When All The Girls Have Gone (19 page)

Charlotte awoke, breathless, on the jagged fragments of a dream in which she was trying desperately to reach Jocelyn, who was being swept away by a river.

Okay, not hard to figure out where that imagery came from,
she thought.

She sat up quickly. Moonlight and the sparkling lights of the city spilled through the uncovered window, illuminating the bedroom.

She pushed aside the bedding, intending to go out into the living room and walk off some of the dark energy of the nightmare. She took two steps toward the closed door of her bedroom before she remembered her houseguest.

She stopped, listening intently. There was no sound from the living room. Max was most likely asleep. He needed his rest. The last thing she wanted to do was wake him.

On the other hand, the bedroom was too small for her purposes. She needed to
move
. She certainly wasn’t going to be able to go back to sleep for a while.

She regarded the door with a deep sense of dread. In the shadows of the bedroom it seemed to have been transformed into a solid wall—the one thing that was keeping her from escaping to the freedom of the living room.

She knew it was ridiculous, but she was suddenly convinced that if she didn’t get out of the bedroom she was going to have a full-blown anxiety attack.

The hallway that connected her room to the living room and kitchen would be a reasonable compromise, she decided. She could pace up and down that narrow corridor until her nerves settled.

She opened the door and stepped, barefooted, out into the hall. She stood quietly, listening. There was still no sound emanating from the living room.

Cautiously she began to pace the short hallway, focusing on her breathing, as she had learned to do in the meditation classes she had taken. Gradually the last traces of the nightmare faded. Her pulse slowed.

She was considering a glass of water when she heard the squeak of springs. There followed a faint rustling in the living room.

She thought about rushing back to the bedroom, but she told herself there was no point. Max was awake.

He appeared silhouetted in the entrance of the living room.

“Bad dream?” he asked. “Or just couldn’t sleep?”

His low voice, a little roughened from sleep and edged with a darkly sensual vibe, made her catch her breath. A thrill of excitement swept through her.

He was wearing a dark T-shirt and she saw that he had taken the time to put on his trousers. That explained the rustling sounds, she thought. She was suddenly very conscious of her robe and bare feet.

“Sorry,” she said. She was surprised at the husky note in her own voice. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Not a problem. I’m a light sleeper.”

She cleared her throat. “Right.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Bad dream or insomnia?”

“A little of both.”

He folded his arms and propped one shoulder against the doorjamb. “No need to explain. I’m having the same kind of night.”

“We both need sleep,” she said. “We didn’t get much last night. Maybe we should try some brandy or hot cocoa.”

“Either one sounds good.”

“The brandy will be quicker. I’ve got some in the kitchen.”

“Okay.”

The kitchen doorway was just before the living room entrance where Max waited in the shadows. She padded down the hall toward him. He did not move, but he watched her with an intensity that stirred her senses. She could not recall ever having felt so aware of a man. There was something deeply primal about the sensation.

She told herself to calm down and remember that the attraction between them—assuming it went both ways—was based on the connection created by the harrowing experience they had gone through together. The reality was that they barely knew each other. Their relationship was not founded on stable ground.

Relationship
.

That was probably not the right word to describe their association. Partnership was more accurate. And it was a short-term partnership at that. A business partnership.

And if she tried to define their situation any more clearly tonight, while they were standing only a few feet apart in the darkened apartment, she really would bring on a panic attack.

She made it to the kitchen doorway and stopped. Max was so close now that she could reach out and touch him. To keep herself from doing just that she locked her arms together beneath her breasts.

“Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?” she said.

“How personal?”

“I was just wondering if you ever have a problem with female clients.”

“In the six months I have been in the investigation business, I have discovered that I have problems with every client. Goes with the territory. What sort of problems did you have in mind?”

“It just occurred to me that there’s a certain intimacy factor involved in your work.”

“Intimacy.” He said the word as if he wasn’t sure what it meant.

“I mean, your clients probably share some of their most closely held secrets. They trust you to get answers to questions they’re often afraid to ask.”

“It’s not like the kind of relationship you have with a doctor or a lawyer, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Maybe not,” she said. “But you’ve probably dealt with a lot of clients who are in a highly emotional state. You must have had some who are angry or fearful or desperate. They see you as the one person who might be able to solve their problems. They probably project some of their strong feelings onto you.”

“I’m kind of new at the PI business, remember? I told you, until I went out on my own six months ago I worked for a consulting firm. Our clients were usually members of law enforcement or government agencies—not private individuals.”

“Yes, right, sorry. Just wondered.”

“I interviewed people from time to time—suspects and victims and witnesses. And sometimes it was bad. Real bad. But it was usually someone else who had to deal with the emotional fallout of a case. My job was to identify the patterns and figure out how to predict what the bad guy was going to do next.”

“I see.”

“Mind if I ask where you’re going with this?”

She felt the heat rise in her cheeks. “I have absolutely no idea. Sorry.”
Stop apologizing, you dork
. “Nervous chatter. Blame the bad dream and the insomnia. I’ll get the brandy.”

She escaped into the kitchen and opened a cupboard door to take down the brandy bottle. She sensed rather than heard Max move into the doorway behind her.

“Were you wondering if I’ve ever slept with a client?” he asked.

“No, no, no. Nothing like that.” Horrified, she yanked the cork out of the bottle. “It’s none of my business. I wouldn’t dream of asking such a personal question.”

