"You knew I'd come after you, didn't you?"
"No. I just hoped you would."
"Come here," Gideon whispered, urging her down so that her breasts brushed against his bare skin. He could feel her taut little nipples against him. "That feels so good, sweetheart."
"I love you, Gideon." She kissed his shoulder and then his own flat nipple. "I've been feeling so awful for the past few hours. I could hardly stand it."
"You should never have left."
"Maybe not. But I couldn't bear to stay, either. Not with you refusing to admit that we have something special together. Not when you couldn't let yourself trust me. But now you're here and everything's the way it should be."
He slid his hands down the length of her back to the sensual curve of her buttocks. He began coaxing the jeans over her lushly rounded derriere, allowing his fingers to stray into all the secret places. She moved delightfully against him once more and he lifted his lips against hers, seeking the sweetness of her. There was still far too much denim in the way.
"Easy, honey, easy," he breathed, holding her gently away from him so that he could slide off the sofa and stand up long enough to get out of his own clothes. When he finished with the boots and the jeans and all the rest of it he sat down and reached for Sarah.
She came to him willingly enough as he finished undressing her but when she started to lie down and pull him to her he shook his head.
"This way," he mouthed in her ear, as he half-sat, half-sprawled against the leather cushions. Hands on her thighs, he parted her legs and eased her down so that she sat astride him. He felt her tremble.
"Gideon." She braced herself, kneeling on the cushions. Her fingers entwined in his hair. Her eyes glowed with excitement.
"Yeah. Like that." He took one nipple gently into his mouth and simultaneously touched her intimately. He found her warm and damp and ready for him. When he eased one finger into her she clenched almost violently. Gideon caught his breath.
"So sexy, baby. That feels so good," he muttered. He drew the tip of his finger across the small pearl hidden in the delicate nest and had the satisfaction of feeling her shiver again in his arms.
"Gideon, my wonderful, fabulous, Gideon." She nibbled on his ear, moving against his head. "I love it when you touch me."
He guided himself slowly into her, feeling her open to him and then close tightly around him. She gasped and began to slide up and down as he indicated with his hands on her waist. Then she began to set the rhythm, growing more confident and more forceful until Gideon could think of nothing except the powerful hunger that was sweeping through him.
When he could stand the ravening forces no longer, he surged into her one last time seeking the full satisfaction that he knew was waiting. Gideon felt Sarah shudder and cry out and then he was lost in the thrill of her release as it mingled with his own.
SARAH SMILED TO HERSELF as she languorously stroked Gideon's shoulders. "I like this position," she murmured.
"So do I. But, then, I like any position with you." His eyes were closed. He continued to sprawl against the cushions, his well-muscled legs relaxed, his hands moving absently on her thighs. "Sarah, promise me you won't run off like that again."
Her leaving had shaken him, she realized. He really did care for her. But, then, she had been certain of that the moment she saw him standing in her doorway.
"What made you come after me?" she asked softly. "You must have left shortly after I did." She was consumed with curiosity now, needing to hear every detail of what he had been thinking when he made the decision to pursue her. "When did you finally realize you couldn't let me go?"
"Sarah?"
"Yes, Gideon?"
"Just promise me you won't do that again. Please."
She sighed, resigned to the fact that Gideon was never going to find it easy to talk about his emotions. "All right. I promise."
"I could sure use a cup of coffee."
She collapsed against him in a fit of giggles. "What a romantic."
"I try." His smile was slightly lopsided, his eyes bemused as he played with her hair. "But I'd better warn you, there are probably going to be times when I'll mess up."
"You think so?"
"I keep telling you, I'm no hero. But you won't run off again if I do occasionally fail to live up to your expectations, will you? Sarah, I don't want to have to be afraid that every time I screw up, you'll leave."
Sarah's amusement slipped away in an instant as she saw the seriousness in his steady gaze. She shook her head vigorously. "No, never. I won't run off."
"You did this morning."
