Flirting with Disaster (20 page)

“Two minutes,” she said in a choked voice.

He glanced into her eyes. “What?”

“We have to be there in two minutes,” she said.

“Oh? Why is that, sugar? You have a camera on a timer?”

For an instant there was dead silence, but as his words apparently sank in, she put a hand in the center of his chest and shoved him back a step. “Are you crazy?”

He laughed at her indignation. “Just checking, since you seem to be on an urgent timetable. If you want some kinky pictures to remember me by, it's okay with me.”

“You are so delusional,” she snapped. “What made me think for one single second that I wanted to sleep with you?”

“Maybe this,” Josh said, covering her mouth with his and sliding his hand up her bare midriff till be could run a finger over the hard bead of her nipple. Her hips instinctively swayed into his.

He pressed her back against the wall and continued his assault on her mouth until she was whimpering with pleasure. The movements of her hips became more and more restless. Josh was pretty sure they'd never make it to the bedroom if they kept up like this. Reluctantly, he backed up a step.

“No,” she protested, trying to pull him back.

“Just taking a little break, sugar.” To prove it, he scooped her into his arms and cradled her against his chest, then looked into her eyes. “You think you're gonna change your mind before we get to the good stuff?”

Her gaze remained perfectly level, as if she was responding to a dare. “Not a chance.”

Josh grinned. “It's not supposed to be about pride, Maggie. You can back out if this is more than you wanted. Just because you started the game doesn't mean you have to finish it.”

“It's not a game. This is exactly what I wanted,” she said. “Didn't I make myself clear enough when I answered the door wearing this?”

Josh eyed the skimpy amount of lace still covering her. “It was an unexpectedly fascinating invitation, all right.”

“Then you're accepting?”

“I may be a lot of things, but I'm no fool. When a woman like you says she wants me in no uncertain terms, I'm not likely to walk away. Only one thing I need to know.”

“What?”

“Where's the bedroom?”

“Last door on the right,” she said.

Josh carried her into the room, which was lit with candles. A bouquet of fresh roses scented the air. The luxurious flowered comforter on the bed was turned back, revealing sheets that looked smooth and soft and welcoming. A pile of pillows promised comfort.

The atmosphere was purely romantic, but it was the suggested permanence of it, the hundred and one little personal touches that screamed Maggie, that got to him. This was the bedroom of someone who understood what it took to make a home. Josh couldn't help wondering if he'd ever fit here, or anyplace like it.

Maggie touched his cheek. “What's wrong?”

“Just thinking how different your life is from mine,” he admitted, settling her on the bed, then sitting on the edge beside her, not quite ready to join her.

“In what way?”

“I'll bet this big old bed has been in your family for generations,” he said.

“It was my great-grandmother's,” she confirmed.

He met her gaze. “Do you know I don't have one single thing from any ancestor of mine? Not even a snapshot.”

“That's sad.”

He shrugged. “It's just the way it is. Nadine never was one for sentiment. We didn't have room for it on the road.”

“Sometimes family's not all it's cracked up to be,” Maggie said as if that might console him.

“Your folks seem like good people. And you obviously like the links to the past. They're all around you, here and at Images.”

“These are things, Josh. I appreciate them for their beauty and, yes, to a certain extent for the memories they carry with them. But sometimes the weight of responsibility that goes along with them can be a heavy burden.”

“Which explains all those rebellions of yours,” he guessed.

Maggie nodded.

“Am I another one?”

She looked away, then lifted her gaze to his. “I can't be sure.”

He couldn't say that the truth didn't hurt, but he shrugged it off. “That's honest enough.”

“Is it enough that I'm here with you now?” she asked.

He reached over and slid the strap of her bra off her shoulder. “I guess we'll just have to see whether it is or not.”

Heat flared in her eyes. “Not to worry. This is the part I always get right,” she assured him. “It's the rest I usually mess up.”

“Then we're in the same boat, darlin'. Let's just see where it takes us.”

 

The trip turned out to be spectacular, even if it was only the start of a journey. Josh had a hunch there might yet be rocky seas ahead. Surprisingly, that didn't make him want to bolt, as it had so many times in the past.

With Maggie still cradled against him, he sighed with contentment, then gazed down into her flushed face and commented, “You know, when we made this date, I promised you drinks. I don't want you to think I usually go back on my promises.”

Maggie grinned and straddled him. “Things change. Besides, there's a bar downstairs if we get thirsty.”

