By Hook or By Crook (11 page)

He stopped in front of the fireplace, braced his arm on the mantel, and stared at the flickering flames. She had the feeling he wasn’t even seeing them; he simply wanted an excuse to turn away.

“Joe, I didn’t mean to insult you. I don’t know what to tell you. Pock is wrong for my sister. It’s no reflection on you.” She desperately needed him to understand. “My problem with Pock is not that he doesn’t have money, or that he’s an MMA fighter, or any of that stuff. He’s trying to use my sister. He just wants her to support him while he gets his MMA career established. Someone used me for my money and family connections once, and it hurt me very badly. I don’t want to see her go through that.”

His shoulders remained set, like something she couldn’t quite see churned under his still waters. After a long moment, his shoulders dropped and he turned halfway to face her, his eyes pensive.

“It’s been a long day. We ought to get some sleep. Hopefully we’ll be able to get out of here tomorrow.” He raked the fire again and added two more logs.

“Should we take turns keeping the fire going?” she ventured after a moment, when she realized he wasn’t going to directly address what she’d said.

“No. You get some more sleep. I’ll take care of the fire.” He disappeared into the bedroom and came back with a couple of pillows and another blanket. “You take the couch. I’ll curl up on the floor.”

She settled in on the sofa with her blanket and pillow as he made a place to sleep on the floor beside her. He settled closer to her than he probably needed to, but she didn’t mind. It reminded her of an illustration she’d seen in a medieval manuscript: a knight curled up at the foot of a lady’s bed, guarding her while maintaining a chaste distance to prove his courtly love.

In the chilly dimness of the cabin’s interior, it didn’t take much to imagine Joe Dunham as her chevalier. As sleep made her lids heavy, she watched the firelight flicker on his rugged face. This stubborn, difficult, loyal man had set himself to protect her, if only for the night.

****

In his office on the far south side of Vegas, Phil Cantor swore at the two men who appeared in his doorway, Jerrie fluttering behind them. He dismissed her with a scowl and waved the men into his office, shutting out his assistant’s prying eyes with a slam of the door. It rattled in its flimsy frame. You get what you pay for, Cantor figured, and he hadn’t paid a lot for this office.

“What the hell are you two doing back here? Aren’t you supposed to be finding Pock?”

The shorter of the two men, Belton, shook his head. “You sent us out there in an Acura, man. You have any idea what it’s doing in the mountains right now? It’s a freakin’ blizzard.”

Ramirez agreed. “We couldn’t do anything in that weather. We would have gotten killed if we’d stayed with it. Oya told me so. The passes are gonna be closed for sure.”

“Jesus.” Phil rose from his desk and wandered over to his office’s sole window. The view was as low-rent as the office itself—rocky scrub dotted with low vegetation. The snow-dusted mountains in the distance almost compensated for the ugliness of the near view, but not quite. “What the hell am I gonna do now? If they get through the mountains before the storm hit, we might lose them for good.”

The fight manager had been able to give a good description of the couple who had been asking about Pock, but it didn’t make up for his stupidity in replacing Pock without notifying Cantor first. Using his description, Jerrie placed a few calls and found out all about a gorgeous guy and the bitchy girl with him from the very talkative concierge who had arranged a Jeep rental for the pair. The concierge, eager to help, had volunteered that she’d requested snow chains for the Jeep at the gorgeous guy’s request. He’d explained they were heading into the Sierra Nevadas and didn’t want to take a chance, what with the forecast being so sketchy.

Ramirez lifted a cell phone from his pocket. The device looked tiny in his meaty fist. “No big deal, man. We put a beacon on the Jeep.”

Phil’s mood brightened for the first time since he’d heard about Pock taking off. “Why the hell didn’t you say so in the first place?”

“We put it on when they stopped at the gas station. We didn’t want to take the chance of losing him in the mountains.”

“Why did you need a beacon?” Phil couldn’t resist needling Ramirez. “Couldn’t Oya tell you where they went?”

“That’s not funny, man,” Ramirez said with a scowl. “You don’t fuck with Oya. She doesn’t like people who doubt her.”

