Satisfaction Guaranteed (21 page)

When the ferry docked, she made her way off, found
her car in the parking lot, and drove home on autopilot. She stabbed the security button on her apartment building's door too hard and damaged her nail tip in the process. Now her day was perfect. Sabrina made her way into the lobby, to the elevator, and finally home. Once inside, she locked the door behind her. Then she stood there, frozen, lost, with no idea what to do next. She felt like a stranger to the self who had left that morning full of excited anticipation.

Finally, she gave herself a mental shake. She couldn't just stand there like a statue until the next morning.
Do something. Start small
. Sabrina held up her hand to inspect the damage. The broken nail would have to be dealt with. That gave her something concrete to fix, and she desperately needed to fix something in her shattered state.

"I broke a nail," she said out loud. And then, to her horror, she burst into tears.

When everything was ready to move
Rebecca
out into open water, Kane went to find Sabrina. She hadn't come to join him, and she wasn't in the galley. The cabin was empty, too, but something was out of place. The trunk was open.

Sabrina
. Somehow she'd figured it out, and she'd unlocked the trunk to be sure. But why hadn't she come to talk to him about it? He didn't think the discovery that he was so in touch with his feminine side that he'd given it a name and a career would be a turnoff to Sabrina. A big surprise, sure. Maybe a little difficult to understand. But after the hours they'd spent in bed, she couldn't have any doubts about his masculinity.

She hadn't come to talk to him about his alter ego, though, and she wasn't here. Kane retraced his steps and saw
her jeans still lying on the floor. He picked them up and folded them neatly, then walked back to the cabin with them and put them in a drawer. Then he opened the drawer again and took them back out to check the pockets for clues to her identity. A receipt with her name on it, an address, anything.

His search came up empty.

Kane held the pants while he mentally shuffled the puzzle pieces around, trying to make them form a picture. The trunk was open. Sabrina was gone. She knew who he was, so she'd left? It didn't make sense. He checked the label on her jeans and shook his head. Gloria Vanderbilt. She'd want them back. He refolded them and put them away for a second time.

Then he walked back over to the trunk and saw his last manuscript with the notes on top. How would it have looked to Sabrina?

She couldn't have known that his intentions had changed. He hadn't had a chance to tell her. Instead, she'd found this and thought the worst. It had upset her. Enough, maybe, to make her leave him without a word.

Kane locked the trunk again and put away the key. Sabrina might be upset right now, but she'd cool down and then they'd talk about this. He'd call the agency first thing Monday morning and find out how to get in touch with her again. This wasn't over.

"So how did your date go?"

Rachel was glowing, Sabrina noted with a mix of envy and tired sadness. "Not as well as yours obviously did," she said. She plopped herself into the chair that faced Rachel's desk, her back to the windows and their city view.

"He didn't run, too, did he?" Rachel asked, her eyes going wide.

"No." Sabrina extended one leg to inspect her shoe. Navy was probably a mistake on a day like today. She should have gone for color, pizzazz. Pink. She made a note to stop by Nordstrom during her lunch hour. "I did."

"Oh." Rachel blinked at her in surprise. "I suppose you had your reasons." Then she sat forward, her face drawing in visible concern. "Did he want to do something really strange or scary in bed? Because if he did, I think you should complain to the agency. It should go in his profile."

"Nothing strange or scary," Sabrina said. "Unusual, maybe a little kinky, but nothing he wanted in bed went beyond what I wanted."

"Okaaay." Rachel drew out the word while she reached for her coffee cup. "Let's recap. You asked the man in your last relationship to do something kinky and he bolted. So you went to an unusual dating agency to find a more adventurous partner. You got an agency match. You met, you talked, you liked him. You made a date. Were the two of you sexually compatible?" Her voice softened in sympathy. "Was it lousy, Sabrina? After you went to all that trouble?"

