As Mac sped up, the car with the skewed headlight disappeared behind them. Hands gripping the wheel, gaze continually darting to the rearview mirror, he eventually slowed down. Sure enough, the wacky headlight came into view within minutes, coming on fast, then slowing and blending in with the other traffic.
His mind raced.
Grace made a sound in her sleep. He glanced at her in time to see her hands flutter in her lap. She said, “No,” softly but urgently, like a wounded, frightened child, and his heart twisted in his chest.
Her next, “No,” was louder and more violent and her hand batted at a dreamscape foe. He spared a hand from the wheel to shake her shoulder and murmur her name.
She awoke with startled eyes that stared right through him. He saw recognition flood her gaze and then a wan smile. “You okay?” he asked.
“I was dreaming,” she said.
He glanced back again and mumbled, “A nice helpful dream maybe, with names and addresses?”
“Sorry, nothing concrete.” Smothering a yawn, she asked, “Where are we?”
“Just outside Macon, Georgia.”
He could feel her staring at him. Did she sense his uneasiness? He was trying his best to mask it, still unsure if the car six or seven vehicles back was connected to them or not.
Finally, she said, “Mac, you have to be bushed.”
“Another three or four hours—”
“No. You haven’t eaten since breakfast. We’ll get up early and make up the time in the morning. It’s dark in here, but damn, you look like hell. Stop at the next exit and get a motel. You know I’m right.”
His mind whirled. What he knew was that a car with a weird headlight had been behind them for hundreds of miles. He also knew the car that had trailed him in Billington had crashed into a newspaper machine on the driver’s side. Not a serious accident, but enough to whack a headlight out of alignment.
Was this their tail? He blinked a few times, cursing the fatigue that pulled on him like gravity. What had it been, forty-eight hours since he’d slept? He felt dull-witted and stupid.
“What is it?” she asked.
Get off the road, his inner voice demanded. You can’t fight when you’re this tired. You can’t plot a nice little trap when you can’t think. You can’t protect Grace.
Hell, maybe that car back there is a station wagon full of vacationers.
“Mac?”
“You’re right,” he said. He slowed down and watched as the car with the bad light passed him. Late-model, dark, impossible to see the occupants in the poor light. He waited until the car was far ahead before he took one of three possible exits, speeding up, turning, then turning again. He’d seen signs advertising a roadside inn with underground parking, and now he told Grace what to look for as he studied the mirror.
“Up ahead, on the right,” she finally said as he almost turned the wrong way down a one-way street.
Soon they were deep inside the ground, parked in the darkest recess. Minutes later, he registered them as Mr. and Mrs. Weston, using a fake ID he carried for just such a purpose. He noticed with relief that the place had a lounge and a restaurant, which meant they could order up dinner.
Soon after that, they were inside their room.
What now? He could think of nothing to do but wait. He made a few calls on his cell phone, one to check that his aunt and the Coopers were okay and another to Lou to see if anything had broken on Jake’s murder case. He idly asked about missing persons as well. Both calls had the same result. Everything was fine, nothing new to report.
After that, he stared at the plush bed, torn with conflicting emotions about how he’d like to put it to use. Part of him wanted to crawl between the sheets and black out. A bigger part longed to coax Grace in with him and do everything in the world but sleep.
The trick would be to do neither, at least not for a few hours, until he was sure they were safe.
“You look like a caged tiger,” Grace said from a chair in the corner.
He tried smiling.
“Want to tell me what all that fancy driving was about or shall I take a guess? You saw something—”
“I don’t know what I saw,” he said honestly, rubbing the back of his neck, weary to his bones. “I’m a careful kind of man, Grace. Not a risk taker.”
“I don’t believe you,” she stated frankly.
“Well, it’s true. Risks are for fools. I’m a dull, ordinary guy who just wants to safely escort a client home. That’s why you hired me, right?”
“Technically, your aunt hired you,” she said.
“Not exactly,” he said. “I didn’t accept her money.”
“What do you mean? I thought you were going to let her finance this venture? I was going to pay her back.”
God, she looked good sitting in the chair, even with her body kind of pitched forward, weight on the balls of her feet like she might make a run for it if he turned his back. She looked alert and healthier than he’d so far seen, her bright aura the total opposite of his burned-out fatigue. Of course, she was a decade younger and she’d slept most of the day away.
