One Summer’s Knight

warmth and pulse beats, Summer opened her eyes to find that her wrists-in fact, her forearms-were cuddled up against the stiff white shirtfront she’d been staring at so intently only moments ago, and that the pulse beats were her own, tapping joyfully against the smooth pads of Riley’s fingertips. Letting her gaze travel upward, she found what seemed to be the same pulse-no, not a pulse, but a muscle, a tiny knot of tension-beating in the side of Riley’s jaw.

A strange hollowness filled her, a dizzy, light-headed feeling she hoped was only exhaustion. Carefully removing her hands from their gentle restraints, she said, “Yes, of course you’re right,” and took a breath. “Right now, I have to think of the children.”

Was it like this for you, Cinderella? she wondered as she turned her back on the totally incongruous vision of the Prince standing there in the flesh before her. She went to the sink, turned on the water and plunged her wrists into the stream in a determined effort to drown those tap-dancing pulses. Was this what prompted you to throw caution and good sense to the winds and go riding off with a man you hardly knew? Was it just that you knew you couldn’t possibly stay where you were a moment longer? Did you feel you had no choice? Maybe, she thought, it wasn’t true love after all, just simple expediency.

It occurred to her then, that trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea, if a person were scared enough of water, the devil might not look all that bad.

Not that she suspected Riley Grogan of being the devil in disguise, or anything even close to it In fact…

“It’s you I’m concerned about, Mr. Grogan,” she informed him quietly as she reached for a paper towel and then turned to the rest room door, an ironic little smile on her lips. “I don’t think you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into.”

“Oh, Lord, what have I gotten myself into?” Riley muttered the words aloud sometime later that evening-or more accurately, early the next morning-as he sat in his study nursing a large brandy and a bandaged finger. If anybody had asked him, he would readily have admitted it was no accident that the words were arranged in the form of a prayer.

Except for the fitful and distant grumble of thunder, his house was quiet. Blessedly quiet. He relaxed in it, slouched down on his spine in his favorite chair with his feet stretched out on the matching ottoman, the snifter cradled on his chest. His eyes were closed as he savored, along with the old-woodsy aftertaste of the brandy, both the quiet and the thunder-the latter because it echoed his mood at the moment, the former because he had an idea it might prove to be the last of such moments for a while.

He had a headache, and his finger throbbed to the dirgelike pace of his heartbeat. And it was becoming increasingly clear to him that he had lost his mind.

There were few things in life Riley Grogan valued more than his privacy. He considered his home his personal refuge, a haven that in the past he’d guarded as jealously as a wolf would guard his lair. Yet, inconceivable as it seemed, there were at this very moment asleep in one of the several extra bedrooms he called “guest rooms”- though he seldom if ever had any-not one stranger, but three: an exhausted woman, who happened to be his newest client, and her two minor children. Oh, and had he mentioned her cat and her dog? And-he stared balefully at his bandaged finger-one apparently demented parrot.

What had he been thinking of?

As if his mind had been waiting for that question, had already rewound his memory tapes to the proper place and had just been waiting for the order to push Play, he found himself watching a replay of that scene in the rest room at FBI headquarters in Augusta, those last few moments before she-Summer Robey-had pulled her hands from his and turned to wash them and her face in the sink. He’d never forget the way she’d looked at him then. Doomed but not defeated, like a magnificent wild creature caught in a trap. He’d never forget the way he’d felt, either, as if something had struck him hard in the chest and momentarily interrupted the normal rhythm of his heart.

He hadn’t known whether to be relieved or sorry when she’d left him immediately after that, focusing instead on her kids. While she’d been doing whatever one did to get children ready for a trip, Riley had gone to get his car. Following Agent Jake Redfield’s instructions, he’d driven around to the back of the building and up to what had appeared to him to be a blank wall, which had opened, James Bond-like, to admit him to an underground garage. In that stuffy, dimly lit cavern, he and Redfield had transferred various pet accessories from an anonymous FBI sedan to the trunk of Riley’s Mercedes-food and water dishes, assorted bags of dog, cat and parrot chow, cat litter and the appropriate container for same, something covered with carpeting that Jake had told him was called a cat cave, and what appeared to be a miniature-size jungle gym. Enough equipment, it had seemed to him, to outfit a small invasion force. At least, he’d thought, it didn’t look as if he was going to have to stop at an all-night pet shop on the way home.

