Hard to Hold (3 page)

“Here, let me have a go.” The door opened smoothly on his first attempt. He cocked
an eyebrow and stepped back so she could lead the way.

She shot him an irritated look as she passed. “Now I’m going to have to change the
code again… And the fire department thinks it was arson.”

If his blood had chilled at the realization Anna
could
be frightened, that little snippet of information turned it to ice. With slow precision,
Nick fitted the heavy, studded door back into its stainless-steel frame and turned.
“What the hell do you mean, arson?”

“If you want a coffee, you’ll have to follow me.” She disappeared through a wide doorway
into what was presumably her kitchen.

This was Anna at her most evasive. Pretending nothing was wrong, that if she just
carried on as normal, everything would work out fine. She’d make him fence, parrying
his every advance with a lunge and a few strikes of her own. Anything to deflect attention
away from the core issue of someone intending her harm.

Not wanting his simmering temper to rise to the boil, he took a moment to scan her
home. A home that, had things been different, had he been different, they would have
shared.

Her love of color certainly hadn’t dimmed. Wild abstracts clashed brightly enough
to require the use of sunglasses. Her sofas, one bloodred, the other hot orange, shouldn’t
have worked but did. And the rest of the place was just as untidy. Magazines threatened
to topple from the antique leather chest she’d adopted as a coffee table; sheets of
newspaper spat their guts on the floor. A forest of bonsai—those she hadn’t managed
to kill with her interpretive clipping—lined the wooden floorboards beneath the sweeping
wall of windows, uncurtained and an open invitation to any pervert who might wish
to spy.

Gritting his teeth, he crossed the wide, open space in the direction of her voice—she
was humming out of tune, which didn’t seem to bother her—and stopped in the double
doorway of the shiniest space-age kitchen he’d ever seen.

He frowned. Anna didn’t cook. Though a genius with computers, she barely knew how
to program a microwave. What the hell did she need a high-grade facility like this
for?

“And the mighty Nick Marshall hit the deck in a dead faint.”

She was laughing at him. Another smoke-and-mirrors tactic he remembered all too well.
“I asked you a question, Anna. What do you mean by arson?”

She closed the gap between them, a steaming mug in her hand, and set it on the granite
counter in front of him before retreating. “I assume you still take it black, no sugar.”

The aroma was strong enough to twitch his nostrils. “Aaannaaa.”

“Okay. Okay. Though I’d have thought you of all people would understand the legal
definition of arson. It’s when a fire is started with the intention of—”

“I know what it means, damn it. What I want to know is what the fire department found
to make them think the fire was deliberately set.”

He could sense she didn’t want to tell him. That her speed-of-light mind was fast-forwarding
through any number of possible lies to distract him. The smoky lavender depths of
her eyes were a dead giveaway. “Goddamnit, Anna.”

“Stop growling my name like that. You know I don’t respond well to reprimand. Do you
remember the time I—?”

“Just. Tell. Me.”

“Fine. They found the remains of some kind of device.”

He choked on a mouthful of coffee. “Good God! A bloody bomb.”

“No! I knew you’d overreact. Some kind of remote-ignition thing to start the fire,
and don’t look at me like that. I have a fire-alarm system that is second to none,
so the damage was confined to the exterior stairs. Anyway, I suspect the intention
was to scare rather than to harm.”

He needed her to focus on him, not some damned imaginary crumbs she was pretending
to brush into her cupped palm. He set his coffee mug on the side to keep from launching
it through the wide window at the end of the kitchen, just to get her attention. “Did
it work?”

Her back still to him, she tossed him a cheeky grin across her shoulder. “What do
you think?”

He wasn’t fooled by her bravado, not for a second. Didn’t she know her eyes dulled
to the color of storm clouds when she was anxious? Had he ever told her?

He risked stepping closer. “I think you’re scared but just about irresponsible enough
to believe you are invincible and can handle this on your own. What else has happened,
Anna?”

She turned to face him, and a frown immediately creased her brow. Clearly she was
less than happy at him closing the gap between them. He didn’t give a shit. Anna was
in trouble, and she needed to admit it.

