Authors: Elizabeth Bevarly
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #General, #Suspense
Overnight Male (10 page)
“So. Iris,” he began as she approached the desk where the attendant had left her dinner. “You and I have never really had a chance to chat.”
She folded herself into the chair, but reached past the salad for the glass of wine first. “Yeah, well, you and the guys always seem to have something else going on,” she said, the words tinged with just a hint of resentment. “You’re all such busy little planners. Busy, busy, busy.”
“No one ever said you couldn’t be part of the planning,” Adrian pointed out.
“No one ever said I could be, either,” she replied.
His mouth dropped open. Was that petulance he heard in her voice now? And if so, what had caused it? Could Iris’s feelings have been hurt? She, the woman who worked so hard to make them all think she didn’t care about anything?
Well, color him shocked.
Before he could say anything, she was talking again. “I know what you guys think. You think because I don’t have a pair, I don’t know as much about computers and gaming and scamming as you guys do.”
Oh, Adrian wouldn’t say she didn’t have a pair. She just had a pair of something different, that was all. And quite a nice pair it was, too.
“But you might be surprised by some of the things I know,” she told him. “You might be surprised by some of the things I’ve done.”
“I don’t think I’d be surprised,” Adrian said. And then, before he realized he intended to do it, he added, “Trisha.”
He had no idea what made him say her name aloud like that. He honestly hadn’t made a conscious decision to out her. He’d still been toying with the idea of the reward, had still been thinking he might call that number and reveal her whereabouts to a family that still wanted her back very much. He told himself he must have made the decision subconsciously, to see if he could squeeze even more money out of Iris by agreeing
not
to report her location to her family. But there was nothing avaricious about his thoughts at the moment. There was only…curiosity. About Iris. As a person, not a price.
Her face paled at the sound of her name spoken aloud, and her blue eyes went dark as her pupils expanded in her terror. The wine glass slipped out of her fingers and onto the desk, splitting in two to spill a river of ruby-red across it and onto the carpet. Neither Adrian nor Iris moved to clean up the mess. They only looked at each other in silence—her eyes filled with fear, his, he imagined, filled with speculation.
She recovered quickly, however, leaping up and grabbing the linen napkin from her tray to mop ineffectively at the quickly spreading puddle. “Why did you call me Trisha?” she asked. And he had to give her credit, because there was nary a tremor in her voice when she spoke.
“Because that’s your name,” he replied. She continued to blot at the wine on the desktop, but mostly all she did was push more of it onto the floor. That was the problem with panic. The more you tried to contain it, the bigger the mess became. “Trisha Harrington,” he continued when she neither confirmed nor denied his assertion. He steepled his fingers and leaned back comfortably in his chair as he went on. “Daughter of Benjamin Harrington. Granddaughter of Nathaniel Harrington. Last known address in the heart of Philadelphia’s Chestnut Hill area—a quite lovely community, if I do say so myself. I never would have suspected such an ugly, ruthless crime element was thriving there,” he added parenthetically. “Anyway, Trisha is currently missing and presumed dead, but she’s quite valuable to anyone who could return her to her grieving family.”
Iris continued to swipe fruitlessly at the spill, but her movements had slowed and become more mechanical. “A million five last time I heard,” she finally said. “Though it’s been a while since I checked.”
“It hasn’t gone up,” Adrian told her. “It’s still a million five.”
She nodded, still wiping, still not looking at him. “I guess they’ve given up on finding me alive, then. But don’t worry, Nick, they’re not grieving. That would be impossible for them.”
“Why is that?” he asked.
Her motions slowed some more, but she was still trying to clean up the mess—without much result. “Because you can’t grieve when you don’t have a heart.”
Instead of commenting on that, he said, “I wouldn’t say they’ve given up on your being found alive. They’ve not rescinded the reward. If they didn’t think there was a chance of locating you, they would have taken that off the table a long time ago, wouldn’t they?”
She lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “They’re a pretty tenacious lot. They don’t like losing. Anything.”
Interesting she would refer to herself as an any
thing
instead of an any
one,
Adrian thought.
Finally she looked up at him and met his gaze levelly. “So…have they located me?” she asked softly.
“Not yet,” he replied honestly.
She straightened and squared her shoulders a little, looking like someone who was trying to decide whether or not there was any point in doing battle. “How long before someone tells them where I am?”
Now Adrian folded his arms behind his head and leaned back even more in his chair. “I guess that depends on who else finds out where you are.”
“You haven’t told anyone?”
“No.”
“Are you going to tell anyone?”
He started to reply with an honest
I don’t know,
but instead heard himself reply with an honest, “No.”
And he realized then, for the first time, that he genuinely had no intention of turning her over to her family. Not for profit. Not for gain. Not for anything.
“It could be worth a lot of money to you,” she reminded him.
“Yes, it could.”
