Led into Temptation Read online

  “The FBI might have thought so at first, but they’re beginning to have their doubts. I think he used you to get access to King and Fairchild and their clients. Then when the curtain came down faster than he’d expected on his scam, I think he stashed the artifact with you until he could pick it up.”

  “So that’s why you came here and got close to me, made love to me?”

  Fury radiated from him as he rose off the seat and stepped toward her. She felt a flutter of panic and excitement as she backed in to the door.

  “No. I came here to catch a thief and a murderer. Do you think I planned on wanting you from the first moment I saw you? Masquerading as a priest was supposed to put up an insurmountable barrier between us. I intended to gain your trust without making you think that I had any sexual intentions. Instead, that’s all I’ve had since I laid eyes on you. You weren’t supposed to get inside of me until I can’t think of anyone or anything but you. What happened between us should never have happened.”

  She might have needed the door for support, but she kept her eyes steady on his. “But it did happen.”

  “Yes.”

  And they were both remembering exactly what had happened between them. He wasn’t touching her, but he was so close she could feel the heat of him in every pore. And she recalled exactly what his hands had felt like on her skin. The room, already tiny, grew even smaller. He still smelled of the sea, and with each breath she took, the memories of what had happened on the beach grew more intense.

  His breath feathered over her cheek and all she could think of was how much she wanted his mouth on hers again. She had to experience again the mindless whirl of pleasure that only he could bring her. She simply had to. She was rising on her toes to close the distance when she caught herself.

  She couldn’t. In denial, in desperation, she placed two hands on his chest and gave him a hard shove. But the moment she felt the thunder of his heartbeat, her fingers curled into his shirt and she dragged him closer.

  “This is crazy.” But she couldn’t stop her body from melting against his when she was finally pressed against him. “We’re crazy.”

  “Yeah.” But his mouth was already doing things to the curve of her throat. “We’ll go into therapy tomorrow.”

  She nearly cried out in protest when he drew back enough to grip her arms and draw her up until they were eye-to-eye. “No fantasy this time, Naomi.”

  “No fantasy,” she agreed as a dark thrill moved through her.

  “This time it’s just you and me.”

  And that was exactly the way she wanted it. Whoever he was. “Kiss me. I can’t wait another minute.”

  “Say my name.”

  “Dane.”

  When his mouth finally crushed hers, there was none of the gentleness, none of the careful exploration that she’d experienced before. She didn’t want it. She wanted this. With each nip and scrape of his teeth, the torrid heat that only he could trigger battered her again and again.

  She’d sampled his flavors, savored them, but the desperation was new. At the first taste of it, her own response overwhelmed her. She was dimly aware of the hiss of the shower and the moist heat filling the room, but all she really knew were his lips and his hands. As eager as he was, she helped him pull off her shirt and drag down her shorts.

  Then at last his hands were on her, searching—not with the gentleness he’d shown earlier, but with a bruising meticulousness. Those hard fingers, those rough palms, scraped her skin from breast to hips, stoking old fires, kindling fresh ones.

  How could he possibly make her want more, feel more than she had just a few hours ago?

  “More,” she said on a ragged breath. “Now.”

  Her desperate murmur sent Dane teetering toward the thin edge of sanity. And he should have been more prepared. This wasn’t the first time. He’d kissed her before. He’d touched her before. He should have known what to expect. But from the moment he tasted her, desire escalated to the raw and the primitive. There seemed to be no way to prepare for explosions of need that she could set off inside of him. No way to control his response.

  Pushing her back against the bathroom door, he let his hands feast on her—soft skin, strong muscle. But it wasn’t enough. He needed more. Helpless, driven to possess, he plunged two fingers into her and sent her shooting over the edge.

  It was his name she cried out, and it still wasn’t enough. Lifting her hips, he set her on the narrow counter. His blood was pounding in his head, screaming in his loins for release. It seemed he’d waited all his life and not a mere matter of hours to have her again.

