One of These Nights Read online

  She was asleep. Her head pillowed on her arm, her long legs drawn up on the sofa beneath her, she was by all appearances sound asleep.

  She was also beautiful. Not that she wasn’t always, but there was something about her in this vulnerable moment…

  Vulnerable. A word he would never, ever apply to Samantha in a waking moment. She was too strong, too competent, too alert—

  Alert.

  Well, not at the moment. If he wanted to slip the leash, this was obviously the time. But did he?

  He jerked his gaze away, feeling suddenly on the wrong end of a conundrum. If he didn’t believe there had been an attempt on his life, why was he wary about walking out the door right now? And if he did believe it—as he grudgingly admitted he should—then what right did he have to be angry at Samantha for trying to protect him? Especially when she’d been under orders from a man he himself would find very difficult to disobey.

  It wasn’t what she’d done, he argued with himself, it was how she’d done it. It was the lying, the sneaking…again done at Josh’s behest.

  You should have known Josh wouldn’t just let it go.

  He supposed Singleton had been right. He should have known. Anybody who knew Josh’s reputation for protecting his people should have realized the man wouldn’t stop doing that simply because one of those people didn’t like it.

  And really, Josh hadn’t gone completely against his wishes. He’d accommodated them as best he could, Ian supposed. Keeping the protection at a distance, instead of hovering over his shoulder at every moment.

  The protection.

  His gaze slid back to Samantha. He tried to think of one man he knew, had ever known, who would resent having Samantha in his life, even under deceitful circumstances. He couldn’t think of a single one.

  As he looked at her, he even felt a qualm at how tired she must be. She had probably been watching over him all night and grabbing sleep when she could, he guessed, when he was in the lab at Redstone. Besides, it probably took energy to maintain the false front….

  Agitation rippled through him. Maybe he should slip that leash Josh had fastened him to. Maybe he should take advantage of her weariness instead of feeling sorry for her.

  He got to his feet. Maybe he should—

  Too late.

  The moment he’d stood up, she’d awakened. And not just sleepily opened her eyes, she’d come awake totally alert and ready to move. He could tell by the way her body went instantly taut, the way her legs uncurled from under her. And he was certain he’d barely made a sound.

  “Light sleeper?” he asked wryly.

  “I’m used to sleeping with one ear open,” she answered.

  “Handy in your line of work,” he said, careful to keep his voice neutral.

  “Yes,” she agreed, equally neutral. She waited, and he wondered if she was expecting him to say something else. When he realized she was still slightly tense, it irritated him. “I agreed to a truce, so you don’t need to act like I’m going to snap at you.”

  “Maybe I think I deserve it.”

  Something in her voice told him she meant it. She felt guilty for what she’d done. He wasn’t sure how that made him feel. It should make him feel better, shouldn’t it, to know that she felt badly about lying to him? Then why did he still have that sense of loss? As if he’d really had something to lose, instead of just an illusion?

  Samantha let out a long sigh. “I’m going to say this once more, Ian, and then it’s a closed subject for me. I’m sorry I had to lie to you.”

  “Josh said you had no choice in the matter.”

  “He sent me in undercover, yes. But still, Josh is…understanding. If I’d thought about that, I could have gone to him and told him I couldn’t lie anymore. Not to you.”

  Ian’s breath caught in his throat at her emphasis on that last word. He told himself not to be a fool again, not to assume she meant what his heart wanted to hear.

  Ask her.

  He could almost hear his mother chivvying him, as she had so often when his innate reserve and shyness silenced him.

  Ask her.

  “Josh is…” he began, then stopped and had to try again. “Wouldn’t he ask…why?” It was as close as he could get to flat out asking her why this case was different from any other she’d handled. He was afraid, he guessed, that she’d say it wasn’t any different.

  Samantha grimaced slightly. “He’s very perceptive. He probably wouldn’t have to ask.”

