Don’t move,” the blond said, “or he’s history.”
“I hear you,” Bernie said.
“I was hoping you’d just drive away.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Give me your gun.”
“I’m not armed.”
“Bullshit. Let’s have it.”
Bernie paused just long enough to look at what was on the security screens. One camera was pointed to the courtyard, where Bernie’s car sat. Another screen showed a large truck making its way up the winding road toward the house. In only a few seconds, it would be there. She had to do something now.
Slowly she reached beneath the hem of her dress to pull her Beretta out of the holster strapped on the inside of her thigh above her knee. Just as she kneeled down to slide it across the floor, she heard the truck’s engine outside. Seconds later, the muffled thud of doors slamming and boots on the ground told her that men were heading into the house, and when they got there, all hell was going to break loose.
The kitchen door opened. The blond turned toward the noise, angling her gun away from Jeremy. Already in a crouching position, Bernie dove at the woman, grasping her around the hips. She fell backward, her hand smacking the floor and dislodging the gun from her grasp. It slid across the hardwood floor to crash into the wall. Bernie was on her feet in an instant, still holding her gun, but the men were almost there.
“Safe room!” Bernie shouted to Jeremy. “Now!”
Bernie shoved Jeremy in front of her as they raced to the hallway at the back of the house and into his office. She slammed the door behind them, locked it, then ran to the bookcase on the far wall. She reached beneath one of the shelves, grabbed the handle, and swung the bookcase open to reveal a silver keypad on the wall behind it. Heavy footsteps clattered down the hall.
She spun around, double-fisting her Beretta, pointing it at the door. “Punch in the code!” she shouted at Jeremy, just as the office doorknob rattled. An instant later, somebody started kicking the door.
Jeremy hit the last number, and the safe room door clicked. He yanked it open. Bernie turned and shoved him inside at the same time a gun went off. Glancing behind her, she saw pieces of the lock on the office door go flying, and with one more smack on the door, it swung open hard, bouncing against its hinges. As the men entered the room, Bernie pulled the door closed behind them.
Then… silence.
Not only were the walls concrete, reinforced with Kevlar, they were also soundproofed. Absolutely nothing got into or out of this room unless Bernie decided it would. She paused for a moment to catch her breath, then went straight to a communications panel connected to a secure phone line and called 911.
“Robbery at 4536 Emerald Creek,” she said. “The home of Jeremy Bridges. Perpetrators are still on the premises.”
“Where are you and Mr. Bridges?”
“Safe room.”
“Anyone else in the house?”
“No.”
The operator told Bernie that the cops were on their way. Bernie told her to call them back for an all-clear when the incident was over. Then she called Mrs. Spencer and told her to lock her door and move away from the windows until the police arrived, assuring her that the burglars were most likely on the run by now. Bernie heard the apprehension in the woman’s voice, but she was a calm, levelheaded soul. Of course she was. How else could she have continued to work for Jeremy all these years?
After she hung up, Bernie pressed her palms against the wall, closed her eyes, and took a deep, cleansing breath. That had been close. Too close. Then she turned around, and any relief she felt was overwhelmed by a surge of irritation.
In the few minutes it had taken to her to make sure the room was secure and the authorities notified, Jeremy had poured himself a drink. Now he was lounging in an overstuffed leather chair, basking in the ambience of a space that looked more like a gentlemen’s club than a safe room. It came complete with walls paneled in cherry wood, a wet bar, an entertainment center that included a state-of-the-art music system, and a forty-two-inch HDTV. As he relaxed in that chair, instead of showing fear, relief, thanks, something, he looked smug. Slightly bored. Not the least bit distressed at the possibility that he might have ended up dead, and she might have, too.
“Well,” he said, with a big sigh of satisfaction. “That was fun, wasn’t it?”
For a moment, Bernie was speechless. Then her anger shot through the roof. “Fun?” she shouted. “Fun?”
“Yeah,” Jeremy said, taking another casual sip of his drink. “Really gets the old blood rushing. But I am a little disappointed. You had your gun. I think you could have taken them.”
Bernie looked at him incredulously. “Taken them? There were three of them!”
