The Survivor Read online

  “Like you wouldn’t believe,” Chester told her proudly. He lifted the lid, then selected a disc, lowered the needle and wound the crank. Bing Crosby’s “Sleigh Ride in July” suddenly filled the air and she inhaled, utterly delighted.

  “Chester, this is simply extraordinary. Where did you find it?”

  “You aren’t going to believe this, but at a yard sale.”

  She felt her eyes widen. “You are kidding me.”

  He shook his head. “Nope. The couple had found it in the attic of an old house they’d just bought to flip and really didn’t know what they had. I picked it for fifty dollars.”

  “Wow,” she said. “That’s just incredible.”

  “According to the serial number, this model was made in 1921 and there were only a little over twenty-thousand produced.”

  She nudged him in the shoulder. “And you saved it,” she said. “If you hadn’t come along it would have probably gone to the dump.”

  “Awww, somebody would have gotten it,” he said. “But I daresay I can appreciate it more than most. I can remember my parents having one similar to this, firing it up, pushing back the furniture and dancing around the room.”

  “That sounds like a wonderful memory,” Bess said, touched.

  Chester’s smile turned reminiscent. “It is.”

  She offered the older man her hand. “All right, then,” she said. “Let’s have a go.”

  He smiled, his faded eyes lighting up, then took her hand and bowed over it. “As you wish,” he said, then began to slowly whirl her around the room. She was laughing delightedly when Lex appeared in the doorway, but she waited for the music to stop before giving him her full attention. She’d be willing to bet that Chester hadn’t danced since his wife passed away and he’d bought the Victrola because it brought back good memories.

  This was why she did what she did, Bess thought.

  She dropped into a small curtsy and nodded primly. “Thank you, Chester.”

  “Thank you, Bess,” he returned, his grin sincere.

  She looked at Lex once more and watched something curious pass over his face. It was a fleeting look, so quick she thought she might have imagined it. “Did you find something?” she asked.

  “How far is Albany from here?”

  Bess frowned. Albany? But why would—

  “About an hour and a half north,” Chester told him.

  Shit. She shook her head. “I missed it, didn’t I?”

  “There are lots of addresses, Bess,” he said, trying to make her feel better about the mistake.

  She hurried into the kitchen to get her cell phone. “I’d better call. Did you check to see if that address is on the other list?”

  He nodded. “It is.”

  She swore again, this time under her breath. Dammit, she thought she’d been so careful, thought she’d covered every address. She’d gone over the master list at least three times. How in the hell had she missed Albany? In all likelihood the man they wanted had left Waycross and gone straight to Albany. By now he’d probably been there and gone. She dialed the right number with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  “Mrs. Handley? Bess Cantrell. How are you?”

  “I’m just fine, hon. How are you doing?”

  “Not too good at the moment.” She explained the situation as best she could. “He hasn’t been there, has he?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid so, dear. He’s been gone about an hour. Said he was working with you now and that you’d sent him on the road, that you’d gotten into the rare books business and were looking for an old Bible. He even showed me a picture of it.”

  Bess massaged the bridge of her nose. “He didn’t hurt you or try to bully you, did he, Mrs. Handley?”

  “No,” she said. “He wasn’t what I’d call friendly, but he wasn’t rude, either. Mostly he just seemed to be in a hurry. When he saw that I didn’t have the book, he thanked me for my time and left rather abruptly.”

  So she hadn’t had it, Bess thought, wilting with relief. Whoever had the book needed to be made aware of its worth and that person should be the one to profit from it, not some jerk who was trying to hoodwink them out of it. “Did you happen to catch his name?”

  “I did. He said his name was John Smith.”

  She smirked and looked at Lex. “John Smith, eh?”

  “That’s right. Plain name for such an odd-looking fellow,” she remarked.

  Bess’s antennae twitched. “Odd-looking how?”

  “Well,” she said, “he had one blue eye and one brown eye and was wearing a really bad hairpiece.”

