Читать книгу In The Enemy's Embrace - Mindy Neff - Страница 9

Jessica Coleman hugged the scratchy wool blanket around her shoulders and shivered in the balmy June night air, the tremors from nerves, not cold.

Before her, the downtown Dallas apartment she’d called home for the past two months oozed smoke out its balcony windows like a baby dragon throwing a hissy fit.

Jessica felt a little like throwing a hissy fit herself, but realized it would do no good. Roll with the punches, her cousins always told her, stand proud and project a regal presence even if you don’t feel it.

Easy for them to say. Her cousins, whom she’d been raised with, were indeed royalty. Bona fide sheikhs. All of them married now—thanks in part to Jessica’s matchmaking skills.

She sniffed and wiped her nose on the scratchy blanket the firefighter had given her, her throat burning from the cloying smell of smoke. Destruction was always so painful to see. Especially destruction of a person’s home.

Thankfully Jessica wasn’t emotionally attached to the apartment, didn’t have any keepsakes there—other than the photographs of her parents and cousins that she’d snatched up and shoved in her purse on her way out of the smoke-filled building. The rest of her belongings of any value to her were at home on the Desert Rose Ranch in Bridle, Texas, northwest of Austin.

Except her clothes of course. Now that was a big loss.

On the bright side, though, losing one’s entire wardrobe was a great excuse to go shopping.

She glanced around at her neighbors and felt badly about her frivolous thought. My gosh, what was wrong with her? Was she on the verge of hysteria?

Unlike her, she imagined these people had lost irreplaceable keepsakes and memories. A couple had nearly lost their lives. That thought made her shiver—especially as the image of little Timmy, her neighbor’s boy, sliding on his stomach toward an open flame replayed in her mind like a preview clip of a horror movie. He’d broken away from his parents, running back toward his apartment to search for his cat. The untied shoelaces on his sneakers had tripped him and sent him tumbling.

Tugging her mass of red hair from beneath the blanket, she turned at the sound of tires screeching on asphalt. Her heart lurched into her throat.

A black Mercedes sedan.

Nick Grayson—her absentee boss.

Well, sort of her boss. He was the son of the Grayson half of Coleman-Grayson Investment Company, and she was the daughter of the Coleman half. His handsome features made her knees weak, yet his bossiness left her spitting like a she-cat more often than not. She knew her parents had asked him to watch over her, teach her the ropes in the family business, but at twenty-five, she was well past needing a baby-sitter and resented his superior attitude.

She sighed, watching him approach. His long stride and rigidly set shoulders beneath a black polo shirt didn’t bode well for harmony. At least not between the two of them.

The subtle smell of sandalwood cologne surrounded her as he drew near, giving her a second’s respite from the acrid stench of smoke. Heat coursed through her. Her insides still trembled like soft-set pudding—nerves and something more now.

Why in the world couldn’t she be her normal “catch me if you can, baby” self around this man? It was thoroughly disquieting, a failing she’d had since she was thirteen. You’d think she would’ve gotten over her adolescent crush.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his deep voice concerned, edgy.

Annoyed that she wanted to say no and turn into his wide chest for comfort, Jessica clutched the blanket more snugly around her shoulders. “Do you have spies? Had my phones tapped? What?” Why was it he always showed up when she needed him?

She didn’t want to need him, even though the smell of his skin and the intensity of his dark-brown eyes made her heart do cartwheels in her chest.

“Did you make a phone call?” he asked, his tone dripping with censure. “I don’t recall mine ringing.”

When he cocked a dark brow in that sexy, annoying way of his, she didn’t know whether to hit him or jump his bones.

“Obviously it must have rung sometime,” she said. “Otherwise, why would you show up like a thief with a posse on his tail?”

“A thief?”

She shrugged. “Black car, windows tinted black, dressed in all black. A person would think you’re a bad guy or something.”

The long look he gave her did indeed telegraph danger. Sexual, rather than physical.

“The color of the car isn’t readily changeable. The clothes were what I put my hands on first in the closet. I was understandably anxious to get out of the house.”

“You had ESP or something that drew you out of bed and told you my apartment building was burning down?”

