No Holds Barred Read online

  Excitement was too tame a word for what was pounding in her blood.

  Greed didn’t even come close to describing the desperate hunger she was feeling or the urgent need to satisfy it.

  Here. Now.

  Had she said the words out loud?

  Had he?

  * * *

  ALL DUNCAN KNEW WAS THAT HE couldn’t think. She flooded his senses, blocking out everything else with her taste, her textures, her scents. He couldn’t separate them. Couldn’t possibly name them all. Couldn’t resist taking more, asking for more.

  When she wrapped her arms and legs around him, as much demand as invitation, he was helpless to do anything other than take them both deeper. No other woman had ever made him feel helpless. Now she was taking him places he’d never been before, making him feel things he’d never felt before.

  And why had he waited so long to let her do it?

  Here. Now.

  The idea of laying her on the hood of his car and quenching the desire, the need that had gone from flame to inferno in seconds, flashed brilliantly into his mind. He wanted, wildly wanted to turn the image in his mind into reality.

  Here. Now.

  But he couldn’t. With the words still thrumming in his mind and pounding in his blood, he reached deep for control and found it. Easing away, he settled her against the car’s fender before he stepped back. His pulse was still racing. His heart slammed like a hammer against an anvil in his chest. And he still wanted her. He had to figure that wasn’t going to stop any time soon.

  So he had a problem. An even bigger one than he’d anticipated. “That isn’t what I came here to do.”

  “Ditto.” She’d folded her arms across her chest, but she was no longer using the car for support. When he noticed he still was, he stepped away.

  “We have to figure out a solution to this,” she said.

  “Agreed.”

  “I have to think.”

  Duncan thought the time for that had passed.

  “So.” She walked around to the passenger door and opened it. “You can take me to my apartment, see that I’m safely locked in and then go away.”

  Duncan slid behind the wheel and then drove them out of the alley into D.C. traffic. He could go along with one out of three of her directives. But he figured he’d have a better chance of making his case in her apartment.

  4

  PIPER STOOD IN HER KITCHEN watching Duncan open a bottle of red zinfandel. He’d picked it up with the pizza on the drive back to her apartment.

  “We have to talk. You have to eat,” he’d said by way of explanation.

  She couldn’t argue with either point. And she figured she needed to save up her energy. If she was going to argue with Duncan about anything, it was going to be about what she was sure he wanted to “talk” about.

  The mind-blowing kiss they’d indulged in.

  In an alley. A very public place.

  She’d made the move, but at least they knew what they were up against. And she hadn’t been the one to call a halt to it. She’d always been able to before. That aside, they had to find a solution. They both worked in D.C. They were adults. And they wanted each other like gangbusters. No way they could ignore the elephant in the room.

  She made her living arguing cases, negotiating solutions, and if she’d learned anything from law school and from working for Abe, it was the value of a preemptive strike.

  So while they’d driven home, she’d tried to review her options. But it was damn hard to weigh them objectively while they’d sat so close in that tiny car. Every time he’d shifted gears, his arm had brushed against hers, and each time it had, “here” and “now” had blinked on and off, little neon letters in her mind.

  Now he filled all the spare space in her kitchen. She could even smell him above the spicy aroma of the food.

  He’d given her no chance to send him away as he’d cut a path through the little throng of reporters that had been waiting at the mouth of the alley. And she had to admit that she was happy not to have had to enter her apartment alone tonight.

  He poured the dark red wine into two glasses and handed her one. “I have a proposition for you.”

  “Ditto,” she said. She just had to figure out what it was. Exactly.

  “Mind if I go first?”

  “Go ahead.” The only thing better than making a preemptive strike was learning what your opponent had in mind and then adjusting your strategy.

  “Cam has been bugging me to take a few days off and go up to the castle to see what I can figure out about the rest of Eleanor Campbell MacPherson’s missing dowry and about that intruder he believes was breaking into the library. I want you to come with me.”

  Surprised, Piper stared at him, her mind racing. Duncan Sutherland knew a bit about making preemptive strikes himself, it seemed. “Why would I want to do that?”

  He sipped his wine, and then smiled at her. “Because your sister Adair already found one of the earrings. Don’t you want to see what you can do if you set your mind to it?”

  She tilted her head to one side to study him. “My sisters and I aren’t much motivated by sibling rivalry. And I have a lot on my plate right now.”

  “Agreed.” He finessed two slices of pizza out of the steaming box and handed her one on a plate. When they were both seated at the small table, he continued. “Look, I know that Monticello wants you to keep a low profile for a while. Part of that is because he is what he is. He doesn’t want the spotlight focused on anyone else but him. But part of that is motivated by genuine concern for your safety. He’s worried about you. And what happened today—you can’t take that lightly. My boss isn’t taking it lightly. What argument could I make that would convince you to come up to the castle with me for a while?”

  Piper lifted her glass and swirled the contents. She took a careful sip before meeting his eyes. “Not a one. I don’t believe in running away from problems.”

  Okay, Duncan thought. He’d struck out on his first and second strategies. The missing sapphires and the safety factor. It struck him quite forcibly that he didn’t know as much as he needed to know about Piper MacPherson. Therefore, he’d used the wrong approaches so far. A first for him and totally due to the fact that for the last seven years he’d tried to avoid thinking about her, period.