  “Anything else?” Bess prodded.

  “His fingernails were dirty,” she said matter-of-factly. “I should have known he didn’t work for you. Should have known better than to think you’d work with anyone who had dirty nails.”

  Bess smothered a laugh. “Hygiene is important,” she said. She pressed the older woman a little further, but didn’t come up with anything more than what they’d already learned. When she disconnected, she filled Lex in on everything. “Mrs. Handley says that she’d put him in his mid to late forties, that he had one blue eye and one brown eye—”

  “Heterochromia,” Lex said, surprising her with the medical term. She knew it, too, but only because her grandfather had explained it to her after she’d seen a child with the same anomaly.

  “—and that he was wearing a bad rug and had dirty fingernails.”

  Lex frowned. “Dirty fingernails? That’s an odd thing to notice.”

  She grinned. “That’s Mrs. Handley.”

  Evidently still pondering that, Lex consulted the maps again. “He should be coming here next.” He winced. “Unless he moves on into Alabama. There are several contacts close together over there.”

  Bess tapped a finger against her chin. “I can’t believe he’d skip coming here. He’s too close.”

  “He could have missed it,” Lex said.

  “Possibly.”

  “You’re welcome to hang around here and wait on him,” Chester told them.

  She could tell that Lex was torn. He consulted the maps again, then absently rubbed his shoulder. That was the second time she’d seen him doing it since they’d arrived. The spot where he’d been shot, she suddenly realized, her heart giving a squeeze. It must be aching. Even though she imagined it would bug him that she’d noticed—men and their crackbrained ideas of masculinity, she thought—she reached into her purse and withdrew a couple of aspirin, then silently handed them to him.

  He quirked a questioning brow and she glanced pointedly at his shoulder.

  Honey nudged his leg as if to say, “That’s the medicine, you fool.”

  He smiled at the dog, then popped the pills into his mouth and washed them down with a drink of coffee. “Thank you.”

  She merely nodded. “So what’s the plan, boss?”

  He grinned. “Oh, you’re going to let me be the boss now, are you?”

  “Only on a trial basis,” she quipped.

  Lex glanced at Chester. “If you’re sure you don’t mind if we hang around for a little while, Chester, then we’ll certainly take you up on that. If he’s not here in a couple of hours, then I think we can safely assume he’s missed this address and has moved on toward Alabama.”

  “You’re welcome to stay as long as you like,” Chester told him.

  Bess grinned and looked at her old friend. “In that case, I think a little more dancing is in order.”

  6

  IF BESS WAS GOING TO DANCE again, then he was definitely going to get his turn, Lex thought as he and Honey followed Chester and Bess back into the large living room. He took a seat in a wing chair away from the makeshift dance floor and watched as Chester once again fired up the old Victrola. But he’d wait his turn, particularly since Chester looked to be having the time of his life.

  Lex had been over the maps and addresses several times and had concluded that the client in Albany had indeed been the only one Bess hadn’
t included on their map. He sincerely hoped that John Smith—he inwardly snorted at the name—would be here soon so he could take him down, load him up and haul him back to Atlanta, where the boys in blue would take care of him. Theoretically, he and Bess could be home before ten tonight, he could be back in his new apartment, his first assignment completed quickly and competently.

  For whatever reason, he didn’t think that was going to happen, and there was an even bigger part of him that, perversely, hoped it didn’t. Because no mission meant no more Bess and he wasn’t ready to say goodbye to her just yet. She was beautiful and interesting and she had a different way of looking at the world—a way that made him appreciate it more—and she was a nurturer and she was…

  She was good, Lex realized, the simple description fitting her as well as her name. Or as good as a woman with a wicked sense of humor who bathed nude on her back porch could be, he thought, smiling as that little picture leaped obligingly to his mind once more. He shifted, losing room in his pants again, and watched her smile up at Chester, her ripe mouth curling in sultry humor. Take now, for instance.

