Hush

by Karen Robards

  A moment later he pulled a white garment from the suitcase. As he stood up with it clutched in one hand and turned to face her, they were so close that their bodies brushed. The contact was inadvertent, she knew, but the electricity that sparked between them was instant and real and there was no way either of them missed it. In sheer self-defense, she took a step back to put some space between them and saw in the hardening of his mouth that he knew what she’d done and why. Like on the dance floor of the Palm Room, Riley was supremely conscious of his size, and of the solid strength of his body, and not just because all those manly muscles turned her on. He looked like he could take on an army single-handedly, and under the circumstances she found that supremely comforting. The shoulder holster he was wearing helped, too: a big, strong, armed federal agent was probably about as good as it got, protection-­wise.

  If he’d been in the car with them when Emma was grabbed . . .

  A wave of coldness hit her, and she shivered. The hard knot that had been lodged in her chest ever since Emma had vanished in that van expanded so that she suddenly couldn’t breathe.

  His eyes narrowed as they slid over her face.

  With no warning at all, he bent his head and kissed her, moving his lips against hers, sliding his tongue along the line where her lips met, in a soft, deliberate tasting that never penetrated but still acted on her like a defibrillator, jolting her back into the moment, slamming fireballs of awareness through her system, making her gasp and breathe even as he broke the contact and lifted his head.

  The increased rate of his respiration was scarcely noticeable. The hard glitter in his eyes was impossible to miss.

  Suddenly dizzy, Riley steadied herself by clutching at his arm. The feel of his taut bicep beneath her hand seemed to burn itself into her palm.

  Heat blazed between them as tangibly as if the air had ignited.

  “Quit thinking about what happened,” he said, as she stared at him. “You’ll make yourself crazy, and it won’t do any good.”

  That was when she understood that he’d kissed her to get her mind off Emma. The knowledge didn’t do anything to calm the hungry quickening he’d awakened, but it did give her the presence of mind to let her hand drop away from his arm, to break eye contact with him, to center herself and remember why she was there. For protection. And to save Emma.

  Sleeping with him wasn’t it.

  “Here.” He thrust the wadded-up garment in his hand at her, and as she took it she saw it was a plain white T-shirt, size extra-­large. “Best I can do. I don’t sleep in pajamas, and everything else I’ve got will be way too big for you.”

  Talking, Riley discovered, was beyond her. She nodded, went into the bathroom, and closed and locked the door. Then she gave in to nerves, exhaustion, and stark, icy terror. Bracing both hands on the vanity, she leaned heavily against it while long shudders of reaction shook her. Staring into the mirrored wall above the twin sinks without even so much as seeing her reflection, she sucked in a series of ragged, unsatisfying breaths. Her shoulders sagged, her legs wobbled, and her stomach threatened to turn inside out.

  The thought of Emma, terrified and in danger, that took possession of her mind would have been enough to take her to her knees if she hadn’t deliberately forced it from her head.

  Stop it. Get a grip.

  As Finn had said, thinking about it wouldn’t do any good.

  Thinking about his kiss was equally unproductive, so she shoved that out of her head, too.

  Instead she gritted her teeth, straightened away from the vanity, kicked off her shoes, and turned on the shower.

  Putting one foot in front of the other and getting on with it: that’s what she’d done all her life.

  She could do it now, too.

  Having taken a quick shower, brushed her teeth with his toothpaste and her finger, swallowed a couple of Tylenol from her purse to combat the throbbing headache and various other aches and pains that afflicted her, and checked her face for damage from that punch—she was relieved to find nothing more than a red mark up near her hairline—she emerged from the bathroom to discover that he’d made himself a bed on the floor: a beige blanket and a pair of pillows were spread out on the carpet at the foot of the bed.

