Deep Breath (7 page)

He stroked his way up her leg, breathing deeply of her scents, which were clean and sweet, earthy, like fields of flowers, like the sea. He found her center, brushed aside her soft thatch of hair, thumbed the hard knot of her clit.

She gasped, tensed, shuddered, pulled his jacket closed and tightened her grip. The intimate space grew smaller. He turned her, holding her weight as she leaned back. Her hip hit the wall for support.

And then his head bowed, the darkness around them encompassing, he slid his middle finger inside of her and teased in and out of her folds with his thumb.

He felt her muscles contract as she began to move, rolling her spine like a snake and thrusting slowly to meet his rhythm as he fucked her with his hand. She was wet and wild; he wanted to taste her, to pull his finger free and lick away her sticky sweets.

But she was close, clenching him, milking his fingers when he added another, grinding against his wrist. When she came, she burst in a silent wave, one powerful and sweeping. He felt the pulse of her contractions like a riptide pulling him down, and he straddled her leg and rubbed the engorged head of his cock against her.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered again moments later. “I’m so sorry. That was so unfair.”

He pulled his hand from between her legs and helped her smooth down her skirt before, gingerly, he took a step back and sat down. “Why are you always apologizing?”

She struggled with the hem of her dress. “Because I’m horribly selfish. I’m always thinking about me and what I want.”

“There’s nothing wrong with looking out for number one,” he said, slouching back to adjust the swollen goods.

“To the extent I do it? Even I think I’m a pig.”

He would have laughed if he wasn’t trying to catch his breath. “I think the ladies’ room is across the lobby. I’ll wait here if you want to freshen up.”

“Oh, Harry. I’m so sorry.”

“Are you still cold?”

She shook her head.

“Nervous?”

The same again.

“Then my job here is done.”

She brought up her hands to her cheeks. “You’ll let me make it up to you?”

He groaned at the thought, grew harder rather than soft. “Let’s not go there right now.”

She gave a mewling sort of guilty-sounding whine, leaned down, took his face in her hands, and kissed him. Then she scurried away. And it wasn’t until after she was gone and his hard-on was halfway to hard-off, that he realized she’d left without an apology.

At least they were making progress on one front—though he would’ve been a lot more satisfied if they’d been making it on others. Specifically, finding what they’d come for and figuring out a way to get it, get out of here, and get back to the diner all in one piece.

The sex thing could wait. Hell, the sex thing didn’t even have to happen. Georgia McLain, with her face, her hair, her outstanding body, and her hellcat ways were not a priority point of this mission. His cock might think differently, but he had yet to let the bastard run the show.

He enjoyed women. He loved women. He liked being with them in bed and out. Women were the finest thing to have ever been created—so fine that men could never have done the job of designing the same perfect fit.

That didn’t mean Harry would risk life, limb, or the covert nature of what he did for the Smithson Group for a little bit of nookie on the side.

Of course, thinking about nookie was the moment he happened to look back up and see Georgia walking toward him, her wrap in place, her skirt straight, her hair a tousled mess of strands colored like a copper mine.

All the work he’d done convincing himself of his immunity to the way she walked and looked and wore her clothes went to hell in a fiery handbasket. He was monumentally doomed. He got to his feet, adjusted his shirt and his belt and buttoned his coat, trying to decide if he had it in him to walk.

He met her in the lobby hallway before she got the chance to corner him again in the dark. He was feeling about as weak as a man could get. He needed space.

She handed him the money she’d had zipped inside a pocket smartly designed at the edge of her wrap. “Here. I’m feeling all girly, so you can be macho and pay.”

“Now there’s the smart mouth Georgia McLain I’ve come to know and love.”

She hooked her arm through his. “If you knew me, you would never have taken me shopping for a dress I can’t even afford to have dry cleaned. And if you loved me, well”—she stood on tiptoes to whisper since they’d moved back into line—“you did okay on that score.”

“Please. Don’t use the word score. Not until I’ve recovered from the fact that I didn’t.” When she opened her mouth, he quickly silenced her with two fingers pressed to her lips. “Whatever you do, do
not
say you’re sorry.”

