Mackenzie's Pleasure (28 page)

then swiftly combed her hair and began applying a minimum of makeup. The air was so

steamy that it would be a wasted effort to apply very much, but she wanted to appear as

normal as possible.

Oh, God, the exhaust fan was making so much noise she might not have heard their

breakfast arriving. Hastily she cut it off. Zane would have knocked if their food was here, she

assured herself. It hadn't arrived yet.

She tried to remember where her purse was, and think how she could get it and get out

the door without Zane knowing. His hearing was acute, and he would be watching for her. But

the room service waiter would bring their breakfast to the parlor, and Zane, being as cautious

as he was, would watch the man's every move. That was the only time he would be distracted,

and the only chance she would have to get out of the room undetected. Her window of

opportunity would be brief, because he would call her as soon as the waiter left. If she had to

wait for an elevator, she was sunk. She could always try the stairs, but all Zane would have

to do was take the elevator down to the lobby and wait for her there. With his hearing, he

probably heard the elevator every time it chimed, and that would give him an idea of whether she

had been able to get one of the cars or had taken the stairs.

She opened the bathroom door a little, so he wouldn't be able to catch the click of the

latch.

"What are you doing?" he called. It sounded as if he was standing just inside the double

doors that connected the bedroom to the parlor, waiting for her.

"Putting on makeup," she snapped, with perfect truth. She blotted the sweat off her

forehead and began again with the powder. Her brief flash of anger was over, but she didn't

want him to know it. Let him think she was furious; a woman who was both pregnant and angry

deserved a lot of space.

There was a brief knock on the parlor door, and a Spanish-accented voice called out,

"Room service."

Quickly Barrie switched on the faucet, so the sound of running water would once

again mask her movements. Peering through the small opening by the door, she saw Zane

cross her field of vision, going to answer the knock. He was wearing his shoulder holster, which

meant, as she had hoped, that he was on guard.

She slipped out of the bathroom, carefully pulled the door back to leave the same small

opening, then darted to the other side of the bedroom, out of his line of sight if he glanced

inside when he passed by the double doors. Her purse was lying on one of the chairs, and

she snatched it up, then slipped her feet into her shoes.

The room service cart clattered as it was rolled into the room. Through the open parlor

doors she could hear the waiter casually chatting as he set up the table. Zane's pistol made the

waiter nervous; she could hear it in his voice. And his nervousness made Zane that much more

wary of him. Zane was probably watching him like a hawk, those pale eyes remote and glaciercold.

Now was the tricky part. She eased up to the open double doors, peeking through the

crack to locate her husband. Relief made her knees wobble; he was standing with his back to the

doors while he watched the waiter. The running faucet was doing its job; be was listening to it,

rather than positioning himself on the other side of the table so he could watch both the waiter

and the bathroom door. He probably did it deliberately, dividing his senses rather than

diluting the visual attention he was paying to the waiter.

Her husband was not an ordinary man. Escaping him, even for five minutes, wouldn't be

easy.

Taking a deep breath, she silently crossed the open expanse, every nerve in her body

drawn tight as she waited for his hard hand to clamp down on her shoulder. She reached the

bedroom door to the hallway and held the chain so it wouldn't clink when she slipped it free.

That done, her next obstacle was the lock. She moved her body as close to the door as

possible, using her flesh to muffle the sound, and slowly turned the latch. The dead bolt

slid open with smooth precision and a snick that was barely audible even to her.

She closed her eyes and turned the handle then, concentrating on keeping the

movement smooth and silent. If it made any noise, she was caught. If anyone was walking

by in the hallway and talking, the change in noise level would alert Zane, and she was caught.

If the elevator was slow, she was caught. Everything had to be perfect, or she didn't have a

chance.

How much longer did she have? It felt as if she had already taken ten minutes, but it

was probably no more than one. Crockery was still rattling in the parlor as the waiter

arranged their plates and saucers and water glasses. The door opened, and she slipped

through, then spent the same agonizing amount of time making sure it closed as silently as it

opened. She released the handle and ran.

She reached the elevators without hearing him shout her name and jabbed the down

button. It obediently lit, and remained lit. There was no welcoming chime to signal the arrival

of the elevator. Barrie restrained herself from punching the button over and over again in a

futile attempt to convey her urgency to a piece of machinery.

"Please," she whispered under her breath.
"Hurry."

She would have tried calling her father from the hotel room, but she knew Zane would

stop her if he heard her on the phone. She also knew her father's phone was tapped, which

meant that incoming calls were automatically recorded. She would try to protect her father,

but she refused to do anything that might endanger either Zane or their baby by leading the

kidnappers straight to the hotel. She would have to call her father from a pay phone on the

street, and a different street, at that.

Down the hall, she heard the room service cart clatter again as the waiter left their

suite. Her heart pounding, she stared at the closed elevator doors, willing them to open. Her

time was down to mere seconds.

The melodic chime sounded overhead.

The doors slid open.

She looked back as she stepped inside, and her heart nearly stopped. Zane hadn't yelled,

hadn't called her name. He was running full speed down the hall, his motion as fluid and

powerful as a linebacker's, and pure fury was blazing in his eyes.

He was almost there.

Panicked, she simultaneously pushed the buttons for the lobby and for the door to

close. She stepped back from the closing gap as Zane lunged forward, trying to get his hand in

the door, which would trigger the automatic opening sensor.

