One of These Nights Read online

  It wasn’t until after the meal, when Rand picked up his duffel bag and disappeared into the up-to-now unused third bedroom, then reappeared sans the bag, that he realized the significance of it. Rand was moving in.

  It made sense. If he was going to be backup, he would need to be close by.

  It also made the question of what would—or would not—happen tonight moot. If Rand was anything like Samantha, and he had to assume he was, he would never miss what was going on.

  He felt a strange combination of frustration and relief. Frustration at the removal of any chance at experiencing that wonder again, relief at the removal of the chance of rejection. A chance that had increased exponentially, it seemed, with the arrival of Draven. The irony of the fact that Draven was impersonating the man Samantha had turned to because she couldn’t have him wasn’t lost on Ian.

  When coupled with the subtle yet unmistakable edge of tension in both Samantha and Rand—he was seeing the Redstone security team on alert, he realized—it made for a long and relatively sleepless night for Ian. Which was followed by yet another night just like it, even though he was exhausted from his efforts to concentrate on his work despite the constant, overpowering presence of two trained operatives ready to move at any sign of trouble.

  He couldn’t imagine living like that, he thought as he lay staring at the ceiling in the bedroom he’d been using. It was hard enough being on the periphery.

  He wondered who had the shift tonight. He’d heard them discussing it that first night. Since they had both been handling the night shift before this, it was a split as to who got the break of sleeping at night. They ended up doing something so ordinary it took him by surprise; they flipped a coin.

  He shifted position, pounded at his pillow, even knowing it would make little difference. He hadn’t thought about how difficult Samantha’s job must have been, staying awake all night to watch him.

  To watch over him.

  Somehow when he put it like that, it didn’t seem quite so distasteful. More…protective, less like spying. Still, he surprised himself with his uncertainty about how he felt about a woman protecting him. He’d never thought of himself as a traditionalist, but still, he wasn’t quite comfortable with the idea. Which was ridiculous; it only made sense. She was the one with the training, the experience. And the idea of reversing their roles was absurd; he was hardly qualified.

  It suddenly struck him that perhaps he was uneasy because the woman in question was Samantha. That, at least, made sense to him. He didn’t like it, but it made sense. What he felt for her—whatever it was—was something so new to him he had no idea how to deal with its existence, let alone how to turn it off. So naturally he was concerned, and he didn’t like the idea of her risking herself for him.

  Then again, he didn’t like the idea of Draven, a man he’d never even met, risking himself for him, either. So maybe it was more complicated than that, maybe—

  “Sam! This is it!”

  Rand’s shout cut through Ian’s thoughts like a razor-sharp blade. He sat up. Reached to flip on a light, then stopped himself, afraid he might alert someone they didn’t want alerted. Heard running footsteps go past his door then down the stairs.

  By the time he’d pulled on some jeans and shoes, it was quiet upstairs. He raced down the stairs, stopping at the bottom to listen. He heard nothing but silence.

  It had to be something at his house. He ran to the window he’d looked out before, when he’d first seen Draven. The house was dark and quiet.

  A movement caught the corner of his eye. He looked to the left, saw two darker shadows in the shadow of the honeysuckle between here and his house. The honeysuckle Samantha had no doubt trimmed to give her better access, he realized suddenly. Shaking off the irrelevant thought, he peered at his house once more. And heard the faint sound of breaking glass.

  This was indeed it.

  Chapter 16

  The target should be most vulnerable with his hand through the hole he’d made in the glass, right…about…now, Sam thought.

  “Now,” Rand whispered, on the same beat with her thoughts.

  They had taken the first step when Rand suddenly grabbed her arm and held her back.

  “A number two. Up front,” he whispered. “I’ll take him.”

  Sam merely nodded, keeping the chance of being heard to a minimum. Rand moved quickly, yet in utter silence. She paid him scant attention, knowing he could handle whatever he found.

  They’d alerted Draven, not that it had been necessary; he’d already known. And now she used the small walkie-talkie she carried to let Draven know there were two attackers.

  He didn’t acknowledge.

  Her instincts, already humming, now kicked into high gear. She could hear sounds from the back of Ian’s house, and concentrated on her own man, edging forward with exquisite care. She knew Rand would be monitoring and would have heard Draven’s silence, so she didn’t use the little radio again; she was too close. She rounded the corner of the house and went quickly to the rear slider, which had been pried open.

  She heard a thud from inside, then a grunt. Something crashed, like a pile of something knocked over. She stepped inside, crouched for a moment, peering around the shadowy room. Another thud, and now she could tell it came from the front of the house. Rand’s man, she guessed, being taken out of the picture.

  Then she spotted a large, bulky shape in the corner near the stairway. A harsh, muttered curse in an unfamiliar voice issued from it. The shape seemed to split, then recombine. The curse came again, laced with pain this time. Draven, she thought, making it clear to the intruder the folly of his life choices.

  “The stairs!”

  Draven, yelling, just as a sudden movement above spun her around. A third man? She started to move quickly. But before she could get there the figure leaped over the stair rail, down onto the two men struggling below.

