Dangerous Passion (14 page)

“Cellini’s, on Broadway.”

“Not Cellini’s on Broadway. Stay away from there. Find out who is next best and go there. I want everything here by eleven tomorrow morning.”

“Yessir.”

Drake broke the connection.

Grace was sitting straighter in her chair, looking a little less like a truck had run over her. His respect for her went up another notch.

“I’ll pay you back, Drake. I don’t have my checkbook with me, it was in my purse, but I’ll—”

Drake put a finger over her lips, horrified. “Stop. Please stop. Don’t even think it. I’m the reason this is happening to you. All I’m trying to do is make you as comfortable here as possible.”

“Okay.” She drew in a deep breath. “I understand that I stepped into the middle of some kind of—hostile takeover.” She gave a little laugh that turned wobbly. She bit her lips and waited a second for control. “Very hostile. But I don’t understand why I’m involved. Why do they feel that somehow they can get to you through me? I’m nothing to you. I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. So why trash my house? Slash my paintings? What difference could that possibly make to you?”

Okay.

Drake had been hoping to put this moment off to when she was feeling better, when the adrenaline had worked its way out of her system and she wasn’t shaking. To when she could be wearing clothes of her own and not his and was feeling less of a refugee from her own life.

But what you want and what must be are two entirely different things. Drake understood that down to the bone.

“Words aren’t enough,” he said, rising from the chair. He put a hand on her elbow and lifted her gently up. “I must show you. Come with me.”

They walked in silence down the long hall. Drake thought briefly about somehow preparing her, but dismissed the idea immediately. It wasn’t a moment for words.

His study was at the end of the long, wide hall, essentially across the entire footprint of the building. It took them minutes to get there. They walked in silence, Drake utterly conscious of her hand in his, of her presence at his side.

She was making no bones of her curiosity, twisting her head left and right, noting the furniture, the rugs, the tapestries.

Drake wondered what she thought of his home. It was as far from the current New York style as possible. He liked color, soft fabrics, fine antiques, rugs. He often thought that perhaps he had Mongol or Tartar blood in him, since he always set up households that looked like caravanserais.

He stopped outside the door to his study. His inner sanctum.

Drake looked down at Grace, standing quietly in front of the door. She seemed to understand that he needed a moment to gather himself, and though she must have been quivering with anxiety to discover what lay behind it, she stood and let him take his time.

He could see long lashes, the curve of a high cheekbone, lush mouth slightly downturned. Beauty and grace. Courage, even. A woman of great worth. He’d never thought to see her outside this door.

Drake reached out to the door, a beautiful mahogany veneer over stainless steel, and touched a small glass panel. He pressed his thumb against it; a bright green light flashed, and with a soft whirring sound, the door slid into the wall.

Grace watched the door disappear and then looked up at him for permission to enter. The door framed darkness that had a cavernous feel to it. It was the largest room in the apartment and the darkness inside was dense and black.

It had to be done.

Drake pushed gently at her back and reaching to the side, flipped the light switch of the chandeliers. There were three of them, from Murano, and they made the room and its contents glow.

Beside him, Grace gasped. He tightened his grip on her elbow as her knees buckled.

Enrique Cordero lived in Crown Heights, home of the Bloods. Cordero had come up out of the gang to form his own, a professional organization a million miles above the heads of the street gangs, though he used some of the old gang members now and again.

He hadn’t used the excitable young punks forming the Bloods to get Drake, but he might as well have, for all the good they’d done.

Fucking amateurs.

Rutskoi had worked up a good head of steam by the time he made it to Cordero’s home. Compound, really. Thirty thousand square feet of what looked like a Mexican adobe hacienda plunked down five thousand miles north in a more unforgiving climate. The compound was surrounded by concrete walls two feet thick, with only one way in—a set of big featureless steel doors set in the wall farthest from the street. You had to drive all the way around, being tracked by surveillance cameras every inch of the way, and announce yourself to the monitor.

Cordero’s gatekeeper hesitated just long enough to be insulting, making Rutskoi wait a full five minutes. Finally, Rutskoi heard the loud metallic click of the gate’s electronic lock disengaging. The big steel gates slowly swung open and Rutskoi drove his rental straight in.

Shitheads,
he thought sourly.