“I’m betting that anyone who can afford a five-hundred dollar bra can afford my fees. I’ll keep the receipts and when this is all over, I’ll bill you, okay? Meanwhile, I don’t want to be my aunt’s employee, I want to be yours. Do you understand?”
She thought for a second and nodded.
“Good. By the way, Aunt Bea’s doctor sent your blood work off to the lab. They should have an answer tomorrow. I’m going to take a shower. Why don’t you order us some dinner from room service? I’d like a straight bourbon and a medium-rare steak. No potato, extra vegetables. And Grace, don’t open the door to anyone, okay, no matter what? Promise me?”
“Why?” she snapped, eyes sparkling with curiosity.
“You are the most hard headed—”
She waved him away with her hand, which he took to be as close to a promise as he could expect. Of course, if he told her about the car with the headlight, she’d no doubt dutifully cower in the corner, but damn, he hated taking that bit of fire out of her eyes. It looked good in there. Way too good to extinguish with a string of maybes.
Grabbing his duffel bag, he closed the bathroom door behind him. He heard Grace pick up the phone and order their dinner.
THE SHOWER revived him a bit, as did a shave and a change of clothes. It was the first time he’d really seen his face in days. The shiner Grace had given him the night before went a long way toward explaining why the check-in clerk had seemed fidgety.
He was tying his shoe when he heard a knock on the outside door. He pushed the bathroom door open, glanced at Grace with a stay-put look in his eyes and retrieved his gun, which he then tucked in the waistband of his jeans. It felt cold against the small of his back.
He looked through the peephole and found a gangly youth with a food cart. If this was their tail, he’d either started his life of crime at a tender age or affected a very ingenious disguise.
Mac opened the door slowly.
The kid was tall and awkward, still in his teens, Mac guessed, though technically, a kid that age shouldn’t be delivering liquor. Mac felt kind of bad for even entertaining the thought this youngster could be dangerous, so after he settled their bill with cash, he tipped the kid twice as much as he should have, which earned him an enthusiastic shake of the hand.
“You didn’t order yourself any dinner,” Mac said as he lifted the lid off the single plate and found his steak. No vegetables. Giant potato. They never got it right. He covered it again and picked up the drink.
“I’m not hungry,” Grace said from her chair where she flipped through the television channel guide without looking at the pages. “I’m too nervous to eat.”
He put the gun on the dresser and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Come here,” he said as he took the first sip of his drink and felt it spread a warm glow inside his body. With a lift of the glass, he offered to share it with Grace. She hadn’t ordered herself anything to drink, either, but she shook her head and stayed in the chair.
“Please, Grace, come here,” he repeated, patting the spread beside him.
Setting aside the magazine, she rose gracefully, still wearing Jessica’s slacks and sweater, though the clothes were going to be way too warm for Miami.
The thought ran through his head that Jessica had never looked this good in either piece of clothing. She’d been a pretty woman, but she hadn’t moved like Grace.
Grace stood over him for a second and he bent his head back to look up at her. The light in the room came from a single lamp and it cast her face in shadows. Setting aside the drink, he took one of her hands. Maybe he should come clean with her. He said, “Grace, sit down, please.”
She sat beside him, bringing her face into full light, so close her features commanded all his attention. Big blue eyes, small nose, full lips. Short black hair. Rounded cheeks flushed like peonies.
Hell, he wasn’t even sure what a peony looked like….
She barely touched his bruised cheekbone. Her touch was casual but for some reason he couldn’t explain, electrifying. Galvanizing. Why that one touch should send a shudder right into his groin was one of nature’s little tricks, he mused, played out every second of every day by the good people on the planet Earth as they looked at and touched one another in subtle ways that changed their corners of the world forever.
Damn, he was turning into a philosopher after one lousy sip of bourbon!
He caught her hand. His lips grazed her fingers.
“What are you doing, Mac?” she whispered, her full attention on his mouth, not his eyes, as though she couldn’t tear her gaze away from his lips. He found her concentrated focus to be incredibly sexy. It drove what little rational thought he still possessed straight out of his mind.
“Nothing,” he said, his voice husky, desire spreading through his body.
She seemed as mesmerized as he was by the way their fingers twined of their own accord. Their gaze met again. She whispered, “Then why does it feel as though you’re doing something?”
No answer to that. It was part of the mystery. He didn’t know what to do with her or with himself. He only knew what he wanted to do.
