White Heat (2 page)

“Are you sure he isn’t dead?” she asked quietly, coming up behind him, tension in every lovely line of her body. Her tall, lush, sexy body. Her full breasts were outlined by the skimpy Cotton top. One side of the little pink satin bow holding up her pants was undone, The single loop sat just beneath the leaping dolphins. Sweet. Girly.
Hot.

Not only was the guy
not
dead, Max was pleased to note that Emily’s knee to his groin hadn’t killed any lustful thoughts he had. Christ—that tat on her smooth, creamy skin had given him some extremely uncomfortable nights over the last few months. Good to know his dick was still fully functional.

He doubted if Emily Greene had been holding open the window of opportunity for him for a year. Fine and dandy with him. Max didn’t do involvement. Ever. But she’d let him into her bed before. Perhaps—”Yeah, I’m positive he isn’t dead. Know him?”

He hauled the guy upright by his lapels. Cheap, dark suit. Brown shirt. Dark sneakers. Stunk of Gauloise cigarettes and gun oil. Max patted him down, relieving him of the Heckler & Koch tucked in an underarm holster. A USP Tactical, Max noted. Cost twice as much as the guy’s entire outfit,
plus
a thousand bucks.

A hired gun.

Put a whole different spin on the break-in.

Taking out the clip one-handed, Max slid the magazine and weapon along the floor behind him, out of reach. Then started searching his pockets. A knife in a leg holster. And a compact Smith & Wesson .357 in an ankle holster. The guy meant business.

What kind of business?

Max removed both weapons and stuck them on top of a nearby bookcase out of sight. Who the fuck
was
this guy? Not a tango. Not here. Not in Emily’s apartment at two in the morning in a quiet residential neighborhood of Florence. Didn’t make sense. But even though it wasn’t likely, he considered it for a moment. Considered and dismissed it. Nah. But since terrorists were his business, he tended to see tangos behind every shrub and dung heap.
“Of course I don’t know him.” Her eyes gleamed in the semidarkness. She was so beautiful she stole his breath. “He broke in just like you did.
Friends,”
she said pointedly, bending to pinch the gun in two fingers, “don’t climb up two stories to pay a social visit.”

She took several steps closer, eyes running over the guy, whose head was flopped to his chest. Max used the barrel of his Glock to jerk up his chin so she could have a better look. She’d done a nice job breaking the intruder’s nose, and she’d managed to get in several more strategic hits, as evidenced by the ugly bruise on one cheek and a knot above his left eye. Blood still ran sluggishly down the dude’s temple.

“Did he touch you?” Max asked coldly. She had no idea the man could go from slightly battered to dead in two seconds or less depending on her answer.

When she didn’t respond, he glanced over his shoulder in time to see her shaking her head. “Is that a no?”

She held the gun slightly away from her body like one would hold a dead rat. “He scared the bejesus out of me, but I saw him before he saw me.”

Good enough. She was scared, but rational. Max needed answers. “Are the police really on their way?”

Could complicate matters. Max had his own people to deal with garbage detail. Not that he’d expected to need them since he was technically on vacation. Technically.

She hesitated. “I didn’t have time to call them. I’d just come into the kitchen for a glass of milk when I heard him sneaking out of my bedroom—My God. I didn’t even hear him go right past the kitchen and
into
my bedroom. I just grabbed the heaviest pan I could, and hit him as he passed the door. The sound was—” She grimaced.

Horrific.
Max knew. He’d slammed heavy objects into any number of craniums. Had a few slammed into his own.

She glanced back at her victim. “What did he think I had that was worth stealing?”

It was rhetorical, but he answered anyway. “We’ll find out.” He continued searching the guy’s pockets as he talked. If the intruder was a burglar he’d been flattened before he could lift anything. Odd, since he’d gone from one end of Emily’s apartment to the other. “Anything missing?”

He was no expert, but Emily had some good stuff around. As he recalled she had antiques, objets d’art, and other presumably valuable bits and pieces cluttering every surface. The woman was not only untidy, he remembered, she was adorably absentminded.

“I don’t know. There’s nothing of any great value up here. The studio downstairs has better security. The insurance companies for the museums demand it.”