Phil ran his hand down his face, rubbing his eyes as he mulled over the situation. He couldn’t risk sending these two out by themselves again. He didn’t tolerate screw-ups. At least they had thought to use a tracking beacon. If they hadn’t, he would have had to put a bullet in each of them.

This time, he had to handle it personally. Pock wouldn’t get away with double-crossing him. He’d fielded angry calls from too many powerful—and dangerous—people who’d lost money on Dykeman. How the hell would it look if he let Pock get away with it? His own life wouldn’t be worth a damn if he let some no-name thug thumb him in the eye without consequences. He’d take Ramirez with him. The mountains wouldn’t stay closed forever, and when the passes opened, he intended to be right on Pock’s trail.

****

The bruising cold woke Ivy from a sound sleep. What time was it? She peered outside. No streaks of dawn light relieved the blackness of the sky. The fire had subsided to nothing more than glowing embers, and the temperature in the cabin had dropped accordingly. Beside her on the floor, Joe slept on.

She felt a stir of pity for him. He must be exhausted. At the wheel for hours of dangerous driving, he hadn’t been able to snatch naps as she had. She pulled back her blanket and stepped lightly over him. Shivering in the frigid air, she scampered to the fireplace and added two more logs. Easing the poker out of its rack as silently as possible, she stirred the embers to life again and waited for the new logs to catch fire. When the heat flared against her face, she replaced the poker and headed back for the sanctuary of her blanket.

Intent only on climbing back into her warm cocoon, she once again stepped over Joe. She gasped as a strong warm hand caught her bare ankle and pulled. Surprised, she fell off-balance to the couch with a plop.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “I needed to put more logs on the fire.” Belatedly, she wondered why she was apologizing to him. She tried to tug her ankle out of his grip, to no avail.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

His voice, husky from sleep, and, just possibly, desire, made the fine hair on her arms stand up. The heat of his hand sizzled all the way up her leg to the inside of her thigh.

Ridiculous, really, she told herself. She’d never thought of her ankle as an erogenous zone before, but she couldn’t otherwise explain the sexual tension that flowered between them at his briefest touch.

Clearly she’d been celibate for too long.

She tried to remember how long it had been since she’d been to bed with a man. A year, at least. Chas Coffey, from her father’s club. They had dated for six months or so before she’d finally let him spend the night at her apartment. The experience had been unmemorable and never repeated.

While these thoughts spun through her mind, she realized she’d been staring at him like a frightened mouse, not answering his question. What had he asked?

“Nothing. I mean, I’m not going anywhere,” she said, and then paused to try to smooth down a flutter of inexplicable panic. “Just getting back into bed. I was cold.”

“I can fix that.”

Before she could respond, he slipped his other hand behind her knee and tugged on her leg, pulling her inexorably down until she lay half atop him. With a flick of his arm, they were huddled together inside his blanket.

Her breath caught. Her body temperature skyrocketed, likely having more to do with the impressive erection against the inside of her thigh than a mere blanket. The recognition of his arousal warmed her face. Caught unawares, she had to will herself not to tilt her hips and press against his heat. The simmering attraction she’d felt toward him since she’d met him flared to life, and she couldn’t hide it, no matter how much she wanted to.

Uncertain, she met his gaze and held it. Did he realize what he was doing to her? Did he know she could feel the hardness so blatantly against her body? One look at his face told her that he did. She held her breath, unable to react, unable to do anything except let the energy sizzle through her body. Joe Dunham seemed to have that effect on her. She bit her lip. Would he make a move? She hoped and feared he would.

Brushing a strand of hair back from her face, he raised his mouth to hers. His tongue explored her mouth, insistent yet tender. The scents of the fire, the pines, and some fragrance that belonged only to Joe overwhelmed her senses. The tension in her gut eased, lulled by the feel of his mouth on hers. She basked in his kiss for untold moments.

