Snowed in with the Boss

Griffin had used some of the kindling to build a neat teepee, with crumpled paper in the center, and a trio of larger logs crossed in a tripod arching over the kindling. The setup, like the hip-check he’d used to open the door, looked practiced and professional, which didn’t fit with the image of the polished businessman she’d spent the past month assisting.

The Griffin Vaughn she worked for wore custom suits and monogrammed shirts, yet cared little for fashion. His entire focus was centered on VaughnTec. He was seeking to grow the company by shrinking their products even further while increasing the functionality of each unit. VaughnTec, which was part R & D, part mass market, combined cameras, computers, phones, music, video games and a host of other functionalities into small handheld units so simple that even the technologically challenged could figure them out within a few minutes. It was Griffin who’d moved the company in that direction when he’d taken it over from his uncle, Griffin who’d made it into the powerhouse it was today. He was ruthless without being cruel, cold without being unfriendly. But even when he was being his most cordial, she’d noticed, he maintained a thick barrier between him and the world, a reserve that she’d only seen soften when he was talking to his young son, Luke, on the phone.

Despite the pressures of Sophie’s job situation—i.e. that losing it was a real threat yet absolutely not an option—she had grown, if not comfortable with Griffin’s business persona, at least confident that she knew where she stood with him. He was polite but not terribly friendly, and had made it obvious that he considered her too young and green for the position. But at the same time, he’d been clear about his needs and wishes, and had given her ample room to perform the tasks Kathleen had laid out for her, which had mostly consisted of scheduling his travel and juggling calls, retrieving information and hunting up the occasional meal. All of those things were well within the skills she’d learned in the courses she’d taken for certification, and if she’d fumbled a few times when nerves had overcome training, he’d seemed to let those instances go. All in all, she’d found him a tough but fair employer. Yes, he was far too attractive for her peace of mind, but she thought she understood the Griffin Vaughn she’d been working for.

However, she didn’t know the Griffin Vaughn who was crouched down in front of the fireplace wearing a fisherman’s sweater and faded jeans, blowing a small ember into a flame, then feeding it strips of kindling until the fire flared up and lit the teepee he’d built so carefully. Logic and what she knew about her boss suggested that he should’ve looked like a man completely out of his natural element. Instead, he wore the borrowed clothes like they were old familiar friends, and he moved with neat economy as he built the fire up, coaxing it to accept the first of the logs. His towel-dried hair was engagingly rumpled, making him seem younger, though his face still gave away little of the man within.

Illumination from the flames danced across his forbidding features. The warm light was a welcome contrast to the dimness outside, where the world had gone to grayish-white and the day was fading hours earlier than it should have.

The fire drew Sophie forward, even as nerves warned her not to get too close to this new version of Griffin Vaughn. She stood beside him and stretched her hands out toward the fire, but felt little relief from the cold.

“It’ll need to warm the brickwork before much heat starts bouncing out into the room,” Griffin said.

“Were you an Eagle Scout or something?” she asked, unable to help herself, because too many things weren’t quite lining up between this Griffin and the one she thought she knew.

“Or something.” He rose, dusting the ash from his hands, and wound up standing very near her. Too near.

She could see the hints of hazel in his green eyes, saw them darken when tension snapped into the air between them. She was suddenly very aware of his height and strength, and the way the smell of wood smoke fit with the sight of him in jeans and a sweater—raw, masculine and elemental. And in that instant, she realized she’d been wrong about at least one thing: Griffin most definitely knew she was a woman. The knowledge was in his eyes, which were more alive than she’d ever seen them.

Heat flared suddenly, not from the fireplace, but within her. The warmth spread from her core to her extremities, which still tingled with the aftereffects of the freezing conditions, and the danger they’d survived together.

Maybe it was that danger that had her leaning into him, maybe it was the attraction she’d told herself to ignore all these weeks. Either way, she was suddenly very close to him, and he to her, their lips a breath apart.

A log shifted in the fireplace, sending sparks. The noise startled her, breaking through the sensual fog and slapping her with a shout from her subconscious. Danger!

Grabbing hold of herself, she took a big step back, away from the fireplace. Away from the man. As she did so, she was aware that he did the exact same thing, levering himself away. In that moment, she saw the shields drop back down over his expression, distancing him more surely than the floor space now separating them. Suddenly, he was no longer a regular guy starting a fire in the fireplace; he was a millionaire businessman who ate small companies for breakfast, and just happened to be wearing a sweater and jeans.

More important, he was her boss.

