Loe raamatut: «One Night In Texas»

1

HE SAT ALONE at the bar, a darkly handsome man surrounded by an aura of mystery that made the very air around him quiver with tension. Underdressed for the trendy Seattle hotel club, he wore a pair of jeans and a fitted black T-shirt, but after one look at those eyes, not a soul would have suggested he adhere to a dress code.

At least fifteen minutes had passed since the drink in front of him had touched his lips. He paid no attention to the lively atmosphere in the club. Ignored the bartender when he spoke to him. Barely moved a muscle.

He only had eyes for her.

Sitting at a nearby table, she felt the power of his presence like a knockout punch. No matter how many times she looked away, when she glanced back, his gaze was still fixed on her, his eyes like daggers that could rip right through the fabric of her dress and leave her completely naked.

The game continued between them for several more minutes. At his unrelenting attention, her cheeks flushed and her skin grew taut and prickly.

He wanted her. She knew it. They’d never exchanged a word, yet still she knew it.

Then, inexplicably, he turned away. Rising from the bar, he tossed down a bill and then headed for the door of the club.

Disappointment surged through her. She told herself it was for the best, that she had no business messing with a man who exuded danger, but the sexual tension he radiated still made fantasies spring to her mind.

But as he neared the door, he slowed down. Stopped. Turning around, he met her eyes again.

And waited.

But even as he issued the invitation, his eyes flashed a warning. He was telling her that if she gave in to temptation, she did so at her own risk.

Some unfathomable force drove her to stand. Saying nothing to her friends, she sidestepped the table and walked toward the doorway, as if an invisible thread were drawing her to him.

Even if she was having second thoughts, he didn’t give her the chance to reconsider. Without a word, he took her by the hand and headed for the elevators, forcing her to keep up with his long, purposeful strides. He led her straight into an open elevator, and as the doors closed, the tension between them reached a crescendo. He backed her against the wall and kissed her, bringing those fantasies to life in ways she never could have imagined. And by the time they reached his room—

“Hey, lady! Watch where you’re going!”

A hand clamped down on Alyssa’s arm and pulled her backward at the same time a car horn blared. She whipped around to find that the hand on her arm belonged to an older man who had just pulled her out of the path of an oncoming car.

She stared at him dumbly, then glanced at the traffic whizzing by. Good Lord. What was the matter with her?

She blinked, bringing herself back to reality. “Thank you,” she told the man. “I—I don’t know what I was thinking.”

He gave her a smile. “You must have been daydreaming.”

“Yes,” she said. “I guess I was.”

“Better be more careful next time,” he said as he continued down the street.

Alyssa stood there for a moment, collecting her wits and chastising herself for walking around in traffic like some kind of loony romantic with her head in the clouds. She’d spent a lot of time in the past six months thinking about what had happened in Seattle, but this was the first time that preoccupation had nearly gotten her killed. In every other aspect of her life, she had her head on straight. So why was it that the memory of that man could still make her behave like an idiot?

Oh, hell. She knew why. Because the week she’d spent with him had been the most incredible experience of her life and no man since had measured up. Not one of them had even come close.

Particularly the man she’d met today.

She’d left the restaurant a few minutes ago, thankful she’d agreed to meet him for an early lunch and not dinner. Of course, for the right man, she could have stretched her hour-long lunch into two, but this guy hadn’t even been worth a coffee break.

Not that he was unattractive. He was tall and blond with surfer-boy good looks—every woman in the place had noticed him. Unfortunately he’d turned out to be the most smug, self-centered, self-important man she’d ever met.

The light turned red and the Walk sign came on. Alyssa had just stepped off the curb when she heard a voice behind her.

“Alyssa! Wait!”

She turned to see her sister, Kim, hurrying down the sidewalk toward her, moving clumsily in her too-tall heels, the breeze swirling her hair into a copper cloud around her head. She stopped in front of Alyssa, breathing hard.

Alyssa looked at her incredulously. “Kim? What are you doing here?”

“I was sitting in the coffeehouse across the street from the restaurant, waiting for you to come out. But you left so quickly I had a hard time catching up.” She wiped a strand of windblown hair from her face and flashed Alyssa a big grin. “So? How was your date with Tom?”