“No. Guy Pirrazzo—he’s the head of personnel at the company—”

“I know who Guy is,” she said. She’d found that out on her own. She’d come to Coleman-Grayson at her parents’ behest to learn the ins and outs of the business under Nick Grayson’s tutelage. He hadn’t done much tutoring so far. It was as though he was avoiding her, finding excuses to be out of the office or out of town altogether.

Although he did have an uncanny knack for showing up every time she seemed to be at her worst.

“Yes, well, Guy’s uncle lives in this building—”

“Lived,” she corrected waving a hand at the water-and-soot-drenched grounds. She didn’t think she’d ever get the shrill scream of the smoke alarm out of her head. Emergency lights from the fire engines cast intermittent splashes of crimson across the wet asphalt, which had already been cordoned off with yellow tape.

“Lived,” Nick repeated, his jaw flexing as though he was annoyed and holding on by a thread at being interrupted. “Guy recalled that you were in the same building and phoned to let me know about the fire.”

He was looking at her as though he was disappointed that she hadn’t called him herself, as though he’d expected as much.

Which was absurd of course. The man avoided her the way an Arabian horse shies around a Texas rattler.

At the moment, though, his demeanor was far from shy. It set her nerves tingling.

She cleared her throat, unsure what to say or do next. Suddenly she felt nervous and vulnerable. The adrenaline that had carried her out of the apartment building was ebbing. Despite the fact that Nick Grayson got on her nerves, a part of her was actually glad he was here.

She shoved her tousled red hair off her forehead and sighed.

Nick laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Are you ready to go?”

His quiet voice and warm breath sent more shivers down her spine. At this rate, her bones were likely to rattle apart joint by joint. “Go where?”

“My place, I’m thinking.”

She looked up at him. “Obviously you’re not thinking to make a suggestion like that.”

Astonished, she watched his teeth flash white as his lips canted into a slow grin.

“Now, Jess. Are you insinuating the two of us can’t get along under the same roof?”

“I’m not insinuating. I know.”

He slung an arm around her shoulders, steered her toward his car. “Come on. Let’s get out of here and we’ll fight about it later.”

She had to bite her lip to keep from smiling. If there was one thing she and Nick were good at, it was fighting. Well, sparring was probably more accurate.

He held the car door open for her and gallantly helped her into the plush leather seat as though she’d been harmed, not just her apartment.

“You could drop me at the Embassy Suites or the Sheraton.”

“Sit back and relax. From the looks of that garage, I’d guess your car’s pretty well toast. Since I’m in the driver’s seat, I say we go to Grayson suites.”

The sight of her ruined building sent another sickening tremor through her. “Since when are you in the hotel business?”

He slanted her a look. “Play on words, Red. I’ve got plenty of suites in my place. You’ll be more comfortable there than at a hotel.”

Jessica wasn’t so sure about that. The words comfortable and Nick Grayson didn’t coexist peacefully in her vocabulary. Right now, though, she was too tired to put up much of a fuss.

It was an effort to act tough, but she couldn’t afford to let down her guard. Not with Nick.

She rested her head against the leather seat. Soft country music played on the stereo system. The lights on the dashboard looked sophisticated and complicated, yet pretty against the dark night. She shut her eyes as they wound through downtown Dallas, then left the city lights far behind as they traveled down a four-lane highway divided by a grassy median strip.

She heard the rustle of denim and cotton sliding against leather, knew he’d turned to look at her. She kept her eyes lowered. There was a time when she would have given her prize Arabian mare to be sitting next to Nick Grayson in his car, to have him be the dashing knight who’d come rushing to her rescue.

That seemed like a lifetime ago. She’d been a girl of thirteen and he’d been a worldly man of twenty-one. Even now, her face heated when she thought of that embarrassing day he’d come out to the Desert Rose Ranch. She’d been filled with a young girl’s dreams, infatuated with this older boy, watched him, pined for him, ached for him to notice her as only a young girl in her first crush can ache.

He’d been sweet to her, and that was all it had taken for her to tumble head over heels. She’d been so sure of herself, feeling older now that she was a teen, certain that Nick Grayson would fall madly in lust with her, promise her undying love, promise to wait for her forever. She’d built up the scenario, dreamed it so often it had become real to her.

That had made his abrupt rejection all the more humiliating.

