San Diego
June 28
Well, well. Look at that.
Sam Reston leaned his shoulder against the wall of the hallway of his office building and simply drank in his fill.
There she was.
His own personal wet dream, standing there in the hallway between his office and hers, desperately scrabbling through a huge, expensive-looking purse.
Everything about her was expensive, classy. Top of the line. Real high maintenance, too. The kind of woman he stepped right around without a second thought because he didn’t have the time or the inclination, but shit, with her he’d make an exception.
Any man would.
Nicole Pearce. The most beautiful woman in the world. Certainly the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, hands down.
He remembered every second of the moment he’d first laid eyes on her. Two weeks, three days and thirty minutes ago. But who was counting?
He’d been under cover, infiltrating a gang of smugglers and thieves working the docks. His client, a big shipping company, had found it impossible to get a handle on the losses incurred during transhipment at the docks, which last year had totaled almost $10 million.
The police had gotten nowhere and the company suspected that someone somewhere was being bought off. Sam hoped it wasn’t in the police department. His brother Mike was a SWAT officer with the San Diego PD and incredibly proud of it.
Someone had definitely dropped the ball, though. So the ship owner had decided to go private.
Smart move.
For a hell of a lot of money, Sam had gone under cover, working the night shift as a stevedore, spreading word around that he wasn’t averse to some under-the-table money. He’d been contacted, and had quickly made his way up the hierarchy of the Bucinski gang, finally rising to the point where they had included him on two major hauls. He’d been wired to the teeth and had about a hundred photographs nailing gang members, their scumbag boss, and three corrupt Port Authority employees.
The fuckheads had not just been stealing cargo, they were involved in sex trafficking, too, bringing in kidnapped young girls hidden in the holds of legitimate ships, the owners of the ships entirely unaware of their human cargo.
The whole gang was going down. The shitheads deserved the needle but wouldn’t get it. Each of them would, however, spend the next twenty to thirty being some gangbanger’s newest girlfriend, which might even be better.
So Sam had looked like a scumbag the day he first saw her. Being a scumbag had been his job for the previous two weeks.
When San Reston did something, he did it well.
Going under cover wasn’t like in the movies. You ate, dressed, acted and even smelled the part. While under cover, he rarely washed or shaved, and wore the same clothes for days at a time. He knew he smelled ripe and looked dangerous. Well, hell. He was dangerous—he was murderous with rage at the thought of fuckheads willing to rape little girls spending even one day out of jail.
He’d been up thirty-six hours straight and was just coming into the office after another all-nighter to shower, change and grab a few z’s on his very comfortable office couch when he’d seen her.
Actually, he smelled her before he saw her. The elevator pinged, the doors opened and some floral…thing that traveled into men’s heads through the nasal passageways and fucked with their brains reached out and walloped him.
He saw her a second later and froze. Simply froze. Later, when he’d untangled his head from his ass, he’d been amazed. He’d been a SEAL until his eardrum blew, and he’d been a damned good one.
SEAL training beats surprise right out of a man. You have to have good, solid nerves just to think of trying out for BUD/S. If you were the easily surprised type, you were weeded out fast.
Nothing took him by surprise, ever.
Except Nicole Pearce.
Sam had known that the tiny studio office across the hall had been rented out. The building’s manager had told him. To a translation agency—though Sam had no fucking idea what that could be—run by one Nicole Pearce.
He hadn’t thought more about it.
That particular morning he was more exhausted, filthy and pissed off than usual. He smelled, too, of sweat and beer. He was in a shitty mood, ready to cut the job short simply to get the top guys into the slammer fast. But he knew better. With the evidence he was getting, the entire operation would go down and that was worth a few extra days or weeks living with slime.
A second after that amazing, womanly smell chock-full of pheromones went straight to his dick, he saw her, and his entire body seized up. He was unable to move, unable to breathe, for a second or two.
