Into the Crossfire (19 page)

Mike's mouth and Sam launched himself. He hadn't even felt his feet as he jumped

Mike, throwing him so hard against the wall his head bounced. It wasn't planned

or premeditated. He just found himself trying to punch Mike through the wall by

his arm across Mike's throat. Dimly, he was aware of Mike turning red, his hard

punches that had no effect, Harry's shouting, Harry pulling at his arm...

The noises grew louder, finally penetrating the wild static in his head. Bits

of him were coming back. He started feeling Mike's punches, Harry's hold.

They wouldn't have made any difference except for the fact that a little

sense was seeping back into his head together with the voices, and he realized that

he was doing his damnedest to throttle his own brother.

He dropped his arm, stepped back.

"Hey man," Mike wheezed, voice raw. He bent forward, hands on his

knees, drawing in breaths in loud whoops.

"Sam..." Harry growled. Harry shook him once, then released him. All three

of them had spent their childhoods gauging men on a rampage. Harry instinctively

knew the storm had passed and that a little bit of sense had come back into Sam's

head.

Jesus.

Sam's hands were shaking. What the fuck was he doing? This was Mike,

his brother. And he'd wanted to kill him.

Except no one talked about Nicole that way, as if she were just some casual

fuck. Particularly not Mike, who had women tripping into and out of his bed

nightly. Mike was a "love 'em and leave 'em" kind of guy. So was Sam, except for

now.

When he'd been loved and left.

Sam and Mike stared at each other, both breathing heavily. Mike owed Sam

an apology. And Sam owed him one. Sort of.

Who was going to go first? Their gazes were unwavering, stances hostile.

Two old bull moose on a tear. Damned if Sam would be the first to break.

The aroma of good whiskey filled the room.

"The hell with this," Harry said, thrusting shot glasses of whiskey into their

hands. "Back off, both of you, and drink up. Maybe alcohol will knock some sense

into your hot heads."

Mike had relaxed his stance, got his breath back. "But it's ten o'clock in the

morning," he observed. Mike was a carouser, but he had his standards. No alcohol

till after midday, he always said.

"It's afternoon in New York," Harry said, and Mike nodded, curling his

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hand around the heavy crystal glass.

Sam blew a breath out. Another. Looked with disgust at Harry holding the

bottle, pouring so fast the whiskey gurgled. "Go easy, man. That stuff costs two

hundred bucks a bottle."

"Yeah?" Harry perked up. "Then I'll take the bottle home with me. It's

wasted on you two."

They stood, knocking back the whiskey with satisfied sighs, the tension

lowering as the level of liquid dropped in the bottle.

Silence. Mike and Harry looked at Sam. There was no censure in their gaze,

no recrimination, which was awful, of course, because Sam had acted like an ass.

And he'd attacked his brother. They should be ganging up on him, chewing his ass

off. But they weren't. They just stood there, silently, two strong men saying

nothing at all, letting Sam stew a little.

Sam loosened his shoulders, drew in a quick breath. It had to be done.

"Sorry," he muttered to Mike. "I was way out of line."

Mike dipped his head, eyes fixed on Sam's face. "She means something to

you."

Well, duh. Of course Nicole meant something to him, though he'd bite his

tongue before he said it out loud. Sam didn't want to say anything because saying

it out loud somehow...nailed it down. Made it real and raw and scary. Articulating

what were batshit crazy feelings he barely understood himself.

"Well, let's just say I don't want her beaten up by the fuckheads across the

street."

That shut Mike up. Harry too. They'd both seen lots of brutality toward

women in their lives. They knew what a beaten-up woman looked like. No one

wanted to see a black-and-blue Nicole, with swollen eyes and broken bones.

"Yeah." Harry's jaw muscles worked. Sam knew he was thinking of his

mother and sister, lost to violence. He turned to Mike. "Do what you need to do to

keep her safe."

Mike nodded curtly. "I'll stop by a couple of times. Make sure they see me.

Make sure they know who they'd be messing with."

Goddamn US law enforcement, that's who.

Mike put the glass down. "So. Any messages you want me to give her?

Anything I should say from you?"

Answer your phone, goddammit. Don't shut me out. Talk to me. I want to

see you again tonight, and the night after that and the night after that. I haven't

even begun to get you out of my system.

Sam's jaw clamped shut on the words. His throat was tight and dry. He

couldn't have spoken if he wanted to.

He shook his head and Mike left. With an odd glance at Sam's face, Harry

left, too. Without saying anything, or over-analyzing the situation, which was a

miracle.

He was alone. Alone in his big, expensive office that he'd worked so hard

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for. Alone with at least three urgent reports and requests for ten quotes for new

business. Alone with his fucking thoughts.

He was behind in everything. He should be diving into work and instead

here he was, playing with his dick.

He winced.

Do not think of your dick.

Too late.

It rose, urgently, as if he hadn't fucked his brains out last night.

Oh Jesus, just the memory of her was enough to set him off. That face,

under his, moving slightly up and down on the bed in time with his thrusts. Those

huge cobalt eyes gazing into his. He'd never seen eyes that color before, a blue so

intense it glowed.

Nicole Pearce was, hands down, the most beautiful woman he'd ever

fucked. The most beautiful woman he'd ever even seen. But there had been

something else in the bed with them. Some kind of...connection, however crazy

that sounded. There'd been intensity, yes, of a kind he'd never experienced before.

But there had been other things, too. Things he had no word for, really, because

they were new. But if you put a gun to his head and forced him to find a word, one

might be affection.

Though that was crazy, because they had spent the night fucking like

bunnies.

However much they'd fucked, though, it wasn't enough. It wasn't even in

the same ballpark as being enough.