  He wasn’t going to escape, he realized. It took him a moment to gather his nerve and take the plunge. “I guess I’m not very perceptive then, because I have to ask. Why not to me?”

  For a long moment she just looked at him. Her eyes seemed to bore into him, as if she were seeing to the very core of him. Then she said softly, “I think you know the answer. You just don’t trust me enough to believe it.”

  His breath caught once more.

  “If it’s any help,” she added, “It’s never mattered before. I’ve done my job, and never cared about what anyone thought, because I knew I was doing the right thing.”

  “And now?” he barely managed to ask.

  “I still know I’m doing the right thing. But I do care about what you think. I care a lot. And nobody’s more surprised about that than I am.”

  Except me, Ian said silently. And when she looked away, he was almost relieved.

  Chapter 14

  It should have been easier.

  Sam rolled her shoulders, aware of the tension that had settled at the back of her neck. It should have been easier with Ian here under the same roof. She didn’t have to watch for him, didn’t have to sit up for hours spying on his house, didn’t have to worry about timing trips to pick him up. She was able to simply lounge here in the living room and keep an eye on him as he sat at the table they’d set up in the dining room for him to work on. The only thing she had to worry about was her daily sweep of the house and phone lines for bugs; it was much safer for them to use scrambled landlines rather than too-easily monitored cell phones for regular communications with Redstone. Yet she was more tense now, on the third day of his residence here, than she’d ever been while watching him from a distance.

  You just don’t like the feeling of being watched yourself, she admitted ruefully.

  And he was watching. Intently. And it unsettled her, to feel that itchy sensation and look up and find those unwavering green eyes fastened on her. Once she caught him with his glasses off, looking at her, and wondered what he saw. Wondered if she looked different to him that way, unfocused perhaps. And if he liked it better that way….

  Sam sat up straight, resting her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. She was losing her mind. That’s all there was to it. She’d never wanted to bail in the middle of a job before, but she wanted to now. Wanted just a few hours alone, to think, to sort out the chaos cascading around inside her.

  “Are you all right?”

  Her head snapped up at the sound of Ian’s voice, very near. “Fine,” she muttered, hiding her surprise that he’d been able to get so close without her hearing or sensing his approach.

  “You don’t look fine,” he said frankly.

  “Thanks for the observation.” Especially since it’s your fault, she added snappishly to herself.

  “Cabin fever?” he asked, sounding almost genuinely sympathetic. “I know you’d normally be outside in the garden today, since it’s Saturday.”

  She gave him a sideways look. “Where’d all the cheer come from?”

  He shrugged. “Work always takes my mind off my problems.”

  My problem is my work, she thought sourly. Which made her say aloud as she leaned back on the couch, “I thought work was your problem.”

  “No. Answers are my problem. Work is…satisfying.”

  “Even when you hit a dead end?” She asked with a curiosity that had been growing since she realized how much of his work was truly trial and error.

  “It’s worth it, for
the times when it all comes together.” Unexpectedly, he sat down beside her. “I’ve been meaning to thank you.”

  Thank her? He’d agreed to a truce, not to forgiveness, so what was this? “For what?” she asked cautiously.

  “Solving my problem.”

  She blinked. It took her a moment to remember the problem he’d told her about, that the explosives-sensitive material wouldn’t stick to metal.

  “How did I do that?” she asked, mystified.

  “Your soaker hose.”

  She blinked again. “Okay, now I’m totally confused. What does my soaker hose have to do with your adhesion problem?”

  He grinned at her, and for a moment she forgot to breathe. “Do you remember I said the sensor material sticks okay to lead?”

  She nodded. “And lead is too heavy and toxic to line a plane.”

  “Yes. But the ribs in the plane could be coated with lead without adding a prohibitive amount of weight, or presenting danger of its own.”

  “Okay. But what does that have to do with—” She broke off suddenly as an image formed in her mind, of the evenly spaced ribs of an airplane and the evenly spaced folds of the soaker hose. “You mean it can react to the space in between?”

