Trouble With Harry (14 page)

“Uh-huh.” A grin slipped across his face.

Her astonishment made her green eyes sparkle and a soft, rosy flush spread up her neck into her cheeks. Damn Harry’s eyes, Edie was beautiful and her father should be horsewhipped for telling her anything different. Of course, her father hadn’t seen her like Harry had—all of her.

She leaned to the side, peering down the long aisle of books to the main corridor and dodged back behind the end. “There are people on this floor,” she whispered.

“More than likely. I believe the time is now ten o’clock in the morning.”

“Holy crap!” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “You’re naked!”

“So are you, my dear. Deliciously so, although you do have the comfort of a blanket to ward off the chill in the air.”

“Where are our clothes? My dress!” Edie lumbered to her feet, tripping over the blanket into Harry’s arms.

When Edie grabbed his shoulder to brace herself, Harry winced.

“What’s wrong?” She spun him around and gasped. “Omigod! You’re injured.”

“Can’t be that bad, it only hurts a little.” He attempted a shrug but it turned into a cringe, belying his words.

“You’ve a gash on your shoulder. We need to get you to a hospital.”

“I’d rather not at this point.” The longer he stood naked, the more conspicuous he felt.

“Why not? If you got it on that pirate ship, no telling what kind of hideous germs you picked up. That place was disgustingly filthy.”

“You didn’t seem to mind so much.” He circled her waist with his arm and pulled her to him. “Still mad at me?” With the thin blanket the only barrier between him and Edie, Harry’s body reacted immediately.

For a moment her body stilled. Then, eyelids drooping over gray-green eyes, Edie leaned into him and rubbed her thigh up his leg to nudge against his hardened shaft. “Did you enjoy your little snack? Want to continue on to the four-course meal?”

With a groan, Harry leaned over to nibble on her neck.

Edie placed a hand in the middle of his chest and shoved. Hard.

Harry stumbled backward, his injured shoulder crashing against a bookshelf. “Yow! What did you go and do that for?”

“I don’t need you, Harry. I don’t need you to save me from every mess I land myself in, and I don’t want you to keep assigning yourself as my unwanted bodyguard. I’m not your obligation, and I didn’t ask for picket fences. Things are a little different in the twenty-first century than they were where you come from. Women don’t have to wait for a man to tell them when they can blow their nose. We’ve got a take-charge and don’t-fuck-with-me attitude. So leave me alone!”

Harry was totally taken off-guard by her attack and just as completely turned on by her conviction and determination. The fire in her eyes practically lit the shadowed corners of the library. “How would Mitch say it? You go, girlfriend!”

Edie’s breasts rose and fell beneath the thin blanket, her mouth skimmed into a tight line.

“Excuse me, but would you mind holding it down? We are in a lib— Oh my!” A gray-haired lady in orthopedic shoes blanched white and staggered backward.

Startled by her appearance, Harry turned to face her, giving her a full frontal.

“Oh my!” The older woman clapped a hand to her mouth her white face suddenly flooding with mottled red splotches. Her gaze went from his chest to his groin and she gasped. “Oh my!”

Edie jerked her arm sideways spreading the blanket wide to cover Harry’s vital parts, only to expose her own. Caught in a battle of open-close-open-close, Edie finally gave up and wrapped the blanket around herself, darting a withering glance at Harry.

As if she couldn’t turn away, the lady backed slowly in the direction she’d come. “We don’t allow naked people in the library, sir. You’ll have to wear clothes or—” she glanced down at his cock, again. “Oh my.”

He couldn’t win. With nothing but his hands to cover himself, Harry jerked a book off the shelf and opened it in front of his groin. At least the old lady wouldn’t get another look at his puckering penis. If she said “oh my” one more time…

“Oh my.” At the end of the aisle, she darted a look both directions. “I’m afraid I’ll have to report this to security.” And then she raced away.

“We have about two minutes before somebody shows up to throw us in jail. Come on, we have to get out of here.” He reached a hand out to her.

Edie shook her head. “You’re on your own, buster. I wish I were back in my apartment.”

“Edie!” Harry shouted as thunder rumbled, the lights dimmed and the floor beneath his bare feet shook.