  His breath was ragged, his eyes fused on hers as he released himself and put on the condom. He dug his fingers into her hips again, drawing her forward to the edge of the counter, and positioned himself between her legs. Then he plunged into her, hard and deep. She closed around him, a tight, hot glove.

  She dug her nails into his shoulders and wrapped her legs around him. “This time come with me.”

  He pulled out and drove into her again and again. When the next convulsion rippled through her, her muscles clamped around him, owned him, and dragged him with her over the edge.

  12

  NAOMI WIPED THE REMAINING FOG off the bathroom mirror and took a long, hard look at herself. She wished that she could clear the fog out of her brain just as easily.

  The shower had helped, but the woman she saw in the mirror, her hair slicked back, her body wrapped in a white towel, still looked like she’d been ravished. Her lips were swollen, her skin was flushed, and unless her imagination was working overtime, her eyes held knowledge that they’d never had before.

  All thanks to Dane MacFarland. A man who’d lied to her. But her body wanted him anyway, anytime, anyhow. She frowned at herself. There were other considerations, ones that required her brain to function.

  Which clearly wasn’t something that she could depend on when Dane MacFarland was around.

  He seemed to be a little more in control. And she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Annoyed? Hurt? Jealous? What she knew for certain was that after their bout of fast, hot, mindless sex, he’d recovered enough to tell her to lock the bathroom door while he got her fresh clothes and looked for “bugs.”

  “Bugs.” She was still trying to get her mind around the idea that Michael Davenport was bugging her room, Hattie’s room and Lord knew what else? And twice now he’d hurt Dane.

  She thought of the scream she’d heard just before he’d flown out of the stairwell and sent her crashing into the wall. It had been the scream of a frightened man. How was it that in the six months she’d been engaged to Michael, she’d never seen anything but the suave, smooth and seemingly caring man?

  There’d been both violence and fear in the man who’d burst out of Hattie’s room and raced down the hall as if the hound of the Baskervilles was on his tail.

  At least her eyes were now open to the true Michael Davenport. She should be grateful for that.

  And she hadn’t been quite as stupid about Dane. Hadn’t she sensed from the beginning that there was something very unpriestlike about him?

  When the knock sounded at the door, she jumped and nearly screamed. Dane hadn’t been gone more than three or four minutes.

  “It’s Dane. I’ve brought some clothes.”

  She flipped the lock and took the clothes he passed through a crack in the door. When he quickly closed it in her face, it was relief and not disappointment she felt. He was being practical. She sent herself a quelling look in the mirror. Practical. Didn’t that used to be her middle name?

  There was a dangerous man somewhere in the hotel who’d planted listening devices, killed his former partner and tried to kill Dane twice. It was time to turn back into the old Naomi and not the time to fantasize about being ravished again.

  WHILE NAOMI WAS DRESSING, Dane checked the tower room. There was no trace of the almost crippling cold he’d sensed when he’d first climbed the stairs. And he hadn’t felt it when he’d
left the bathroom earlier.

  He located a listening device on the back of the computer and left it there. He’d left the one he’d found in Naomi’s bedroom similarly undisturbed. But the tower room was larger. Turning, Dane took a moment to study the space. There was a six-foot-tall partition that bisected most of the round room. That was what had blocked his view and allowed Davenport to get the jump on him.

  One side of the room was furnished as a work space, and the other side had antique furniture arranged in a comfortable sitting area. Bookshelves framed a fireplace on an inner wall, and next to them were the sliding glass doors to a balcony. He searched the room quickly, locating another listening device in a vase of artificial flowers, and finally he stepped out onto the balcony. It was wide, bordered with a wrought-iron railing and protected by an awning. A table, chairs and two lounges filled the space nicely. The bug was beneath the edge of the table. This one he removed and placed back in the tower room before returning to the balcony.

