Midnight Man (22 page)

His teeth crunched on something. “Some egg shell got into the scrambled eggs,” he mumbled. “Sorry.”

“Yes,” she said serenely, forking another clump of eggs onto his plate and then hers. “And you oversalted the eggs and burned the toast. But you’re forgiven. Have we exhausted the food supplies?”

“Pretty much. We’ll have to make a food run into Fork in the Road some time today.”

She considered him, head to one side, silver eyes observing him soberly, and then nodded. “Okay. I need to buy some stuff anyway.”

Female stuff, he’d bet. She could buy whatever she wanted as long as he didn’t have to know about it. If it was female stuff, he didn’t want to go there.

Suzanne pushed her plate to one side and leaned forward, searching his eyes. “So. Tell me the truth, John. I need to know. For my peace of mind, if nothing else. How long are we going to have to stay here?”

“As long as it takes,” he answered bluntly. He debated, briefly, telling her about Todd Armstrong, then decided against it. She had a right to know, and she’d be angry later. But now it was his call and he decided not to overwhelm her. He needed her to think straight and she wasn’t going to do that knowing a friend was dead, because of her. “We’re going to have to figure out what’s going on, honey. As long as we’re in the dark, we’re vulnerable. I need to ask you some questions.”

She nodded, poured herself another cup of coffee and folded her hands on the table. “Go ahead and ask.” She looked at him and waited.

John didn’t try to soften his words or pussyfoot around it. “Two men were sent to kill you. Do you have any idea why?”

She was still a long moment, and then shook her head. “No. Absolutely not. I’ve thought and thought and thought, but I can’t imagine why anyone would want to hurt me.”

“Okay. Let’s take it step by step. Let’s start with your job. What is it exactly that you do?”

She sighed. “I guess the easiest way to describe what I do is that I design spaces, both public and private. Not everyone has the time or inclination to decorate their office or home, so they call in a specialist. Me. I’ll visit the space to be decorated, come up with two or three alternatives and the client chooses which alternative he or she wants. Sometimes it’s an individual and sometimes it’s a committee. Then I arrange for the purchase of the furniture and with the help of a moving company, I’m there to set everything up.”

“Who are your clients?”

“Mainly people in the business community. Some private clients. I’ve helped in the design of three shops—two boutiques and a bookstore—and a couple of museums, too. It’s really tame stuff.”

John walked her through her clients over the past year, grilling her on every aspect of her job. She’d never worked for government agencies or for public procurement companies or defense manufacturers. Not even a software company. She wasn’t privy to any industrial secrets. She earned well but not spectacularly well. She had a small nest egg in the bank, but nothing that was worth killing for. John earned more than that per job. She’d built her business slowly, through word of mouth. Her clients were all solid citizens.

An hour later, frustrated, John rubbed the back of his neck. If there was any person on the face of the earth who had an innocuous job and a perfectly harmless life, looks like it was Suzanne.

Now for the biggie, the one he hated. He had to ask it and was dreading the answer.

“How about your love life? Any disgruntled ex-lovers, abusive former boyfriends?” John asked the question casually, but his fists were clenched under the table.

“Oh.” Suzanne looked surprised at the idea. “No, of course not.” She blushed, delightfully, but kept her eyes on his. “I, um—“ She stopped and drew in a big breath. “I haven’t…dated all that much. My mom was sick while I was in college and we were all pretty much caught up in her illness. Luckily, she’s fine now. And the past few years I’ve been concentrated on work.”

“Who’s the last guy you were seeing?”

“John…is this necessary?”

“Absolutely.” That was a lie. John didn’t know how necessary this was to the investigation. But it was certainly necessary to his peace of mind to have names to put to faces. The thought of another man’s hands on her made him sick with rage. As soon as he got a name or two he’d check them out and make damn sure they never approached Suzanne ever again.

“Okay. I guess the last man I dated was Marcus Freeman. He’s my bank manager. But it’s not—well, it was a very casual relationship. We never, um…we never—you know.” She shrugged. “The last man I, um, had a sexual relationship was Adrian Whitby, the director of the Kronen Museum. I designed their new annex. That was two years ago. We broke it off and I haven’t seen him since.”

Les was going to have to check Adrian Whitby out. John would be too tempted to smash his face in. He could maybe stomach checking Marcus Freeman out, knowing he and Suzanne hadn’t gone to bed together. The thought of another man kissing Suzanne, the thought that this creep Whitby’s cock had been in her, enraged him.

Suzanne was his. No other man was ever going to get within two feet of her. John realized he’d kill to keep it that way.

He sipped his coffee, needing to get his emotions under control, get his voice calm. Rage wasn’t a productive emotion. He sipped again and forced himself to concentrate.

“What about your family? Does your father do any sensitive work? Your brother? Sister?”

Suzanne shook her head. “We’re a small family. I’m an only child. My father is a retired college professor of literature, an expert in Chaucer. My mother is—was—a high school French teacher. She’s half French herself. They retired to Baja California, where Dad is writing what he fondly considers will be the Great American Novel. They’re perfectly pleasant, utterly harmless people.”

Another dead end. Shit. This wasn’t getting them anywhere. Frustration was an unusual emotion for him and he didn’t like it one bit. John pinched the bridge of his nose.

She’d answered his questions calmly, but he could tell she was upset. He didn’t want her upset.

What the hell?

How was it that all of a sudden Suzanne’s serenity was more important to him than information? This had never happened before. He’d never ever had any difficulty in keeping emotion separate from a mission. But there it was—he couldn’t stand to see her unhappy.