He missed her, fiercely. Missed her smell, fresh and clean at first.

Afterward, she'd smelled of sex, of course. But somehow, her juices and his mixed

together smelled good, real good. He missed her smile, her intelligence. She got

him, got everything he said. There hadn't been even one of those awkward

moments Sam often experienced on first dates where the woman had no clue what

he was talking about. He'd always put them down to those man-woman differences

all the books went on and on about.

His Y chromosome made him say things the woman's two X's didn't equip

her to get. And oh man, vice versa. Sam couldn't count the times he'd listened,

baffled, as the date du jour went on and on about things he barely understood and

couldn't care less about.

Nothing like that with Nicole. Even blasted by lust over dinner, Sam found

what Nicole had to say interesting. She'd understood Lebanon, a country he loved.

Her caring so intensely for her father made perfect sense to him.

In bed, it was as if she had been tailor-made for him, moving lithely to his

rhythms. Not one awkward moment, just sex so intense he thought he'd pass out at

times and yet fun at the same time and...his mind skittered away from any further

definition of the feelings he had.

This was way too much introspection for him. Bottom line--he missed her,

he wanted her, he wasn't in any way ready to let her go.

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If he'd done something, he would apologize.

If she was reticent, he'd convince her.

Giving her up wasn't an option, not even close.

He picked up the phone and called her home number again.

"You've reached the Pearce household..."

Nicole sat in the tiny pantry off the kitchen that had been converted into a

home office. She stared at the words on-screen, listening to the phone ring. Again.

The housekeeper had strict instructions to let the answering machine pick up.

From the suspicious look thrown Nicole's way, Manuela clearly thought it was

someone Nicole owed money to. Not that there weren't plenty of those.

The answering machine clicked, went through its little spiel about them not

being home then clicked again. Nicole, a deep voice said. Pick up-She switched the whole thing off then pulled the plug from the wall. Sam

had graduated from the tentative messages at the beginning of the morning, with

lots of pleases, to a peremptory tone.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow she'd go into the office, ring his bell and talk to him,

adult to adult. Not today. Oh God, no, she couldn't face him today. Not on no sleep

and after the most intense sexual experience of her life, which had left her so

shaken and off-balance.

Just listening to his deep voice leaving messages had made her stomach

muscles clench, her thighs quiver. And worse.

Nicole had shared a dorm room once with a funny, smart girl from Seattle

who had a crazy, wild sex life. She cut a swathe through the university, basically

going to bed with everyone with the right plumbing. When a man particularly

attracted her, she'd whisper to Nicole, "Whoa, that guy makes me cream."

Nicole hadn't really understood until now. Now she knew exactly what

Sharon had been talking about.

Listening to Sam's voice loosened a wave of moisture in her sex that was

embarrassing. As if her body were preparing itself for him to walk through her

door and fling her on the couch. Just from listening to the man leave a damned

message on her answering machine!

She stared at her screen, incomprehensible words swimming in front of her.

A report of the board of directors' meeting of a Luxembourg bank. Something she

could do with her eyes closed, though not, apparently, while blasted by leftover

lust from the night before.

She blew out an impatient breath. The report was due tomorrow and she

was only halfway through it. They were paying her very good money, more than

the market rate. If she wanted the bank as a customer, she had to deliver that

translation by tomorrow.

She forced herself to sit up straight, concentrate. She reread the paragraph

for the millionth time and finally started typing, forcing herself to focus on the

translation and not on Sam Reston.

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"Darling?" The quavering voice cut through Nicole's attention. She sighed

and rose from her workstation.

"Coming, Pops," she called. This was one of the reasons she couldn't work

from home. He called her a thousand times a day. Though there was a housekeeper

on call and though a registered nurse stopped by twice a day, if Nicole was

around, Nicholas Pearce wanted his daughter.

Nicole knew why. Manuela was an excellent cook, kept the house gleaming

and wore a perpetual smile, but she didn't know how to handle her father. Once,

she'd insisted on helping him get up and he'd fallen to the floor.

The nurse who stopped by twice a day was super-efficient but had never

cracked a smile in her life. Certainly never in Nicole's presence.

Nicole had learned how to physically care for her father. She never let him

fall, she knew exactly which muscles were sore and how to massage them, she

could dress him smoothly and quickly. She also took care to smile, to be upbeat,

no matter how hard it was.

The downside of that was that when she was home, Nicholas wanted her,

and only her, by his side. Nicole understood completely. If she could have

afforded to, she would have dedicated herself exclusively to her father in the last

waning months of his life.

Unfortunately, she couldn't afford to do that. The oncologist had mentioned

a brand-new, incredibly expensive treatment that wouldn't cure but could possibly

halt the progression of the disease. Nicole had enrolled her father in the

experimental protocol and was waiting for him to be called up.

The new drug cost almost $1,500 a month and the protocol called for a

three-month cycle.

Wordsmith was doing well, even in the downturn. She was gaining new

customers by the week. She was growing, earning more each month. But the

expenses went up each month, too, in a horrible spiral.

Her father was in his wheelchair in the living room, a big book open on his

lap. His head lifted when he saw her and he smiled. "Ah, darling, there you are.

The light seems to have dimmed, could you open the curtains a little more?"

Her step and her smile faltered. There was plenty of light in the room.

The doctors had told her that Nicholas Pearce's brain was "peppered" with

tumors, bilaterally. Too many to count. And one was pressing down on an optic

nerve. At times his eyesight dimmed, sometimes dramatically. It terrorized him.

Nicole opened the drapes wide and switched on a floor lamp, angling the

light over his lap, hand on his shoulder so he'd feel her touch.