"That was different."
"How?"
"This morning I was feeling depressed. I knew somehow that I'd gone as far as I could. It was up to you to make an effort or give me some sign. If you were never going to be able to let yourself love me or trust me I had to find out now. I knew I had to leave." Sarah smiled. "And you came after me."
Gideon moved his head slightly on the cushions, his eyes warm. "I think you're a little crazy, but that's all right." His gaze shifted to the room around them. "So this is your place? It looks like you. I knew there'd be unwashed cups on the coffee table."
"Thanks a lot." She rose reluctantly from his thighs and reached for her clothing. "Look at the bright side. Now that I've got you, I'll be able to let my weekly cleaning service go, won't I? I'll make you some coffee while you get dressed. The bathroom's down the hall. Give me a minute and then you can have it." She clutched her shirt and looked down at him. "Gideon, I'm so happy."
He smiled slightly, his eyes very intent. "The cats will be pleased. They didn't approve of your running off the way you did this morning."
"You'll all just have to understand that I had my reasons."
Gideon's eyes hardened. "It was more than depression, wasn't it? We could have talked about that. And more than wanting me to give you some sign that I cared. It was Savage finding you on the beach that made you give up on me."
"I didn't give up on you."
"He upset everything. You were all right until he showed up again. You were adjusting to being with me. Getting used to it. But then he cornered you on the beach and it was all over. He always had a knack for being able to throw a spanner into the works."
"That's not the way it was at all. My feelings had nothing to do with Savage. I left because I wasn't sure I was getting through to you. It was time to give you a strong nudge."
"You'd have gotten through to me a lot faster if you'd let me make love to you instead of trying to build a relationship without sex," Gideon muttered. "It wasn't natural, Sarah. I felt you were trying to manipulate me by withholding yourself and then when Savage popped up again, I—"
"Savage." Sarah's eyes widened in belated anger as reality came back with a thud. "Good grief, I almost forgot. How could I? The man's a thief."
"I'm in agreement with you on that point. But you didn't really believe all those things he was saying about me, did you?"
"Of course, I didn't believe him. But that's not why I'm furious with him now. I'm mad because he broke in here and stole all my extra copies of the map, Gideon."
Gideon's eyes hardened. He reached slowly for his shirt. "The bastard."
"He's going to dig up the earrings," Sarah said with a sigh. "I know he is."
"He won't find them."
"Gideon, I keep telling you, I can almost feel him finding them. My intuition tells me he's very close to getting his hands on them. Maybe he couldn't get close without the map, but now that he's got all ten copies of the thing he's bound to figure it out."
"Sarah, be reasonable. Ten photocopies won't do him any more good than one. They're all the same. I guarantee you he won't get the earrings."
She gave him a speculative glance. "You're very certain of Jake Savage's incompetence."
Gideon grinned briefly. "As I've always said, he's got his talents, but finding treasure isn't one of them." His grin vanished as quickly as it had come. "
But he's gone too far with this business of breaking into your place."
"That's certainly the truth. I won't have it. What are we going to do, Gideon? Call the cops? How will we be able to prove it was Jake who broke in?"
"We probably won't be able to prove it." Gideon shrugged into his shirt. "But I think it's time I had a private chat with my ex-partner. I've had it with him."
"What are you going to do?" Sarah asked anxiously.
"I'm not sure yet, but one thing's for certain, I liked him a lot better when he was supposed to be dead."
"Gideon, you wouldn't, would you? You can't be serious. I mean, you can't actually, uh, that is… "
"See that he goes back to being dead? Permanently this time? It's an interesting possibility. As a solution, it definitely has its merits."
"Gideon."
"Weren't you going to fix me some coffee?"
Sarah wasn't certain what to make of the blandly innocent expression in his cool green eyes. It occurred to her that on some level she had always understood that Gideon Trace was dangerous. She just hadn't ever expected to see that side of him. She still wasn't sure she was seeing it. There were definitely parts of this man she did not completely know or understand yet. The knowledge was disconcerting.