The internal courtyard was lit up like a prison camp, huge 500-watt spotlights in each corner. He had to work to keep from shielding his eyes with his hand, not wanting to give Cordero’s men the satisfaction. The overbright lights ruined his night vision, as they were meant to. He could barely make out two hulking figures looking like gorillas in jeans and parkas flanking the entrance to the house and knew that they could see him with almost brutal clarity.

Cordero thought he was so smart, but five of his men had let Drake go. He had fucking delivered Drake on a fucking platter and they had let him get away with hardly a scratch. The thought made him as angry now as it had five hours ago.

Rutskoi got out of the car, holding up his hands to show they were empty, and stopped right outside the door. The two men frisked him thoroughly, even feeling his balls and the crack of his ass. They were right to, a terrorist could hide a good four or five pounds of plastic explosive in underpants, but Rutskoi was no terrorist and they knew it. It was a power game and they had probably been ordered to do it by Cordero, who was an idiot.

“Go on in,” one of the gorillas growled.

“I hope you enjoyed it,” Rutskoi said, and both gorillas stiffened with rage while he walked through the door. That was petty. He didn’t have time to play games with bodyguards. It was a sign of his frustration and anger that he’d prodded the animals.

He stopped in the middle of the two-story atrium and tried to get himself under control.

Fuck! The one chance anyone had ever had to nail Drake, the one small piece of information on a weakness of his, and Cordero’s men had blown it. That window of opportunity was never going to open again. Drake would be more tightly protected than the Kremlin now. And all because Cordero had sent second-rate men.

If only this weren’t America. Rutskoi had no men here. If this had been back home and he could have taken care of it himself, Drake would be dead. After Drake gave him the codes, Rutskoi would be the sole proprietor of a kingdom and he wouldn’t have had to team up with a shit-for-brains like Cordero.

But he
was
in America, and he
was
teamed up with Cordero. That was the bottom line and he had to deal with it. Rutskoi rarely wasted time wishing that things were different. It was a hard world and only hard men got by.

Under control now, he trotted up the stairs to the second floor under the watchful eyes of another pair of security guards posted at the top of the stairs.

“I have an appointment,” Rutskoi said as he passed them. They grunted and swiveled their heads to watch him as he made his way down the hallway.

Before he got to Cordero’s office, the door opened and a very young, very pretty dark-haired girl walked out. She was unsteady on her feet, dark red lipstick smeared over her lips, eyes unfocused, hair mussed. Rutskoi watched her stumble along the corridor.

He knocked briefly, then walked in, finding Cordero tucking his lipstick-stained cock back into his pants. White powder was scattered on the glass-topped coffee table.

Oh Jesus, Rutskoi thought. The fuckhead was
high.
A couple of hours after failing to kidnap one of the most dangerous men on the planet, he was getting himself a blow job while high. Did he
want
to get killed?

Rutskoi himself never did drugs, but he certainly understood why they helped in certain circumstances. In Chechnya, his men often shot up heroin. At a hundred rubles a shot, just a few dollars, they could spend a little time in a place inside their heads where dead Russian soldiers weren’t rigged with IEDs. Where small kids didn’t carry suicide belts. Where their officers weren’t selling off their own equipment. Rutskoi always turned a blind eye as long as they did it on down time and not while they were on duty. They had to do something to help them maintain their sanity.

But Cordero wasn’t in the world’s worst hellhole, just praying to stay alive long enough to make it home, like Rutskoi’s soldiers. No, Cordero had a high-profit business in a safe, stable country. He was a leader, or at least he was supposed to be.

Leaders kept clear heads at all times, were in control of themselves at all times. A leader wouldn’t get sidetracked by sex and drugs when war had been declared against a frighteningly powerful man who was undoubtedly at this very moment planning his revenge.

Drake’s revenge was terrifying. Rutskoi had seen it for himself.

The fact that Rutskoi was teamed with a man who was stoned and had just had sex when he should be fortifying his perimeter and planning the next moves was beyond frightening. He shouldn’t have teamed up with this man, this weakling, at all. But what choice had he had?

“Ruso,” Cordero mumbled in greeting. He’d never been able to pronounce Rutskoi’s name, calling him simply “the Russian.” He fumbled to light a cigarette with trembling hands, inhaling deeply. “That didn’t go well, did it? We’ll have to try again in two weeks.”

Rutskoi balled his fists to keep from smashing them into Cordero’s stupid, degenerate face. It took a moment to level his voice out. “Forget it. That won’t work again. We won’t get another chance. He’ll never go back to that alleyway, count on it. You had one chance and you fucked it up.”

