The Phoenix (12 page)

He leaned against the door once more and propped a foot against it. “That was an accident.”

“What makes you say that?”

“The ‘oh shit’ expression immediately following the confession was a bit of a giveaway,” he drawled. His gaze skimmed over her face, tracing the intriguing lines and angles, the plump mouth and wide eyes. “You have a very expressive face.”

She blinked, seemingly startled.

He laughed softly and quirked a knowing brow.

She scowled and he laughed harder.

“Oh, to hell with it,” she said, striding forward to leave. He’d rattled her enough to spark a retreat? Interesting.

“It was a bobber,” he said.

She stopped short and looked up at him, her hand on the doorknob. “A bobber?”

“Yes. You know, to fish with.”

Another line emerged between her finely arched brows and she bit into her bottom lip, evidently trying to make sense of what he’d just told her. “Is there a pond nearby? A lake? A creek?”

He shook his head. “Not on any map that I’ve looked at.”

He was keenly aware of her—the slope of her cheek, the angle of her jaw, the smooth creaminess of her throat. The sweep of her lashes, the absolute carnality of her mouth. His groin tightened and need shot through him, stark and fierce, with more intensity than he had ever experienced before. Her gaze tangled with his, then dropped to his mouth, lingered. Found his once more, and her pink tongue slid unconsciously along her full bottom lip.

He went hard.

Her breathing shallowed out and he watched her pulse flutter wildly at the base of her throat. Desire darkened her gaze, turned the green to emerald, the gold to bronze. He was hit with the almost overwhelming urge to slide his fingers along her cheek, to see if the skin was as soft and silky as it looked. To feel her sleek hair across the back of his hand, her ripe mouth beneath his. He didn’t want just to taste her—he wanted to eat her up.

She drew a quick breath and dragged her gaze away from his. “Can I ask you something?” she said.

“You can ask. I reserve the right not to answer.”

Something shifted in her expression. Hope, maybe? He frowned, trying to decipher what he saw.

“Why did you refuse the background check?”

Ah.
He should have known that would pique her curiosity. “Because it doesn’t have anything to do with what I came here for,” he said.

“I would have deserved it,” she told him, shooting him a chagrined look. “I wouldn’t have blamed you.”

He smiled down at her. “Yeah, but isn’t it better that you don’t have to?”

For once, her expression was completely unreadable. She returned his grin and nodded. Though he didn’t really want her to leave—madness, with a bed that damned close—he pushed away from the door so that she could exit.

“Good night, Charlie,” he murmured.

She darted another glance at him. Paused, seemingly uncertain, perplexed even. “Good night, Jay.”

8

A SOFT, MUFFLED THUMP at his door awakened Jay from a halfhearted sleep. He quietly heaved himself up from the bed, grabbed a small flashlight and shrugged into his robe, then thrust his feet into his shoes.

Honestly, she was so damned predictable.

Jay had strung a thread of dental floss from the bottom of her door and attached it to a counterweight tube of toothpaste on the inside of his room, a few inches from his own door. When she opened her door, it pulled the floss tight enough on his end to slide the toothpaste forward, thus providing a thump loud enough to wake him but hopefully not her.

Sure enough, when he opened his door, hers had been left a fraction of an inch ajar, and a quick peek with his light confirmed an empty bed. She couldn’t claim she needed to go to the bathroom because there was one in her room. It would be interesting to see what sort of story she’d provide when he found her.

Jay turned the flashlight off and, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dark, carefully made his way downstairs. He’d made his way through all of the lower rooms when he heard the telltale sound of a lock being thrown. And not just any lock. A deadbolt. He felt his eyebrows wing up his forehead and swore hotly as his gaze shifted to the window. What the fu—

She was going outside?

It was bitter cold. If memory served—and it typically did—the low for tonight was five degrees. Jay headed to the front hall, where he found the alarm system had been disarmed and the door left partially open. He considered shutting it and waiting for her until she returned, letting her do a Little Match Girl impression before allowing her back into the welcoming warmth of the house.

Because he had to know what she was doing, he rejected that plan and made his way outside. He scanned the yard, looking for any sign of movement, and finally hit pay dirt when he glimpsed a flash of white near the gatehouse. Jay frowned, more intrigued than he’d like to admit. He’d talked to Burt, but other than the older man confirming the “probing” comment he’d made to Charlie and providing Jay with a pamphlet, as well, he hadn’t pulled any sort of a vibe from him.

Evidently, Charlie had noticed something. Otherwise she wouldn’t have braved this bone-chilling cold to search the little office unobserved.

Or so she thought.

Hiding behind the shrubbery, Jay covertly made his way toward the gatehouse. She’d already gotten inside—evidently her lock-picking skills were first-class, he thought drolly—and was bent over a drawer, aiming her own small flashlight into its depths. She read various bits of paper, occasionally frowned, swore and discarded them, then moved to the bottom cabinet of the built-in desk. Though he couldn’t see what she’d found, if anything, it wasn’t long until she straightened once more and turned to the fridge.

Nothing of note in the cabinet then, he concluded.

She pulled a soda from the fridge, selected a packet of cheese and crackers from Burt’s stash, then sat down and fired up his computer. It was password protected, but she cracked it in a very admirable amount of time. He smiled despite himself.