"I'll be right out," Sarah mumbled. Clutching the remainder of her clothing, she hurried off to the bathroom.
Gideon watched her until she disappeared down the short hall. He felt a lot better now than he had when he'd first arrived, he realized. Everything was going to be okay again. He could relax. Sarah had just succumbed to a brief storm of feminine emotion, that was all. She hadn't done anything drastic like change her mind about him.
She still thought he was some sort of romantic hero and apparently he had only reconfirmed her belief by chasing after her.
As if he'd had any alternative, he thought as he got to his feet and pulled on his jeans. He would never tell her, of course, but the truth was, it hadn't been any grand, romantic impulse that had brought him to Seattle. He'd been operating on instinct and his instincts had told him that he could not let her disappear from his life.
Gideon fastened his jeans and began wandering around Sarah's colorful, modern living room. The place fascinated him. It was so completely different from his own home. Everything was bright, breezy and exuberantly chaotic. Magazines that ran the gamut from Cache to Vogue were piled willy-nilly on the second level of a two-tier glass coffee table. A collection of bizarre paperweights occupied the top of the table. An unwashed mug or two stood proudly amid the clutter.
The furniture all looked as if it had been designed in an art studio, with more emphasis on abstract lines than functionality.
The walls were filled with posters of the Pike Place Market, photos of Sarah with two other women and framed book covers. He paused in front of one, studying it more closely.
The cover of Dangerous Talent showed a rugged-looking, dark-haired man braced at the edge of a jungle cliff. The man had apparently forgotten to button his rakish, khaki shirt that morning, Gideon noted. It hung open, revealing a lot of chest.
In addition to his unbuttoned shirt the guy in the picture was wearing boots and a wide leather belt. There was a knife strapped to his leg. In one hand he held a large revolver aimed at some unseen menace and with the other he embraced a beautiful woman.
Gideon wondered idly why the heroine had worn a sleek, sophisticated designer gown and high heels into the jungle. The glittering dress was already badly ripped and was probably going to get even more severely torn in the near future. Both characters looked far more concerned with how they were going to make love on the edge of a cliff than they were with whatever threatened them.
Gideon shook his head in mild amazement and then spotted an open box with a publisher's return address on it. Inside the box were several copies of Dangerous Talent. Unable to resist, Gideon lifted one paperback out of the box, opened it and turned to the first page.
Hilary sat frozen behind the wheel of the broken-down Jeep and watched helplessly as the man with the gun sauntered toward her. Around her the jungle was alive with brooding menace. But nothing it offered seemed even as remotely threatening at that moment as the cold, deadly expression in the eyes of the human predator in front of her.
Green, Hilary thought fleetingly as she stared, mesmerized through the windshield. She could see that his eyes were emerald-green like those of a jungle cat and just as chilling.
Her friends had told her Jed Mclntyre was dangerous—a man who made his own rules out here in the wilds of Rio Pasqual. But Hilary, as usual, had refused to listen to good advice.
She had insisted on setting out to find Mclntyre and now she was very much afraid that she had done exactly that. The man coming toward her with such casual, graceful menace certainly fit the description Kathy had given her.
Dangerous.
Jed Mclntyre was perhaps ten paces away from the Jeep when Hilary came to her senses and remembered the pistol she had stuck in the glove box. Jerking herself out of her momentary trance, she lunged across the seat for it.
She never made it.
Gideon closed the book and put it back in the stack as he heard Sarah's light footsteps behind him.
"See what I mean?" Sarah asked as she went on into the kitchen. "All my heroes are like you."
"Other than the color of Jed Mclntyre's eyes, I didn't see much resemblance."
"Then you didn't read far enough." Sarah switched on the coffee maker and put a kettle of water on the stove.
Gideon shrugged. If she wanted to see him as dark, dangerous and sexy, who was he to complain? "Just tell me one thing. Do I have to start carrying a gun and wear a knife strapped to my leg?"
