Shadows of the Past Page 19

  The best impulse he’d ever had.

  Pink shopping bags brightened the grayness of his bedcover in a splash of optimism that typified Maria. Hadn’t she done the same to his dull workbound life?

  His heart rate eased from a racing trip-trap to the slow heavy thud of the largest Billy Goat Gruff of troll-killing fame. She’d been shopping at Perdito’s.

  He wondered what she’d forgotten that she’d had to dash out in a hurry to buy. Well, he’d surprise her by cleaning up the mess.

  She might have won the game of hide-and-seek, if a low, keening sob hadn’t stalled him at the bedroom door and sent him charging into the en suite.

  Fear hit him fair and square in the middle of the chest and the heart stopped, missed one beat then another. He let out a curse as her grip on the curved edge of the white-faux marble basin tightened as if she’d collapse without its support.

  She was sick. Had to be to pretend she hadn’t noticed him. Her head bowed, hair a tumble of black waves hiding her face, shutting out his reflection as if she couldn’t bear to look at the two of them together. He came up behind and gripped her shoulders.

  “God almighty, what happened?er breath rattled, a harsh, dry sound torn from her throat that unmanned him. He loosened her grip on the basin, turned her in his arms and pushed her hair back from her face. Her eyes were dry too, hot, burning with a light he’d never seen before.

  Hoped never to see again.

  “Speak to me, hon, what happened? Who did this to you?”

  She pushed his hands away, slapped at them when he resisted. Her laugh reminded him of dry ice, cruel and cutting, as she said, “I did. I did it to myself. Dumb, huh?”

  Her hair swung as she tossed her head back, defiant, daring him. “I thought I’d be gone before you got back, but you caught me and now I have to tell you to your face instead of writing a note. How cowardly was that?”

  “You’re leaving, why? We still have…”

  “Oh…yeah, what is it, two days three nights of your precious time left.” Her hand formed a fist to clutch against her breasts as he reached out. “No, don’t! Don’t touch me. Don’t lay one finger on me.”

  Maria shuddered, hating herself for the part she’d decided to play once she’d discovered she was trapped in the apartment with her bags half packed. No way out and no way back. If it hadn’t been for those damn roses she would have made it. Even now their perfume hung about her like a miasma of evil thoughts.

  She had to keep up the act, play the part and make him hate her. She had to smile and hide her broken heart.

  “I don’t get it, what’s changed?”

  “My mind. I’ve changed my mind.” She turned her shoulder to him and turned on the faucet. It took guts to hurt someone she…she cared for. Even to herself she couldn’t say the word.

  She thrust her wrists under the cold water, but it didn’t quench the painful burn in her blood, in her belly. The urge to spill her guts and lay it all out and let Franc take the responsibility for his life.

  Or death.

  The water shushed over her wrists, swirled round the basin, gurgled down the drain as she waited for him to say something, anything. She glanced into the mirror. His face was carved in stone. Not a good memory to carry away with her.

  She grasped the faucet hard, tight so it cut into her palm. “I’ve discovered that I couldn’t play happy family any longer and pretend that you weren’t going to toss me away like yesterday’s newspaper as soon as Stanhope Electronics reopened its doors.”

  “It doesn’t have to end then.”

  She sensed the words were forced, puzzled. It made it worse knowing he might have caved, might have taken a chance. That they could have made this affair work, could have turned it into something that didn’t have a use-by date.

  “But it would end someday. And I find myself getting too used to seeing your face in the morning. Better to cut the cord now and give myself a shot at looking round for a guy who’s interested in something more permanent.”

  “So, you want someone el

  Anger at last. Leashed anger, but maybe she could set it free. She grabbed the guest towel off the ring and looked away from the mirror as she dried her hands, unable to face the results of her handiwork.

  “Well, duh? You must have noticed how I enjoyed the sex. I don’t want to give that up. I just need to find someone I care less for, so I don’t get hurt again.”

