He checked out her knees, but her dowdy skirt was just a shade too long to ascertain the dimple situation.
She finally noticed him lurking and shrank in on herself, clutching her blazer closed. So. She felt the animal rattling its cage, after he had tried so hard to play it cool. “Looking for a cab?” he asked.
“Not having much luck,” she murmured. Her gaze skittered around shyly. “It’s hard when it’s raining.”
He gazed at her, unable to stop himself. Fuck all, he’d been through this. He’d drawn his conclusions. Don’t think with your prick.
But she was afraid, it was late, it was raining, and he really needed to know what the hell she was so afraid of.
And also, incidentally, if her knees were dimpled.
“I’ll drive you home,” he said.
“Oh, no. Thanks, but I couldn’t. It’s okay, really,” Nell babbled. She leaped, waving her arms at the next cab that went by, even though its meter light was off. “I’ll just, ah, walk. Until I find one.”
Or the Fiend finds you. She and her sisters had promised each other to take cabs. Not that it had helped Nancy, who’d been nabbed right out of a crowded hotel restaurant. Surrounded by people she knew.
“No,” Burke said. “You’re not walking. It’s late. And it’s raining.”
She opened her mouth to slap him down politely. Who did he think he was, anyway, announcing what she would do or not do?
Then she looked into his eyes, and the commentary in her mind just…stopped. It was dark. No cabs were stopping. Her neck was prickling in the worst way. The business crowd had gone home, and this part of Midtown was dismal and deserted at night.
The man was scary in his own right, but he was not the Fiend. She was not a brainless bimbo, whatever he might think, with that provocative, hiring-young-women-just-for-scenery comment. She could handle him.
She licked her dry lips without thinking and regretted it when his gaze flicked right to them—and stuck there. “Um, thank you.” Her voice felt dry, was scratchy.
These were the last words she managed to speak. They walked together in silence. She was strangled by shyness. For God’s sake, she’d just accepted a job from this man. They had plenty of things to talk about, but still, her voice was huddled up into a tight, scared ball in her throat. He led her down into the underground parking garage near his office building. She stumbled on the steep concrete slope, clutching the folder that held the game outline she was supposed to study tonight. He caught her elbow and held on to it, all the way to the sleek silver Mercedes that answered his remote beep with a pert flash of its lights.
He helped her into the car and closed the door for her. Her voiceless condition did not improve, even after the necessary interchange about the best route to take to her SoHo address.
After a few minutes of driving, he spoke up. “What are you afraid of?”
There were so many answers to that question, it scrambled her circuits, left her floundering. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“You looked scared when you were waiting for the cab.”
His perception made her feel naked. “Ah, wow,” she said. “I didn’t…that is to say, I’m surprised you noticed that.”
He slanted her a quick glance. “Why is that?”
Yikes. Now he’d think she was judging or criticizing, and only thirty minutes after hiring her. “It’s just odd,” she said, evasively. “It’s intuitive of you. I wouldn’t have thought you were the type.”
He frowned into the windshield. “Why not?”
“I don’t know,” she said, helplessly. “You never noticed anything in your field of vision at the restaurant. You never made eye contact with anyone. You always order the same thing. You have an extremely narrow range of focus. Intuition requires…well, openness.”
“Openness?” He laughed. “You think I’m closed, then. You and my family. That’s Duncan for you. Thick as a brick wall.”
“I don’t think anything of the kind,” she retorted primly.
“I do have a narrow range of focus,” he said. “But there’s a flip side. Whatever gets into that narrow range, I see. Every last detail.”
She flushed. “Well, thank you. I appreciate your interest, but—”
“But you haven’t answered my question. What are you afraid of?”
Her chest bumped with nervous laughter. “Good God. You’re like a dog with a bone.”
“Pit bull, my family calls me,” he agreed easily.
She shot him a quick, nervous glance. “Family? So you’re—”
“Married? No. I’m talking my mother, brother, and sister. So?”
Nell blushed, both for her loaded question and his matter-of-fact answer. There was no reason not to tell him. There was nothing to be ashamed of. But still, it was scary and flesh creeping, and this guy had just become her new employer. And it was none of his damn business.
He waited. She could feel his insistence in the profound silence between them. He just sat there, motor idling, waiting.
“It’s a long, complicated story,” she said warily.
“We’re stuck in traffic,” he said. “Entertain me.”
True enough. They were motionless in a gridlocked snarl.
“It started a few weeks ago,” she began. “When my mother died.”
He shot her a startled glance. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
She acknowledged his words with a nod, and went on, simply and sequentially, with the whole crazy tale. The burglar, the necklaces, the mysterious letters. The clotheshorse, the murdered jeweller and his family, the attack in the stairwell, Nancy’s attempted abduction in Boston. The crazy, winding story got them all the way down to her apartment.
He double-parked, listening with no visible reaction. The longer she talked, the more self-conscious she felt. He probably thought she was a paranoid nutcase. Or worse, an attention-mongering nutcase.
“So, anyway. That’s why I’m scared,” she finally concluded. “All of us. Nervous, and scared, and confused. Do you want to fire me now?”
He frowned. “Why the hell would I do that?”
She shrugged, feeling silly, but before she was required to come up with a coherent reply, a guy opened the SUV in front of them, got in, and pulled away—leaving a perfect parking spot. Unheard of.
Burke pulled into it. “I’d better walk you up to your door.”
Oh boy. How very gallant of him. If only her heart would stop acting like it was trying to pound its way out of her chest. “Don’t worry about it,” she told him, with a breathless laugh. “It’s a fourth-floor walk-up.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I work out.”
She glanced at his body, strangled another crack of laughter into a dry cough. She led him into her building.
Up, up, up. The stairs never stopped. She stopped in front of her door, glad for an excuse to be that breathless and red. “I appreciate the ride and the company,” she said. He nodded, and kept standing there. Like a mountain, a monolith. “I’m not going to invite you in,” she blurted out. “Not for coffee, or for drinks, or…ah, anything.”
“Of course,” he said. “You hardly know me.” But he did not leave.
“So?” she prompted. “Why are you standing there? What do you want from me?”
“Something I can’t have, I guess.” His voice was low. He reached out and touched the end of a dangling fuzzy ringlet that had escaped the bun. “I got the strangest sensation today. In the restaurant.”
“Yes?” Her lips trembled. She pressed them together hard.
“I got the feeling that you were trying to get my attention.”