  So he did what he’d avoided doing for seven years. Biting into a slice of pizza, he put himself in her shoes, the same technique he used on the cases he profiled. She was tired. There were dark circles under her eyes and a little worry line on her forehead. The worry line struck a chord in his memory. When they’d played together as children, she’d always been the worrier about one or the other of her sisters. Protective, too.

  And today of all days, why wouldn’t she be tired? She’d been instrumental in writing a brief that had let a convicted murderer go free. Monticello’s personal hunger for media attention had protected her so far, but now she was suddenly being credited with putting Patrick Lightman on the streets. And someone didn’t like that at all.

  She didn’t like it, either. He’d seen both guilt and regret in her eyes that morning when Abe had been bragging about her brilliant brief. He’d recognized it at the time, but there’d been other things on his mind, including handling his response to her.

  He took another sip of his wine. There had to be a better way to convince her.

  As silence stretched between them, Piper picked a piece of pepperoni off of her slice and ate it. “Abe is so concerned about my safety that he replaced me as second chair on the Bronwell trial.”

  “That sucks.” The case had made all the papers and hit the national news nearly a year ago. Alicia Bronwell, the trophy wife of one of D.C.’s most highly paid lobbyists, had been accused of slowly killing her much older husband with arsenic. When Abe snatched away Piper’s opportunity to participate in the trial, that had to have been a blow. On a day when she’d already sustained a pretty good one.

  But it didn’t escape him that the loss
of the Bronwell trial was foremost in Piper’s mind—not the fact that someone might be intending to harm her. The woman had courage. He’d noticed it when they’d been children. There’d been one day in particular when they’d been playing a pirate game on the cliffs. Duncan recalled finding her clinging to the rocks, frozen with fear. She’d climbed down to the beach with him—in spite of the fact that she’d been scared stiff.

  She selected a slice of green pepper.

  “Monticello offered you second chair as your reward for the work you did on the Lightman case.”

  When she met his eyes, he saw the anger. “Yes. Then he took it away and gave it to Richard.”

  Duncan’s eyes narrowed. “The guy who barged in here this morning.”

  “Yes. And he’ll take full advantage of the opportunity. Richard’s good at that.”

  “You’ve had a hell of a day. First a nutcase who wants to annoy and scare you at the very least and, worst case scenario, wants you dead. Then your boss reneges on his offer.”

  “If you’re trying to cheer me up, you’re failing.”

  “I’m not here to cheer you up. I’m just laying a foundation for the case I’m going to make. Isn’t that what you’d do with a jury?”

  She lifted her glass and studied him over the rim. There was a challenge in her eyes, and they didn’t appear as tired anymore. “Go for it, Sutherland.”

  “Seems to me you have two choices.” Holding up a finger, he talked around another bite of pizza. “You can stay here in D.C., deal with the press and hide away in your boss’s office while you wait for the guy who staged the scene this morning to make his next move.”

  She sipped her wine and waited for him to continue.

  “That is your current plan, right?”

  “Close enough.”

  His eyes narrowed suddenly. “Don’t tell me you’re going to try to find out who set up the little scene this morning.”

  Her eyes widened full of innocence. “Okay, I won’t tell you that.”

  He grinned at her and had the pleasure of seeing surprise flicker over her features. “It’s exactly what I would do. But I have a better proposition for you.”

  The second he saw the pulse flutter at her throat and the color of her eyes darken, Duncan knew he’d chosen the wrong word. Proposition had other connotations, and they were both now thinking about the possibilities. They were alone. And it would be so easy to just propose that they finish what they’d started in that alley. Better still, he could shove the pizza aside, pluck her out of that chair and do what he’d wanted to do since they’d walked into her apartment.

  Except that wasn’t what he was making a case for right now.

  “Why don’t you help me put Patrick Lightman back in jail?”

  She narrowed her eyes, studying him. “Why do I have to go to the castle to do that?”

  “Because I’m having all the FBI’s files on him delivered up there. My current assignment at work is to review all of the RPK cases and find something that will allow us to charge Lightman again. Cam has been bugging me to go up there and get a feel for the intruder who may come back. So my proposition is—come with me to the castle and help me find what I need in the files.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I am. I can work there just as easily as I can work in my office at Quantico. My boss thinks it’s a great idea, and your boss will be happy if you’re safe and out of the public eye for a bit.”

  She frowned at him. “You’ve put a sugar coating on it, but it sounds like you want to whisk me off to the castle so that you can babysit me.”

  He met her eyes very steadily. “I don’t think that you can afford to take what happened this morning lightly. To pull off what he did, he had to have stalked you. And I don’t think he’s through yet.”

  “Scaring me is not going to work.”

  “You’ve made that clear.” He selected another slice of pizza, and leaning back in his chair, stretched out his legs. They nearly reached the back of the couch. “You know this place reminds me of a dollhouse.” He chewed a bite of his slice, then said, “And you eat like a doll. Don’t you like pizza?”