She nodded, stood beside him while he handled the business of the donation and the receipt, then nearly ripped the reception brochure in half pulling it out of his hand.

“You’re supposed to blend in, remember?” he leaned down to remind her, catching a whiff of the soap she’d used to bathe. “That kid at Disney World act isn’t what I call blending.”

But she wasn’t listening. She was scanning the tri-fold color brochure. The first section, the second, the third, the back side of each, before starting at the beginning again. And she did so without looking where she was going. He had to guide her by both shoulders through the door from the lobby into the exhibit hall.

The low-ceilinged room didn’t have the museum-quality ambience Harry had expected. There were no glass-cased displays, ornately carved wood bases, engraved brass plaques. There were no special spotlights or velvet-draped stands. Instead, the setup reminded him of a hotel meeting hall. Dry and businesslike.

Tables covered with maroon cloths circled the room’s perimeter and were made off-limits to the public by roped dividers. In the center of the room, carpeted in an industrial gray, the caterers had set up their tables. Food, drinks. Mucho drinks.

After the earlier symposium, he figured there would be a lot of takers. And, indeed, a large segment of the crowd of a hundred and fifty or so did seem more interested in the refreshments than in the memorabilia displayed.

Not Georgia.

She had her fingers wrapped like a claw around his elbow as she propelled him toward the section designated for the personal papers the general had deemed too insignificant to warrant inclusion in his university bequests.

Harry had expected—and wasn’t disappointed to find—such things as letters from military dignitaries, correspondence from government officials, notes for the general’s soon-to-be-published memoir. The dry cleaner receipts and grocery lists did raise his brow. But hey, if people could auction Britney Spears’ chewing gum on eBay…

What he’d been surprised since the beginning of this mission to learn was that a dossier of this one’s apparent importance would be included with the rest of the junk. Except he was beginning to doubt that it was. Not with the way Georgia had nearly ripped his arm and the brochure to shreds.

“Okay. Something is wrong,” she finally said, having matched up every item on the table with those listed in the leaflet. She reached for a flute of champagne from a passing server, gulped half of it down. “There’s a lockbox of miscellaneous documents related to Duggin’s contract work that’s supposed to be here. It’s not. I can’t find it.”

“You sure?” A lockbox of miscellaneous documents? Was that where she expected to find the dossier?

She punched him in the shoulder, downed the rest of the champagne. “I’ve done everything but look under the table. It’s not here.”

“Maybe it’s in one of the other sections.” He glanced around. There were a lot of other tables set up around the room. They’d only looked at this one.

They could have looked at two hundred. It wouldn’t have changed the fact that he’d put all his eggs into the basket of an unreliable source. He knew better. He should have spread his inquiries further into the field. In short, he’d fucked up. What Georgia was looking for—meaning what he was looking for—wasn’t even here.

“C’mon,” he said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and guiding her away from the table she was reluctant to leave. The champagne wasn’t much of a help. By the time they’d made their way around the entire room, she was holding her fourth flute. And she wasn’t walking so well.

Neither one of them had eaten anything since she’d bought the Cokes and peanuts this afternoon, so he took the drink from her hand and herded her forcefully toward the food.

He loaded a plate with shrimp things and crab things and puffy ham and cheese things before following her back to the original table and forcing her to eat.

“What makes you think this dossier you’re looking for is in this lockbox?”

“Where else would it be?” she hedged.

Avoidance wasn’t going to cut it. He had to pin her down. “Unless you’ve actually seen it in there, then it could be in almost any city in any country in the world.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “General Duggin lived here. In Texas.”

“He traveled all over the world, didn’t he?”

“He lived here,” she said, her words measured, clear, and sharp.

Harry was seconds from writing off this exercise as a huge waste of time. And if not for the innocent people being held at the diner, he would.

But until they were out of harm’s way and he picked up another lead to follow, he didn’t have much in the way of options but sticking this one out.

That didn’t make him any happier. “What you’re saying, then, is that you really don’t know.”

She swallowed a cheesy quiche thing almost whole. “What I’m saying—”

“Georgia? Georgia McLain?”