"It wasn't lousy." Sabrina took off her shoe and sat back, turning the pump in her hands. "I don't know why I wore navy blue today. What was I thinking? It's dark and depressing."

Rachel drank her coffee and then set the mug back down. "Enough twenty questions. Spill. What went wrong?"

"He didn't want me." Sabrina's voice cracked, and she blinked furiously. Dammit, she was not going to cry again. She could live with crying once. She had silk tips, not acrylic.
A broken nail was worth shedding a tear over. But she wasn't going to sit here in the Opal Life Insurance Agency's Seattle branch office crying over Kane, Rebecca, or whoever the hell he was. Maybe his real name was George. She didn't know, and he'd never told her.

Tell me something real
, she'd said to him, and he'd told her he lifted weights three times a week. That was significant personal information there.

"Didn't want you?" Rachel shook her head. "That can't be right, Sabrina. You were his most compatible match. He was there for the same reason you were. And, hello, have you looked in a mirror lately? Unless he's gay, insane, or impossible to please, he wanted you."

"He wasn't there for the same reason I was." Sabrina's voice came out so small, she winced at the sound. She put her shoe back on, concentrating on the task with fierce determination. "Enough pity party. You're right. Somewhere out there is a man who wants me. Just because my first agency date didn't work out, that's no reason to abandon the plan. I'll set up a time to meet the next man on the list."

Sabrina scrubbed at her eyes and stood up. She'd make the call. Right after she fixed her mascara. Then she'd find some shoes that didn't make her feel as though she were on her way to a funeral.

"Right," Rachel said to Sabrina's back as she left.

"What do you mean, you can't give out personal information?" Kane asked, incredulous. It was Monday, and he was standing in the office suite that housed the Capture Agency, because he'd decided he had a better chance of success if he
showed up in person. It was a lot easier to put somebody off on the phone than it was if they were standing in front of you. "You told me she liked skydiving, kinky sex, and wanted to be held captive on a boat. I know what birth control method she uses and how many sex partners she's had. That's pretty damn personal."

"Personal
contact
information," the man behind the desk informed Kane. He was better dressed than anybody Kane had ever seen outside the pages of a magazine. He wondered if Sabrina had met him. She'd love him. The thought depressed Kane, so he shoved it away and focused on the problem at hand. Namely, getting Mr. Fashion Plate to cough up Sabrina's phone number, address, or e-mail account. Anything he could use.

"Is there any rule against giving her mine?" Kane asked. "No, never mind. She knows where to find me. I need to find her. Look, can't you at least call her and ask if she'll talk to me?"

"We take client privacy very seriously," the man, whose nameplate said he was Mark, informed him. He waved an imperious hand, heading off Kane's next protest before he'd gotten further than opening his mouth. "This doesn't mean that we won't convey a message. Do you have a message you'd like to send? A request for a follow-up date?"

"A message." Kane tugged at his earring. "Sure. Do you have paper?"

Mark passed him a "While You Were Out" message slip and a pen.

"Something bigger," Kane said. "There's not enough space in that form."

Mark picked up a full legal pad and handed it to him. "Will this suffice?"

"Yeah. Probably. I think." Kane took the pad and pen. "Is there a conference room I can use?"

"I'll show you." Mark stood and walked around the desk to guide him in the right direction.

Two hours later, Mark reappeared. "I thought you might like some coffee," he said. He set the cup on the conference table.

Kane looked up, then looked around him at the profusion of balled-up pages he'd started, scratched out, and discarded before trying again. "Thanks."

"Not going well?" Mark asked.

"You could say that." He picked up the coffee and took a sip. "I tried a sonnet. That was bad. Iambic pentameter comes across as either smug or desperate. I tried letters, but they were either too polite or too forceful. I tried writing an allegory, but that was too subtle."

"Well, that certainly covers all the bases. I'd say the 'put it in writing' approach isn't going to work," Mark said. "Why don't you just capture her?"

