Moving Target (12 page)

“Niall is a lot bigger than you,” Erik said, “and I had to pack him out of the Santa Rosa Mountains once.”

“Niall?”

“Later. Or do you really want to exchange life histories while we cling to this rock pile by my fingernails?”

Without warning the granite beneath Erik’s left foot crumbled. His foot slid, searched, but didn’t find solid ground. He jammed his hands into cracks and crevices, clenched his fingers into fists, pinned Serena hard with his hips, and waited.

Nothing else gave way.

He probed cautiously with his left foot until he found a crevice that supported his weight. When he was secure again, he silently congratulated himself on taking the time to change his shoes before he followed the faint trail he had picked up. On rocks like this, city loafers were about as useful as Rollerblades.

“Are you all right?” Serena asked, shaken.

“Yes.”

She stared at the big fists that were wedged into rough cracks in the wall. “That looks uncomfortable.”

“It is. But it beats the hell out of falling. Hold still while I change my grip.”

He removed first one hand, then the other from the crevices, and flexed his fingers. Some of the skin smarted and burned. He had expected that. Blood welled from several cuts, but not enough to interfere with getting a secure grip. Slowly, confidently, he shifted his weight so that he could hold her safely against the rock without crushing her.

For Serena, the intimacy of his body moving against her was unnerving. She kept her mind off it by watching while he selected two more handholds. There was nothing random in his choices, nor in the muscle and sinew that flexed to take the new load.

“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” she asked.

“Scared a woman so much that she nearly killed herself trying to get away from me? No, this is a first.”

She smiled despite the residue of fear and adrenaline lighting up her blood. “I meant climbing rocks.”

“It’s my hobby. But usually I’m dressed for the occasion.”

For the first time she noticed the soft maroon cloth that was rolled up to his elbows. Expensive fabric from the look of it, but not as fine-grained and supple as the golden masculine skin that was only inches from her face. Sun-bleached blond hair gleamed along his arm. Blood trickled down the back of his hand.

“You’re hurt!”

“What?” He glanced at the trivial cut and wished he knew Serena well enough to ask her to kiss it better. From where he was, her mouth looked capable of healing, among other things. Much more interesting things. “That’s not even big enough to call an ‘oww-ee.’ “

She laughed, surprising both of them.

Erik let out a silent breath. He liked the feeling of her moving against his hips. He liked it way too much. If he didn’t start thinking about something else, he would be pole-vaulting down the damned cliff.

“Do you want to go up or down from here?” he asked almost roughly.

“Up is easier.”

“I know. I just wasn’t sure if you did. Ready?”

“Wait. Let me test my footing.”

Silently he endured some more of her subtle wiggling while she put weight on first one foot, then the other.

She slipped.

Reflexively he pinned her against the wall again with his hips.

“Slow is better,” he said.

“I’m trying.”

“Very trying,” he said through his teeth. She wasn’t meaning to, but her little movements had made him hard.

“If you hadn’t come up the wall like Spiderman with his feet on fire and scared me to—” she began.

“As my friend Dana would say,” Erik cut in, “ ‘Shut it.’ You can chew me out later.”

“Is that a promise?” she retorted.

“Yeah. Right after you thank me. Guess which one I’m looking forward to?”

As Serena moved to find a better position, she felt the unmistakable hardness of an aroused male pressing into the cleft of her buttocks. Her breath came in a strangled gasp.

“Don’t panic,” he said neutrally. “It’s a simple physiological reflex. It will go away as soon as your tight little butt stops rubbing against my crotch.”

“Give me more room and it won’t be a problem,” she shot back.

He bit back some hot words and eased away from her. This time she managed to stay upright without slipping. His mind was grateful. His dick wasn’t.

“All right?” he asked.

“Fabulous,” she said sarcastically. “I can finally stop licking the cliff.”

He couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t get him in more trouble than he already was. He eased farther away from her, but not so far that he couldn’t grab her if she slipped again.

Without a word she began climbing up the jumbled rock face. Now that she wasn’t trying to flee, she could choose her route for safety rather than speed. She went up with only a few minor slips and one fast scramble.

