Millionaire M.D.

you’re it. As soon as I said your name, the others clicked with it.” He scalped a hand through his hair. “I realize you’re not directly part of the investigation related to Monroe’s murder, but that’s not the point.”

Winona stopped trying to talk. She was just listening. Hard.

“The complications just keep coming. For one thing, the last thing we want to do is publicly accuse anyone from Asterland or Obersbourg of stealing the jewels. Now that those two countries have finally achieved an uneasy peace, we don’t want to fire up tempers again, or risk an international incident. But that means that the investigation into the jewel theft-and Riley Monroe’s murder-needs to be done quietly. And tougher than that…” Justin stood up with an impatient sigh and rolled his shoulders.

“…tougher than that…is that the Texas Cattleman’s Club has kept the jewels a secret for generations now. For a good cause. We were able to keep our little expeditions and missions quiet, for the same reason. If we blow our cover, we blow our ability to help people-at least in the private ways we’ve been able to do in the past. If the truth about the jewels has to come out, then that’s the way it is. But we’d rather it didn’t get out. It would be different if we were just positive there was a connection between the plane crash and Riley’s murder and the jewel theft. We’re not. We don’t know that. We don’t know anything for sure. Not right now.”

Finally she could see where he was leading. “Okay. You’re obviously telling me this for a reason. What do you need me to do?”

In the intimacy of firelight, his gaze seemed to glow and soften on her face. “Win…I don’t like putting you on the spot. But until we sort this out, we need someone we can trust inside the police force. Someone who can help us evaluate what facts go where, help us keep things quiet that don’t have to be public. Someone, for that matter, who can brainstorm with us over the clues we’ve got going…I don’t mean that the police chief would be unaware of what we’re asking you. But he’s not our man, because there’d be nothing but a conflict of interest problem for him. We need someone else. Someone who’s judgment we trust. Whose integrity we trust. We need the kind of person who everyone felt we could be comfortably and completely honest with-”

“Justin-?”

“What?”

She surged to her feet.

Eight

Winona wanted to wildly shake her head, as if to make absolutely positive that she’d heard him correctly. “You trust me?”

Justin had been pacing back and forth in front of the hearth, but now he stopped still, his brow furrowing. “Of course I trust you. What kind of question is that?” He hesitated. “The only worry I have is about putting you on the spot, Win. It’s not fair. There’s no reason you should feel obligated to help the Texas Cattleman’s Club. This is their problem. My problem. I’m the one who brought your name up, and I should have been thinking about how this could affect you. At the time, the only issue on my mind was coming up with someone whose integrity and judgment I didn’t question-and that’s how all the guys felt, too. You just seemed the perfect one for us to ask. Everyone said the same thing. We all trust you, we all knew we could be comfortable and honest with…”

He abruptly stopped talking as if distracted by her sudden, swift charging across the room toward him. Maybe she was just stumbling across the Oriental carpet, but she felt as if she were flying. As if her heart had taken flight and had the power to soar. Toward him.

There seemed to be a lump in her throat the size of…well, the size of wonder. Most of her life, she’d been careful not to react to anything impulsively. It’s not as if she could ever completely forget that she’d been a throwaway kid, an abandoned child. She’d always felt that she had to carefully earn other people’s regard.

And she had. Winona had long learned to value herself. She knew she was an especially good cop and did a great job with the kids. She knew that she was respected, well liked in the community-and that she’d earned respect. But she hadn’t specifically realized that she had Justin’s trust and regard in that way.

Someone who she valued.

Someone who she loved-even if she’d been scared witless of allowing that four-letter word to surface in her heart before now.

It mattered. It mattered like she couldn’t remember anything, ever, mattering this much before. And when she launched herself into Justin’s arms, he responded with a whoomph. Possibly he wasn’t anticipating a rib-crunching hug at that instant. Possibly he wasn’t expecting a hard-ball pitch of a human female from across the room. Possibly he wasn’t prepared for the trembling, hard smash of her lips against his.

But it couldn’t have taken him three seconds-maybe less-to figure it all out. Before she’d realized how impulsively she’d reacted, his arms had balanced her-against him-and they were both glued in a lip-lock. The fire shimmered. Shadows whispered on the walls. The night seemed to surround them in a special, private silence.

He kissed her, then kissed her again and again, as if years had gone by since the last time. As if he’d only barely survived since those last kisses. As if the taste of her were all he needed to sustain life.

But it wasn’t all she needed. Before, she’d thought it was a fluke, the incomprehensible wildness she felt with Justin. The letting-go. The freeing. The need trammeling up and down her nerves like a clattering train, gaining momentum with every motion. Her hands touched, scraped, caressed, clenched. She tilted her head, taking in his last kiss, then leaned into him to give one of her own.

She had been wearing jeans and a chambray shirt, but not for long. She pushed at his long T-shirt in a frenzy, seeking skin, more playground to explore and touch. After his shirt skimmed over his head, Justin seemed to be slower than molasses, as he unbuttoned her blouse, one button at a time, his lips tracking the path from the hollow of her throat to the crest above her breasts, down to the shadow between. And then his hands were inside, his big warm fingers splayed to caress the span of her waist as he pushed the shirt out of his way. His mouth ducked again, this time to the rim of her bra.

Her breath sucked in, like a lost wave, her lungs scrabbling for oxygen that couldn’t seem to be found. She saw his eyes opening, then closing, his face aiming toward her for another kiss, this time on her lips again, this time taking her tongue and her teeth in a kiss that started out sweet and ended up wicked.

By the time he’d pushed the shirt off her shoulders, he’d kissed her shoulders awake as if they were erogenous zones in themselves, and then her shirt snagged at the wrists because of the tight wrist buttons. He smiled-clearly liking that her hands were trapped. Within a millisecond he’d found the catch for her bra, and her breasts tumbled into his hands, her heartbeat tumbling just as fast, just as much in his power, and he took advantage by bending down and skimming her tight, vulnerable nipple with the edge of his teeth.

She’d invited this explosion. She wanted it. But when he surged back up for another wicked kiss-the bad kind, the scary kind, the kind that took her tongue and her breath and tasted all her secrets-she was quivering like a leaf in a wild spring storm. Justin sensed it, lifted his head, studied her face with liquid dark eyes.

“There’s nothing we’re ever doing, Win, that you don’t want.”

“I want this. I want you.”

But now he hesitated as if he meant it. “I need you to be sure you want this. Yeah, I’ll stop if you say, but I’m really, really gonna be unhappy if we go any further and you don’t want this. It’s all right. Whatever you want is all right, but I don’t think you came here believing we were going to do anything like this.”

“Maybe I didn’t expect it. But I know exactly what I want. And it’s you.” He didn’t get it. Didn’t get how much his trust meant to her; his respect. How much something he’d so freely given her, without even having to think, had turned an emotional corner in her heart that simply would never turn back again. She framed his face, kissed him again, this time softer, this time with the “please” buried inside it.

“Well, that’s it,” he said hoarsely. “You’re in trouble now.”

“Oh? Is that a promise or a warning?”

“A promise,” he said thickly. He pulled off the rest of her shirt. “And I always keep my promises, Win.”

A thrill whispered up her spine, an excitement that both embarrassed and unnerved her. The thing was, she believed him. And suddenly she wasn’t so sure of the situation or him-or of herself. He left the lights on, the wood fire blazing, but he was suddenly kissing her in a way that made her walk backward, propelling her out into the dark