Stay the Night (7 page)

Chris knew interior design and how much it cost to achieve this level of quiet, glowing affluence. If Rob owned Archer Enterprises, he had serious money and wasn't afraid to spend it.

She paused in front of the elevator doors. A small table there held a quintet of ivory tree peonies sprouting from a shallow, crimson glass bowl. She touched the delicate petals, not terribly surprised to discover they were real. They reminded her of the brush of his silky black hair against her cheek as they danced. That had been as much of a jolt as the feel of the hard-toned muscles under his clothes, and the impact of those gorgeous violet eyes watching her. Rob seemed almost too beautiful to be real.

Like this place. Like this night
.

Chris knew she had only one advantage left: She could turn around and walk out right now. He couldn't stop her. She'd never meet him again. No harm, no foul.

“Are you coming up,” Rob's voice asked, “or should I return to my prayers?”

This time Chris didn't see the speaker or security camera. “You're very impatient.”

“If I were,” he said, “I would never have survived our first dance.” His tone softened. “You've nothing to fear, love. I promise you.” The elevator silently slid open, beckoning to her as he did: “Come to me.”

She stepped over the threshold. The elevator closed and began to rise, soundlessly rushing past twenty-six floors before a low bell chimed and it came to a smooth stop. She expected to see Rob on the other side of the doors, ready to grab her and go to town, but found only an empty corridor.

He meant it. It has to be what
I
want
.

Chris knew what she wanted. She walked past a forest of trompe l'oeil ferns hand-painted on sandstone to the only door, a wide panel of gleaming fruitwood inlaid with dozens of small brown birds. This one didn't open automatically for her, and knocking on it seemed foolish. Before she could find another hundred reasons to turn around and hurry back to the elevator, she let herself in.

If the lobby said,
Welcome, you can't afford this, now get out
, the penthouse merely said,
Hello, there
.

In Chris's experience, penthouse suites were exalted places with sweeping vistas and cold, obvious displays of wealth. Rob's home had the million-dollar views—she could see most of downtown Atlanta through the endless walls of arched windows—but everything else inside murmured more of comfort and atmosphere than grand impression-making and strategic investment.

Sectional furniture, positioned both to exploit and to ignore the spectacular prospects of the city, sat waiting for occupation. Books that had obviously been read and enjoyed marched in uneven rows across long stretches of freestanding shelves. A massive fireplace, definitely an incongruous touch here so far in the South, burned what appeared to be real wood and threw flickering light over a rectangular pit of velvet and satin pillows.

And everywhere she looked, vases, baskets, and pots of lush, green plants and small trees spread their shoots, limbs, and leaves in near-wild abandon.

A rich man's tree house,
Chris thought, turning around to appreciate the entire effect.
In the middle of Atlanta
.

“I have no ginger ale to speak of,” Rob said, appearing on the other side of the room. He'd shed his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, and he was barefoot. His straight black hair hung loose and somewhat disheveled around his unsmiling face. “But there's wine, tea, or water, if you'll have it.”

On some level Chris had been convinced that Rob wouldn't be as attractive as he had seemed in the uncertain lighting back at the club. He wasn't. He was magnificent, all sinuous limbs and elegant muscle, a visual feast from the silky jet mane of hair to his long, arched feet.

Beautiful, beautiful man
.

“I'm not thirsty.” Chris put her purse down, took off her own jacket, and carefully draped it over the back of a love seat. She'd never done anything like this, so she felt awkward handling the preliminaries.
First I put down my stuff, then we sit and talk, and then I lose it completely, drag him to the floor, tear his clothes off, and ride him until he begs for mercy or dawn, whichever comes first
.

Chris wondered if she could skip the sitting-and-talking part. If she did, she'd probably brand herself forever in his memory as a sex-starved slut—if coming to his apartment like this hadn't already done that.

Jesus Christ, just get on with it
.

Rather than approach her, Rob moved around the room, his bright eyes intent on her. “Are you hungry? I could order some food. Or some entertainment. Musicians. Acrobats. Fireworks. Whatever you desire.”

She shook her head as she began untying the knot in her scarf.

“Talk to me, Christine.”

She watched him as she drew the length of her scarf from her throat. “My name isn't Christine.” The pink silk slithered through her fingers, but then Rob was there, catching it before it touched the ground. “It's just Chris.”

She found out that the intriguing scent she had attributed to his wine back at the nightclub didn't come from his breath; it rose from his skin, too warm and pervasive to be cologne. Chris, who had never cared for strong fragrances, especially on men, found herself breathing him in deeply, as if she had to imprint his scent deep inside herself, where she could recall it at will and never forget this man.

Something already told her that she never would.

“
Just
Chris.” He straightened and draped her scarf around his own neck. His amethyst eyes—surely the most stunning eyes she'd ever seen in anyone's face, man or woman—took on a burnished sheen. “Is it a singular name, then, like Madonna, or Jewel?”

“It's . . . easier to remember than the long version.” She took his hand and brought it to her face. “Chris. It rhymes with
this
.” She brushed her lips, whisper-soft, against the center of his palm.

Rob closed his eyes for a moment, and then bent as if to slide his arm under her knees and lift her off her feet.

“Wait.” She touched his shoulder. “Dance with me again.”

He slowly straightened. “There's no music.”

“I don't care.” She stepped closer.

Rob took her in his arms, enfolding her this time as she rested her cheek against his shoulder. Here, alone with him, with no one around them, she could finally do as she pleased for once. This once.

Chris moved with him, slipping her fingers up to unfasten the buttons on his shirt one by one. She didn't expect to see the thin green lines wrapping around his throat, and ran her finger across an inch of them. They felt hard, almost like calluses. “Someone messed up the tattoo on your neck.”