Midnight black, glossy shoulder-length hair, enormous, uptilted eyes the exact color of the cobalt glass sculpture he’d turned down as too expensive for his office, eyes with lashes so long and thick they could stir up a breeze, slightly overlarge mouth with that Angelina Jolie dent in the bottom lip, perfect straight little nose, creamy skin.
Fuck-me shoes.
Incredible hourglass figure poured into a demure blue suit that exactly matched the color of her eyes and hugged curves guaranteed to make any male within a one-mile radius salivate.
She sure had the two moving guys salivating, as she directed them carrying in a heavy teak desk and a tiny antique sofa. They were doing her bidding like two puppy dogs hoping for a bone.
She turned to look at him directly, at the ping of the elevator, and Christ, all he could do was stare at the dazzler with the deep blue eyes.
Eyes that watched him warily.
Sam was exhausted, but a man would have to be dead not to have all his hormones wake up at the sight of the most beautiful woman on earth. And, hell, his hormones weren’t the only thing to wake up.
Instant boner, right there in the upscale hallway of the very expensive building he’d chosen as headquarters of his new company.
Shit.
Thank God he had on his tightest jeans because she was already looking alarmed at the sight of him. Who could blame her? He’d put a lot of care into looking like a scumbag, walking like a scumbag, thinking like a scumbag, even smelling like one.
And he was enraged down to the bone at the sex trafficking he’d discovered. That was something that was hard to switch off.
A woman like this would have antenna way out there where men were concerned. She’d be able to read men like other women read fashion magazines. It was a fact of her life. She was stunning, with the kind of natural good looks that would carry her through from childhood to old age as a beauty. So she’d grown up with the background buzz of hot male attention and she’d have learned to filter out the bad ones, the dangerous ones pretty quick.
He wasn’t bad but he was dangerous and he carried that with him, like a shroud. He’d had a brutal childhood and had learned street fighting before he could read. By adulthood, he was really good with his fists, with a knife, hell—with a rock. Uncle Sam had taken what he was by nature, refined it, armed him up and spent over a million dollars turning him into a killing machine.
He’d made his living as a soldier leading hard men, and now as a civilian he made his living being tougher than most.
He’d come straight into the office after working the night shift on the docks, then sharing a beer with the man who’d recruited him for Bucinski, Kyle Connelly. Sam had nursed one beer to Connelly’s ten, and laughed while the pusbag told him about the perks of the job. Extra money, all the drugs you could snort or shoot up and sex. Sam had had to listen while Connelly bragged about handcuffing a twelve-year-old Vietnamese girl to a steel post and raping her. Sam had even had to commiserate with the fucker, whining because he’d been sore afterward, after popping the girl’s cherry.
Listening to this, laughing, slapping him on the back in sympathy, had been one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do in his hard life. His hands had literally itched to draw out the garrote wire in his belt and rip the fucker’s head right off.
So he’d been fighting mad when the doors had opened and—whoa. The world’s most beautiful woman, right there in front of him.
He’d actually had to rub his eyes, sure that what was right before him had to be some kind of vision, maybe some kind of compensation for the horrible night.
Her eyes had widened when she’d seen him. He knew what she was seeing—a very large, very strong, hugely pissed-off man, dressed like a bum and smelling like one, too.
Well, he couldn’t shave, wash and change his clothes right then and there and there was nothing he could do to kill those deadly pissed-off vibes so he’d merely walked down the corridor and entered his office.
Her huge cobalt blue eyes had followed him warily every step of the way. She’d actually stepped back as he approached, which pissed him off even more. Goddamn it, the last thing he’d ever do was hurt a woman.
Though, in fairness, she couldn’t possibly know that. Probably every cell in her single urban female body was screaming danger. He knew she was single because though he saw she had some fancy rings on those pretty hands of hers, none of them were on her left-hand ring finger.
She absolutely had to be single because Sam couldn’t even remotely imagine a man married or even engaged to a looker like that who wouldn’t put a rock the size of her head on her finger, to warn other men off her. And what husband or fiancé wouldn’t be around to help his woman move into her new office?
