Rules of Engagement (10 page)

“Are you hurt?”

The voice was low and raspy, but it triggered something in Noelle’s still-recovering memory. Heart picking up pace once more, she peered up at the lean figure sitting rather rigidly on the backseat. She could make out the shape of the head in the gloomy interior of the moving cab. The shoulders were broad and the torso long. The line of the jaw was shadowed with stubble. Her eyes widened. “You.”

There was a dry, masculine chuckle followed by a groan and a muffled curse. “Yeah, me. How are you doing down there?”

“I’m in pain, but I’ll live.” It was the truth. She had banged her head before and suffered nothing more than a raging headache for a few hours. Such were the trials of playing pond hockey with four older—and much bigger—brothers.

“Can you get up?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered and began disentangling their legs. She was puzzled when he didn’t offer his help. Maybe he did only one good deed per night.

Noelle slowly released her breath when she was finally seated beside the man who had saved her earlier only to violently barrel into her from behind a few minutes ago. Pain creased her brow. She closed her eyes, needing the refuge of darkness.

“I thought I told you to go straight home,” he finally said quietly, turning to look at her.

“You did,” she confirmed without opening her eyes. “I didn’t listen.”

“Obviously.”

She made a noncommittal sound. “Where are you going?”

“Nowhere.”

Noelle’s lashes lifted and she caught the driver’s gaze in the rearview mirror. She had to give the man credit for taking it all in stride. It couldn’t be every night when he gets a woman shoved into his cab by a strange man on the run. Then again, what did she know? Maybe this was a common occurrence for him.

“Then why is the cab moving?”

“I told the driver to drive,” he explained, the words labored.

Noelle frowned. Was he hurt? She slowly turned her head to the right and glanced down. Her frown deepened.

“Is there a reason why you’re clutching your side like that?”

“Yes,” he gritted between clenched teeth, the pain almost successfully veiling the sarcasm in his voice.

Her brow puckered, but it wasn’t because of the ache in her head this time. “Oh.” Her eyes widened. Realization dawned. It was belated, but it did dawn. “Oh God! How bad is it?”

Her headache was forgotten as her hands felt all over his face. It was heated and coated with a sheen of cooling sweat. His stubble scratched her fingertips. Noelle’s exploration halted there as she savored the discreet tingle that shot through her fingertips straight to her tummy. She was a sick, sick woman to be turned on by a man bleeding all over the place.

And only hours ago, she’d believed herself in love with another man.

Noelle gingerly probed beneath her defenses. She should be hurt, torn up inside. Yet all she felt was more anger at herself for being so stupid than at Gil for cheating on her.

The rough voice pulled her back. “Not there.”

Noelle was glad of the darkness as warmth flooded her cheeks.

“Is it just your side?”

“Mainly.”

“Are you going to let me check it out?”

“Are you a nurse or a doctor or a paramedic?”

She drew back as if attacked by a kitten. Her lips thinned. “No, but I do know basic first aid. Or do you think sheer macho willpower will take care of your injury?”

A rough sound rumbled from his chest. “I’m sorry.” Very gingerly, very slowly, he moved his hands away from his left side and said, “Here.”

Carefully, Noelle scooted down so she could better examine the wound. She pulled the black T-shirt from his jeans and peeled it up. A blade had sliced through the leather jacket and the T-shirt and left a long cut that wasn’t as deep as she’d feared. But it wasn’t as shallow as she’d hoped.

“We should get you to a hospital. You need stitches.”

The only response she got was an indecipherable grunt. She assumed it was a sound of protest.

She sighed. “Shouldn’t I call the police?”

He growled a very decisive negative.

“What is this aversion you have to the police? Is it cops in general or just the NYPD?”

“No,” he repeated more firmly.

“Why not? Your tax dollars pay for their services.” A thought occurred to her. “Uh, you do pay taxes, right?”

He slanted a narrow glance at her. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry, but guests are not allowed in this area.”

He moved deeper into the office. “You sound a little hoarse,” he said, ignoring her statement, and held out a flute filled halfway with champagne. “Take this.”

Mercy automatically accepted the offering. “Thank you, Mr.—?”

“Edmond,” he said, a hint of an accent flavoring the name. It sounded French, which suited the name and his Gallic coloring.

“Thank you, Mr. Edmond.”

He shook his head but his hair barely moved. “Just Edmond.”

“Uh, okay.”

He lifted his own flute, tipping it toward her. Feeling a little awkward, she touched her flute to his, very aware of his eyes following her every movement. Not wanting to insult a man who’d forked over two hundred and fifty dollars for a ticket to the fundraiser and a potential donor, Mercy took a sip, just enough to coat her mouth and her esophagus.

And squeezed her eyes shut as her head swam and her hand faltered, tilting the flute dangerously. She really should’ve eaten something beyond the banana and carton of cherry yogurt at lunch.

A hand caught hers. She had the impression of icy coldness a heartbeat before warmth washed over her like rain. The champagne flute was rescued from her unsteady fingers. Despite the voluntary darkness, her head continued to bob like a bottle tossed in the sea. Her hand reached back and found the solid surface of her desk.

“Mercy?”

That compelling voice filled her head, dampening the waves. She exhaled, unaware she’d been holding her breath ’til that moment. A heavy, artificial scent filled her nostrils and she instinctively turned her head away. Satin brushed the naked skin of her legs, cool and slick. His cape. Fingertips skimmed the curve of her cheek, the line of her throat, the slope of her exposed shoulder. And she couldn’t protest, couldn’t stir herself from the lassitude that trapped her in its silken grip. Not even long enough to lift her lashes, let alone break away.