Feeling the familiar shame flutter in her stomach at the memory, she banished the thought and sat up straighter, looking around as he drove through a set of private gates supported by brick pillars. White wood fences glowed in the moonlight, reminding her of home, of the paddocks that held million-dollar Arabian champions. Where the Desert Rose was built in a Spanish architectural style, Nick’s house was a scaled-down version of Southfork—the estate made famous by the long-running TV series Dallas.

“I guess our daddies pay you pretty well,” she mused aloud.

He shot her a frowning look. “I work hard for the salary the company pays me.”

Hmmm. She’d hit a nerve. She could practically hear his thoughts, the words he was civilized enough not to tack on. I work hard for the salary the company pays me…unlike you.

Perhaps his touchiness had something to do with the fact that the Coleman half of the partnership owned fifty-one percent of the voting stock, leaving the Graysons a mere forty-nine. Technically she had more clout than he did, but she decided not to poke at that particular sore tonight. She wasn’t at her best. And to keep one step ahead of Nick Grayson, she needed to be at her best.

He stopped the car in the circular driveway beneath a porte-cochere and shut off the engine. A warm breeze lifted her hair as she got out of the car. Cicadas and crickets harmonized with the deeper hum of tree frogs, the sound pressing in on her ears.

She shivered. She’d grown up on a ranch, dealt with snakes and all manner of varmints, yet the thought of thousands of huge insects and critters blending in with the trees, watching her with their buggy eyes, gave her the creeps.

“You cold?” Nick asked as he reached past her to open the front door.

“No. It’s those stupid locusts. I think they deliberately antagonize me because they can sense I don’t like them.”

A corner of his mouth kicked up. “I don’t think you can go anywhere in Texas and get away from them.”

“No place that has trees, that’s for sure.” She ducked under his outstretched arm and crossed the threshold to the foyer. A fortune in marble paved the floor, flowing like polished glass until it met the thick carpet of an enormous living room.

Jessica was impressed despite herself. Heck, she came from a wealthy family. But the layout of Nick’s home was breathtaking.

A solid wall of windows beckoned her farther into the room, where comfortable leather furniture cohabited nicely with priceless antiques. Doors opened onto a patio, where subtle lighting turned the swimming pool into a fantasy-like paradise.

Unable to resist, she walked right out the doors, drawn by the water, and inhaled the scent of chlorine and the sweet perfume of honeysuckle vines.

He switched on the patio and yard lights, and Jessica was further awed. Manicured lawns, shaded by mature oak and elm trees, sloped down to a tranquil lake where a wooden dock extended out into the water. A sporty powerboat was moored at one side of the dock, tied to cleats and protected by bright orange buoys.

She turned to Nick, raised a brow. “A swimming pool and a lake?”

Hands in his pockets, he stood several feet away as though he didn’t trust himself to come any closer. “I swim in the pool and fish in the lake.”

“Ah, a man who knows how to bring home dinner.”

He was silent, watching her as though she were a bobcat ready to pounce. She clearly made him nervous, and Jessica found this a delicious turn of events. She was no longer the thirteen-year-old girl with a mad crush, the girl who’d been humiliated when her kiss had been rebuffed. With her now twenty-five, the eight-year age difference put them in a completely different playing field.

And judging by the hungry look in his eyes, she had the home advantage.

“We should probably go in before the mosquitoes start biting,” he said, his hands still in his pockets, his dark gaze trained on her.

“Vitamin B. I take it religiously and they never munch on me.” Because it was past midnight and they were both a little punchy from the drama of the evening, she preceded him into the house and caught a glimpse of her reflection in the darkened windows when he turned off the outside lights.

For pity’s sake. In all the hoopla, she’d completely forgotten that she still wore her Victoria’s Secret pajamas. Oh, they were modest enough, thin sweatpants in a pink-and-red heart pattern and a matching tank top. Looking down, she noticed the insoles of her sandals were imprinted with toe-shaped smudges from the water and soot remnants of the fire.

She yelped and jumped up onto the fireplace hearth.

Nick took an immediate step forward, switching on the overhead lights, his gaze scanning the floor. “What?” He nearly shouted the word.

She knew he was imagining they’d let a critter in through the open doors, and she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. At this point, a bout of laughter might well turn into that hysteria she’d been worrying about earlier. “My feet are dirty.”

