Indiscreet

Annabel shook her head. “I’ll find him, thank you.”

She walked back out into the frosty night air and around to the side of the stand-alone building that sat on a quiet street off of University Drive.

The second story of Three Mings was an exclusive gallery where local artists’ work was displayed, shown only on private tours and sold in silent auctions. A watercolorist himself, Devon also rented studio space to a few select clients.

After walking through the mazelike hallway of low ceilings and hardwood floors, off which narrow alcoves were lit strategically to enhance the work displayed, Annabel found her brother in a hushed discussion with an Indian artist whose specialty was exquisitely detailed henna body art.

Annabel stepped back to allow them the privacy to finish their conversation. Devon glanced up, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiled, and raised his hand to signal he’d only be a minute. Annabel turned to the wall behind her and took in the collection of photographs framed and grouped in a collage.

One photo in particular drew her attention, as always. The subject was costumed as a Japanese geisha, complete with shimada-mage hairstyle, white cream makeup and red lipstick she knew was infused with safflower extract.

The hair, she also knew, in this case was a wig, a katsura, but the makeup—from the application of the bintsuke-abura, the oil-wax combination allowing the white pigment to adhere, to the drawing of the thinly arched eyebrows in black and the added touch of red to brows and lids—had taken laborious hours to apply.

Annabel knew because it was her face, her eyes into which she was staring.

“That photo gets more attention than any other in the gallery, you know,” Devon said, having silently walked up behind her.

“Considering the subject matter, I should think so.”

“You really are wicked.” He nodded toward the imprint of a woman’s lips on the white canvas of Annabel’s creamed-and-powdered cheek. “And your eyes always give you away.”

She looked again at the photo, knowing it was the mischievous twinkle captured in her eyes as much as the kiss on her face that had garnered this particular photo so much attention. She had a session next week with Luc Beacon, the same photographer, and was anxious to discover who the client was and what they were looking for.

Right now she had more pressing matters on her mind, however, and turned her back on the display. “Devon, I’m in trouble.”

Her brother shook his head knowingly. “Man trouble, no doubt.”

“What makes you say that?” she asked, raising her chin ever so slightly. She knew her expression hadn’t given anything away; she’d purposefully kept her face calm.

Devon lifted one sharp brow over eyes blessed with dark paintbrush lashes. “Your legs are bare.”

She pointed the toe of one pump, glanced at her smooth ivory skin before rolling her eyes. “He hates my panty hose.”

Arms crossed over his chest, Devon rocked back on the heels of his Italian leather loafers and stared down from his two-inch height advantage. “I’m surprised you wear them. I’ve always taken you for the garters-and-stockings type.”

“Judging by your vast experience with women?” Annabel twisted her mouth.

Her brother shook his head. “Judging by the only thing I’ve ever seen hanging over your shower rod.”

Annabel blew out a huff of breath. “I had the flu. I don’t usually leave them out.”

“Annie, lighten up. I don’t give a damn if you leave stockings out year-round.” He narrowed his gaze, his jaw taut.

“Don’t call me Annie.”

His sigh was sibling patience personified as he slipped his hand beneath her arm and guided her through the hallway maze and into his office. Once inside, he waited until she’d settled on his black leather love seat before closing the door to join her.

He faced her, one arm along the seat’s padded back. “Look at you. Arms crossed. Legs crossed. Whoever your mystery lover is, he’s obviously chipping away at your walls of Jericho or you wouldn’t be on the defensive.”

She kept all her body parts crossed, but did stop swinging her foot. “I am not on the defensive. I’m simply irritated.”

“Because of a pair of panty hose?”

“No.” She was irritated because when it came to Patrick Coffey, she’d lost the disciplined control she’d spent a lifetime honing. “The caterer I hired for your New Year’s Eve showing lost her best cook to a competitor and isn’t sure she can manage her schedule without him.”

Devon continued to stare, lifting that one sharp brow the way he always did to signal he had a saint’s fortitude when it came to waiting out her moods.

“I would think that might concern you,” she finally said.

“I trust you implicitly.” His expression shifted, settled in a concerned frown. “But I am worried.”

