Never Trust A Lady

own feet. From that fact, her sluggish powers of deduction reasoned that she must be sitting on the edge of the bed with her head tucked between her knees. Besides being hideously uncomfortable, she found it a mortifying position to be in, especially since a stranger was sitting beside her and holding her firmly by the shoulders.

At some point, he’d also apparently closed the door, but turned on only the entry light. She didn’t know whether to be sorry there wasn’t more light, or glad.

“Are you all right?” the man asked for the second time, in a gravelly, dispassionate voice that Jane suddenly realized was familiar to her. “Want me to call someone?”

She gasped. “Oh, God, no!” The idea appalled her. “No, I’m okay. Really.” She tried a somewhat gingerly stretch.

Her Good Samaritan instantly let go of her shoulders but stayed where he was, close beside her, his body touching hers, as if he thought she needed bolstering.

And she did-oh, she did! All the willpower she’d employed moments ago to keep her wits and her lunch, she called upon now to keep from throwing herself into those strong masculine arms. To keep herself from thinking about how lovely it would be to have those arms around her while she blubbered and snuffled into the man’s nice broad chest.

Instead, she let her eyes drift shut again, drew a long breath and rotated her head carefully. “Oh, my,” she murmured. “What on earth happened?”

“I was hoping you could tell me,” the now very familiar voice said dryly.

Recognition came like a clap of thunder. Jane’s eyes flew open upon a facial landscape so forbidding and at such close range, she pulled back from it with a soft, reflexive gasp. “Mr. Hawkins-it is you. What on earth are you doing here? I’m Jane-Jane Carlysle-from the auction, remember?”

He seemed to be regarding her with puzzling intensity. “Oh, I remember you,” he said, and something about the way he said it made her heart stumble.

While she pondered that phenomenon, he got up and turned on the lamp on the dresser. On the way back, he stooped to pick something up from the floor. “I guess this must belong to you,” he said, and held it out to her on the palm of one hand.

“Oh, God.” Instead of taking the offering, she put a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle. Then, to her dismay, she began to shake, but not with laughter.

Tom Hawkins looked at her for a moment, then shifted his grip on the toy pistol he held in his hand, hefted its weight, sighted along the barrel, pulled back the hammer. He squeezed the trigger and listened almost thoughtfully to the crisp metallic click.

“Quite a weapon,” he drawled with more than a hint of sarcasm. “What were you gonna do, throw it?” It was only when he transferred a steely blue gaze back to her that she realized he was angry.

To Jane, seeing anger in the eyes of a stranger was so unexpected-it seemed so very personal, somehow-it was as if she’d been doused with cold water, or slapped smartly across the face. Her head cleared. Her shaking subsided. She sat very straight and still, immersed in a strange calm that was almost like being suspended in weightlessness.

“I don’t know what I meant to do with it,” she said in a hollow voice. “I don’t think…the fact is, I didn’t think. It was stupid, of course. Right now I can think of at least six things I should have done instead. I don’t know what got into me.”

Hawk found it impossible, suddenly, to be so close to her. He went to sit on the other bed, shoulders hunched and hands clasped between his knees, and studied the woman who had just become his biggest problem. Her face was very pale, and there were dark smudges under her eyes. She should have looked older, he thought, with her makeup gone and her hair all mussed and curling with the humidity in a way that could only be natural, but for some reason she didn’t. She looked incredibly young. And frightened. He hadn’t expected that.

“You were damn lucky,” he said harshly. “You know that, don’t you? If I hadn’t come along when I did-”

“I know.” She caught in a breath hungrily, as if she hadn’t had one in a while, then repeated, “I know. I haven’t even thanked you.” She looked sideways at him. Amazing, he thought, how expressive those sea-gray eyes of hers could be-and a reminder to him to keep his own shielded. “I’m very grateful you happened along. How did you-I mean. it’s such a coincidence, isn’t it?”

There was a nuance in her words that didn’t escape Hawk. He laughed, hoping to head off her suspicions with a certain gruff charm. “No kidding. You’re the last person I expected to see here. Hey, I was on my way to the elevators-going down to get a bite to eat, as a matter of fact. And I hear this yelp and a thump, and the next thing I know, this guy comes tearing out of here with this package in his hands-”

“Package-oh my God, my painting!” She shot to her feet. He could have told her it was a bad move. He put out a hand to steady her when she swayed.

“Hey, it’s okay-it’s right there, on the bed.” He put his hands on her shoulders and eased her down, narrowing his eyes when he looked at her, trying hard not to see how pale and vulnerable she was. “I…more or less persuaded the bast-uh, guy-to leave it behind.” His lips tightened and stretched in a smile while his jaw clenched with the unpleasant taste of lies. Necessary lies, he assured himself. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t persuade him to stick around and explain why he was making off with it. Hey,” he added, all innocence, “isn’t that the one you just bought, today at the auction?”

She nodded, then winced.

“Headache?” he asked gently.

She nodded again, closing her eyes this time. “He…did something to my neck-right here.” She cupped the place with her hand, rubbed briefly, then let the hand drop. Her eyes opened, fixed unnervingly on his face as she said in a soft, puzzled voice, “I think…I must have passed out. It’s so strange…I really think he was going to kill me.”

Hawk didn’t say anything. He watched his hands as he placed one on either side of her neck, watched his fingers search for the spot he knew very well, trying to block out the way her skin felt, the way it had felt such a short time before, when he’d stopped for just a second or two, the life force pulsing beneath it. Soft and warm. Vibrant and strong. Alive.

He tried to block out awareness of those eyes of hers, so near he could see the tiny lines that gave away her age. Tried to deny the strange, tense silence that had fallen between them.

He couldn’t look at her eyes, so he shifted his gaze to her mouth. And that was a mistake. He hadn’t expected it to be so full and soft…or so near. His heartbeat grew strong and heavy; his mouth went dry and his vision blurred. He could feel the moist warmth of her breath on his lips, like a summer promise.

Shaken to the very soles of his feet, he pulled his hands away from her and growled, “Lady, if he’d wanted you dead, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

But even with the safer distance between them, for several moments longer they sat in that curious state of silent tension, in a kind of connectedness God knows he didn’t want, but didn’t know how to end. Her eyes seemed to be asking something of him. He felt as if he ought to apologize to her.

But exactly what would he be apologizing for? The fact that it was he who’d knocked her down and put her out of commission, when by doing so he’d probably saved her life? The fact that he wanted to kiss her-very nearly had kissed her-or the fact that kissing her was the one thing he wasn’t about to let himself do?

And then suddenly, like a rubber band stretched too far, the suspense broke. Hawk shifted even farther away from her and they both spoke at once.

“Did you see who-”

“-Must be some painting.”

He rebounded first, answering her question with a shake of his head. “He was wearing a ski mask.”

For some reason, that information seemed to unnerve her as nothing else had. She muttered, “I don’t believe this,” then added with a touch of asperity, “What is it with that painting, anyway? First that man Campbell tries to buy it, then he wanted to bribe me, and now someone-” She broke off midsentence, her eyes darting to Hawk’s with the unspoken question.

He answered it with a shrug of apology. “Sorry. No way to tell if it was the same guy. I told you-he had on a ski mask.” At least that much was true.

“Must be some painting,” he remarked once more, keeping his tone light, with only a touch of irony. Picking up the flat, paper-wrapped package he’d placed so carefully on the bed next to him, he held it up tentatively in front of Jane, who was chewing her lip and frowning thoughtfully at nothing. “Okay if I take a look at it?”