“Let’s see… three against one… when the one is you… hmm. Now, there’s a fair fight.”
“My job isn’t to take out the bad guys,” she said hotly. “It’s to get you out of the situation alive.”
“And I appreciate that. But I’ve always been a fan of old westerns, you know. I was hoping for a showdown.”
She looked at him incredulously. “Does anything bother you? Anything at all?”
“It wasn’t a kidnapping attempt. They were robbing the place. Low-end criminals. Don’t make it out to be more than it was.”
“So the blond was the inside man. She got you to disable the security around the house.”
“Exactly.”
“She must have had that gun from the time we left the hotel. Didn’t I tell you she was up to something? Didn’t I tell you?”
Jeremy shrugged. “All’s well that ends well.”
Anger and frustration roiled inside Bernie. This was it. The last straw. She’d had Jeremy Bridges up to her eyeballs, and she had no intention of dealing with him one more day.
She stalked over to his bar, grabbed a bottle of Crown Royal. She didn’t drink often, but suddenly it seemed like a really good idea. She poured a shot and tossed it down. And if one was good, two was better.
“I thought you didn’t drink on the job,” Jeremy said.
“I’m not on the job,” she said, pouring another shot. “As of this moment, I no longer work for you.”
He sighed dramatically. “Okay. How much is it going to cost me to get you to reconsider?”
She tossed down the second shot, loving the way it burned her esophagus and instigated even more anger, making her feel as if she could strangle him with her bare hands and walk away without so much as a backward glance.
“Nobody has that kind of money,” she said. “Not even you.”
“Five hundred more a month.”
She slammed the shot glass down on the bar. “I told you to get yourself another bodyguard.”
“A thousand.”
“I warned you not to bring that woman home,” Bernie said, her voice quivering with anger. “I told you I smelled trouble. And you did it anyway. I don’t give a damn if you have a death wish. But you’re not dragging me into it anymore.”
“Now, Bernie. Don’t go away mad.”
“That’s a done deal. I am mad, and I am going away. I’m done with following you around, watching you pick up women. I’m done with your cavalier attitude. I’m done with you.”
“Everybody has their price. Even you. We just haven’t found it yet.”
“Why do you care if I quit? We don’t even like each other. But for some unknown reason, you still want me around. Why is that?”
“I’m a masochist?”
“Nope. I’m the masochist for working for you longer than I ever should have. You want to play Russian roulette with your life? Fine. But you’re not playing it with mine any longer. The moment we get the all-clear, I’m out of here.”
“You didn’t have to come back. Why did you?”
“I don’t lose principals. Not even you.”
“Once they got what they wanted, they’d have been gone.”
“And within the hour, you’d have been pointing out their faces in a mug book. Maybe they were only burglars, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t ruthless burglars. Why do you think they came after us instead of clearing out? Because they didn’t want us turning them in, and they’d have done anything to stop us.”
Jeremy just shrugged. His nonchalance infuriated her. “I saved your ass,” she growled. “Don’t you ever forget that.”
“I know Mrs. Caldwell won’t. After all, I haven’t sent the check yet.”
“You just love jerking people around, don’t you? Then you fix everything by doling out just enough cash that they put up with you being a snarky pain in the ass.”
“I get my laughs where I can.”
“Laughs?” She shook her head. “If you think that’s funny, you have one screwed-up sense of humor.”
“And you have no sense of humor at all. I bet you’ve never laughed a day in your life.”
“You don’t know a damned thing about me.”
“You’re right. I don’t. As far as I know, what I see is what I get. You’re all business. Not a shred of emotion. Tough girl all the way to the bone.”
“It beats having nothing under my skin but silicone and Botox.”
“Actually, I think you should try those things sometime. You might like them.” He looked her up and down with a deliberate sweep of his eyes. “Why, I might even be persuaded to pick up the tab.”
Bernie felt that twinge of sexual awareness that always flickered whenever Jeremy looked at her like that, and she hated herself for letting it happen. It’s nothing but a power play. Don’t give him an inch.
