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  She curled a lip at him disdainfully, giving him a raised eyebrow.

  Jonah grinned. “Some other time, someone else’s dime, huh? Russ is bigger than both of us.”

  “Leave your brother to me,” Janina suggested.

  “Gladly,” Jonah assured her. “Next time.”

  “Coward,” she muttered, but she stepped back out of the way when he slid out of the sleeping bag and slitted open the door.

  And let in the tail end of a corker of an out-of-context argument.

  “Well, it’s not like I’m asking you to join the mayonnaise-jar-and-turkey-baster donation club, so just think about it once, Russell!” Maddie shouted.

  “I’m not even having this conversation with you, Madelyn, so just forget it,” Russ shouted back from the middle of the hallway.

  “What’s she doing here?” Janina asked, none too pleased to see the woman who was her nemesis in a room catty-corner from her honeymoon suite. Not to mention seeing her brand-new husband quite obviously having just emerged from the selfsame room.

  Jonah shrugged. “At a guess? New safe-house accommodations. Ones where he can be with you and she can be near him.”

  “Ones where he can…and she can…” Janina gaped. Then swore.

  “That about sums it up.”

  “Damn you, Russ, who else am I supposed to ask?” Maddie yelled now. “I don’t want anybody else’s baby!”

  From up and down the hallway, doors of occupied rooms opened, hotel guests poked forth curious heads, assessed the situation and retreated quickly.

  “I’m not bartering my commodities with you, Maddie,” Russ retorted furiously. “Get that through your thick, one-track skull. Now.”

  “Commoditi?” Janina eyed Jonah.

  “That’s what I heard.” Jonah nodded.

  “Fine,” Maddie called sweetly. “We’ll talk about it later then. After you bring Jess back.” She slammed her door loudly.

  Russ took the steps to her door, pounded on it, ground out, “We will not talk about it later. We will not talk about it ever. We are done with this topic. Do you hear me?”

  Maddie opened her door. “No. Did you say something?” She slammed it again in his face.

  Jonah rubbed his chin, eyed Janina. “We don’t know why they’re friends. They’ve been arguing since they were six, ever since Russ told her she couldn’t go around doing her own thing in other people’s houses and she stuck her tongue out at him and flipped him off. I wasn’t there, I wasn’t born, but Mabel told me the stories.”

  “Mabel.”

  “It’s always Mabel tells the stories.”

  “Hmm.” Janina considered that. Contemplated the familiarity of it, the accompanying suspicion that didn’t quite settle, shrugged it off in the face of other things. “Did you ever think they belonged together?”

  “Who? Fuss and Bother?” Jonah assigned Russ and Maddie the brothers’ favorite growing-up names for them.

  Janina nodded.

  He shook his head. “God forbid. Oh, once they thought so maybe, for about three days in high school when Russ took her to the prom, but that ended fast. They both knew it. They’d kill each other inside a day.”

  “Really.”

  Thoughtfully, Janina watched her husband take a frustrated swipe at the air beside Maddie’s door with his foot then turn and stalk toward them, rubbing his face. When he caught sight of them he stopped short in midstep, foot in midair, a look of pained surprise on his face.

  “Aw,” he said stupidly, “hell.” He put his foot down.

  “Seems a relative place,” his brother agreed obliquely.

  Russ sent him a narrow-eyed do not go there. “What d’you know?”

  Jonah straightened, said flatly, “I know better than to safe-house two women I’ve got feelings for in the same hotel and across the hall from each other.”

  “Maddie’s not a woman—” Russ began, but the moment he got that far, two things happened simultaneously: Maddie’s door popped open and she stuck her head out to inform him, “I am, too. I’ve got two X chromosomes and everything.”

  And Janina shoved Jonah into the hallway and told him soundly, “Go home.” Then she crooked a finger at Russ. “Could I see you in here?”

  “Ah.” He looked around wildly, gave her a beleaguered, “Later. Gotta go coordinate the search for a missing woman and her kidnapper.”

  “You don’t have anyone that already?”

