The Art Of Deception, Book Two, Stolen Hearts series, Romantic Suspense (10 page)

“Collapse in your arms and sob my heart out while you pat me on the back and tell me everything’s going to be fine."

“How about we go straight to the next part?”

“The next part?” Did he know how seductive his voice sounded when it deepened like that?

He tugged her toward him, leaned down and nipped softly at her bottom lip. “This part."

His muscles tightened into a rock-hard mass under her fingers as she caught his shoulders and pulled herself up on tiptoe.
Like a moth to flame
. She was going to get burnt. She knew that. Gage was too much, too hard, too different. This was a momentary lapse of judgment on both their parts.

His mouth caught hers, held, let go. Then touched again, her lips now seeking his, wanting more. Needing more. Needing to be held. To be desired.

Fire smoldered deep inside her then burst into flame, sparking through her body. She wound her arms around his neck, pressed her trembling body into his solid frame.

“Sophie." His breathing sounded as deep and ragged as hers as he pulled her arms from his neck and gently set her away from him. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea."

God save her. Sophie drew in a shuddering breath. He’d had to peel her off him. She should be embarrassed, but the heat inside her didn’t leave room for shame. Anger, maybe, at being denied, but not shame. Not yet.

“What’s the matter, Gage? Afraid of losing your edge? That control thing you do is pretty damned seductive, you know."

What was she doing baiting him?
Gage. The big bad cop
. Big and bad is exactly how he appeared, a dark, fierce look in his eyes as he studied her breasts--and quite likely her nipples. The thin slip she wore under her dress didn’t conceal much.

“Don’t push me, Sophie. It’s been a long time." His gaze flicked to her eyes, then back to her breasts. “Either we stop now, or we don’t stop at all. Got it?”

Ciro had no idea how close to the mark he’d come that day in her studio when he’d taunted Gage.
On your way to Gramma’s?
Gage watched her as hungrily as a wolf stalking its prey. One move in the wrong direction, and he’d devour her.

She didn’t want to be devoured. Or overwhelmed. She wanted...she wasn’t certain what she wanted, but not this. Not an out-and-out surrender.

“I have a headache." She blushed, realizing how ridiculous that sounded.

Gage continued to stare at her with a ravenous look in his eyes, then his stark features slowly softened, and a quiet chuckle rumbled out of him. He wiped a hand over his face as he turned away. “You should make some of your herbal tea. You look like you could use a cup."

A belt of Scotch was more like it. Sophie headed for the kitchen before she changed her mind and asked Gage for more than she could handle. She knew what happened to people who let themselves be scorched by desire, and there was no doubt in her mind the searing passion between her and Gage would burn bright and fast. Unlike her mother, she refused to pay for a few weeks of glory with a lifetime of regret.

Gage looked at the brown envelope where he’d chucked it on the red couch a few short minutes ago, then at the hallway to the kitchen where Sophie had disappeared. He sighed and picked up the envelope, weighing it in his hands.

Six months of celibacy hadn’t driven his libido into sexual overdrive. Sophie had. They had this thing happening between them, this.... Hell, he didn’t even know what to call it. His job was to protect people. That Sophie needed to be protected from him as much as from the person who sent her the notes chinked another hole in his armor. No white knights around here.

He pulled the latex gloves out of his pocket and put them on. If he kept getting involved with female suspects, he soon wouldn’t have a job.

A prickling sensation swept over his scalp and down the back of his neck. Without his job, everything he was, everything he planned to be would be wiped out. All because he couldn’t get a handle on this attraction thing they had going.

At least he’d been the one to put the brakes on. Maybe giving Sophie a choice hadn’t been exactly using the brakes, but he’d tried, but it had taken every ounce of his control to do that much. If she had given him a flutter of encouragement, he wouldn’t be standing alone in her living room right now.

He sat on the couch and pulled the two letters and the rat trap out of the envelope and neatly aligned them on the coffee table. Okay. He eased his breath out through clenched teeth.

He’d seen his share of death threats, and this kind, using only a few words, were the hardest to interpret. They could be intended as just a nudge. Remember, we’re all friends here. Or, they could be saying if Sophie didn’t keep quiet, they--someone--would kill her.

The prickling sensation ratcheted down his spine this time. Was it too late already? By telling him about the canister of drugs in her refrigerator, had she crossed some invisible line? Become an unknowing traitor?

“What do you think?” Sophie watched him from the hallway.

He thought he wouldn’t be able to sleep at night knowing someone wanted to hurt her; that he was in over his head, and he didn’t know if he could pull back into the safe zone. Disengage. Conduct a good investigation.

“I’ll take them in to be fingerprinted." He scooped all three items up and shoved them back into the envelope.

“We have to start over." He yanked his jacket from the back of the couch and searched the pockets for his glasses and notepad. “You have a pen somewhere?”

He caught the pen she tossed to him from across the room, then immediately looked down at his notebook on the coffee table. Sophie had changed from her sexy, slip of a dress into black leggings and the big, old orange sweatshirt she’d worn the first time he'd met her. The blasted shirt had slipped off her shoulder again, only this time, he didn’t see a strap of any kind, which meant she wore nothing underneath. Nothing as in naked.

He tugged at the collar of his sweater. His turtleneck was too tight. He couldn’t breath. Couldn’t swallow, either.

“What do you mean start over?” She perched on the edge of the chair on the other side of the coffee table and leaned forward.