“My family would be in your debt.”
“They would indeed.”
“They’re very powerful.”
“Yes, I know.”
“They could do a lot for a guy like you.”
“I know that, too.”
She studied him in silence for another moment. “You’re really not going to tell them where I am?”
He shook his head.
“Why not?”
He opened his mouth to reply honestly again, then closed it. Because he didn’t want to reveal that just yet. He didn’t want Iris to know that the reason he wouldn’t reveal her whereabouts to her family was that she was worth so much more than her reward, and that he would rather have her in his debt than her family. As powerful as the Harringtons were, Iris was infinitely more so. Because she had made—and was making—Adrian feel and think things he hadn’t thought himself capable of thinking or feeling. And until he had a handle on why that was, he would just as soon Iris not know how potent she was.
So he said dismissively, “Well, it’s only a million five.”
She expelled a single, humorless chuckle. “
Only
a million five. Nick, I have family members who would blow up a kindergarten for a fraction of that, then torch a nursing home to celebrate.”
“Then they are exceedingly lacking in ambition,” he said. “Because you and I, Iris, we could make a lot more than that together.” Strangely, he realized he was talking about something other than money when he said that. He just wasn’t sure he wanted to think about what.
Her dyed-black eyebrows arrowed downward. “How do I know I can trust you?”
Nick met her gaze unflinchingly. “I don’t suppose you can know that,” he said. “I suppose you’ll just have to trust me.”
“I’ve never trusted anyone before.”
“Well, then. We have something in common. Neither have I.”
“You could still call my family,” she pointed out.
“I could.”
“You could do it tonight, after I go to sleep.”
He didn’t bother to deny it. “I could indeed.”
“I could wake up tomorrow surrounded by some of my father’s favorite thugs.”
“That’s entirely possible.”
“They could drag me back to Philadelphia, kicking and screaming, and you could just stand there counting your money.”
“Right again.”
“So how do I know you won’t?”
His gaze never left hers. “You don’t.”
She inhaled a deep breath and released it on a long, shaky sigh.
“You’re going to have to trust me, Iris. Or you’re going to have to…How did you put it? Jam.”
To illustrate that, Adrian rose and strode across the room to where she had dumped her big, ugly black bag. He picked it up and walked back over to where she stood, extending it toward her. Iris took it from him and clutched it tightly to herself.
“Everything you’ll ever need is in there,” he reminded her.
She shook her head slowly, her eyes never leaving his. “No,” she said. “Not quite everything.”
Adrian nodded, smiled and marveled at the warmth that suddenly seemed to radiate from somewhere deep inside his chest. But all he said was, “Sleep well, Iris.”
T
HE
D
ELTA
U
PSILON
C
HI
house was one of a half dozen fraternity houses dotting a dead-end side street within walking distance of the Waverly campus. It fringed a neighborhood of tidy middle-class homes built shortly after the Second World War, Dutch colonials and bungalows interwoven with looming two-or three-story Federals. Most of the frat houses, including DUC house, were of that last persuasion. The fraternity’s Greek letters hung above the expansive front porch of the square gray frame building, all but one of them looking fairly straight, and the yard wasn’t
too
awfully unkempt.
Chuck Miller had two friends, Hobie Jurgens and Donny Grawemeyer, who were also on the short list of suspects and who also lived at DUC house, so their three computers would be the focus of Lila and Joel’s search this evening. Joel, however, was going to try to hit every computer in the house before night’s end.
She’d once again opted for the less-is-more approach when dressing for the party. Her low-slung khaki pants ended just below her knee, revealing a nice length of calf in addition to a swath of torso between them and the cropped, wine-colored tank top boasting the Waverly College logo. The black hoodie she’d thrown on in deference to the cool evening wasn’t much longer than her top. Her dark hair tumbled loose past her shoulders, and she was starting to get used to the bangs hanging nearly in her eyes. Joel wore charcoal cargo pants and a baggy black sweater, which, coupled with his little black glasses and long dark hair—not to mention his own youthful looks—made convincing his role of bookish postgrad student.
What didn’t fit the scenario was that Lila found the bookish postgrad-student look really, really sexy. She normally didn’t go for the quiet type. Every man to whom she’d ever been drawn had been edgy, rough and not a little dangerous. So how come she kept having to battle the urge to slip those glasses from his nose, tug off the sweater and let nature take its course?
“Do you want to go over everything one more time before we go in?” he asked quietly as they turned up the walkway to the frat house.
“It’s not necessary,” she assured him. “Once is always enough for me.” Before she could stop herself, she added with deliberate suggestiveness, “When it comes to the job, I mean.”
She immediately regretted the comment. Joel might not realize it was a joke, the way her regular partner would have. She just hadn’t been thinking. She’d already switched into undercover mode, which meant she had her flirtation device on, so she would be replying suggestively for the rest of the evening to anything said by anyone who claimed a Y chromosome. It was nothing personal when it came to Joel. It wasn’t. She was just doing her job.
