routinely provided protection for important participants, but Sonia knew Craig wouldn’t have put up with Shadow if she hadn’t been along.
When they’d been in Washington, she’d had more than a moment or two of worry when she realized how volatile certain groups could be. Mention oil and the ecologists cocked their panic guns at the same time that people with vested interests in fossil fuels got touchy. So a little prudence was called for, but Sonia certainly had no intention of living her life in a perpetual state of paranoia. She resented Shadow as she resented toothaches, and glancing back at their tail, she felt a damper clamp down on her ebullient mood.
“The conference is over. We don’t have to have him with us if we’re just going out for a few hours, do we?” she pleaded.
For a moment, she thought Craig hadn’t heard her. His foot pressed down on the accelerator as the light turned green. He adjusted the car’s ventilation to let in some fresh air, loosened his tie and weaved promptly around a driver who was straddling two lanes.
“Of course we don’t,” he said finally.
And immediately regretted that decision. He knew Sonia hated their tail, and he knew she’d guessed that Shadow was there primarily to protect her. Craig would never have put up with Shadow for himself alone, regardless of the knife someone had tried to poke at him in Sheridan, Wyoming, two years before. Sonia didn’t know about that, and never would. At the time, he’d hadn’t known whether his attacker was after his wallet or angry over his work with shale oil. It didn’t matter. Sonia did.
He couldn’t stand the thought of something happening to her.
For the past three days, though, whenever he spotted Shadow’s car in his rearview mirror, he felt like a pretentious fool. He might have a little money, and for a short while maybe he was in a modest limelight. He was still just a man, and a man who’d known how to defend himself from the time he was nine.
In protecting Sonia, however, it was unlike him to let his better judgment be swayed by impulse. He didn’t like big cities and knew the conference had received national publicity, so he had no regrets about taking on Shadow-but dammit, at the moment he just wanted to be with his wife. He wanted the freedom to make her laugh, to talk nonsense and simply
After he parked the car in the hotel garage, Craig stalked back to have a word with the other man. Sonia waited by the car until he returned. “What’d you say to him?” she asked.
“That we were retiring for the night.”
Her chuckle was delighted; her bright eyes were sparkling. “So we get to escape from the big bad wolf?”
“Sonia-”
“Oh, Lord, what if he decides to read the paper in the lobby? We’d better sneak down to the back door.”
He shook his head ruefully, loving her bubble excitement, knowing exactly how much they both valued their privacy. “You’ve been reading too many spy stories. But if we’re going to take off like thieves in the night, we’d better change clothes.” His finger just touched her nose. “Think you could manage to look mousy and inconspicuous for a little while?”
“I’ll fade right into the shadows,” Sonia promised. Craig had so many responsibilities, particularly this past year, that she was delighted to see him shed those cares in favor of sheer mischievous fun. By the time they reached the twelfth floor, he was laughing.
He stabbed the key in the lock, opened the door to their room and relocked it after they entered. “Strip,” he ordered promptly.
“Oh, Lord. Is this one of those your-virtue-or-your-money capers?”
“You have to be joking,” Craig retorted. “I’ve never seen you travel with more than thirty-seven cents in your pocket. Skin is all I’m interested in, lady.”
She slipped out of her emerald dress and tossed it to him; he tossed her his jacket. They hung up each other’s clothes, laughing. Watching her play half naked, Craig forgot ninety percent of his good intentions, particularly once they’d exchanged his shirt and her coral satin half slip. Sonia
Her small, pert breasts were the same ivory color as her complexion, the rosy nipples sassily pointed up at him. And after knowing her for almost five years and being married for better than four, Craig’s reaction to the look of her was as instantly, blatantly physical as when he’d first met her.
Sonia’s original reaction to Craig had been markedly different. Her mother, who was generally inclined to pick up loners around the holidays, had been the one who’d found him and dragged him home for Thanksgiving. At the time, Sonia wasn’t part of the ranching community anymore; for the past few years, she’d had an apartment in Boulder and was working as a buyer for a women’s boutique there. She had a distinctly different definition of “innocent loner” than her mother did. Craig didn’t qualify. Nor had he acquired that considerable expertise of his anywhere near an oil field. Sonia knew trouble when she saw it, and had every intention of spending that particular Thanksgiving in the kitchen. It didn’t quite work out that way.
Though flamboyant in dress and gregarious with people, at twenty-five Sonia still had been reserved at the thought of real intimacy. Her mother used to tell her that she’d already worked through more men than the county had fence posts, but appearances were deceiving. Sonia appreciated a well-cast line, but she was not so naive as to let herself be taken in by one. When she’d met Craig, she could have fit her previous sexual experience in a teacup.
But he’d certainly taken care of that problem since, she thought wickedly. Poor man, now he suffered the consequences. The longer she wandered around bare-topped, the more trouble he was having getting into his jeans. Her own denims snapped, but just, designed to fit her shapely bottom snugly, molding the legs Craig was so fond of. She donned a red silk blouse without bra, left a button or two open, and vigorously took a brush to her curls…which, actually, never helped her stubborn hairstyle anyway. A quick slash of lipstick and a pair of elegant walking boots, and she turned around with a sassy grin.
“Inconspicuous enough?” she demanded.
He shook his head in sheer despair.
“What’s wrong?”
He was afraid if he gave her the list they would never leave the hotel room. His kitten looked ready to prowl, and instinctively he wanted to set off the first purrs. In the meantime, she could have worn a sign on her smile that said Vulnerable as far as walking Chicago’s streets at night went. “For starters, the opal,” he began.
She glanced at the mirror. She never took off the black opal that dangled from a gold chain on her neck; he’d given it to her on their honeymoon. The oval stone was a myriad of green-blues that matched her eyes, just as its onyx setting matched her hair. Only reluctantly did Sonia tie a scarlet-and-white scarf at her throat to cover it. “Better?” she questioned, already knowing his opinion.
Her husband didn’t approve of the fit of her jeans any more than he approved of the scarlet blouse…or the emerald dress she’d worn earlier. He approved of her naked, preferably locked in a room alone with him.
Deep inside, Craig harbored a dreadfully medieval male protectiveness and jealousy. Sonia adored him all the more because of it. It took a very special kind of man to control those intense feelings and encourage his lady to live her own life in her own way, not just follow along in his shadow. It was tough for a strong, dominant man to make a marriage of equals; Sonia was well aware that Craig worked at it.
It was absolutely necessary to give him a long, lingering kiss before they headed out into the hall, ready and eager for a few hours of privacy together in a town of some three million people. That they would find it, neither had any doubt. They only needed each other.
Chapter 2
Lake Michigan lay black and smooth, its still surface glazed with stars. At two in the morning, the city’s traffic was finally settling down. They might almost have been home, Sonia reflected-the park was that serene and restful. Huge shade trees nestled the two of them in privacy, and the smell of new green leaves and damp, sweet grass
