Lucky Charm (18 page)

“You seem to be my lucky charm, you keep popping up out of nowhere to bail me out of trouble,” he said, wryly.

Shaking her head, Ariel said, “I wish I didn’t have to. What’s going on? Matt, what are you doing here? What’s going on?”

Being worried wasn’t just his province, as much as she tried not to, she was worried about him, too.

The potential for an ugly scene had been there in that room upstairs like an unseen elephant. It had been like standing beneath high-tension electric wires, a low hum of threat, a thrum of impending violence. She was afraid for him and that frightened her. Even more frightening, though, was the attraction, the warmth that slid fluidly through her every time she looked at him.

“I wish I could tell you,” Matt said, looking down into her bright blue eyes.

He had to fight the urge to draw her into his arms, to cup his hand around the soft ivory skin of her cheek or to comb his fingers through the thick black curls that framed her elfin face.

Darrin had it right. Ariel, the sprite.

So pretty
.

Her mouth softened and she swayed a little toward him. There was no mistaking that look. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. However reluctant she was to admit it she did care what happened to him.

As crazy as it was, he wanted to kiss her again. Despite the lack of time, the urgency and the danger, he almost pulled her against him, just to have her body pressed against his and his arms wrapped around her to keep her safe.

Ariel looked up into his eyes and went still, caught by the look in them. Something in his expression made her heart beat deep and slow. Her eyes dropped almost involuntarily to his firm mouth. It had been so soft when it had touched hers. It was as if she were drawn to him like a moth to the flame, an attraction as inexorable as the tide. Deep in the recesses of her mind, fear shivered.

Her heart pounded. Then she remembered the last time she’d felt like this, and the pain that followed. It terrified her to care so much, that feel she was so drawn to him. Guilt followed behind the panic washing through her mind in an electric wave, wiping it clean of anything but fear. She struggled, pushed at him, trying to make him let go. Longing and fear warred inside her. She couldn’t, shouldn’t let this happen, let him or anyone get this close.

She thought of the scene upstairs. The air of menace directed at Matthew. Those people were supposed to be businessmen but what she’d seen hadn’t been businesslike at all. Why had they tried to prevent him from leaving?

Whatever it was he was doing it was dangerous, that much she could guess. If anything happened to him, if he got hurt…

She had to stop it now, before it went any farther, before she started to really care and risked the pain. As she stepped away from him, Ariel’s heart twisted.

That only frightened her more.

She wouldn’t deal with it, that terrible heartache. Not again.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Don’t. I can’t do this, Matthew.”

She averted her face, wrapped her arms protectively around herself, and looked somewhere else, anywhere else, as long as it wasn’t at him.

There was fear and pain in her eyes, Matt saw it just as she turned away. Now those dark-lashed blue eyes were shuttered, closing him out, isolating her again.

If he didn’t know better he wouldn’t have guessed this was the woman who’d responded so ardently the morning they’d made love. She’d shut herself off then, too. What was with her?

Looking at her closed expression, her dark lashes veiling her beautiful eyes, Matt fought a rising tide of anger. At what, he wasn’t sure. Being pushed away?

It was just as well as it was pretty likely he’d find a welcoming committee waiting on for him on the first floor and that wouldn’t be good for either of them. So he’d get off on the second. If they were watching, it might draw them away from Ariel. If they separated, the people upstairs might wonder about her involvement but they wouldn’t know. It might be enough to keep her safe.

He punched the button for the second floor with more force than he’d intended.

One minute she ran hot, the next cold.

He thought of the way she’d blown off that guy in Fort Lauderdale and the way she kept everyone at arm’s length. Had what happened between them that morning been only a moment of weakness? Something she regretted? If so, why had she been angry with him that night in the bar?

The elevator slowed, forcing him to remember what he’d come here for. Bill.

Whatever was going on inside her head, he wouldn’t put her at risk but neither could he let it go, either.

“So what happened, Ariel? Did you get hurt? Somebody break your heart? So now you hate all men? Or what, you only needed me to scratch an itch?” he asked, bitterly.

As if she were the only one who’d ever been hurt.

The elevator doors opened and he stepped out.

Like an arrow to her heart, the sharpness in Matt’s voice pierced the wall Ariel had carefully constructed around it. The accusation and the coldness in his voice slapped at her.

He turned his back on her and walked away.

It shocked her.

It wasn’t like that. She hadn’t meant it that way.

Memories tried to escape and with them all the pain. She tried to stop it.

The words slipped out anyway as her hand shot out to hold the door open a moment longer.

“He died,” she said.

Matt stopped. Those simple words went through him like a knife.

He turned and his heart twisted as he looked at her.

All the color had drained from her pretty face. She couldn’t have been any paler if he’d struck her. Her eyes showed a deep and aching grief, an old sorrow. Her blue eyes were wide and shadowed as she looked at him again.

“He died. You’ll break my heart, Matthew,” she said. “Please don’t. I don’t know if I can bear it. Not again.”