She exhaled what she could of her tension. “Don’t be. I’ll handle it.”

“I’m not worried about the caterer. I’m worried about you.”

She glanced away, studied the vase of yellow calla lilies centered on a red-lacquered accent table and flanked by scrolls of painted tigers rendered in Sumi ink and color on silk. The austerity of Devon’s office usually fit her tack-sharp mood. Tonight, she simply bristled further.

“When you come to me and say you’re in big trouble, I worry.” Devon pushed up from the love seat and crossed the small room to lean on the corner of his matching black desk. The distance gave him the edge he needed; the position gave him the upper hand. “You haven’t been yourself for several weeks now.”

She waved off his concern with the flutter of one hand, wondering why she’d come here when she knew he wouldn’t let her hide from his probing questions or continue to deceive herself that she was equipped to handle Patrick Coffey.

Then again, maybe that was exactly the reason she had come, she mused ruefully, getting to her feet. She needed the wake-up call to tell her she was doing the right thing in sending him away. “I was dealing with the stress of finals. Of course I haven’t been myself.”

Devon shook his head. “I’ve seen you stressed from finals. This is different. In your words, big trouble.”

He was right, of course. How she’d even managed finals with Patrick disrupting her schedule, not to mention her concentration…Even now he was on her mind, and she just couldn’t have that. He was getting too close; she was letting him in. She was giving in, when she’d determined that he had to go.

Turning her back on her brother, she made her way from the love seat to the window, opening the miniblinds and peering into the darkness for the second time tonight, as if she’d find her answers outside of herself rather than within.

Her sigh of admission was heavier than she’d intended. “Yes. It’s a man.”

“Glad to hear it.”

She allowed herself a private smile. Her brother’s reaction was no surprise. Over the years, he’d made his feelings on her dearth of personal relationships clear.

When she’d joined gIRL-gEAR as a partner, the champagne he’d sent had been more a celebration of her allowing the fashion empire’s other women into her life than congratulations on the new position.

He didn’t approve of her reasons for keeping her distance, and used every possible opportunity to tell her so. But those reasons were what had brought her as far as she’d come in her life. She hadn’t survived their childhood as well-adjusted as Devon seemed to be. Or maybe he was simply pretending, as his own relationships never seemed to last, either.

He walked up beside her. “I was hoping that once you completed your degree, you’d be more amenable to settling down.”

She couldn’t hold back a full-fledged smile. “With a man, you mean?”

“Well, yes. I’m old-school. I admit it.”

“Don’t get your hopes up. At least not this time.” She sighed. “I told him it was over.”

“Hmm.”

“What’s with the ‘hmm’?”

“I’m just wondering if you told him before or after you lost your panty hose.”

“A lady never kisses and tells.” Not that there was anything to tell, since she and Patrick hadn’t taken time to kiss. “Besides, you should know better than to press me into a relationship. Last I heard, you were on the outs with that particular bliss. Are things okay now with you and Trina?”

Devon shrugged. “What can I say?”

“You can say the two of you are working on it.”

“I’m not sure there’s anything to work on.”

She shook her head in reprimand. “Don’t tell me that. I’ve never seen a couple more suited than the two of you.”

“Get real, Annie. What do you and I know about suitable couples? All we know is what happens when a couple doesn’t work. And right now, Trina and I do not work.”

Annabel didn’t have anything to say in response. Devon had made his point. And all she could wonder was if either of them would ever find a partner they could fall in love with as easily as they seemed to fall into bed.

2

STILL WEARING JEANS, a T-shirt and a bomber jacket, Patrick Coffey leaned a hip on the low railing that bordered Annabel’s balcony, a bottled malt beverage sweating in one hand. He liked Houston in December. Nice and breezy. The perfect weather for stargazing and drinking himself flat on his ass.

Annabel wouldn’t be expecting him, though arriving home to find him waiting wouldn’t come as a surprise. She didn’t approve of what she called his unorthodox behavior, trying to change him, fix him, turn him one way when he was headed another. At least she was finally coming to realize exactly what a pig’s ear he was, and that she wouldn’t be the proud owner of a silk purse anytime soon.