She further blindsided him by slowly leaning closer until her lips touched his. She pulled away at once as though his mouth had shocked her. He supposed it was her own boldness that surprised her. It sure as hell surprised him.
But that one chaste kiss was the spark that started the fire. He put a hand behind her head and pulled her to him again, and after the briefest of moments, she came with a sigh that quaked her slender body. When their mouths touched this time, there was no pulling back.
At first, it was like the first bite of food after years of starvation. Greedy, consuming, no moment for thought or even breathing. All moisture and warmth and tongues sliding against each other. At first, it was all sensuality and nothing more.
And then passion kicked in, that craving that surpassed hunger, unstoppable, insatiable. They fell back against the bedspread and he pinned her with his upper body, his hand sliding under her sweater, against her bare skin, his fingers flicking over the silk of her bra, her tender breasts warm and soft beneath the silk.
She aroused a host of emotions in him, so many they collided in his heart like bumper cars at the fair. Tenderness and lust, watchfulness and abandon, a sense of danger, a sense of need. He wanted to make love to her for a week. He wanted to fall in love with her. He wanted to see her fall in love with him. He wanted to know she would never take another breath without thinking of him.
That she would never kiss another man without thinking of him.
Her hand circled his neck; she pressed up against him. Her body was strong and sensual. He responded in all the predictable, delicious ways. With one hand covering her silk-clad breast, his finger grazed the tiny sea horse. The diamond, tiny as it was, grated against his nail.
Like a man grabbing a trapeze moments before a fall, he came to what remained of his senses.
He was her lifeline.
He was the float she needed to grab so she wouldn’t drown, the vine hovering within reach over a pool of quicksand. She had placed all her hopes in his discretion, his judgment, his experience, and he was about to squander it all for a few hours of bliss.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s why she was sucking on his earlobe and grinding her hips against his. This whole interlude might have more to do with Grace’s understandable primal instinct to bind him to her than because she found him so damn lovable.
His hand slid off her breast and from beneath the sweater. Holding her close, he pulled them both back into a sitting position.
She rested her face against his. He could feel the warm exhalation of her breath against his cheek and eyelid. It seemed more intimate than their kisses. He couldn’t imagine what she was thinking. His own thoughts were hopelessly tangled like a huge ball of fishing line snagged on a waterlogged branch deep below the surface. Tenderness for her. Concern for her situation. His loss, her loss.
All of it illuminated by the skewed glow of a twisted headlight.
At last he said, “I—”
She cut him off. Her voice was breathless and soft. “Don’t.”
“But—”
She pulled away a little and put a finger against his lips. “Don’t,” she repeated, tears suddenly filling her eyes.
“Grace—”
“I feel so useless,” she said at last, and then confirming all his doubts, added, “Like I’m wasting your time—”
He hushed her with a hug, studiously ignoring the way she filled his arms. When she finally looked at him again, her eyes were moist but the tears had stopped.
“But more than that, Mac, for a moment I completely forgot I might be a married woman,” she said. “I’m ashamed of myself.”
“Grace…”
Casting about as if for a safe topic, her gaze settled on the food tray. “Your dinner is getting cold,” she said, rising and pulling the tray close to him.
He admired her attempt to reestablish boundaries. He should do the same thing, he should talk to her matter-of-factly about the possible tail, about the possible danger lurking outside the door.
But he couldn’t. She wouldn’t meet his gaze.
Hell.
If he was right, the tail would find them on the highway the next morning, might even know where they were right at that moment. Mac had all night to plot a trap.
Why keep Grace up all night worrying?
“I’ll eat if you’ll eat,” he said, and so they sat side by side on the edge of the huge bed, him cutting the steak, her dutifully eating an occasional bite, her eyes averted. He was too wiped out to drink alcohol and remain vigilant, so he took minuscule sips while she polished off most of the bourbon and all of the potato. With luck, the drink would relax her.
It seemed to work. After dinner, desperate for something to do that would fill in the time until bed and supersede the need for intimate conversation, he asked her to dig the cards out of the purse his aunt had given her. She agreed reluctantly and then shuffled them with a fluid motion that mesmerized him.
“Do you know how to play poker?” he asked her. “I have a pocketful of loose change.”
She dealt their hands on the bedspread as he split the coins between them. “Seven card stud, deuces wild, ante up,” she said.