Oh, Lord. That goofy smile again. Ever since Kim had gotten engaged, she’d become The Stepford Sister, with a mission to make Alyssa as ecstatically happy as she was. Unfortunately that meant setting her up with anyone she could find who was male and had a pulse. Since Alyssa had been transferred from Seattle several months ago, Kim had talked her into four blind dates, and every one of them had been a disaster. And this guy—a neighbor of Kim’s fiancé—had been the worst one yet.

“How was it?” Alyssa said. “Well, let’s see…have you ever listened to somebody talk about himself?”

“Sure.”

“For an entire hour?”

Kim’s buoyant smile sank into a frown. “Oh, come on. He couldn’t have been that bad.”

“Do you know what he does for a living?”

“Yeah. He sells luxury cars. Jeff says he makes a lot of money.”

“Oh, yeah. He told me he made big bucks last year, but—hush, hush—what the IRS doesn’t know won’t hurt them.”

Kim winced. “Well, if he sells cars, he probably drives a nice one, right?”

“Sure he does. It’s very expensive and classy and prestigious, you know, and he told me if I’m very, very lucky, he might take me for a ride in it someday. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

Kim’s expression grew progressively more pained. She shrugged weakly. “Okay. But at least it sounds as if he likes to talk. Beats the silent type.”

“Only if we’d had an actual conversation. It was more like pontification. I got to hear about The World According to Tom. Religion, politics, sex, the stock market—I heard it all. I’d be willing to bet he couldn’t even tell you my name.”

“Come on, Alyssa. There must have been something good about him.”

“Kim,” she said sharply, “the man could barely eat because he was so busy patting himself on the back!”

Kim held up her palm. “Okay. I get the picture. I just thought you two might get along, you know? After all, you went to the same university.”

“So did ten thousand other people.”

“So you have nothing in common?”

“Yes. We do. We both have opposable thumbs and walk upright. But I’m looking for a little more compatibility than being part of the same species.”

“But opposites attract. Everyone knows that.”

“No, they don’t. That’s a myth perpetuated by people who screwed up and married somebody totally wrong for them and now they’re looking for a way to explain the dumb choice they made.”

“Okay, so this one didn’t work out. But there’s still that other guy Jeff works with. The one who—”

Alyssa held up her hand. “No. No more blind dates. Just let me make my own choices from now on, okay?”

“So the men you pick will be better?”

“Yes!”

“Like Mr. Wonderful in Seattle? The man who had an affair with you for a week, lied to you about who he was, then disappeared without a trace?”

Alyssa cringed. Whenever she thought about that time in Seattle, she tried very hard to edit out the way it had ended. The week they’d spent together had been incredible, and not just because of the sex. He said he’d never been to Seattle before, so she’d shown him the sights, taking him to museums and parks and restaurants and enjoying his company more with every moment that had passed. She’d shared more intimate details about her life with him than with any man she’d ever known. She’d told him about her family, her job, her volunteer work, and he’d listened with rapt attention, as if she were the most fascinating woman he’d ever met. She knew she couldn’t have been. Not even close. She didn’t consider herself to be an unattractive woman, but fascinating she wasn’t.

Still, in spite of her rational, reasonable nature that told her how crazy it was, she’d begun to imagine what forever with him might be like. Then she’d awoken one morning to find him gone, with only a cursory note left behind. It’s been fun, but I have to go. Derek.

She’d told herself to let it drop, to forget him, to pretend the week had never happened, because it clearly hadn’t meant as much to him as it had to her. But she couldn’t stop herself from trying to find him. And that was when she’d made the most painful discovery of all: every word out of his mouth had been a lie.

Derek Stafford didn’t exist. Not in Kansas City, anyway. He’d never worked for Primus Engineering, because it didn’t exist, either. He hadn’t attended the University of Kansas and Oak Park High School had never heard of him. And slowly she’d realized that while she’d told him everything about herself, he’d offered her almost nothing in return aside from a few basic facts, all of which had turned out to be lies.

She’d felt like a fool. How could she have fallen so hard for a man who hadn’t cared about her in the least? Of course, she was acting like an even bigger fool now for wasting time thinking about him at all.

