Secret Seduction (8 page)

His palm was hot and hard against hers and he held on just a second too long. She kept her face a smooth mask, not letting herself reveal how much touching him affected her.

As she watched him walk away, Vanessa couldn’t help wondering how on earth she was going to keep herself from seducing him again.

On this subterranean level, the hospital took on a whole other personality. Like a well-bred woman without her makeup on, down here you could see the cracks in the beautiful facade. The corridors were narrower, the lighting dimmer, the temperature three or four degrees colder than it was on the ground level. Down here, there were no windows. None of the sunny radiance that greeted guests when they walked through the front door.

Tanner glanced up from the data gathered after five days of analyzing the hospital’s current security systems and the interviews with the staff. “I’m not ready to offer an opinion at this point, Dr. Butler. I’ll write up my recommendations in a full report.”

The Chief of Staff had a lanky build and an unhurried way of speaking that reminded Tanner of the actor Gregory Peck in the role of Joe Bradley in Roman Holiday. It had been Maria’s favorite classic movie. For no good reason at all, Tanner found himself remembering Vanessa had told him her favorite classic movie was Dark Victory.

Two very different movies. Two very different women. One a romantic and starry-eyed. The other a hard-nosed realist.

“Fair enough. Senator Garcia asked me to give you this.” Butler stepped over the threshold to lay a house key on Tanner’s desk.

“Thanks.”

“You moving?” Butler was fishing for information, but this part of the assignment was between him and Robert Garcia. Butler wasn’t privy to the plans for guarding Vanessa.

“Yes,” he said lightly. “To be closer to the job.”

“Ah,” Butler said. He stood there waiting as if he expected Tanner to say something more.

“Is there anything else?” Tanner leaned back in his chair, stretched his arms out behind his head.

He’d been looking for ways to shore up Confidential Rejuvenations’ security deficiencies for most of the afternoon and he felt the strain pulling across his back. He wasn’t a desk jockey and his muscles were yelling at him that it was time for a run along the river path adjoining the hospital grounds. He needed to do something to burn off this excess energy.

“If you need help moving,” Butler said, “let me, or any of the security guards know.”

“I appreciate the offer.” Tanner wouldn’t use the security staff to make his move. For one thing, he didn’t want everyone at the hospital to know he was moving into the condo across from Vanessa’s. For another, since losing Maria, he’d down-sized to the point where his personal belongings could fit neatly in a half-dozen packing boxes. The condo was furnished, just like the apartment he’d be vacating. He also wasn’t completely convinced that none of the security guards were involved with the disturbances. Whoever it was knew where the security cameras were located and how to disarm them. Tanner didn’t want to get so close to anyone that he couldn’t view them with an objective eye.

You’re too late when it comes to Vanessa. You’ve lost all objectivity where she’s concerned.

“Well, have a good evening,” Butler said. “I’m looking forward to reviewing your report.”

“Good night, Doctor.”

Butler paused at the door. “You can call me Jarrod.”

That surprised Tanner. From what he’d seen so far, Confidential Rejuvenations was high on formality. Probably due to all the VIPs they dealt with. Was he being tested?

“I appreciate that, Dr. Butler, but I prefer to keep things as professional as possible.”

“Robert told me you were a straight arrow.” Butler nodded in approval.

Butler had been testing him, he realized, and he’d passed.

Once Dr. Butler had left the room, Tanner picked up the key and stuck it in his pocket. He got to his feet and walked out into the control room with the bank of security cameras.

There were three guards monitoring the screens. Tanner had a half-dozen more men patrolling the grounds. He planted a hand on the backs of the chairs of two of the security guards and watched Butler leave the hospital through the emergency room entrance and head for his Lexus parked at the back of the lot. There were only two other cars remaining—one was a silver BMW belonging to Dr. Covey, the other was Vanessa’s burgundy-colored Acura.

He shifted his gaze to the camera monitoring the side entrance to the doctors’ offices directly across the road from the hospital. So that no one would catch on that he was paying particular attention to the surveillance cameras focused on the doctors’ offices, he purposefully asked questions of the guards about what else was going on in the rest of the hospital.

Even though his real job was to guard Vanessa, the hospital had hired him as the head of security. He told himself he could juggle both assignments.

From the corner of his eye, he caught movement on the previous camera, drawing his attention back to the doctors’ side entrance. There was Vanessa, her lab coat draped over her arm. In her right hand she carried her car keys. Mace dangled from the key chain. She stopped, then cautiously glanced right, left and then behind her.

Good girl.

“She always acts like she’s being followed,” commented Josh Newberry, the youngest of the security guards. He’d just turned twenty-two and from all accounts he was the ace player on the hospital’s softball team.

“She’s just playing it safe,” Tanner said. “Actually, I approve. Most people are far too complacent when it comes to their safety.”

“With gams like those—” Charlie Martin whistled “—she can’t afford to be complacent.” Charlie was built like a tank and had deer hunter stickers plastered all over the Igloo cooler he used as a lunch box. He’d been working at Confidential Rejuvenations since its doors opened and he had exemplary evaluations, but his comment irritated Tanner.

“No woman deserves to be a target of sexual harassment simply because she’s attractive,” he growled.

Charlie raised his palms in a gesture of surrender. “Hey, boss. I agree with you. I have teenage daughters at home, but reality is reality.”

Tanner knew that all too well. He watched Vanessa walk briskly to her car. Saw her glance into the backseat as she pressed the button to deactivate her car alarm and open the door.

Here was a woman who was accustomed to looking over her shoulder and he was having trouble reconciling that with the woman who had picked him up in a bar the previous weekend. Vanessa Rodriquez was one helluva paradox.