  Sam ran; as good as Draven was, this could distract him for a crucial second or two. In the darkened room it was hard to tell exactly—

  Light flooded the room. For a split second everyone, even the combatants, froze.

  “You’ve got the wrong man, idiots!”

  Sam’s heart leaped to her throat. Ian. And for the first time in her career with Redstone security, she was paralyzed, unable to act.

  But Ian’s unexpected intrusion gave Draven the distraction he needed. He moved with quick, efficient skill. In moments his original attacker was facedown with Draven’s knee on his kidneys, and the man who had swooped down from the stairs was jammed against the wall with an iron-strong forearm a fraction away from crushing his wind-pipe.

  “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” Samantha snapped at Ian, finding her voice at last.

  “I may not be Redstone security,” he snapped back, “but if you think I’m going to sit back and let somebody else risk their life for me without doing a thing, you’re wrong.”

  “That’s what we’re trained to do. You’re not!”

  “Stick to my lab, is that what you mean?”

  “I mean stay safe and let us do our job!”

  An audible clearing of a throat finally drew Sam’s attention. Draven. And the moment she looked at his face she realized both that this wasn’t the first time he’d tried to get her attention and that he was intrigued by her reaction to Ian’s unanticipated, but in the end helpful, interruption.

  “Want to take one of these problem children off my hands?” Draven suggested mildly to Sam.

  “Sure,” she muttered, hideously embarrassed that she had so lost track of the real crisis here. “Sorry.”

  She went about the familiar task of taking custody of a culprit stunned by Draven’s moves. She barely noticed the man pinned to the wall looking from Draven to Ian with puzzlement.

  But the man on the floor was quicker. “A decoy,” he said with disgust.

  “Sit,” Draven said as the man moved as if to rise. The man glared but did as he was told.

  Draven g
lanced once more at Ian. “Mr. Gamble, I presume?” he asked, reaching up to tug off the wig, revealing his own close-cropped dark hair. “John Draven.”

  “I gathered.” Ian’s voice was stiff, formal. He was looking at Draven with the same intensity Sam had seen him turn on some problem in his work, and she wasn’t sure what that meant.

  Draven seemed to notice it, as well. Sam saw the faintest of creases between his brows before he turned back to the business at hand.

  As she had better do, she realized. On some level Sam knew it was a good thing this had become routine, because her mind wasn’t focused on the job. Her thoughts were in a tangle. The moment when she’d whipped around, expecting yet another threat and instead seeing Ian directly in the path of danger, was scorched into her mind. It struck terror deep inside her, in a place she hadn’t even known existed.

  “Gee,” Rand said from the entryway as he brought in his own captive, “funny how they always deny everything, isn’t it? This guy says he’s got nothing to do with JetCal.”

  Thank God Rand wasn’t in here before, when I had my lapse, Sam thought, as Rand directed the man he held to sit on the floor beside the others. Draven, at least, was unlikely to tease her about her reaction. His sense of humor was far too subtle for that.

  “They always start out that way,” Draven agreed mildly.

  “I know my rights,” the man Sam was holding began.

  “Save it for the police,” Draven said. Then, with a small smile that was anything but reassuring, he added, “When you finally get to them, of course.”

  “What’s that mean?” Draven’s man asked warily.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Rand put in jovially. “Now and then we just rejoice in not having to follow all the rules the police do.”

  Sam would have laughed aloud at the expression on the men’s faces, had she not been so distracted. More often than not, just the realization that they weren’t dealing with rule-bound cops was enough to get amateurs like this to buckle.

  But she was distracted and more than anything wanted to simply get Ian out of here. At the same time, she didn’t want to be alone with him, not until she’d dealt with the tumult he’d caused in her when he’d burst in, putting himself at risk.

  “Why don’t you and Mr. Gamble go back next door until we get this cleaned up?” Draven said.

  It wasn’t phrased as an order, but Sam knew it was one just the same. Apparently Ian did, too, because although he hesitated, when Draven looked directly at him he grimaced, nodded and walked out the way he had come in, through the same back slider Sam had followed the first man through.

  Sam gave Draven a last look herself. If it had been somebody else, she might have suspected this was a case of get the female out of the way, but she knew better. Draven didn’t think like that. This was nothing more than the fact that Ian was her job, and until they were certain the threat to him was over, she had to stay on that job.

  Sam went after Ian at a trot, caught up with him at the honeysuckle, but said nothing as they went back to her false-front of a house.

  When they were inside, Ian turned around to face her.

  “Going to chew me out again?”

  “I should,” she muttered. “Do you have any idea what a disaster that could have become?” She didn’t want to think of what could have happened if that third man had broken free, or worse, come in behind Ian.

  “It worked out.”

  “Only because Draven’s as good as he is,” she said.

  For a moment he did nothing but look at her, studying her much as he had studied Draven. Something, some instinct she’d learned to trust, told her to stay silent.

  At last Ian smiled, almost sadly. “He is, isn’t he?”

  “What?”

  “Draven. He’s as good as they say.”

