Читать книгу Guardian Groom - Сандра Мартон, Sandra Marton - Страница 8

GRANT generally liked Mondays. They put a clean start to the week ahead, but somehow this one already had the feel of disaster.

Why wouldn’t it? he thought, glaring at himself in the bathroom mirror as he shaved. He was about to meet the child who had become his unwanted responsibility, like it or not.

What had seemed a minor inconvenience last week in Denver was looking more and more like a catastrophe waiting to happen. A little judicious checking of guardianship laws suggested that he’d have to do more than sign checks. He might have to offer advice. Even guidance.

Grant’s mouth thinned as he rinsed off his razor. What he knew about children could fit in a pea pod with room left over. And he didn’t know a damned thing about Crista Adams.

He had phoned Simon Adams’s attorney right away but Horace Blackburn was out of the country, his holiday guarded with almost religious fervor by an iron-willed secretary who’d agreed to set up this meeting on her boss’s first day back only after Grant’s growing exasperation had become evident.

But she’d steadfastly refused to release the Adams file so that he could, at least, familiarize himself with the simple details of his ward’s life.

Grant splashed some cologne on his face and strode from the bathroom. Was the child living in her uncle’s house with a governess or was she away at boarding school? Was she a snot-nosed brat or a wellbehaved young lady? Had she been traumatized by the loss of her uncle?

Did she expect her new guardian to take her uncle’s place?

Jaw set, Grant undid the towel knotted at his hips and tossed it aside. The child would simply have to realize that her entire situation had changed, and if she couldn’t cope with that change, she’d be in for a rough ride.

At eight-thirty, just as he was about to leave, the telephone rang. It was his driver, calling to tell him that his car had a flat.

“No problem,” Grant said. “I can grab a taxi.”

But it had started to rain. Finding a cab was impossible at rush hour on a rainy Monday. With a muttered curse, Grant gave it up and sprinted for the nearest subway station.

The platform was crowded and he paced its length with growing irritation. When a train finally came shrieking into the station, the crowd surged forward as if it were the last train anyone would ever see. Grant set his jaw and shouldered his way inside.

By the time he emerged on Wall Street, his mood had gone from bad to grim. Finding that he had at least another three blocks to go in the rain without an umbrella did not improve it.

“Dammit,” he snarled to no one in particular. He turned up the collar of his jacket, ducked his head against the rain, and hurried down the street.

Crista was walking as fast as she could toward the building that housed Blackburn, Blackburn, and Katz but it wasn’t easy when the ridiculously high heels on her boots kept slipping on the slick pavement.

She sighed, thinking how much better she’d feel if she were wearing her own clothes to this meeting. But the meeting was at nine, and she had to be back in the Village to start work by eleven. There wasn’t any choice, except to wear this silly getup under her raincoat.

The letter from her uncle’s attorney had arrived by registered mail on Saturday.

Dear Miss Adams,

Your presence is required at this office Monday morning promptly at nine regarding the provisions of your late uncle’s will.

It was signed by Horace Blackburn, LL.B., J.D.

Crista had frowned. What was this about provisions in Uncle Simon’s will? There wouldn’t be anything in the will that concerned her. Simon had made that clear when she’d moved out of his home.

“You will not get one penny from me, young woman,” he’d said shrilly, wagging a bony finger in her direction. “I’m going to cut you off without a cent!”

“I never wanted anything from you, Uncle,” she’d responded—nothing he’d wanted to give her, at any rate.

So what could the estimable Horace Blackburn, LL.B., J.D., be talking about? Did some kind of legal mumbo jumbo require him to inform her that Simon had written her out of his will?

Well, she’d thought as she dialed Blackburn’s office, he could just tell her that over the phone.

A recorded voice had informed her that the offices were closed until Monday morning at nine.

Crista had grimaced. She’d just have to wait until then to make the call…

Maybe it was impulsiveness. Maybe it was stubborn pride and the determination not to be intimidated by anyone, traits that had always infuriated her uncle. But sometime between Saturday afternoon and Sunday evening, she’d changed her mind.

Crista had decided to keep the appointment.

She’d met Horace Blackburn once when Simon had consulted him about transferring her from one boarding school to another. A prissy man with the same icy bearing as his client, Blackburn’s disapproval of her had been written all over his face.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to smile sweetly at him and tell him where to get off after he’d read the words he undoubtedly hoped would bring tears to her eyes?

The more she’d thought about it, the more she’d looked forward to the chance.