Heat rushed to Sophie’s cheeks and she berated herself for being stupid, for getting too close to the line with the man who had far too much control over her future, more than he even realized. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have—”

“I’m going out,” he interrupted, heading for the door, where he grabbed a pair of tired-looking boots and a heavy, bright-red waterproof parka, borrowing more of Erik’s clothing. “I want to look around a little and get the generators going. There are a bunch of outbuildings—barns, a guesthouse, that sort of thing. I want to make sure they’re as secure as they’re going to get before the main force of the storm hits. I’d appreciate it if you’d check the kitchen and see about some food. Do you still have your PDA in your coat?”

A unit of his own design, the PDAs combined a phone, computer and GPS functionalities into a single small unit.

Sophie nodded. “Yes, I do. But won’t it have shorted out?” They were seriously useful little machines, but still, they were machines.

“Sometimes the little buggers come back to life after they’ve gotten wet. Say, for instance, after a toddler tries to flush one of them.” His expression softened a hair at the tangential mention of his son, but his eyes stayed cool on hers, as though he was waiting to see what she would do next, how she would handle herself in the aftermath of the sensually charged moment they’d just shared.

She was going to ignore it, that was what she was going to do, Sophie decided on the spot. Just as he’d done.

Plastering a neutral expression on her face, she tried to drop herself back into the executive assistant’s role, even though it didn’t seem to fit quite right under the circumstances. She nodded. “Food and PDA. Got it. If I get the phone up and running, do you want me to call Sheriff Martinez and let him know what happened?”

Griffin glanced through a window, at the whiteout conditions outside. “Definitely. See if he can get someone out here to pick us up.” He lifted a shoulder. “It’s a long shot, but you never know. Maybe this is just a squall before the blizzard.”

A howl of wind hit the side of the mansion and rattled the windows in their frames, seeming to mock the idea. Somewhere else in the house there was a crashing noise, suggesting that Perry and his work crew hadn’t secured the construction zone sufficiently against the force of the incoming blizzard.

Griffin winced, but didn’t say anything, just jerked on the borrowed boots, shrugged into the coat and headed for the door.

He paused at the threshold and looked back at her. “I want you to lock the deadbolt after me, and keep it locked.”

He was gone before she could ask why that would be necessary, given that they were alone in the mansion. She flipped the bolt as ordered, but couldn’t help wondering who he was trying to guard her from. Himself? That didn’t make any sense.

She heard his footsteps recede, heard a distant door slam. Moments later, she caught a flash of his red parka as he headed, not around the generator shed, but rather straight across the parking circle and down the driveway.

He was going to look at the crash site, she realized, and the realization brought a shiver of fear as she clicked onto the one question she hadn’t yet asked herself about the situation—not how they were going to manage to wait out the storm, or what would happen if she and Griffin ended up face-to-face again and they weren’t smart enough to step away, but rather the all-important question they hadn’t had the time to ask before. Why had the bridge given out beneath them? Was it just bad luck?

Or had it been something more sinister?

Chapter Three

The wind was sharp as hell and Griffin’s core temp wasn’t all the way back to normal, but he kept moving down the driveway, his booted feet sliding in the rapidly deepening snow. The visibility wasn’t great, but he was certain he could make it down to the crash site and back up to the mansion before the conditions became impossible. Besides, the longer he waited, the less likely he was to find anything useful.

If, of course, there was anything to find.

Maybe it was just a flat-out coincidence that he and Sophie had been in the SUV that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. Maybe it was simply that their vehicle had finally overloaded the time-stressed cement bridge and brought it crashing down.

Thing was, he wasn’t a big believer in coincidence. That lesson had been hard learned in the service, and his years in the business world had only reinforced his conviction that everything happened for a reason, and that anything could be prevented from happening twice if he was smart enough, disciplined enough. Controlled enough.

At the thought of control, he flashed back to what had just happened in front of the fireplace, when he’d almost lost the self-discipline he prided himself on. He’d very nearly given in to temptation and kissed Sophie. What was more, she would’ve welcomed his kiss; he’d seen it in her eyes, felt it in the tension-laden air.

The attraction was there, had been there from the first moment she’d walked into his office. He’d managed to tamp it down to an awareness, and she’d hidden the fact, as well. Most of the time, anyway. But that moment in front of the fireplace had shattered their pretense of disinterest. And damned if that wasn’t going to complicate things, big time, not just over the next couple of days if they wound up snowed in together, but over the longer term, as well. He couldn’t afford to get tangled up with another woman who wanted to trade affection for a step up in life.

It wasn’t that he thought Sophie was playing him, either. His instincts said she was exactly what she seemed: a young, relatively inexperienced woman who was getting a late start in the workforce for whatever reason, and was earnest in her efforts to do a good job. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t set her sights higher if he gave her reason to think it was a possibility.

