Damp, bracing night air heavy with the scent of the woods enveloped her. She stepped outside and went to stand at the balcony railing. Shoulder-high wooden partitions separated her from the rooms on either side, but she could see that no light came from either of them. Apparently Mack was not having any trouble sleeping.
Lucky Mack.
Or was he lying awake in bed, staring at the ceiling as she had been doing until a short time ago?
Don’t think about Fantasy Man in bed. Your nerves can’t take the additional stimulation.
She touched the wet railing with the tip of one finger. It was so quiet here in the rain-drenched redwoods. Hard to believe that the high-tech commercial wonderland that was Silicon Valley lay within commuting distance, assuming that one was prepared to commute on narrow mountain roads.
A shiver of awareness went through her. She sensed Mack’s presence just before he spoke out of the darkness to her left.
“What’s the matter?” he said. “Couldn’t sleep?”
His question settled one issue—Mack was not in bed. He was standing in the dense shadow on the other side of the partition. She wondered how long he had been out here gazing into the wet night.
His hands were thrust deep into the pockets of a black windbreaker. He was a compelling if enigmatic figure, his expression unreadable in the darkness. Awareness went through her in a flash of invisible lightning that left her strangely breathless. It was as if she found herself poised at the top of a very high Ferris wheel.
She clutched the robe more securely at her throat and tried not to think in terms of fantasy and gender. They were business associates. He was her employer. There were rules of engagement to be observed, especially in view of the fact that she wanted to work for him again in the future. As often as possible.
“You okay?” he asked.
She could hear the genuine concern in his voice. She realized she had not answered his question.
“Fine. Great. No problem,” she said quickly, trying to sound casual. What was a little danger, mayhem and a near-death experience on the job? All in a day’s work in the art consulting business. She was a professional. “Just having a little trouble getting to sleep. Thought some night air might help.”
“I’m not surprised. I thought you were handling things a little too coolly earlier this evening. Wondered when it would hit you.”
Irritation surged through her. She was cool, damn it. She wasn’t even having a panic attack although she had every right to one under the circumstances.
“Okay, so walking into a burglary-in-progress is not how I spend most of my evenings,” she said brusquely. “But I hear that a change of pace now and then is good for you.” She remembered the image of light glinting on a very old sword, and shuddered. “Besides, you did all the heavy lifting.”
“You gave me a hell of a scare tonight.”
She froze, uncomprehending, at the tone. She could have sworn that he was quietly furious. But that made no sense. Why should he be mad at her? She was the one who had reason to be annoyed.
Her consulting instincts took over. This was a client, she reminded herself. She was going for repeat business here. Besides, they had both been under a lot of stress this evening. Allowances had to be made.
“I got a pretty good scare myself,” she said, deliberately choosing a more diplomatic note. “And it got even worse when I realized you were going to do a lot more than just send the van rolling backward down the drive. I couldn’t believe it when I saw you holding the point of that blade to that man’s throat.”
“Creating a distraction with the van wasn’t going to solve the problem.”
His voice was the temperature of ice now. It occurred to her for the first time that maybe he was the one in danger of having a panic attack. She took a step closer to the partition and peered at his face, trying to catch a glimpse of his expression.
“Are you okay?” she asked gently.
“Depends how you define okay.”
“We’ve both had a difficult evening.”
“You think?”
She did not like the cold amusement in his voice. It sounded as though he were exerting enormous self-control. She knew the feeling. She hesitated a second and then decided to take the plunge. This was Fantasy Man, after all. He had quite possibly saved her life tonight. He had certainly prevented the theft of a fortune in old armor. Mack deserved a reward. She braced herself for the supreme sacrifice.
“I have a pill in my key chain case,” she said. “I keep it handy for emergencies. It’s for acute anxiety attacks. You can have it if you need it.” She tried not to think about the long trip home tomorrow without her small security blanket in her purse.
There was a short pause.
“Thanks,” he said finally. “Very generous of you. But I found one of those little miniature bottles of whiskey in the mini-bar. I think it will do the trick.”
“Oh, good.” She tried to conceal her relief.
There was a beat of silence.
“Do you have to use the pills frequently?” he asked.
“No. But I have a tendency toward panic attacks. Everyone says I inherited it from my aunt’s side of the family, but as far as I know she and I are the only ones who suffer from them.”
“Have you always had trouble with the attacks?”
“They started when I was in college.” She gripped her lapels more tightly. “But I think they stem from something that happened when I was fourteen. There was an…accident. I nearly drowned. Later, when I started getting the panic attacks, the feeling reminded me of how I felt when it happened.”
“You use the pills often?”
“No. Not anymore. Not for ages.” She listened to her own words with mounting horror. The conversation had taken a bad turn. By now Mack had probably concluded that she was nothing but a twitchy bundle of nerves—unstable, unsteady and unreliable. Not a terrific professional image. Visions of future consulting jobs began to fade rapidly. “I haven’t had a serious problem for a long time. Years, in fact.”