When the lights glowed back to life, Edie was gone, and Harry stood naked in a public library with nothing but a book to cover him.

The old woman’s voice drifted through the stacks of books. “They’re just around that last bookshelf.”

A male voice answered, “Don’t worry, Miss Peabody, I’ll take care of them.”

His heart leapt into his throat. Harry had to get out of there before someone decided to throw him in jail for exposing himself in the library. Surely, even in as strange a place as New York City, they didn’t allow naked men in public places. As the security guard neared the end of his aisle, Harry slipped back the way from which the guard had come.

“I don’t see nobody back here,” the guard called.

Harry leapt to the end of the next set of shelves and ran halfway up the aisle toward the center walkway. He stopped and listened.

“Oh my!” Miss Peabody stepped across the end of the row a hand fluttering to her throat, her eyes shifting downward. “Oh my! He’s—” Her voice squeaked and she cleared her throat. “He’s over here!”

Booted feet thumped across the floor. Harry didn’t wait to see his pursuer. Spotting a red, lettered sign with the words EXIT written in large bold print, Harry spun in that direction and took off at an all-out run.

“We’ve got a streaker on the third floor. I repeat—” the security guard was shouting.

Harry slammed into a metal door. He didn’t stop long enough to read the warning sign. As soon as the door cracked open a piercing screech rent the air, warbling over and over. Great, he’d set off some alarm.

Every security guard in the building would be onto him before he had a chance to make it to the bottom floor. How many security guards did a public library need? But then they would expect him to go down. Harry hesitated only a moment and then took the stairs upward two steps at a time climbing one floor after the other.

When he reached the fourth floor, he collapsed against the door and pushed. The heavy metal didn’t budge, locked from the other side. Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs below, pounding their way upward. Harry dragged a deep breath into his lungs and sprinted upward.

A door burst open on the seventh floor when Harry was halfway up the fifth flight of stairs. Black boots and the blue-gray uniform of a security guard appeared between the stair rails.

Harry spun and ran back to the fifth floor door, hoping it wasn’t locked like the last one he’d tried. He shoved hard.

Damn, it was locked.

Now he had three choices, he could go up the stairs and plow into the guard coming down, go down the stairs and use gravity to knock his pursuers over or he could give up and go along quietly, be thrown in jail and have nobody to bail him out. He braced himself and prepared to take on the least of the evils.

“Hey freak! We have you surrounded.”

* * * * *

As soon as she got her bearings in her own bedroom, Edie dropped the blanket she’d grabbed aboard the ship and slid into her blue-green silk robe. Then she paced her bedroom floor chewing her thumbnail, still angry with Harry. When her nail came off between her teeth, she spit it across the room. Damn! She hadn’t chewed her nails since she was thirteen. And it was all Harry’s fault.

Had she asked him to be her protector? Well, she’d wished him to save her twice from dire circumstances. But that didn’t mean she wanted him to feel
obligated
to take care of her. Ever since her mother died, she’d been taking care of herself. She sure as hell didn’t need a man to provide for her. And she wasn’t afraid of adventure. Was she? She picked up the pacing again, nibbling on another nail.

On her fifth pass in front of her warm comfortable bed, she couldn’t help envisioning Harry standing in his birthday suit in the cold aisles of the library, the shocked librarian running for assistance.

He had helped her out of more compromising situations. But Edie had deserted him when he needed her most. So, he didn’t care about her as much as she did about him. And yes, she did have feelings for the jerk, but that was beside the point. He didn’t owe her anything, but she sure as heck owed him two times over for saving her ass. Her mind tumbled over her dilemma—should she save Harry or let him fend for himself?

At that moment, she noticed her perfumes were tipped over on her dresser. What the heck? She hadn’t knocked them over and Harry had left with her. She pulled her drawers out one by one. Underwear and bras lay in a tangled mess unlike the usually color-coordinated rows. Edie raced to her closet and flung open the doors. Hangers hung askew, dresses and skirts were piled on the floor.

A loud thump shook the floor beneath her feet and rattled her closed bedroom door. Holy shit! Whoever had been in her bedroom was out there in her living room. Buried in trivial personal problems she hadn’t noticed the disturbance outside the haven of her bedroom.