That wasn’t ego talking, either. It was just the way he’d learned the world worked. And if that felt faintly disloyal to the memory of his own childhood, it couldn’t be helped. His parents had met and fallen in love in a very different time, and they’d been lucky to find a perfect match in each other. He’d tried to find the same sort of match and failed. Worse, the last failure had hurt his son, as well. There was no way he was putting Luke—or himself—through another such ordeal.

They were fine on their own. There was nothing wrong with it being just the guys. In fact, the only thing wrong with the arrangement was the extensive traveling Griffin had to do for work, while Luke stayed behind in San Fran with Darryn. Then again, it was a huge relief knowing Luke was safe at home, especially given that Griffin didn’t yet know exactly what sort of a situation he was dealing with.

His musings had occupied him on the half-mile trek down to the bridge. Now, as he got within sight of the wrecked span, he once again replayed those last few moments before it had given way. He remembered a banging noise, like a backfire. Or maybe an explosion. But seriously, what were the chances someone had rigged the bridge? And why?

Unfortunately, he could make an all too plausible case for the “why.” When Sophie called to set up the meeting with Perry, she’d mentioned that she and Griffin were planning to tour the estate that afternoon, before the storm hit. What if the contractor was more than just shoddy or a little crooked? What if the delays were only the surface of the problem, and Perry was actually up to something even more devious, something that he couldn’t afford to let an outsider see? The theory might seem pretty farfetched, but the contractor had given Griffin some seriously negative vibes the last few times they’d spoken. At the time, Griffin had assumed Perry was spooked by his run of bad luck on the project, and rightfully fearing for his job.

Now, as Griffin worked his way out to the place where the bridge had collapsed, testing each step as he went, he wondered whether Perry had perhaps been afraid of something else entirely, like his employer finding out about dire doings up at Lonesome Lake. And if so, whether the contractor had decided to slow him down, or worse.

When Griffin reached the edge and looked down, he cursed, giving up any hope he might’ve had of recovering his and Sophie’s suitcases or computer bags. There was no sign of the SUV, save for a rough patch where it had broken through the ice, and even that was rapidly smoothing over to snowy sameness.

“Son of a bitch,” he grated, liking the situation even less than he had before. For the duration of the storm, it looked like he and Sophie were going to be down to borrowed clothes and a doused PDA.

And each other.

AS TIME PASSED and Griffin still didn’t return, Sophie kept herself moving because she figured it was better than working herself into a state of panic.

Deciding she’d give her boss another half hour before she went out looking for him, she turned to the tasks he’d given her: pulling together some food and rebooting her PDA. She started by making a survey of the supplies in Gemma’s pantry, and quickly realized they were in pretty good shape in the nonperishable food department. The shelves were crammed with canned goods, along with glass jars of pasta sauce and homemade preserves. There was plenty of dried pasta, along with pancake mix and coffee, and even powdered eggs and milk.

“Looks like you’re prepared to be snowed in for the entire winter,” Sophie said to the absent housekeeper. The thought wasn’t particularly cheering.

Deciding to keep it simple, in case the meal had to wait while she went out looking for Griffin, Sophie added tap water to a can of condensed tomato soup, and broke out a box of mac and cheese, knowing firsthand that it tasted fine made with powdered milk and no butter. Once she had the pasta cooking, she headed out into the main room, where a welcome sight greeted her, namely the telltale wink of an LED light from her PDA.

“Aha. A sign of life.” Relieved by the thought that they might not be completely cut off from the outside world, she crossed to the unit and pressed a few buttons, shutting down the handheld computer and then powering it back up to see if it would come fully online.

When it did, it showed her a half charge on the battery and a weak but tenable network signal. Crossing her fingers that the call would go through, she phoned Sheriff Martinez.

He answered on the second ring. “Ms. LaRue? Are you back in the city? That was quick.”

“Hi, Sheriff. And no, we’re not even close to being down off the mountain.” Sophie sketched out the situation, trying to give the facts as calmly as she could, even though it wasn’t easy to keep a tremor out of her voice as she described their plunge into Lonesome Lake and the harrowing trek up to the house.

There was a long pause after she finished, and then Martinez said, “Okay, here’s the problem we’re going to be facing. That snow out there? It’s the real deal. The blizzard got here faster than predicted and is likely to be here for a good long time. Two days, maybe three. More importantly, the road up to Lonesome Lake goes through a pass that’s impossible to keep clear during a storm. Which means you’re going to be stuck there until the blizzard blows itself out.”

