To the Limit (8 page)

When the elevator finally hit the ground floor, she stepped inside and punched 19 on the polished chrome panel. She'd thought she was over the disappointment of having to resign from the Secret Service, too. So much for what she'd thought. Seeing McClain had not only resurrected her anger and humiliation over what he'd done to her; it had also gotten all tangled up with her anger and frustration over whoever was running around with stun guns and bombs and in the man who had ultimately cost her her Secret Service career: Jeremy Clayborne.

A bigger person might have been able to forget about past transgressions. But, like her brothers always said, she was like an elephant. She didn't forget. Anything.

"And you don't forgive," Nolan had once accused her. "Just see where that's going to get you."

A lot he knew,
she thought grumpily as the elevator passed the tenth floor. Just because her two semiserious relationships—one her senior year in college, the other her first year in the Service—had ended in near bloodlettings didn't mean she didn't forgive. She was passionate, that was all. Passionate and particular.

Specifically, she was very
particular
about the men in her life adhering to the same philosophies as she did. Like monogamy. Yeah. She'd been real particular about that. Just her good luck that the men she ended up getting involved with in her personal life always turned out to be triple-A's. Like McClain.

Life lesson: there are no good guys out there for her— either that, or she was destined to draw the bad boys who couldn't or wouldn't commit. Either way, she'd finally wised up. She wasn't going there again. Sure, she dated, but as soon as a guy started making noises that smacked of exclusivity, she was gone—saved her the pain of his letting her down later. Besides, long-term was a myth. And love—if there truly was such a thing—was overrated in the bliss department but deserved its reputation for pain. She'd concentrate on her career, thank you very much, and leave that rocky ground to those with a higher pain tolerance than hers.

When the elevator doors opened with a space age
whoosh,
she grounded herself back in the present, stepped out onto the intricately designed marble in the nineteenth floor's outer lobby—and walked directly into McClain.

"Whoa." He steadied her with the firm grip of his hands on her upper arms. "We've got to quit meeting like this."

He was all flashing brown eyes and five o'clock shadow— even at nine in the morning. He met her gaze with a cocksure grin as she tipped her head back to look up at him. She hated being short. Really, really hated it. Hated it more that she felt a slight stirring of an old memory when it registered that he still wore the same musky male scent she remembered from high school.

"But hey, at least you aren't holding a cannon on me this time," he added with a look that made her realize she'd been staring.

She took her anger at herself out on him. "That can be arranged. What are you doing here?"

He dropped his hands and the corners of his eyes crinkled; his tanned cheeks dimpled. "And here I was hoping a good night's sleep would cure that bad case of the crankies. Any more random bombings I need to know about?"

Eve smoothed a hand over her hair and headed for Edwards's office door, refusing to let McClain rile her. "Tell me you were just leaving."

"Sorry. Just got here. Now I'm serious. You had any more run-ins with the bad guys?"

"Only you," she said, and headed for the reception area.

"Wait. Wait just a sec."

She stopped, expelled an impatient breath. And went rigid when he reached out and hooked a strand of her hair with his pinkie. Their gazes locked and for the longest moment held. His eyes were mocha brown, warm, and just a little bit sleepy.

Bedroom eyes, she'd always thought. Sexy eyes that appeared to see more than they should.

With a gentle caress and a slow, intimate smile he drew the hair back and away from her face. Let his hand linger at the shell of her ear, let his fingers brush against her cheek as he finally pulled away. "There. All neat and tidy for the big showdown."

It took a moment, maybe two, for her to remember that she had no time for this man. Another to stall a shudder the heat of his touch had elicited.

She drew herself up to her whole five foot two—stretched to five-five in her open-toed bone pumps. "What makes you think this is going to be a showdown?"

He lifted a shoulder, a lazy, limber motion on a six-foot frame that was all lean muscle and corded sinew. "Did a little checking on you,
Agent
Garrett. You've got guts showing up in the lion's den, I'll give you that."

She felt her spine stiffen. So. He'd done some digging. Found out she'd been with the Secret Service. The lion's den reference also suggested that he must have discovered her history with Clayborne, which most likely meant that he knew she'd been assigned protection detail for Tiffany and that Clayborne had ultimately called for her dismissal from the Secret Service because of the abduction attempt. The information couldn't have been that hard to find. Eve could still see the headline:
Fatalities In Abduction Attempt Foiled By Secret Service Agent.

She'd never forget that day. The would-be abductors had almost gotten to Tiffany. Would have if Eve hadn't killed them. Her first kills. Her only kills. Yeah. She'd gotten the bad guys. Too late, however, to save Clayborne's chauffeur and Jack Small, a good, solid agent. Both had died that bloody day.

"Hello?"

She blinked herself back—away from the hail of gunfire, Tiffany's screams, the bodies and the blood—and realized McClain was watching her with both concern and compassion.

"What?" she snapped, not wanting either from him.

"It must have been tough," he said softly.

Yeah. It had been tough. She wasn't about to admit it to him.

"You OK?" he asked softly.

She drew in a bracing breath. "Right as rain."

"Yeah. I can see that."

When she didn't rise to the bait, he shook his head. "I'm surprised Edwards agreed to see you."

She mustered up a tight smile. "Life's just one big surprise."

She could see the moment when he decided things had gotten too heavy. The look in his eyes shifted from somber to smart-ass in one long blink. "Don't I know it. Came as a huge surprise when Edwards summoned me out of bed at," he checked his watch, a dollar-sized silver disk strapped on his well-defined left wrist with black leather, "eight thirty in the morning."