Kim was right. Anything beat a man who was there one day, gone the next, with no goodbye, not even a halfhearted attempt at the old “It’s not you, it’s me” excuse. Just a note on his pillow and a trail of lies to remember him by.

“He was probably married, you know,” Kim said.

“I know.”

“Or just a world-class jerk.”

“I know.”

“Or both.”

Alyssa sighed. “I know.”

“You need to stay away from guys like him. Go for ones who’ll offer you some kind of future.”

“Who are also self-important snobs?”

“Okay, then, tell me. If Tom was a dud, what are you looking for in a man?”

She didn’t know, exactly. It was so hard to describe the man she saw in her head sometimes that it would sound stupid to say it out loud. She wanted a man who was interesting. A man who was exciting, who knew how to excite her.

Her mystery man in Seattle.

He lied to you and left you, and you’re still obsessing? What’s the matter with you?

Kim sighed. “Look. All I’m trying to say is that you may be looking for something that’s just not reality. If you’re still waiting for that dashing man to ride up on his white horse and sweep you off your feet, you’re going to be alone for the rest of your life.”

Intellectually, Alyssa knew her sister was right. Still, something inside her said it was better to be alone than with a man who demanded everything and gave nothing.

“After all,” Kim went on, “you’re pushing thirty. You need to be thinking about settling down.”

“I’ve got a good job. I don’t need a man to take care of me.”

“You’ve got a job that requires you to work twelve hours a day and pays you for eight. Lawrence Teague is a gazillionaire, but does he pay you what you’re worth? If you didn’t get an apartment out of the deal, it’d be slave wages.”

“I make enough. And I like my job.”

“Right. Running in circles for a bunch of rich people. Sounds like a real blast to me.”

Kim just didn’t get it. Yes, the people who lived at the Waterford were wealthy. After all, it was arguably the most prestigious apartment building in the city of Dallas, one of seven identical buildings owned by Starlight Properties in major metro areas across the country. It climbed twenty-three stories into the North Dallas skyline, offering housekeeping services, a state-of-the-art security system, an on-site spa and hair salon, as well as a health club. As Tenant Relations Manager, it was a challenging task for Alyssa to keep everyone in the building happy and life running smoothly, but she thrived on it.

“Speaking of Mr. Teague,” Alyssa said, “he’s flying from Houston to Dallas early tomorrow morning. I’m picking him up at the airport.”

“Good. That’d be a great time to ask him for a raise.”

Alyssa ignored her sister’s remark, thinking instead about her most important task whenever Mr. Teague came to town: making sure he got star treatment. That meant picking him up in a limousine, putting fresh flowers in his suite, having his clothes cleaned and pressed if necessary, making reservations wherever he chose to dine. He might own the building, but she was the hostess there to welcome him to his home away from home.

Alyssa’s cell phone rang and she pulled it out and put it to her ear. As soon as she heard the panicked voice speaking broken English interspersed with Spanish expletives, she knew her problem-solving abilities were about to be put to the test.

After determining the gist of the problem, Alyssa hung up and turned to Kim. “One of the housekeepers accidentally broke a vase in the penthouse apartment.”

“Oops. Better hope it’s something cheap.”

“Up there, nothing’s cheap.” Alyssa shoved the cell phone back into her purse. “Gotta go.”

“I’m sorry your date sucked,” Kim said. “I’ll try to do better next time.”

“Kim? Didn’t I tell you there isn’t going to be a next time?”

Kim just flashed one of her “that’s what you think” smiles. Alyssa wanted to scream with frustration. But instead of fighting it, she merely said goodbye and double-timed it up the street to the Waterford. Right now the problem in Gerald Owens’s penthouse was more pressing than her problem with her sister’s matchmaking.

Okay. A broken vase. That was only a minor crisis, one she could deal with long before Mr. Teague arrived tomorrow morning. By the time he got here, he’d see nothing but a smoothly operated building and four hundred happy tenants.