  “You think I would hurt you?”

  His voice crowded her, rippled across the nerve endings at her nape the way it did when he spooned with her in bed and talked close to her ear.

  “Hell!” She could imagine the lift of his eyebrows, for she never swore. “You couldn’t help yourself. My fault, I walked into our deal with my eyes wide shut, but I already know how to do victim, and I refuse to play the role again, so just let me go and forget me.”

  She didn’t say “the way I’ll forget you.” That was one lie she couldn’t bring herself to mouth.

  “And if I don’t want to forget you? If I don’t want to give up the sex, the great sex, what then?”

  She wouldn’t look, didn’t need to. She could sense how close he was. The heat of his body invaded the taut muscles of her back as she breathed in his scent.

  Why had she imagined she could pull this off? Burying her face in the towel to hide the emotions, twisting her expression, she stepped away and hit the wall. A real wall.

  Trapped, by her feelings for him.

  Trapped between his arms as he flattened his palms either side of her head against the cold sheen of white painted wall. His breath was hot on her neck, on her ear. “How about something to remember you by before you leave.”

  Indignant heat suffused her face. Franc was playing his part too well, had his lines off too pat.

  His mouth traced the line of her neck and muttered temptation in her ear. “I liked the sex, as well, the great sex. How about now? Right here, right now against the wall. No one knows what you like the way I do, hon. No one knows which buttons to push, what turns you on.”

  The thick hard ridge of his arousal pressed against her bottom, flattening her against the cold wall. Her nipples froze, hardened into beads of ice while flames licked at her neck.

  If she was going to make an end to this, she knew it had to be now. Before her wants, her needs, led her astray.

  She let her body go lax, let it sag against the wall, using his triumph at her imagined capitulation against him. Twisting, bumping him out of the way, she turned, hand held high to wipe the satisfaction off his face.

  She hesitated a second too long.

  Long enough to look in his eyes. Long enough for him to press her palm to his hair-roughened jaw, to feel him swallow convulsively instead of humoring her futile resistance with laughter. When he carried her palm to his lips and placed a kiss at its heart, she allowed him unconditional surrender.

  Wanting Franc was killing her.

  Wanting her might kill him.

  Franc was past taking anything concerning Maria for granted, or blaming the maelstrom they’d come through with anything as crass as PMS. One emotional storm was over and another in the making as Maria stretched up on her toes to close in on his mouth.

  He took her mouth gently, carefully, wary of tipping the teetering balance of their relationship past the point where nothing could be retrieved.

  It was Maria who forced the issue, forced the pace with her succulent mouth; questing tongue and torturous sweet bites that made his bottom lip throb from her attentions.

  She arched against him, fumbling at his shirt buttons and ripping them off when they failed to yield to her gentler persuasion. He’d thought to persuade her with slow seduction, to get to the truth. She’d said so much yet left everything important unsaid. But if he weren’t to fall behind in the race she’d started, seduction would have to give way to unadulterated lust. The only L word he dared use.

  Her hands were on his belt buckle. “I want you now.”


  It took her forever to reach for his zipper. Her blouse parted in his grip like it had been made of tissue paper, and her bra gave way before he resorted to nipping it off, its straps sliding down her arms to bare her breasts.

  He didn’t see the scars, simply recognized she was beautiful, and made to fit him, and to tremble at his caress, as she did now. One-handed, he bunched her skirt round her waist and cupped her, feeling the damp warmth of arousal flow through her panties onto his fingers. He removed the last barrier with a simple twist of his fingers and slid one inside.

  She moaned, reaching for him, nearly setting him off from the pleasure of her talented caress as she measured the weight of him, sliding her thumb, back and forth, again and again. He had taught her that, taught her too well.

  Cold sweat beaded his forehead and top lip. He fought for control, groaning, “No more, hon. No more. When I explode, I want to be inside you, driving you crazy the way you’re doing to me.”