  He stood beside the chest that held the TV, his back to her. As she tucked her clothes inside the closet and dropped her shoes on the floor, a glance told her that his shoulder holster was gone now, although he was still fully dressed in the same rumpled dress shirt and trousers. She took in how nearly black his hair actually was, the color of the darkest coffee, along with how broad his shoulders looked above the trimness of his waist and the athletic tightness of his butt. Her gaze was sliding down his long, muscular legs when he turned around and held something out to her.

  “Take it,” he said abruptly.

  She stared at the object in his hands. It was easier than looking at him.

  What he was holding out to her was a clear plastic glass, one of the two that had been wrapped in paper beside the ice bucket, she confirmed with a glance at that hotel room staple, which sat on a tray beside the TV. The glass appeared to be about half full of orange juice.

  “What is it?” Her voice sounded croaky, a result no doubt of all the screaming she had done earlier. But she refused to think about that. Instead, she stepped forward and took the glass from him, eyeing its contents with a skeptical frown.

  “A screwdriver. The minibar had orange juice and vodka.” His gaze swept her. She’d kept her hair dry, and brushed it out after her shower with the small brush she kept, along with a few cosmetics and other essentials, in her purse. The soft fall of it hid the bruises on her neck, as well as the fresh mark near her hairline. Her face was washed clean of any makeup except for a slick of rosy balm on her lips. She was wearing his T-shirt, which was far too large. It hung on her like a sack and hit her at approximately mid-thigh. For modesty’s sake, she was wearing her panties beneath it—short and loose equaled a wardrobe malfunction waiting to happen—but still she felt pretty bare.

  “I’m not much of a drinker.”

  “It’ll help you sleep.”

  With him watching her, she sipped cautiously, grimaced at the strong taste of the alcohol, then took a breath and gulped the rest down, determined to get it over with. He was right on two counts: she needed sleep, and she was going to need help to get it.

  When she finished, he was regarding her with that slight uptick at the corner of his mouth that, for him, signified amusement.

  “What?” she asked, nearly belligerent.

  The uptick deepened and expanded into what was almost a real smile.

  “I like women who chug their liquor.”

  “I wanted to get it over with.” She set the glass down on the chest. The drink seemed to burn in her stomach, and she had to press her lips and swallow hard to suppress a hiccup.

  His eyes were on her mouth. They flicked up and met hers as if he felt her looking at him. She barely had a chance to register the dark, hot gleam in them before he turned away.

  “Go to bed,” he said.

  Then he walked into the bathroom and closed the door.

  By the time he emerged, Riley was curled up in the big bed, lying on her side with the covers bunched around her ears to ward off the cold she couldn’t seem to shake. The vodka was doing its work: fear and grief and terrifying images swirled through her mind, but none of them stayed in place long enough to be truly upsetting, and despite everything, she was feeling more and more drowsy. She’d turned out the light before getting into bed, but enough light still filtered through the curtains so that the room wasn’t completely dark. The comfortingly familiar sounds of the bathroom—flushed toilet, running water—lulled her into a sort of half-awake stupor, and she realized it was because they meant she wasn’t alone.

  Then the bathroom door opened. Her eyes did, too.

  In the brief glimpse she got before he turned out the bathroom light, she saw that Finn was bare to the waist. She got a fl
ash of what looked like acres of muscles and bronzed skin, and then the light was gone and he was no more than a tall shape padding toward her in the dark, almost silent on bare feet.

  Riley wasn’t aware that she was holding her breath until he stopped at the foot of the bed and she had to exhale—quietly, she hoped. For a second she got the impression that he was looking at her, but he didn’t say anything and neither did she.

  Then she heard the sound of a zipper being lowered: he was shucking his pants.

  Her pulse quickened, and she felt a welcome infusion of warmth along with an acute awareness of his every move.

  His pants hit the floor. A moment later, he did, too, settling into his makeshift bed.

  Closing her eyes, she listened to him breathing, and felt her tense muscles slowly begin to relax.

  Halfway between wakefulness and sleep, she realized that it wasn’t the fact that she wasn’t alone that she found comforting.

  It was Finn.

  He made her feel safe.

