Secret Games

If Sam wanted control, she’d give it to him. “Okay.”

He smiled. “You won’t be sorry.”

She closed her eyes and whispered a silent plea that she wasn’t making the biggest mistake in her life. Goodness knows she’d made some doozies.

Sam clearly didn’t think this was one of them, though, and he’d been privy to them all. She found that in itself reassuring. When he moved toward the elevator’s control panel, she found herself breathing a little easier.

He popped open the emergency panel and lifted the receiver from the cradle.

“Try 19,” she suggested. This crazy turn of events qualified as trouble, didn’t it?

He punched in the numbers and someone must have picked up on the other end on the first ring, because Sam was suddenly explaining their predicament and hanging up the phone before Maggie’s racing heart had slowed its rhythm.

“Are they coming to rescue us?” she asked, trying to keep her voice casual and unaffected.

“That bellhop sounds just like Scotty from the Starship Enterprise. He said he’d have us moving in a minute.”

“Dougray is the maintenance supervisor.”

“I thought he was the bellhop.”

“Jack-of-all-trades, he said.”

Sam glanced askance, a look that clearly revealed his lack of surprise that she knew so much about one of the superclub’s male department heads before she’d even checked in.

Love-’em-and-leave-’em Maggie. Damsel in distress. The relationship counselor who’d had loads of dates, but no long-term experience whatsoever. Except for Sam.

Maggie had some work to do on her image, but she didn’t have time to consider ways to affect the necessary changes, because true to Dougray’s word, the elevator lurched into motion almost immediately. Sam retrieved her coat from the floor and handed it to her, his strong fingers lingering on hers until she lifted her gaze to meet the promise in his.

“You won’t be sorry, Mags.” The lusty assurance in his voice sent a shiver through her.

“So you keep saying.”

Life as Maggie had known it had just taken the most incredible turn. Her friend Sam Masters had vanished, leaving behind this brazen, possessive and very intriguing man to take his place.

4

THE ELEVATOR FLOOR rumbled beneath Sam’s feet, then lurched into motion, lifting them toward the fifth floor and the top of the superclub. He shifted uncomfortably, the seam of his slacks biting in exactly the wrong place as he subdued his firebolt response to kissing Maggie.

Beside him, she tried to look calm and unaffected, but to his eyes, she managed only pale and uncertain. Her chest rose and fell with sharp breaths, and she eyed him askance, as though the Swamp Thing had suddenly materialized by her side.

He resisted the urge to wrap an arm around her shoulders, draw her close, and reassure her that her long-term friend still resided inside the man who’d just kissed her.

But he couldn’t let her in on that secret just yet. He needed her off balance and off guard, otherwise his plan to tear down her defenses would never get off the ground.

And he planned to go for broke this weekend.

Maggie thought she was an authority on relationships, both from her education and personal experience, and while she might be, she didn’t know a thing about romance and intimacy. He’d convinced her to give him chance, because he intended to show her the difference.

Though he possessed no psychology credentials, Sam knew Maggie would never tackle a commitment until she was willing to acknowledge that she spent her life fixing relationships because she didn’t believe they could work. He’d witnessed the events leading to her family’s breakup and wasn’t surprised by her lack of faith, but it was high time she put the past in the past and got on with her future. A future that included him. But for Maggie to look squarely at her own behavior, she needed incentive. Serious incentive.

Sam had an invitation, a bed and a weekend to provide it. He would use seduction to wear down her defenses until she lost herself to passion. And to love.