There was no precedent for these feelings in his life. What was going on? He needed to pump her, to push her harder and…he couldn’t.

There she was, at his table. Heartbreakingly beautiful and forlorn. A unicorn at the edge of the forest. He didn’t want her worried and he didn’t want her sad.

He’d walked knowingly into danger more times than he could count. He’d faced hostile gunfire. He’d even once defused a bomb. There wasn’t anything he’d back down from, anything he feared—or so he’d thought. And yet seeing Suzanne sitting in his kitchen chair, looking forlorn and frightened was more than he could bear.

He’d have sworn he didn’t have a heart, but there it was, clenching tightly in his chest.

Moving fast, he scooped Suzanne up in his arms and placed her on his lap. After an initial cry of surprise, Suzanne slumped in his arms, and put her head on his shoulder. They sat there in the calm quiet morning light. Just the feel of her in his arms, listening to her quiet breathing, pressing her head against his shoulder, calmed down something sore and inflamed deep down inside of him.

He ran the back of his forefinger down the sleeve of her nightgown, and then fingered it. It was an excuse to keep his hands on her. “That’s a pretty color. You look great in blue.” It was true. But then any color would look good on her.

“Thank you.” She turned her face up to him and smiled. “But it’s not blue.”

John looked at the pinch of material in his hand. It was blue. He raised his eyes to hers. She shook her head. Okay. Not blue. He looked back down. Yes, it was. Dammit, it was blue.

She covered his hand with hers. She was smiling up at him, looking for a moment like the woman he’d first met. Confident. Sexy. He loved seeing her like this. He’d give his right arm to keep that expression on her face.

“You have problems with colors, John. You need to learn the names, the nuances. For example, this nightgown isn’t blue, it’s robin’s egg. There are so many blues around—powder, peacock, navy, denim, Wedgwood…”

He was trying not to smile. “Okay, okay, I get it.”

“The world has a thousand colors.” She ran her hand over his bare chest, down his arm. “Let’s take your skin. You’re very tanned. I’d say your skin color is…” she cocked her head. “Earth. Maybe bark where you get more exposure to the sun. But here…” She traced a finger along his biceps, and then around to the paler skin beneath, “here I’d say you’re more a suede. I can see all sorts of different colors in you, from your hair, which is definitely ebony, with traces of pewter along the temples, to your eyes, which are gunmetal. Mouth.” Shifting in his arms, finger over his lips. The smile had changed and was no longer amused, it was pure temptation. That was the smile that got Adam into so much trouble with the snake. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Your mouth is…oh, I’d say cinnamon.” Her finger caressed the outlines of his lips. Her finger dipped into his mouth and he sucked the tip. His tongue swirled around it, exactly as it did to her nipple and he knew that’s what she was remembering by the way her lids lowered over her silvery gray eyes.

She had pure devil in her expression and he—there was no way to hide it any more—he was excited as hell. She looked down at his lap and—what a witch she was—licked her lips. His hard-on lengthened. It occurred to him that she was going to use sex as a way to forget her troubles.

Great. Worked for him.

There wasn’t anything that needed doing that couldn’t be put off for an hour. Or two. Or four. He could get into sex, big time.

Both her hands were in his hair now, fingers curled around his head. She ran her tongue around his lips and he obediently, eagerly opened his mouth. Her tongue rubbed against his.

“Mmm,” she whispered, angling her head, kissing him deeply.

Oh, yeah.

She pulled away just as he moved to pull her closer.

“Ah, ah,” she admonished, lips so close to his he could feel her warm breath, running her hands down his arms to pin his hands to his side, “no touching during the color lesson.” She exerted a little pressure on his wrists, as if to say—stay put.

He let her pin him down. It was ridiculous of course. There was no way she could force him to keep his hands off her, no way she could match his strength, but if this gave her a measure of control, when her life was spiraling out of control, then what the hell.

So he sat with Suzanne on his lap, his cock in its usual condition whenever this woman touched him, or was close to him, or even looked at him—iron hard.

The minx knew it, of course. How could she not know it, when she was sitting right over his hard-on? But she ignored it, as she continued playing with his mouth, petting him all over.

She ran her tongue around the rim of his ear, the tip following the whorls to the center, while her hands caressed his shoulders. It electrified him to feel her small wet tongue delicately probing. The hairs on the nape of his neck rose.

“Let’s see here,” she sighed. She found his right nipple in the chest hair and rubbed it. Damn, it was like an electric jolt shooting straight to his cock. She breathed in deeply, her breasts rubbing against him, as she fingered his nipple. “I’d say, here…” A pink-tipped finger rubbing around the flat areole, “here you’re brick, with copper tones, but here—“ her head dipped and she licked him, and then suckled gently, “Mm. Vermilion. Definitely.”

It wasn’t just his cock that was hard. He was hard all over, tense and tight. Clenched like a fist. Each slow, lazy lick, each pull of her mouth on his nipple shot straight to his groin.

With a smile and a sigh, she slipped off his lap, kneeling at his feet. Reaching up to his pectorals, she ran her hands over his chest, over his abdomen. The witch bit lightly at the muscles of his abdomen.

“Bay, bronze,” she whispered and her little pink tongue ran over his chest and belly to his belly button. “Sand.” The tip of her tongue fit into his belly button and she bit him, again, not so lightly this time. Her chin rubbed against his cock.

Oh God.

A pull of the strings, and the waistband of his sweats opened. She pulled the sweats down and took him in hand.