  “Ah. No. Sort of.” Hedging. A hand through his hair in a clear attempt to rid himself of the moment. “I’m the senior. It’s my responsibility. My case.”

  All truth as far as it went. Janina decided to tweak him—just a little. “You don’t have to stay here to protect me from Buddy. And Maddie from… What are you protecting Maddie from?”

  Silence, more pained expression coupled with bewilderment and an obvious lack of knowledge of the right thing to say to his wife under the circumstances.

  Or perhaps make that any circumstances.

  “Fine.” She relented, took pity on him. Oh man, he was cute, and in it far too deep to do more than try to unnecessarily bury history from her anyway, despite the green edges around her vision where Maddie was concerned.

  “Fine,” she said again. Her lips twitched. She eyed him up and down, found herself mmm-mmm-ing appreciatively under her breath. Even when he was getting under her skin by not talking to her, he got under her skin and heated her blood all the way from her toes to her scalp. “What were you going to do if the, er, volume of your conversation with Ms. Thorn hadn’t brought every guest on this floor out into the hallway for a look-see?”

  It took him a moment to shift mental gears, for understanding to hit him, but when he did, the change was instant. The defensiveness went out of his posture. His mouth curved with sensuous promise, eyes went hot and black. His entire attention focused on her, caressed her as potently, as heatedly, as physically as his hands might. Flowed back up to lock on her eyes, his own as deep as midnight, infinite as the stars she’d watched earlier and far more willing to find and guide her to secret lands into which only he knew the trails.

  Janina swallowed hard, slumped against the doorjamb, and puddled under the weight of the heat in his eyes.

  “I’m gone,” Jonah muttered, and went before anyone had a notion to notice or hear him.

  Janina held out a hand to Russ. “Get in here,” she ordered hoarsely.

  And predator about to take prey, wolf after mate, he came.

  They took each other, and not gently. Demanded full custody of each other’s spirits and souls, minds and hearts along with each thought and taste, thrust and parry, song and desire.

  They didn’t bother with darkness. The shadows and things half-spoken between them were enough to shroud them in dimness, enough to entertain mystery and mystique, to keep them guessing about each other and where they stood—anywhere but here. Locked together, bodies joined, his within hers around his seeding hers.

  Breaths labored, mingled, groaned.

  Kisses drugged and drugging, soft, deep, breaking away, skating flesh heated beyond burning. Skin rising to follow the tongue, the lips, the mouth. Bodies slipping together, flesh slapping gently, urgently, higher, tighter, faster, in and in and bursting in lightness, exploding in nothingness, hanging suspended in pure release….

  Then resilence and awe, wondering at the magic, insecure in the sensation of security. Gathering together the moments and the strength to begin again.

  Chapter 8

  Dawn.

  Etchings of pink low against the horizon, soft among the ridges of cloud slumbering without malice at the rim of the sky; below them sounded the clickety-clack of trains speeding east and west, forth and back, hither and beyond in an endless quest to get people and goods, commodities and shares, from one part of the country to the next.

  Within the hacienda-hotel a satisfied sigh in sleep, the shift of a palm beneath a pillow, hip and thigh to a more comfortable position. The touch of a lover easi
ng carefully out from under an arm, a leg, the head pillowed on his shoulder lest he should waken the woman he must leave.

  The gentle murmur of sheets sliding against skin, the near-silent dip and sigh of Russ’s body coming upright in the bed, rising to pad across the room, stooping to collect his clothing.

  In semidarkness he closed the bathroom door, washed and dressed as quickly and quietly as possible. If Janina woke, spoke, touched him again, he didn’t know if he’d have the strength to leave her. And he had to this time.

  Part of who he was lay in what he did. If he didn’t establish that between them now, at the start of their marriage, it was over. He was lost.

  They were lost.

  You couldn’t stop being who you were because of what you wanted to add to your life or who else you wanted to become especially if you didn’t want to stop being who you were at the same time.

  He wanted to add being a husband—and one day a father, but he also planned to continue being a cop, a native artisan alchemist-jeweler and designer, a brother, a friend —but not necessarily in that order.