“And dinner,” he said in a strangled voice when she took him in her hands, then shifted until he was deep inside her. “What about that?”

“There's plenty of food in the kitchen and I'm a great cook when I put my mind to it. I might have a little trouble focusing right this second,” she said, beginning to move. “Are you hungry?”

She shifted provocatively and every thought of food vanished from his brain, along with all the blood.

“Only for you,” he said, grasping her hips and settling her into place before giving in to sensations that made him wonder how he'd ever have the strength to crawl out of this bed again.

Maggie was right. She was a tantalizing expert at this. She knew just which of his buttons to push and when, but when he looked into her eyes, he had to wonder if there wasn't a part of herself she was holding back.

He deliberately slowed things down. “Maggie?”

She finally met his gaze. “What?”

“Keep looking at me, sugar.”

“Why?” she asked, obviously confused.

“Just do it, okay?”

With their gazes locked, Josh began to move again. This time when the sensations ripped through him, when they shuddered through her, he knew with absolute certainty that she was with him.

His name was the cry on her lips when she came.

But as the tremors faded, she slowly slipped away, growing more and more distant without ever leaving his side.

For the first time in his life Josh got why it mattered whether someone made love or had sex. He'd just had the most incredible sex of his life, when what he'd wanted more than anything was to make love.

He tried to imagine what it would take for Maggie to let that happen. Or would she always keep some sort of emotional wall between them?

And, he wondered, why did it seem to matter so damn much if she did?

“Y
ou must be pretty pleased with yourself,” Josh said as he and Maggie ate cold roast-beef sandwiches in the kitchen at midnight.

She paused with her sandwich halfway to her mouth and regarded him suspiciously. She didn't like that glint of amusement in his eyes one bit. He looked as if he'd figured out the secret workings of her brain. Given how chaotic her thoughts were these days, especially when it came to him, that was troublesome.

“Oh?” she said carefully.

“You're back in control,” he said succinctly, as if that explained everything.

She frowned at his knowing expression. “What is
that
supposed to mean?” she demanded, even though she knew exactly what he was saying. He'd seen straight through the whole seduction. He was aware that she'd set out to prove that he hadn't gotten the best of her with that unexpected kiss earlier in the day. She'd wanted him to know that she could be every bit as impetuous and daring as he could be.

“I kiss you. You seduce me.” He grinned. “Do I get to choose what happens next? The escalation of this contest could get to be downright fascinating.”

She frowned at his attempt at humor. It was the second time he'd acted as if taking her to bed were all some sort of game for grown-ups. “Not likely.”

“I think I'll surprise you,” he remarked thoughtfully as if she hadn't spoken at all. “Though tonight will be a tough act to follow.”

“It's not a game, Josh.” She spoke sternly, as if addressing a particularly mischievous child. Unfortunately, he didn't seem the least bit daunted.

“Isn't it?” He leveled a look into her eyes. “Isn't that what people like you and I do, Maggie? We play games. When things get too serious or when the challenge wears off, we cut and run.”

“Maybe you do,” she said to stress that they were entirely different. “I'm not the one who broke my engagement. I was ready to make a commitment.”

“Oh, really?” he said with annoying skepticism. “To a man who would have bored you stiff in a month?”

“You don't know anything about my relationship with Warren.”

“I know Warren and I know you. He's a nice guy. You're a woman who needs a challenge, someone who'll keep her on her toes. You don't want easy, Maggie. I think on some level you knew Warren would figure that out and call things off.” He pinned her with another of those penetrating looks that made her shiver. “What about the men before Warren, Maggie? Weren't they a lot like me? Guys you knew would never call your bluff? Guys who were destined to walk away?”

She couldn't deny that, much as she wanted to. Dinah had called her on the same thing only a few hours earlier. Rather than replying, she tried to shift the attention back to Josh. “What about you? What do you expect when you start seeing someone?”

“Nothing,” Josh said flatly. “I have no long-term expectations when it comes to relationships. I'm one of those guys who walks away, remember? At least I'm willing to own up to it.”

The answer sounded rehearsed. Maggie was willing to bet he'd said it a thousand times before. Heck, he'd said it twice just now. But there was something in his expression, in the way he refused to meet her gaze when he said it, that made her question whether it was actually true this time. She couldn't help thinking about Dinah's claim that Josh had previously untapped staying power.