Leaning beyond the railing, which bit into his upper thighs, he glanced down, hovering over the edge, weaving from side to side until dizziness brought him back up. He lifted the bottle in a toast, celebrating his continued resistance to the temptation of taking a dive four stories to the ground below.

Another day, another…day.

And, oh yeah, another toast.

Earlier tonight in her office, after screwing the both of them mad, he’d walked out on her without saying a word, unable to respond to her statement about no longer being able to see him.

Hell, woman, he’d wanted to say. For once, just open your goddamn eyes.

But he hadn’t said anything. He’d needed to get his thoughts together before putting them into words. He hadn’t done a lot of talking the last few years, and what skills he’d once used to express himself had pretty much seized up.

Not a big loss, since he didn’t have much to say these days. Neither did he have anyone wanting to listen. Really listen. Though, he supposed with another fine toast, he could probably find a willing audience if he were to make up a few horror stories about his captivity and exaggerate the reality of what had been a hell of a lot of boredom.

He couldn’t help but wonder if the searchers would have made half the effort to find him had they known he hadn’t been strung up by his balls at all. Instead, he’d spent a whole lot of hours flat on his back, napping in the sun, an ankle shackled to the base of a huge palm. And, hey. He’d lost a good forty pounds.

Yeah, he doubted that scenario would’ve garnered a lot of sympathy. Thank goodness he’d had his brother to count on. Ray had refused to give him up for gone. Three long years, and he’d put everything he’d had into the search, exhausting his finances, putting his own life on hold, working to right a very bad wrong.

He’d been just as conscientious since Patrick’s return, making sure he had time and space to get his act together without the pressure of reporters and other inquiring minds butting in. Thing was, it was too much time and way too much space. Lately, they rarely spoke of anything more vital than football stats.

Oh, yeah. Rushing yardage and passing percentages were the things that made life worth living. Patrick considered his bottle, considered his brother. Hell. If nothing else, Ray’s inability to shed the guilt eating him up deserved the biggest toast of the night.

He hadn’t been responsible for the kidnapping, but nothing Patrick said made a dent in Ray’s hardheaded insistence that he should have been more vigilant in plotting their course, in choosing a captain with a better sense of the region’s criminal climate, in negotiating their freedom when the pirates boarded the schooner.

Patrick drained the bottle, reached for another, not feeling half the buzz he’d been aiming for when he’d grabbed the two six-packs on his way home from the gIRL-gEAR offices. Home. Now that was pretty damn funny, thinking of Annabel’s place as home when she didn’t even want him around.

As much as Ray sidestepped digging through the pit of Patrick’s psyche, Annabel didn’t even bother with a shovel, but plunged knee-deep through his crap. She expected him to be the man he was, the best he could be, no matter how many bamboo shoots he’d had shoved under his fingernails.

He smiled, a strange feeling he was still getting used to, remembering the night he’d bought her at the auction. Damned if that hadn’t been some kind of night. She’d wanted answers: Why had he bought her? Where did he get the money? What was he expecting in return?

He’d had no answers to give. He’d simply herded her into the narrow alley behind the bar, wrapped her up in his jacket and backed her barely dressed body into the cold brick wall. He’d been healthy and horny. She’d been sex on stiletto heels. He’d kissed her until neither one of them could breathe, and his cock sat up and begged.

No surprise there.

What he hadn’t seen coming at all, what had crept up from behind and slipped a shiv between his ribs, was her appeal above the neck. After their bodies were spent, the brain sex took over. And it was every bit as addictive as conventional intercourse.

She was older than he was, independent, smart as hell. She was ballsy and brash and driven. In a horribly Freudian sort of way, she reminded him of Soledad—the woman who had been the one and only reason he’d held on to his sanity during those years away. And that was enough reason to let Annabel kick him to the curb.

Having one woman’s blood on his hands was a sin for which he had a long time left to pay.

Thing was, it wasn’t easy lately for him to separate past from present, because Soledad’s death was the reason he couldn’t let Annabel blow him off. Call it a hunch. Call it intuition. Call it thirty-six months kept captive in the hot seat.