  “Looks that way, so far. It takes a slightly more concentrated application, but I think it’s going to work. We were just too focused on lining an entire plane with it. We never thought about using more of the sensor and spacing it out.”

  She stared at him. “And you got this from just looking at a garden hose?”

  “Ideas are where you find them.”

  It amazed her, that kind of leap from an everyday object to the solution of a totally unrelated problem.

  “Outside the box,” she said, almost to herself. “I could never do that.” She knew she was bright, but her mind was logical, and for the most part linear.

  “I could never do what you do.”

  She winced inwardly, thinking he was once more referring to her having deceived him. As if he’d read her thoughts, he said, “I meant the bodyguard thing. The security thing in general. Any more than I could be a cop.”

  “I couldn’t be a cop, either. Working for Redstone is much better.”

  Ian smiled. “Working for Redstone is better than just about any other job.”

  On this, at least, they could agree.

  “Josh told me he pulled you out of Alaska.”

  She nodded. “I was working in the resort division. Redstone Sitka,” she said, and went on to explain how Josh had rescued both her and her brother.

  “Tell me about Alaska,” he said. “I’ve always wondered if it’s as wild as they say.”

  “It is. And not, in the bigger cities. But you still get from nonwild to wild faster there than anyplace I’ve ever been.”

  “I’ve seen photos and documentaries, and it all seems so incredible.”

  “It’s all true, and they don’t capture the half of it. It’s vast, beautiful and awesome in the original sense of the word.”

  “You sound sorry to have left.”

  “I am, a little. But not sorry to have left the job there, or to have brought Billy here. I do want to go back, someday. With enough time to see what I want to see.”

  “You mean with all your traveling for your job, you’d still do it for fun?”

  “Sure. I love seeing different places and people. Didn’t you like it, when you traveled with your folks?”

  “I suppose when they were dragging me all over, I was too young to appreciate it.”

  This was nice, Sam thought as they talked. The strain she’d been feeling just slipped away. She snuggled deeper into the cushions of the sofa, feeling herself slowly unwind. He was right here, she didn’t have to be watchful, to worry, she could relax a little, just for a moment or two….

  She awoke slowly, wondering why nobody had ever thought of a heated pillow before. This was wonderful.

  The inanity of her own thought brought her awake enough to realize that the heat she was feeling was indeed beneath her cheek, but it was not a pillow.

  She went very still, suddenly aware of the slightest of movements, as if someone were stroking her hair. In the moment of her realization the movement stopped. A tiny sigh escaped her at the loss, surprising her.

  “That was nice,” she murmured, wishing she could go back to that sleepy state, and only half-aware she was speaking out loud.

  “Yes, it was.”

  Ian’s voice was soft and husky above her, and the sound of it made her shiver. She tried to sit up, wondering how on earth she had ended up in this position. He moved at the same moment, and she had to stop to avoid smashing her head into his chin. They wound up face-to-face, Sam in an awkward, uncomfortable position that she barely noticed. The room was nearly dark; he’d also apparently turned out the lamp, and the only light was spillover from the dining room.

  Ian had taken off his glasses. She’d seen him so rarely without them that it always stopped her breath to see those vivid green eyes with no barrier of glass. And now those eyes simply took her breath away, because they were hot with a look she couldn’t mistake.

  “Samantha,” he said, his voice barely a whisper this time.

  “Yes,” she said simply, unable to stop the answer her heart, mind and blood wanted to give him. All the reasons why this was insane, all the reasons why it was stupid, all the reasons why it was reckless vanished in the heat created in her by that look.

  “Samantha,” he said again, and suddenly it was the most beautiful name she’d ever heard, so much better than the “Sam” everyone else called her.

  He moved closer, then hesitated. Afraid he would change his mind, afraid he would remember he was angry with her and pull away, Sam lifted her head to close the last little gap between them.

