Blue Dawn (18 page)

Erik diverted his attention from Allie and her visitor to Doug. It couldn’t have been for more than a second or two. But when he looked back, what he saw wrenched his gut with fear.

The man’s face contorted with rage; his eyes bulged behind his glasses. But what struck terror into Erik as nothing else had was the small blunt weapon in the stranger’s hand. It was only an Earth weapon, but it was trained directly, and at close range, on Allie.

The man’s scream cut through the usual newsroom commotion. A hush fell over the room.

Heads peeked around or over baffles, then fell still. Reporters and editors stood unmoving by their desks.

The surge of fear set off another reaction, one far more powerful and primal than anything Erik had ever experienced. The urge to fight for what was his, to protect Allie with his life.

“I don’t want to talk,” the man screamed.

Carefully, slowly, so as not to attract notice, Erik raised the camera and flash around his neck.

He didn’t have time to reach for the film canister in his pocket that disguised a tiny but highly effective Zalian immobilizer.

The man waved the gun wildly. “What I want is the truth. From you. From all the—”

Erik aimed the flash at the man’s eyes. He depressed the shutter release.

Then, with cold fury, he leapt straight for the man’s throat.

At the news conference hastily arranged by Nate that afternoon, Allie saw Erik for the first time since he’d streaked past her to tackle Klassen. The man had been subdued, the police had arrived, and in the flurry of police interviews, statements, and questions from fellow reporters, she hadn’t had a chance to thank him.

Now, for a brief moment before they filed into the boardroom where the radio and TV reporters had set up their mikes, lights and cameras, they were alone.

“Are you all right?”

Erik cupped her elbow with a gentleness Allie had never seen in him before. She looked up into dark, usually shuttered eyes. Eyes that today brimmed with a fierce protectiveness that brought her to the edge of tears.

Her heart rose to her throat. She nodded, unable to speak. No man had ever shown the slightest inclination to do
anything
for her before.

Certainly no man had ever risked his life for her.

Until now. Until Erik. The Erik whom she had refused to trust, whom she had refused to believe could actually care about her.

Swallowing the lump, and blinking back tears, she turned and followed Nate and Doug into the boardroom.

The room blazed with lights for the TV cameras.

A hush fell over the room as they seated themselves at a table at the front.

Nate, who had orchestrated the event to gain the utmost in publicity for
The Streeter
, greeted the reporters and began the conference with a brief statement of fact. He said the paper had already reviewed its security measures and was instituting new controls to protect its employees and prevent another situation like this from occurring. Then he turned the conference over to Allie.

Allie outlined what had happened from the time Mr. Klassen had arrived at her desk. She spoke matter-of-factly, and with confidence. Erik’s steady presence at her side seemed to calm her jitters and bolster her courage.

Briefly, but trying not to give away too much of the first-person account she had written for Nate and
The Streeter
, she talked about how scared she’d been, and how relieved when the man had been disarmed.

Finally, impulsively, she turned to Erik. She looked into his calm, angular face, his eyes drawing her like a magnet. “But this is the person you should be talking to, not me. He’s the one who saved my life.”

For a moment she forgot the reporters, Nate, the press conference. The lights faded away. She had eyes for Erik only. “He’s the one who’s done something . . . heroic,” she said huskily.

A glimmer of a smile touched Erik’s eyes before he turned to face the barrage of questions.

“Tell us, Mr. Berenger, why did you notice Klassen?”

“Erik! What made you think to use the flash to blind Klassen?”

“Weren’t you afraid? Were you aware the gun was loaded?”

Allie’s heart expanded with pride at the way Erik answered each question, direct and to the point, without any self-preening or arrogance.

“It was Klassen’s coat that first caught my
attention. That and the fact he knew exactly where he
was going.”

“I’m a photographer. Using the flash came
naturally.

“I didn’t have time to be scared for myself. But I
was afraid . . . afraid that Al—Miss Stanislawski
would be hurt.”

After the flood of questions slowed to a trickle, a statuesque blonde TV reporter noted for her sensational takes on mundane stories stood up.