  She picked off a mushroom and popped it into her mouth. “I love pizza. But when I’m playing the role of jury I like to give the argument my full attention.”

  “Okay, scaring you is the stick part of my strategy. The carrot part is that I really want you to work with me on the RPK files. You found things in the trial transcript and in the case files that got Lightman off. That means you have a damn good eye. I saw the proof of that right here this morning. Thanks to you, I think I found the bag the guy used to carry in a brand-new sheet from Macy’s.” He elaborated on the search Nelson was doing. “I could really use your help. There’s something in one of the cases that I’m missing. And I want Lightman back in a cell.”

  So did she. “I’m not ashamed of the work I did on the case.”

  “I wouldn’t be either. Under all the bombast and drama, Abe Monticello serves an important function in the justice system, and in the end all of us will be safer. You did your job and you did it well.”

  He could make her feel so many things. The approval in his tone triggered warmth that intensified when their fingers linked again. She felt the pull, the same one she’d felt when their hands had connected on the hood of his car. Her gaze shifted to his mouth, and she felt the pull even stronger than before. They were alone. All she had to do was lean across the table, close the small distance between them, and she could feel more—more than anyone had ever made her feel. And there was more that he could make her feel.

  Here. Now. She simply couldn’t prevent those words from coming to mind every time he was this close.

  “There’s a connection between us,” Duncan murmured.

  There was definitely something between them. She glanced down at their joined hands. She could try to pull her hand away. She might be able to. She might not. He might let her, but he might not. Each possibility brought a separate thrill.

  Here. Now.

  She met his eyes and saw that he was thinking the same thing. All one of them had to do was make that small move. But she saw something else she recognized, because it matched exactly what she was feeling. Wariness.

  Watching each other, they drew their hands back at the same time.

  Duncan closed his fingers around his wineglass. “If you agree to come to the castle with me, we can explore the connection. Or not. No pressure. That part’s up to you. Bottom line, I’d really like your help.”

  Piper was surprised that her hand didn’t tremble when she used it to lift her glass. She needed a sip of wine because her throat had gone dry as dust. He was going to leave whatever was going on between them up to her?

  Maybe. She wasn’t sure she entirely trusted him on that score. As far as no pressure went…there was pressure each time she looked at him.

  Duncan leaned forward. “I’ve never made a case to a jury before. What’s the verdict? Will you go with me to the castle?”

  She had her mouth open, ready to answer when footsteps pounded on the staircase outside. Duncan was already at the door when someone knocked.

  When he opened it, all she could see beyond Duncan’s large frame was the face of her visitor, and she recognized it immediately. “Mr. Findley.” She crossed to the door. “Duncan, this is Mr. Findley. He runs the coffee shop across the street.”

  “A deliveryman left these with me earlier today. I promised I would bring them up when you got home. But I wanted to wait until the reporters finally gave up and went away.”

  “Thanks.” But it wasn’t until Duncan turned that she saw roses. They were bright red and arranged in a glass vase. Fear knotted in her stomach.

  Mr. Findley was already retreating down the stairs as Duncan closed the door.

  “Those are not from the RPK,” Piper said. “They’re from whoever set up that little scene this morning. And he’s beginning to annoy the hell out of me.”

  Du
ncan took a vellum card out of an envelope and held it out to her.

  THE NEXT TIME YOU’LL BE THE ONE LYING BENEATH THE PETALS. THESE PERHAPS.

  “The person who sent this note could be just as dangerous,” Duncan said.

  “I don’t want to run away from this. I want to catch him and make him pay.”

  Duncan set the flowers down, then turned to face her. The anger she saw in his eyes was such a close match to her own that some of her tension eased.

  “We’re going to catch him,” he said. “He’s already making mistakes. He left behind that Macy’s bag, and he used a florist for this. Mike Nelson will check it out. In the meantime, why not play with his mind the way he’s trying to play with yours?” he asked. “Just think of what he’ll feel like if you’re not here to get the next message or flower delivery. If you come away with me to the castle, it’s going to annoy the hell out of him.”

  She studied him for a moment, but the decision had been made. “You’re damn good at making a case, Sutherland. I’ll pack a bag.”

  * * *

  AT FIRST PIPER WASN’T SURE what had awakened her. Not Donald Duck, a fact she discovered when her hand whacked the flat top of the nightstand. And she couldn’t see a thing. The lights from the street always filtered in through her bedroom curtains.

  By the time her mind had slogged its way through the missing alarm clock and the pitch blackness that surrounded her, lightning flashed outside and the brief illumination chased away her disorientation.

  She was in her bedroom at Castle MacPherson. Thunder rumbled. Rain splatted.

  Ah, the sounds of home, she thought. Turning on her side, she angled her head toward the windows so that she could see the lightning sparkle and dance across the sky. Nature’s fireworks.

  For better or worse, she’d let Duncan talk her into coming here. And he hadn’t wasted any time doing it. He’d called Aunt Vi to let her know they were coming, and his suitcase and golf clubs had already been in the trunk of his car when he’d finessed her suitcase in between them. Either he’d been very confident that he’d be able to talk her into going with him or he’d been prepared to leave without her. She suspected the former.