Cordero’s eyes widened at Rutskoi’s tone. He inhaled deeply on the cigarette, watching the tip flare red and scowled. “You can’t talk that way to me, Ruso. We don’t know exactly what happened. For all I know, my men were betrayed and Drake was waiting. His men sure came fast.”

Rutskoi could feel a vein throbbing in his forehead. “His men came fast because he employs the best. They’re fast and they’re good.”
Unlike your second-rate hoodlums.
“Right now he’s wrapped up tighter than a virgin’s ass and he’s finding out who came after him, then he’ll come after us. We’re dead men walking.”

Cordero’s dark eyes gleamed. “Not if we get him first.” He leaned over to stub out his cigarette in an overflowing ashtray and almost lost his balance. He sat down heavily on the couch, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. “I say we go after him for real this time. Not to abduct him but to get rid of him.”

Rutskoi sat down next to him, nostrils flaring at the smell of what seemed like half a bottle of expensive men’s cologne, pungent cigarette smoke and the heavy musk of sex. “What do you mean?”

“You had some info, right? Someone on the inside willing to rat him out? Use him again.”

“Telling me a small detail about Drake’s schedule is a little different from setting him up for murder. The people who work for Drake have been vetted. And they’re probably afraid of him, too.”

Cordero waved that away. “No one’s immune to money.” He lowered his voice to a Marlon Brando-esque mumble, waggling his eyebrows. “Make him an offer he can’t refuse.” He burst out laughing at his own wit. The laugh turned into a hacking cough.

“Christ, Cordero.”

“I mean it, Ruso. Throw money at the guy. Or better yet, find out if Drake employs women to clean his house and kidnap the family of one so she can plant a mike. Or a bomb. What the fuck. The idea is to get rid of the fucker once and for all. And then you and me, Ruso, we’ll rule the world together.”

You can’t rule yourself,
Rutskoi thought sourly.
How can you rule the world?

Still…Rutskoi’s mind raced. No one had ever had inside info on Drake. Could his informant be persuaded to put out once more? For the right price? Or even better, one of the cleaning staff. That was a good idea. He’d been at Drake’s headquarters. There were multinationals with smaller offices than just the few spaces Drake had allowed him to see. That kind of space required a big staff, working seven days a week.

If his informant didn’t come through, Rutskoi could kidnap the kids of one of the maids. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He’d kill kids if he had to—in Chechnya, sparing them hadn’t been an option, the fuckers were born with AK–47s in their hands—but he preferred not to.

Cordero’s eyes were drifting over to the sideboard with its array of liquor. He was scooting forward on the couch trying to get up, but his balance was gone. The man was disgusting. What had Rutskoi been thinking of, teaming up with a miserable worm like this?

Rutskoi made a fast decision, like a soldier in battle would. “Give me ten million dollars,” he said.

Cordero’s head snapped around to him.
“¿Qué?”

“You heard me. Give me ten million dollars and I’ll do it. I’ll get rid of Drake for you, forever. And I won’t want to share in the business afterward. I’ll leave it all to you. You can take over Drake’s affairs, become the most powerful man in the business in one stroke, and I’ll disappear forever. Ten million dollars is nothing. It’s what Drake makes in a week. And even if you can’t scoop up all his businesses, you won’t have any rivals here. You’ll be top dog forever. A man like Drake comes along once every couple of generations. You’ll be rich and powerful, with no competition, for the rest of your life.”

Cordero’s eyes filled with a crafty light. Christ, Rutskoi could all but see the gears grinding away in his brain. Rutskoi had just put Cordero’s secret dream right into his head. Drake gone, the business all his.

“Five.” Cordero narrowed his eyes. A trickle of sweat fell from his coarse black hair down through the stubble on his cheek.

“Ten,” Rutskoi said firmly. “And expenses. I’m going to need equipment and bribing money. I want you to give me a black credit card and some ID to go with the name. And I want ten million in my bank account in Switzerland. Up front. I promise you Drake will be gone, dead by my hand. I know him, know how he thinks. I’ve known him since he was twenty. I’m probably the only man alive who can do this.”

“Ruso,” Cordero said slowly. “How can I trust you? I give you ten million dollars and you disappear. How crazy do you think I am?”