She couldn’t know that his rage wasn’t in any way directed at her, of course, but at the system. He wanted to nail the gang right now and send them all into the slammer five minutes later, special treatment reserved for one Kyle Connelly, child rapist.
But what you want and what you can have are very different things. No one knew that more than he did. So he’d had to stay under cover, sick at heart, wondering if some other little girls were being raped while he put together enough evidence to put the fuckers away. And to do that he had to stay in Scum-land for another couple of weeks.
So every time Nicole Pearce saw him, he’d been tired and grim and dirty, inside and out. Dealing with the scum of the earth was filthy work.
He knew that while he was on this mission, there was no room for anything else, certainly not something as beautiful as Nicole Pearce, so he’d waited.
But all that was now behind him and life had just handed him a big fat present all wrapped up in a fancy bow, to thank him for his patience.
Nicole Pearce, outside her office, looking as beautiful as ever, even with a ferocious scowl on her face, rifling through her bag and jacket pockets, looking for her keys.
The keys to the flimsiest piece-of-shit lock he’d ever seen. When he’d signed the lease on his office, he’d been happy with the space and the location and—though he ordinarily didn’t give a shit about his surroundings—the classiness of the building. It was the kind of building that made clients relax, which was crazy to him. What the fuck difference did mellow earth tones and fancy designer junk make?
But to most people it made a difference. A huge one. He’d noticed that. Noticed tense clients start unwinding after entering the building, with its liveried doorman, elegant brass and teak fittings, slate floors, expensive floral arrangements scattered around.
The building supervisor had given him the name of some office designer, who’d come in, taken measurements of the huge space he’d rented and come back a week later and outfitted the office so it looked like a spaceship. A designer spaceship, sleek and comfortable. It all cost a fortune but it was worth it, to see his clients’ faces as they walked in.
Anyone who came to Reston Security by definition needed relaxing, and it was good that his office did the trick because Sam wasn’t good at putting people at ease. He had no charm and no small talk in him.
When Sam came across a problem, he wanted it solved yesterday. He became an arrow shooting straight at a solution.
That attitude had worked real well for him in the Teams, where problems and possible solutions were clearly stated and no one’s goddamned feelings ever came into anything.
Civilian life had been a bitch, as Sam found himself tussling with clients who were afraid to say what they wanted, who kept intel from him, who had hidden agendas. Christ.
So the upscale, soothing premises had come in real handy.
Not to mention Nicole Pearce, right across the hallway from him, right now scrabbling for keys that weren’t there.
Well, he could do something about that. For a price.
“Need some help?” he asked, and suppressed a smile when she nearly jumped right out of that gorgeous skin of hers.
“Need some help?” the scary lowlife who worked for the security company across the hallway asked.
Nicole Pearce’s head whipped around, heart kicking up into a hard panicky beat in her chest. Oh God, there he was, long and broad and dark and grim. And frightening as hell.
He hadn’t been there a minute ago. Everyone on her floor came in well before her company’s opening time of 9 A.M., so she had been sure she was alone as she scrabbled in her purse, quietly freaking out.
How could such a large man move so quietly? Granted, her head was completely taken up with the tragedy of no key, but still. He was huge. Surely he’d have to have made some noise?
Come to think of it, the times she’d seen him coming and going from what she assumed was his workplace across the hall, he’d been utterly silent. Frightening.
She looked at him warily, hands still in her large purse that often doubled as a briefcase.
He was standing with arms crossed, leaning back against the wall, looking completely out of place in the elegant hallway. Tall, immensely broad-shouldered, grim and unsmiling. Just perfect if Central Casting had sent out an urgent call. One thug. Huge. Intimidating. Report to set.
But it hadn’t. Central Casting populated the Morrison Building in downtown San Diego with perfectly nice, perfectly tame office workers, some a little flamboyant if they were in the advertising business, but otherwise harmless.
Lowlife had absolutely no business here, staring at her out of dark, steady eyes, gaze still and unwavering, completely out of place in the context of the cream and teal accents, the expensive Murano wall sconces and the faux Louis XV Philippe Starck Plexiglas console with the very real calla lilies in the Steuben vase.