In her usual manner, Natasha Klein waited until she had the room’s attention, then let loose her most flirtatious smile on Erik.

“Mr. Berenger,” she cooed, ”what you did today was truly heroic. Tell me, do you make it a practice to rescue damsels in distress?”

Erik’s eyes narrowed. “It hasn’t been necessary before.”

Natasha’s smile turned lascivious. “Ahh, but if it was? You’d be the first one to stop if I had a flat tire on the freeway, right? A real knight in shining armor.”

When Erik did not respond, the woman sashayed forward until she reached the table where he and Allie sat. She rested her hands on the table and leaned forward until her ample bosom was almost under Erik’s nose.

“Tell me, Mr. Berenger, do you have a girlfriend?”

“No.” Erik looked startled by the question.

“Well, I’m sure that won’t be a problem any more.” Natasha turned to face her station’s camera, positioning herself beside Erik and effectively cutting Allie out of the picture. She smiled brightly. “I know all our single female viewers will be just dying to meet you after this.

It’s not every day a woman gets to meet a real old-fashioned knight.”

With a parting wink for the camera, Natasha sauntered back to her place and sat down with a satisfied smirk. Allie struggled to hide her irritation.
What an attention-seeking flirt!
.

But Natasha was right, Allie conceded after a moment’s consideration. Her gaze met Erik’s once more. There, in the steady, gray depths, she saw the concern and caring she’d questioned for so long.

Natasha was right, she thought again, with growing conviction. Erik
was
a knight in shining armor.

But the reporter was wrong too. Allie’s stomach muscles tightened and she bit her lip.

Because if Erik was anyone’s knight, he was her knight and hers alone.

Erik couldn’t help it. As the elevator to Allie’s apartment left the garage level, he stole another look.

A wave of relief overwhelmed him, the same feeling he’d experienced every time he’d glanced at Allie this afternoon, ever since that crazed man had pointed a loaded gun at her. She was safe.

She was all right.

Again his gaze slid over her. Relief welled up in him again, filling his throat, squeezing his chest.

He didn’t even try to control it. If she had been killed . . . his mind refused to even consider the possibility.

He glanced at her once more. In spite of the jaunty attitude her pink silk jacket and tight blue jeans fought to project, she looked smaller and more vulnerable than ever. The sprinkling of freckles across her nose was more evident than usual in her pale face, the eyes larger and more luminous. She turned slightly and smiled at him, her face lighting up and making his chest tighten.

The thought of losing that sweetness, losing that affection, was unbearable.

The elevator came to a jerky stop. The doors opened. Allie stepped out into the hallway.

Erik swallowed, then followed her. Suddenly, from the deep recesses of his mind where events and emotions had buried it, came a thought purely Zalian in origin. Now was the perfect time—the perfect time to put into motion the final stages of his strategy to win Allie and complete his destiny.

He had saved her life, and he could see not only gratitude, love and admiration, but most important of all, trust, shining from her eyes.

What better time to take her into his arms, to mate with her, then to transport her to the waiting Idlanta III and ultimately Zura and his Zalian home?

Something inside him rebelled, recoiled from what was surely only a practical end to all his planning. Suddenly what was only Zalian common sense seemed somehow odious, offensive.

Not that he didn’t want Allie. Not that he didn’t want to take her right now, to hold her in his arms and never let her go. He could hardly prevent himself from crushing her to his chest, from possessing everything about her he held dear.

But not now. Behind her, Erik’s step slowed. To take her now, with trust and love shining in her face, would be the ultimate betrayal. And Zalia be damned!

Allie opened the door to her apartment. She turned to look at Erik. “You are coming in, aren’t you?”

“No.” Erik forced out the refusal. He wanted to come in, to make love to Allie, more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life. But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

Surprise, then disappointment, flitted across her far too open face. She lowered her eyes, bit her lip, then looked up at him again. “I really don’t want to be by myself right now.”

She said nothing more. She didn’t have to. Her green eyes, shimmering with a naked plea, spoke for her.

