What the Lady Wants Read online

  And suddenly she was terrified that she was never going to see him again. It didn't matter that he was a terrible relationship risk, that he was never going to be able to commit to her, that she was asking to get kicked in the emotional teeth by loving him. Those things were all logical and true and had nothing to do with love. Love had its own truth; you knew when you were in it and the likelihood of the success or failure of it had nothing to do with the fact of it.

  At that moment, all she needed was to know that he was safe. That would be enough. She didn't need him to hold her or to save her. Just let him be all right.

  Somewhere. He didn't even have to be with her, he just had to be all right.

  Then she heard a key scrape in the lock, and he came into the dark room, and she said, "Oh, thank God," and her voice was like a prayer.

  "Mae?" In the gloom, she could see him stop and lean against the door, which closed under his weight. "Mae?"

  "I'm here."

  He drew a deep, uneven breath and said in a shaky attempt at lightness, "I've been looking for you, Mabel."

  "I've been here," she said, trying to match his tone. "I figured you were with a librarian."

  He came over and sat on the bed, and it sagged under his weight, tipping her toward him. He put his hand against her cheek and just sat there for a moment, touching her, and she closed her eyes because it felt so good to have him close, to feel his hand on her face, to know that he was all right.

  He sighed. "I almost lost my mind." His voice was shaky again. "I thought I'd lost you forever."

  She reached out for him, putting her hand against his chest, curling her fingers to clutch his shirt. "I was so scared. I thought Carlo had killed you. All I wanted was to know that you were safe. I'm all right now that you're safe." To her horror, she started to cry from relief. "I'm all right. I just couldn't stand it, thinking you were—"

  "I love you." He kissed her and stopped her words with the soft caress of his mouth, making her dizzy with relief and comfort and love. She put her arms around him, holding him hard against her to prove that he was really there, and he held her just as close, just as tightly. "From now on, we stay together," he whispered in her ear. "This was just too damn scary. From now on, you stay with me."

  "That's really what you want?" she asked him, swallowing hard. "No more pipeline?"

  He smiled in the dark, his lips moving against her cheek. "No more pipeline. I've lost all my interest in the West. The only thing I want to explore is you."

  "You wouldn't lie to me, would you?" she asked, and he said, "Everybody lies, Mabel. Everybody but us."

  She nodded against his chest, too overwhelmed with relief and love to say anything else, and he kissed her again, deeper this time, and she melted into him, trying to merge with him so they'd never be apart again. He slipped his hand under her shirt, stroking his fingers up her damp back, holding her to him, and she pressed her lips to his neck, breathing him into her. "Make love to me," she whispered. "I want to be part of you."

  He held her tighter for a moment, and then he said, "You're already part of me."

  She stood up to pull his shirt over her head, breathing heavily in the heat that filled the room like fog, watching him gaze up at her in the blue light from the window. The shirt stuck to her, and she had to peel it off her sweat-slicked skin. She saw him stand then, too, the breadth of his body like a wall between her and whatever lay outside the door, and she heard him breathe deeper as he took off his shirt. She crawled back onto the bed and leaned forward to kiss his chest, licking at his salty dampness, and he stripped off his pants and then pulled her down on the bed with him, hot and damp and solid and safe.

  She held him for a moment, savoring the warmth and weight of his body against hers, both of them slippery with sweat and heat and remembered fear and growing desire.

  "It's almost enough just to hold you." He wrapped his arms tighter around her. "I'm just so damn glad that I'm holding you again."

  She stretched against him, clutching him closer, trying to melt into him, dissolve her flesh into his, and he said, "Almost enough," and rolled his hips against hers. The heat flared low in her, and she bit him hard on the shoulder as he slid his ringers down her slippery body and into her, and she clenched around him, her tongue licking across his collarbone as she breathed into the waves of pleasure he stroked inside her.

  They moved against each other slowly, rediscovering in deliberate detail what they'd found in tumbling haste the night before. The heat kept them slippery with need, salty with desire, and what had crashed and exploded before built slowly, inexorably, in low, swelling waves this time, moving higher and tighter, and when he finally arched himself into her and she enclosed him, they stopped for a moment, not breathing, listening to the lap of the blood in their veins, feeling the pulse where they were joined together and the throb of each other's hearts.

  "I love you," Mae whispered to him, her lips moving on his. "I will love you forever."

  His lips traced a silent echo on hers, and then all thought faded, and they were only rhythm and flesh and friction and heat and finally fusion, mindlessly one. And when all thought and fear and relief had been burned away, they slid wordlessly into sleep, still locked in each other's arms.

  Mitch woke the next morning when she moved away from him, and he reached for her to pull her back against him.

  "I need a shower." She kissed him and then slipped away, so Mitch shrugged and followed her.

  It was a long shower.

  "You know, if we do this often, we're going to have to start getting up earlier," Mae told him later as she went through his cupboards. "Why don't you have any food?"

  "Because I never eat here. There are cockroaches the size of Bob here, and I don't want to encourage them."

  Mae looked around warily.

  Mitch sat on the edge of the bed. "Mabel, there have been some new developments."

  "I know." Mae leaned on the counter. "I think I'm under arrest."

  "I've got that handled. We're going to go see Nick right now, and he'll take care of everything."

  Mae swallowed. "Okay. That sounds good."

  Mitch hesitated. "There've been a few...updates on the situation."

  Mae closed her eyes. "Hit me with them."

  "Well, the good news is, you're not broke. The bad news is that your Uncle Armand embezzled your trust fund and then wrote in the diary that someone was forcing him to pay it all back. He deposited eight million in your account in the past three months. That's a motive for killing him."

  Mae frowned. "The police think I was leaning on him? I didn't even know he'd done it."

  Mitch blinked at her. "Mabel, did you miss the part about the eight million?"

  "No." Mae walked over to the bed, and Mitch spared a moment to enjoy watching her move. He was going to spend the rest of his life watching her move. It was enough to make a man enthusiastic.

  She picked up her purse and pulled out one of Armand's diaries. "Look what I found at the town house."

  Mitch took it, read the date on the spine and gaped at her. "I searched that town house. Harold searched that town house."

  Mae nodded. "I think somebody left it there to be found. Just not by me. Probably by the police. There are pages missing at the end, but there was enough there for me to figure out he'd put a lot of money back into my fund and into several other funds he'd looted. He was really unhappy about it because he'd worked it so there was no legal redress unless he confessed, which of course he did in the diary. He must have thought he was invincible."

  "That sounds like our Armand." Mitch opened the diary and flipped through it. "Who made him put back the money?"

  "Claud. Once he found out what Armand had done, he leaned hard on Armand to put it all back before the Lewis name got any more tarnished. It must have been Claud on the phone that night, making sure Armand had restored the accounts he'd looted. It's all in the diary." Mae laughed shortly. "Poor Uncle Claud. He finally forces Armand to pay