“Drake isn’t sure about you, but he
knows
I was involved in the attempt. My life isn’t worth shit while he’s alive, after this. He’ll come after me, no question. So I need to get rid of him, in self-defense. I could maybe disappear, stay off his radar for a while, but you can’t. Your business is here. He’ll come after you, don’t ever doubt that, and he knows exactly where to find you. You can’t handle him. We saw that. Five of your men couldn’t take him down. But I can. I know him, I know him well. We’ve worked together, we’ve even fought together. I know his ways and I have this inside informer. Give me enough money to do the job and I’ll get rid of him for you. You stay put here for the next month, don’t move, don’t leave the compound, and I’ll give you Drake’s head on a plate. Not for you, but for me. And then I’ll disappear forever.”

Rutskoi could watch the greed dawning on Cordero’s face. It was a win-win. Cordero could justify doing fuck-all for a month. He could spend it stoned, getting blow jobs every hour on the hour, while Rutskoi took care of taking Drake out. What was ten million to him? For access to Drake’s kingdom or at least with Drake out of the way? Nothing.

“Okay,” Cordero said, finally. He stuck his hand out. Rutskoi took it. “Deal.”

Cordero’s hand was soft, limp, humid; it was like touching a slug. Rutskoi barely managed to keep from wiping his hand on his trousers to get rid of the feel of it.

“Deal,” he replied.

Grace felt the breath leave her lungs in a
whoosh,
making her light-headed, dizzy, completely disoriented.

It took her a second to understand. At first, she was overwhelmed by the magnificence of the room, which was like a small Versailles. The rest of the apartment was lush, hyper-comfortable in a very expensive sort of way, colorful and unique. This—this was lavish beyond anything she’d ever seen, the way royalty must live. Her eyes greedily drank in the jewel tones of the plush carpets, the enormous, brightly colored enameled vases with huge, thriving plants, a massive, highly polished desk that looked like the place where God would do his paperwork, if He had any.

And of course, as in every room in this unusual home, the magnificent nighttime skyline of Manhattan stretched like an immense diamond necklace outside, along one glass wall.

Then, a second later, what was on the remaining three walls popped out at her and she stared, unable to believe her eyes.

Dozens and dozens of paintings, drawings, watercolors, exquisitely framed and beautifully lit. The artwork fit into the room perfectly, the colors and shapes echoing the furniture, sculptures, vases. Seeing the artwork here, recognizing it, was so outlandish, it had literally taken a second to penetrate her mind, though every work of art was as familiar to her as her own heartbeat.

Hers.

Every single painting, every single drawing, gouache, watercolor—all hers. This magnificent room was like a Grace Larsen museum. She pivoted to the dark-eyed man watching her so carefully. She felt herself wobble and he steadied her.

“You,” she whispered.

He bowed his head gravely. “Me,” he confirmed.

Put it into words, pin it down. “You’re the one who’s been collecting my work for the past year.”

“Yes.”

Her head swam. “I think—I think I need to sit down.”

“Absolutely.” Drake’s hand was once more on her elbow and it felt as if he were carrying her more than guiding her to the nearest couch. She sat down gratefully, not certain whether her legs would have held her one second longer. Drake sat next to her. The soft down cushions of the couch settled deeply under him, rolling her a little into him.

Here, too, a big fire was burning, framed by an intricately carved hearth of sandstone. She was grateful for the warmth.

Grace looked at the nearest wall, where two of her best oils flanked the fireplace. She remembered clearly all the emotions running through her as she painted them. The two big oils were meant to be shown as a pair. A Flemish-style still life of overblown roses in an earthenware vase, an open manuscript and a plate with grapes and apples on a wooden table. The other painting was a still life of a small topiary in a red terra-cotta designer vase, an open laptop and a box of Godiva chocolates on a transparent Philippe Starck table. The Flemish-style still life was a riot of colors and rotund, convoluted shapes. The modern still life was in cool tones of gray and beige, with hard edges and machined shapes.

She’d painted them more than a year ago, hoping that whoever bought them would buy them together and hang them together, the old and the new, but she hadn’t been holding her breath. Artists never got any kind of a say about who bought their work and how they displayed it.

These two had been bought together and they were displayed magnificently.

The far reaches of the room were in shadow, but she could see enough. A hand gleaming out of the darkness in one painting, the foam of the ocean in another. The walls were filled with her work.