In a weird way, he supposed he understood how she could be of two minds. One, the cautious, suspicious young doctor; the other a sensual woman out to meet her sexual needs with seemingly reckless abandon.

He suspected when she’d asked him to dance at Emilio’s it had been her way of whistling in the dark, of facing her fears, of vanquishing the bogeyman from her past. Particularly on the day she’d learned the man who vowed to kill her had been released from prison. By making the move on Tanner in a place where she felt comfortable, she’d been in control.

The core emotion of both her caution and her bravery was fear, and she was doing what she could to reconcile the two sides of her personality and live life the best she could. From what he knew about her personally and from what he’d observed over the past week, she was loyal, responsible and witty and people really seemed to like her, but she let very few people get close to her. What was she so afraid of?

He had a sudden, intense yearning to free her from the prison of her fears and that scared him. What was he so afraid of?

Startled by the surge of feelings, Tanner stepped back from the bank of computers. He hated this undercover crap. He wanted her to know that he was there for her, guarding her, protecting her. He was used to being up-front.

He hated even more that he had to pretend that…what? They weren’t involved? Because they weren’t involved. Not really. They had made love.

Correction, they’d had sex. Granted it had been great, mind-blowing sex, but it had been nothing more than a one-time thing. He couldn’t step across that line again. He wouldn’t.

Forget about Friday night.

Easy to say, not so easy to do. Not when she looked the way she did. Not when she stirred things inside him he thought long dead.

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to stop the need. He liked her. She was smart and sexy and feisty as hell. He wanted to know more about her. He wanted to know everything that scared her.

He’d learned she was suspicious of others, loved spending her limited spare time watching old movies or hanging out with her two best friends, Elle Kingston and Julie Demarco, and that she kept a hand-beaded necklace dangling from her desk lamp. Tanner knew that nibbling the nape of her neck sent her body into paroxysms of delight, and what she sounded like when she had an orgasm, but he didn’t know what she thought about him.

Although he might soon find out.

Tanner stuck his hand in his pocket and fisted it around the condo key Butler had dropped off. For a brief moment, he closed his eyes and let himself dream of impossible possibilities.

AFTER A QUICK GLANCE up and down her street, Vanessa let herself into her condo and turned off her alarm. The minute she stepped through the door, her black cat, Fantasia, coiled around her legs, purring like a Porsche engine.

“Hey coo-coo kitty,” she said, kicking the door closed with her heel, dropping her keys on the foyer table. She bent over to scoop up the American longhair who’d just shown up on her doorstep one day last summer.

She rubbed the cat’s fluffy fur against her cheek and breathed in her precious smell. Independent Fantasia, who could only take so much affection, jumped from her arms and pranced toward the kitchen, tail in the air. It was suppertime.

“Tuna Delight good for you?” she asked the cat as she opened the pantry and took a tin of cat food.

Fantasia swished her tail and meowed.

“Tuna Delight it is.”

Vanessa pulled the top off and served up Fantasia’s dinner, tossed the can, then turned her attention to her own supper needs. She opened the pantry door again and stared inside.

Plenty of cat food. She bought Fantasia’s food in bulk from a warehouse club, but she hadn’t made it to the grocery store for herself in weeks. She had a canister of whole-wheat pasta, sundried tomatoes and black olives. She could sauté some onions and garlic in olive oil and make a pasta toss. It would do.

While the onions caramelized, she poured herself a glass of red wine and wandered into the living room to pop Norah Jones into the CD player.

Soon the smell of simmering food, the sound of soft music and the taste of dry Merlot took the edge off the past week. Here it was Friday again. A week since she’d picked Tanner up at Emilio’s. And he’d been on her mind almost nonstop ever since.

Funny how that one reckless indiscretion had turned out to wreck her whole week. She still found it awfully coincidental that Tanner had shown up as the new head of security at the place where she worked. But other than catching a few glimpses of him around the hospital, Vanessa hadn’t seen Tanner much since that day in her office when he had rearranged her furniture.

Just thinking of how his muscular arms had strained at the sleeves of his shirt had her heart thumping. Gee, he did as much for a woman’s cardiovascular system as a good step aerobics class.

By the time the she’d eaten her pasta and finished up the wine and Norah had played her course, Vanessa was in the mood for something more hardcore. She browsed through her CD collection, her hand stopping when she happened upon a rock-and-roll album.

A blast from her very dangerous past. Back before she was Vanessa. Back when she danced as Trudy Valdez.

“Honky Tonk Women” poured from the sound system. Fantasia appeared; the cat loved the Rolling Stones. Vanessa scooped her up and danced around the room, swaying her hips in time to the smoky beat.

Then she heard a loud thumping sound like something falling downstairs, followed by a loud, masculine curse.

She set Fantasia on the floor, muted the music and tilted her head.

Another muffled curse.

Vanessa edged to the front room, peeked out into the twilight. A man sat on the front steps of the vacant condo next door. A busted-open packing crate lay in two pieces beside him. Pants, shirts, leather belts, work boots, tennis shoes and other belongings were scattered on the ground. She couldn’t make out his features in the dimness, but she noted he had blond hair and appeared to be holding pressure on his arm as if he’d cut himself.

The doctor in her reacted immediately. She jerked open the door, hurried across the lawn.

The man raised his head.

Vanessa halted.

Tanner Doyle.

What was he doing here?

Suspicion took hold of her, but then she saw he was bleeding quite freely around the fingers he had clamped around his left forearm. “Lock up your condo first, then come inside,” she said, motioning toward her house. “Let me see the damage you’ve done to yourself.”

Without a word, he stood and followed her, dripping blood along the way. She raced ahead, running into the kitchen, grabbing a dish towel and meeting him at the front door. She wrapped the towel around his arm and applied steady pressure.