“Your…”

She held up a foot, letting her white sandal dangle from her toes. Even her gold toe ring was tarnished black. “I hope I didn’t track this mess on your beautiful carpet.”

“The rugs can be cleaned, Red. My heart’s not so easily repaired.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to shake you up. And why do you keep scowling at me like that?”

“I’m not scowling.”

She rolled her eyes. “Look in the mirror, why don’t you. And while you’re at it, could you bring me a towel so I can rake some of this gunk off my feet? Honestly, I should have jumped in the pool while I was out there.”

“I can give you a hand if you like.”

She looked at him and laughed. “A push, you mean?”

A dimple creased his cheek. Amazing, since his expression was still nearly as solemn as a judge’s.

He turned to leave the room, presumably to do her bidding. Man, oh, man, Nick Grayson had one fine derriere. Jessica sat down on the brick hearth and rested her chin on her raised knees, sniffed, then lifted her head. No wonder Nick was keeping a respectable distance between them. She reeked of smoke.

Her gaze was still on the seat of his jeans when he suddenly turned and caught her staring. Except now she was staring at the fly of his jeans.

She lifted her eyes to his scowling face. “Well,” she said. “You’re the one who turned around. If you’d just kept going, I could have ogled your backside in peace and you’d have been none the wiser….” Her words dried up as he crossed the room toward her, bent down and scooped her up in his arms. “What in the world are you doing?”

“Taking you to the shower.”

“Fetching a towel was too taxing for you?”

“My towels are white. You’d ruin them.”

“The man owns a swimming pool and a lake and he quibbles over a towel.” She sighed and clutched the blanket that was still around her shoulders.

“Red?”

“Mmm?”

“You smell like charred wood.”

Yes, and if she closed her eyes, her mind replayed the horrible image of flames licking at her neighbor’s window. “You’re such a gentleman for pointing that out, Grayson. No sense complaining, though. I didn’t ask for the impromptu ride.”

“A good host should bear up under any hardship.”

“Now I’m a hardship. You’re not exactly endearing yourself to me.”

“I wasn’t trying to.” He lowered her feet to the tile floor of the bathroom.

Jessica wasn’t sure what imp got into her, but she dropped the blanket from her shoulders and turned to face him.

In a typically male reaction, his gaze dipped to her tank top where thin cotton adorned with little hearts stretched over her breasts. She felt her nipples harden and nearly groaned.

But she’d started this, and she wouldn’t act like a shy maiden now. Never mind that she had little handson experience in the male-female relationship department; she’d learned years ago that men were drawn to the voluptuous curves of her body, and she’d perfected a seductress act that could have a guy panting like a puppy in two seconds flat. And while Nick wasn’t exactly panting, his dark eyes flared nearly black—a perfect match for his clothes.

A muscle worked in his jaw as he backed out of the bathroom. “You didn’t happen to stuff an extra change of clothes in that backpack purse, did you?”

“‘Fraid not.”

“I’ll see what I can come up with.”

He closed the door behind him and Jessica let out a slow breath. Her hands were trembling—heck, her entire insides were quaking.

Darn it, she was not attracted to Nick Grayson. She’d gotten over that years ago. They rubbed each other the wrong way, couldn’t have a decent conversation without tempers igniting. So why the devil were her nipples poking out as if she’d just dipped herself in an icy lake?

Undressing, she turned on the shower, adjusted the water temperature and stuck her head under the steamy spray. From the corner of her eye, she saw the bathroom door open and she froze.

Holding her breath, she watched as a masculine arm reached in and set down a stack of folded clothes, then withdrew, pulling the door closed again. She let out a sigh, her heart pumping. She’d been raised in a house with three male cousins, but none of them had ever breached her privacy this way. Well, it hadn’t actually been breached. He hadn’t come all the way in the room and looked.

Just to ease her mind, she would make a point of standing at the doorway when she was done to see if the mirror afforded a clear view to the shower. No sense letting Nick Grayson get one up on her.

The purpose, she’d decided weeks ago, was to make him drool, regret what he’d so carelessly turned down years ago. Not the other way around.

NICK WENT INTO the kitchen and poured himself a healthy shot of brandy. He’d tried to work on a prospectus report for a software company he was considering investing in, but the sound of water rushing through the pipes was too much of a distraction. Especially knowing Jessica Coleman was the one standing naked in his shower.