  “He’s the best,” she said, puzzled by the undertone in his voice. “But that doesn’t mean he can’t get hurt by the unexpected.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and there it was again, that almost sad note. “I was trying to keep him from getting hurt because of me, and instead I just made it worse, didn’t I?”

  “You were trying to keep Draven from getting hurt?” Sam asked, a touch of astonishment creeping into her voice despite her efforts.

  Ian smiled ruefully. “Stupid, huh, the thought of me trying to do that? But my intentions were good. And I see why now.”

  She was feeling a bit at sea here. “Why what?”

  “Why you…feel the way you do about him. A woman like you should be with a man like that.”

  It finally hit her. And took her breath away. “Ian Gamble,” she said slowly, “are you telling me you pulled that stunt because you’ve got it in your head that I love Draven?”

  “It’s all right, Samantha. I understand now.”

  She stared at him. She was sure her mouth was gaping open, but it was beyond her at the moment to do a thing about it. She wanted to yell “Are you nuts?” but bit it back. Her, in love with Draven? Hardly. It would take a crazier woman than she to make that mistake.

  “I’ll start packing up,” he said, turning to go. Then he stopped. “I will be able to go home now, won’t I?”

  “Not until we get the all-clear from…Draven,” she finished awkwardly. Ian’s assumption made it hard for her to even say his name.

  “Oh. Then I guess I’ll wait.”

  He walked into the dining room, and she saw him reach to turn on his laptop computer. Only when he sat down, obviously intending to work, did she give in to the urge to retreat. She ran up to the master bedroom and sank down on the window seat, staring out toward Ian’s house but seeing nothing. Nothing except that instant when the light had flared and she’d seen Ian standing there, drawing attention to himself, and giving Draven that precious moment of distraction he’d needed. In essence, he had protected Draven, even though he hadn’t really needed it.

  You pulled that stunt because you’ve got it in your head that I love Draven?

  It’s all right, Samantha. I understand….

  This was insane. Beyond insane. Ian, the quiet, studious professor, on a mission to sacrifice himself, to offer himself up as prey to killers in an effort to protect a man he thought she loved?

  It made no sense. Men like Ian just didn’t do things like that.

  Women like you don’t hang with guys like me.

  She drew her knees up and clasped her arms around them as his words, spoken what seemed like eons ago now, came back to her. He thought himself a geek, a nerd. Sam had never seen him like that. She might have thought it before, but once she’d laid eyes on him, that image had been blasted out of her mind forever. He was brilliant, no doubt about that, albeit in his own unique way. He was quiet, almost reserved, but also a man of strong principles.

  And however misguidedly, he’d just shown he was certainly no coward.

  So why had he done it?

  She tried putting herself in his position, which was difficult. It was often her job to protect others. But she tried, tried to imagine why someone not in her position would do what he’d done, and she could only come up with one answer.

  The only reason she could think of was caring so much for someone you didn’t want them hurt. Like she cared for Billy. Or Josh. Or the team, over and above the job.

  Caring so much you did what you could, even if it meant you were protecting the competition.

  Her breath caught anew at the implications. And hastily she shoved the door shut on that line of thought. She wasn’t going to make that mistake, letting wishful thinking convince her Ian felt something he didn’t.

  Wishful thinking? Did she want Ian to feel that way about her? For that matter, how exactly did she feel about him?

  Judging by the way her heart had slammed into her throat when Ian had stepped into harm’s way, she was afraid she already knew.

  “I’m not in love with John Draven.”

  Ian froze in the act of slipping off his other shoe as Samantha’s voice
came from the doorway.

  “I’m probably in awe of him, I admire him, respect him, and won’t deny he’s sexy in a dark and dangerous sort of way, but I don’t love him.”

  What she’d just described sounded to him like every woman’s dream man. Or, at least, it was what he’d always heard he wasn’t, as some woman explained how he was a nice guy, but…

  At last he kicked off the left shoe and looked over at her, standing in the doorway to the bedroom he’d been using. He sucked in a breath and tried to ignore that she was in only a silky-looking shirt that ended midthigh on those long legs. She looked wide awake and unmussed, and he wondered if she’d pretended to go to bed early just as he’d pretended to keep working late, just to keep a floor of the house between them.

  “I just thought you should know,” she said then, as if his silence had torn it out of her. She turned away, and before he could stop himself he called her name.

  “Samantha?” She stopped, but didn’t turn back. “Why? Why did you tell me that?”

  He thought he heard a soft sigh escape her. “Maybe because I got this crazy idea you were comparing yourself to Draven and coming up short.” She turned then, facing him in the doorway, her hands on her hips as if daring him to disagree with her. “Don’t ever think that, Ian. Draven’s damned good at what he does. But so are you.”

  “It’s hardly the same,” he said, although her words pleased him.

  “Should it be? What you do takes something special, something that neither Draven, nor I, nor anybody else I know has.”

  He thought of what she’d told his parents. She’d meant it, he thought with not a little wonder. She hadn’t just been placating them.

  “Besides,” she added, “Draven’s also the most alone man I know, except for maybe St. John. It would take more woman than I am to change that.”