“How many years?”
If she didn’t get the topic changed in a hurry, she was going to get a real panic attack tonight after all.
“At least two,” she said, trying to sound casual and unconcerned. “Three, actually.” Three was pushing it a bit but in another couple of months it would be a full three years since the last severe attack. “Actually, it’s been so long, I can hardly recall the last time I had a problem.” Mentally, she crossed her fingers behind her back. “Regular yoga and deep breathing do the trick. I just keep the pill handy for an extreme emergency.”
“I see.”
Definitely time to redirect the focus of this conversation, she decided.
“What you did at Ambrose’s cabin tonight,” she said. “That was amazing. I assume from the way you dealt with those two thugs that this is not the first time you’ve been in that sort of situation?”
There was a small pause. She got the impression that Mack was considering his words carefully. Apparently the fact that they had shared a major bonding experience tonight did not mean that he suddenly wanted her to know his life history.
“My father was career military,” he said finally. “I got married in college and needed a job in a hurry so I followed in his footsteps for a few years. When I got out I went to work for a company that did security consulting for corporations. One way or another I’ve spent a fair amount of time around guns or people who carried them.”
“I see.”
She digested that news cautiously. It certainly cast a whole new light on Mack Easton. She came from the world of art and until tonight she had assumed that he also came from that same realm. She had understood from their first telephone conversation that he was different from the other men she had known well in her life, but she had not fully comprehended just how different.
“How did you end up in the business of tracing lost and stolen art?” she asked.
“After my wife died
, I decided to get into a line of work that involved fewer guns.”
“I see. I’m sorry, I hadn’t realized. When did you lose your wife?”
“Six years ago.”
The quiet acceptance of loss in his voice told her everything she might have wanted to know about his marriage. He had loved his wife. He had come to terms with grief.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, very gently this time.
Silence dripped as steadily as the rain for a time.
“You know,” Mack said after a while, “I can’t even remember the last time a recovery job went south the way this one did tonight.”
He sounded thoroughly disgusted. She sighed inwardly. So much for the prospects of future work for Lost and Found. Without any real hope of altering his opinion of her performance, she sought some mitigating circumstances.
“It was a highly unusual situation,” she pointed out. “Not exactly a routine assignment.”
“You failed to follow procedure. You should have called me as soon as you traced the helmet to Vandyke.”
“Wait a minute, that’s not fair. I admit things went bad, but it wasn’t my fault. I just flew in to examine the helmet. Ambrose had described it to me over the phone, but with old armor, you have to take a close look. How was I to know those two had planned a robbery?”
“You should have kept me in the loop.”
“Give me a break, I didn’t even know if it was the missing piece. I was just doing my job as a consultant, following up a lead.”
“That’s no excuse. I don’t pay you to take risks. I expect my freelance consultants to exercise good judgment and common sense and to stay within the boundaries of their expertise. I thought I made it clear when I hired you the first time that your job is to trace rumors and leads. I arrange for recovery.”
He really was annoyed. A cold sensation settled over her.
“Are you telling me that I’m fired?” she asked.
“I’m thinking about it.”
Not a certainty yet. She took a deep breath. It wasn’t much, but she would cling to the tiny glimmer of hope.
“The situation that developed tonight is highly unlikely to ever occur again,” she said briskly.
“Yeah?”
“In fact, I can practically guarantee that it won’t.”
“Is that so?”
“Next time, I’ll keep you fully apprised,” she vowed. “There won’t be any more screw-ups.”
Mack did not respond.
“I’ll send you daily progress reports,” she assured him. “Via e-mail so you’ll get them in a timely fashion.”
“Hmm.”
He was weakening. She was almost sure of it.
“I’ll institute my own internal procedures,” she continued earnestly.
“Procedures?”
“I’ll make sure you know the exact status of any trace job I’m working on, twenty-four hours a day. That way you can ask questions or give instructions at any point.”
More silence. She held her breath.
“I take it you like working for Lost and Found?” he finally asked neutrally.
“Very much,” she said quickly. “I realized after that first job that I did for you, the one involving the ewer from that Spanish monastery, that I wanted to do more trace work. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy consulting for my clients who want to acquire good pieces. But when you think about it, the Lost and Found work is a natural extension of my business. It takes advantage of my skills in a way that is extremely interesting. Fascinating, in fact.”
“I see. You’re in it for the thrill, is that it?”
“The challenge,” she said. “I’m in it for the challenge.”
“Uh-huh.”
She waited, hardly daring to move.
“I don’t want any more incidents like the one tonight,” he warned.
He was weakening.
“As I said, I’ll institute my own additional procedures to keep you fully informed.”
He brooded on that. Mentally she drew up and designed a variety of professional-looking forms that she could use to transmit reports.
“All right,” Mack said, finally. “We’ll try it again. I’ll give you a call the next time I get something in the decorative arts.”