  Right now, “husband” was the closest to his heart, the first thing on his mind, the most tempting to his soul and body. But “cop” and “friend” were the order of the day. Had to be. If he didn’t put them first, he wouldn’t be able to look himself in the mirror.

  Sometimes, things he saw and had seen, things he remembered, things he did—especially when his temper got away from him, even if he could almost call it justified—made it difficult enough as it was to look himself in the mirror first thing in the morning.

  “Russ?” Muzzy and delectable, Janina slipped quietly into the bathroom behind him, tucked her arms around his waist and rested her cheek against his back. “What are you doing?”

  Russ tried to ignore the feel of her, his body’s singular longing to simply sink into her and stay there forever without thought or apology. “Getting ready for work.” With an effort he made himself unlink her arms from about him, draw her away.

  “At this hour?” She squinted around trying to find a clock. “Is it even four-thirty yet? And you don’t have your uniform

  “I’ll stop for it.” Janina’s eyes widened with surprise and Russ winced. He sounded a little short, even to himself. He kissed her roughly. “Sorry. I don’t want to leave. I have to or I wouldn’t.”

  “Ah.” A smile, slow and inviting, accompanied by her hand sliding up his chest and around to cup his head, drag him down to her. “You could wait then. I promise to kick you out when I leave for work later, too.”

  “God, Janie.” He groaned into her mouth. “Don’t do this to me. I can’t. You make it too hard.”

  “That’s pretty much the point,” she murmured, wondering anew at his instant response to her. Her own need to be—to remain—part of him, one with him.

  For a moment she had him.

  Had him in his kiss, deep and sinking deeper.

  Had him in the fingers threading her hair, anchoring her to him; in the hand slipping over her rump to bring her close, tuck her high to fit him.

  And then she didn’t have him anymore.

  Because with an oath he set her away, left her startled and aching without a word or a backward glance until he reached the door to the corridor. Where he stopped and turned back, but didn’t quite look at her leaning against the bathroom doorway in half shock.

  “Someone’s removing people, players from the field, to get at Maddie and me.” The pronouncement was ragged, strained, almost harsh. “I doubt whoever it is knows about you but I can’t take that chance and Maddie’s lyin’ to me about something, so Jonah’s your watchdog today.” He stopped, drew a breath. Sent her the look of a man bemused beyond reckoning, a cop torn between duties. “Put something on. I’ll send over one of the officers with Maddie until Jonah gets here. Don’t go anywhere without him.” It was not a request.

  Then he was gone, closing the door quietly, leaving Janina gaping after him, torn among a tumult of rising emotions: desire, frustration, curiosity, concern for him and finally, overriding the others, fury at his high-handed assignment of his brother as her watchdog for the day—or however long he deemed necessary.

  Why had she never noticed this side of Russ before?

  Because she’d been too busy staring at his angel’s face, that’s why, noting his knight-in-shining deeds, wanting his blasted body commingling with hers.

  Autocratic, arrogant turkey. Well, she didn’t have to do a blasted thing he said. She eyed her state of undress in the mirror. Except maybe put something on, because she didn’t plan to flash the nation—even if “the nation” only happened to be another cop and Jonah—just to spite him.

  But she’d damn well have a good seethe-and-plotting session while she wasn’t flashing anybody. As a matter of fact…

  She grabbed a cover-up and slammed out the door after her husband, intent on catching him before he left Maddie’s room.

  “And another thing, Russ Levoie,” she said, picking up the conversation with him where she’d left it off in her head she stopped banging on Maddie’s door. The moment it cracked open, she shoved her way inside. “I do not care who you think you are, you do not—Hey!”

  Even as she shrieked, someone grabbed her, yanked her arms behind her back, slammed her face-first into the wall beside the door and handcuffed her wrists together. She yanked hard away, twisted around and lashed out with a kick that struck her captor squarely in the side of the knee, causing him to buckle a bit—at which point she hopped up and used her other foot to kick him in the groin. He let her go and doubled backward with a harsh groan, covering up.

  “Maddie!” Janina yelled, ducking between two more moving silhouettes in the shadowy early-morning light. “Maddie, are you all right?”

