A heavy silence followed her words, and Duncan struggled for something intelligent to say. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked.
She fixed him with her blazing look, the one that took his breath away, scared him and aroused him, all at once. “I remember her hammering out the details of each new mutually beneficial arrangement. As soon as she was done, off I’d go to another boarding school. Until the guy got bored. Or she found a richer client.”
He searched for a place to put this new and extremely dangerous information, but it wouldn’t stick to anything. “Ah. Oh. I, uh, see.”
“Do you?” She looked away. “It looked all right on the surface, I guess. She handpicked her lovers. They were always rich. She lived in beautiful places. But her whole existence was in function of her patrons. Their egos, their convenience, their tempers. She didn’t have energy to spare for me. Being beautiful, charming, seductive, and entertaining is hard work. Doesn’t leave much time for a kid.”
“I…ah—” He floundered for something to say that was not either stupid or offensive, but he couldn’t think of anything.
“I don’t want that,” she said. “I don’t want a man to be in the center of my life, and me circling around him, anxiously scrambling to please him. Hell with that. I’ve got plans. I have ambitions of my own.”
“I never meant to imply that,” he said, helplessly.
“I’m sorry this embarrasses you,” she said. “It embarrasses me. But I want you to know why I feel so strongly about this. I am not for sale. Not to anyone, for any reason. Not even for protection from the Fiend. Now, or ever. Because that mutually beneficial arrangement you were talking about last night? It’s not a good bargain, whatever it might look like. Not even if the sex is great. It wouldn’t benefit me. On the contrary. Eventually, I’d start to feel about two inches tall.”
He pondered what she said for several moments. Then he walked slowly around her, pried her clasped hands apart, and held them tightly.
“You misunderstood,” he said. “It was just semantics.”
She stared into his eyes, trying to peer inside his brain. “Was it?”
“I would never dream that you were for sale.” His fantasy of the sexy secret affair with the juvenile waitress flashed guiltily through his mind, but the point was moot, because Nell was not that girl.
Nell was infinitely more than that girl. More complicated, more fascinating, more trouble. And she never needed to know about his politically incorrect horn-dog fantasies. He lifted her hands to his lips. “What happened between us can’t be bought,” he said. “For any money.”
She heard the raw, blunt sincerity in his words and blushed. “Thank you for saying that,” she said softly.
He kissed her hands in answer, and couldn’t stop kissing them. Those long, tapered fingers, those pink oval nails. Funny. He’d never noticed a woman’s hands before.
“But I still have to go to work,” she persisted. “Maybe if you could spot me the cab fare this morning, I’ll pay you back from my tips.”
He bit down on his frustration. “I will drive you,” he ground out. “On one condition. You do not leave the restaurant until I come to pick you up and take you to my office. No errands, no breaks, no shopping, no bank machines, no Starbucks coffee, nothing. Is that clear?”
She sighed heavily. He cut her off before she could object again.
“Let me put it this way,” he said. “Do it as a favor to me. Because I care. I’m scared for you. I’ve earned that much.”
“Duncan—”
“Whoops! Sorry. Let me take that back, about earning anything. It’s not about earning. No way. No economic metaphors here. No, sir.”
She tried not to smile. “Don’t make fun of me. This is serious.”
“Christ, yes! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”
“But I have to go to that seisìun at Malloy’s, too. I have a date to meet my sisters later this evening,” she informed him. “I have to go.”
“I’ll take you to that, too. And then I’ll take you home.” He stared keenly into her eyes, and added, deliberately, “My home.”
She cocked her head at him. “Surely you have better things to do than chauffeur me around the city and listen to Irish tunes in a pub.”
“No. Just, you know, making money. But I’ve got enough of that to piss you off already, so I might as well slow down, right?”
Her eyes flashed. “Do not make fun of me.”
“Sorry,” he said meekly. “I would really like to meet your sisters.”
That mollified her. “All right. But that’s a dirty trick, you know.”
He blinked up at her, all innocence. “Trick? What trick?”
“You get me softened up, and go into supercontrol mode.”
He grunted. “Whatever works.”
They stared at each other, and, like always, the oxygen in the air between them began to combust. But she darted back when he reached for her. “Uh-uh! We’re late, remember?”
He headed for the shower, trying to breathe his spring-loaded, rock-hard boner down and concentrate on the task at hand. First, haul out his old SIG Sauer 229 and a full clip of ammo. Root around in his utilities drawers for the shoulder holster. Identify the suits in his closet that were tailored to accommodate it. Then bathe, dress. Pull it together. His heart pounded. His palms were damp.
Only the thought of her in his bed again tonight consoled him.
Chapter
7
Nell listened, guiltily, to the sound of the shower through the bathroom door. Thinking of his amazing, powerful naked body in there under the pounding stream, water and soapsuds cascading over his contoured muscles. So tempted to just peel off her clothes, and—
No. He was never quick. It would be long and wet and steaming and soapy and marvelous, and they would both forget all practical issues such as making money, safeguarding her self-respect, meeting her professional obligations. She was already missing the lunch prep. He’d completely disarmed her. Wrapped her around his little finger.
Or maybe she was wrapped around something more substantial.
She stared at the suit he’d slung upon the bed. She didn’t know much about fashion, having remained deliberately ignorant, but she recognized the cut and fine finishing of costly men’s clothing when she saw it. Thousands of dollars lay there on that rumpled bed, in those smooth, graceful silver gray garments. He looked so good in his clothes.
She went back out into the front room. The roses still lay where she’d forgotten them on the telephone table. They hadn’t been put into water, what with one thing and another, and they were looking shabby.
Which was a shame. She grabbed the flowers, with the half-formed intention of looking for a vase in the kitchen. What a sweet thought, last night, for him to stop and get her roses. Some of the roses disintegrated, bruised petals scattering over the gleaming wood floor. She gathered them up, hesitated for a moment, and pulled a handful of silky petals off the wilting bouquet.
She carried them into his bedroom and slipped some into the pockets of his suit jacket with them.
He was all brusque practicality when he came out of the bedroom, clean-shaven and fragrant. Their cautious truce lasted all the way down to the Sunset Grill, but as she was getting out, he pulled her toward him and gave her a hard, possessive kiss. “One more thing, Nell.”
“It’s always one more thing,” she grumbled. “Enough things.”
“That’s for me to decide,” he said, with his usual breathtaking arrogance. He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. An extravagant, eight-hundred-dollar one. “Take this. Keep it. No arguments.”
She rolled her eyes. “I was going to buy one today anyhow.”