Читать книгу The Librarian's Passionate Knight - Cindy Gerard, Dianna Love, Шеррилин Кеньон - Страница 11

Daniel picked up his pace, then momentarily lost track of her when he got tangled up in a group of rowdy, laughing teenage girls. When he finally broke free of them and spotted her again, she was heading away at a fast walk. The guy was hot on her heels.

Daniel caught up with her at a fast jog.

“Hey, babe.” Moving in close beside her, he physically cut off the other man with his body. “Slow down, would you? I lost you for a while there,” he added, slinging an arm over her shoulders with the easy familiarity of a man claiming his woman.

She stopped so fast he had to steady her to keep her from toppling over. When she looked up at him, the eyes behind her glasses were huge and round and scared. It took a moment but eventually she recognized him from the concession line.

He smiled and reassured her with his eyes. Play along. I’ll get you out of this.

“How was your ice cream?” he asked and nudged her back into a walk.

“F-fine,” she finally managed to say, cueing in to his intentions and falling into a faltering step beside him.

“Who the hell are you?” an angry voice demanded from behind them.

“Just keep walking,” he said, lowering his mouth to her ear. For her sake, he didn’t want to make a scene, and he figured the best shot at avoiding one was to walk away.

A beefy hand clamped on his shoulder and stopped him.

So much for what he’d thought.

“I said who the hell are you?”

Daniel turned, a deceptively neutral smile in place. “I’m the guy who’s taking the lady home. Now, if you’ll excuse us—”

“You threw me over for him?” The stench of alcohol explained the slurred words. “For this pretty boy? I knew it! I knew you were screwin’ around on me!”

“Jason.” Her voice was thin and tight. Embarrassment flooded her chalk-white cheeks with color. “We are over. We’ve been over for two months now. What can I say to make you understand that?”

“Yeah, Jason,” Daniel echoed with false congeniality. “What can she say to make you understand?”

“Stay out of this,” Jason snarled and started in on her again. “We are not over, Mouse. Not till I say so.”

Red ringed the eyes that narrowed into angry slits. Hands the size of small anvils clenched into tight fists at his sides. He wanted to hit something. With a sickening twist in his gut, Daniel realized what—or in this case who—it was.

“Don’t even think about it.” He shoved her behind him and stepped into the line of fire. “And then do yourself a favor. Walk away. Just walk the hell away.”

Jason, who easily outweighed him by twenty or thirty pounds, snorted. “You think you wanna piece of me, pretty boy?”

“Oh, I’d love a piece of you, Clyde.” Daniel smiled pleasantly. “But you’re just not worth my time. Now back off and leave the lady alone or this is gonna come down to you and me and the nice policeman walking toward us. You want to go down for attempted assault with a little drunk and disorderly tacked on for good measure? Make a move and you’ve got it.”

“Problem here, folks?”

“I’m not sure.” Daniel glared at Jason as the uniformed officer approached them. “Is there a problem?”

Jason glowered but finally shook his head.

“Is there a problem?” Daniel repeated, turning his attention to a pair of doe-brown eyes, relaying with his tone that all she had to do was say the word and this bozo was history.

She hesitated then shook her head. “No.”

Daniel watched her face for the length of a deep breath, not knowing what to make of that. What he did know was that it wasn’t his call. It was hers, and since he’d come in at the middle of this particular movie, he wasn’t going to make any snap judgments.

“Guess there’s no problem.” He flashed the officer a tight smile. “Thanks anyway.”

Daniel shot Jason a warning glare. Then he waited to make sure the other man got the hint to move on. When he stalked off, Daniel wrapped his arm around her shoulders again. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

She tried for a smile—of relief or gratitude, he couldn’t tell which. Regardless, it didn’t matter, because she didn’t pull it off anyway. She was shaking so hard that he expected her to vibrate right out from under his arm. She surprised him, though, because when he started walking she let out a pent-up breath that seemed to drain her of her tension and fell into step beside him.

He looked down at the top of her head, comfortable with the easy way she fit against him, not so comfortable with the intensity of the protectiveness he felt for her.

True, it wasn’t the first time he’d been ready to take a fall for a woman. As a rule, though, he generally liked to know a whole helluva lot more about her before he got his lights punched out. For starters, he thought with a cheeky grin, he at least tried to make it a point to know her name.