  She had barely a moment to think about how warm and firm his lips were before fire erupted in her. She heard a soft, needy sound she thought was him, but that could have been her. In fact, it must have been her, because it sounded exactly the way she felt—hungry and wanting more of the rich, male taste of him.

  He might have hesitated in the beginning, but there was no indecision left in him now. He deepened the kiss, probing, tasting, teasing her tongue with his until she was dizzy with it. She felt her fingers digging into his shoulders, and the feel of the taut muscles there reminded her of that day in the garden when he’d blown any last remnants of her preconceptions about “the professor” to bits by pulling off his shirt.

  That image in her mind made it suddenly imperative that she feel that bare skin, and she moved her hands down to his waist to tug his shirt free. Then she slid them up under the cloth, stroking satin skin stretched over hot, taut muscle. Memories of a drawerful of silk boxers seared through her mind, and she wondered if her fantasy of those moments was about to be fulfilled. The thought made her heart begin to hammer even faster.

  He murmured something against her mouth she didn’t catch, but it didn’t matter. His voice, heavy and thick with desire, was all she needed to hear. She kissed him back harder, deeper, reveling in his response, in the way he groaned low and harsh, in the shiver she felt ripple through his body. He pressed her back onto the couch, and she welcomed the solid feel of his weight.

  And then they were clawing at each other’s clothes, or maybe their own, desperate to be rid of them. Ian’s shirt went flying, Sam’s followed, then the rest. Sam only paused long enough to fulfill that fantasy thought, to touch him through silk warmed by his own heat. It was as erotic as she’d imagined and then some.

  Skin to skin now, it still didn’t seem enough to her. She wanted him closer yet, and opened her mouth to ask, but the only thing that came out was a whimper of need.

  For a moment Ian stopped. When he sat up and simply stared down at her, Sam was afraid he was having second thoughts. But when he said in an awed tone, “God, you’re beautiful!” the tension faded as quickly as it had arisen. She looked at him hovering over her, at the solid shape of his ches
t, the ridged abdomen and flat belly, and below, where she couldn’t help shivering at the jutting flesh mere silk couldn’t have restrained any longer.

  “So are you,” she whispered fervently, making him color slightly.

  He moved then, slowly, much slower than he had been, as if with great purpose. And it didn’t take her long to realize what that purpose was; to drive her utterly mad. Methodical, his father had called him. She’d never thought at the time how that word could be applied to other things; but now, as he lingered over every inch of her, kissing, tasting, caressing, stroking, until she was wild with aching, pulsing need, she thought that methodical could be a very good thing.

  And then she stopped thinking much at all as Ian found and caressed that center point that sent heat billowing out in waves. She cried out his name, heard him suck in a breath, then mutter an apology. Before she could gather herself to ask what on earth he was apologizing for, he was sliding into her, showing her just how ready her body was by the ease of his entry. At the same time she had the most wonderful sense of fullness, of being stretched by his rigid flesh, so wonderful she couldn’t hold still, but lifted her hips, demanding more, then more.

  Ian shivered in her arms as he slid home. For a long moment he didn’t move, just held her hips tight against his as he groaned low and deep in his chest. She shifted slightly, spreading her legs wider, and he slipped another fraction of an inch into her, just enough to make her cry out his name once more.

  He called her name in turn then, and began to move. Slowly at first, in long, smooth strokes, but then, as his control began to shatter, in harder, fiercer thrusts. Sam thrilled to the sight and feel of him, her studious, brilliant, shy professor, driven to this.

  It was her last coherent thought. Her own formidable control deserted her as her body drew tighter and tighter, until she thought her nerves must be fairly humming. And then Ian shifted slightly upward, and the first sliding caress of his body over hers from that new angle sent her flying. She convulsed almost violently, every muscle seeming to tighten as wave after wave of incredible sensation swept through her. She grabbed at Ian, as if only he, who had brought her to this, could save her from flying into a million pieces.