  She backed off, but only with her hands. The magic she worked with her mouth on his nipples made his chest feel as if it had been pierced with hot nails. “Better?” she asked as he gasped his needs out loud.

  There was only one thing for it. He rid himself of his pants and boxers. Stepped out and left them huddled on the floor as he lifted Maria onto the vanity and set her purse spinning onto the floor.

  “Ouch! It’s cold.”

  “It’ll get warmer.”

  He pulled her skirt down, sliding her bottom closer as he opened her thighs and stepped between them till they were touching but not joined.

  Her eyelids hid what he needed to see. Needed to know.

  “Look at me.”

  No butterfly flutter of lashes answered his demand; her lids were heavy with the weight of desire. They opened slowly, grazing across deep violet irises blurred with need.

  “Now look down.” He kissed his fingertips and touched them to the scar that had been gouged across her belly. “That is past history. Long gone. The are only two of us in this room. You and me.”

  He leaned into her as her gaze lowered. Slid his aching length up over her moist folds, simulating the act that nature had shaped them to perform when she stirred their pheromones and called them to the dance. He pulled back, felt her shiver as the blunt tip she’d caressed dragged over the hot button hiding at her center. “Do you want this?”

  “I want you.”

  “It’s all part of the same deal. Take it or leave it. I’ll stop now and let you go if that’s what you want. No more caterwauling or threats, just goodbye.”

  He bent his head and took her lips, filled her with all the tenderness he could muster. “What’s it to be?”

  “Heaven forgive me, I can’t leave. I just pray we never rue the day we met. Two weeks isn’t long enough to know if our relationship has staying power. But I want to find out.”

  “Same goes.” He pulled back and cupped her hips in his large palms.

  “Before we go any further there’s something you should know.”

  “Tell me later, just don’t try to stop me now,” he growled, spreading his legs until his long-suffering flesh was angled for the perfect entry and he slid into her waiting heat with one impatient thrust of his hips.

  The noise of their mating bounced off the hard surfaces around them in echoes both erotic and tender, skin slapping against skin, and murmured endearments entwined them in a melody played to a rhythm written by Mother Nature.

  Maria dazzled him with her touch and raised the hair on the back of his neck with her dangerous enthusiasm, her willingness to put everything on the line to please him. And he gave back measure for measure till he thought his heart would burst with the emotions swelling it.

  He’d known this was no casual fling, known from the first time he’d made love to her that his feelings were a banner twisting in the wind that only Maria could unravel. He’d hidden the knowledge, shoved it to the back of his mind and pulled a dark curtain across to render it invisible.

  Maria had cut a swath through the curtain, but with his family history he knew better than to hope he could have it all. Maria and his ambitions.

  But he was running out of road, taking off into a space where nothing mattered but being with Maria, rocking her in the cradle of his hips as her climax rippled over him and blew him apart in a starburst pleasure he’d never found with anyone else.

  It took a long time for Maria to come down from the place Franc had taken her. Had she ever been so high before? Ever soared amongst the galaxy?

  Then Franc brought her down to earth with a bang, fluttering in freefall with no notion of making a safe landing. “What was it you wanted to tell me? Before…”

  “Before we half killed each other?” Help, where had that come from? It was too close to the truth to take her impulsive outburst lightly. No matter what she did, made love, stayed, left, the threat wasn’t going to disappear. “Untangle me and help me dow then I’ll tell you.”

  He winced as he stepped back and accidentally heeled something into the shower door as he moved away and they were no longer as one. “I think my left leg went to sleep. Wait till I pick up your purse, you might need something.”

  What did he think this occasion called for—lipstick? The occasion. It dawned on her shell-shocked synapses that as Franc pulled away he hadn’t worn a condom. As if life wasn’t terrifying enough, she could be pregnant.

  From the frown on his face as he straightened, Maria guessed that he had received the same jolt to his memory at almost the same moment it hit her. They both spoke together.

  She said, “We didn’t use a condom.”

  He said, “Where the hell did this crap come from?”