"Good heavens, no. You don't need one. In that sense, you're a lot more interesting than Jed. Jed, I'm afraid, tended to rely a bit too much on brawn instead of brain. But brawn works nicely in a romance novel."
Gideon smiled at that. "Well, that's a relief. I've never liked guns or knives. Or khaki, for that matter. Stuff wrinkles like crazy." He went down the hall to the bathroom, which smelled of lemon-scented soap. Automatically he plucked the used towel that was hanging askew off the rack and tossed it into the hamper. He located a fresh one in a small closet.
A few minutes later when he got back to the kitchen he found Sarah pouring freshly brewed coffee. The stuff really was a lot better than instant, he decided. He was getting used to it. He sat down in a high-backed stool at the counter and picked up the red mug.
In front of him on the counter lay an assortment of odds and ends including a couple of large yellow notepads, a glass jar holding a dozen pens and a stack of romance novels.
"All right," Sarah said as she plunked herself down on the seat beside Gideon. "What are we going to do about your pal, Jake?"
"As I said, I'll have a talk with him." Gideon sipped his coffee thoughtfully.
"But how will you convince him to stop pestering us about the earrings? This little matter of going through my files is more than I can tolerate, Gideon."
"I agree and I'll deal with it."
She looked skeptical. "If you say so."
"Don't tell me you're losing faith now?"
"No, it's not that." She broke off, her thoughts clearly taking her in other directions. "But I can't help worrying about those earrings. I don't like leaving them buried up there in the mountains. I don't have as much confidence in Jake Savage's lack of competence as you do, I guess."
"Okay," Gideon said, coming to a decision. This had gone on long enough. Time to end it. "We'll go get them."
Sarah swung around on her stool and stared at him in surprise. "We will?"
"I want you to be able to relax and stop worrying about them. Obviously the only way to do that is to dig them up and put them in a safe place. We'll go see if we can find them in the morning."
"What about Jake Savage?"
"With any luck, he's still over at the coast, looking for an angle or contacting a talk-show prod
ucer. If he saw me leave, he probably assumed I followed you to Seattle."
"Gideon, this is wonderful. Do you know what this means? Do you realize what you're saying?"
He eyed her warily. "I'm saying we're going to dig up the earrings. If we can find them."
"No, no, no." She shook her head with obvious impatience. "That's not what you're saying at all."
"It's not?"
She smiled, her bright eyes triumphant. "What you're really saying is that you finally realize it's all right to help me dig up the earrings because you no longer think I'm just using you to get them."
Gideon absorbed the statement slowly, struggling with the convoluted feminine logic. "You really do have a talent for leaping to conclusions, don't you?"
"Go ahead. Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me you haven't decided to trust me at last," she challenged happily.
Gideon studied her for a long moment, enthralled by the warmth and delight in her vivid gaze.
"You win. I trust you."
He became aware, even as he said it, that it was the truth. He wondered if he'd known it all along on some instinctive level or if it was some grand realization that had just hit him. He decided not to worry about it. How and when he had come to trust her was no longer important.
What he couldn't explain to her was that this business of going back into the mountains to dig up the Fleetwood Flowers proved nothing at all about his trust in her.
GIDEON'S SHOVEL hit metal and clanged loudly in the morning stillness.
"Oh, my God, that's it," Sarah exclaimed. "You've found them. You've found the earrings. Gideon, this is so exciting. I can hardly believe it."
She leaned closer to examine the small pit they had dug precisely ten paces due north of the white rock. She had dragged Gideon out of bed very early so that they could get to Emelina Fleetwood's old cabin by mid-morning. Gideon had hardly complained at all.
"Stand back and let me get a little more of the dirt out of the way. It might not be the earrings, Sarah. It could be nothing more than an old tin can that was covered by mud years ago. Or a hubcap. Or a hunter's trap. Anything."