Patrick’s cushy homecoming was about to fall apart.

He didn’t have anything solid to back up his suspicions, didn’t have proof to take to his contact at the FBI, didn’t have anything more than his instincts to rely on.

But he knew. He knew.

Russell Dega, the pirate leader who’d escaped during the confusion of Patrick’s rescue, was here. The scum-sucking thief had come to close the one piece of business left unsettled between them: ending Patrick’s life.

And if that didn’t deserve another toast, he didn’t know what did.

He finished off his fourth drink and had just reached for his fifth from the open six-pack sitting on the balcony’s black-iron table when the whir of the loft’s private elevator signaled Annabel’s arrival. His gut clenched hard in response.

Using his knife, he pried off the bottle cap and tried not to choke on the memory of what they’d done earlier in her office.

The disk clattered against the patio as the converted freight car stopped on the fourth floor. As he listened, Annabel lifted the elevator’s rolling garagelike door, sliding it overhead on its tracks. He heard her unlock and slide back the accordion-style grate that opened into the dark room behind him. He lifted the beer, drank deeply, waited for the buzz that was way too long in coming.

Annabel was already stepping out onto the balcony and he’d yet to feel a thing.

“What are you doing here?”

He raised his drink. “Toasting my fine taste in women.”

She waited a moment, then reached for the last bottle in the six-pack and tilted it his way. He removed the cap and, as she drank, their gazes met, stinging him with a keenly sharp buzz that he sure as hell wasn’t getting from the alcohol.

He let the sizzle settle, watching her keep the table between them and move to sit in one of the balcony set’s matching chairs. She shivered lightly, he noticed, when the cold metal bit into the backs of her bare legs.

Served her right for wearing the panty hose.

She drank again before glancing in his direction a second time and getting back to business. “You know me well enough by now to understand that I mean what I say.”

“Yes, but here’s to all the things you don’t say.” He tilted his bottle toward her in, what? His tenth toast of the night? Bringing the lip of the glass to his mouth, he swallowed a quarter of the contents, feeling…nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing but the same determination, the same wariness that had brought him here earlier. He wouldn’t be leaving tonight until she was aware of…Hell. He wouldn’t be leaving tonight period. Her awareness of anything wasn’t a factor in the equation.

“What sort of things am I not saying?” she finally asked. “What do I need to say to make myself clear?”

“Give me a reason. Why can’t you, or won’t you, see me anymore?” He hated that his request came out sounding so candy-assed, but he was no good at conversation, and conversation was the only way to get from here to there.

“Having you here is inconvenient.”

He sputtered at that. “Inconvenient? I’d say I’ve been about as convenient as you’re ever going to get in a roommate.”

“I don’t want a roommate, and I’m not talking about the sex.”

She wouldn’t be. She never wanted to talk about the sex, simply engage.

Annabel was one of only two women he’d known who approached life—and sex—like a man. Then again, his experience with the opposite sex consisted of no more than a short list of adventurous coeds before graduation, and two older women intent on wearing him out since.

The thought brought him back to why he was here. Why he couldn’t go. Until he put his dealings with Russell Dega to bed, Patrick would be as big a part of Annabel’s scenery as downtown Houston’s skyline.

Leaving her alone would seem to be her best protection, but if Dega were indeed here, the bastard would’ve picked up on Annabel being Patrick’s Achilles’ heel. He couldn’t chance having her used as a pawn in a game that might end badly.

What little common sense he still listened to insisted that his purpose would be best served if she were the one to suggest he stick around. Which meant she needed him here for a reason that had nothing to do with what he gave her in bed.

He thought a moment while drinking. Then, fingers laced around the bottle, he leaned back against the railing and braced the glass against the top button of his fly. Giving a little shrug, he said, “Guess I’m just surprised you’d give up such a good thing.”

“And I’m surprised you didn’t hear me say I wasn’t going to talk about sex.”

He gave another shrug. “I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about food.”