She would have never expected such gentleness from this tousled tough guy. It soothed her frazzled nerves and allowed her to relax. She probably should have been mentally reviewing all the reasons she shouldn’t be doing this, but instead the hum of anxiety faded and she simply enjoyed him. The heat of his body slowly penetrated hers, and her shivering gradually ceased, replaced by an entirely different frisson of excitement.

Without her intending it, her hand crept around his waist, sliding under the blanket to caress his back. Even that tame gesture seemed to set him aflame. His answering groan sent fire streaking through her veins.

She—
she
, Ivy Smithson, introvert, scholar, and dull, dutiful daughter—had what it took to attract this beautiful, prickly, unpredictable and difficult man?

Unbelievable.

He shifted, his body covering her.

His lips left hers and began a long, slow slide down her neck. She wondered if he could feel her pulse hammering in her throat. It beat so hard, she wouldn’t be surprised if he could hear it. Lost in the delight of his mouth, she didn’t realize his hand had slipped under her shirt until his fingertips closed over the tip of her breast. Electricity streaked through her, along with a dash of panic.

She jerked away. “I don’t think this is a good idea,” she said, breathless, willfully ignoring her heated body and pounding heart. “You’re working for my father! He wouldn’t like it.”

A dash of cold water couldn’t have stopped him any more effectively. Panicked by a flood of unfamiliar emotions, she had reached for the first weapon she could lay her hands on: her father’s wrath. Even in the dimness of the cabin, she could see Joe’s annoyance.

Emotion roiled her. Embarrassment at her clumsiness, relief that she’d managed to stop something she wasn’t totally comfortable with, and a tiny bit of curiosity about what would have happened if she hadn’t put a halt to it.

“Last time I checked, we’re two adults,” he pointed out. “What does your father have to do with it? Why would he even have to know?”

“I don’t like hiding things from him,” she countered, pulling the hem of her shirt down and sitting upright.

“You think other people run home to their parents with a list of everybody they’ve slept with?” he scoffed.

“Of course not. But you’re not just some guy. You’re his employee. It’s a bad idea.”

“Jesus Christ. Grow up, will you, Ivy?” He rolled over, his back to her, pulling the blanket tight around him.

Stung, she quietly moved back onto the sofa and crawled under her own blanket. The sofa felt cold and empty after sharing a blanket with Joe. The reason she’d given him was ridiculous, she admitted to herself, as she lay watching the firelight flicker against the ceiling. She’d simply felt things moving beyond her control, turning into something she’d never experienced before, and had sought to stop it, to retreat to the safe and familiar.

She didn’t hop into bed with a guy she barely knew because he made her heart beat fast and could make her blush like a sixteen-year-old. She chose partners based on shared interests, compatibility, and mutual respect.

Even then, she usually required a long series of dinner dates, trips to the theater, and social events before she moved on to a sexual relationship, if she ever did. She simply didn’t get much out of it, and saw no reason to rush into the physical.

Joe, on the other hand, seemed to be able to short-circuit all of her elaborate requirements and appeal straight to some primal part of her that she didn’t know existed. She suddenly understood why people sometimes got involved with the wrong guy...why Daisy sometimes got involved with the wrong guy.

Ivy shuddered. She had come out here to show Daisy the error of her thoughtless ways, not to adopt them herself. Joe Dunham made her nearly forget that, and that made him dangerous.

****

By morning, the blizzard had finally petered out to a drizzle of freezing rain, forming a thin layer of ice over more than a foot of fresh snow. It made for precarious footing, but Joe lifted his gaze every now and then to take in his surroundings anyway. The landscape awed him. The snowdrifts sculpted to a razor’s edge by the wind and the firs weighted with fresh snow almost made him forget the frustration of last night.

Almost.

At every step, his shoes broke through the ice and sank into the deep snow beneath, slowing his progress. He didn’t mind much. His hike to see whether anybody had plowed the main road yet also gave him some time to think, and he needed it badly.

As he’d left Ivy sleeping on the sofa this morning, he’d wrestled with a set of seriously mixed emotions. Getting involved with his biggest client’s daughter, when that client opposed the idea in no uncertain terms, was one hell of a professional blunder.