Damn it, he should have just left the clothes outside the door. He’d only meant to stick his arm in and put the stuff on the counter. How the hell was he to know the mirror angle gave a perfect reflection of the shower—and its occupant? Now, in addition to a twelve-year-old kiss haunting him, he had the image of her naked curvy body to keep him up nights.

She could have been burned tonight, lost her life. That one vulnerable look she’d given him when he’d first shown up at the fire would forever be etched in his mind. It had said, Hold me, please. And he’d wanted to, wanted to take care of her, but he was scared to touch her.

Jessica Coleman had been off-limits for so long. He was weak when it came to her, didn’t trust himself to let go, and that made him mad.

The very worst thing he could do was get involved with a Coleman. He and Jess had been like water and oil since the moment they’d met—flammable, volatile, passionate oil. Love and hate walked a very thin line. To act on that emotion, see where it would take them, was too dangerous. One or both of them would likely get burned. And what happened between them would naturally affect the business.

Coleman-Grayson Investment Company was too important to him to take a chance on ripping it apart because of personal conflict.

“Didn’t your mama ever tell you what a shame it’d be if your face ended up getting stuck in that position?”

He looked up, became aware that his brows were indeed drawn together in a frown, then promptly lost his entire train of thought.

She wore a white bathrobe he kept for guests who came to swim. He could see the collar of his T-shirt he’d lent her beneath the plunging V of the robe. Her legs and feet were bare and he wondered if she was wearing the drawstring shorts he’d laid out for her. Her long red hair was a mass of damp curls, framing her face and sliding over her shoulders. Her face was void of makeup, making her look even younger. That should have had the effect of ice water dumped over his head, but it didn’t.

Although she was perfectly decent, his body was humming as if she’d walked into the room stark naked.

Nerves crowded when she sauntered over to him, reached out and brushed his forehead with her finger.

“It’s your skin, but seems a shame to promote early wrinkles like this.” She plucked the brandy glass out of his hand, sipped, her gaze still on his.

Her eyes were unique, one green and the other blue—something he’d never seen on anyone before. That was the kind of thing that sticks in a man’s mind. It’d stuck in his since the day he first laid eyes on her.

“Did you want a glass?” he asked.

“This one’s fine. Why don’t you just pour yourself another?”

Not many people came into his home and told him what to do. They wouldn’t dare. Obviously Jessica Coleman dared.

He might have called a halt to it, but the sultry pitch of her voice, the seduction in those unique eyes, was rendering him stupid.

Determined to break the spell, he got down another crystal glass and poured brandy in it, putting distance between them in the process.

“Did you want me to show you to your room?”

She grinned. “Are you trying to tell me it’s past my bedtime?”

“Do you have to challenge everything I say?”

“Habit, I suppose.”

“Well, suppose you can break it?”

“A truce works two ways, you know.”

He wasn’t sure how a man could be annoyed and want to smile at the same time. Jessica Coleman just flat out confounded him.

“I’m game if you are,” he said.

“Are you sure you don’t want to give me a lift to the nearest hotel? I mean, practically tripping over each other like this will likely cramp both our styles.”

“It’s a big place. I doubt we’ll trip.”

“We’ll definitely be aware of each other, though. And I, at least, have a fairly active social life.”

“And what makes you think I don’t?”

She shrugged. “I guess it’s just hard to imagine. You’re stuffy, all business. You never knew how to enjoy what was offered.”

He saw the quickly masked distress in her eyes, knew she hadn’t meant to blurt those words, knew that she was referring to that long-ago kiss. He knew he’d hurt her, but until now, hadn’t realized the depth of that pain.

But damn it, she’d been jailbait back then, and he’d hated the pull of attraction he felt for the kid, fought it like crazy. All it had taken was a long look into those intriguing eyes filled with curiosity and mystery—yes, even at that young age, Jessica Coleman had exuded an innocent sensuality that promised bliss. She’d scared the hell out of him. And because of that, he’d mishandled her tender feelings, crushed her spirit.

But she was no longer a girl of thirteen, and the man in him had been goaded just about enough.

Obviously her crushed spirit had only been a temporary setback.