Phoebe figured she was in shock. She couldn’t think of another reason why she was letting a total stranger wrap his arm around her and walk her farther and farther away from her car. She supposed there was the very real likelihood that Jason had scared her witless. And then, there was the fact that the man steering her down the sidewalk was quite possibly the most beautiful man she’d ever seen.

“You okay?” she heard him ask. The way he said it made her realize it wasn’t the first time he’d asked. His voice, as smooth and low as deep water, was filled with concern.

When she couldn’t find it in her to reply, he stopped and turned to her. Cupping her shoulders in his hands, he searched her face. As she, in turn, searched his, she forgave herself for lapsing into speechlessness.

Sweet Lord, he was gorgeous. He wasn’t particularly tall—just under six feet—but at five-four she still had to lift her chin to look up at him. He wasn’t exceptionally muscular either, not like a bodybuilder. Instead, he was sleekly muscled, like a runner or a swimmer, a study in athletic fitness that combined conditioning and finesse to a honed perfection that overshadowed brawn any day. His black T-shirt and black shorts showed off tan arms and legs and lean, sinewy strength.

She knew what it felt like to be tucked into the warmth and power emanating from his body. She’d felt sheltered and protected while visions of a different kind of embrace—intimate, needy—further scattered her already fractured thoughts.

He wasn’t a workingman either, she decided, forcefully dragging her mind back to the moment. Nothing specifically told her that. It was more of a generalization of his overall presence that quietly spoke of money. That he either came from it or was made from it was as obvious as the blue of his eyes. From the artful style of his sun-streaked brown hair that he wore longer than respectable yet looked exactly right on him, to the cut of his formfitting black T-shirt, he wore wealth. It wasn’t overt. It was, instead, effortless. He was as comfortable with it as he was with his utter maleness, at ease with everything that he was.

The blue eyes that searched her face were thick-lashed and kind of dreamy, strategically set for maximum impact in that stunning, poster-perfect face. His cheeks were deeply tan and slightly stubbled, his jaw molded with love by a benevolent master.

His classic male beauty, however, had enough rough edges thrown in to save him from being pretty. A tiny crescent-shaped scar marred the corner of his full upper lip, and a nick split the arch of his dark eyebrow. Still, his face was so symmetrically sculpted it was almost painful to look at it, yet impossible to look away.

He was everything—everything—that a hero was supposed to be. Brave, gorgeous, wealthy.

Her heart sank on a reality check. A worthy heroine she was not.

The realization of who she was, what she was and what she wasn’t, melted over her like spent wax, starting at the top of her head and working its way to her fingertips.

“Are you still with me in there?” he asked with a lazy, amused grin that infiltrated her thoughts like a spelunker breaching a turn in an underground cavern.

“I…um…”

He chuckled, held his hand in front of her face and asked, deadpan, “How many fingers?”

She blinked, focused, and remarkably, the magic of speech returned. “Four and a thumb. At least that was standard issue last I knew.”

On second thought, magic may have been too strong a word when paired up with the words she’d just uttered. Obviously, her reply had spilled out before she thought, because if she’d thought, she wouldn’t be firing wisecracks. Shock, prompted by reality, made her forget to measure her words, police her reactions.

She reined herself in and clarified. “He didn’t hit me.”

He smiled again, gently this time, sort of a slow, concerned unfurling that dug deep grooves in his lean cheeks and crinkled the corners of his eyes. “But he wanted to. And that in itself is a violation.”

He had the most sensual mouth. His lips were generous and seemed to be perpetually tipped up in some semblance of a grin.

Too aware that she was staring again, she lifted her gaze to quite possibly the most expressive eyes she’d ever seen. In that moment, she read his pity through them and was ashamed.

“Oh. Oh, no. It’s…it’s not what you’re thinking. I’m not one of those poor women caught up in an abuse cycle.” Though he was a total stranger, she didn’t want him thinking that about her. “I ended our relationship months ago. He’s just not— Well, he’s not getting the picture.”

“And he’s not likely to anytime soon unless he has a reason to consider the consequences.”

Consequences. So far, she, not Jason, had been the one suffering the consequences of his unwarranted obsession.

It all caught up with her then. The fear of the past few moments. The utter sense of vulnerability and violation. The embarrassment of a public scene. And her dependence on this stranger to come to her rescue.

Jason had blindsided her. She hated him for that. She hated violence more. She’d felt as helpless against it tonight as she had as a child. And like a child, she’d frozen in the face of it.

