SIMON PACED. TWO DAYS. Two pointless, fruitless days. He’d spent that time shadowing Tolliver and his “business associate” as he’d overheard him introduce his beaming brunette shower buddy at a lunch meeting with a member of the press earlier that day. Or yesterday, as the case may be. He didn’t bother glancing at the illuminated clock dial beside his bed. He knew it was well into the wee hours. He also knew from the past two nights that sleep was a commodity his restless brain wasn’t prepared to allow his exhausted body to have. Not until he had that damned emerald in his grasp. Or at least a solid game plan on how to get it.
And now that game plan was going to be even harder to come by.
“Why the shift to the safe?” he muttered for at least the hundredth time. And, for the hundredth time, he had no immediate answer. Simon had been careful to stay well hidden, well disguised, as he’d tailed his former employer. No way had Tolliver made him. But, who knows, maybe he’d felt the surveillance. Given his notorious paranoia, it wasn’t entirely out of character to make the sudden change, and the reason could be something only Tolliver would think suspicious. The old man was also supremely wary of anyone who wasn’t in his direct employ, which was why he had his own team on premises at the Art Institute, watching over the collection as it was being installed. He’d probably babysit it himself if he thought he could handle any potential threat.
Whatever Tolliver’s reasons, the fact remained that there were now two very beefy sentries posted by the entrance to the hotel safety-deposit boxes. Which meant the gemstone wouldn’t make an appearance until the night of the gala. Where it would be spotlighted around the neck of his “business associate.” Why the pretense there, Simon had no clue. Tolliver’s wife had passed on decades before, and though his personal life wasn’t tabloid news, it wasn’t any secret that he enjoyed the company of much younger, very beautiful women, whose only business appeared to be keeping the egos of older, wealthier men amply inflated. Perhaps it was the prestige of the benefit-oriented event that demanded he appear somewhat more interested in raising money than chasing women who were, at best, a third his age.
Simon tried to recall the time when he’d been under the magnetic spell Tolliver could so effortlessly weave when it moved him. He’d convinced Simon that philanthropy was his passion, and that restoring his personal heritage was important to him, as a means of settling, once and for all, a generations-old feud, so he could return his full attention to the business of helping others. Simon had fully believed while executing his mission that the documentation Tolliver had “uncovered” was authentic, despite meeting Guinn, whom he’d genuinely liked and respected, and whom his gut had told him was the one to be believed.
Now, Simon knew too much about the real Tolliver, the “man behind the curtain” as it were, about where his narrow-viewed, spiteful passions really lay, to ever imagine being swayed by his once powerful rhetoric again. But Simon had watched the poor sap interviewing his former boss and mentor leave lunch with his face almost glowing from the golden light that was Tolliver’s charm and magnetism.
He couldn’t let him get away with this. Not only for Guinn’s sake, but because it simply wasn’t right.
Simon needed a plan.
He needed Sophie.
He rubbed his hands over his face. And this time it had nothing to do with her key card. He wanted her here because he missed her. Because she had a sharp mind that he could bounce ideas off of. Because she respected what he was trying to do, and would help him figure out a solution, even if the solution couldn’t involve her directly.
She understood him in a way no one else seemed to, maybe in ways even he didn’t fully comprehend. She had a different perspective on things than he did, came at them from a different angle, but it was one he always understood when he listened to her. She made sense to him. That was the only way he could think to describe how he felt about her. Everything about her just made sense to him.
But that was one option that was not open to him. So, stop thinking about her and start thinking about how you’re going to get that damn stone off that skinny supermodel’s neck. Tolliver would likely have guard dogs shadowing him at the gala, just as he likely wouldn’t let his date for the event so much as separate herself more than a few inches from him all night. The only time he could see where she’d be given any tether was to go to the loo, and even then, Tolliver would send someone with her. No way would he let her wander off with that piece of history around her neck.
Simon shoved off the bed and jerked open the door to the mini fridge, stared at the same overpriced, less than appetizing selections he had the last time he’d done this, and slapped the door shut again, empty-handed.
He paced. He downed half a bottle of water. He paced some more, then finally groaned and did a spread-eagle face-plant on the bed. Was it pathetic that he couldn’t stop thinking about her? Or that he was spending as much time trying to come up with some wild-ass game plan that would get her back into his life as he was trying to find a solution to the Tolliver problem? He didn’t even try to fool himself into thinking he needed her to get the job done. No, this was about him needing her for himself. It was about her being irreplaceable to him. Personally.