“I—I don’t know what to say, what to think. A whole year, I’ve been wondering who was buying up my work.” Mind spinning, she turned her head to him. “Harold was disappointed that you hadn’t organized a show. Most people who collect a lot of one person’s work are planning a show to drive prices up. You were never going to, were you?”

He shook his head.

“I didn’t really care, but Harold did. He felt he could have started pushing the prices even higher if you’d shown my work. Even though they were already going very high.” She’d made a fortune off him.

Drake’s jaws worked. “Mr. Feinstein could have quadrupled the prices and I would have paid. I would have paid ten times what he asked. I love your work. Your paintings have given me enormous pleasure over this past year. There’s no price for that.” His dark eyes held hers. “I’m sorry if I held your career back by not showing your art. I didn’t want to—couldn’t share it with others. I see now I made you suffer. I am deeply sorry.”

Grace reached out with her hand to touch him, then stopped suddenly, her hand an inch above his. She looked down at their hands. At his, so sinewy and strong, with the tough yellow calluses on the sides. Not an artist’s hand, not at all. It was an expression of sheer male power. Banked power.

He didn’t move in any way, just watched her carefully. She was holding her hand above his for so long it was almost an insult, and yet he didn’t act insulted at all. He merely waited for what she would do.

Her instincts told her he would accept whatever she did. Whether she slapped him or caressed him, he would accept it.

Her hand lowered over his and again she was shocked at the warmth emanating from his skin.

“It’s okay,” she said, hand curling over his. “Poor Harold got really exasperated with me because I wasn’t as ambitious as he was. I mean, I am ambitious, but my real goal is simply to live from my art, not to be famous. I don’t really do well in society, anyway. But he had this dream that I would be as famous as—I don’t know—Andy Warhol, or even Picasso. Someone known even outside art circles. Like some kind of celebrity.”

Grace couldn’t suppress a shudder at the thought. She’d once been part of a collective show of ten artists, one of whom was a rich heiress, famous for a sex tape with a well-known movie star that had taken more than 10 million hits on the internet. The paparazzi outside the gallery had been like a swarm of angry bees, flashbulbs flashing aggressively in their faces. Grace could still feel the press of sweaty bodies, the anxiety and then panic she’d felt as she tried to push her way through. When she finally made it into her apartment, she’d been shaking and sweating, with a massive headache from the flashbulbs.

No, celebrity was not her thing.

“That’s not for you,” he said quietly. It wasn’t a question.

“No. Definitely not. So I was more than happy to have someone buying all my stuff, even though it made Harold unhappy to have it hidden away. But I remember thinking…thinking that I’d like to talk to the person who was buying my work. Find out what he or she thought. What pieces they liked best. What worked, what didn’t. Except the lawyer sort of hinted that his client lived abroad.”

“That’s exactly what my lawyer was told to say. And to tell you the truth, he doesn’t know where I live. We communicate by e-mail and I send money from London.”

He’d gone to such enormous trouble to remain anonymous. “So…you weren’t ever going to stop by to have a chat, were you?”

His hand flexed under hers. “No.”

“I—I see.”

“No, I don’t think you do. I’m in a dangerous business and I have dangerous enemies. Anything I care about would be considered a point of attack. If anyone knew I loved your work, they’d use that knowledge against me. So I bought them anonymously. I shouldn’t have. But I did. Your work means a great deal to me and I simply couldn’t renounce having it. I simply couldn’t. Every painting, every drawing speaks to me. And I was selfish enough to want them for myself. And now, because of my weakness, I have placed you in jeopardy.”

“You need to straighten this mess out,” she said. She looked around her, at the magnificent room that managed to be exquisitely beautiful and amazingly comfortable at the same time. Something very few homes in New York ever managed. “I mean, it’s nice here, but I can’t stay here forever.”

He shook his head, something weary beyond words in the gesture. “I can’t make it go away, Grace,” he said quietly. “Not immediately. And words cannot express how sorry I am about that.”

He was. It was there, written in every harsh, exhausted line of that strong face. His face was so fascinating. She studied him openly and he let her. Grace was always curious about faces, about what they said of a person and what they hid. Particularly lived-in faces like his, which spoke of hardship and power and authority. Whoever he was, he’d lived through harsh times and prevailed.

“I’m not too sure you should be beating yourself up for something that you didn’t do. I mean, you didn’t invite those men to attack you, did you? It’s not your fault.”