Ariel put her trembling fingers to her lips. She shoved the memories ruthlessly away.

It hurt so much to remember how good it had felt to kiss someone. She wanted to touch, to hold and be held again, to feel strong arms around her. She wanted to know his fierceness and gentleness but even the thought terrified her. Whatever it was he was doing was dangerous, as she knew all too well. She’d seen it.

The memory of another face rose. Guilt stabbed. She closed her eyes against it, to shut it out.

Reaching out, she pushed the ‘close doors’ button.

Her soft voice seemed to echo in Matt’s head, ‘He died.’

The doors slid together, cutting off his view of Ariel’s face.

Now he understood. Ariel knew grief as intimately as he did.

His mother’s death had affected him deeply. He’d deliberately steered away from anyone who reminded him of her.

Ariel didn’t want to care about him because the last person she’d loved had died.

Something about the depth of her grief told him there was more to it than that. That’s what she was afraid of, that he would get hurt or killed. That’s what she was telling him each time she pushed him away. That he’d break her heart. She might not want to care about him, but she did.

Even so, she never asked him to stop.

That stricken expression in her eyes nearly ripped his heart out. He would have done a lot of things not to have put that look in her eyes.

Break her heart, or his?

Somehow in his own grief and sorrow he’d forgotten that other people could suffer, too.

Don’t break my heart, she asked.

No, he wouldn’t do that. He didn’t want to do that either.

Or the complication.

His mind said one thing but his heart and body said another. Whether he needed it or not, it didn’t stopping him from wanting her. Badly. He couldn’t get her out of his mind.

Whether either of them wanted it or not, though, the attraction was there.

He didn’t want to leave her here alone in this place with unknown enemies all around her. If they suspected something she’d never have a chance alone.

Before he could worry too much about Ariel, though, he had to get himself out. He couldn’t help Ariel if he was caught.

It was a fair guess they weren’t far behind him.

The elevator descended to the basement. As if everything were normal Ariel stepped out and walked toward the vending machine. She couldn’t, wouldn’t think about Matt, about the liquid warmth that poured from her heart through her belly. Or what it had done to her. What it could do to her. Her hands were shaking so badly she had difficulty popping her change into the machine.

With a crash, the doors to the stairs smashed against the wall and Ariel spun, startled.

From the shadows of the stairwells men stepped out. None were small and two would have looked eye to eye with Matthew. All were broad and heavily muscled across the chest, shoulders and arms. Not Matthew’s lean coiled muscle but bruising, battering muscle. They had a coldness to their eyes and a thin, mean tightness to their mouths. None of these men were much into smiling. There was a sense of barely restrained cruelty about them, as if they’d enjoy hurting people.

Men like these had beaten Matthew.

All three wore the uniforms of Marathon security. Suddenly she had a pretty good idea who it was Jeremy and Tony had been waiting for.

An icy trickle of fear slid down her spine.

The juice bottle dropped down in the machine with a clunk. She jumped, nervously.

“The man with you, where did he go?” one of them demanded.

They were looking for Matt. Either they hadn’t seen what floor he’d gotten off on or they thought he’d come all the way down with her.

“He wasn’t with me,” she said, shaking her head and acting surprised. “I think he got off on the third floor.”

Keying a walkie-talkie cell phone she hadn’t noticed in his hand, one of the men said, “Third floor.”

Gestures from him sent the others back up the stairs on each side of the building. The leader walked to the elevator.

Ariel fetched her bottle of juice from the machine and went to join him.

“I’ll ride up with you, if you don’t mind,” she said and smiled at him. “I’ll feel safer. What’s going on?”

He glanced at her. “Nothing you need to worry about.”

“I think I’d rather not know, to tell the truth,” she said.

There was enough truth to her words to mollify him it seemed. She sensed the slight slackening of suspicion.

Act normal and keep acting normal
, she told herself.
Don’t give them any reason to doubt
. Atavistic instincts she didn’t know she possessed rose up. She was the prey here, if she gave him or them the least reason to wonder about her.

He exited the elevator at the third floor while she continued up. She saw him draw his weapon, advance, as the doors closed. She went cold at the sight.

Even so the relief at his departure was enormous.

All she was worried about was Matt, but with security heading for the third floor, at least he might have a chance to escape. He might be safe. It eased a fear she hadn’t wanted to admit she felt. The knowledge that somehow she’d come to care about him even that much shook her but she pushed the thought away. She didn’t dare look at it too closely.

When the elevator doors opened in front of her, Jeremy looked up at her from his desk across the room. She wasn’t certain whether it was just her imagination or whether he stared at her oddly as she walked out of the elevator.

It seemed so strange to see him acting so normal. It was as if what had happened only moments before hadn’t.

But all he said was, “Do you need me, Ariel?”

Forcing another smile, she shook her head, holding the bottle of juice tight.

“No,” she said, “I’m fine but you can stay if it would make you more comfortable.”

Keep acting as if nothing happened
, she told herself.