Watching her work was genuinely fascinating. Her keen eyes scanned the contents of Burt’s computer while her fingers flew across the keyboard. She paused occasionally to eat a cracker and sip her drink, frowning then smiling, and finally copied a few things to a little flash drive she’d produced from the pocket of her robe. She wore flannel sock-monkey pajamas, a fluffy white robe and sock-monkey slippers on her especially small feet. She looked completely in her element, confident and certain of her own abilities.

Her face was scrubbed bare, her button nose so clean it was shiny, and she’d pulled her hair up into a messy wad on top of her head. Frankly, there was nothing about her appearance that should elicit any sort of carnal response, and yet he found himself growing increasingly aroused.

He liked the way her mouth moved when she ate, the way her delicate throat muscles contracted when she swallowed. Her intriguing kittenish face held so much character it was hard to give it any of the traditional labels.
Pretty
simply didn’t cut it,
beautiful
was too vague and
gorgeous
gave the wrong impression. Her lips were definitely the most sensual thing he’d ever laid eyes on, but even that didn’t explain what it was about her that just did it for him. There was something about the way she cocked her head when she was thinking, the unmistakable intelligence in her large hazel eyes, the capable confidence with which she carried herself.

In a blinding moment of insight, he realized
that’s
what made her different,
that’s
what set her apart and tripped his trigger.

She was frighteningly smart, intimidatingly clever and more capable of taking care of herself than any woman he’d ever known. It was that utter assurance of her own ability that made her so singularly attractive.

He’d never met another woman like her. And he doubted he ever would.

She tilted her neck one way and then the other, then put her hands on the small of her back and gave a languorous stretch. Her unbound breasts pressed against her robe, making it gape open and he could see her pebbled nipples—for the first time in his life he was thankful for the cold—behind the soft fabric. She rolled her shoulders and yawned, then gave her head a little shake to jolt herself awake and set to work once more.

He watched her hack into Burt’s email account, then his bank account, and finally check his browsing history. She played a word for him on his open Scrabble game—
observant,
for a double-word score—then updated his virus protection. Evidently confident that she’d found everything of note, she stuffed the cracker wrapper and empty drink bottle into her robe pocket and powered his computer down.

Observant,
eh? He snorted. He’d see about that.

Jay waited for the light on the laptop to go off before scratching at the window. He watched her head jerk in his direction, her gaze narrow as she tried to see without any background illumination. After remaining motionless for a moment while she listened for further noise, she ultimately discounted the sound and continued tidying up.

He scratched again.

And this time when she looked in his direction, he put the flashlight under his chin and hit the light.

Predictably, she screamed.

LAUGHING SO HARD HE could barely breathe, Jay bent double in the little gatehouse and continued to mock her mercilessly.

“If you…could have…seen your face,” he wheezed, his blue eyes streaming with tears of mirth. “Priceless,” he chortled. “Classic,” he wheezed. “Oh, God,” he repeated hoarsely, over and over again. “That was— You
wailed
— And I—” Another exasperating fit of hilarity. “I don’t know when I’ve ever heard that sort of noise out of a woman before in my life.”

“It’s all right,” she said, waiting for her flaming face to cool. “Lots of men have trouble getting a woman to scream. There’s probably a support group for that. You should ask Burt. I suspect he’s a member.”

He merely smiled wider, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners, an unexpected dimple in his right cheek. He ducked his head as though sharing a confidence. “Sweetheart, if the day ever comes that I can’t make a woman scream, that’s the day I’ll eat my own hat.”

Mercy.
That smoldering look should have scorched all the hair off her face. She swallowed, suddenly unaccountably nervous. “You don’t wear a hat.”

He cocked his head and chuckled softly. “How do you know?”

She didn’t, but… “You don’t look like the hat type.”

“There’s a hat type?”

Feeling ridiculous and off-kilter, Charlie gave herself a shake. “Asinine prank aside, what the hell are you doing out here?”

“I followed you, obviously. The
asinine prank
was a belated stroke of genius.” His shoulders shook with silent laughter again. They were broad, his shoulders, she noticed now. Well muscled and mouthwateringly wide.

She imagined licking one while she writhed naked beneath him, and a rush of warmth puddled in her core, making her squirm with want. Her traitorous nipples budded behind her pajama top, rasping against the soft fabric. She couldn’t have been more shocked with herself than if she’d disrobed and pole-danced for him.

Of course, considering she’d grabbed him by the balls earlier this evening—felt his dick jerk against her hand and begin to swell—she should be past the point of shocking herself.

She also should have expected him to be watching her. Nevertheless, she’d thought she’d waited long enough for him to fall asleep. Her own eyes were drooping with fatigue now and she could feel the day’s events catching up with her. She wasn’t at her sharpest when she was tired and didn’t have the mental ability to keep up with him right now, much less stay a step ahead.

He searched her face and he sobered a bit, his expression becoming one of affectionate concern. “Tired, Kitty-Cat?”

She didn’t know what was more disturbing—the expression or the nickname. “Kitty-Cat? Oh, right,” she said. “I clawed you. Earlier,” she qualified at his bemused expression.