"What?" Kane nearly spilled his coffee. "You're going to tell me where she is?"

"She's here. And I believe you both need the opportunity to work things out face-to-face."

Kane was on his feet and nearly through the door before he realized he had no idea which way to go. He stopped and turned back to Mark.

"Where do I find her?" Kane asked.

"Down the hall, third door on the left." Kane was in
motion before Mark finished talking, a pirate bent on reclaiming his prize.

Sabrina stood in front of a framed watercolor painting of a sailboat on the water while she waited for Mark to come back to finish discussing the end of her term as an agency client. The painting was bright and full of life and color and sunshine. Just looking at it made her feel better. So did her decision to remove her profile from the client database. The truth was, she didn't want to try another agency match. Dating somebody else struck her as a colossally bad idea. It also made her stomach lurch.

She'd be better off forgetting about men, pirates, and her sex life and taking some advanced sailing and navigation lessons. She could buy her own boat and then run up her own damn Jolly Roger if she felt like it. Read romance novels. Drink lots of rum and pineapple juice. Sing all the verses of "Sixteen Men on a Dead Man's Chest" to the tune of "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing."

She looked down at her shoes. Lovely pink leather lace-up pumps with a four-inch heel. Much better than dark, dull navy. Men were unpredictable, but Nordstrom never let her down. She couldn't wear them on her future sailboat, of course, but if ever there was a day when she needed a little pink to cheer her up, it was today. Maybe she could find a pair of canvas deck shoes in pink for her new life on the high seas.

The door opened and closed behind her. Without turning around, Sabrina said, "I'm glad I've decided to give up men."

"Killing them? Or sleeping with them?" a deep voice that was not Mark's answered her.

All the air left her body, and she felt light-headed. When she recovered enough to answer a beat later, she said, "Sleeping with them. I think killing them is probably okay as long as I only do it for the money and I'm careful not to get caught."

"In case you were thinking of killing me, I have to tell you that I'm prepared to keep you tied up at sea, having multiple orgasms, until you reconsider."

Dammit. She could feel herself weakening, softening toward him, wanting him to tell her it was all a mistake and then sweep her off her well-shod feet before he bent her over some convenient and well-supported surface.

Sabrina sighed. "Why are you here, Kane?"

"Because I had to find you. Why did you leave?" He moved up behind her and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her back against his body. "I was planning to tell you about Rebecca, but you'd be surprised how hard that is to work into a conversation."

"Forget Rebecca. You should have told me I was research." The pain hit her in the solar plexus all over again. "You shouldn't have let me think you wanted me, wanted the fantasy with me, when all you wanted was a book."

Kane was silent for a minute. Finally he said, "I don't mean to be slow, but I can't imagine what I did to make you think I didn't want you. I told you I wanted you. If that wasn't enough, consider the sex. I promise you, any guy past the age of eighteen who performs like that with a woman is seriously interested."

"Nothing you did," she admitted. "It was in your notes."

"My notes said I didn't want you?"

He knew exactly what his notes said. Sabrina was sorely
tempted to drive her brand-new four-inch heel into the top of his foot. He was wearing canvas deck shoes. No protection at all from a dangerous woman bent on vengeance. "No, your notes said you were doing research. I only came into the picture because I was convenient." And disposable.

"I didn't expect you to take that well," Kane said. "Although I could point out that you were out of line to open the lock in the first place, and you should have asked me about it after you did. But you were already upset before you opened the trunk. Is there maybe some other reason you reacted so badly, and my notes gave you a good excuse?"

Oh, hell. He was right. If she hadn't been braced for rejection already, she would have confronted him instead of bolting. He couldn't have known the weekend would turn into more than either of them had planned when he'd made those damn notes. He hadn't even met her then.

"Yes," Sabrina said. "The last man I was in a relationship with ditched me when I asked him to meet my sexual needs. I came to the Capture Agency because I was determined to avoid another disappointment or rejection."