The H&K and frying pan clanged together as she switched the gun to free her other hand. She reached down and picked up the clip, turning it end over end as she talked. She had pretty hands, with long slender fingers and short nails. He remembered her hands weren’t quite as soft as they looked because of the paint and cleaners she used. But he’d loved the feel of them gliding over his skin, touching him, stroking him. God. He’d loved the feel of her hands.

And she always had paint on her, somewhere, that she’d missed when she cleaned up. This morning it was a smear of green on her elbow, and a smear in her hair. Five gradiated diamond studs sparkled and flashed in each ear as she moved. Those were new.

“I recently finished a copy of a very famous work, but no one except the client knew the original was h—What?”

“English, okay?” He switched from Italian, jerking his chin indicating the guy on the floor. Chances were he spoke English, but maybe he didn’t.

Emily switched easily to her native English as she continued. “But I shipped both pieces back to Denver three days ago. So there’s nothing of value downstairs right now, even if someone figured out
how
to break in. Do you want me to go down and check?” she offered. But she didn’t move.

It hadn’t occurred to him that she’d suggest going alone after what had just happened. Single woman. Could take care of herself. Except when an armed man broke in. Well hell. She’d even taken care of the intruder before he’d gotten there. “No. Go somewhere and lock the door till I’m done here.”

She looked over her shoulder, and Max followed her gaze. Other than the dim light streaming through the kitchen doorway, and the overhead hail light, the entire apartment behind her was dark. A visible shiver ran across her shoulders.

“What if he wasn’t alone?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

He figured that a second intruder would be long gone, but he wasn’t about to take any chances. “Maybe.” He reached back for the flex-cuffs he just happened to be carrying. “I’ll secure this one, and go take a 1—”

The guy exploded up off the floor. Emily screamed. More in warning than fright.

Max shot out his elbow, striking his opponent’s throat. The guy gagged, but came back with a punch to Max’s solar plexus.

The party was on.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” Emily said hoarsely, backing up.

“Go back in the kitchen, shut the door. Lock it if you can,” Max told her evenly as the man landed another solid blow, this time to his sternum. Pissed Max off, because he’d been thinking about Emily, not guarding himself sufficiently to deflect the blows. He threw a rear hand punch that knocked the bastard back a couple of steps, then pulled him in for a head butt. Both men cursed. It hurt like hell.

There wasn’t enough room for three of them in the narrow hallway, and Max was afraid Emily would try to “help” him with her frying pan. And get hurt for her trouble.

“Emily—” The other man telegraphed by his body movement that he was going to deliver a punch to the side of Max’s head. Max grabbed his arm high and low, and pulled him in for a knee to the belly. The man grunted, but came up swinging.

“I have his gun and this . . . thing.”

Great.
A weapon
and
the clip. “Put them
— separately –
somewhere out of the way.” He relaxed his muscles, and transferred his weight, rotating his hips and shoulders into the attack, then moved straight forward, forcing the guy to back up with a series of fast punches to the face and chest. His rapid retraction prevented the man from grabbing Max’s hand or arm, and kept him off balance.

Uppercut. Hook. Rear hand punch. Max kept them coming faster than the other man could deflect them.

“Kitchen,” Max shouted to Emily, as the intruder tried a horizontal elbow strike. “Close, but no cigar,” he told the other man in Italian, raising his right knee and driving hard, just above his opponent’s knee. The guy’s body sagged, and he grabbed onto Max’s shirt front.

Max stepped forward and left at a forty-five degree angle, moving into the outside of the other man’s body, then chopped up with both forearms, breaking the hold.

Damn it. He didn’t want Emily holding the gun, and he sure as it didn’t want his opponent to wrestle it from her. The guy charged in, attempting a hip throw. Max was ready. Shaking off the man’s hand on his right wrist, Max pulled him in close and off balance, then used a leg sweep to bring him to his knees.

He sensed that Emily was still with them in the hallway. With his forearm across his opponent’s throat, he yelled,
“Now.”

