Guardian Groom

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.

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