She knew what that made her. Leslie Griffin, her sixty-years-young friend and co-worker, could argue all she wanted that Phoebe was heroic for overcoming her abusive childhood, for putting herself through school, for enduring and establishing herself as a solid, independent citizen. The truth, however, was that at heart she was a coward. For that failure alone, she hated herself almost as much as she hated Jason for putting her in this position.

“Well.” She squared her shoulders and rallied what pride she had left. “It’s my problem. I’ll figure out how to deal with it.”

“Think in terms of a two-by-four. Right between his eyes,” he said darkly.

“Do you all run on pure testosterone?” She blurted out the words before she could marshal them. Again.

She closed her eyes, pressed her fingertips to her temple. Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

She didn’t know how to act around this man. If she wasn’t gaping in stupefied silence over his glaring good looks, she was bumbling out the most inappropriate things.

“I’m sorry. You saved me from a really bad ending here and I’m coming down on you for wanting to…” She paused, lifted a hand in the air.

“To add more violence to an already violent situation?” he suggested, an apology in his voice. “Unfortunately, sometimes that’s the only option.”

For the first time, something other than gentle amusement hardened his mouth. She saw and heard his anger but understood that it was directed at Jason. She also understood that he hadn’t judged her as harshly as she’d judged herself.

When she realized he was watching her with an absorbed intensity that relayed both concern and the same gentleness as his smiles, she drew in a deep breath and let it out.

“Well,” she said, feeling compelled to assure him, “I’ll be okay. He’ll give up sooner or later. In the meantime, I really don’t know how to thank you. Most people wouldn’t have stopped, and, you know, gotten in the middle of someone else’s mess.”

“I’m not most people.”

That much she’d already figured out. He certainly wasn’t like most of the people she knew at any rate. And he wasn’t anything like her. She was strictly struggling to be middle-class mundane. And he— Well, he wasn’t.

“So, what happens now?”

She let out a breath through puffed cheeks. “What does happen now?” she mused aloud before her brain synapses clicked into place. “Well, now I guess I walk back to my car and drive home.”

It seemed simple enough, except that on the heels of her statement, she realized it wasn’t going to be simple at all. She would have laughed if she could have mustered the strength.

“Well, normally I’d walk back to my car and drive home.”

“Normally?”

She worried her lower lip between her teeth then lifted a shoulder. “He got away with my car keys.”

He quirked a beautifully arched eyebrow—the one with the nick in it. “Oops. That’s a problem.”

Phoebe tugged on the tips of her hair where it tickled her nape and tried not to fidget as he continued to watch her with that half-amused, half-interested, all-male grin.

“So it would appear that you’re stranded.”

Yep. She was in a tight spot. So why was she suddenly grinning back at him?

It was ludicrous. Someone who had once meant something to her, someone she had trusted and had actually considered building a life with, had just tried to physically assault her. In addition, he’d made off with her car keys. Yet the pain of the first and the anger over the second just sort of drifted off in the comfort of this man’s dazzling smile.

“I’ll, um, just hail a cab,” she said, sobering resolutely. “I’ve got an extra set of keys at home. I can come back for my car tomorrow.”

“Or,” he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his shorts, “I could take you.”

Yes, yes, yes.

She pulled back from that idea with a steadying breath. “No, oh no. I couldn’t ask you to do that. You’ve done enough. And you don’t even know me. For that matter, I don’t know you.”

“That is an issue,” he agreed with another one of those knee-melting smiles that didn’t make fun but teased just the same. “Here’s a thought. You could tell me your name, and I could tell you mine.” He paused, his grin playful and expectant. “You see where this is leading, right?”

Infectious. His smile was positively infectious.

“And then we can say we know each other,” he finished, looking very pleased with himself and his silliness. “Works out pretty well to my way of thinking.”

She liked his way of thinking. She was baffled that a man who looked like him would even bother with a woman who looked like her, but she liked it. In fact, she was quickly discovering that she liked everything about him.

Like his lips. Supple, sensual.

“So, what do you say?” he prompted. “How about you go first?”

“Phoebe,” she murmured, dragging her gaze away from his mouth. “Phoebe Richards.”

“Phoebe,” he repeated, mulling it over then looking immeasurably pleased. “I like it. It suits you much better than Mouse.” His expression was as sober as it was sincere.

She blinked, speechless again.

“I’m Daniel.” He extended his hand. “Daniel Barone.”

This time when he smiled it was full out, no-holes-barred and devastating.