AS DEREK STONE strode through the parking garage of the Waterford, he felt that familiar rush of adrenaline that pulled every nerve taut and heightened all his senses. Even though the intelligence he’d received about this situation was reliable and the job had been scripted right down to the last footstep, that trace of uncertainty kept his head up and his body on full alert.

He passed one late-model luxury vehicle after another, testimonies to the wealth of the people who lived in this building. If Gerald Owens occupied the penthouse, his business of gathering blackmail information on U.S. government officials had to be pretty lucrative. Maybe even as lucrative as Derek’s business, which today just happened to involve retrieving blackmail information before it could cause a government incident.

Derek adjusted his earpiece to make sure the communication was loud and clear between him and the surveillance van parked across the street, and then he pulled his backpack more securely over his shoulder. When he reached the door that led to the private elevator lobby, he glanced over his shoulder and saw no one else in the vicinity.

“I’m at the door,” he said softly.

Through his earpiece, Derek heard the soft clacking of Kevin’s fingers on his computer keyboard. A moment later the door lock clicked open. Derek entered the lobby and headed for the private elevator that led directly to the penthouse suite.

“I’m in,” he said.

Derek listened to a few more seconds of Kevin’s keyboard clacking and then the lock clicked behind him.

Perfect.

Derek loved tightly integrated high-tech security systems like this one, because it made his job so much easier. Once they were breached, all it took was a few keystrokes to open doors all over the place. Not that the average hacker could penetrate a sophisticated system like the one at the Waterford, but the men on Derek’s team left average in the dust.

“Okay,” Derek said. “I’m at the elevator.”

“I’ve bypassed the circuit that reads the key card,” Kevin said in his ear. “Just punch in the code. It’s sixty-eight, fifty-four. That’s six, eight, five, four.”

Derek entered the numbers and the elevator doors opened.

“You’re a genius, Kevin.”

“Uh-huh. Can we talk about that raise now?”

“Don’t get cocky.”

As the elevator ascended, Kevin said, “The doors will open into the apartment itself. You can head to the safe right away.”

Two days ago, Derek’s contact in Washington had approached him about Congressman Galloway’s problem. In spite of the tight time frame and the possibility of a dozen things going wrong, Derek took the job. His team, as always, had risen to the challenge. They’d begun analyzing the intelligence, planning a breach of the building’s security system, and surveilling Gerald Owens.

Fortunately for Owens, Derek’s contact in Washington didn’t want him arrested or charged. He merely wanted the blackmail material Owens had gathered on Congressman Galloway to be retrieved and destroyed. Owens was only the hired help, anyway. Derek’s contact didn’t know who had ordered the man to gather the blackmail material, and he didn’t care. Making arrests in this case would only bring out into the open what needed to stay firmly under the rug—namely, that Galloway had a fondness for dressing in women’s clothing. If Derek didn’t retrieve the DVD that showed the congressman’s fetish in action, one of two things was going to happen on Monday morning. Either Galloway would vote against the trade bill coming to the House floor, a bill that would greatly restrict the import of certain Chinese goods to America, or Galloway would release the DVD to the press, revealing that Galloway was one of those men who knew Victoria’s secret. Once his redneck, gun-toting constituency from east Texas got wind of that, Galloway’s chances of reelection were nil.

As the elevator neared the top floor of the building, Derek pulled a ski mask from his pocket and put it on. If something went wrong inside the apartment, the last thing he wanted was for somebody to give his description to the police, which could lead to an artist’s rendering of his face being splashed all over the evening news. His team worked independently from contract to contract, sanctioned by the federal government but with no traceable ties to it. Translation: if something goes wrong, you’re on your own.

Derek mentally reviewed the floor plan of the apartment. A study of the architectural drawings of the building had told him where the safe was and the most direct route to it. He couldn’t say for sure that the blackmail material would be there—nothing was one-hundred-percent certain—but the intelligence reports had all pointed to this man, this building and this safe. A pair of Derek’s men were tailing Owens right now, ensuring that he stayed on the golf course long enough for Derek to break in. The housekeeping staff maintained a rigid schedule, which meant that the maid had already come and gone, and with Kevin in the van opening doors and keeping watch, this job was going to go off without a hitch.

And, most importantly, his team’s perfect record would stay intact.