“All right. But just for a while.” Erik tried to convince himself he could walk through that door, stay for a few minutes, and then leave without touching Allie. He tried to ignore the thrum of excitement growing in his veins, the electrical anticipation he could taste on his lips and hear humming insistently in his head. The physical symptoms of destiny that had tested Allie so severely. He did not miss the irony of it.

Inside, Allie tossed her purse on the couch, shrugged out of the silk jacket, and headed straight for the refrigerator. Erik watched her from the spot just inside the door where he had uneasily stationed himself.

Allie flung open the fridge door. Her head disappeared inside. Her muffled voice echoed through the apartment. “I’m dying of thirst. I feel like I’ve been talking all day.”

Her head surfaced over the door. In triumph she held high a red plastic jug. “V
oila!
Lemonade.

Would you like some?”

“Please.” Maybe a cold drink would cool him off, douse the wanting growing in him second by second.

Allie filled two tall glasses, then swung over to him. He took the glass she offered. As he did, their fingers touched for a split second. Sparks seemed to shoot through him, burning the tenuous threads of his control. He almost dropped the drink.

Over the top of the sweat-beaded glass, Allie smiled. “To you,” she said, lifting her lemonade higher. Their eyes met. Her thick, dark lashes brushed her cheeks, then she looked up again. “To my hero,” she whispered huskily. “Like Natasha said, you’re a real knight.”

A lump settled in Erik’s throat. He swallowed.

“I’m not a hero.” But it was impossible to resist the pull of her eyes. No one had ever looked at him like that. No one had ever said, the way Allie was saying with her eyes, with her words, with her body, that he was wonderful.

With one long gulp, he drained his glass. The ice-cold lemonade did nothing to quell the powerful yearning inside.

He set down the glass. “I’d better go.”
And
quickly, too.
Before he took her while she was under the false impression he was heroic. Before he hurt her more than he’d ever thought possible.

Before he turned the most precious gift he’d ever been given into the mere means to an end.

Allie set her glass aside. In the wide set green eyes was a puzzled, hurt look. She lifted her chin, exposing the slim vulnerability of her bare neck and shoulders above the figure-hugging tank top.

“But . . . but I haven’t thanked you yet.”

Her husky voice rasped across his nerves, like the play of a bow across a tightly-strung violin.

“You don’t need to thank me. I couldn’t let you be hurt.” Erik avoided her gaze. He couldn’t look at her, couldn’t let her get too close. He turned to the door.

“I want to apologize too.”

“Apologize?” Erik turned back. “Why?”

Allie looked at him, then flushed, but didn’t look away. “I thought you were a user. Like . . .

like . . .”

Her voice trailed off. Erik knew she meant Cody.

“I didn’t want to trust you. Even when . . . But now I know I was wrong. And I’m sorry.”

The honesty of her words hit him like a slap.

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” he said quickly. Because she was wrong. He
was
a user, and had helped her and saved her only to achieve his destiny.

But even as he forced himself to face the truth, something inside him cried out in denial.
It isn’t
like that,
he thought.
It just isn’t
.

Allie approached him, until she was standing only inches away. She placed one slim hand on the wall to the right of him, effectively blocking his way. He breathed in the warm, enticing scent of the woman standing far too close.

“I thought you liked me,” she whispered, her eyes dark and questioning.

“I do.”
More than anything
.

Something in her expression changed, became more wistful. She placed her other hand on the wall to the left of him. “I thought you wanted me.”

Again Erik tried to ignore the need burning in her eyes, the same need burning inside him, and urging him to forget everything but her. He knew what he should do, for her sake if not his. But he didn’t want to deny her, or the truth either.

“I do.”

Her lips curved upwards and she rose on tiptoe. “Good. Because I think we’ve already wasted enough time.”

Her mouth claimed his, with a gentle sweetness that was more welcome than any award he would ever receive on Zura. He sank into the kiss eagerly, shutting out his doubts, letting his mind, heart and body concentrate on Allie, and only Allie.

He clasped her waist and drew her closer. The touch of her fingers in his hair, the warmth of her arms around his neck, made him hungry for more.