When she turned to him to explain, however, it was obvious he
hadn’t
taken the joke the way her partner Oliver would have. Oliver would have laughed and retorted with something like “So I hear from the boys in the OPUS mail room” and moved on. But Joel’s dark eyes had somehow grown even darker, and his cheeks were ruddy with…something. Lila wasn’t sure what. Embarrassment maybe. Anger perhaps. Because it surely couldn’t be arousal. Not over such a lame comment. And not when the two of them were about to embark on an undercover penetration.
Oh, dammit, she thought as those final two words formed in her brain. Maybe Joel wasn’t feeling aroused, but now Lila was. It had just been too long since she’d been in a position to—
Well, that was just the point. It had been a while since she’d been in a position. Any position. Preferably doggy-style, or maybe sitting astride him in a chair, or, wow, on the stairs—that was always fun—but it had been so long since Lila had been with a man that even the missionary position was sounding pretty damned hot.
Um, what was the question?
“What did you say?” he asked as he came to a halt beside her.
No, that wasn’t the question. The question had had something to do with sex—she was sure of it.
Joel looked so flummoxed and flabbergasted and all those other old-fashioned terms for embarrassed that Lila finally remembered there hadn’t been a question at all, and that what had actually happened was that she’d said something inappropriate. Well, inappropriate to a guy like Joel, anyway, who, in this day and age could still manage to be flummoxed and flabbergasted and all those other old-fashioned terms for embarrassed.
“Uh…that came out wrong,” she said, doing her best to tamp down all thoughts of positions and undercover penetrations. “I’m sorry. Once I get into character for an undercover penetra—uh, I mean undercover operation, I just stop being me and start being whoever I’m supposed to be.”
Except for the fact that, by saying what she just had, she’d dropped completely out of character and started being herself. Why was she having so much trouble maintaining her role? That was the easiest part of an assignment. Then she realized she hadn’t really been playing the part of Jenny Sturgis since she’d arrived home from school at the apartment earlier in the day. But then, she thought further, if that was true, wouldn’t it mean that when she made her suggestive comment to Joel just now, she’d done it as Lila, not Jenny?
Before she could ponder that, Joel said quietly, “Sounds to me like you’re doing just the opposite now.”
She bit her lip anxiously. He was right. In spite of that, she told him, “It was nothing personal.”
But somehow that came out sounding wrong, too. Because it made it sound as if she didn’t think Joel was worthy of a flirtation. And that wasn’t true, either. At all.
“And I don’t need to go over the plan again,” she added, still out of character. And not much caring. Which should probably concern her. But she wasn’t much concerned, either.
The plan was simple. Immediately upon arrival, Lila and Joel would make clear that Jenny and Ned weren’t getting along, and their tension would grow as the night progressed. When the timing was right they would argue, and he would threaten her, so that Chuck could step in and be a hero. That would give Lila an excuse to remain close to him and his friends for the remainder of the evening. Joel, the boyfriend scorned, would storm off in a huff, then return unnoticed later, when the party became rowdier, and investigate the guys’ computers. He and Lila planned to meet at their car at 3:00 a.m.
“Then it’s showtime,” he told her.
As they turned back toward the house, Joel surprised her by taking her hand in his. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d held hands with a man. Maybe she never had. She’d become sexually active at an early age, and when teenagers coupled, they got right to the main event. Her adult sexual unions hadn’t been a whole lot different. Not to mention the guys she’d always dated hadn’t been big on romantic gestures. Their idea of romance had been saying “please” before “take off your clothes” or asking if they could keep her panties as a souvenir.
Then again, Lila had never exactly been Ms. Romance herself. To her, sex had never been more than a vehicle for satisfying a basic physical need, the way food was for eating and air was for breathing. Things like holding hands and murmuring sweet words and playing footsie under a table had always seemed silly. Romance had always seemed silly. It didn’t serve a purpose. What was the point?
But holding hands with Joel didn’t feel silly at all, she thought as she felt her skin grow warmer against his. In fact, holding hands with Joel felt kind of…
Before she could identify the strange feeling coursing through her, she remembered that they were supposed to be a feuding couple, and she told herself they shouldn’t be holding hands. Then the warmth in her hand spread to her arm, and then into her chest, and then it settled nicely in the cradle of her belly. And, as seemed to be becoming her habit, she didn’t care if she and Joel were acting out of character.
Inside the house, the party was a little livelier, enough that no one seemed to pay much attention to their arrival beyond a few polite smiles and hellos. Lila scanned the room in an effort to identify faces from the OPUS dossier, but none was familiar.