He stared at her for a moment. This was a side of her he hadn’t seen. An hour later, one dollar and fifty-eight cents poorer, he was glad when she begged off. “Time for me to take a shower,” she said, gazing at the carpet.
He rolled the dinner tray out into the hall and locked the door again, knowing he was going to spend another night on guard duty.
He flipped on the TV so Grace wouldn’t ask him to play cards again after her shower. It was a little embarrassing to get creamed at poker by a sweet-faced young woman who wouldn’t meet your eye.
And he didn’t want to talk to her again, either.
GRACE STOOD under the shower for a long time, letting the hot water pound her head and shoulders.
She’d spent the last hour acting like she didn’t have a care in the world, trying so hard to make things normal her head pounded with the effort.
She’d been ready to make love to Travis MacBeth. If he hadn’t had second thoughts, they’d be lovers now.
She pushed her fingertips against her forehead. It didn’t take a genius to figure out the complications of a physical relationship between herself and Mac. Big one: she might be married. There might not be an answer waiting for them in Miami. They might have to return up north. She might have to relent and go to the police. She might be a felon. Perhaps her amnesia was a direct result of a guilty conscience. What if she’d murdered her husband? What if she was on the run from the law?
But why the memory loss, why the drugged state, why the needle marks in her arm? Why?
Best-case scenario—she regained her memory during the night.
Then what?
An end to this nightmare.
What would happen to Mac?
She’d become yet another woman who used him and left him.
The sexual tension throbbing between them didn’t matter, nor did the fact that it was perfectly clear he shared her longing for intimacy. None of that mattered.
She wouldn’t use him.
She wanted to run.
She stared at the doorknob and pictured turning it, walking out into the room, telling Mac she wanted a soda or a magazine from one of those little shops she’d seen signs advertising as they crossed the lobby. She tried to picture him agreeing to let her walk out of the room alone.
He wouldn’t do it. He’d either go for her or insist on coming along.
So, if he went down there alone, what would stop her from leaving while he was gone?
Why don’t you just fire him? an inner voice posed.
Because Mac wasn’t the kind of man you could just fire. But the other reason was because she couldn’t bear the thought of losing him forever.
Not until she had to, anyway.
All she wanted to do was get away for a while.
He would simply have to accept the fact that she wanted to be alone. She’d tell him straight. He’d be angry, but that was his problem.
Towel dried, she slipped on gray pants and a long, ivory top. She had to admit that Mac’s ex-wife had nice taste. And yet the more complicated Grace’s feelings for Mac grew, the more she hated wearing clothes that had once belonged to another woman.
Taking a deep breath, she opened the door and marched resolutely into the room.
All that resolution, all for nothing. He was asleep atop the bedspread, hands crossed over his chest, head kind of tilted as though he’d nodded off without meaning to. The only illumination in the room came from the TV. She approached quietly and looked at him for a moment in the flickering light.
Such a handsome, rugged, masculine man. So big and powerful and oddly innocent looking in his sleep. She stared at his lips and then at his hands, and her head felt light. She thought of him coming home to an empty house with a note on the table and his wife gone forever. She thought of the things Mac’s aunt had told her, the way Mac was drummed out of the police force, the accident in the army.
She stared at him. He was a man used to going it alone, to coping with things in his own way. To calling the shots. In some ways, she thought, he was as solitary as she was.
She turned away and pulled a blanket from the closet shelf, draping it over his recumbent body, and then tried adjusting the pillow beneath his head so he wouldn’t wake up with a stiff neck.
Why hadn’t he asked for a room with two queen beds instead of this one king that had been offered? Or had he? She couldn’t recall what he’d said to the woman who checked them in downstairs, only that as far as this motel was concerned, she was Jane Weston, wife of James Weston, the man now asleep on the bed.
That’s why he hadn’t made a point of asking for two beds, she realized. A married couple would want one bed and that’s what they were supposed to be.
Mac was thorough.
Her reason for running was sound asleep, but that fact didn’t change the antsy, got-to-move feeling still coursing through her veins.
She gently dislodged her hand and resettled his head on the pillow, relieved when he didn’t stir.
Crossing to the chair in the corner she’d commandeered as her headquarters, she retrieved the little purse Aunt Beatrice had given her. Slipping it over her shoulder, she took the card-key and quietly let herself out of the room, careful to test the knob to make sure the door locked behind her.