“Then all you care about is the sex?” she persisted, needing him to define things so there would be no misunderstandings down the road. It was another thing she did, getting all the cards on the table so there wouldn't be any unpleasant surprises when things blew up. Despite what Josh thought, Warren's action had been an unexpected and hurtful twist.

A faint flicker in Josh's eyes suggested she'd hit her mark with her assessment about his focus being all on the sex.

“Absolutely,” he insisted. “Isn't that what matters to you? That's all tonight was about, right?”

Her pride kicked in, even though a part of her recognized that the moment called for honesty. One of them had to break old habits, but she wasn't ready to be the one. Why should she open herself up when he wouldn't? Why should she put all of her vulnerabilities on the line and let him get off scot-free?

“Of course,” she said blithely. “How could it be about anything else? We don't know each other that well.”

“And something tells me we never will,” Josh said, his voice suddenly dulled by something that might have been disappointment.

Maggie was taken aback by the bleak assessment. “What do you mean?”

“You don't really let people in, Maggie,” he accused. “Not even when you're sharing the most intimate moment two people can have. You look away as if to preserve some sort of anonymity.”

She recalled his command earlier that she look into his eyes when they were making love and knew now why he'd been so insistent. His words resonated because the accusation was almost the same thing Dinah had accused her of earlier. It didn't sound any more complimentary coming from Josh. Her temper flared.

“As if you're any different,” she said bitterly. “I thought you enjoyed yourself tonight. You certainly got what you came over here after. Now you're trying to make it seem as if I'm the one who shortchanged you.”

“Didn't you?” he asked, his gaze unwavering. “Maybe you're not giving me enough credit, Maggie.”

“I doubt it,” she said, but with far less certainty than she might have a couple of hours ago. She began to gather up the dishes from their makeshift meal. “I guess that's that, then. Now that you've satisfied your curiosity or proved you've got what it takes to get into my bed, I'm sure you'll be moving on. I won't quit helping with Amanda's house, but I'll try not to make it awkward for you. I've never been the clingy type.”

He frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Moving on, of course. Isn't that what usually happens next?” She almost choked on the words, but she managed to keep her tone even. She would not let him see that tears were stinging her eyes.

He reached out and snagged her hand as she tried to slip past him, then hauled her into his lap just as a tear spilled over and ran down her cheek. His expression surprisingly tender, he brushed away the trail of dampness with the pad of his thumb.

“Oh, darlin', you've got that all wrong,” he said with quiet conviction.

“What did I get wrong?” she inquired stiffly.

“You and me,” he said, his gaze locked with hers, “we're just getting started.”

Her blood hummed at the promise in his words and in his eyes. A nagging little fear shuddered through her, as well. Maybe this time she'd met a man who wasn't going to make walking away quite so easy. Wouldn't it be ironic if the man who never settled anyplace for long turned out to be the one who took up permanent residence in her heart?

 

When the phone woke Maggie out of a sound sleep in the morning, she was still shaken by last night's realization that Josh could turn out to be important in her life if she allowed her defenses to slip and let him start to matter.

“Hello,” she said groggily, aware that Josh was still in her bed. That was a surprise, too. She'd expected him to take off the minute she gave him a chance to do it, but he'd seemingly been determined to prove that she couldn't chase him off.

“Maggie, it's Ellie. I'm so sorry to wake you. I've been trying to call for a couple of hours now, but your line's been busy.”

Maggie immediately snapped awake. She remembered deliberately leaving the phone off the hook so she and Josh wouldn't be interrupted when they came back to bed. She'd put it back in its cradle when she'd rolled over a half hour or so ago. She sat up now, filled with tension. “What's going on, Ellie?”

“There's a problem,” Ellie began. “At the gallery.”

“Tell me,” she said.

She felt a shift in bed beside her and Josh settled a steadying hand on her shoulder, his expression quizzical. She gave him a slight shake of her head to indicate she didn't know anything yet.

“It's Images,” Ellie explained again, her voice breaking. “The police couldn't reach you, so they called me.”

Maggie's heart began to pound. She wanted to scream at Ellie to just get on with it, but she could tell that the young woman was deeply rattled and having difficulty finding the right words.

“Someone broke in last night, Maggie,” Ellie finally blurted. “The police found the door open when they were patrolling the neighborhood.”

“I'll be there in ten minutes,” Maggie said at once, her stomach churning. “Are you at the gallery now?”