She crossed one leg, shifted her weight to her hip as he pulled out the second chair and sat. He kept the table between them because he was no stranger to body language and hers was screaming at him to stay the hell away.

He could respect that. Didn’t mean he was going to abandon his plans to convince her she needed him around, though. Who’d’ve thunk Soledad’s obsession with teaching him to cook would’ve come so in handy?

He stretched out his legs and leaned back, playing the part of a man on his way to a full-blown drunk. In reality, his senses were sharply honed. He wasn’t only fighting for his survival—a badge of expertise he claimed proudly—he was fighting for hers. Knowledge he would dispense on a need-to-know basis.

“Who else would feed you grilled salmon with orange scallion salsa? Or puff pastry with shiitake mushrooms and Asiago cheese?” He sensed the smile she fought to hide. “Did I mention chocolate-raspberry pot pie?” He had her with the pie, but twisted the screw one more time. “How can you even think of giving up my cappuccino crème brûlée?”

Holding her bottle beneath her lips, she said, “You’re the only man I know who can talk to me like that and not have me question your sexual orientation.”

He tossed back his head and brayed. “And this from the same woman whose brother paints with watercolors.”

“Happily affianced brother, I’ll have you know.”

“Happily? This the same brother you said was on the outs with his woman not a week ago?”

Tentatively, she returned the bottle to the table, as if distracting him with the slow motion, because in the next second she brought the glass down with a cracking thud. Then she snapped, “I hate how you do that.”

“Do what?”

She growled and turned away, so that the light from the moon fell on her blue-black hair. The severely angled layers swung as she moved, the longest strands brushing her jaw.

The sharp razor cut was her first line of visible defense, a barbed-wire barrier keeping softness at bay. He wasn’t fooled for a second. “How I can tell when you’re not being honest? Or how I know when you’re hiding something?”

“Either. Both.” Her head whipped back, and he sensed her eyes narrow into stabbing pinpoints, felt them nail him to his chair.

He couldn’t help it. Aiming to get a buzz or not, he felt the first stirrings of arousal as his balls shifted between his legs.

She used the neck of the bottle as a pointer and aimed it in his direction. “I am not going to fall for your tricks, Patrick.”

“I’m not peddling any tricks over here.”

“Of course you are. You think in seven weeks I haven’t learned a thing or two about you?”

He forced himself not to stiffen; it didn’t make for a convincing drunk. “Keep it to those two and we’ll be doing okay.”

Her exasperation was obvious as, with a deep sigh, she flopped back into her chair. When she said nothing more, he felt the first pricks of worry. Pissing her off was no way to get back into her good graces. And so he let her stew.

She stewed, but not for long. Her chin came up as she said, “I cut you off without warning. I admit that was hardly fair.”

Her Annabel-ized apology only had him stiffening further. He waited for the “but” sure to follow—but nothing has changed, but you still have to go, but—

“But I have been thinking.”

More dangerous yet. “Oh?”

“Perhaps we can come up with an arrangement of sorts.” She held her bottle on the table, drumming her fingers along the label. “Temporary, of course.”

“I’m all ears.” Temporary would give him the time he needed to flush a certain nemesis from whatever shadows the bastard was using for cover. Yeah, temporary worked.

Although Patrick still couldn’t help but wonder if that was all Annabel assumed he was good for.

“Cut your hair.”

What the hell? “Cutting my hair is your deal?”

She shook her head. “Your comment. Being all ears. I just realized I only see them when you tie back your hair.”

“Is this about your Delilah complex?”

“You’re not exactly Sampson,” she said softly. “Your hair isn’t a source of strength. It might put off more people than you know.”

Now he was getting irritated. “What people? The ones who are supposed to be considering me for work?”

Not that there were many of those—and there wouldn’t be until he decided what he wanted to do with his life. He had money to live on for the moment, thanks to a combination of reward and bounty money, and it seemed a waste of time and energy to take a job for the sake of saying he had one. He’d learned a lot about priorities during the last few years, and doing for himself mattered a lot more than trying to please all of the people all of the time.

Annabel nodded. “Them. My neighbors. Little children on the street. Elderly ladies with heart conditions. Puppies—”