortable, and closed her eyes. Maybe the pill she’d taken had started working, because she felt herself letting go. And soon she had crossed from wakefulness to sleep.
For a few hours, that slumber was peaceful. Then a dream grabbed her. She was back at the S&D building, and it was after the hostage situation was over. Hadn’t they been in the ladies’ room? Instead, Shane helped her to her feet and pulled her into Mr. Perkins’ office and closed the door.
Wrapping her in his arms, he gathered her close. She closed her eyes and leaned into him the way she’d wanted to but hadn’t allowed herself.
“Are you all right?” he asked urgently.
“Yes.” She raised her head and opened her eyes, searching his face. “Are you?”
“Yes.”
She caught her breath as she took in their surroundings. They had come into Mr. Perkins’ office. But that wasn’t what she saw now. She and Shane Gallagher were in a bedroom, where they obviously shouldn’t be.
She pushed at his shoulders, but he kept her in his arms.
“What are we doing here?” she asked in a shaky voice.
He tipped his head to the side, giving her a look that made her blood heat. “Don’t you know?”
Of course she did, but she wasn’t going to say it.
His words didn’t quite match the look he’d given her. “You’ve just been through a terrible ordeal. You need to calm down.”
She swallowed hard. She had been scared out of her mind a few minutes ago, and she was still off balance.
Shane massaged her tense shoulders, helping her relax. He ran his hands up and down her back the way he’d done before…but this time he went farther, gliding down to the rounded curve of her bottom, sending currents of sensation through her body.
Every lesson she’d learned from her mother about how to act with men told her he shouldn’t be touching her like that. She should push herself away from him, but she didn’t have the strength to do it.
“I want to kiss you,” he said in a gritty voice. “And you want to kiss me.”
She wasn’t going to admit that aloud. When she didn’t move, he crooked one hand under her chin, tipping her face up, and she saw that he was smiling down at her.
She stared into his dark eyes, watching him as he lowered his head, so that his lips brushed back and forth against hers, then settled, pressing, moving, asking her to open for him.
She did, feeling another surge of heat as his tongue dipped into her mouth, playing with the inside of her lips, then the line of her teeth.
This was more than she should allow, but she ignored proprieties. Experimentally, she moved her own tongue, sliding it against his, each stroke of that intimate contact increasing the heat coursing through her body.
She was wearing the blue blouse that Lincoln Kinkead had given her, and her breath caught as Shane began to unbutton it.
“No,” she protested.
“You don’t want me to do this?”
Emotions warred inside her. All the warnings Momma had given her clashed with her own desires. “I don’t know,” she managed to say.
He laughed. “Don’t fool yourself.”
Before she could come back with a retort, he moved one hand from the buttons to her breasts.
“Don’t.”
He let go of the button he was holding and glided his fingers over the silky fabric of the blouse, making her nipples poke out against the silk.
What—had she forgotten to wear a bra?
Heat surged through her as he circled the tight peaks with his fingers. And this time, when he started unbuttoning the blouse, she didn’t protest.
He pushed the sides of the blouse out of the way, baring her breasts.
“Don’t,” she protested again, but her voice had gone weak.
“You like it.”
“I shouldn’t.”
His gaze grew more intense. “Don’t deny yourself what you want.”
She couldn’t answer.
She might have run, but she was rooted to the spot. He took her nipples between his thumbs and fingers, tugging on them, making her body rigid with molten need. He kept one hand on her breasts, playing with them as the other hand slid down her body to the juncture of her legs.
She felt her knees buckle, but he backed her against a wall to keep her upright as his fingers separated the folds of her sex, slipping into her most intimate flesh.
He caressed her there, stroking and pressing, making her hips rock to increase the contact.
“That’s it, sweetheart. Go with it,” he whispered as his teeth nibbled at her ear.
An explosion gathered and flared, sending a burst of pleasure through her body. She cried out, calling his name.
“Shane.”