  “She’s fine,” Russ snapped, snatching her up under his arm before she could do more damage to either of his on-duty officers. “What’re you doing barging in here?”

  “Russ?” She swiveled her neck from side to side trying to see him. “Put me down, damn it. What was he doing handcuffing me? I was looking for you.”

  “Well, you slammed in here like some hell-for-leather perp, so what’d you think would happen? Somebody’d open the door and say, ‘C’mon in, honey, pop one in her ear?’” He dumped her upright in a chair and towered over her. “I don’t care who the hell you are. Not happenin’, babe.”

  She glared I dare you up at him. “Tell me you didn’t know it was me.”

  “I was in the bathroom with Maddie. I didn’t know it was you because I didn’t hear you. They didn’t know it was you because I hadn’t told ’em you were here.” He bent close to her, nose to nose, eye to eye, and dropped his voice, made it for her ears alone. “They didn’t know we were here. Together. Do you follow me?”

  “Oh, I follow you all right,” she muttered furiously. “I do. You just don’t want anyone to know…” Her voice trailed off. She looked at him, the warning in his eyes, the guarded expression on his face.

  “Someone’s removing players from the field…. I doubt whoever it is knows about you….”

  He saw her realization and tilted his head in the most imperceptible of nods. She squeezed her eyes shut against it. So that’s what he meant. If no one inside knew, no one outside could possibly know, either. Safer if they kept their relationship as private as possible for the moment.

  Which was what she’d told Jonah she wanted to do anyway.

  Fury slipped away in residual irritation, fleeting frustration, perplexity over who—or what—Maddie really was—what kind of danger she might really be in—and what she, Janina, could have missed by being simply sixteen and focused on only one thing during the trial and its insinuations, its aftermath.

  “Okay,” she whispered. Acquiescent now didn’t mean she couldn’t give him hell later, when the timing was more appropriate.

  Russ leaned in close, slipped his arms around her under cover of unlocking her handcuffs and left a surreptitious kiss in her hai
r. “See you for dinner if I can,” he muttered before backpedaling upright to toss the handcuffs to the slowly recovering Damiano. “You can stay here, but don’t assault any more of my men or I’ll have to run you in,” he advised her dryly and headed for the door.

  She picked up the nearest thing to hand—a book—and threw it at him. He caught it and set it neatly on a hand-crafted table, grinned at her and left.

  Janina couldn’t quite decide if she found herself truly beginning to love or hate those grins. She did, however, think she was learning to decipher them.

  The thought made her shudder with…she wasn’t sure what. Anticipation and recklessness, maybe. Because taciturn though he might appear, the man was Levoie to the bone.

  She slumped in the chair and covered her ears. And no, she didn’t need to hear George Thorogood singing inside her head a bastardized version of his lyrics to “Bad to the Bone,” that had Russ as the key player.

  The woman was frightened, crying again.

  In growing panic the thin man paced a track in the earth in front of the shelter he’d built and tried to think. When she cried, his head hurt and that made it hard for him to focus and he knew he had to. He wasn’t hurting her, he hadn’t hurt her—they gave him pills so he wouldn’t do that anymore, so he wouldn’t want to, and he didn’t want to. Hurting was wrong. But she had to stop crying so he could think. His head wasn’t right when he couldn’t think. He wasn’t right.

  He went to the shelter’s entry and tried to tell her that. “D-don’t c-cry. Y-you m-mustn’t c-cry. I c-can’t th-think when you c-cry.” He wasn’t sure if she heard him. The medication made his mouth dry, had given him a tick that made him stutter occasionally. He used the metal cup beside the five-gallon jug filled with fresh water to get a drink, tried again. “I won’t hurt you. I’m not hurting you. I just need you to help me. She won’t t-talk to me, s-see m-me. Help me. P-please.”

  He thought she quieted but couldn’t be sure. She didn’t seem as loud anyway, and that helped.

  Satisfied, he resumed his pacing, his watch, his methodical attempts to figure out what would make his daughter forgive him for all the things he’d done to her so many years ago….