She’d chosen to pay premium rent for a tiny office in the upscale building near Petco precisely because its classy, elegant design had appealed to her and because, well, it shrieked success so loudly she hoped no one could hear the crackling sound of financial distress underlying her new company.
Everyone in the building bustled in and out in morning and evening waves, well dressed, well groomed and busy busy busy. Even after the stock market crash, they all made an effort to look sleek and prosperous and successful, which was why Lowlife was so out of place.
The rent took a big chunk out of the earnings of her brand-new company, and her office was the size of a thimble, but she loved it. She’d signed the lease half an hour after the realtor had shown it to her.
That was, of course, before Lowlife started haunting the halls. Every time she turned around, it seemed, he was there. Enormous, dressed like a biker. Or how she imagined a biker would dress—what would she know? Bikers had been scarce growing up in consulates and embassies around the world.
He had a uniform of torn, filthy jeans, a formerly black tee shirt washed so many times it was a dirty gray, and at times a black leather bomber jacket.
Overlong black hair and a heavy, scruffy black beard, nothing at all like the chic designer stubble sported by the guys working at the ad agency two doors down. No, this was a man with a heavy beard who didn’t shave for weeks at a time.
But beyond not following the yuppie dress and grooming code, Lowlife was different in other ways from all the other people in the building.
She would never forget her first sight of him in the elevator, leaning one-armed against the wall, head down, looking like a warrior who had just come in from battle.
Only there was no war going on in downtown San Diego that she knew of. He’d disappeared into the office across the hall, passing some pretty fancy security, so she’d imagined he worked there.
As an enforcer?
She’d been aware of his scrutiny as she entered and exited her office. He never overtly stared, but she could feel his attention on her like a spotlight.
Now, however, God help her, he was definitely staring, arms crossed over that absurdly broad chest, unsmiling, gaze fierce and unwavering.
“Need some help?” he asked again. His voice matched his physique. Low, so deep it set up vibrations in her diaphragm.
Then again, maybe the vibrations were panic.
No key.
This definitely wasn’t happening. Not on top of the Ride from Hell in to work. Of all the days to lock herself out…
“No, I’m on it.” Nicole bared her teeth in what she hoped he’d take as a smile, because she so wasn’t on it.
What she didn’t have—and what she so very desperately needed—was her office key. The office key on her Hermès silver key fob that had been a birthday present from her father, back in the days when he could work and walk on his own. The set of keys that was always, always, in the front pocket of her purse, except…when it wasn’t.
Like now.
Nicole Pearce contemplated beating her head against the door to her office, but much as she’d like to, she couldn’t. Not under Lowlife’s dark, intense gaze. She’d save that for when he finally left.
He watched as she once more checked her linen jacket pockets, first one, then the other, then her purse, over and over again, in a little trifecta routine from hell.
Nothing.
It was horrible having someone see her panic and distress. Life had taken so much from her lately. One of the few things left to her was her dignity, and that was now circling the drain, fast.
She tried to stop herself from shaking. This was the kind of building where you keep up appearances and you never lose your cool, ever. Otherwise they’d raise the rent.
It was so awful, fumbling desperately in her purse, sweat beading her face though the building’s powerful air conditioners kept the temperature at a constant 62 degrees. She could feel sweat trickling down her back and had to stop, close her eyes for a second and regain control. Breathe deeply, in and out.
Maybe Lowlife would disappear if she just kept her eyes closed long enough. Realize that she deeply, deeply wanted him gone. Do the gentlemanly thing and just go.
No such luck.
When she opened her eyes again, the man was still there. Dark and tough, a foot from the console she wanted to use.
She looked at the slate floor and the transparent console and gritted her teeth.
Of the two horrible choices, getting close to him to dump the contents of her purse on the console was marginally more dignified than simply squatting and dumping everything in her purse on the floor.