  * * *

  FINN WAITED until the soft sounds of Riley’s breathing told him that she was asleep. Then, being careful not to wake her, he got up, put his pants back on, grabbed his shirt and shrugged into that, too, tucked his gun into the back of his waistband, and left the room. He had his cell phone with him, among other necessary things, and used it to call Bax as he went. So he was slightly impatient as he waited for his temporary partner to haul his ass out of bed and answer his soft tap on the door, which Bax finally did by pulling it open with an alarmed “Oh, shit, what now?”

  Going into Bax’s room would have meant leaving the door to his own room vulnerable, and Riley unprotected—not that he expected her to be attacked while in his company, but just in case. Thus he kept one eye on the hallway as he stood in the open doorway to Bax’s room and brought him up to speed. As Finn recounted the night’s events, he noted that Bax slept in a full set of pale blue cotton pajamas; he apparently liked to leave the TV on mute while he slept, and, judging by the series of yawns that he kept apologizing for, he had a far harder time coming fully awake than Finn did. None of these observations were unexpected, and none of them gave him any reason to change his mind about what he wanted from Bax. Trusting came hard to him, but under these limited circumstances he was prepared to trust Bax. To get done what he needed to get done, Finn had little choice. He wasn’t about to leave Riley, and he couldn’t make the arrangements that needed to be made while in her company.

  “I want you to head up to Mack Alford”—referring to the medium-­security correctional center in Stringtown, Oklahoma, where George Cowan was incarcerated—“and set up a visit for Riley with George,” Finn said. “Anytime within regular visiting hours. I don’t want this to go ringing alarm bells anywhere. Make arrangements for a private area for them to meet in, and get some surveillance in there.”

  Bax blinked at him. “But—it’s a prison. It’ll already have surveillance.”

  “Yeah. This is private surveillance. Nobody’s going to see it but us.” Finn outlined what he needed Bax to do. “I want to have eyes and ears on everything Riley and George say and do. Audio and video. Got it?”

  Bax nodded. “Uh—does this mean you don’t trust her?” The question sounded almost timid.

  “I don’t trust anybody,” Finn replied with perfect honesty. “Except, right now, you. I’m trusting you to do this, and not to fuck it up.”

  “I can get it done.” Bax sounded resolute.

  “I never doubted it.” He gave Bax a level look. “I’m assuming that since you just filed your report with your boss, you won’t need to file again for a few days. As in, after this prison visit’s over and we get a chance to see what’s what. Am I right?”

  “I’m supposed to report everything you do.” Bax looked unhappy. “That’s my job.”

  “I know. And you can report it, just not right away. That work for you?”

  “Yeah,” Bax said. Then he nodded, and added more firmly, “That works.”

  “Look at it this way: your assignment is to help me find the money. That’s exactly what you’ll be doing.” Up until this point, Finn had humored the joint agency arrangement that had the FBI (Bax) monitoring his every move (a lack of trust between government agencies was pretty much par for the course), but now he needed to operate on his own. Just in case, as his gut kept telling him, Riley was more involved with the missing money than anybody in officialdom knew. If she was, he didn’t know what he was going to do, but he did know he wanted to get a solid understanding of the situation before he played a part in throwing her to the wolves. That particular motive, though, wasn’t something he was prepared to share with Bax, or anybody else. If, later, his playing his cards close to his vest in this way proved to be a problem higher up the food chain, he could always say that he’d been worried about leaks. Everybody in the Alphabet Kingdom was always worried about leaks: it was the excuse that kept on excusing.

  “I will be, won’t I?” Bax sounded relieved. Then he frowned. “Who gets the car?”

  “I do,” Finn said. “You take a taxi to the airport and get a rental. Get started right now, and you should be on the road to Stringtown within the hour. We’ll probably be about five to six hours behind you.” Finn reached into his pocket and drew out a burner phone—he kept a collection in his suitcase for precisely this type of situation—and handed it to Bax. “When everything’s set, use this phone to call me and let me know. Don’t use your regular phone.” Which the Bureau might very well have somebody monitoring. “Got it?”