“No.”

She froze. “No?”

“No, I have never slept with a client.”

She took a deep breath. “Of course not. I never thought you had. I was
speaking in more general terms about your emotional involvement. You know—how do you handle an angry client who takes his anger out on you when he gets an answer he doesn’t want—that kind of thing.”

“It happens. That’s why I always get a retainer up front. But a lot of my work is business and corporate stuff. Not much emotion involved in those cases, but they’re the kind that pay the rent.”

“I see.” Why in the world had she started this ridiculous conversation? Her hand shook a little as she tried to splash brandy into two glasses. “Forget I asked. Just idle curiosity.”

“And maybe the fact that you’ve got a strange man sleeping in your living room is giving you an anxiety attack?” he asked a little gruffly. “Sorry about that.”

“No.”
She set the bottle down hard on the counter and gulped some of the brandy from one of the glasses. The stuff burned all the way to her stomach, robbing her of breath for a few seconds. She coughed and managed to gasp, “You’re not a stranger.”

“And you’re not a client.” He took a couple of steps into the kitchen and stopped. “You’re assisting me in exchange for my services as an investigator.”

She looked at him. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know about you, but as far as I’m concerned the usual rules don’t apply here.”

She handed him the other glass of brandy. He took it and swallowed some.

“So?” she prompted.

He lowered the glass. In the shadows his eyes seemed to heat.

“So we get to make up the rules as we go along,” he said.

She drank a little more brandy to fortify herself and lowered the glass slowly, proud of her control.

“Okay,” she said.

He closed the distance between them, halting less than a foot away. His eyes never left her face.

“Got any?” he asked.

“Any what?”

“Any rules I should know about.”

She was suddenly standing on the edge of a very high cliff. She really ought to think long and hard before she jumped.
Screw thinking
. She’d done a lot of thinking before she agreed to marry Brian Conroy. What good had it done?

“No,” she said. “No, I can’t think of any rules that apply. At least not tonight.”

He set his glass down on the counter. “I want to be very sure of what’s going on here.”

“In all honesty? I haven’t got a frickin’ clue.”

“Do you want me?”

She took a breath. “So much for the subtle approach.”

He caught her chin on the edge of his hand. “I’m not good with the subtle approach. I need to be sure. I need a yes or no.”

She was still in free fall, she realized, about to spread wings she didn’t know she possessed.

“Yes,” she whispered. “But only if you want me, too.”

He smiled a slow, intimate smile that left her breathless. She could have sworn his eyes got a little hotter.

“That’s important to you?” he asked.

“It would be a disaster otherwise.”

“Good to know.” He took her glass from her unresisting hand and set it down on the counter. Then he cupped her face between his palms. “Just to be clear, I want you, too.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

He leaned in close, pinning her slowly, relentlessly against the kitchen counter with the weight of his body. The kiss started out as a slow burn. His mouth moved deliberately on hers, as though he was issuing an invitation. Or making an exploratory foray. Or trying to seduce her.

But she didn’t need to be seduced. She was shivering with anticipation, intoxicated by an incendiary brew composed of equal parts reckless
abandon and absolute certainty. She acknowledged the risks and simultaneously concluded that she could handle them. Hell, someone had tried to murder her. She could have died trapped in a car that had plunged into the cold waters of a raging river. She could have perished of hypothermia on a merciless mountain. On top of all that, she was helping a professional PI—a former profiler, no less—look for her missing stepsister.

Compared to all that, the potential drawbacks of having sex with the man who was sharing the danger with her just didn’t seem very worrisome. Tonight she was going to do what she wanted to do and let tomorrow take care of itself.

The decision set her free—gloriously free—in ways she could not possibly have imagined. For once she was not trying to think through to the logical conclusion; not trying to play it safe. For once she simply did not give a damn about the risks involved.

She reached up to grasp Max’s shoulders. Everything about him was hard, honed and heated. She knew then that in setting herself free, she had freed him, as well.

Lightning struck. The slow-burn kiss flashed into a firestorm. Max gripped her around the waist and lifted her up onto the counter. Her robe fell away. He pushed her knees apart. She wrapped her legs around his waist and wound her arms around his neck.

He groaned, swept her off the counter and started toward the bedroom. She clung to him, her thighs snugged tight as though he were a wild stallion she could ride.

There was something very focused about the way he carried her down the hall. She had the sense that he would have walked through hell to get to his destination. She liked knowing that, she discovered. She liked it a lot.

He fell with her onto the tumbled bed. She came down on top of him. He got the robe off her shoulders, yanked the sleeves down her arms and tossed the garment aside. A moment later he hauled her nightgown up over her head and flung it out of the way.

His hands closed gently over her breasts.

“Charlotte,” he said.

Her name was a hoarse whisper in the shadows.

She fought to get rid of his T-shirt and then she started to work on the zipper of his trousers. He was fully aroused, his erection thrust firmly against the fabric of the pants.

The zipper resisted. She took a firmer grip on it and prepared to yank hard.

Max sucked in his breath and stopped her with his hand.

“I’ll take care of it,” he said.

She rolled onto her side so that he could deal with his trousers. He got up, stripped off the pants and then stepped out of his briefs. He lowered himself alongside her and gathered her to him. One of his hands moved on her, gliding over her thigh. When she touched him, she discovered that his back was damp with sweat.