  The question that had been plaguing him since he’d left the bathroom was where could he take Naomi to talk. Their rooms were out and so was the tower room. Since he couldn’t trust himself to keep his hands off her, bathrooms and beaches were out. What they needed was a semipublic place where they could talk without fear of being interrupted or overheard.

  The balcony wasn’t ideal, but this one offered more privacy because it didn’t look out over the courtyard. Instead, it provided a view of the terraced gardens that led up to the cliff edge on this side of the hotel. Twilight had settled, lights twinkled in the gazeboes, and lanterns glowed along steps that led from one terrace to another. To his right, he could just make out the hedge that bordered the huge maze.

  The garden wasn’t an ideal location, either, but when Naomi joined him on the balcony, the look in her eyes told him that she was going to have to have answers soon.

  Without saying a word, he gestured her into one of the chairs and closed the balcony doors.

  “How’s your head?” she asked.

  “It aches.”

  “Would you like some brandy? Jillian keeps the wet bar well-stocked.”

  “I’ll pass.” He sat down in the chair across from her. She wore the T-shirt and shorts he’d grabbed from her room, and with her hair pulled back into a slick ponytail, she looked like a teenager. And she still stirred his blood.

  Naomi folded her hands on the table. “Look, I have questions. Tons of them. I’m sure you do, too. But I want to settle something first.”

  “Okay.”

  “We have to get a handle on what’s happening between us.”

  Though he agreed, he said, “What’s happening between us?”

  She broke her hands apart to wave one of them. “Lust.”

  He couldn’t have said why the word annoyed him. She was right on the money. Lust was a very accurate word for what had overpowered him in the bathroom. Primitive. Raw. Nearly as basic as the need to survive. He’d never wanted a woman more, and he’d never taken one with less thought or finesse.

  He should have let it go, let her go on talking. Instead, he leaned forward. “I’m not sure that lust covers everything that went on at the beach this afternoon.”

  She met his gaze squarely. “That was different. That was fantasy. And it’s over. I’m not sure what happened in the bathroom is over.”

  “Okay.” She’d hit the nail on the head there. “So what’s your point?”

  “The point is, neither one of us likes what’s going on between us. So that ought to give us an edge in making sure that it doesn’t happen again.”

  “I can guarantee that we’ll make love again.”

  Naomi placed both palms flat on the table and rose from her chair. “Not until we have Michael Davenport in custody. Catching him has to be our first priority.”

  “I agree we have to get our priorities straight. I’m just not making any promises.” Not ones he wasn’t sure he could keep.

  Naomi swallowed hard as she firmly ignored the thrill Dane’s words sent rippling through her. Lord help her, she didn’t want any promises. She wanted him—and he was purposely baiting her. She took a deep breath and counted to ten. It was a technique she’d often used when dealing with her sisters. Then she tried a new tack. “Look, we’re both adults.”

  “I’ll definitely agree to that.”

  His grin was quick and charming, and for a second she lost track of her train of thought. Fighting to get it back, she said, “Can we at least agree to do our best to keep our lust in check? That man has tried to kill you twice. I think catching him deserves our full attention.”

  Rising, he raised his hands, palms outward. “You’re right.” Then in a move so quick she couldn’t avoid it, he gripped her chin in his hand and gave her a quick kiss on the nose. “Teasing you is almost as irresistible as making love to you. But I agree we should do our best to put what we’re feeling on the back burner until we get Davenport.”

  She studied him for a moment, not quite sure if she’d gotten him on the same page she was on. He was a complicated man. Not the priest she’d first thought him to be, and more than the focused investigator he claimed to be. But thinking about Dane in any way was a distraction she couldn’t afford.

  Ruthlessly, she shifted her focus back to Michael. “While I was getting dressed, I thought about your idea. You think when Michael got wind of the fact that the curtain was about to crash down on his scam, he gave me a very expensive artifact to hold on to. Why? Why didn’t he just cut his losses, take the money and run?”