“Keep your money, Bridges. The older you get, the more those twenty-year-old bimbos are going to cost you.”
“I believe I can still spare twenty thousand or so,” he said, tilting his head and focusing directly on her breasts. “I know a surgeon in Houston who does some damned fine work. He can take a woman from B to D and never break a sweat.”
Bernie resisted the urge to fold her arms across her chest. “Have you ever considered dating a real woman? Just once in your life?”
“Define ‘real.’ ”
“Smart. Sensible. A woman who thinks plastic surgery is for accident victims, and that’s about it. Instead, you sleep with every living, breathing, blond-haired D-cup you can find. It doesn’t get much more juvenile than that.”
He swirled his glass, ice cubes clinking. “An attraction to beautiful women is juvenile?”
“When those beautiful women are nothing but boobs and asses to you, yes.”
“Not every encounter has to be a cerebral experience.”
“How about one, Bridges? Just one? My God. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you have a conversation with a woman under age thirty that wasn’t designed to get her into bed.”
Bernie knew she was losing it. Saying things she might regret. But for one of the very few times in her life, she couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to stop. She was full to the brim with anger fueled by a really nice alcohol buzz, and she wanted to take out every bit of frustration she’d felt with this man over the past two years and face the consequences later.
“But it’s not the conversation that gets them into bed,” she went on. “It’s your money. Without it, you’re nothing. You might be able to get by for a few more years on your good looks alone, but pretty soon you won’t even have that.” She made a scoffing noise. “And when that day comes, a real woman wouldn’t have anything to do with you.”
Jeremy’s demeanor shifted, and for the first time, anger flickered across his face. Very deliberately, he set his glass down on the coffee table and stood up. “A real woman, you say?” He took a few steps toward her, closing the gap between them. “Such as yourself?”
“You’re such an asshole.”
She turned to walk away, but he grabbed her by the arm and spun her back around. She looked down at his hand, then slowly turned her gaze back to meet his, giving him a look so frigid it could have turned Death Valley into a polar ice cap. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“Oh, yeah? Why not?”
“Because I know a dozen ways to kill a man. I’m thinking number five.”
“You could do that,” Jeremy murmured, his gaze wandering over her face. “But you won’t.”
“I wouldn’t bank on that.”
“You want to do a lot of things to me right now,” he murmured, “but killing me isn’t one of them.”
As she imagined what kinds of things he was talking about, her face heated up as if she were standing in front of an open furnace. She closed her hands into fists and realized her palms were sweating. She wanted to object. Tell him she didn’t care if he lived or died. But as he continued to challenge her with an unyielding stare, she was forced to admit the truth.
God help her, he was right.
There had been times when she watched Jeremy lust after beautiful women that she wondered what it would be like to be the object of his singleminded attention. Look at me like that, she’d thought sometimes, as her mind wandered to forbidden places. As furious as she was with him right now, just the feel of his hand against her arm triggered the kind of sexual thoughts she hated herself for having, the kind of fantasies about this man no real woman would even begin to entertain.
All at once everything seemed mixed up together—the alcohol, the flaming-hot anger shooting between them, his green eyes boring into her. Her heart had settled into a heavy, sluggish rhythm, refusing to drive enough blood to her brain to ward off the fuzzy, incoherent feeling that came from one too many whiskey shots. Light seemed to fade around the edges of her vision, blurring the room around her until the only thing she could see clearly was his handsome face and his mocking eyes.
“If you’re one of those real women,” he said, easing closer still, “why don’t you show me what I’ve been missing?”
“Why don’t you go screw yourself?”
“Good. At least you’re thinking about sex. I wasn’t sure that was possible.”
“Which is just more proof that you don’t know a damned thing about me.”
“Then maybe it’s time I found out a thing or two.”
With that, he wrapped his arm around her waist, yanked her up next to him, and slammed his mouth down on hers.
For several seconds, Bernie couldn’t fathom what was happening. She was stunned into submission, her head swimming with disbelief.
He was kissing her?