Emily darted back into the kitchen as the two men wrestled in the hallway. This was surreal. The big gun felt ridiculously heavy in her hand as she tried to decide what to do with it. She’d never held a gun before. She didn’t want to hold one now. Nothing good could come from her gripping the bloody thing, and she presumed Max was afraid if the guy got free he might take it from her by force and kill them both. Not a pleasant thought.

She wasn’t about to grapple with a guy twice her weight for a weapon she had no idea how to use.

She tossed the bullet holder thingie behind the refrigerator, then opened the odds-and-ends drawer, carefully laid the big black gun inside, and closed the drawer as if it might detonate with the slightest movement.

For a moment she stood there in the semidarkness of her herb-scented kitchen, bare toes curled on the cold tile floor. Favorite frying pan still clutched in a death grip in her left hand, she stared at the closed door.

The sounds coming from just outside were enough to make her consider shimmying through the narrow kitchen window and making a break for it down the folding fire escape ladder to the street below. She should get
la polizia.

The sickening crunch of a bone snapping made her hesitate. Hopefully it was the intruder’s bone. As annoyed as she was with Max, she still didn’t want to hear his bones splintering like kindling. Emily wiped her damp palm on her pajama bottom, switched the pan from one hand to the other, and wiped that hand as well.

Her gaze darted between the small window and the closed, not locked, door. She knew she could fit through the window. Not easily, but she’d done it on three occasions when she’d lost her keys.

Of course she hadn’t done it in the dark, or in the rain, any of those occasions. She hadn’t done it when she was scared for her life either.

God—She couldn’t leave Max alone with a motivated burglar. He could be killed.

Even reminding herself that Max had a gun didn’t make leaving
him
to deal with
her
problem acceptable. Damn her own moral code of responsibility. It was frequently inconvenient. Using a double- handed grip on the handle of the pan, she raised it above her head, and stepped back out into the hallway again. Ready to help Max if necessary.

Heart pounding and breathing as if she’d been running, even though she’d barely walked ten feet, Emily gripped the handle so hard her hands went numb. Crossing the threshold from kitchen to hallway, she was just in time to see that the man’s eyes were open. Not that he was looking at her. He was more focused on Max.

With good reason.

Max looked scary as hell. His strong jaw was unshaven, and the lights in the hallway threw his lean, hard features into shadow so that he looked not only enormous, but fierce and deadly. He had a gun in his left hand, pressed hard to the burglar’s bleeding temple. His right had the guy’s injured elbow high over the man’s head, completely earning the menacing grimace the guy was sending him. Max didn’t seem to notice, or care, as he warned the intruder not to move a muscle. In, Emily suddenly noticed, perfect Italian.

The Italian he’d claimed not to speak or understand just eleven months ago.

He was dressed all in black. But then so was the intruder. Which was the bad guy? They both looked dangerous and disreputable. Max’s dark hair was far too long and shaggy. He needed a haircut. And a shave.

All she’d gotten was a glimpse of his eyes in the kitchen, and the coldness in those hazel eyes had chilled her to the marrow. It was as though he were looking at a stranger. Which was damn unflattering, all things considered.

He hadn’t looked at her that way the last time they’d been eye-to-eye. Then the color of his eyes had been black-forest green. And hot. Smoldering hot. A sense of foreboding shuddered through her body and her fingers cramped on the frying pan.

Who was
this
Max Aries?

Two

MAX YANKED THE MAN TO HIS FEET. THE GUY BUCKED AND heaved, for all his bulk as supple as an eel. He almost managed to wriggle free. Max held on and braced a forearm against the man’s neck. “Oh, no you don’t. What do you want? What did you steal, asshole?”

“Mi lasci andare. Non ho preso niente!”
the man assured him hoarsely, gripping Max’s forearm with both hands, Emily presumed, to release some of the pressure threatening to collapse his airway. His face was turning red from lack of oxygen. Or anger. Probably both.

She spread her feet for better balance, tightening her grip on her weapon even though Max clearly had things under control. She didn’t recognize him. The man who’d charmed his way into her bed within hours of their first meeting had looked nothing like this steely-eyed giant with a gun.

He’d been amusing, sexy, interesting, and . . .
benign.
Just as she preferred. Just like Franco, who would be here later today to accompany her to the airport.