She drew a deep breath and tried to shore herself up as every bone in her body sort of liquefied to the consistency of pudding.

And then she smiled like a goon again because he just made it so darn easy.

Slowly, she took the hand he offered. It was a strong hand. Her own hand felt small and protected tucked inside his. Before she could stop the image from forming, she imagined the coarse, warm strength of it caressing…well, something much more intimate than her hand.

She was thankful it was shadowy and dark on the street. Maybe he couldn’t see the flush spreading across her cheeks. With luck, he wouldn’t notice the slight tremble of her hand either when she finally managed to extricate it from his and lift it to her nape to tug self-consciously at her hair again.

“Let me take you home, Phoebe Richards,” he said, his voice and his eyes gentle. “Now just wait a sec before you say no. Think of how bad I’d feel if after all this you ended up getting mugged or something. I’d have put my life on the line for nothing.”

His easy self-assurance only reminded her of all the confidence she lacked. It reaffirmed that she had no business accepting his offer because in the overall scheme of things, it meant very little to him if he took her home and way too much to her.

Daniel Barone, she’d decided, couldn’t help but play the hero. She, conversely, never had and never would fit the role of a heroine. Especially not his heroine, although she couldn’t help herself from wanting to cast herself in the part.

That was when it hit her.

She knew who he was.

Her eyes widened.

How could she not have recognized him?

Maybe she was wrong, she thought, stalling panic as her gaze raced across his face. Maybe she hadn’t just made a fool of herself in front of a man who, a few months ago, the Boston Globe Magazine had billed as “Boston’s Own Sexy-as-Sin Daredevil Millionaire.”

Yeah, and maybe the light sheen of perspiration that had broken out on her forehead made her look delicate instead of desperate.

“Daniel Barone?” she squeaked, like the mouse she truly was. “The Daniel Barone?”

When he merely crossed his arms over his chest and grinned, she pressed the flat of her palm to her forehead.

“The Boston Globe’s Daniel Barone? The Baronessa Gelati Barone?”

Unless you lived under a rock, you knew about the Boston Barones. The colorful Italian family’s ice cream dynasty was legend, not just on the East Coast but worldwide. The original gelateria still flourished in the North End of Boston, and the delicious gelato had made Baronessa a household word and made multimillionaires out of anyone bearing the Barone name.

He shrugged, looking a little sheepish, which only added to his appeal. “I’m getting the impression that you may not consider this a good thing.”

“Oh, no. No, it’s just—”

“It’s just a name,” he preempted to make his point. “And I’m just a guy who wants to make sure you get home okay. Okay?”

In spite of it all, she was helpless not to return his smile. She’d given up resisting it. Just as she’d given up on the idea of doing the smart thing and begging off on his offer of a ride.

When he extended his hand, she hesitated for only a moment before taking it.

Just a name. Just a hand. And he’s just being polite, she told herself. Yet she felt as if she was walking in a dream as she let him lead her to his car.

Wasn’t she entitled, just this once, to have a fantasy fulfilled? One real-life fantasy involving one of the richest, sexiest men alive?

When he opened the door for her she went with it. She sank into the plush, supple leather of the bucket seat and pretended that she belonged there. She let the classical music flowing from the stereo system wrap around her, and entered another world. His world.

Phoebe Richards, welcome to the world of the rich and famous. All she needed to complete the scene was Robin Leach with his phony accent prattling away in the background.

She sighed and regained enough of her wits to remind herself that she really didn’t belong in that world. Just like she didn’t belong with a man like him.

Yet here she was.

She was in a car, in the dark of night, with the man of her dreams—hers and any other woman with a beating heart.

Daniel Barone was a true-life knight in shining armor who had literally saved her. Surely the shiny silver Porsche qualified as armor. Surely he was as much of a knight as Guinevere’s Lancelot.

And in the name of fair play, surely, just once in her life, Phoebe Richards was entitled to a fairy-tale ending, even if, like Cinderella’s coach, she’d turn into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight.

Okay. So she was mixing her fairy tales and her metaphors. She didn’t care. For this brief moment in time she indulged. She let herself forget about pumpkins and different worlds when he turned to her.

His blue eyes were thoughtful and interested as they met hers over the tanned arm that gripped the gearshift. The streetlight cast stunning shadows and shading across his incredible face. He smiled that devastating smile. “All set?”

“To the castle,” she murmured and settled back as his soft, warm chuckle enveloped her.