“Well, Will got all bent out of shape when some boy racer tried to run me off the
road… And then someone sent me pizza. I couldn’t eat it because of the anchovies,
but Sid nibbled and was pretty sick. I thought we were going to lose him.”

He pinched the top of his nose and dropped his eyelids for a moment. Jesus, how could
he have forgotten? Talking to Anna was like being catapulted into a parallel universe
where nothing made sense. “Who the hell is Sid?”

“The office cat. The vet said he might have ingested some kind of poison. And before
you ask, no, Will doesn’t know, either about the pizza or the fire, but the police
do. Which reminds me. I’ve a little confession to make, and I don’t think you’re going
to like it.”

His eyes snapped open. “What have you done?”

She rubbed carelessly at her arms, seemingly chilled despite it being a heavy, humid
day. “Well, I had to give them a list of known associates who I may have upset in
the past. Your name was on it.”

Fuck. His boss, the Commander of British Intelligence, was going to love that. “You
accused me of trying to kill you?”

“No, of course not.”

He drummed his fingers on the counter. “Give me a time frame, Anna.”

“That was a fortnight ago.”

Odd. “I haven’t had a visit, which I should have by now.”

Her hands fluttered in the air, as if searching for answers. “They’ve probably been
busy.”

“That long a list, was it?”

“Don’t be nasty…but yes, it was. I may be a reformed activist now, but some people
have extremely long memories and are very unforgiving. You’re one of them. And you
may as well know the police have asked for a second list, specifically naming any
disgruntled lovers I may have had.

“Terrific, now I’ll make it onto both lists and when they cross-reference—”

“I’ve refused to give them that particular list. I prefer to keep my personal life
private,” she interrupted quickly.

Thank God for that. “Pissing someone off enough for them to try to kill you overrides
any desire for privacy. If you don’t want to give the police the list, then give it
to me. I’ll do some checking.”

“I’m still working on it.”

And the metaphorical knife she’d lodged in his gut twisted again.

…

It didn’t bode well for anyone when Nick vibrated like that. Most wouldn’t even detect
the miniscule disturbance to the air, but Anna had always been hypersensitive to his
moods.

“If a list of your former, disgruntled lovers needs that much thought—”

She raised her hand, palm vertical as if to halt his flow. “Don’t go there, Nick.
You don’t have the right.” She wasn’t about to share with him the fact that his was
the only name to make it onto the second list.

Unsurprisingly, likely due to the warning edge in her voice, he moved the conversation
to slightly more neutral ground. “I’ve watched the CCTV footage of your fall. It’s
a moot point as to whether you were pushed.”

“Well, I sure didn’t trip.”

“You were wearing the most ridiculous stilettos.”

She seized the opportunity provided by his censorious comment to take shelter. Shoes,
after all, were a subject on which she was an expert. The numerous pairs choking every
one of her many closets bore testimony to that. “I know, and they’re ruined. Pity,
they were quite unique. Vintage—”

“Do you think you can focus for one minute?”

Pretending nonchalance was proving too hard, so she dropped the act. “No. I don’t
want to. I don’t much like the idea of someone in a snit with me.”

“An alleged poisoning, a fire, and last night’s
possible
attempt to break your neck are a little more serious than a snit.”

“I know, but I’m hormonal, so I’m having difficulty thinking straight.” Now why did
she have to go and let
that
slip? Nerves tauter than piano wire, she waited for him to call her on it, easing
free a relieved breath when he held his silence. But she wished he wouldn’t crease
his brow like that. It meant he was thinking, which made him dangerous.

“What do you mean you’re hormonal? You never were before.”

Busted!

She should have known better than to hope her slip of the tongue would escape his
notice. But that didn’t mean she had to share the intimate workings of her body with
him. He’d given up that privilege five years ago.

She forced what she hoped was a casual laugh. “Look, I don’t need your prying or your
help. I’m already on first-name terms with half the detectives at the local precinct;
I’ve even dated a few of them.”

“I’m not interested in the finer details of your love life, Anna.”