  Then he said, “Dammit. I hope you’re not pregnant, because according to this I’ll be dead by tomorrow.”

  Chapter 15

  So this had been the surprise Franc had planned. Pleasant though it was, Maria was certain he would confirm that the bombshell she’d dropped on him had topped this. But then, having someone predict the day of your death wasn’t an everyday occurrence.

  Maria looked around the saloon of the motor yacht Stanhope’s Fancy II. Feeling dwarfed was not exactly new to her, not when she spent so much time around Franc, but his sister, Jo McQuaid Stanhope, measured in at six feet without high heels—a fact that had to intimidate some of the killers Franc said she had a knack for catching. But this wasn’t Auckland Central, the detective sergeant was off duty and Maria had no intention of killing anyone. Though she did have motive.

  Maria gave the thought a mental raspberry. She was doing her best to see the funny side of life without much success.

  But no wonder Franc had thought Jo could help. The confident way Jo held herself showed she knew her own worth, not only as someone married to a millionaire but as a cop.

  The mere fact that Franc had planned on introducing her to a member of his family before the threat, showed a departure from his original plans for a brief fling. Familywise, until now, all she’d been sure of was that Franc had spent his life trying to live down his father’s reputation.

  Jo’s husband, Rowan, stood a shade taller than Franc, but it didn’t show as they pored over the death-threat card and mutilated photographs. Rowan had come down to join them from the flying wheelhouse of the motor yacht as soon as they anchored in Waitamata Harbour.

  “So tell me again,” Jo asked, her eyes twinkling as if this was the fun, girl-talk part of the deal. “How did he manage to smuggle you out of his apartment?”

  “It does sound like something from a movie. We went down in the elevator to the basement garage, and he had me stay in the elevator until he looked around to make sure there was no one in sight, and then he hid me in the back seat with a traveling over me. You have no idea the twists and turns he took to make sure we weren’t being followed. I thought I might be seasick by the time he finished.” She looked out at the harbor from the window of the yacht as it rocked on the wash of a passing boat, wondering if she might still be
seasick.

  Maria looked down at the white boat shoes she was wearing. They had been part of Franc’s surprise; a short boat trip on the Stanhope’s Fancy had been the rest, only now the term safe haven seemed more appropriate than a short holiday cruise.

  Jo got up from the custom-built sofa they were sharing, covered in a mixture of blue-grays and peaches; it toned well with the apricot suede and natural-wood walls. Maria watched her skirt the dining table the men leaned on, to open a freezer in the galley, and then quickly and efficiently she slid the contents of a plastic bag into an ice bucket.

  “I know it’s too early to toast in the new year,” she said, opening a cabinet next to the dining saloon. “But I’m sure after all your hassles, a small reviving glass with a little kick to it might be just the thing to settle your nerves.”

  “Wine for me if you have any,” Maria answered before remembering that one of those hassles could be she was pregnant.

  Had Franc mentioned that to his sister when he told her about the death threat? It seemed so minute a problem when looked at alongside the fact that someone wanted to kill Franc; she had refused to take the possibility seriously. It had struck her as funny that he should take an opposing stance.

  Jo turned her attention to the men. “Now that you’ve studied the evidence, Rowan, what do you think?” Though she was a card-carrying member of the New Zealand police and Rowan a member of the hugely rich Stanhope family and Franc’s immediate boss, they both worked as a team and it showed.

  “Here’s what I reckon, Peaches.” Neither Franc nor Jo seemed to perceive anything peculiar in the diminutive Rowan used for his wife who was actually a very feminine version of Franc. “I think the threat needs to be taken seriously. But whether Randy Searle has the kind of psychological profile to carry the threat out, I couldn’t say. Human Resources should have his work history, check it out when you go back to work on Thursday.”

  “But surely you won’t let him go back to work until this guy’s been found,” Maria blurted out. So what if Rowan was his boss? He should be Jo’s husband first.