Seconds later, her eyes blinked open, and she knew she was alone i
n her own bed. The heated encounter with him had all been a dream. And the memories of what she had dreamed made her face redden. Now she was glad that the room was almost dark and that she wasn’t at her parents’ house.
The dream had started with the terror of the hostage scene. But the terror had dissolved into sexual need, then… She didn’t want to admit that her unconscious mind had brought her to sexual climax, but there was no way to avoid the reality.
She lay in bed, struggling to bring her emotions and her breathing under control.
Moments ago she had imagined making love with Shane Gallagher. Well, not sexual intercourse. She supposed she hadn’t dared go that far—even in her dreams. But he had made her come.
Made her come. That’s what it was called. Something nice girls didn’t do. But she hadn’t been able to control her dream.
She laughed out loud, the sound startling in the darkened bedroom. She’d been asleep. That was her excuse.
A long-ago scene flashed into her mind. Something she didn’t like to think about. The time Momma had come into her bedroom and caught her touching herself. She’d slapped her and told her that was something forbidden. And Elena had made sure she’d never been caught doing it again. Of course, “caught” was the operative word. It was something she didn’t want to give up, and she’d just been more careful about it. That was all.
She dragged in a breath and let it out.
Back then she’d been a scared little girl, wanting to please her parents. When she’d grown up, she’d read a lot about sex. It was a natural function and perhaps a joy for married couples. But in the world where she came from, it was forbidden to anyone else.
Well, at least that was true of women. She was fairly sure that a lot of men felt entitled to disobey that rule. They could get away with it because their wives were dependent on them, for themselves and for their children, if they had any. But she would never be the kind of woman with no resources of her own. She’d dreamed of being an artist, but she’d known that was an uncertain career. She’d made sure she had a marketable skill, working with computers. That had gotten her a good job. She was perfectly capable of supporting herself. And maybe someday she’d find the right man. Someone who would love her and respect her.
Her heart squeezed. Was the right man out there? She didn’t know, but for the moment, her best choice was to keep on with the life she had made for herself.
She sat up in bed, pulled her knees up and clasped her arms around her legs, rocking back and forth. Her life had been going along the way she’d planned it until a new chief of security had showed up at S&D. Shane Gallagher. She was afraid of him, but at the same time she was attracted to him, and she thought the attraction was mutual. But there were times when it felt like he had something against her, something she didn’t understand, because she had no idea what she’d done to set him against her. That part was like the soldiers back home. You never knew what they’d be ordered to do—and why.
She didn’t understand his moods, and right now she was praying that she wasn’t going to run into him tomorrow. Not after her unconscious mind had led her to an admission she never would have made if she’d been awake. She wanted him, and she’d dreamed of him kissing her and touching her with the intimacy of a lover.
Of course, the episode had made another decision for her, as well. Lincoln Kinkead had suggested she might want to talk to a counselor. That was out of the question now, because the thing at the top of her mind would be her fantasy sex with Shane Gallagher. And she certainly wasn’t going to talk to anyone about that.
Chapter 5
After only a few hours of sleep, Shane heaved himself out of bed and winced. He must be out of shape if a jaunt to the eighth floor of an office building made his muscles sore.
He laughed. Yeah, sure. He’d been confident of his ability to make the climb down from the roof, but now he was paying the price because he’d used muscles that didn’t usually get a workout.
He did some stretching exercises, then headed to the home office that doubled as his workout room. After a punishing forty-five minutes on the elliptical trainer, he showered and headed for Rockfort Security.
Max was already in the office. Jack was probably at home, snuggled in bed with his wife. Shane wasn’t going to complain about that. The guy was entitled after the rough year he’d had before stumbling naked into Morgan Rains’ front yard. Quite a way to meet. But then Jack had never been the conventional type.
Part of him envied his friend for being happy and settled down. The other part knew that Jack had found a rare woman—a woman worth trusting and loving. Was that in the right order? Did you have to trust someone before you could love her? Probably it was the wiser course. He’d fallen in love with Glenda without knowing enough about her—and paid the price for his impulsiveness later.
