Aftershocks

Briana hadn’t felt nearly as confident. But she did want to help her uncle, and she’d wanted to move to California, where she felt there were better employment opportunities, for a long time. “And if he does make a pass?”

“We’ll have the tape to the media faster than you can say Monica Lewinsky.”

“I’ve always pictured myself more as the Hillary Clinton type.”

“Of course. You’re bright and ambitious. You’ll go places. But I know you’re also deeply concerned about justice, and hate dirty politics. I’m offering you a chance to see justice done, and one ugly political wrong put right.”

She bit her lip. She didn’t like the plan. Didn’t want to bring a man down. But she owed her uncle her loyalty. And he was right about her love of justice. Besides, if her new boss was an honorable man, he wouldn’t make a pass at a female employee.

But if Patrick O’Shea was an honorable man, he never would have faked evidence against a decent, good person like her uncle. She’d do what her uncle asked in the name of justice and family loyalty, help clear up some civic corruption and then move on. With her work record, glowing letters of recommendation from former employers and an honors degree in government studies, she wouldn’t have much trouble obtaining a challenging position, maybe in Los Angeles or Sacramento. Reluctantly, she agreed to Uncle Cecil’s plan.

Briana hadn’t been thrilled about the part she was to play before she arrived in Courage Bay and interviewed for the job, but she was even less happy when she met Patrick O’Shea and felt her mouth go dry.

The man was gorgeous in an understated, rugged, pick-a-woman-up-and-carry-her-across-a-raging-river kind of way. He had black hair with a few silver strands beginning to show, and Irish blue eyes that could twinkle with amusement or turn a hard, cold pewter when there was trouble. When he gazed at her, his eyes darkened in intensity. He might not say anything, but she knew what he was thinking. She didn’t think seducing him would be much of a trial.

Men came on to her all the time. It was something she’d been used to since she was a teenager. With her Nordic genes and statuesque body, she was accustomed to male attention. However, it was unusual for her to respond as forcefully as she did to Patrick O’Shea. She was only sorry that someone she found so attractive should be so corrupt.

Of course, whatever his standards, she considered herself a woman of integrity. She wouldn’t make the first move. It was up to him. But her tape recorder was always in her purse and the batteries fresh.

She’d discovered in the first week of working for the mayor that when he was out of the office, he sometimes made notes into a small personal recorder. Periodically, he’d give her the recorder and ask her to transcribe his notes, which ranged from budget issues to ideas for future speeches.

The recorder was common enough, and by the second week of her employment, she owned an identical one. She reasoned that if Patrick ever caught sight of hers, he’d naturally think it was his own. Not that she intended for him to notice she had a tape recorder, but she believed in covering all her bases.

In two months, nothing had happened.

Nothing that you could put on tape, anyway. Things like sizzling eye contact. A sudden rise in air temperature that had nothing to do with a faulty air conditioner. And a longing deep inside her that was as rare as it was potent.

Briana had never found herself in a worse predicament. She wanted Patrick O’Shea. She wanted to run her fingers over the rugged planes of his face, trace the shape of his ears, the scar that bisected one eyebrow.

Even though his next birthday would be his fortieth, he still had the lean hard body of an active firefighter. She knew he trained frequently at the gym with the guys from his former station.

She wanted to touch that powerfully built body. She had fantasies of coming together with him naked. Fantasies that shamed her because he was her boss and it was inappropriate for her to think about having sex with him.

The curse of her situation was that if he did make a pass, she’d know he was as hot for her as she was for him.

And if he made a pass, she’d also know that he was a hypocrite. A man who would make sexual overtures to a female employee after promising to act with squeaky clean ethics was beneath contempt.

But now here they were, in this dark elevator, and it was Briana’s body, not her brain, that was in charge. Still thrumming with adrenaline after their brush with death, she suddenly didn’t care much about ethics or campaign promises.

As his lips crushed hers, Briana responded helplessly, even as she wished deep down that Patrick had turned out to be a better man.

Five minutes. She’d give him five minutes. Enough time to get some moaning and groaning recorded. If he was like every other man she’d ever kissed, he’d try to get her out of her clothes.

She’d say no.

He’d beg her for sex.

And she’d have him. On tape.

The man is a hypocrite and a liar, she reminded herself as Patrick’s lips found her throat and she tipped her chin to give him better access.

Five minutes. She traced the shape of his eyebrow, noting the indent of his scar, then let her hands roam his face, his shoulders. His arousal strained against her, hard, seeking her softest parts, and she couldn’t stop the rush of longing.

Stuck there in the dark, suspended between floors was like being caught between reality and fantasy.

Patrick O’Shea was a bad man.

She knew it. He’d destroyed her uncle’s chances of ever becoming mayor of the town he’d served for a quarter of a century. Now, the minute they were stuck in an elevator together, he was jumping her bones. Intellectually, she knew he was a hypocrite and a liar. But the trouble was, her body didn’t care. Her flesh and blood responded to him in a purely physical sense that had nothing to do with morals or ethics, elections or earthquakes.

Well, earthquakes maybe, in their crudest “the earth moved” definition.

“I want you so much,” he murmured against her neck.

Damn. Too soft for the tape recorder.

Her breathing shallow, she raised her head and spoke as clearly as she could. “What did you say?”

“I want you so much, Briana,” he repeated. “I want to make love with you.”

“Yes,” she said, not certain whether she meant yes as in Yes! I got it on tape, or Yes! He wants me, he wants me.

Patrick seemed to take it as Yes, she wants me. He went back to kissing her neck, which was fine, because she did want him. More than she ever remembered wanting anything.

He made it to the base of her throat, and she found herself arching up to give him easier access to her breasts.

His hands, so capable and strong, cupped her breasts with hot abandon, surprising a moan out of her.

As though impatient to reach bare skin—and he couldn’t be more impatient for it than she was—he plunged a hand into the vee of her blouse, then cursed in frustration.

“Buttons,” she cried, desperate to feel his hands on her. She’d have undone them herself, but her arms were supporting her and they trembled beneath her.

He made such clumsy work of her buttons that Briana realized he was shaking as badly as she was.

The tape, she recalled dimly. It would be impossible to register what he was doing on tape.

“Are you taking off my blouse?”

A low chuckle answered her. “I’m trying, but damn it, I’m out of practice.”

That blunt admission gave her pause. Of course, she knew he’d been a widower for three years, but surely…He was a man. He must have…

Anyway, none of that mattered. What mattered was getting him to incriminate himself on tape so she could do her buttons back up and be done with this unpleasant task of entrapping a man she’d grown to like.

Even if her judgment was suspect, she did like him. She wanted to get this over with. Record the incident. Get out of here alive. Give the tape to her uncle and leave town.

Playing this devious undercover game was no fun. She’d discovered within hours of meeting Patrick that she wasn’t cut out for entrapment. She liked plain dealing and honesty. He might be a lying, devious career-destroyer, but at this moment, so was she, no matter how she tried to justify her actions.

Mentally, she reviewed the tape. There’d be kissing sounds, heavy breathing, Patrick admitting he wanted her…