Eight thirty? He'd only been up for half an hour? No wonder he looked like he just crawled out from under a rock. Or a woman. He was wearing worn flip-flops, baggy, wrinkled tan cargo shorts, and an oversize tropical print shirt that looked like he'd dug it out of a clothes dryer—or a pile of dirty laundry. Her money was on the dirty laundry. As for his hair, it may be in style, but the look he was wearing was pure, real "bedhead," as opposed to the results of a session in front of a mirror with a bottle of hair gel.

And he was still one of the most devastatingly attractive men she'd ever seen. Damn him.

She averted her gaze to Edwards's office door. "If he needs you to run interference, he must consider me quite the threat."

"Or quite the nuisance," McClain suggested.

Yeah. There was that. She rapped on the door. And waited, feeling McClain's dark eyes watching her. Entertained. Amused.

He was still grinning when the door swung open. A tall, svelte brunette wearing a navy blue suit and a professionally distant air greeted them.

The woman's hair was styled in a sleek no-nonsense cut, and if there was any warm blood running through her veins, Eve got the impression there couldn't have been more than an ounce. A chill radiated from the brunette that made Eve shiver.

There was professional distance and then there was barely veiled contempt. Eve's money was on contempt.

The woman offered McClain a tight smile. "Good morning, Mr. McClain." Clear, cool gray eyes met Eve's with an icy stare. "And you must be Ms. Garrett."

"Eve." Eve extended her hand.

"Of course. I'm Jazelle Taylor, Mr. Edwards's executive assistant."

Jazelle's handshake, Eve noticed, was as reserved as her manner. And she'd been right about the blood. A dead fish was warmer.

To her credit, however, whatever opinion Jazelle, the EA, formed in a brief but assessing once-over, she didn't so much as let a hint of emotion flicker in her eyes. Of course, one had to assume she
had
any emotion.

"Please, come in," Jazelle said, stepping aside. "Mr. Edwards is expecting you."

With a phone to his ear, Edwards sat behind a black lacquered desk roughly the size of Miami. He lifted his hand, motioning Eve to sit in a plush black leather chair, then held up a finger indicating he'd be with her in one minute. McClain sat in her chair's twin beside her.

While Edwards finished up his call, Eve took in Jeremy Clayborne's inner sanctum. The office on the nineteenth floor was a study in chrome and glass elegance and priceless artwork. To the west, through floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows, was the most amazing view of Lake Worth. To the east, the Atlantic, all raw power and white swells, crashed against the eroding Palm Beach sand.

And directly in front of her was a man who, by virtue of speaking as Jeremy Clayborne's mouthpiece, wielded more power than the heads of many small foreign countries. If she'd passed him on the street, however, she'd never have taken a second look—unless it was to shake her head over his comb-over.

It was a little hard to get past. Harder still to figure. Jeremy Clayborne's right-hand man—Jeremy, the new millennium's answer to Howard-trust-no-one-Hughes Clayborne—was most likely wearing a five-thousand-dollar Armani suit and five-hundred-dollar imported Italian loafers, but wouldn't spring for a decent hairpiece. Or plugs, for God's sake. This was West Palm Beach, Florida. Cosmetic enhancement capital of the world. Edwards had to be one of the highest-paid flunkies on earth, yet there he sat, a testament to wealth and power with a flipping bird's nest on his head.

"I apologize for that," Edwards said, disconnecting and rising to refill a cup of coffee from a small, sleek kitchen area toward the back of the office. In his wake, the scent of some spicy, pricey cologne mingled with the sterile air produced by a state-of-the-art air-conditioning system.

"It's all right. You're a busy man."

Edwards gave her a pointed look as he returned to his desk. Eve had to concede that with the exception of that ridiculous hair he wasn't a bad-looking man. He was about five-ten, a little on the stocky side, but in good shape. He had decent skin, pleasant features, and nice hazel eyes.

In all fairness, it was quite possible that if she worked for a wing nut like Clayborne—a man who had in the past three years morphed into an anal, distrustful, agoraphobic recluse— she supposed she might develop a few unusual peccadilloes of her own. Like a comb-over.

"Let's make this short and to the point, shall we?" Edwards said in a clipped, no-nonsense cadence. "I have no idea why you requested an audience, Ms. Garrett, but the very fact that you did raises all my antennae."

"I'm concerned about Tiffany," Eve put in before he could completely roll over her. "I was hoping—"

"Let's get something clear," Edwards interrupted coldly, part corporate gunslinger, part authority on everything in the world. "Tiffany is no concern of yours. Which brings me to the reason I granted this meeting. I want to make it clear to you, Ms. Garrett, that whatever feelings of attachment you have to Ms. Clayborne are misplaced and unappreciated. Mr. Clayborne could not have made that any more clear after the debacle in which you and you alone were responsible for placing Tiffany in harm's way."

"Mr. Edwards, I underst—"

"Ms. Garrett," he interrupted again with a hard look, "let me restate. You are here for one reason and one reason only. I wish to remind you in person that you are to stay away from Tiffany. You are not to contact her, not to call her, not to concern yourself with her in any way, shape, or form. If you do so, you will find a law enforcement officer at your door with a no-contact order."

Not to mention that Tiffany would pay a price, too. Eve had received a phone call from Edwards three months ago warning her that if she didn't keep out of Tiffany's life, the consequences were that Tiffany would be the one who would be punished.

Eve had thought then that the punishment would most likely be in the form of putting a lid on Tiffany's spending. Perhaps Clayborne would even disown her. For Tiffany's sake, Eve had backed away. The only problem was, Tiffany had seen it as yet one more person cutting her out of her life. She'd accused. She'd cried. And in the end, she'd told Eve she never wanted to see her again. Childish, yes. But she'd been hurting.