“I've been here for a while,” Ellie said. “The police are still crawling all over the place. They have a lot of questions, Maggie.”

For the first time, Maggie realized that there was more than urgency in Ellie's voice. There was real fear, suggesting that this wasn't some ordinary break-in by someone looking for cash or even valuable art.

“How bad is it?”

Ellie hesitated. “It's awful, Maggie,” she whispered eventually, her voice thick with tears. “Hurry, okay?”

“Ten minutes,” Maggie repeated, turning off the phone and tossing it aside as she haphazardly gathered up clothes and pulled them on.

“What happened?” Josh asked, already yanking on his own clothes.

“Someone broke into Images,” she explained. Her hands were shaking so badly, she couldn't get her bra hooked. Josh shoved her hands aside and finished the job. For an instant she wished he would go right on touching her and make this whole incident disappear beneath a sea of sensation. Instead she just uttered a curt, “Thanks,” and pulled a T-shirt over her head.

“So how bad
is
it?”

“I'm not sure. Ellie started crying before she could even describe what happened, so…” Because she couldn't bear to think about how bad, she put her own spin on it. “She's probably overreacting. After all, the police woke her up in the middle of the night to go over there. Anything would seem shocking under those circumstances, right?”

She regarded Josh hopefully, but judging from his tight-lipped expression, he wasn't buying it. “It was probably a burglary,” she continued anyway, trying to put off jumping to a far more logical conclusion. “A lot of people know what we have in there is very valuable. Sooner or later, something like this was bound to happen.”

“You know better than that,” Josh retorted grimly. “This is Brian's doing. There's not a doubt in my mind.”

She scowled at his assumption. It was one thing to imagine some anonymous burglar ransacking the place for cash and valuables and quite another to envision the kind of destruction of which Brian was capable. She couldn't bring herself to think that right now.

“Then it's a good thing you're not a policeman, isn't it?” she said testily. “They at least go through the motions of gathering facts before they make wild accusations.”

Josh stilled her in midstep and forced her to face him. “Look, I understand why you don't want to believe it has anything to do with Brian, but face facts, Maggie. Have you ever had any problems with thieves before?”

“No,” she admitted. “The alarm system seems to have been a good deterrent. Or maybe we've just been lucky. Even before you talked to the cops, my dad's probably had them patrolling around the building 24/7 since I opened the store years ago. What good is influence if you can't use it to protect your daughter's business, right? Somebody probably took a break at the wrong time last night.”

“You know better,” Josh pressed, his gaze steady. “Did Ellie even say anything had been stolen?”

“No.” Before he could go on, she held up her hand. “Okay, let's just say the break-in was Brian's doing, is that really the point?”

“It sure as hell
is
the point,” he said, raking a hand through his hair impatiently. “Can't you see that the man's getting more and more brazen? It's gone beyond threats now, Maggie. You and Ellie could be in real danger.”

She simply couldn't face that possibility, not until she absolutely had to. Brian might be jealous of Ellie's talent and furious with Maggie for wanting to promote it, but that didn't make him some sort of psychopath. Or did it? She remembered the destroyed paintings. At least at Images, he probably hadn't been able to get to Ellie's paintings.

“Don't be crazy,” she told Josh. “Even if he did this, he broke into the gallery. He didn't attack either one of us. He's basically a coward.”

“And that's supposed to reassure me? Cowards like to pick on people they think are weaker, and in his case, I suspect, women fit the bill. Come on, Maggie, you saw him that night at Ellie's. You described him to me. Weren't you just a little bit afraid of how far he might go?”

She didn't like thinking about that night and the fury in Brian's eyes when she'd barged into Ellie's studio. “Can we stop arguing about this and just get over there?” she pleaded.

“I'll drive,” Josh said.

“We can walk just as fast. It's only a few blocks.”

“We might need the truck,” he countered.

She stared at him blankly. “Why?”

“To haul away whatever he's destroyed, unless the police need it for evidence,” Josh said. “Or to take what's left to someplace that's safe.”

“The most valuable things are in the vault,” Maggie reminded him—and herself. “Whoever did this can't have gotten in there, unless they're some sort of professional.”

“Let's hope you're right,” Josh said. “Is the alarm code kept anywhere around the gallery?”

“No.”

“Does Ellie know it?”

She hesitated, then nodded.

“Think she's memorized it, or would she have written it down someplace?”