Approaching him warily—she was pretty sure he wasn’t dangerous, and that he wouldn’t attack her in broad daylight in a public building, but he was so very big and looked so incredibly hard—she reached the pretty console, shifted the vase of lilies the super had changed just yesterday, opened her purse wide and simply upended it over the transparent surface.
The clatter was deafening in the silent corridor.
She had her home keys, car keys, a removable hard disk, a silver business card case, a cell phone, four pens, a flash drive—all of which made a clatter. And her leather bag of cosmetics, paperback book, checkbook, notepad, address book, credit-card holder, all of which made a mess.
In a cold sweat of panic, Nicole pushed her way through the objects on the console, checking carefully, over and over again, reciting each object under her breath like a mantra. Everything that should be there was there.
Except for her office key.
What a disaster. Construction on Robinson had forced her into a long detour, which was why she was opening the office at 9:15 instead of 9. At 9:30, she had a vital videoconference with a very important potential client in New York and her two best Russian translators, to negotiate a big job. A huge job. A job that could represent more than 20 percent of her income next year. A job she desperately needed.
Her father’s medical bills kept rising, with no end in sight. She’d just added a night nurse for weeknights and it was $2,000 a month. A new round of radiotherapy might be necessary, Dr. Harrison had said last week. Another $10,000. It was all money she didn’t have and had to earn. Fast.
If the conference call went well, she might be able to keep ahead of her money problems, for a while at least.
There was absolutely no time to cross all of downtown to go back home and get the keys. Not to mention the fact that she would upset her father, who was so ill. He’d be worried, be unsettled all day. Sleep badly that night. She absolutely didn’t want to upset him.
Nicholas Pearce had a limited number of days to his life and Nicole was determined that they be as peaceful as possible.
She simply couldn’t go back home. And she simply couldn’t afford to miss this meeting. Her translation business, Wordsmith, was too new to be able to risk passing up this client—manager of one of the largest hedge funds in New York, looking to invest in Siberian gas futures and the Russian bond market, and needing translations of the technical data sheets and market analyses.
Sweat trickled down her back. She made a fist out of her trembling hand and beat it gently on the console, wanting to simply close her eyes in despair.
This was not happening.
“I can open your door for you.” She jolted again at the words spoken in that incredibly low, deep voice. Heavens, she’d forgotten about Lowlife in her misery. His dark eyes were watching her carefully. “But it’ll cost you.”
This was not a good economic moment for her, but right now she’d be willing to pay anything to get into her office. Snatching up her checkbook from the clear surface of the console, she turned to him. He watched her with no expression on his face at all. She had no reason to think he was a decent sort of guy, but she could hope he wouldn’t use her obvious desperation to make a killing.
Please, she prayed to the goddess of desperate women.
“Okay, name your price,” she said, flipping back the cover, womanfully refraining from wincing when she saw her balance. God, please let him not ask the earth, because her checking account would go straight into the red. She steadied her hand. Don’t let him see you tremble.
She looked up at him, pen hovering over her checkbook. “How much?”
“Have dinner with me.”
She’d actually started writing, then froze. “I—I beg your pardon?” She stared for a second at the blank check where she’d started writing dinner with Lowlife on the line with the amount.
“Have dinner with me,” he repeated. Okay, so it hadn’t been an auditory hallucination.
Her mouth opened and absolutely nothing came out.
Have dinner with him? She didn’t know him, knew nothing about him except for the fact that he looked…rough. Instinctively, she stepped back.
He was watching her carefully, and nodded sharply, as if she’d said something he agreed with. “You don’t know me and you’re right to be cautious. So let’s start with the basics.” He held out a huge, callused, suntanned and none-too-clean hand. “Sam Reston, at your service.”
Sam Reston? Sam Reston?
Nicole couldn’t help it. Her eyes flicked to the big shiny brass plaque, right next to the door across the hall, bearing the name of what she understood to be the most successful company in the building. RESTON SECURITY. He followed her gaze and waited until she looked back at him.
Maybe he was the company’s owner’s black-sheep cousin. Or brother. Or something.
It had to be asked. “Are you, um, a relative of Mr. Reston?”
