The Doll Brokers (24 page)

Jonathan finished when she couldn't bring herself to spit it out. “Rabbited.”

“All those negotiations I went through with him. Second and third year percentages. He knew all the while that it was just bullshit. He'd have my million-five and be long gone.”

“He paid those people upstairs to cover for him.”

They turned together, ramming shoulders. Ann slapped at the elevator button. They rode in silence back up to the fifth floor. This time Jonathan shouted when he punched his fist against the door of number 508. “Open up, damn it.
Now!
”

The man did, but he kept the door on a chain. “Go away.”

Jonathan drove his weight against the door. There was a cracking, splintering sound as the metal tore free from the wood. The man leaped back, stumbling, hollering. Then Jonathan was on the man. He grabbed him by the lapels of his suit and lifted him just enough to drive him back against the wall.

“How much?” he demanded.

The man started shouting in Cantonese. Telling the woman to call the police, Ann was sure. She was nowhere to be seen now.

“Hurry.” She barely recognized her own voice.

Jonathan thumped the man against the wall again. “He pays you to tell anyone who asks that you've been here for years, doesn't he? He pays you to let him leave his phone hooked up here! Tell me and I won't hurt you.”

“He'll kill me.” This came out in wretched English.

Ann grabbed Jonathan's arm and pulled. “That's answer enough.” She listened for police sirens. “
Please
. Let's get out of here.”

“I want to know where the bastard is.” He shook the man. “Where's Chow?”

“I don't know!”

“How do you get the money?”

“He wires it into my account!”

Jonathan abruptly let the man drop. He grabbed Ann's hand and they fled the office.

They were on Nathan Road when the first police vehicle careened onto the street, lights flashing a sickly blue. Ann instinctively tried to duck lower.

“They don't know who we are,” Jonathan said. “We're not the only Americans visiting Hong Kong.”

Her brain was chugging, trying to work. “We should change hotels,” she said. “We need to tangle our trail in case they make inquiries.”

He surprised her with a bark of laughter. “You've got a criminal mind.” Then he caught her chin, turned her face toward him, and kissed her.

She didn't see it coming. Something exploded behind her eyes and stars rained in her head. She brought a fist up to hit him and heard herself moan instead.

She was mortified by her reaction. But she didn't stop him.

The first lick of his tongue was fast, forbidden. Then his hands were in her hair and he held her steady for an assault. Again. Deeper. He tasted dark and dangerous, like everything she feared, but Ann still wanted more. From him, this man she'd hated, wanted, through almost half her lifetime. He broke away first.

Ann stared at him, feeling drained and electric, dazed and alive. “If you ever do that again, I'll kill you.”

He smiled slightly, then moved in for another kiss.

“I mean it!” She pushed him away.

This time, he laughed.

W
hen they finally got back to their hotel and she reached her room, Ann swiftly entered and locked the door behind her. She moved tentatively to the foot of the bed and dropped there, looking around vacantly.

There was a courtesy bar. The cabinet faced the room, a dark glass front threaded with pretty decorative wire. And just inside was a neat little bottle of Dewar's. The sight of it made Ann jump to her feet. Just what she needed.

When she tried the glass door, it rattled in its frame but didn't give. She slid her palms over the counter beneath it. It couldn't be locked—Hong Kong hotels
never
locked their mini-bars. Then again, this was a new hotel, with perhaps new rules. So where was the key to the damned thing?

Ann pressed her hands to her cheeks and fell gently to her knees. She could feel herself coming undone.

The contract for their doll was missing and Edmund had hit the highway with the company's money. Her vice president of finance was up on conspiracy and drug peddling charges. Her dearest friend in the world was dying. And Jonathan Morhardt had just kissed her like he wanted more.

A crazed laugh worked its way up in her throat. Ann dropped
her hands and let it take her. She would handle all of it, she thought, but she wanted a drink first.