He followed. Rock climbing with a major woody was something he had never tried before. He would be happy if he never did it again. He glanced into the small cave as he went past it. All he saw was an old, weathered broomstick. She hadn’t left anything else behind—pages from the Book of the Learned, for instance.

As soon as Serena gained the top, she glanced toward the cabin. If she ran, she could beat him to her car. Then she remembered his speed coming up the ragged jumble of rocks and decided that he would likely catch her before she got halfway there.

In any case, she had to admit that if Erik North wanted her dead, he was going about it in an odd way.

All the same, she watched him with wary violet eyes as he topped the cliff in a coordinated rush. He could be Santa Claus and she still wouldn’t be happy about being alone in the desert with a strange man, no matter how hauntingly familiar he was.

I know him, dammit. I’m sure of it.

Maybe she had seen him in one of those ads for extreme outdoor equipment, the kind only strong, fit, and completely crazed people used.

As he walked up to her, she saw that he was even bigger than she thought, well over six feet. He moved like an athlete. His hair was every color of blond from flax to bronze. His eyes were as clear and tawny as an eagle’s. And as measuring.

She had seen those eyes before.

Erik noted the tension in Serena’s body and wondered if it was just a woman’s normal wariness at being alone with a stranger or if it was the nervousness of a crook who had a lot to hide. He didn’t like the latter idea but he had to keep it in mind.

No matter how much he wanted the pages to be real, Warrick had seen the originals and pronounced them fakes. Erik would be a fool to dismiss that appraisal simply because he had an emotional attachment to the Book of the Learned.

“Okay,” he said, looking into her wary eyes. “Where do we go from here?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“Why you followed me.”

E
rik stared at Serena. “What makes you think I followed you?”

“Get real. This isn’t exactly on the must-see list for sightseers in southern California.”

He smiled slightly. Even dusty, scuffed, and perspiring in the desert heat, she was unreasonably attractive to him. Maybe it was her unusual combination of red-gold hair and violet eyes. Maybe it was the intelligence and wariness in those eyes and her quick tongue. Maybe it was the curves he saw beneath her casual clothes. Maybe it was the combination of dirt smudges and pale freckles on her high cheekbones. Maybe it was the fey, almost silky scarf she wore around her neck.

Maybe it was the memory of her hips rubbing against him.

She seemed both intensely familiar to him and totally unknown. It was a disturbing combination.

He wondered if she felt it, too, or if her wariness came from the circumstances: two strangers in the middle of an empty desert, one of them male, one female. Maybe she would feel more relaxed if they were surrounded by people. His younger sisters kept telling him that he just didn’t understand how vulnerable a woman felt when she was alone with a strange man.

And maybe Serena wouldn’t be more relaxed in a crowd. Someone running a scam had lots of reasons to be nervous around the person whose job it was to see through scams.

“Cat got your tongue?” she asked coolly.

Mentally Erik shrugged. Whether her edginess came from an attraction to him, an instinctive feminine caution around strange males, or something less savory, he needed answers from her. He might as well go for broke right now, where he could run her to ground if she bolted at his first words.

“I’m a consultant for Rarities Unlimited,” he said.

And waited.

“Is that supposed to explain something?” she asked.

He almost smiled. She hadn’t flinched, hadn’t tightened, the pulse in her neck hadn’t quickened, and the pupils of her fey violet eyes hadn’t dilated or contracted. Either she was a great actress or she really hadn’t heard of Rarities. If it was the latter, it spoke well of her innocence. If it was the former, she was a crook or simply an extremely cautious person bent on getting more information from him than she gave.

“Rarities is a collaboration of specialists,” he said. “We buy, sell, appraise, and protect rare artifacts and art.”

“For anyone who hires you?”

“Up to a point.”

“What’s that point?”

“Known crooks.”

“You only work for the good guys, is that it?” There was a cynical edge to Serena’s voice.

“What do you think?”

“I think you’d go bankrupt if you waited for saints to hire you.”