He shook his head slowly, dark eyes never leaving hers. “Company belongs to me.”
Oh. Wow. How embarrassing.
He was standing there, hand still out. Nicole’s parents had drummed manners into her. She’d shaken hands with tyrants and dictators and suspected terrorists in embassies all over the world. It was literally impossible for her not to put her hand in his.
She did it gingerly, and his hand just swallowed hers up. The skin of his palm was very warm, callused and tough. For a moment she was frightened that he might be one of those men who had to prove his manliness by the strength of his handshake. This man’s hand could crush hers without difficulty and she made her living at the keyboard.
To her everlasting relief, he merely squeezed gently for three seconds then released her hand.
“N-Nice to meet you,” she stammered, because really, what else could she say? “Um—” And she so desperately needed to get into her office. Now. “My name is Nicole Pearce.”
“Yes, I know, Ms. Pearce.” He bent his head formally. His eyes were very dark and—she now realized—very intelligent. “So—as to my price, let’s see if I can convince you I’m not a security risk.”
He pulled out a slim, hugely expensive cell phone. One Nicole had coveted madly, both for its function and style, but had decided against as being simply way out of her current financial league. He pressed two buttons—whoever he was calling was on speed dial—and waited. She could hear the phone ringing, then a deep male voice answering, “This better be good.”
“I’ve got a lady here I want to ask out for dinner but she doesn’t know me and she’s not too sure of my good character, Hector, so I called you for an endorsement. Show your face and talk to the lady. Her name’s Nicole. Nicole Pearce.” He waited a beat. “And say good things.”
Nicole accepted the cell phone gingerly. The video display showed the darkly handsome face of San Diego’s brand-new mayor, Hector Villarreal, dressed in a bright orange golf shirt, holding a golf club over his shoulder, out on the links, eyes crinkling against the bright sunlight. “Hello, Ms. Pearce.” The deep voice sounded cheerful.
She cleared her voice and tried not to sound wary. “Mr. Mayor.”
“So.” He was smiling, eyebrows high. “You want to go out to dinner with Sam Reston? You sure you want to?” There was humor in the faintly-accented voice.
“Well, actually, uh—”
But it was no use talking to a politician, they talked right over you.
“Don’t worry about it. Sam’s a great guy, he’ll treat you right, no question. But I really do need to warn you of something, Ms. Pearce, and it’s serious.”
Her heart thudded and she looked up into Sam Reston’s hard, impassive face. He could hear perfectly, since Mayor Villarreal was talking at the top of his voice.
“Yes, Mr. Mayor?”
“Don’t ever play poker with him. Man’s a shark.” A loud guffaw and the connection was broken.
Nicole slowly slid the phone closed and looked up at Sam Reston. He was standing utterly still; the only thing moving was that enormous chest as he breathed quietly. He had the extreme good taste not to look smug or self-satisfied. There was no expression at all on that hard, dark, bearded face. He simply watched her to see what she would do.
She held out the phone by one end and he took it by the other. For a moment they were connected by five inches of warm plastic, then Nicole dropped her hand.
They looked at each other, Nicole frozen to the spot, Lowlife—no, Sam Reston—as still as a dark marble statue. There was no sound, absolutely nothing. The building could have been deserted, there weren’t even the normal sounds of air-conditioning or the elevators swooshing up and down.
Everything was still, in suspended animation.
Nicole finally took a deep breath.
Ooooo-kay.
Well, it looked like Lowlife—Sam Reston—wasn’t a serial killer or a drug dealer. Actually, he, um, was the owner of a company she knew to be very successful. The success of Reston Security constituted a significant portion of the gossip machine that was alive and well in the Morrison Building. Reston Security was certainly much more successful than Wordsmith, which was clinging to life by the occasional IV line of new clients.
If the extremely dangerous-looking, seriously scruffy man in front of her, watching her quietly, was Sam Reston of Reston Security, then surely she could do this.
A deal was a deal. If he could somehow open her door and allow her to make her videoconference call, she would owe him far more than could be repaid by a couple of hours spent consuming a meal.
