The Business Of Strangers

The handkerchief she was dabbing gingerly at her nose muffled the snort she gave. He reached for her wrist, tugged it away from her face so he could survey the damage. “The bleeding has stopped. C’mon. I’ll take you somewhere you can clean up.”

“That’s not…” He heard a slight sound that might have been her teeth grinding as he cupped her elbow and herded her back toward the restaurant. “You’re pushy, you know that?”

“It’s been mentioned.” Inside the front doors, instead of entering the restaurant he took out his keys and used one to open the discreet private elevator on one wall. “But even given the fate suffered by your last admirer, I’m going risk it. You need some ice for that nose. And if I think it’s broken, you’re going to see a doctor, too.” He ushered her into the elevator and punched in a code. The doors slid closed silently.

“It’s not broken.”

He had a feeling that her words were laced with more determination than certainty, as if she could will them to be true. The woman had a spine of steel. His mouth quirked. And the self-defense moves of a ninja.

“We never got around to exchanging names.” He watched the wariness flicker across her face before she deliberately blanked it. “Mine’s Jake Tarrance.”

“Ria.”

He waited, but it was apparent that was all she was going to offer. With a mental shrug, he waited for the doors to slide open again, then put his hand to the base of her back to nudge her forward.

She went, crossing the large open room to the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows that comprised the west wall. “Nice view.” She looked back at him. “Reflective glass?”

He stilled, shot her a look.

“No window treatments.” She waved a hand. “Either you’re an exhibitionist or the place was designed so you could enjoy the view while maintaining your privacy.”

“I do like my privacy.” He went to the kitchen and placed some crushed ice in a dish towel, then folded it into a makeshift ice pack. Returning, he passed it to her, taking the handkerchief from her hand. “For the swelling.” She pressed it to her face while he studied her. “So he jumped you on your way to your car?”

“I heard him behind me, but he was closer than I thought. Got in one good crack before I turned around.” Somehow Jake knew that fact would rankle her for a while. “At dinner he had difficulty understanding I wasn’t interested. Must have thought I’d find him more appealing in the dark.”

Jake’s fist closed, tightened. Ghosts from the past drifted through his memory, carrying with them the sound of distant screams. But Ria wouldn’t be the type of woman to cower in a corner while the blows rained down, heavy and punishing. Wouldn’t be the kind to make excuses for the man later, smiling through the bruises, with a look in her eyes that was half despair, half hope.

Consciously, he unclenched his fingers. Whatever else this woman was, she was no one’s victim. “Guess he found out otherwise.”

“You think?” A small satisfied smile settled on her lips, and lust punched through him, just as swift, just as savage as the first time he’d seen her in the restaurant. He knew almost nothing about the woman, but he knew he wanted her, all of her. He wanted to wipe that look of cool competence from her face, to shatter that wariness and have her attention focused only on him as he moved over her, inside her.

The strength of that vicious longing was unexpected enough to have all his well-constructed defenses slam into place. He wasn’t a man driven by impulse. Emotion-laden decisions led to vulnerabilities, and he couldn’t afford to be vulnerable. He’d done very well without feeling much of anything at all for the last decade, and hadn’t been overly bothered by the void.

It also seemed a shame to develop an attachment for someone who might have to be killed later.

She could have been sent by Alvarez. It wouldn’t be the first time an attractive woman had been used to try and set him up. If so, the man had deviated from type this time. Ria was far subtler, both in looks and in manner. She hadn’t tried to gain his attention at the restaurant, although the scene outside it could have been a pretense.

Jake considered the thought as she rose and crossed the room to look at a collection of black-and-white photographs on the far wall. Alvarez knew him a bit better than Jake would have liked, and may have staged the scene, guessing how he’d react. But if that was the case, Jake doubted very much that the woman selected would end up beating the hell out of the guy.

The corner of his mouth lifted. No, whoever this woman was, he was willing to bet she hadn’t faked anything this evening. Not the spark of awareness that she’d almost successfully hidden. Not the instinctive guardedness that she made no effort to hide.

In any case, this place was swept for bugs daily. The code to the elevator was on a triple circuit pattern that changed upon each use. And Alvarez wouldn’t send anyone with lethal intent. He wanted Jake’s death to come from his own hand.

Some might consider Jake’s swift mental assessment as paranoid. But in his world, paranoia was a necessary tool for survival.

He joined her at the photographs, glancing at her as she stared fixedly at them. Most people found the stark images disturbing. They hadn’t been taken to capture beauty, or to celebrate life. But it was impossible to tell her opinion. Her face was expressionless. “You like photography?”

Ria didn’t answer at first. She couldn’t. They were the sort of photos that made her want to look away, the sort that wouldn’t allow her to dismiss them easily. At first glance they would seem disconnected shots. A close-up of a wino shivering in an alley. An old woman leaning out a tenement window. A barely clothed toddler sitting on a ramshackle stoop. A group of teens wearing gang colors and sullen masks.

“I thought at first they were random shots, but I was wrong. The look in the eyes of the subjects is the same. Desolation.” She recognized the expression easily enough. She’d faced it in the mirror more times than she wanted to think about. Noting his stillness, she felt comprehension dawn. “You took these yourself, didn’t you?”