“You’re wrong.” He closed his eyes wearily. “In a very real sense, it is my fault. I should have arranged for a discreet purchase of an oil or two, a drawing here and there.” He opened them again suddenly, his gaze as direct and fierce as a falcon’s. “But I was greedy, I wanted them all, everything you ever produced, would ever produce. And now you’re paying the consequences.”

The regret on his face, in his voice, pierced her. Most people evaded responsibility, even when it rested squarely on their shoulders. This man was clearly used to bearing heavy burdens and not foisting them off on anyone else.

He also looked utterly exhausted. Underneath his naturally olive complexion, he was pale, and it seemed to her that the grooves bracketing his mouth had carved themselves more deeply in the past few hours.

“Do you know, Drake—by the way, is that your first name or last name?”

“Neither. My name is Viktor Drakovich. But I’m known as Drake.”

It was an odd way to phrase it. Most people would say
People call me Drake.
She tilted her head to study him some more. There was something so compelling about his face, with its high cheekbones, strong brow, sensuous mouth. Compelling and…and sort of familiar. Which was crazy, of course. She’d never seen him before in her life and she knew no one like him. Obviously, all these shocks had rattled her brain and that was the source of the déjà vu. Even his voice—incredibly deep and with a hint of an accent that she couldn’t place—sank deep into her bones as if she’d heard him a thousand times before.

“Where are you from?”

He gave a frosty smile. “I have no idea.” He held his hand up when she recoiled. “That’s not—what would you call it? An answer that’s not serious?” Deep grooves etched between his eyebrows. His accent was becoming stronger.

“A flip answer?” she suggested.

“Precisely. It’s not a flip answer. I don’t know where I was born. My first memory is of being a street rat in Odessa, running with a pack of what you’d call hoodlums there. But someone said something about me coming from Tajikistan.” He shrugged. “I grew up speaking a mongrel mixture of Russian, Tajik and Ukrainian. Took me years to straighten the languages out.”

He was trying to frighten her. No, not frighten. His body language was clearly protective, not aggressive. He was trying, for some reason, to put himself in a bad light.

“Well, Drake, let me tell you, I’m finding it really hard to be that angry with someone who made the mistake of loving my paintings too much.”

A huge log crumbled into the fire with a crash and flurry of sparks. The fire was dying, consuming itself. She knew just how it felt. Before she could stop herself, a huge yawn bubbled its way to the surface.

“Sorry.” Her eyes felt heavy. She could feel her neck muscles weighing on her shoulders. It took an effort to keep straight and upright.

Drake folded his hand around hers. “You’re tired,” he said. “You need rest after what you went through today. You need to sleep.” In a lithe movement, he was standing and helping her to stand, too. He put a light hand to her back.

His hands were so amazing. Huge and hard and like heaters. The warmth of the hand at her back came through the silk of the gi as if it were a heating pad.

One hand holding hers, the other at her back. For a moment, it was as if she were in his embrace. Grace was utterly shocked that she was tempted to keep going, simply turn into him, feel those incredibly strong arms fold around her. The temptation was so strong that she had to freeze for a moment not to give in to it.

He misunderstood and dropped his hands to his side, stepping back sharply.

How crazy. She felt…bereft. Already missing his hands on her, the heat of them soaking into her, the feeling of being surrounded by his immense strength.

“Come,” he said. “You must be exhausted.” He turned and motioned toward the door. They walked silently down the immense corridor until he stopped outside the bedroom door, opening it and gesturing for her to enter. “I never have guests, so I am afraid there is just the one bed. I’ll sleep on a couch.”

Grace stiffened. “You most certainly will
not
sleep on a couch in your own home. If anyone sleeps on a couch, it will be me. I’d like to remind you that you’ve been shot, in case you’ve forgotten.”

A wintry smile. “No, I haven’t forgotten. But it is unthinkable that you sleep on a couch. I absolutely cannot permit it. You’ll find a pair of pajamas on the bed and—”

“Drake.” Grace stepped a little closer, looking up into his eyes. Dark-ringed, weary eyes. “Don’t even think of it. I am not about to make a wounded man sleep on a couch, and that’s final.” She pointed at the bed, large enough to plant corn on. “If you insist, that bed is big enough for both of us, with a football team in the middle.”

He sagged a little in relief, caught himself. His deep brown eyes turned almost liquid. “You—you trust me? I swear you’ll be safe, I swear on my honor.”