“For which I am eternally grateful.” He took in a sharp breath when her fingers trailed down across the bare, smooth skin of his chest. “I see. You've come to continue the torture.”

“You're wrong.” She guided his hand to the pearl buttons hidden under the lace of her blouse. “I came here for you.”

As Rob opened her blouse, Chris pushed his shirt back from his shoulders and drew it down his arms with little trouble. However he worked out, his regimen had left him with layer upon layer of tight, streamlined muscle so tough her fingertips couldn't dent them. The firelight lent a little color to his pale skin, and shadowed a small depression on his chest, just above his left nipple.

She saw no surgical mark to explain the absence of muscle, and idly wondered what sort of injury healed without scarring. As his fingers tugged free the comb holding her hair in place, she tilted her head and kissed the old wound.

Without warning Rob used the hair in his fist to pull her face away from his chest. “I thought you wanted to dance.”

Harsh words from a man holding her by the hair and the hip, and sporting an erection that felt like a tire iron wedged between them. He didn't want her kissing his old injury or whatever it was; that much was plain.

She understood. She had her own scars to hide.

“I do.” Chris shrugged out of her blouse and took hold of the ends of her scarf around his neck, using it to bring his head down to hers. “But is this”—she punctuated her words with little nips on his jaw, chin, and lower lip—“the only dance you know?”

Rob's mouth curved against hers. “I think not.”

She expected him to kiss her, but instead felt his hands shift and heard the hiss of her skirt's zipper. Cool air whispered against the stretch of skin between the bottom hem of her chemise and the narrow hip band of her garter belt. She stepped out of the puddle of her skirt and moved back enough to watch his expression.

She would never be as beautiful as he was, but she knew how she looked almost naked.

“More splendid than I'd imagined.” He traced his fingertips across the slippery shell of her satin lingerie, circling with his thumb her nipple, her navel, and the curve of her hip bone. “What else do you hide from me, my lady?”

Too much
.

Chris felt an impossibly strong, wholly uncharacteristic impulse to tell him her life story right then and there. Chris, who had never confided anything to anyone outside her immediate family. Her parents were the same; they let people assume she was their biological daughter so that no one would know the truth about her real mother, and how cruelly she had abandoned Chris.

She should have asked, “What do you want to know?” but the words seemed locked in her throat.

“Look at me, love.” Rob cradled her face between his hands. “Look.” When she did, he stared into her eyes, muttered something under his breath, and covered her mouth with his to give her a brief, hard kiss. “I would trade all my worldly possessions so that I might not have to say this, but you must leave me.”

“Leave you.” Chris wasn't sure she'd heard him right. “Leave you
now
?”

“Aye.” He turned his back on her, showing her a stretch of muscle that made her mouth water. “I'll have a car brought 'round to take you home.”

After a few moments Chris followed him over to where he was dialing a cordless telephone. “Where is your bedroom?”

Rob gestured to the left as he lifted the phone to his ear.

Chris removed the receiver from his hand, switched it off, and placed it back on the charging station. “I'm not going anywhere.” She put her hand in his and tugged him toward his bedroom. “Unless you take me.”

 

Gordon Middleton checked through thousands of international air travelers as they streamed through his customs station at Heathrow's terminal two every day. He enjoyed his job as well, in a surly and somewhat grim fashion. Twenty years ago, Pan Am flight 103 had exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, only thirty-eight minutes after it had left Heathrow. The bomb, probably concealed in a bag that had not been properly checked, had taken a mate of Gordon's and 269 other souls on board and on the ground to a fiery death only four days before Christmas. Ever since that bitter night, Gordon had distrusted every passenger who came through his gate.

His suspicious nature had earned him three special citations of merit as well. He'd personally nabbed a pair of drug mules declaring plaster vases that turned out to be molded from pure cocaine; an HVAC mechanic from the U.S. with a case filled with unclaimed specialty compressor parts worth thousands of pounds; and a sweet-looking grand-mother toting eight handguns in her knitting bag.

For twenty years, no one and nothing got past Middleton.

Gordon kept his eye on the three Americans as soon as they'd joined his queue. He didn't get many Yanks through his station; most came through terminal three with the rest of the passengers from U.S. flights. These three had probably come in on a private jet; they had the designer clothes and that particular bloody air of privilege about them.

The two men, one tall and dark, the other broad and scarred, kept a little bit of skirt in heaven-blue silk between them. The bint had a phone to her ear and a frown on her small face; likely she thought it made her look less suspicious. Yanks, Gordon knew, were idiots that way. He pegged them for a full inspection.

“Passports, if you please.” Gordon carefully examined all three before looking up at the dark one, who seemed to have an air of authority about him. He also smelled of rose perfume, or maybe it came from the little fancy on the phone. “Have you or your friends anything to declare before you enter the United Kingdom, Mr. Cyprien?”

“Nothing at all,
mon ami
,” Cyprien said.

Gordon, who thought Frenchmen were the only thing on earth worse than Yanks, stiffened. “Would you put your cases on the table?” Sensitivity training be damned; he would not say
please
to a sodding frog.

“Of course.” Cyprien smiled. “But may I first tell you something very important?”

The bint's rose perfume made Gordon blink several times before he grinned back. “Anything you like, mate.” He bent over and, although he hated being touched by passengers, didn't flinch as Cyprien put one long, cool hand to the side of his neck.

Then Gordon listened, and nodded, and agreed with every word that Michael Cyprien told him.

 

“We have questioned every member of the Methodist church where John was seen attending services on the morning he disappeared,” Valentin Jaus, suzerain of the Chicago
jardin
, told Dr. Alexandra Keller. “None of them remember your brother leaving the sanctuary.”

Alex moved several paces away from her lover, Michael Cyprien, who was speaking in a low murmur to the customs agent who had stopped them. “And you thoroughly searched the property again?”