But reality wasn’t measuring up to the fantasy, Crista thought glumly as she turned down Canal Street. Things had gone wrong from the minute she’d awakened this morning. She’d slept through the first jangling call of her alarm clock, and then the gray cat had managed to get himself stuck behind the refrigerator. By the time she’d finally dashed from the apartment, Crista had been running late.

The bus had pulled out just as she’d reached the stop, and neither frantic shouting or jumping up and down had slowed it down or brought it back. So she’d caught the crosstown instead, intending to transfer to a downtown bus at Broadway, but somehow she’d miscalculated.

Now she was walking the last four long blocks in the rain, wondering why on earth she’d ever thought a face-to-face confrontation with Horace Blackburn would be a good idea.

She hunched deeper into the collar of her raincoat. The wind was picking up now, driving the rain before it. Her hair would be as tangled as a bird’s nest by the time she reached Blackburn’s office, and whatever rain-defeating abilities her thin coat once had were long gone. She didn’t even want to think about what the dampness seeping through it might be doing to her already snug T-shirt.

Crista sighed as she stepped off the curb. She’d have been better off sticking to Plan A, she thought as she hurried across the intersection. She could have phoned Blackburn this morning and told him, in her best lockjawed, boarding-school accent, that she didn’t give a fig for whatever it was he had to tell her, that he could either make his little speech over the phone or he could—

“Look out!”

The warning came too late. Crista’s head came up just as the man barreled into her. Her right foot, already up on the curb, slid out from under her. She gave an outraged cry, windmilled her arms in a desperate attempt to keep her boots from bidding a fast farewell to the pavement, and went stumbling backward into the street just as a truck, horn blaring, came racing into the intersection.

The man’s arms swept around her. “I’ve got you,” he said, swinging Crista off her feet and onto the pavement as the truck thundered past, drenching them both in a spray of water.

They stood looking at each other in shocked silence and then Crista let out a long, shaky breath.

“Ohmygod,” she whispered as she clung to the hard, broad shoulders of her rescuer.

“Oh my God?” Her rescuer’s voice was deep and harsh and very angry. “Oh my God? Is that all you can say after you almost killed us both?”

Crista blinked. His face, as harsh and as angry as his voice, was inches from hers; his eyes—some strange combination of blue and brown and green—were cold with fury.

“Me?” she said. Her head lifted. “Me?” she repeated, her voice shooting up the scale in indignation. “I almost killed us both?” She glared back at him, shoved her drenched hair back from her eyes, and twisted free of his grasp. “You ran into me, remember?”

“Where are you from, lady? Didn’t anybody tell you that you’re supposed to watch where you’re going in the big city?”

“I was watching where I was going,” Crista said in her best New York fashion. “You were the one who was tearing along like a linebacker for the Jets.”

The man’s eyes grew flinty. “Thank you for the apology. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get by.”

“That makes two of us,” Crista said, her tone as nasty as his.

She stepped to her right. The man stepped to his left. They glared at each other, then made the same moves in reverse. He shook his head, muttered something, then made a mock-chivalrous sweeping gesture with his arm.

“Ladies first,” he said, his tone heavy with sarcasm.

Crista sniffed. “Try keeping that in mind. It might save another woman from almost getting knocked down.”

It was, she thought, a fair exit line—but as she started past him, her right ankle buckled. With a cry of alarm, she stumbled—and was caught in the man’s arms again.

“What now?” he demanded.

Crista’s brows drew together. “I don’t know,” she said. “I was fine until I put weight on my foot. But when I did, it just—”

“Hell, I get it.” She gasped as his hands dug into her forearms. “What comes next? An ambulance ride to the nearest emergency room, where you suddenly develop an incurable headache and back pains?”

“What are you talking about? I never said—”

“I warn you, you’re wasting your time trying a scam like this on me. I’m an attorney, and—”

“An attorney!” Crista twisted away from him and slapped her hands on her hips. “Of course,” she said, her lip curling, “I might have known.”

“Spoils your little scheme, doesn’t it?” Grant smiled tightly. “Trust me, madam. There’s nothing you can try that I haven’t seen before.”

No, he thought, with a catch of his breath, no, he had not seen a face like hers before.

Her eyes were enormous, the color of violets. Her mouth was rosy and heart-shaped, centered between a small, slender nose and a feminine, yet determined, chin. Clusters of tiny silver bells swayed from a pair of delicate ears that were framed by a silky tumble of ebony hair in which raindrops glistened like tiny jewels.

For a man who had seen everything, Grant was suddenly speechless.

“What’s the matter?”

Grant blinked. She was eyeing him narrowly, her face tilted at a questioning angle. The anger was still there but something else was there, too. Wariness? Suspicion?

