“If you do that, you’ll be sorry, Charlie. I swear, you’ll pay and you’ll pay big-time. And that’s a promise!”
The voice seemed to come out of nowhere, and even though it wasn’t terribly loud, it came to him over the drone of voices behind him. Maybe it was the passionate intensity in every word, he didn’t know, but it made him stop and turn to see where it was coming from.
There were double doors across from the elevators, one true blue, one bright red, and both shared a rainbow logo splashed across them—Just for Kids. It had to be the new location for the company child-care center, a place he’d avoided earlier when tours were being formed to see the facility.
“Charlie, you’re vermin!” the voice said and he could tell it was coming from beyond the red door, which was slightly ajar. He couldn’t hear whether or not Charlie was defending himself, but he could definitely hear the woman. “If I let you live, and at this point in time, that’s a big if, you’re going to pay for this.”
He went closer to the door. The voice, touched with a slight huskiness even through the frustration and anger, was starting to intrigue him…really intrigue him. There was the promise of murder and mayhem in the words, but the voice could have been sexy if the words had been different. That thought was shattered when he eased back the red door and glanced inside the facility as the woman ground out, “You rat! You miserable rat!” Not sexy at all at that moment.
He looked down a short, wide hallway to the center of the facility where twinkling lights seemed to be everywhere, and the scent of baking gingerbread drifted on the air. He couldn’t see anyone, but the voice was still there, somewhere ahead of where he stood.
“If you move, if you so much as turn, it’s going to be your last move.” The words were lower now, a bit muffled. “My panty hose are history, just ruined.” There was a tearing sound, and the woman gasped, “My dress! Oh, great! Now it’s ruined, too, and it’s not even mine! Jenn is going to be as mad as I am. You’ll have her to deal with after I’m through with you.”
This was none of his business, nothing to him if employees or guests got drunk and made out in the day-care center, then had a horrendous fight. Torn dresses, ruined panty hose and threats of murder—none of that stopped him going farther into the center until he could see that the twinkling lights were draped all over a climbing-frame tree that stood dead in the middle of the huge main room. Massive branches that probably masked climbing trails spread to four corners and into what looked like four separate tree houses suspended under a domed ceiling over the carpeted floor.
He was beginning to feel suspiciously like a voyeur and would have left right then if he hadn’t seen movement high in the center of the tree. It was a quick movement, little more than a flashing image of a woman with dark hair and her back to him. Then she was gone, but the voice was still there, echoing in the gingerbread-tinged air.
“What a waste, the dress, the panty hose, the stupid gingerbread family! I thought it would work. Well, color me wrong, very wrong.”
He smiled as he moved a bit closer, the voice drawing him as surely as the words she uttered. Then there was more movement at the bottom of the tree, and he could have sworn he saw a bare foot coming out of an arched hole in the trunk. It was a foot, then another, coming out soles-first, followed by an expanse of legs tangled in some material that could have been ice blue, but the lights were too low to let him see if he was right or not.
What he did know was that a woman was backing out of an arched hole in the tree trunk on her hands and knees. She was slowly inching out, showing a swell of slender hips, and all the time muttering. “Well, never again. Once burned, that’s it with me. You’ve run out of chances, Charlie.”
A narrow waist, then she was out with her back to him. But he could see that she was tiny, slender, and when she shook her head, hair the color of night tumbled around her bare shoulders and partway down her back. He remembered hearing somewhere that long hair was sexy on a woman, but he hadn’t realized the truth of it until that moment. Sexy. Damn sexy. As sexy as the way the fine material of her dress defined a tiny waist, clung to her hips and the ripped hem tangled with her slender legs.
Lucky Charlie, he thought, as something stirred in him, something so basic and sexual, that it startled him. He hadn’t felt anything like this for a woman for what seemed ages, if ever. No matter what his son thought, he’d had a personal life, but right then he knew that he’d never let himself really go.
Just find some sexy woman and go with the flow? Let it happen. Relax. Chill out.
Looking at the woman, he thought that maybe it was time to just go with the flow, to let whatever happened happen and not look back. He was on his own. He wasn’t protecting anyone anymore. He wasn’t looking for a miracle. He was looking at a woman who stirred him, and he hadn’t even seen her face.
He would have spoken then, said something to get her to turn so he could see her face. As if on cue, she started to turn, one arm tucked out of sight in front of her. Quint literally felt his breath catch in his chest with anticipation as he took in her profile, the elegant sweep of her throat, a small chin, softly parted lips, a tiny nose, improbably long lashes.
Then she faced him, her features filled with delicate beauty that he knew could haunt a man’s dreams. When she saw him, dark eyes widened with shock, and in the next second, she screamed, her hands flew up, and something came flying through the air toward Quint.
Amy Blake hadn’t known there was anyone else in the day-care center until she’d turned and found a tall, lean stranger, all in black, no more than two feet from where she stood by the tree. The world suddenly moved in slow motion as her first thought was to protect herself. And that meant instinctively thrusting out her hands to ward the man off. That’s when Charlie, the fat black-and-white pet rat, flew out of her hands and sailed through the air, headed right for the stranger.
Her second thought was that no matter what misery the animal had caused her by getting loose right before she began to close up and leave, she was sending him to his death. His little legs were flailing as he flew through the air, right at the stranger’s chest.
She lunged in an effort to save the poor animal from meeting a horrible end, and realized the stranger was moving, too, right at her. In a heartbeat he had the rat in both hands, but she couldn’t stop her own momentum any more than he could stop his. She was as out of control as Charlie had been a split second ago, but she wasn’t being caught and rescued. Instead, she hit the stranger, tangling with him, feeling a stinging blow at her forehead, inhaling a jumble of scents, from gingerbread to aftershave, all layered with body heat.
The momentum kept up, the uncontrolled tumbling with the man until she hit the ground, felt the back of her head make contact with the floor, gasping as the man seemed to be everywhere. In the next heartbeat she twisted and the world stopped. All motion ceased. She’d gone from flying wildly into a stranger, to lying on top of the stranger on the floor with her eyes tightly closed.
She could literally feel his heart beating, and it took her a second to define the fact that her breasts were pressed to his chest, that his body was under hers, a hard, lean body, filled with heat and strength. A horrid thought—she hadn’t been this close to a man since Rob had died—was there before she could stop it. All she had to do was open her eyes and see the man, but she couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
She pushed back then opened her eyes and was thankful that the man was little more than a blur of darkness to her. His hand was on her arm, his fingers all but burning her skin, and she tried to jerk free. But he wasn’t imprisoning her, just holding her, and the motion of pulling hard sent