The exploration continued, soft and gentle and warm…and somehow familiar.

There was nothing to fear from him. That thought whispered through her mind like a tendril of smoke.

Mercy let herself drift, let the sensual pleasure of his touch lull her.

The hand holding hers drew it upward until her palm met a chest that felt like marble under the layer of cloth. Soft lips grazed her jaw line. He whispered her name again. From the jumbled, hazy mess of her thoughts, one question emerged.

“What are you?” she breathed.

Lips brushed her earlobe. “The man of your dreams.”

“Damn it, Ethan,” Nick Markov muttered, trying to steady his drunken partner and keep him from falling flat on his face and doing permanent damage to it. “Your wife’s going to have my ass for this.”

Ethan Murtagh’s scowl bordered on a pout more suited to a two-year-old. “I can walk on my own two feet,” he said, his words only slightly slurred. He stumbled, nearly taking them both down.

Nick grunted and muttered, “Right.”

It was several frustrating moments before Nick managed to strap his partner into the passenger seat of the black SUV parked in front of the bar. Ethan had been, once again, trying to drink himself into a stupor. He didn’t handle disagreements with his significant other well. The current dispute was over the photographer who had shot his wife’s swimsuit spread the previous week in the Bahamas.

“You’d better hope Torie’s asleep when I get you home,” Nick said, getting behind the wheel.

A disgruntled sound came from the sprawled figure beside him. Nick answered with a grunt of his own as he pulled out. At almost one in the morning on a Wednesday night, it was relatively quiet in the Sixties on the Upper East Side, so it was a few short minutes before he was turning onto Fifth Avenue. Deciding it wouldn’t take long to get Ethan upstairs and into his nineteenth-floor condo, Nick stopped the SUV in front of the building, killed the engine and flipped down his visor to display his credentials. He released his seat belt buckle, then reached over for his partner’s. Ethan mumbled a protest, swatted at Nick’s helping hand and fumbled with the door handle. Suppressing the urge to roll his eyes, Nick grabbed a fistful of his partner’s jacket.

“Stay put,” Nick said. “You open that door, you’ll land on your pretty face and Torie will never forgive me.”

Ethan fell back in his seat, head tilted back, eyes closed. Satisfied, Nick opened his door, got out and made his way to the passenger side door. Ethan didn’t move when he pulled the door open. Nick silently groaned at the possibility of having to carry his less-than-petite partner upstairs.

Before Nick could reach for his semiconscious partner, small pebbles pinged the roof of the SUV and bounced off his head and the sidewalk. Frowning, he skimmed a hand over his hair and his gaze across the roof of his vehicle. The pebbles glittered faintly under the mellow glow of the streetlight.

Not pebbles. Glass shards.

Nick glanced up—and froze, his gaze transfixed by the body above him.

With a faint sense of incredulity, Nick stared, breath trapped in his lungs, as the blurred line of stark paleness grew larger and sharper as gravity closed the distance between its victim and the sidewalk. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the white face seemingly directly above him. For timeless seconds, that was all he saw, but his mind filled in the rest with disturbing clarity. He saw the wide open mouth and the rounded eyes, filled with the horrifying knowledge of one’s own imminent death.

Nick was wrong about two things—the body wasn’t directly above him, and the ground wouldn’t stop its free fall.

It was directly above the SUV.

His own eyes widening at this realization, Nick fisted his hands in Ethan’s jacket, hauled his partner from the vehicle and jumped back, grunting when the edge of the door caught his shoulder. Ethan stumbled and both men went down hard as the body met metal.

The sickening thud was nearly drowned out by the explosive crunching of metal and shattering of glass as the SUV gave like an aluminum pie plate under the sudden force.

As the squeaky sound of the SUV’s shocks being tested beyond their limits mingled with the other sounds of destruction, Nick, his heart somewhere in the vicinity of his throat, found himself flat on the ground, face first, his head covered with his forearms. The damp, industrial scent of the sidewalk filled his nostrils as he took in the heavy, metallic clinking sounds as parts fell off the vehicle.

Nick opened his eyes, lifted his head and pushed to his feet. Without conscious thought, he withdrew his gun and turned around. He stood on the street, the worn handle of his Glock comfortable and familiar in his grip, and took in the remains of his SUV. The new hood ornament had slammed onto it with enough force to bend the front hood into an imperfect V, partially obscuring the body from Nick’s view. The windshield, torn from the top of its frame, was split in two down the middle. The jagged, incomplete halves—spider webs of shattered glass held together by the thin, inner layer of plastic laminate—disappeared inside the SUV’s dark interior.

Nick took a step closer, his mouth tightening as his gaze dropped. A stark face stared at him from the dashboard. Dark hair topped glassy, unseeing eyes, a bent nose and a mouth opened wide in a silent scream. Blood, thick and dark, seeped from the matted hair to pool on the leather. There was no need to check for a pulse.

“Jesus Christ.”

Ethan’s shocked whisper brought Nick’s attention around to him. His partner swayed for a moment, then slapped one hand against Nick’s shoulder to steady himself. Blood trickled down the left side of his forehead from a gash that disappeared into his hair. He was sobering up by the second as he stared at the body. Homicide detectives they might be, but they’ve never had a case fall on them literally.

Nick swiveled his gaze back to the front of his SUV and blinked, but the image before him didn’t waver.

The male body was a tangle of arms and legs bent at awkward angles nestled in the damaged hood of the SUV.

There was nothing that he could do.

Something heavy settled inside Nick, as it did every time he saw a body. Not bothering to shake off the feeling, he peered up the high-rise—and caught a flash of pale color on the top terrace.