The children, however, did require a stop at some vending machines for crackers and chocolate milk, which Riley made damn sure were eaten and all traces disposed of before they were allowed anywhere near the Mercedes. He and Redfield had then escorted everyone downstairs to the garage via a special express elevator.

It was while he was helping to find places for three pet carriers and two kids in the back seat-his suggestion that the carriers might ride better in the trunk had been loudly overruled-that Riley had managed, though he still couldn’t figure out how, to get his finger within range of that damn parrot’s beak. That had brought about a short but chaotic delay in their departure while Jake went in search of a first aid kit and Summer tried her best to calm hysterical children and livestock while simultaneously assessing the damage to Riley’s person.

“It’s not broken-hardly even bleeding. You’re lucky,” she had pronounced when order had been restored, more or less. Riley, experiencing sensations similar to those caused by slamming a finger in a car door, had seen no reason to answer that “A parrot’s beak can easily snap small branches-and bones,” Summer had explained in a tone half instructive, half scolding, as if Riley were a not-very-bright child. “You should never, ever put your fingers in a parrot’s cage-especially one who doesn’t know and trust you.”

But to tell the truth, he’d hardly been aware of his injury just then. He’d been watching Summer, watching her capable hands as they gently examined his finger, watching a frown of concentration etch a deep crease between her brows, watching a stray strand of her hair float in the breeze of her breath.

He’d discovered he liked seeing her in this mode-relaxed, confident, less tense than she had been up to now. He wondered if it had even occurred to her that she was holding his arm, tuxedo sleeve and all, imprisoned between her arm and body, and that when she shifted to find a better hold, or better light, she’d turned herself neatly into the circle of his arm, with her back turned to him and her head bowed low over his wounded hand so that her nape was unself consciously bared to him. He could have counted the hairs that had escaped from her haphazard ponytail, he thought, if there’d been more light If there’d been less, he would only have had to lower his head a little, shift his arms a few degrees…and his mouth could have savored the taste and texture of the velvety skin drawn taut over the vulnerable bumps of her spine…

Absurd notion. She was his client, a mother, and absolutely off-limits. But it had been a very long day and an unexpectedly unsettling evening, and he supposed he must have somehow been reminded of Miss Louisiana and her uncanny resemblance to Maureen O’Hara. Thinking of what might have been.

Agent Redfield had returned about then with a first aid kit, and Summer had made short work of bandaging up Riley’s finger, all the while tweaking his masculine ego with remarks about the insignificant nature of the injury. He’d consoled himself with the thought that naturally she’d say that-it was her bird that had inflicted it, after all. Technically, she was liable for the damage. Not that he’d have said so. Just a minor legal point.

They’d left the FBI garage in a convoy-Redfield first, with a mannequin sitting beside him in the passenger seat of the tan sedan as decoy for anyone who might have observed the departure with interest-and no one present questioned the need for such a precaution. After five tense minutes, Riley’s Mercedes rolled silently out of the garage, with its passengers crouched low and hidden from the view of any of those watchers who might have remained behind. It was then, as he’d guided the big car down an alley that seemed as dense and dark as a tropical jungle, through streets where humidity drifted in the car lights like dust and hung overhead in a gauzy yellow shroud, that he’d realized that all thought of his wounded finger, incipient headache and the sensuous Miss Louisiana had faded from his mind. The night was like a sauna, but the sweat that trickled down his spine was cold. Evil was out there, somewhere. He could feel it. Unlikely as it seemed, evil had touched this woman and her children. And because he had committed himself to keeping them safe, it had touched him, too.