Yeah, he was. Which was why she’d deliberately dropped that nugget of information.
Nick Marshall was fiercely possessive. Always had been. It was his flash point. No
one got to take away what was his. Even if he didn’t want it anymore. He’d box it
up, lock it down, store it somewhere cold and dark. She should know. That’s what he’d
tried to do to her.

And she’d just lit his fuse deliberately. To get him to leave. The look he gave her
was arctic.

“I’d forgotten how irritatingly blasé you can be about the chaos you wreak.”

Okay, he wasn’t moving. She could huff at her bangs and fiddle with the ragged ends
of her short black bob all she wanted, Nick wasn’t going anywhere without full disclosure.
Time to give him more information so he’d have a bone to chew on and might finally
leave her alone. “I knew you’d find a way to make this my fault. I didn’t ask to become
some schizophrenic’s obsession.”

He drew his strong brows together in thought, the black-ops agent taking over.
Yes
. “What do you mean by schizophrenic?”

She reached for a royal-blue presentation box that had been tucked away in a corner
of the counter, under a pile of junk mail, and pushed it toward him. “First, he sends
me flowers—always yellow roses which, as you know, I hate—and other extravagant gifts.
Then he turns all grim reaper on me, and now we’re back to gifts again.”

He raised the lid, his eyebrows soaring when he registered the probable cost of the
delicate, retro, platinum Rolex. He didn’t say a word as he lifted it clear, his long
fingers tan against the impossibly pale precious metal, and flipped it to see the
back of the casing.

With little she could do about the speed of blood chasing through her veins, she held
her breath instead.

“Why the hell’s it got ‘Thank you’ engraved on the back?

“Beats me.” She shrugged, snatching back the timepiece and slamming home the lid of
the box. She could just imagine the nasty suspicions dirtying Nick’s mind. “And that’s
all you’re getting. You can be irrational when it comes to someone else trespassing
on what you mistakenly consider your territory.”

“Consider yourself safe then. I gave up any claim over you long ago, and I’m not looking
to restake one.”

“Excellent, because I don’t need two dysfunctional beings messing up my life.”

Just as in the old days, the combustion was appallingly instant. He’d bruise, she’d
scratch right back, leaving the air heavy with waves of hot resentment, swollen with
angry accusation and guilt.

She recognized the familiar danger, and judging by the blue glitter in his eyes, so
did he. Once, he’d have had her up against a wall by now, his hands tearing at her
clothes. Hers at his. Tempestuous makeup sex that had never solved a damned one of
their issues.

They stared at each other in the long, drawn-out silence, her afraid to breathe—him
too, judging by the absolute stillness of his chest, the way his knuckles whitened
as his long fingers curled his mug more tightly. Long, talented fingers that had once
danced across her skin. Seeking, finding, playing, little wild fires igniting as he
trailed his deliberately erratic path. Fingers so fiendishly clever they’d teased
her inside and out, until she’d lost all sense of time and self and hadn’t cared.

She clasped her thighs together and then, swallowing thickly, stepped back a pace,
no longer chilled but rather seared bone deep.

“Looks like some things never change,” he said softly. “You got yourself back under
control yet, Anna?”

Her cheeks heated as if slapped. “Go to hell, Marshall.”

“Already there, and I prefer Nick. We had an agreement, remember. Christian names
only. Our stand against the anonymity of that god-awful foster system.”

Whether he’d intended it or not, his words tossed her into the past. Suddenly, they
were Nick and Anna of old again, two discarded kids defiant against a cold and uncaring
world, naively believing that together, they alone held the power to fight back.

It was a relief to laugh, even shakily. Some of the stiffness ebbed from her spine.
She was ready to bet a part of his anatomy wasn’t giving up the fight quite so easily.

Oh, God, he’d caught her furtive glance, and he wasn’t the slighted bit disconcerted
by his telltale bulge. Heat slapped at her cheeks as he slow-grinned at her.

Flustered, she hooked back into the relative safety of idle banter. “I hadn’t forgotten.
Although when we were kids, I once spent a week trying to persuade everyone that in
future I was to be called Grace. You undermined my campaign.”

“Anna Key suited you. You broke every rule, leaving chaos and anarchy in your wake.
God, it drove those social workers insane. How many foster homes did you get us chucked
out of?”