LITMIR.BIZ

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      “The cabbie was supposed to be holding you for ransom.”

      “I threatened him and he let me go.”

      “You what?” She was appalled. He’d end up back in jail before the night was out on a totally unrelated charge and what would that do to her career?

      “You need to calm down, honey,” McKenna said. “Seriously, you’re pale.”

      Honey. He was calling her honey again. “I thought we agreed on ‘lady.’” Or had it been Ms.?

      “By any name, you’re white as a sheet.”

      “Has it occurred to you anywhere in that warped brain of yours that maybe you’re the cause?”

      He seemed to honestly think about it. “I guess warped is a step up from stupid. Is it?”

      “I never said you were stupid!” she screeched.

      People around them took several quick, alarmed steps back. Grace caught the movement out of the corner of her eye and she was horrified at herself.

      She wanted to cry, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried.

      “Ms. Simkanian?” the desk clerk said tentatively.

      Grace spun back to her. She was holding out her Visa, the receipt, and a twenty-dollar bill. Grace snatched all of it from her hand then somehow found the presence of mind to be polite.

      “Thank you. Thank you very much. I’m fine now.”

      “If you say so,” McKenna said.

      She all but galloped out of the lobby. Part of it was the fact that she was afraid the cabbie would get tired of waiting for her to come back and call the cops. The other part was that she just wanted to get away from McKenna.

      It was going to be a very long night.

      Chapter 3

      Aidan watched his attorney whip through the hotel door. What exactly did he have on his hands?

      He wasn’t a man who gave undue thought to his problems. Life was full of them, after all, and he knew what mattered in life. Family mattered. Love mattered, not that he’d ever want any of his buddies to hear him say that. The love of a good woman, the love of a niece or nephew who thought he was one step short of God, yeah, those things mattered. He tried to shrug off everything else.

      Big problems could trip him up for a few strides, sure. But he’d been blessed with very few big things going wrong in his life until lately.

      Grace Simkanian was a small problem, but she was nagging at him anyway. For reasons that totally escaped him, he liked her. He liked the heat of her temper and her cool rigidity and her mind. But she didn’t like him and at the moment he had big problems that mandated that his attorney at least tolerate him.

      He really ought to fire her, but he didn’t want to.

      She came back into the lobby, then she cut through the air beside him, heading right past him.

      “I guess this means we’re staying?” he asked, going after her.

      She stabbed the elevator button. “For $762 plus tax, you damned well better believe I’m staying.”

      Aidan whistled under his breath. The big guy with the firm liked good rooms.

      He caught her hand to stop her assault on the defenseless button. She did the same thing she had done all night when he’d gotten too close. She stopped breathing before she bristled. That intrigued him.

      If he was going to succeed in disliking her, he was going to have to strip her of all this mystery she had going on, he realized. There was nothing more deadly than a beautiful, mysterious woman.

      He leaned closer to her anyway, stopping only when his face was inches from hers. He kept holding her hand. He needed another beautiful, mysterious woman in his life right now like he needed a firing squad, and the fact that this one obviously believed he was guilty made her all the more treacherous. But he whispered to her all the same.

      “In…out,” he said.

      “What?” She gasped the word and suddenly he could feel her trembling under his touch. Oh, man, he thought. Beautiful, mysterious and trembling.

      “Inhale, exhale,” he explained. “That’s what I meant.”

      “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

      “Sure you do. You’re not breathing.”

      “I’m breathing.”

      “Not well. And your pulse is going off like a machine gun.”

      “What kind of mind uses machine guns in an analogy?”

      He tightened his grip on her wrist. She tugged at his hold but she wouldn’t embarrass herself by going into all-out war to dislodge his grip.

      “Maybe a criminal mind,” he suggested. “Maybe dark characters excite you.”

      “Excite—” She choked then broke off.

      “You,” he finished for her.

      “Go to hell.”

      “I might, for what I’m thinking about doing to you right now. You know, there are only so many miles of legs, so much dark, tossed hair a man can stand.”

      That did it to her. She panicked and wrenched away from him. When she was free, she attacked the elevator button again, slamming her palm against it. She looked close to tears.

      Good show, Aidan thought. Beautiful, mysterious, trembling and tears. Oh, yeah, he was on a roll here. The thought doused him enough that he stepped back suddenly to give her room.

      “Sorry,” he said shortly.

      She turned her head to glare at him. “For behaving like an ignorant ass?”

      “That, too.” He couldn’t resist. “And for turning you on.”

      Her eyes went huge. “You did not—”

      “Lady, you were as ‘on’ as a bug in a rug.”

      “That’s ‘in’!”

      “Well, actually, it was snug, but that brings us back to fit, and that takes us to—”

      “Shut up!”

      Yeah, he thought, he rattled her. He really rattled her and he didn’t understand why. All this mystery was going to make for one very long night.

      The elevator finally came and Grace all but leaped inside. It was crowded but that offered her no hope. Everyone spilled out into the lobby and left her alone with McKenna. She pressed herself into a corner as the doors slid shut again.

      If he got out of line now, she could kill him without risking witnesses. And she wouldn’t give a damn about her credit card bill, either, when she fled the scene.

      He stood in the middle, his back to her, silent. The elevator was quiet as a breath and moved like an underwater dream, and still he said nothing. The car reached their floor with a delicate chiming sound. The doors parted again soundlessly. Grace waited for him to move first since he was closest to them. He didn’t.

      After all that nonsense downstairs, now he was mute, she thought. Deaf and blind, too. She stepped around him. The doors began closing again. She shot a hand out to hold them open. “Can we just do this now? Please?”

      One corner of his mouth crooked up. Now what had she said? Grace felt her skin heat and she was reasonably sure that she hadn’t blushed since the age of fifteen.

      Let him stand here, then, she decided. He could ride the elevator up and down all night. She had a job to do. She left the car and was four strides down the hall before she remembered that she couldn’t do the job without him. By then he was behind her.

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