He sighed. Hell, she was right to look at him like that. Only a nut—or a man in a very bad moodwould go off the deep end the way he had.

She’d run into him, or he’d run into her—who could tell? And what did it matter? The one indisputable fact was that their collision had been forceful. For all he knew, she damned well might have twisted her ankle when she fell back off the curb.

“Nothing’s the matter,” he said. “Look, I’m sorry I’ve been so—”

“Unpleasant?” That determined chin shot forward. “Hostile? How about just plain nasty?”

He tried a polite smile. “I was just heading into that building,” he said, and nodded toward an entryway on his right. “Why don’t we step inside the lobby? You can get off that foot and I’ll check to see if—”

Her hand drove into his belly, hard enough to make the breath shoot from his lungs.

“That’s the most pathetic come-on I’ve ever heard,” she snarled. “Next you’re going to ask me to come up to your office so you can examine me on your couch.”

“Don’t be a fool. I simply meant—”

“Oh, I know exactly what you meant.” Crista’s chin lifted. “First you knock me down, then you accuse me of faking an injury, and now you’re trying to—to—”

“Listen, lady—”

“I’m on my way to a meeting with my attorney this very minute. I swear, I’ll tell him to sue you for—for—”

“The charge is stupidity, lady. First degree stupidity,” Grant said coldly. “Go on, limp your way to wherever it is you’re going. And good luck to the next poor chump you run into.”

“The same to you,” Crista said, and flounced past him.

She didn’t get very far. This time, she didn’t so much stumble as drop to her knees.

“Oh,” she said in surprise.

“Give me a break,” Grant said wearily, stooped, and swung her up into his arms.

“Hey,” she said, “what are you doing?”

Being a glutton for punishment, Grant thought as he carried her toward the building where Horace Blackburn’s office was located. Hell, he thought grimly, at least he was getting closer to that damned meeting.

“You put me down!”

She was beating her fists against his shoulder, but Grant ignored her. At some later point, he thought with bemused detachment, he’d probably laugh at all this, especially at how a woman who felt so soft and smelled so good could land such solid, uncompromising punches.

Right now, all he could hope was that none of the passersby tossing amused smiles in his direction was Horace Blackburn.

Grant shouldered open the lobby door and made for a marble planter that held a scrawny rubber tree trying to survive. With a grunt, he dumped his burden unceremoniously on the planter’s edge.

“No couch,” he said briskly as he knelt down before her. “But then, you can’t have everything in this life, can you?”

“Let me alone,” she snapped as he reached for her foot.

“I’m checking to see what you’ve done to yourself.”

“What I’ve done? You’ve got to be kidding! You ran me over, you called me a swindler, you—you kidnapped me—”

“I told you,” he said pleasantly as he grasped her ankle. “Sue me. But first you’re going to have to take this boot off.”

“Not on your life! Dammit, I didn’t ask you to—” The furious words ground to a halt. “What’s so funny?”

“You won’t need an ambulance or an orthopedist.” Grant looked up at her, his lips twitching. “What you will need is a shoe repair shop.”

Crista frowned as she leaned forward. “What?”

“It’s your heel. It broke when you—when we—collided. That’s why you had trouble keeping your balance.”

Crista shut her eyes as the man began to chuckle. But she couldn’t blame him. What a fool she’d made of herself, starting the minute they’d bumped into each other and going straight through to that performance she’d put on as he carried her inside this lobby.

She was in a terrible mood, angry at herself and the world, but he had no way of knowing that. He was just a stranger and she’d let it all out on him.

She took a deep breath. “Look,” she said, and opened her eyes…

The apology died on her lips. He was still holding her foot, but he wasn’t smiling any longer. Instead, he was taking a slow, steady inventory, that topaz gaze of his sweeping up the length of her inch by inch.

Crista knew, with awful certainty, what he was seeing. The T-shirt. The ridiculous leather skirt. The stupid boots…

Those incredible boots, Grant thought. They were the sexiest things he’d ever seen. And that skirt—it was leather, like the boots, and it barely came to midthigh. Above it, a wide belt cinched an impossibly slender waist and above that…

Oh yes. Above that, her breasts rose in exquisite fullness, rounded and high and encased in a pale pink cotton shirt that had been dampened by the rain. He could see the outline of her nipples so clearly defined that the need to reach out and touch them, to stroke them until they hardened in need, was almost overpowering.

“Well?” Her voice was low pitched, controlled, and very cold. “Have you had a good look, little boy?” She pulled her foot free of his hand and, with a lurch, got to her feet. “Then run home to Mama and I’ll be on my way.”