He was watching her quietly, and standing oh-so still.
9:23. She took a deep breath. “Okay, you have a dinner date, for an evening of your choosing.” She gestured behind her. “But you’re going to have to open my door, Mr. Reston, right now. I have a very important business call coming in at 9:30 sharp, and if I don’t make that call, then our deal is off.”
He dipped his head gravely. “Fair enough. And the name is Sam.”
“Nicole.” Nicole gritted her teeth, glancing at the big clock at the end of the corridor and wincing. However Sam Reston was going to get her into her office, he’d have to do it in the next six minutes or she was toast. “I wonder…is there a building super with a master key?”
“No.” He shook his head. “So—we have the deal?”
“Um, yes. We do.” Nicole barely refrained from tapping her toe.
“You’ll go out to dinner with me tonight?” he pressed. At her look, he shrugged broad shoulders. “Ever since I left the Navy and became a businessman, I’ve learned to nail agreements down.”
Actually, he looked like the kind of man who would enforce deals at the end of a gun. But she’d promised.
“As a new businesswoman myself, I’ve learned to keep my word. So, yes, I accept your invitation. Now, please open my door. And if you kick it open, I’ll expect you to pay damages.”
“Of course,” he murmured.
Nicole shot a glance at her watch. Damn. It had taken her several days to set up this conference call. The client was a Wall Street “Master of the Universe,” almost impossible to pin down to an appointment.
The “Master” in question was an anal retentive and when he said a 9:30 conference call, it would be 9:30 to the second, and she knew that he’d never call again if she wasn’t on the line. In a harsh, nasal New Yawk accent, the words spilling out almost more quickly than she could understand them, he’d told her he couldn’t have anyone wasting his time because his time was worth at least a thousand dollars a minute.
The message couldn’t have been clearer. Be at the end of the line at 9:30 or else.
Nicole worked with two retired professors of economics, one of whom had been born in Russia and had come to the States as a teenager, and another who had studied in Moscow for ten years. They would be perfect for the big, long-term translation job and she had every intention of asking the Master of the Universe top prices. Her commission off the deal would go a long way toward paying for the night nurse.
Four minutes to go. She was going to lose this appointment, and probably the client. So much for…
She looked up from her wrist and blinked.
Her door was wide open, her tiny, pretty office beckoning beyond it.
She turned her stunned gaze to Sam Reston, who was straightening and moving away from her door. “How did you do that? Did you just pick the lock?” Surely picking a lock required some kind of effort? Some time? In the movies, the thief jiggled at the lock forever.
He wasn’t looking smug or even proud of himself. In fact, he was scowling. “You haven’t improved on the building security at all,” he said, his deep voice making it an accusation.
“Um, no.” Nicole felt like she’d fallen into a rabbit hole. The real-estate agent had stressed the excellent building security and had dwelled lovingly on the quality of the office locks. “Was I supposed to?”
“Well, sure. When it’s as crappy as this.” His scowl deepened as he pocketed something. Though she’d love to see if it was a lockpick, she didn’t have time to waste.
Another glance at her watch and she hurried into her office. She was just barely going to make the videoconference.
She had less than two minutes to spare.
“Thank you, Mr. Reston. So I guess—”
“Sam.”
“Sam.” She gritted her teeth. A minute and a half left. “Tell me where to meet you and when.”
His scowl grew deeper. “Absolutely not. I’ll pick you up at your house.”
There wasn’t time to argue, not even time to roll her eyes. “Okay. Shall we say seven? I live on Mulberry Street. Three forty-six Mulberry Street. Is that okay?”
“Fine. I’ll be there at seven to pick you up.” A muscle in his jaw rippled, though the words were low and quiet.
Did he live far away? Well, if he had to drive across town, he’d asked for it. She’d been willing to meet him at the restaurant.
He turned away, she closed the door and the phone rang.
Nicole leaped to pick it up, heard the Master’s nasal tones. She’d made it! The price had been high, but she’d made it.