He didn’t do personally. His lifestyle didn’t really permit a personally. And, if and when he decided to somehow fit a personally into his life, it would certainly have to be with someone who could actually factor into his day-to-day life. Not someone a continent away.
“Someone who hasn’t already walked out on you would also be a good place to start,” he muttered. He was contemplating taking a reviving shower, ordering from the room service menu, or pulling a pillow over his face and attempting to get some much needed sleep, when there was a light tap on his door.
“Housekeeping,” someone said quietly.
His heart stopped, then started up again in double time. He cautioned himself to slow down, think, before reacting any further. He rolled his head and looked at the clock. It was just after six in the morning. Good God, another whole night without sleep.
Guardedly, with an almost sickening rush of adrenaline pulsing into his exhausted system, he rolled off the bed to his feet, and cautiously approached the door to the hallway. He believed Tolliver wasn’t remotely aware that he’d trailed him to Chicago. But something had made him decide to use the hotel safe. If the quiet voice on the other side of that door belonged to anyone over six foot with a jacket size of forty-four or more, he was in for some unpleasant company.
He palmed his gun from his ankle strap and positioned himself, back to the wall next to the doorknob side of the door. And waited.
A nerve-racking minute later, there was another whisper-light tap. “Housekeeping.”
Either the hulking security agent on the other side of the door had a remarkably girly voice, or there was no hulking security agent. He did a quick visual scan through the peephole. Short, female, head bowed, hairnet, maid’s uniform. His heart was skipping all kinds of crazy beats, but he schooled himself to remain calm. Despite the fact that there could only be one maid in this entire hotel who would be standing outside his door at 6:00 am.
“It’s six in the morning,” he said quietly, so his voice would reach just past the door, but no further. “What could I possibly need from housekeeping?”
“Me.”
He flipped the locks off the door, pulled it open, tugged the maid in his room, closed the door behind her, then pushed her up against it. “Really? And why is that?”
He pulled off the dark hairnet and soft strawberry curls came tumbling out. His heart tumbled right along with them.
Sophie looked up at him. “Tolliver is suddenly using the hotel safe. I tried to keep my distance. I shouldn’t be here. I should steer clear of this whole thing, and most especially you.”
“But?”
She searched his face. “But I had to know if you were okay.”
“Sophie…” It was exactly what he wanted. Her, back in his arms, back in his life. Nothing else seemed more paramount than that. At that moment, he didn’t give a rat’s ass about the job or what she could do to help him.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He most definitely wasn’t. “What for?”
“Walking out, coming back. Being flighty. I’m never flighty. I make a decision, I stick to it. I’m not needy, or clingy, I don’t play games and I don’t walk around with my head in the clouds. Grounded, that’s me. I know my path, my goals, and I set out to achieve them.”
“Maybe your path leads to me.”
She softened beneath him then, and her bottom lip trembled slightly. And his heart was no longer simply in danger, it was fully compromised.
“How can it?” she asked, her voice a tremulous whisper. “This is not real.”
“You feel very real to me.”
“Simon—”
“Sophie.” Then he kissed her, claimed her mouth as his own, wishing he could extend that declaration to the rest of her, but was thankful enough, for now, that she didn’t turn him away. Thankful that, after only a moment, a breath, she kissed him back. Her fingers tunneled through his hair, her nails scraped his scalp as she pulled him closer, took the kiss deeper. As if perhaps she’d been hungering for him, missing him, as much as he had her. Two days. It felt like an eternity. Especially when he hadn’t known he’d ever see her again.
He left her mouth, dropped kisses along her jaw, nuzzled her neck. She moaned softly, arching away from the door, into him, so she could tip her head back and allow him greater access. His body roared to life, the exhaustion and fatigue temporarily forgotten as desire and adrenaline punched renewed life into him. “I missed you.”
“I missed you, too,” she said on a sigh. “I didn’t know what to think when Tolliver made his sudden move, and in the middle of the night.”
He lifted his head so he could see her eyes. He framed her face, pushing his fingers into her soft tumble of curls. “I’m okay,” he told her, answering her initial question. “Tolliver still doesn’t know I’m here, as far as I can tell.”
“Then why the sudden change? I thought maybe you’d made your move, and—”
“I did some scouting….” He didn’t elaborate. It was bad enough he’d used her and her key tag. If she didn’t know the particulars of where, how, or what had happened since then, she couldn’t be liable. Well, as liable.