“One step at a time,” she whispered aloud, pushing to her feet. She'd learned a long time ago that when things got amazingly out of hand, the only thing to do was prioritize.

The problem with Baby Talk N Glow was that it was going to take days, perhaps weeks—along with the collective minds of many people—to unravel. She'd done what she could this afternoon.

Patrick was in Frank Ketch's hands now—there wasn't much she could accomplish on that score, either.

Only God could save Felicia.

That left Jonathan for immediate consideration, and the Dewar's. She went to the phone and called his room.

“Do we have keys for these contraptions?” she demanded when he answered.

“What contraptions might you be speaking of?”

“Some sadist locked up the Scotch.”

“Ah. That key. I have it.”

“You have mine?”

“I guess I forgot to hand it over.”

“Thanks. Very thoughtful of you.”

“I'll be there in fifteen minutes and we'll have that drink together. I just want to jump in the shower first. I ordered room service. It's coming to your door. I got you a steak. Sign for it.”

Fury at the way he spoke to her, the way he took over, hit her first. Then a wave of helplessness, something she hadn't felt in a very long time. She understood instantly that there was nothing she could do to stop him. So she decided to get cranky. “I don't want to eat in. I want to go out.”

“Too late. The food's already on its way. Besides, I've had enough of the great polluted outdoors for one day.”

“I don't eat red meat.”

He paused for a moment. “On principle, or is it a health thing?”

“Principle.”

“Oh. Then either call down and change the order, or live dangerously for one night.”

“Why would you do something like this?” she demanded.

“Something like what?”

“Order dinner for me!”

“Must be these Lancelot tendencies of mine.”

“I don't need anyone to…to—”

He waited.

“I don't need anybody,” she finished, hating the hitch in her voice.

“Ann, I really don't feel like discussing your amazing strength right now. I want to take a shower. I stink.”

“Well, I want my key.”

His sigh gusted into the line. “Fine. Meet me in the hallway. I'll toss it to you.”

They had not been given adjoining rooms. Or a suite. Ann tried to be grateful for that. She hung up and went to the door. He was already in the corridor. Shirtless and barefoot, in jeans, looking amused. Something poked at her insides. He lofted the key in her direction and she caught it across some twelve feet of space.

She turned without saying anything and went back to her room. She freed the Dewar's from the cabinet. With drink in hand, she hit the bathroom, turning the shower on hot, then she stared at her reflection in the mirror. He'd had her doing the same thing in Chicago, she remembered, just staring at herself in the bathroom glass. But this time she didn't feel brittle and empty. She felt … achy.

She wanted very much to break her own rules; it was a yearning that almost folded her in two. She wanted to be normal and weightless, and just give in to what he was suggesting. To touch and shiver and explore without walls. She didn't want to be scared.

Ann began ripping off her clothes—the khakis and shirt felt like they'd begun to adhere to her skin. She balled them up and heaved them to the floor, then grabbed her glass and took another deep guzzle of Scotch. She wasn't just angry at him, she realized. She was upset with herself.

In every other way—in
every
other area of her life—she had triumphed. No matter what Jonathan had said at the precinct, she'd taken nothing free from anyone. Yes, Felicia had given her a job, a series of jobs, but she'd made the company money. Yes, Felicia had gotten her a private tutor, but she had paid back every dime. No one would look at her now and think she was the daughter of a wayward, drugged-out mother. No one would look at her and correctly surmise that she was the loneliest person on earth.

No one ever had to know, Ann thought. What she did personally was really no different from what she did professionally. Lovers and associates got from her exactly what she chose to give. She could offer up to Jonathan the woman he thought she was and never let him be any wiser. But, oh, God, how she wanted just one person, one man, to really know her.

Ann began to shower. A sudden knocking on the outside door jolted her out of herself. She remembered that Jonathan had ordered room service.

She shut the water, dragged herself into the bathrobe that had been left hanging next to the shower, and dashed to the corridor door. She jerked it open … and there he was. He still wore jeans, but now he had topped them with an obnoxious Hawaiian-print shirt.