In spite of that, “See anyone you know?” she asked Joel as they approached an entertainment unit in the corner of the room that had been turned into a bar. Not far from it there was a pool table that had also been turned into a bar. Along with an aquarium turned into a bar. And a Barca Lounger. And what looked like a freshman. Maybe a sophomore. Lila would have to get closer to know for sure, and frankly, she’d just as soon not.
“Yeah,” he said as he turned a bottle of cognac to inspect the label, flinched at the brand and began to pick through the assortment of beers instead. “I’m pretty sure I went to school with all these guys.” He finally made a selection, pulled the tab on the can with an errant hiss, then turned to survey the crowd again. “No matter when or where you go to college, you’ll always have your jocks, your stoners, your overachievers, your wannabes, your Greeks….”
Lila, too, plucked a beer out of the assortment, opened it and pretended to sip it. “Your geek Greeks,” she added helpfully, smiling up at him. This time she hadn’t said it to needle him, however, she realized. No, this time she’d said it to flirt with him.
She’d
said it. Not Jenny.
She was about to say something else flirtatious—not that she had any idea why she would do something like that, since flirting for any other reason than to lure some poor sap into a false sense of security was even sillier and more pointless than romance—but Joel prevented her from saying a word. Because in one swift, fluid gesture, he moved to stand in front of her, arced an arm over her head, braced it against the wall behind her and leaned in
very
close.
Then he murmured near her ear, “Like I said, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. You might be surprised how much a guy like me could have taught a girl like you in college. You might be surprised how much I could teach you now.”
Something hot and impulsive exploded in her belly unlike anything she had ever felt before, something completely out of character—for both Lila and Jenny. No way would Jenny feel the way Lila suddenly did about a man she was supposed to fighting with. And no way should Lila be feeling it about any man at all. Because in that moment, towering over her as he did, his silky hair falling over his forehead, his dark eyes turbulent, his mouth hooked into a grin, Joel Faraday took her breath away. Literally.
She tried to stifle the gasp that escaped her as he loomed over her, but the way his eyes darkened and his lips turned up in a knowing smile, she realized he’d heard it just the same. She inhaled a slower, deeper breath in an effort to steady her racing pulse, but when she detected the clean masculine scent of him and felt the warmth of his body mingling with hers, she was filled with something else instead. Something hot. Something hungry. Something needy. Something that made her want to forget who she was. Who she was supposed to be. And never go back to being either of those women again.
Ignoring the way her heart was pounding in her chest with enough force to make her hot and dizzy, Lila bluffed. “Yeah, I could’ve learned a lot from a geek, couldn’t I? Things like chemistry and physics and calculus. Hoo, boy. Who wouldn’t want to know more about those?”
Instead of leaning back again, Joel dipped his head even closer, his lips skimming her sensitive flesh, her neck growing damp with the warmth of his breath. Even more quietly than before, he assured her, “I was thinking about a different kind of chemistry and physics. And a different word that starts with
c
and ends with
u-s.
Take all the time you need to think about that one.”
Lila didn’t need any time at all. Before he even finished speaking, one heated image after another began to tumble through her brain, each more graphic than the previous one. But before she could say a word—not that she had any idea what to say—he was pulling back again, removing his arm from the wall above her head and turning to lean his back against it instead. From there, he sipped his beer and surveyed the room dispassionately, as if the past few minutes had never happened.
Her mouth dry, and without thinking, Lila lifted the beer for a healthy swig. Then she nearly choked on it, so unfamiliar and unpleasant was the taste. Lifting the back of her hand to her mouth, she looked over at Joel, but he continued to gaze indifferently out at the crowd, as if he didn’t even know she was there.
Some geek, she thought, her body still humming with the heat and hunger he’d stirred up. Just what the hell had that been about?
“Just what the hell was that about?” she demanded.
When Joel turned to look at her, his expression was vacant, save—and she might have just been imagining it—a little smugness. “What was what about?”
She expelled an incredulous little sound. “Oh, don’t even try to pretend.”
He grinned, and there was something smug about that, too. “Just trying to be authentic,” he said quietly, cryptically.
But authentic as who? she wondered. Joel or Ned? And why did the answer to that question suddenly seem so important?
He glanced beyond her and frowned a little. “We’re starting to draw some curious eyes,” he said softly.
Oh, there was a shocker. Considering their exchange of body heat over the past few minutes, the two of them probably looked as if they were about to give everyone a free preview of
Lila Does Waverly.
“People are dancing in the other room,” he added. “Let’s go in there.”
She followed him into the dining room, which contained not a stick of dining room furniture, all the better to convert it into a makeshift dance floor. Plenty of people had done just that, making it easy for Lila and Joel to thread their way to its center and blend in with the crowd. He pulled her close as they halted, draping his arms casually over her shoulders and linking his hands loosely at her nape. Then he leaned in again—though not quite as close as he had before—and whispered, “We should start setting the stage. Pretend you’re getting uncomfortable with me.”