“I stayed home for two shifts, called in sick,” she told him. “I wanted…to give you time. I had to have my tag replaced when I came back to work.”
“Did it cause you trouble?”
She shook her head. “No. They issued me a new one.”
He didn’t even glance down at it. “I won’t be wanting it, so don’t worry.”
“I couldn’t risk it again, anyway. They let me off with a shake of the finger, but—”
He slid his thumbs across her lips. “I won’t ask you to involve yourself further, Sophie.”
“But what if I want—”
He stopped her with a kiss. “Just want this.” He kissed her again, then again, until she was kissing him back. Only this time it wasn’t simply the relief and thrill of being in each other’s arms again. This time it flared quickly past that, as if they were both starving and had been presented with a buffet feast. Which was exactly how he felt about meeting Sophie. He hadn’t known how hungry a man could be, how deprived he’d been, until presented with the most tantalizing smorgasbord he’d ever encountered. She swamped all of his senses, engaged him on every level. He’d never been so fully aware, so completely in tune, so insatiably greedy. Want me, he wanted to say. Want me enough to stay, to try.
He slid his hands down her body, pinning her to the door with his own as he pulled her legs up and urged them around him. “Hold on.”
She wrapped her arms tightly around him, kissing the side of his neck and sending a whole new host of sensations rocketing through him as he spun her away from the door and staggered blindly toward the bed.
He found her mouth again, just as they hit the bed. He followed her down, then rolled to his side, pulling her with him, his lips never leaving her. She was undressing him, and he was, once again, fumbling with that damn maid’s uniform. “You really have to stop wearing this thing,” he murmured, as he tugged at the zipper while she popped open the buttons on his shirt.
“I know,” she said, breathless. She got the last button of his shirt undone just as he tugged the zipper of her dress the last few inches. She shrugged out of her dress while he ripped his shirt off, his pants following.
He shoved them off the bed, then turned to find her struggling with her bra straps. “Allow me.”
She smacked his hands away, then smiled when he looked affronted. “Oh no. You’ll get sidetracked. And I’ll let you. This time it’s not going to just be about me.”
“Well, I’m all for that, but—”
She slipped her arms from the straps, then pinned him to the bed by the shoulders when he reached for her again. “I’m not kidding. I don’t know if or when I’ll ever have this time with you again, and I’m not going to have any regrets.”
He certainly didn’t want to stop her from doing whatever the hell it was she wanted to do, but what she’d said, right before leaving him…they were too close now to chance it again. He had to know, had to make sure. “Before, when we were together, you said you didn’t think you could handle taking things further—”
“That was before I spent two long days without you, wishing I hadn’t been such an idiot.”
He grinned. “I had a few wishes myself, but—”
She rolled fully on top of him. “I have no idea how I’ll handle this, but I tried walking away, and that pretty much sucked. So, if it’s going to suck either way, then I say we should at least have what we can have.”
He rolled her to her back, pinned her wrists to the bed. Her chest was still heaving from the heavy breathing they’d already amped themselves up to. His breathing wasn’t exactly steady either. “At the risk of destroying this not once, but twice, I have to ask you, who says this is all we can have?”
“Simon—”
He leaned down, bracing his weight on his elbows, smoothing a few errant curls from her face. He was surprised to feel the slightest tremor in his fingertips. He’d run dozens of jobs where steady fingers under extreme stress were the only thing between success and sometimes deadly failure. So it was disconcerting to say the least. But he knew that what happened here now, between them, was vital, paramount, even, to his future. “What do you want to have?” he asked quietly. “Simon.”
“I’m serious. If there were no boundaries, no obstacles, what would you want?”
She held his gaze for the longest time, and just when he thought she wouldn’t answer, she whispered, “You.”
He’d had no idea that the heart muscle could actually squeeze so painfully for reasons other than something like a heart attack. “What makes you think you can’t have me?”
“Those boundaries and obstacles.”
“Boundaries can be compromised, adapted to new needs. Obstacles can be overcome.”
“You make it sound simple. It would be anything but. Simon, I…” She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again and took a steadying breath. “Are you saying you want the same thing? Even if it’s complicated? Really complicated?”
“I’ve never wanted anything so badly.” And it was the God’s honest truth. “It’s what I was trying to tell you before. I couldn’t leave you thinking it was just a lark. It was already more for me, or I wouldn’t have said what I said.”