He smiled thinly. “I think you’re right. But our allegiance is always to the art, not to the client. It’s in the contract all our clients sign.”

“Meaning?”

“If it comes to a choice between the art or the client, the client loses.”

Her left eyebrow lifted in a golden-red arc. “Does that happen often?”

“You’ll have to ask Dana.”

“Who?”

“Dana Gaynor. Along with S. K. Niall, she owns Rarities.”

Serena jammed her hands in the rear pockets of her jeans and looked away from Erik’s searching bird-of-prey eyes. “Buy, sell, appraise, and protect. Well, I don’t want to buy or sell anything, but I sure could use a neutral appraisal.”

She could use protection, too, but she wasn’t about to bring that up. The way she had run from Erik North, he probably thought she was a little bit fractured. If she said she was afraid that her grandmother’s murderer might be after her, he would assume she was fractured, period. Lisbeth’s murder had been random, not particular. It said so right in the police files.

In any case, she wasn’t a piece of art to be protected. She was just an ordinary human being who was afraid she was caught in a situation that wasn’t ordinary at all.

“A neutral appraisal,” Erik repeated, watching her elegant back and partial profile. “An interesting way to put it.”

“Why?”

“Most people just want to find out how much something is worth.”

Her smile was a quick, hard curve. Making a living from her own weaving creations had taught her that no matter how much work she put into a piece, the price didn’t change. Not really. “It’s worth whatever someone will pay for it. No more. No less.”

Erik looked at her curving hips. His hands itched to feel what he was seeing, to shape her rear and squeeze, filling his hands with her flesh. The depth of his hunger baffled him; she was attractive, yes, but hardly the type to bring a grown man to his knees with lust.

Yet his knees were weak.

“Then why don’t you just put the pages up for bid?” he asked irritably, looking away. “The marketplace will tell you what they’re worth.”

“I don’t want to sell them. I just want to know if they’re real.”

“For insurance?”

Her mouth turned down.
If you decide to go after your inheritance . . . be very careful. Forgery is a dangerous art.
“In a way.”

“What way?”

“Does it matter?” she asked tightly.

No matter how unnervingly familiar he seemed at times, she wasn’t about to share her grandmother’s lifetime secret with him: the Book of the Learned. Yet she had to know more about those pages to go after the rest of her inheritance. Right now she was playing a game of blindman’s buff, and the penalty for losing was very high.

Trust no man.

He looked at her narrowed eyes and full mouth. “It’s hard to work with someone who doesn’t trust you.”

“Trust isn’t a problem for me,” she said distinctly. “I always work alone.”

“So do I.”

“Is that why you came out here today? To be alone?”

Reluctantly Erik decided that the lady was as intelligent as she was attractive. “You never answer your phone.”

“And?”

“I wanted to see the pages. I couldn’t, so I came here instead.”

“How did you find out my grandmother’s address?” Serena asked baldly.

“Rarities.”

“How did Rarities find out?” she asked through her teeth.

“Ask—”

“Dana,” she cut in ruthlessly.

He smiled. “Right.”

She thought of a golden wolf. Not the kind that seduced maidens. The kind that dined on them. “You’re here. She isn’t.”

“We could fix that.”

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

“Think of it as a trade secret.”

“Think of me as your fairy godmother,” she retorted.

His smile changed. It was warmer, but it didn’t make her feel less hunted.

“There is an elfin quality about you,” he agreed.

She made a sound of disgust and brushed off her dusty jeans. “Try again. I’m five feet seven. Hardly an elf.”

“Witch, then. No. Sorceress. Witches have black hair and bad breath. All those toad stews.”

She tried not to smile, but the wicked light in his eyes told her she wasn’t fooling him. Absently she ran her fingertips over the cloth that nestled around her throat and lifted on the least stirring of the air. “Do you know many witches?”

“The margins are full of them.”

“You lost me.”

He held out his hand. “You found me. Now lead me out of here.”

Before she realized what she was doing, she had taken his hand. She made a sound and snatched her fingers back.

“I’m not contagious,” he said.