Gage picked up his notebook and leaned back. Three feet between them wasn’t enough, but it was going to have to do. “What’s the first thing that happened out of the ordinary. The groceries?”

“Yes. But, at first I didn’t notice...you know, the canister or anything weird. Just that the food appeared and no one claimed credit.”

“And before that, a lot of people had access to your apartment and studio. Did any of them check out your refrigerator on a regular basis?”

“Everyone did. Whether I was down here or working upstairs, they’d make a beeline for the kitchen to see what there was to eat or drink. God." She fell back into her chair and covered her face with her hands. “They’re so clever. If that really was drugs I saw, it could be....”

She dropped her hands and stared at him, her eyes luminous with fear. “It could be any one of them. It could be all of them."

Gage clenched his jaw and concentrated on staying on his side of the coffee table. If he were smart, he’d take himself off the case right now. They talked about this at the Bureau, about getting in too deep to be objective.

A good agent never got involved with anyone implicated in a case.

He was a good agent.

He was involved.

Can’t have both. Gage looked away from Sophie’s tortured expression. He knew he wasn’t going to walk away. Not from this woman. Not yet. If the case became more complicated, if he started messing up big time, he’d hand-pick another agent to work it.

He pulled his thoughts back to the questions he needed to ask. “Has anyone made any allusions to the drugs? A joke, maybe.”

“No.”

“What about the groceries Raphael brought earlier this evening? What happened to them?”

“Raphael has nothing to do with this.”

“Just look in the refrigerator, will you?”

Sophie shot to her feet and glared at him mutinously before stalking from the room.

Oh yeah, this was working well. Truth be told, he suspected the only thing Raphael guilty of was keeping a secret, and chances were that secret had nothing to do with art fraud or drug dealing. Another one of his damned feelings again. He followed Sophie to the kitchen.

“Nothing. See?” Sophie stood in front of the open refrigerator door and stared into its depths.

Gage walked over to look. He pushed a bag of lettuce to one side, then opened the freezer compartment and peered in. There wasn’t enough food in either part to conceal a can or package of drugs.

He checked the cupboards, one after another. The ones that weren’t bare held dusty tin cans that had probably been left by the former occupant. Obviously, Sophie’s talents didn’t lie in the kitchen.

“Ciro was here, too?” he asked, closing the last door.

“Yes."

He glanced up at her feeble reply. Hell. She had that jittery, strung-up look people got when they were running on empty. “When’s the last time you ate a meal?”

Her delicate, bare shoulder lifted in a negligent shrug. “We were planning on going out to dinner after Mother’s opening tonight.”

“Me, too." He looked in the refrigerator again. “How about an omelet?”

“I don’t cook very well.”

“Lucky for us, I do." Gage pulled a carton of eggs from the refrigerator and set them on the counter. Without waiting for her approval, he grabbed the milk and some cheese and shut the door.

He turned to the sink to wash his hands. “Tell me exactly what happened tonight. Raphael came in with the groceries, and...”

When she didn’t answer, Gage looked over his shoulder. With great effort, he turned back to the sink and continued washing his hands. He couldn’t hold her every time she looked sad or upset. He just couldn’t. “For what it’s worth, I agree with you about Raphael.”

Gage grabbed the towel and dried his hands. How many rules was he going to break in one evening? You never gave information away for free unless you were working someone. Sophie pulled out of her slump. “You really believe that? You’re not just...you know, pretending, to get me to talk or something?”

“I think we’re past the putting-one-over on each other, don’t you?” He tossed the towel on the counter beside him and prayed he was right about Raphael as he watched her eyes light up with hope. Treacherous thing, hope. It could be snatched away at any time.

“Raphael arrived with groceries,” he prompted.

“Yes. He gave me a bag, and we brought them in here. Then he opened a bottle of wine and Ciro arrived and we toasted our friendship, and then I went to my room to get dressed.”

“So, who put the groceries away?”

“I don’t know. Ciro, probably. He cooks for me sometimes, and he’s the one who told Raphael to buy me some food.”

Ciro again. “Are you involved with him?” The egg shattered in his hand as he cracked it harder than necessary against the side of the glass bowl he’d found. He chucked it in the sink and picked up another one.

“Do you need help with that?” Sophie came to stand beside him at the counter.

“Maybe find me a frying pan."

She bent over to fish a frying pan out of the jam-packed drawer beneath her oven, and Gage nearly crunched the second egg in his hand as he studied the way Sophie’s black leggings hugged her tight, perfectly rounded behind.

Pots clattered against each other when she yanked a stainless steel frying pan out of the mess. She slid the pan on the stove top and twirled it around. “Ciro came over and cooked dinner twice last week to cheer me up. We’re good friends, but it’s more than that. There’s a connection. Not like...." Her gaze skated to his, then back to the frying pan. “Not the same as it is between you and me. Just...something."

Between you and me. Sophie acknowledging out loud the fascination they had for each other–okay, maybe Sophie was only curious, but he was can’t-get-her-out-of-my-head fascinated–gave it a weight and a presence he wasn’t prepared to concede. He poured milk into the bowl of eggs and beat them harder than necessary. How was he supposed to work the case if this kind of stuff kept cropping up?

Try harder. Because he wasn’t ready to entrust Sophie’s safety to anyone else. “Ciro’s father is a wealthy man." He glanced at Sophie, but her expression didn’t change.