“We don’t really know each other.”
“We know each other.” He brushed a kiss across her lips. “I’ve never, not once in my life, been so fully engaged in another person. I don’t know how long that’s supposed to take, but with you it was instantaneous. And that fascination, that connection, has only strengthened the more time I spend with you, around you, listening to how your mind works, watching you.” He kissed her again. “Smelling you, tasting you.”
She moaned a little and arched into him when he took the kiss deeper, invaded her mouth, claimed her in the most basic way a man could claim a woman.
By the time he lifted his head, her body had grown heated and damp. His had, too. Her eyes were unfocused and dreamy looking, desire for him a naked, open thing.
“I hunger for you, Sophie. For everything about you. You may be right in that I don’t know a lot about your life, and I have no idea what could become of us, but I do know you. You. And the need to find out the rest, the urge to explore this whatever it leads us to, is the strongest thing I’ve ever felt. When you walked out, it was like a part of me walked out with you. And I told myself how insane that was, but it’s been two days, and it still feels exactly like that. It could be two years, and I don’t think that would change. So it doesn’t really matter how crazy this might be.”
She slid her hand free and touched his face. Her fingers were shaky.
“Does that scare you?” he asked.
She nodded, but continued to stroke his face, his cheeks, his chin, his lips. Her fingertips might have been trembling, but her gaze never wavered from his.
“Good. Because it scares me, too,” he said. “But it’s also thrilling, and exciting, and fills me with this amazed sense of anticipation. This is too momentous a thing to walk away from just because I fear where it might take me, what it might cost me. That’ll get me nothing.”
“Chasing it could get you heartbreak,” she said softly.
“Could. Life can be cruel, Soph. But, like you said, it can also be wondrous. Right now, the only heartbreak I feel is from not trying.”
Her lips started to tremble again, and her eyes grew glassy.
“What did I say?” he asked, truly perplexed. “Don’t cry.”
“You’re amazing, Simon Lassiter. And, I don’t care what you say, you’re rosy, and hopeful, and maybe even more of an optimist than I am. And I think your parents would be intensely proud of you right now.”
“I want you to be proud. You. Sophie Maplethorpe. Of the soft curls, innocent freckles.” He kissed one, then another. “Sharp mind, devilish wit.” He kissed her forehead, the tip of her nose, the corner of her mouth. “And just a twisted enough view of how the world works to appeal to my rather eccentric views on the matter.”
“Ditto,” she said, then smiled through the sheen in her eyes. “Minus the freckles part.”
“So, you’ll have me, then, will you?”
She moved beneath him and this time he was the one who groaned. “I believe I will.”
“Did I mention the wicked minx part?”
“Minx?” Laughter spurted from her. “Who uses that word?”
He moved between her legs and she gasped. “When it fits…”
He pushed into her, and she lifted her hips, wrapped her legs higher and took him fully. “Oh. My.” She moved, gasped, then moved again. “It fits quite perfectly,” she said, on a long, groaning sigh of satisfaction. “I thought, these past two days, I’d exaggerated how much.” She moved beneath him. “If anything…I underestimated.”
Simon knew exactly what she meant. He groaned and fought against the urge to pull out and plunge deeper, faster. To take her with the furious need and heat that was a constant live thing inside him now. She was female in every single wonderful sense of the word. Delightfully soft beneath him, ample and strong, and so damn tight around him it was a miracle he could be still even a second.
“Have me, Simon,” she whispered, then lifted her head and kissed him.
And he was well and truly lost to it, then. To her. Completely, utterly, and without a single reservation. It went against everything he’d ever been before. Every precaution he’d taken with his life, and more to the point, his heart. Gone as if they never existed. He’d seen what his parents had, and he’d never thought to be that lucky himself. Maybe that was why he’d never reached for it, never tried. They’d set the bar too high. Anything less would have been settling. Like Sophie, he knew what he wanted, and he went about getting it. But how did a person get that?
And yet, here it was. Right here. Finally. All he had to do was not screw it up. Find a way to keep it, keep her, and nourish and grow it, so it would be that powerful, amazing thing he’d witnessed firsthand.
And even that revelation didn’t terrify him like it should.
The only thing that could terrify him now would be discovering her heart wasn’t capable of making the same leap his was.
But, in that moment, his was pounding too hard and fast for him to pay any attention to what might come next. The only thing in his mind at this second was who was going to come right now.