She allowed herself to relax. “Thanks. I really appreciate this. You won’t regret it.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Absolutely. Come on, Mack, you have to admit that I’m good at what I do. I’ve turned up all three of the missing objects you sent me after. Four, counting the helmet.”
“Can’t argue with that.”
“I’ve got good instincts for this kind of work.”
“Good instincts,” he agreed dryly. “And good contacts.”
She shrugged. “The art world is a small one and I was raised in it from the cradle. I can pull in information from a variety of sources that you can’t reach with your computer program.”
“You don’t have to sell me on your ability to do the job. I already know you’ve got a flair for it.”
She gazed steadily at the shadowed outline of his face. Best to change the subject again, she decided. “Well, now that we’ve settled my employment status, there’s something else we should discuss.”
“What’s that?”
“I haven’t thanked you for what you did tonight,” she said quietly. “I’m not sure how to do it. In fact, I don’t even know how to begin.”
“Forget it,” he growled. “It’s company policy at Lost and Found to keep an eye on employees.”
“I see.” She thought about that. “How did you know where I was tonight?”
“Called your assistant.”
“Oh.” Cady nodded. “Smart. Well, would you mind if I gushed with gratitude just a little? Real live knights, with or without the armor, are rare these days.”
“I said forget it.”
Exasperated, she moved to stand next to the partition. She went still when she realized how close he was. Right there. Mere inches away. Close enough for her to feel the heat of his body. Close enough to see that he wasn’t wearing his glasses. Close enough to make her catch her breath.
“Thanks anyway,” she whispered.
He looked at her for what seemed like an eternity. With a flash of womanly intuition, she knew that he was going to kiss her.
All she had to do was step back and let the thin partition do its job. But why should she? she wondered. This was Fantasy Man and they were both single. And he had saved her life, probably.
My hero, she thought. The genuine article.
She did not retreat. He took his hands out of the pockets of his windbreaker very slowly, giving her plenty of time to change her mind. But she knew that she was not going to change it. She would not change anything about this moment, not for the world.
He reached over the top of the partition, caught her head between his palms and kissed her.
Fantasy Man.
His hands were big. She could feel the strength in them. It sent a delicious shock wave through her. Yet he cradled her face as if she were a piece of eighteenth-century Sevres porcelain. His mouth closed over hers, deliberate, persuasive—hungry. His fingers tightened ever so slightly. She could feel the power and the desire in him.
The rush took her completely by surprise, overwhelming her. It was as if her previous experience in this department had consisted of a few encounters with some attractive fakes and a handful of nice forgeries, but at long last she was dealing with an original creation.
So maybe this wasn’t the smartest thing in the world. Still, where was the harm? She could handle it. True, she hadn’t had much practice in a while because her social life had been in cold storage lately, but she wasn’t going to lose her grip on reality just because Mack was kissing her. She was in full control here.
Mack slanted his mouth more heavily across hers, deepening the kiss. Heat pooled heavily in her lower body. It was probably a good thing that the partition was complicat
ing matters, she thought. Otherwise, she would have been sorely tempted to wrap herself around him. Might have made a complete fool out of herself.
A kiss was one thing. Sleeping with a client was something else again. Definitely not good business policy.
Mack groaned softly. His hands fell away from her face. He raised his head.
It was all ending too soon.
She opened her eyes and saw that Mack was in motion. He had one foot on the lower crosspiece of the railing and was reaching for the top of the partition with his hand. In the next second he was over the top, vaulting lightly down onto her side of the balcony.
He caught her by the shoulders, pulled her into his arms and kissed her again. This time there was no partition between them.
Rules were made to be broken.
She put her arms around his neck. The moisture in the air had dampened his hair and his windbreaker, but that hardly mattered. He was hot enough to dry the rain off both of them. He was holding her so snugly against him that she could hardly breathe. That didn’t matter either. Nothing mattered except getting as close as possible.
The intensity of her excitement blindsided her. Desire, fierce and relentless and thrilling, flooded her senses. She gripped his shoulders hard.
“Mack.”
He slid one hand down her back to her upper leg, gripped and lifted her up against him. Her robe fell open. She gasped at the sudden deepening of the intimate physical contact and clung to him more fiercely.
“I’ve been thinking about doing this for hours,” he muttered.
“Me too.”
“No wonder neither of us could sleep.”
He picked her up in his arms and shifted his mouth to her throat. She felt the night whirl around her. She realized that he was crossing the balcony to the sliding glass door.
“Open it,” he breathed when he reached the barrier.
She groped for the handle and managed to haul the door aside. He carried her into the deeper shadows of the room.
By the time he fell with her in his arms down onto the rumpled sheets, she was wild and breathless and more excited than she had ever been in her life. A great, glorious urgency consumed her.
She rolled with him across the broad bed, frantic and eager and a little delirious. He fought her for the embrace, using his weight to pin her down at last. When she came to rest he was on top of her, one leg between her thighs. The robe had come undone completely in the passionate scuffle, leaving her sheathed only in the thin nightgown.