  She’d instinctively known that Chester would want to dance and without batting a lash had asked him. And she’d quietly observed that Lex’s shoulder had been hurting and had handed him the pills to make it stop. No muss, no fuss, just a pointed look when he’d played dumb—he knew what the pills were for—and she had gone on about her business, certain that she was doing what she could.

  It was that same attitude that had made her so worried over her clients, that made her want to protect each and every one of them like a mama bear protecting her cubs. She knew what was good and true and right and endeavored to achieve that end. That was admirable, Lex thought. And it took character.

  Chester laughed as the music drew to a close and gestured to Lex. “You’ve got to come dance, young man. These old feet have to have a bit of rest.”

  Lex didn’t hesitate. His gaze tangled with hers and he held out his hand. The instant her fingers wrapped around his, he felt something shift in his chest, something so profound he almost hesitated before pulling her into his arms. Almost being the operative word there. Wild horses couldn’t have dragged him away, he was that damned determined to touch her.

  Just touch her.

  Shaken, he looked down at her and smiled. “This is a nice change,” he said. “There wasn’t any dancing on the job in the military.” He breathed her in, inhaled the air around her and felt it settle into his lungs. She was soft and womanly in his arms, warm and pliant, and he resisted the urge to draw her closer, to mold her more firmly to him.

  But this wasn’t that kind of dance and Chester, bless him, was watching.

  She smelled good, too, Lex thought. Like lemons and something else. Something light and floral. If he leaned forward even the smallest fraction, he could rest his chin on top of her head. He hadn’t realized how short she was until that very moment, and something about her petite size beckoned his protective instincts, made him want to hold her closer.

  “You’re short,” he remarked before he thought any better of it.

  She looked up at him, droll humor in her eyes. “That’s some serious deductive reasoning skills right there,” she teased. “What tipped you off? My hair tickling your chin?”

  “Yes, actually,” he said, looking down at her. The smart-ass. “I like the way your shampoo smells, by the way.”

  She swept out and twirled beneath his hand, then curled back into his chest and grinned. “It’s lemon verbena,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “You’re welcome to try it.”

  “No thanks. I’ll stick with my manly shampoo and leave the girlie stuff for you.”

  “Probably wise,” she murmured. “It might confuse people if you smelled lemony fresh.”

  He chuckled softly. “Why do I always feel like you’re laughing at me?” he asked no one in particular. “Why do I feel the butt of all of your jokes?”

  She pretended to frown. “Who are you talking to?”

  “The world,” he remarked broodingly, looking down into her lovely green eyes again. She had a tiny mole just to the right of her upper lip, Lex noticed, momentarily concerned because he found that so adorable.

  Adorable?

  What the hell was wrong with him? What was it about this woman that was completely turning him inside out?

  He’d never felt this way about a girl before. Never had this instantaneous level of attraction, fascination and admiration. In fact, he couldn’t say that he’d ever been fascinated by one before. Had never looked at a woman and wondered what she was thinking, or what circumstances shaped her into the person she was today.

  But he did wonder such things about Bess, and those unsettlingly original thoughts combined with this ridiculously powerful attraction were making him more than a tad nervous.

  Because he wasn’t altogether certain he was going to be able to resist her. And he knew enough about women to discern when one was interested in him and, in some twisted trick of fate, she was every bit as hot for him as he was for her.

  The lingering looks, the preoccupation with his mouth, the way she instinctively leaned toward him when she was talking, the way she didn’t shy away when he lessened the distance between them, the rapid flow of her pulse beneath her skin, the hint of rose on her cheeks. The way her palm tightened around his. Little tells, but tells all the same.

  He’d get fired, Lex thought. She was a friend of Payne’s, more than a mere client. And this was his first job. It was lunacy to even consider acting on this unholy attraction, and yet in some dark corner of his mind, he knew it was inevitable, that it was going to happen, that it was going to literally rattle his foundation, and knowing that, he couldn’t simply let it go.