She heard something else in his voice, and asked the same question Griffin had earlier. “What aren’t you telling me?”

There was another, longer pause. “Maybe Vaughn should call me when he gets back in.”

“We’ll have to conserve the battery on this phone,” she said, too aware that unless Griffin managed to rescue their chargers from the SUV, they were going to have to make her half-charged battery last. “So why don’t you just tell me whatever it is that you’d rather tell him?” Nerves had her edging toward irritation more quickly than she would have otherwise. “I am a fully functional grown-up, you know.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the sheriff said politely, “but you’re not a highly decorated marine TecSpec with some serious combat experience.”

Her breath whistled between her teeth at that. “Are you saying that Griffin is?”

“Yes, ma’am. It popped up on the background check we ran as part of the Del Gardo investigation. So the way I’m figuring it, if you had to be stranded up at Lonesome Lake for a few days, you picked a pretty useful guy to be stuck with.”

“I didn’t pick him,” she murmured automatically, but her brain was spinning.

Eagle Scout, indeed. He’d been a marine, had he? Well, that probably explained the skills he possessed that were decidedly non-MBA-approved, and the quiet reserve that sometimes seemed as much about survival as it did business. And yeah, under their current circumstances it helped her to know that he could deal with dangerous situations better than the average tycoon—if there was such a thing. But at the same time, the revelation put a serious shiver down the back of her neck.

She hadn’t known about his military service. What else didn’t she know about him?

A tap at the door to the apartment had her spinning with a gasp. She relaxed only slightly when Griffin’s voice said, “It’s me.”

“What’s wrong?” the sheriff asked quickly, still on the phone.

“Griffin’s back.” She unbolted the door and let him through, then held out the phone. “The sheriff wants to talk to you.”

He nodded and shucked out of his gloves and parka, and hung them near the door, where a mat was set out to catch the wet. When he reached for the phone, his fingers brushed against Sophie’s. Warmth kicked at the contact, but she forced herself not to jerk away, forced herself to act as though she hadn’t felt a thing.

From the way his green eyes darkened, though, he knew. And he’d felt it, too.

So much for there being a safe distance between them. She had a feeling the next few days were going to be very dangerous to her equilibrium. But she needed this job. She needed to be able to stay in San Fran near the facility where her mother was being treated now, and she needed to make a good enough salary to cover more than the bare minimum payments on her various loans. Which meant she couldn’t risk making the same mistake she’d made at her last job. What was more, she couldn’t risk Griffin knowing about that mistake. Kathleen had overlooked the rumors and hired Sophie anyway, but Sophie had a feeling Griffin wouldn’t be nearly so sanguine about it. The members of upper crust San Fran society tended to stick together.

After a moment, Griffin nodded, though neither of them had said anything. Then he took the phone, headed into the office and shut the door behind him.

Sophie stood for a moment, staring after him. Irritation rose. Granted, he was the boss, and he certainly had the right to take private calls in private. Hell, he’d have that right even if their roles were reversed. But what could possibly be private about a conversation with Sheriff Martinez? Whatever the sheriff was telling Griffin, it had to be related to the situation out at Lonesome Lake…and that most definitely involved her.

Setting her teeth, she marched toward the office. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do when she got there, but that didn’t matter because the door opened before she reached it, and Griffin stood there, filling the doorway with his face set in harsh, unyielding lines.

She halted an arm’s length away, tension coiling in her stomach. “What’s wrong?”

“Perry’s wife hasn’t spoken to him since right after you called to tell him we were coming to meet with him.” He paused, and held up his hand to show her a slender wire attached to a round, circular metal scrap, which he held pinched between his thumb and forefinger. “And I found this down by the bridge.”

She stared. “What is it?” she asked, even though on some level she already knew.

“A piece from a radio-controlled detonator. The bridge didn’t just give way. Somebody blew the damn thing out from underneath us.”

GRIFFIN WATCHED Sophie’s color drain and hoped she didn’t pass out on him. If she did, though, he’d deal with it, just as he was doing his best to deal with the situation that was developing around them.

After finding the detonator scraps and evidence of a blast pattern, he’d raced back to the mansion, hoping to hell he’d find Sophie intact, that the bomber hadn’t been waiting for them to split up before he made his move. But there was no sign of the bomber, no evidence of another move.

So what now? He didn’t know.

His first instinct had been to not tell her about the bomb, which was why he’d talked to the sheriff in private. That wasn’t because he was trying to keep her from worrying, either. It was more that he was used to keeping the most important pieces of information to himself. Whether in battle or in business, information was power. Besides, he was used to being alone, dealing with things alone, and didn’t see any need to share.

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