He liked the enveloping silence. It comforted him; it was so far removed from the constant cacaphony of his youth.
Just as he was almost out of his office the phone rang. Rocco turned back and picked it up. He heard what the person on the other end said and his whole body tautened. He bit out his words. ‘Send her up to me.’
Tension kept Rocco’s body tight as he walked to his lift and watched the numbers ascend. Someone was here asking for Steven Murray. There was a pause when the lift stopped, and in the split second before the doors opened Rocco had a prickling sensation of something momentous about to happen.
The doors opened to reveal the petite form of a woman dressed in a grey T-shirt, faded jeans, and what looked like a cardigan tied around her waist. Her form was lithe and compact, with small pert breasts pushing against the fabric of her top. A heavy coil of red hair lay over one shoulder, reaching almost to those breasts. Her face was pale and heart-shaped, her freckles stood out, and her eyes were huge and brown, flecked with gold and green.
Instant recognition, shock, and something much hotter slammed into Rocco as he reached in and clamped his hands around slim arms almost as if he had to touch her before doing anything else.
He breathed out incredulously. ‘You!’
CHAPTER TWO
‘YOU …’ Gracie echoed faintly, still reeling after the lift doors had opened to reveal … him. In a haze she asked, ‘What are you doing here?’
Rocco de Marco’s hands pulled her from the lift, forcing her legs to move and she heard the faint swish of the doors closing again behind her. Her heart was thumping, and shock choked her at being faced with this man again.
His hands were on her arms like vices. ‘I own this building,’ he ground out, dark eyes blazing down into hers. ‘I think the more pertinent question is this: why are you here, looking for Steven Murray?’
Dimly Gracie realised that he recognised her from that night they’d met a week ago. But there was no comfort in that. Adrenalin was pumping through her at seeing Rocco de Marco again, but from one look at his face she could take a wild guess and assume Steven was far away from this place. And in big trouble.
She couldn’t speak. She could only look up into the most arrestingly handsome features she’d ever seen for the second time in just over a week.
His grip tightened. ‘Why are you here?’
Gracie shook her head, as if that might force oxygen to her malfunctioning brain. ‘I just … I thought he might be here. I wanted to find him.’
Rocco’s mouth tightened into a flat line. ‘I think it’s safe to assume that Steven Murray is in any number of locations now—none of which are close to here if he’s got half a brain cell. He’s done what most criminals do: they go underground.’
Gracie’s heart stuttered at hearing her own fears so baldly spoken, but her innate protectiveness surged upwards even as her conscience protested. ‘He’s not a criminal.’
One of Rocco’s brows arched up. ‘No? Then what would you call stealing a million euros?’
If Rocco de Marco hadn’t been holding her arms then Gracie would have fallen down. A million euros?
‘What is he to you? Your lover?’ He almost spat the words out.
Gracie shook her head and tried to back away—a futile exercise while he still held her arms. Paramount was the need to protect Steven at all costs as she tried to assimilate this mind-boggling information.
‘I’m just worried about him. I thought he might be here.’
De Marco all but snorted. ‘He’s hardly likely to return to the scene of the crime. I don’t think he’s stupid enough to try and steal another million from the same source.’
Gracie felt trapped and claustrophobic, but fire surged up. ‘He’s not stupid!’
With a desperate wrench to get away that had more to do with this man’s intensely physical effect on her than anything else, Gracie finally freed herself from his hands and whirled around, wildly searching for escape. She spotted emergency doors in the distance and sprinted, hearing a faint curse behind her. Just as her hands were about to touch the bar her shoulders were caught and she was twirled around, landing with a heavy thud against the doors. Rocco de Marco was glaring down into her face, hands either side of her head, effectively trapping her.
On some rational level Gracie knew she shouldn’t have run, but the shock of hearing what her brother had done was too much. She realised now that she’d just made herself look as guilty as Steven.
As if reading her mind, Rocco de Marco breathed out and said in a chilling voice, ‘You’re obviously in this too—up to your pretty neck. The question is: why did you come back here? It must have been to get something important.’
She shook her head, her anger fading as fast as it had risen and leaving her feeling sick. ‘Mr de Marco, I swear I’m not involved. I’m just worried. I came because I thought Steven might be here. I don’t know anything.’
His face grew even harder and it sent a shiver through Gracie.
‘You knew who I was last week when we met.’
It wasn’t a question. She shook her head again. There was a quivery feeling in her belly at the thought of that meeting now. ‘No … I didn’t. I had no idea. Until that man came and used your name.’
As if not even listening to her, Rocco de Marco said, ‘You were there with Murray as his accomplice. You and he cooked the whole thing up.’
Gracie just shook her head. It was throbbing with a mixture of anxiety and lingering shock. Rocco de Marco’s focus seemed to come back to her, and with something that sounded like a snarl he stood up straight and took her arm, ignoring her wince. He was frogmarching her back to the lift and Gracie panicked, having visions of police waiting for her downstairs.
She started to struggle. ‘Wait … Look, please, Mr de Marco, I can explain …’
He cast her a dark look as he punched a button on the lift. ‘That’s exactly what you’re going to do.’
Fear and trepidation silenced Gracie as he pushed her into the lift ahead of him, yet kept a hold on her arm, and pressed another button once they were in. Silence, thick and tense, swirled around them, and Gracie cursed herself for coming here in the first place.
Standing next to him in the lift, she had a very real and physical sense of the disparity in their sizes. Her head barely grazed the top of his arm. His tautly muscled strength radiated outwards, enveloping her in heat. Gone was any trace of the man who had oozed warmth and seduction the night they’d met. Evidently if you moved within his rareified milieu you were accorded his attention. A few steps out of it, however, and it was an entirely different story.
Gracie did not need this situation to demonstrate to her that someone like Rocco de Marco would look right through her if he saw her in her natural habitat. Her stomach twisted. She’d faced down many opponents over the years with plucky resilience, but for the first time she recognised someone who was immovable. And more powerful than anyone she’d ever encountered.
Oh,