“Where's the food?” She craned her neck to look behind him.

“Ann, you really need to put on some clothes.”

Heat streaked through her, followed by cold. She stared at him, her mouth forming words that wouldn't come.

“I meant that in a wholly hygienic sense.” He stepped past her into the room, holding a beer and his laptop. “But it got you thinking, didn't it?”

“No.” She turned to follow him with her eyes, then finally thought to slam the door shut.

“Liar. By the way, while we eat we can see if we have any e-mails from home.” He indicated the laptop.

“I'm not going to go to bed with you,” she blurted.

He laughed.

She wanted to jump on him. Wanted to just fling herself across the room and pummel him. Or drag the clothes off his body. She wanted to drive her fingers into his still-wet hair. She wanted to hate him and she wanted to give herself over to him completely.

In the end, Ann went back to the bathroom. It wasn't until she finished with her shower and stood dripping on the tile that she asked herself what she really, truly wanted. She towel-dried her hair. The pin-striped shirt was long, hitting her at mid-thigh. She put that on, along with panties, then sailed into the room, still rubbing her head with the towel. She wondered if she
was
playing games with him, trying to get his attention with what she was wearing.

Room service had arrived. There was a small oval table in one corner and it was laden with food. Jonathan sat there, working at the cap of a fresh bottle of beer. Ann smelled fish. Good fish. Something like … Dover sole.

Her stomach rolled. It had been entirely too long since she had last eaten. She went to the table and plucked the silver dome off her plate.

It
was
sole. With lemon and a cream sauce she was sure contained wine. “How did you do this?”

He looked up at her. “I learned to use a phone when I was three.”

“You changed my order?”

He sliced off a bite-sized portion of his steak, forked it into his mouth, and chewed. “That's the general progression of things when one commits such a social gaffe,” he said finally, swallowing.

She had to get her equilibrium back. “That wasn't a gaffe. You just didn't know.”

“Watch it there, Ann. You're starting to sound magnanimous.”

“Stop eating and listen to me a minute.”

Jonathan put his fork down too exaggeratedly. “Go ahead.”

Ann sat. Carefully. “Thank you. For dinner.”

“You are very welcome.”

“But I'm still not going to bed with you.”

J
onathan let her fall asleep in the chair. He closed his laptop and went to the door. He paused and looked back at her. She was tucked sideways, her knees drawn up protectively, offering a nice, long angle of leg.
What was she afraid of?
Sure, there'd been bad times between them, some jousting and nipping, but nothing to warrant the kind of unease he'd sensed in her today.

He had never liked complicated sex. Her reaction to him should have turned him off, turned him away. But Jonathan found himself intrigued, picking at it. Theirs would be a temporary liaison anyway, he reasoned. They scraped off each other just a little too much for anything long term.

He went back to his room. Worn out from the time change and too many hours without rest, Jonathan slept like the dead and was roused in the morning by an insistent rat-tat-tat on his door. He opened one eye. The bedside clock read just past seven.

Feeling bleary-eyed and sluggish, he got up, narrowly remembering to pull on a pair of sweat pants before he opened the door.

Ann was wearing a crisp white suit. She was rubbing her neck as though it was stiff, but she was all business. “Get dressed,” she
said. “I talked to the police sergeant who issued the subpoena for Patrick's arrest. He's agreed to meet us at nine o'clock.”

“Do I get to eat first?”

“Is that all you ever think about?”

He let his gaze climb her legs deliberately. “No.”

“Damn it, stop that!”

“Then take your clothes off and assuage my curiosity.”

Ann felt it like a punch—an electric, immediate arousal all tied together with something that hurt. She turned away, heading for the door. “I'll meet you downstairs.”

“You'll have a long wait. I'm going to order up breakfast first.”

That stopped her. “We can grab something on the way.”