  He had to have her.

  In fact, were Chester not smiling now, were he even in another room, Lex knew he would have already made a move. He would have spun her out, and twirled her back in, hauled her up against him and molded that utterly distracting, too-sexy, perpetually smirking mouth to his. He would have memorized every vertebra in her back and measured her waist against his palms. He would have lifted her up and slid her slowly along the front of his body so that she could feel what she was doing to him, and he would have eaten her gasp and tumbled her onto the couch, where he would have systematically removed her clothes and buried himself in her softness.

  “Lex,” she hissed.

  He blinked stupidly down at her.

  “The song is over,” she said, looking gratifyingly flustered and short of breath. She backed carefully away from him, and it was only then that he realized that he had hauled her closer to him. Close enough for her to feel what she did to him, to confirm any mere suspicions she might have had.

  Brilliant, Lex thought, mortified.

  Still beaming at them and completely oblivious to the massive hard-on Lex was trying to get under control, Chester clapped enthusiastically from his chair. “Well done,” he cried. “Oh, well done!”

  He’d done it all right, Lex thought. And there was no undoing it now.

  THREE HOURS LATER, WHEN IT was obvious that Asshole Bastard aka John Smith wasn’t going to show up, Bess, Lex and Honey loaded themselves back into Lex’s SUV.

  “Well, hell,” Lex said as he cranked the motor.

  She knew. Well, hell, indeed. “Do you think he missed this address?” she asked. “Or do you think he might have caught wind that we’re after him and he’s changing up his strategy?”

  With a final wave at Chester, Lex aimed the car down the drive. “I don’t know. He probably knows that you’re calling people because at least one of them—Gus, was it?—was ready for him. Would he assume that you were chasing him or had gotten someone else to do it?” He released a breath. “I don’t know. I do know that I’m hungry, so I think our first order of business is to find somewhere to eat and then we’ll plot our next move.”

  “I don’t want to leave Honey in the car,” Bess said, shooting a look at the sweet dog.
Honestly, the way Lex’s dog followed his every move was nothing short of incredible. Honey didn’t just love Lex—she was intensely protective of him. If Lex moved, Honey moved. For whatever reason, she’d appointed herself his guardian and took the job very seriously. That sort of devotion was hard to ignore and Bess knew the animal would be miserable locked in the car away from Lex.

  Lex’s smile was grateful. “Thanks,” he said. “I don’t like leaving her in the car, either. She gets anxious.”

  She’d noticed. “It’s not a problem. We can go to a drive-through and pick up something or maybe find a hotel with room service.”

  She’d expected this to take several days and had packed accordingly, but somehow when she’d considered being on the road with one of Brian’s security experts for several days, she hadn’t considered that she might be attracted to him. Or that he might be attracted to her.

  She’d sensed his interest from the start, had watched it flare in his eyes a couple of times and would even go so far as to say they’d flirted quite shamelessly with one another. But sensing it and feeling it were two entirely different things…?.

  And she’d felt it.

  High on her belly.

  That unmistakable nudge, the thick ridge of his blatant, panty-scorching erection.

  Mercy.

  She wanted. More than anything, she just wanted. She wanted to kiss that unbelievably carnal mouth, to know how his lips felt against her own. She wanted to slide her hands all over his body, to feel his skin beneath her greedy palms, mapping his warm flesh. She wanted to kiss his injured shoulder and nibble her way along his neck. She wanted to kneel behind him and rake her aching nipples across his back and listen to him hiss with pleasure, with wanting. She wanted to watch his eyes darken and droop, to feel his powerful fingers sliding over her rib cage and curving along her hip and to feel them in darker places, hidden places she instinctively knew he’d expertly explore.

  She wanted to slip her fingers into his hair while he fed at her breasts and feasted between her legs and she wanted to welcome him into her body with a sigh dredged from her very soul. She wanted him to take her long and slow and then hard and fast and every variation in between.