He didn't quite make it. The doors slid shut, and the box began to move downward.

"God
damn
it," he roared in frustration, and Barrie flinched as his fist thudded against the

doors.

Weakly she leaned against the wall and covered her face with her hands while she

shook with reaction. Dear God, she'd never imagined anyone could be so angry. He'd been

almost incandescent with it, his eyes all but glowing.

He was probably racing down the stairs, but he had twenty-one floors to cover, and he

was no match for the elevator—unless it stopped to pick up passengers on other floors. This

possibility nearly brought her to her knees. She watched the numbers change, unable to

breathe. If it stopped even once, he might catch her in the street. If it stopped twice, he would

catch her in the lobby. Three times, and he would be waiting for her at the elevator.

She would have to face that rage, and she'd never dreaded anything more. Leaving Zane

had never been her intention. After she'd warned her father, she would go back to the suite.

She didn't fear Zane physically; she knew instinctively that he would never hit her, but somehow that wasn't much comfort.

She had wanted to see him lose control, outside of that final moment in lovemaking

when his body took charge and he gave himself over to orgasm. Nausea roiled in her stomach,

and she shuddered. Why had she ever wished for such a stupid thing? Oh, God, she never wanted to

see him lose his temper again.

He might never forgive her. She might be forsaking forever any chance that he could

love her. The full knowledge of what she was risking to warn her father rode her shoulders all the

way to the lobby, one long, smooth descent, without any stops.

The rattle and clink of the slot machines never stopped, no matter how early or how

late. The din surrounded her as she hurried through the lobby and out to the street. The

desert sun was blindingly white, the temperature already edging past ninety, though the morning

was only half gone. Barrie joined the tourists thronging the sidewalk, walking quickly despite the

heat. She reached the corner, crossed the street and kept walking, not daring to look back. Her red

hair would be fairly easy to spot at a distance, even in a crowd, unless she was hidden by someone taller. Zane would have reached the lobby by now. He would quickly scan the slot machine

crowd, then erupt onto the street.

Her chest ached, and she realized she was holding her breath again. She gulped in air

and hurried to put a building between herself and the hotel entrance. She was afraid to look

back, afraid she would see her big, black-haired husband bearing down on her like a thunderstorm, and she knew she would never be able to outrun him.

She crossed one more street and began looking for a pay phone. They were easy to find, but

getting an available one was something else again. Why were so many tourists using pay

phones at this time of the morning? Barrie stood patiently, the hot sun beating down on her

head, while a blue-haired elderly lady in support stockings gave detailed instructions to someone

on when to feed her cat, when to feed her fish and when to feed her plants. Finally she hung up

with a cheerful, "Bye-bye, dearie," and she gave Barrie a sweet smile as she hobbled past. The

smile was so unexpected that Barrie almost burst into tears. Instead she managed a smile of her

own and stepped up to the phone before anyone could squeeze ahead of her.

She used her calling card number because it was faster, and since she was calling from a

pay phone, it didn't matter how she placed the call.
Please, God, let him be there,
she

silently prayed as she listened to the tones, then the ringing. It was lunchtime on the east coast;

he could be having lunch with someone, or playing golf—he could be anywhere. She tried to

remember his schedule, but nothing came to mind. Their relationship had been so strained for

the past two months that she had disassociated herself from his social and political

appointments.

"Hello?"

The answer was so cautious, so wary sounding, that at first she didn't recognize her

father's voice.

"Hello?" he said again, sounding even more wary, if possible.

Barrie pressed the handset hard to her ear, trying to keep her hand from shaking.

"Daddy," she said, her voice strangled. She hadn't called him Daddy in years, but the old

name slipped out past the barrier of her adulthood.

"Barrie? Sweetheart?" Life zinged into his voice, and she could picture him in her

mind, sitting up straighter at his desk.

"Daddy, I can't say much." She fought to keep her voice even, so he would be able to

understand her. "You have to be careful. You have to protect yourself. People
know.
Do

you hear me?"

He was silent a moment, then he said with a calmness that was beyond her, "I

understand. Are you safe?"

"Yes," she said, though she wasn't sure. She still had to face her husband.

"Then take care, sweetheart, and I'll talk to you soon."

"Bye," she whispered, then carefully hung the receiver in its cradle and turned to go to

the hotel. She had taken about ten steps when she was captured in the hard grip she had been

dreading. She didn't see him coming, so she couldn't brace herself. One second he wasn't there,

the next second he was, surfacing out of the crowd like a shark.

Despite everything, she was glad to see him, glad to get it over with instead of dreading

the first meeting during every dragging step to the hotel. The tension and effort had drained

her. She leaned weakly against him, and he clamped his arm around her waist to support her.

"You shouldn't be out in the sun without something on your head," was all he said.

"Especially since you haven't eaten anything today."

He was in control, that incandescent fury cooled and conquered. She wasn't foolish

enough to believe it was gone, however. "I had to warn him," she said tiredly. "And I didn't

want the call traced to the hotel."

"I know." The words were brief to the point of curt-ness. "It might not make any

difference. Las Vegas is crawling with a certain group of people this morning, and you may

have been spotted. Your hair." Those two words were enough. Redheads were always

distinctive, because there were so few of them. She felt like apologizing for the deep, rich

luster of her hair.

"They're here?" she asked in a small voice. "The kidnappers?"