She’d expected verbal sparring, but not this. Never this. Her brain, still disoriented, refused to react, which gave him the opportunity to slide his other hand up her back and clamp it around the nape of her neck. He kissed her long and hard, consuming her mouth with his until she couldn’t catch a breath. She cursed herself for downing those shots of Crown. Her brain felt so hazy that it was several seconds before she finally wrenched her lips away from his.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she said.
“Nothing you haven’t been asking me to do.”
“Asking you to do? Are you out of your freakin’ mind?”
“If I am,” he said breathlessly, “then stop me.”
He smothered her lips with another kiss. He moved forward, one step, then another, until he’d backed her against the wall. She made a halfhearted move to shudder away, but he held on, kissing her until the room spun around her.
Stop him, stop him, stop him…
The words swirled around in her mind but never took hold. She’d always imagined Jeremy to be cool and calculating with women, but something had bubbled to the surface she’d never anticipated, something wild and scorching and out of control.
And it was making her hotter by the second.
He was right. She could have smacked her knee right to the place that would shut him down in an instant. But now that the dark, hidden fantasy she’d denied for so long was finally coming to life, all she wanted to do was melt into his kiss, to feel like the woman he had never believed she was.
But he wasn’t on the same page. Not even close. She knew he felt nothing for her. His kiss was intimidation. Proof he could control her whether she liked it or not. A power play designed to ultimately humiliate her. If she didn’t put a stop to it right now, she’d regret it forever.
She jerked her head to one side, dislodging her lips from his, only to feel his hot breath skate along her cheek. “I’ll have you arrested for this, you son of a bitch.”
“It’s only a crime when a woman isn’t willing.”
“Willing? What the hell makes you think I’m willing?”
He pressed his forearm against her shoulder, trapping her against the wall as he cradled her chin between his thumb and forefinger. With his other hand, he clutched the hem of her dress, pulling it upward until his palm rested against her bare thigh. She jumped as if he’d touched her with a lit match. He inched his palm upward, staring at her with an expression of lust so primitive and powerful it paralyzed her. She had the sudden irrational thought that a surge of superhuman strength might be waiting beneath that lust, and if she so much as blinked, it would come roaring out. But worse than that, she discovered something truly insidious about that irrational fear.
It made her even hotter than she already was.
She fought to hold on to her anger, but it seemed to melt into the wall behind her, leaving her more vulnerable to him than she’d ever felt before. He moved his knee between hers, pressing them apart at the same time his hand burned a path upward along her leg. He reached the apex of her thighs and cupped the crotch of her panties, teasing one finger lightly back and forth. Just one small touch, and she shuddered with pleasure. Knowing her expression was giving her away, she tried to turn her head, but he grasped her chin more tightly and turned it back, tormenting her with those unrelenting green eyes. She held her breath, desperate for his touch even as she cursed herself for it. Then he curled his finger around the edge of her panties and slid it beneath them, discovering the truth she couldn’t hide.
She was hot and slick with desire.
When a smile of satisfaction crossed his lips, it was as if he’d shaken her awake from a rapturous dream to the harsh reality of day. Humiliation surged through her.
“You bastard,” she said. “Let go of me!”
“Come on, Bernie,” he said, his voice low and raspy. “We both know that if you really wanted me to stop, you wouldn’t be talking at all. I’d be on my back on the floor before I knew what hit me.”
In that moment, something shifted inside her. Yes, she wanted him. She wanted him like a woman crawling through the desert wanted a drink of water, and denying it any longer would only make her look like a fool. But suddenly she didn’t feel the least bit vulnerable to the games he played. Jeremy lived to control everyone and everything in his midst, but he sure as hell didn’t control her.
Thanks for the suggestion, Bridges.
She took him by the shoulders, spun him around ninety degrees, drove her hip into his, and flipped him onto his ten-thousand-dollar Persian rug. Before he could recover, she was on her knees beside him, her hand wrapped around his throat. She saw the shock on his face, but to his credit, it took him only a few seconds to erase that expression and replace it with one that was considerably more unconcerned.
“What a disappointment,” he said, his voice a little breathless. “Does this mean sex is off the table?”
“Oh, no. It’s very much on the table. But from here on out, I’m running this show.”