Her heart leapt into her throat when she realized her telephone was out there. She couldn’t call the police without it. Inching toward the door leading to the living room, Edie pressed her ear to the wooden panel. She wanted to wish Harry back to go out there and chase away the bad guys. But damn it, then she’d be depending on him yet again. When she wished him back, she’d do it to save his butt, not hers.

With her breath frozen in her lungs, Edie pressed her ear to the door. The heavy wood paneling muffled the crashing sounds of furniture being overturned, shattering glass and deep rumbling voices muttering curses. With another nail sacrificed to the nerve gods, Edie stood wringing her hands trying to decide whether to hide in her closet or make a mad dash through the small living room to the outside door. She’d be a fool to place herself in danger. The closet looked like her only choice until the men either found what they were looking for, or left.

Once more, she pressed her ear to the door and listened. No sounds came from the other room. Had they gone? Dared she go out and use the phone to call the police? Maybe they could get here before the criminals completely disappeared. Her hand hovering over the doorknob, Edie hesitated, then inched the door open and peeked through the crack.

She gasped. Son of a bitch!

Couch cushions were tossed across the room, slashed down the middles. Kitchen knifes were left stabbed into the backs of her wing-backed chairs. Her best butcher knife was buried in the front door with a note wedged beneath.

Her heart beating like a tom-tom in her chest, Edie threaded her way through the mess, a cold shiver snaking down her back. She leaned down to pick up a broken photo frame with the only picture she had left of her mom, dad and herself when she was six years old. Thank God the picture was still intact. But the rest of her stuff was a shambles, completely ruined.

What did they want? Why had they destroyed her apartment and everything in it?

A thick arm clamped around her throat, a meaty hand shutting off the air to her mouth and nose. Edie’s heart stopped for a moment then beat wildly against her chest. Oh damn. How quickly her perspective changed from worrying about things to worry about her life!

With the prospect of suffocating a very real possibility, Edie erupted into a crazed frenzy clawing at the dark-skinned arm holding her against the wall of a man behind her. Her feet flailed, landing blows against his shins. But the man didn’t budge and her bare feet made no difference to the vise over her mouth.

Soon, her vision blurred and her struggles ceased, blackness creeping around the edges of her vision. No. She couldn’t pass out. Perhaps, if she cooperated, they’d let her go.

Her head spinning into darkness, Edie went limp.

“That is better,” a low voice said against her ear and he loosened his hold on her nose.

With the desperation of a dying woman, she sucked air through her nostrils into her burning lungs, replenishing her oxygen-starved brain cells.

“Where is the Stone of Azhi?”

All this—she stared around at the ruins of her apartment—was about that stupid stone she’d found in the sarcophagus at the museum? Her life had been turned completely upside down by the Stone of Azhi? Some days it didn’t pay to get out of bed.

“Where is it?”

And she was supposed to answer with a hand clamped over her mouth?

The hand loosened enough she could move her mouth. Blood flowed into her lips. “I don’t know where the stone is.” And she didn’t. Harry had it last.

“You will give us the stone or your boyfriend will die.”

Harry? Edie’s gaze bounced off the corners of the room she could see around the suited arm. Harry wasn’t here. He was comparatively safe back at the library where she’d stranded him. She was about to breathe a sigh of relief when the door to her apartment burst open and another burly man with the dark, swarthy skin of a Middle Easterner pushed Mitch in, his hands bound behind his back, a slash of silver duct tape over his mouth. He was barefooted, his normally tailored khaki slacks were wrinkled and his polo shirt hung loose from his waistband.

“Mitch!” Edie surged forward only to have the arm around her throat tightened and pull her snug against the goon’s, curry-scented body. “They haven’t hurt you, have they?”

Mitch shook his head.

Edie noticed a dark bruise and a lump above his right temple. He’d been hit but he was putting on a brave front for her. Her stomach ached with dread. These guys meant business and probably wouldn’t blink an eye over killing her or Mitch.

“Now, are you going to give us the stone? Or do you want us to kill him?” The man she had as yet not seen said behind her. His arm tightened, making breathing difficult.