Both Harry and Georgia turned at the interruption. The man who had butted into their business was older, probably the general’s age, and dressed in a three-piece tweed complete with a watch fob and wire-rimmed glasses.

When Georgia didn’t respond except to frown, Harry stepped in. “I’m sorry. I don’t believe the lady knows you.”

“She wouldn’t, of course.” The older man smiled, held his lapels, and laughed. “I only recognize her from a photo I once saw. It was a long time ago, so I wasn’t sure. It’s just your eyes. They still look the same.”

At Harry’s side, Georgia was shaking her head. “Where would you have seen a picture of me?”

“Your father showed it to me. He always carried pictures of both you and your brother.”

“You knew my father?” she asked, sagging into Harry’s side. “When? How?”

“Oh, I apologize. Let me introduce myself.” He removed his glasses, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. “My name is Paul Valoren.”

“You were the symposium speaker,” Harry said, taking in the other man’s head of thick white hair and his even thicker waistline. What else had the invitation said? “You’re a professor…”

“Political science, yes. At Stanford.” Valoren returned his clean glasses to his face. “I take it you didn’t attend my speech.”

“We were late getting into Dallas,” Harry said, a weak explanation but all that came to mind, and true enough. He was still waiting for Georgia to react. Valoren seemed to be doing the same.

She finally did, rubbing a hand over her forehead. “I’m sorry. I don’t recognize your name. Then again, I have had way too much champagne.”

Valoren laughed, a strangely deep twitter. “Don’t worry, Miss McLain. I knew Stanley a very long time ago. I doubt he would have had reason to mention me to the little girl you would’ve been.”

“You served with him in the military? Or did you know him when he worked for TotalSky?”

“Actually, both,” he said, scuffing the sole of one shoe over the carpet.

Harry wondered what the other man was thinking because the nervous gesture was a dead giveaway that his mind wasn’t in the moment. “If we’d known that, we would’ve made an effort to get here in time to hear you speak.”

“Oh, who wants to hear an old man blather on about politics in the military, uh, I didn’t catch your name…”

“Harry.” He extended his hand. Valoren’s grip was firm, his palm damp. “Harry van Zandt. And from the look of things, you had a decent size crowd.”

The older man smiled. “Ah, but how many came late as you did, for the food and the drink and the preview?”

“Professor Valoren—”

“Please call me Paul,” he said to Georgia.

“Paul, do you know anything about the documents up for auction? Looking at the listing”—she glanced down at the mangled paper she held—“it seems there are some items missing from the display.”

Valoren leaned to the side to study the brochure. “I don’t really know anything, no. Were you interested in something in particular?”

“Yes,” Georgia got out before Harry managed to grab her elbow and squeeze. She nudged him in the side. Hard. “It’s nothing important.”

“If you’re asking, then of course it’s important,” the professor insisted.

Georgia gave a small shrug. “It’s just that he kept up a correspondence with my father while he was away. I thought it would be nice to have those letters. No one’s been able to find them for me, so I was hoping they’d turn up here. I’m being too sentimental, I suppose.”

“One either is sentimental or isn’t,” Valoren said, reaching for her hand. “I don’t believe it is possible to be too much so. Maybe one of the employees from the auction house can help you?”

“I’ll check with them, thanks,” Georgia said, adding a sigh and impressing Harry all to hell with her improv skills. “It’s so nice to meet someone who knew my father.”

Valoren looked from Georgia to Harry and back. “How long will you two be in Dallas? Perhaps we could do lunch tomorrow? Or Sunday before the auction? I’m actually scheduled to fly home Monday evening, so that day isn’t out of the question.”

Harry wanted to find out more about the man before making a commitment. He liked an even footing. Right now that was not what he had. “How can we get in touch with you?”

“Oh.” The other man scrambled to find a card. “I’m staying at the Adam’s Mark. You can reach me there, or leave a message with my service. The number is on the card.”

“Thanks.” Harry flicked the card once, then pocketed it. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Professor. But I think I need to get Georgia back to our room. It’s been a very long day.”