“What makes you think so?”

After a last glance at the photos, she turned back toward the windows. “Because you have a way of looking through people.”

She wouldn’t want that cruelly discerning eye turned on her, she thought with vague discomfort. How many times had she felt like little more than a snapshot herself? A carefully presented picture developed to present the image she wished to display to the world. There might be character hinted at in her unsmiling demeanor, but if one were to examine her life, much as they’d hold up a photo to peer at it more closely, they’d find little more than what existed on that flimsy paper. No substance behind the image.

Because in every way that mattered, Ria really didn’t exist at all.

Walking to the large, well-equipped kitchen, she placed the ice pack in the sink and then turned to find Jake contemplating her from the arched doorway. “I should go.” The thought of her new home lacked appeal, but there was danger here, emotional rather than physical. She recognized the fact even as she wondered where that realization stemmed from.

“You don’t have to.” His pale blue eyes glittered with unmistakable intensity, but he made no move toward her. Whatever her decision, it would be hers to make. She could respect a man who didn’t push, despite the hunger apparent on his face.

“Yes.” Her voice was shakier than she’d like, matching her resolve. “I do.”

“You can’t go home like that. Let me get you a shirt.” He turned and walked into another room, while Ria headed toward the chair near the windows where she’d left her purse.

He caught up with her at the door, silently handing her a gray T-shirt with a faded Knicks logo. “Thanks.” She took it, appreciating the thought even though she had no intention of changing in front of him. They stared at each other for an instant, the moment awkward, thick with tension. She felt the wild and reckless beating of her pulse, and found it much harder than she’d like to ignore. If it had been due solely to animal attraction there would be no choice; she’d be in his bed, wrapped around him, using him to quench the heat in her blood.

But it wasn’t that simple. He wasn’t that simple. Instinct warned her of that. There was an undeniable connection between them that defied identification, and anything that couldn’t be coolly qualified and analyzed was to be avoided. Ria took plenty of risks, but only when she could control the situation. Jake Tarrance didn’t appear to be a man easily controlled.

So she tucked away need in the interest of safety. She opened the door, for the first time noticing the tiny cameras in the hallway. Most visitors wouldn’t observe them at all, but the miniscule whirls in the oak paneling high on the walls appeared just a little too uniform. He was a careful man. She assumed he had cause to be.

Jake followed her out silently, produced the key that unlocked the elevator. When the door opened, she stepped inside it, turned to face him. He punched in the code that would have carried her away from him. But just as the doors began to slide shut, he stepped forward and slapped his hand over the button that would stop them.

One of his business sidelines—by far the most lucrative one—dealt with rarities of unparalleled value. So he recognized the uniqueness of the woman who was bent on leaving, even if he couldn’t have described where the quality came from.

Bracing his hands on either side of the entrance, he leaned in for a taste of her. If this was the last time he’d see her, he’d damn well have this much.

He pressed her lips apart with his, sweeping his tongue into her mouth, and felt the hunger lunge inside him. His fingers clenched on the open elevator doors. It took physical effort to keep from reaching for her. Her flavor was foreign, an intoxicating mixture of desire and caution, but there was a response there to match his own.

Kindred spirits. The phrase drifted across his mind, even awash as it was in a fog of frustrated lust. Something in him recognized a part of her, a part she would have denied existed. Most solitary people were that way by nature, or became so by circumstances.

Then there were people like them, he thought, who allowed circumstance to dictate nature, until the two were so entwined it was impossible to say where one left off and the other began.

Ria gave in to a rare moment of self-indulgence and opened her mouth beneath his. He knew how to kiss a woman, with a single-minded intensity that stripped them both down to their most elemental levels, male and female. He knew how to take while still giving riotous pleasure, sensual hints of the erotic satisfaction to be had if she let passion have its way.

This wouldn’t be an easy man to walk away from, although she had every intention of doing just that. But one taste couldn’t hurt, could it? Even if it whipped her blood to churning whitecaps and incinerated her control? Every move she made in life was calculated, with the benefits and risks carefully weighed. Stealing a few minutes with an exciting stranger seemed relatively harmless.

But there was nothing harmless about the flames licking through her veins. Absorbing his intoxicating taste was like diving headlong into dark fire.

Without conscious thought she moved closer and caught his full lower lip in her teeth. Scoring it lightly, she felt a measure of restraint slip away. His answering kiss was hard, demanding, but he made no further move toward her. The muscles in the wall of his chest were bunched tightly, his hands still pressed against the open doors.

Emboldened, she leaned against him, took the kiss deeper. How long had it been, she thought fuzzily, since she’d last felt a fever in the blood, temptation stripping layers off her defenses? Had she ever?

This scorching heat was its own kind of seduction for a woman who spent her life—what she could remember of it—in the cold. It was unlikely their paths would cross again. The idea was tantalizing. Despite the shadowy aura of danger that surrounded him, there was something soothing in his very anonymity.

The rationalization shredded caution, struck down logic. He angled his mouth over hers, the pressure almost punishing. The purse and T-shirt dropped from her hands, and she slid her arms around his neck.