She realized at once that she should have left him a note but was reluctant to chance going back into the room to do so now.
As she walked down the hall with increasingly sure-footed steps, she realized that for the first time since awakening in the alley, she felt…strong.
It felt good.
MAC WOKE UP instantly, pushing aside a blanket he didn’t recall pulling over himself as he rose to his feet. He cursed the fatigue that had lulled him to sleep. One look around the room told him what he needed to know—Grace was gone.
How long? He switched on a lamp and checked his watch. It was ten o’clock. When had they eaten? Six-thirty? Seven? How long had she been gone? Two, three hours? Where would she spend that kind of time?
He checked the table she’d commandeered. The little purse was gone, though the slightly worn-looking deck of cards was not. He checked the top of the dresser—his car keys were as he’d left them. He pocketed them out of habit, even though he’d used the time Grace was in the shower, before he fell asleep, to call a car rental place that promised an early-bird delivery right to the underground parking lot. The plan was to leave here as the Westons in a sleek new rental car, the Coopers’ wreck gathering dust in the bowels of the inn. Of course, this meant he’d have to replace the Coopers’ car or come get it later. That dilemma could wait.
He shrugged on a jacket to cover the gun tucked in his waistband holster and pocketed his cell phone, all the while cursing his decision not to tell Grace he suspected they’d been followed. By trying to protect her feelings, he’d jeopardized her safety. A stupid mistake—it just went to show the dangers of getting emotionally involved with a client. He should have explained instead of leaving her in a fool’s paradise where she felt safe enough to leave the room, to venture out where he couldn’t protect her.
His first instinct was to go to the lobby, which he did. A few people milled around, but no Grace. No suspicious-looking single males, either, which was something of a relief, though the guy leaning against the elevator button had shifty eyes. Or was drunk. Maybe both. Maybe neither.
Mac rubbed his own eyes and took a deep breath as the button pusher stepped aboard the elevator and sagged against a new set of buttons.
Calm down, he told himself sternly and tried to think like Grace.
Clothes. She hated wearing Jessica’s old clothes. He saw signs promoting a boutique downstairs and took the steps two at a time.
A placard in the door of the boutique indicated it had closed precisely at 9 p.m. Ditto the beauty and sundry shops. More signs announced more possibilities, so he kept walking. Door after door opened off the corridor, some with names mimicking Georgia towns. Atlanta, Columbus, Athens, Pine Mountain, Tifton. Conference rooms, he supposed, closed and locked for the night.
At the end of the hall, he made a turn. The corridor widened at this point, forming another lobby much like the one upstairs, only smaller. A coffee shop occupied the left side, one of those wide-open-to-the-public places. At the very end of the corridor he saw a door with street access to encourage local patrons. He hadn’t realized until that moment that the inn was built on a slope, with the lobby above actually on the second floor. No wonder it had underground parking. What else had he missed in his semidazed state?
He searched the few late-evening diners, but there was no sign of Grace. Part of the right side of the small downstairs lobby sported an elaborate coffee stand shaped like a peanut lying on its side. A sandwich board proclaimed Goober’s Espresso. It, too, was closed up tight for the night.
A dark door with a neon cocktail glass above it assured drinks. Another sandwich board set up in front promised live entertainment. On this Wednesday night, it sounded like an Elvis impersonator was having a go at it. The place was booming but poorly lit and Mac entered slowly.
As his eyes adjusted, he listened to an aging Elvis sing along with a karaoke machine in a warbly voice that sounded more than a little like the late-night crooning of a lovesick cat. When Mac could finally make out the details, he saw that the man’s voice wasn’t the only shaky thing about him. His dance steps—if those arthritic shufflings could be called dance steps—were painful to watch. A dingy white body suit, tattered scarf and slick black wig were crowning touches.
Had Elvis lived, this is what he’d look like. Haggard. Wrinkled. Approaching senior discount years. No wonder the lights were low.
Elvis held a handful of plastic leis. As he sang “Blue Hawaii” off-key, he crooned to individual women in the audience, all of whom looked more mortified by his attention than flattered. But one woman sitting alone at a small table in front, an open wine bottle by her elbow, already wore two leis. Elvis was drifting her way again, dangling a third like a prize. No wonder he focused on her; the woman he appealed to was the only one in the room who seemed willing to meet his gaze.
Grace.