  Bax nodded. “Got it.”

  “Good man.” Finn clapped him on the shoulder in the kind of gosh-we’re-buds gesture he knew Bax could relate to, which seemed to please him.

  “I’m on it,” Bax said again as he closed the door. Finn headed back to his own room.

  Where he got to lie down on the floor and, instead of falling instantly asleep as he’d trained himself to do, tried to keep his mind off how much he wanted to crawl into bed with the woman he suspected of lying to him with practically every word she uttered.

  It didn’t help that, when he’d opened the door to reenter his room, the wedge of light from the hall had fallen squarely across the bed.

  Riley must have gotten too warm, because she’d kicked off the covers. Sound asleep, she was lying on her stomach with his T-shirt hiked up around her waist. The sight of her sweet, sexy ass in nothing but a pair of tiny pink panties hit him like a lightning bolt to the crotch.

  After years spent in the highly dangerous, highly stressful world of an undercover operative, he’d learned the art of snatching a few hours’ sleep, whenever, wherever, and however he could. Lots of times, he’d figured he wouldn’t live out the next twenty-four hours, and still he’d slept like a baby. Right now, though, sleep proved to be beyond him. Why? Because he was tormented by images of a truly world-class ass in a pair of itty-­bitty, silky pink panties every time he closed his eyes.

  — CHAPTER —

  TWENTY

  When the alarm went off on her phone, Riley sat bolt upright, startled awake. She was groggy, and it took her a moment to assimilate her surroundings: big, rumpled bed, not hers; gloomy, unattractive room, also not hers.

  A tall, buff guy wearing nothing but a white towel hitched around his waist appearing along with a puff of steam in the lighted bathroom doorway to frown at her.

  Definitely not hers.

  Finn.

  She blinked at him, bemused. Then, grabbing for her phone, which was chiming insistently from the night table beside the bed, she shut the sound off.

  Last night, before falling asleep, she’d set her alarm for 6:30 a.m. It was, she confirmed with a glance at her phone, a few minutes past that time.

  Emma. The events of the previous night came crashing down on her.

  I have to tell Margaret.

  Her stomach knotted. She took a quick, pained breath, drawing the air in through her teeth.

  “You snore,” Finn said. Th
ere was no identifiable expression on his face as his eyes ran over her.

  The covers were bunched somewhere south of her feet: she must have kicked them off during the night. His too-big T-shirt had twisted around her as she slept. A downward glance told her that the white cotton hugged her breasts closely, molding the soft curves to the point where the jut of her nipples was clearly visible against the fabric. The hem was hiked up above the top of her thighs, giving him an unimpeded view of her bare legs and, she feared, even a peek at her panties.

  “I do not.” Adjusting the tee with a quick tug, she scooted off the bed. Then she remembered the screwdriver, and frowned. Against all odds, once she’d fallen asleep she’d slept like the dead. So, maybe—“Did I?”

  “Like a chain saw.”

  “If I did, it was the vodka. So you can just blame yourself,” she retorted, keeping her composure even as the intimacy of the situation threatened to render her tongue-tied. Or maybe it was the sight of Finn in a towel: heavily muscled shoulders, brawny arms, a wide, honed chest above a noticeable six-pack. A nice wedge of black chest hair that narrowed down to a slim line that disappeared beneath the towel that rode low on his lean hips. Innie belly button. Long, strong legs. Bare feet.

  Her pulse was picking up the pace, Riley realized. And her breasts were tightening and swelling against the fabric and her body was quickening.

  It occurred to her that neither of them was saying anything, and her eyes flew to his face to find that he was looking at her breasts.

  He must have felt the weight of her gaze, because his eyes lifted to meet hers.

  In that brief, unguarded moment, his eyes gleamed with unmistakable sexual intent. As she recognized that, her heart beat faster. Unexpected little darts of excitement raced through her bloodstream.