He shook his head, then realized that his other partner, Max Lyon, was watching him.
“What?” he asked.
“You look like you’re doing some deep thinking.”
“Yeah, about the case,” Shane lied. “I was hoping you or Jack could do some background checking for me while I’m at S&D.”
“Sure, what do you need?”
“There are two guys in the IT department, Jed Lansing and Roy Newman, that I’m wondering about. I don’t want to use the work computers to poke into their backgrounds, because if I did, they might find out about it.”
“You mean—they might check up on you?”
“Right.”
“What do you want to know about them?”
“Dig below the surface of the usual information and see if either of them has been involved in anything questionable.”
“Any particular reason you’re interested in them?”
“Both of them act uncomfortable around me. I’d like to know if there’s a reason for it.”
“Will do.”
Shane thanked his partner, then headed for S&D. He had planned to go straight to his office, but as he walked down the hall, people kept stopping him to congratulate him on the takedown of the evening before and to ask questions. By the time he got to his desk, it was after ten. But the questions gave him an idea. He’d been wondering how he could bump into Elena today. It would certainly be natural for him to go over to IT to find out how she was doing after yesterday’s harrowing events.
The plan lightened his mood, which he found annoying. His relationship with her should be strictly business, yet he was pleased at the prospect of seeing her again.
He spent an hour and a half at his desk doing routine security work, looking at the logs of calls from hardwired company phones as well as running through cell phone calls made inside the building. He was sure most employees didn’t know that the company could track their private communications. In fact, the system was something like what the National Security Agency had been using to monitor phone calls and emails around the United States.
He didn’t have ready access to the conversations themselves, but he could see who was calling whom. So far he hadn’t picked up any suspicious patterns, but that could simply mean the person out to steal company secrets was being cautious and not communicating with anyone questionable while he or she was at work.
Around eleven thirty, Shane got out of the computer program and sat for a moment, picturing the layout of IT.
There was a small reception area, then cubicles along two short halls. Elena’s desk was near the end of the hall on the right.
Shane took the elevator down to IT and stepped into the department, pausing in the reception area as he pretended to get his bearings. He saw that several people noted his presence, including Roy Newman, one of the men he’d asked Max to check on.
When Shane looked in the guy’s direction, Newman quickly lowered his head back to his work, which might be significant or not.
Shane continued down the right-hand hall, walkin
g slowly on feet that were almost silent. Several of the nearby cubicles were empty, but Elena was at her desk, poring over a spreadsheet on her screen. Absorbed in her work, she wasn’t aware that anyone was standing behind her, which gave him a few moments to take her in.
His gaze skimmed over the glossy black of her wavy hair and the feminine tilt of her shoulders. He could see her delicate features reflected in her computer screen.
When she realized she wasn’t alone, she stiffened and looked up quickly, turning to see who was there. As she registered who it was, a mixture of expressions flickered across her features. She looked glad to see him, but at the same time embarrassed and wary.
“Mr. Gallagher,” she said.
“After last night, I think you know me well enough to call me Shane.”
After last night.
She flushed, and he wondered what about the hostage takedown was making her blush. “Shane,” she murmured, letting the sound of his name hang between them.
He had the feeling she’d wanted to ask why he was there, but then thought better of the question and waited for him to explain.
“I wanted to find out how you were doing—after that ordeal with Duckworth yesterday.”
“I’m fine.”
“You answered pretty quickly.”
She raised one shoulder. “Okay, it was an automatic response. But it is true.”
“I’d like to get your impressions of what happened.”
“I’m kind of busy.”
He waited a beat before saying, “I was thinking we could get some lunch. You were planning to eat lunch, weren’t you?”
“I guess.”
“Let’s get out of the building. There’s a sandwich shop I found a few blocks from here that’s very good.”
She looked torn, and he felt his stomach clench while he waited for her to make a decision. When she finally agreed, the tension eased out of him.