Grant rose, too. Her eyes had gone from violet to plum. She was angry at him again, which was laughable—almost as laughable as her pretended outrage when she’d thought he was coming on to her a few minutes ago.

Why would a woman dress this way unless that was exactly what she wanted from every man she met?

“Of course,” he said silkily. “I wouldn’t want to keep you. An appointment with your—ah—your attorney, isn’t that what you said?”

Crista drew her raincoat around her. “You go to hell,” she said. With as much dignity as she could manage, considering the broken boot heel, she turned and walked toward the door.

Damn him, she thought, trying not to tremble. And damn herself even more for letting him do that to her. It was a long time since she’d cared how men looked at her in this awful outfit.

But this man, the arrogant bastard, had more than wanted her. He had judged her. Not that she was surprised. Even soaked to the skin, he wore his money and his breeding like a badge of office. People who didn’t meet his hard-hearted standards, who didn’t measure up to some rigid set of rules of his own making, were beneath his contempt.

He didn’t even believe her story about having a meeting to attend. Well, for all she knew, she didn’t. She was so late now that…

Crista stopped as the directory on the wall caught her eye. Blackburn, Blackburn, and Katz were located in this building, on the twentieth floor.

She spun around. There were two elevators, and the doors of both were just shutting. The man might be in either one.

So what?

“Hey,” she yelled, “wait!”

The doors jerked, stopped, then slid open. Crista hurried into the car. There were two occupants. A middle-aged woman with a briefcase—and him.

Crista shot him a cold look, then turned and folded her arms across her breasts. The elevator climbed slowly. At the third floor, the doors opened. The woman with the briefcase stepped out, and the doors closed again.

Crista counted silently as the car moved upward again. At the sixth floor, it stopped. She turned and glared at the man, who was leaning back against the wall, his feet crossed at the ankles.

“Sorry,” he said with a contemptuous smile. “I’m not getting out yet—but feel free to choose any floor you like.”

Crista’s jaw tightened. “Don’t I wish I could!”

“Following me is pointless. I don’t know what you want, but—”

“Don’t flatter yourself, mister! I have as much right to be here as you do. I have—”

“An appointment. Sure.”

Crista heard the disdain in his words. She told herself it didn’t matter, that the opinion of this stranger meant less than nothing to her—but she was already swinging toward him.

“Has anybody ever told you what an absolutely vile human being you are?”

His eyes narrowed. “Listen, lady. You’ve pushed your luck about as far as it goes. If I were you—”

“You are the most—the most arrogant, insolent, coldhearted, unfeeling son of a bitch—”

She cried out as he grabbed her and drew her to him. Her hand flew toward the control panel but he slammed his fist against it first.

The car shuddered to a halt.

“Hell,” he growled, “I’ve taken just about enough from you!”

Deep inside, Grant could hear a cold, rational voice warning him that he was going over the edge—but he wasn’t listening. No woman who looked like this should blame a man for looking at her, for wanting her—for needing to silence her in the most primitive way.

Grant gave up the battle and plunged into a time when men fought saber-toothed tigers.

He pulled her into his arms, ignoring the beat of her fists against his chest, his mouth dropping to hers in a kiss that demanded not just repentance but submission.

Crista offered neither. When he lifted his head, she spat a name into his face that the voice inside him assured him he more than deserved.

Let her go, Grant told himself. Dammit, man, let her go.

But the darkness reached for him again.

His hands fisted in her hair and his mouth descended toward hers. Again, he kissed her, branding her with his anger. Again, she fought back.

Grant went still. What in hell was he doing? He was not a man who took without giving. He was not a man who wanted without being wanted in return. And, God, that was what he needed from this woman. He needed her to want him, to part her lips for his kiss, to reach out to hold him and turn to fire in his arms.

Slowly, he bent his head, brushed his mouth against hers in soft, gentle strokes. His hands shifted, his fingers threading into the spill of her hair so that her head was tilted back and she was captive to his kiss. He kissed her again and again, each kiss tender and sweet, until he felt the tension and the fear leaving her body, until he felt it being replaced by something else.

She made a little sound, one the tiny bells of her earrings seemed to echo. Grant felt her body soften, felt the sudden heat of her, and he whispered words of reassurance against her mouth.

Crista swayed forward. Her lips parted; she whimpered as his mouth slanted over hers, hungry now, and demanding. Slowly, she rose toward him, she lifted herself to him…

The car lurched to life and Grant and Crista fell away from each other. In the silence, Grant could hear nothing but the rasp of his own breathing, the dull droning of the elevator’s motor, and then the sound of the car stopping and the doors opening.