  “Lots of reasons. For one because he’s greedy. He doesn’t like to leave a job until the last dollar has been squeezed out. So it could have been that he was waiting for a big influx of cash from a client. Plus, I think he’s a risk junkie. He loves the thrill of skating on thin ice and waiting until his pursuers are close before he figuratively thumbs his nose at them and does his little vanishing act. Or there might have been a more practical reason. Maybe there was just a delay in getting the cash converted into an artifact.”

  With a frown, Naomi nodded. “Besides, he had a convenient patsy to deposit the artifact with and then lie low until the coast was clear. He knew me, so he’d have a pretty good idea that I’d eventually come here to Belle Island, where it would be a lot less risky to make contact with me.”

  She met his eyes. “I’m figuring the artifact is one of those little gifts he gave me. Or it’s hidden in one of them.”

  “That would be my guess.”

  Naomi’s frown deepened. “Except he had to be sure that I would bring them with me. I kept them on a shelf in my apartment. Every time he came over, he’d inspect them. I could tell that he was pleased that I valued them. And I—just like a stupid little patsy—brought them with me. Because I was clinging to the hope that some of what he’d told me was real.”

  She whirled, paced to the balcony railing, and then turned back. “I absolutely hate the fact that he could be so sure I would bring those stupid things with me. I despise that I was so gullible.”

  He moved to her then. “You weren’t.”

  “I certainly was.”

  Taking her hands, he simply held them. “No. You weren’t completely taken in by everything he was telling you. If you had been, you wouldn’t have settled for his let’s-take-it-slowly-because-you’re-such-a good-little-Catholic-girl routine. And you’d have had him in your bed.”

  She stared at him as the words sunk in. How could he possibly understand her better than she understood herself?

  “And maybe there’s a simpler explanation. Perhaps he didn’t expect you to bring all of them with you. Just one.”

  She continued to stare at him. “Of course. The one that he could depend on me to take was the key chain he gave me from the gift shop at the Four Seasons. He even made a point of fastening all my keys to it.” Withdrawing her hands from his, she fisted them on her hips and tapped her foot.

  “That answers one of my questions,” Dane said.

 
; “Which one?” Naomi said, trying to control the anger she was feeling. “Just how big a sap is Naomi Brightman?”

  “No. You’re not a sap. Michael Davenport is a clever man who reads people very well. He’s made a living lying to people and using them. So don’t waste your anger on yourself. Save it for him—when we catch him.”

  She studied him for a moment. “You’re right. What question did you get an answer to?”

  “Why he hired someone to snatch your purse this morning.”

  “And hiring someone…that raises another question. Why did he hire those two men especially if he’s a risk junkie? He was in town this morning.”

  “You saw him, too?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I think so. There was a man on the patio of that restaurant by the pier. He made a gesture that caught my eye, but I was thrown off by the tattoo.”

  She patted her upper arm. “I’d never seen Michael with one. But the man who screamed and raced out of here was definitely Michael and there was a tattoo on his upper right arm.”

  Dane nodded. “He was definitely on that patio near the pier this morning. He lost his hat leaning over the railing while he was trying to see if that goon managed to get your purse.”

  “So why did he bother to hire someone?”

  Leaning his hip against the railing, Dane studied her for a moment. “That’s an excellent question and deserves another. What if he didn’t hire them?”

  Excitement leapt to her eyes. “Then someone else did. Someone who knows about the artifact and just where it might be located. That means there’s more than one person who’s after it.”

  And that puts you in even more danger, Dane thought.

  “Maybe it’s the same person who ransacked my apartment early this morning,” Naomi said.

  He straightened and gripped her upper arms. “Someone searched your apartment back in Boston?”

  “That’s what Sheriff Kirby told me before I left the lobby. He came all the way out to the hotel to tell me in person. It couldn’t have been Michael. He was here on the island. Besides, Michael knew that I would bring the key chain with me. After all, I’d have to lock up my apartment when I left.”