Not that she was being hyperbolic or anything.
Then Nathaniel was pulling her in behind him and closing the door again. “Phase one complete,” he whispered. “You still with me?”
She nodded, not sure she trusted her voice at the moment. The way sound had been magnifying for her, she’d probably sound like the call to the gate at Churchill Downs. Nathaniel must have sensed her anxiety, because he cupped a hand on her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. Funny, though, how that only made her heart hammer faster still.
He flicked on a small penlight and aimed it at the stairs. “Dryden Properties is the door on the right at the top. You want to go first, or should I?”
Silently, she pointed a finger at him. He nodded once, then started up. She followed immediately behind him, unable to keep from curling her fingers into the fabric of his shirt in her irrational fear of losing him. She reminded herself that it was only a stairwell and that there weren’t a whole lot of ways to go. But even a swell girl Friday had her off days.
Nathaniel dispatched the door to Dryden Properties with considerably less cacophony than the door downstairs, and then they were inside. He leaned back against the door to inhale a few deep breaths before proceeding, and Audrey realized he was no less anxious about doing this than she was. Instead of worrying her, that made her feel better for some reason. His discomfort over doing something he knew he shouldn’t made her think maybe Silas was wrong about his soul moving farther away from rescue. Surely if it had gone too far, Nathaniel would have no qualms about doing this.
Heartened some, she braved speaking aloud. Okay, so it was in a whisper, so the “loud” part of “aloud” was relative. “Tell me again exactly what we’re looking for.”
There was enough light afforded from the streetlamps in the parking lot beyond for her to see him turn and look at her. “How about a big red arrow that says, ‘Clues here’?” he whispered back.
“Very funny.”
“Look for anything that might be associated with me or Summerfield Associates,” he told her. “Or anything that has words like
whack
or references to taking someone for a ride. And also any weapons of mass destruction.”
Yeah, right.
If this were a film noir
, she thought,
they’d start rifling through the filing cabinets, and, at some point, turn up a bottle of whiskey and a Maltese falcon.
This being the twenty-first century, however—
“The computer,” Audrey said. “But what if it’s password protected?”
“Let’s hope it’s not.”
“Are the computers at your office password protected?” she asked.
“Mine is,” he told her. “Irene’s is. But the ones for the secretaries and paralegals aren’t.”
“So we start with the ones out here and work our way inward.”
“I’ll do that,” he said. “You try the filing cabinet.”
He pointed toward the opposite wall, and, sure enough, there sat a trio of filing cabinets. Nice to know some things didn’t change. When she made her way over to them, she saw that one was locked, which, of course, meant that was where she should start. She strode back to the desk closest to the entrance, figuring it belonged to the receptionist or secretary, the one most likely to keep track of the key.
Nathaniel was at that desk, too, booting up the computer, and she tried to reach around him for the drawer in the center. When he saw what she was doing, he took a step to the left to make room for her. But Audrey didn’t anticipate the move, so ended up colliding with him. When he reached out to steady her, he brushed his arm over her breasts, but it was dark enough that she didn’t think he realized what he’d done. She realized it, though, her breath hitching in her chest and heat filling her belly at the intimate touch.
“Sorry,” she said a little breathlessly. She took a giant step backward and crossed her arms over her chest. “I was going to see if there was a key to the filing cabinet in there.”
For a moment, Nathaniel only looked at her, and she thought maybe he knew what he’d done after all. Then, sounding a little breathless himself, he said, “Right. Uh, go ahead. I’ll stand here.” And then he, too, took a giant step backward.
Audrey moved quickly, finally finding the key in the bottom drawer, and went back to her task. She found nothing about Nathaniel’s company in the locked cabinet—or any WMDs, either—so she hastily checked the others. Nothing.
She located a door opposite the one through which they’d entered and deduced it was Dryden’s office. After returning the filing cabinet key to its drawer, she made her way to the other door. It wasn’t locked, but the office was darker, due to the blinds being closed on the solitary window. Audrey flicked on the penlight Nathaniel had given her and shot a small circle of light around the room, until she saw a solitary filing cabinet in the corner. She passed Dryden’s desk as she went and, just for the hell of it, sat down and started pulling at drawers.
Much to her surprise, none was locked. So what could she do but start rifling through them? Carefully, but thoroughly.
At the very back of the second drawer she checked, she found a file containing some photographs. Nothing out of the ordinary, just a lot of shots of one man in various states of vacation and recreation with family and friends. It was safe to assume that the man who was a common denominator in all of them was Edward Dryden, and when Audrey tried to remember the grainy photo of the man she’d seen in the paper that morning two weeks ago after dreaming about Silas that first time, she was fairly certain it was him. In one photo, he was standing on the deck of a sport fishing boat with two other men. Another looked like a picnic in a park somewhere. Another showed him with a group of people at Churchill Downs.
Nothing incriminating, she thought again. But maybe worth having. She located a copier in the corner of the room and quickly made copies of each of the photographs before returning them to their rightful place. Then she went to the filing cabinet to see if she could find anything there. It didn’t take long for her to discover a file whose tab read
Summerfield Associates
, which she pulled from the drawer at the same time Nathaniel opened the door to the outer office and entered.
“Any luck?” he whispered.
“Maybe,” she told him.
She explained about the photographs and showed him the file she’d found. He glanced hurriedly through it, but didn’t seem to be surprised by anything he found.
“It’s duplicates of everything I have in my files,” he said, his voice tinged with disappointment. “There’s nothing helpful here.”
“Did you find anything on the computer?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. Not even any encrypted files that might look fishy. It’s just a typical office computer with typical office files. I’ll check the one in here, too, but it probably won’t be any more helpful.”
It didn’t take long to confirm precisely that, leaving them both where they had started when they entered—with knowledge of nothing new. Certainly they could hand the photos over to Leo and Nathaniel’s investigator, but chances were slim that there would be anything useful among them, either. It wasn’t like Dryden had ever shied away from cameras.
Nathaniel looked at his watch. “It’s going on six. I don’t think we’re going to discover anything else.” He emitted a single anxious chuckle at that. “Not that we really discovered anything to being with.”
Without thinking, Audrey lifted a hand to his shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. Even through the fabric of his sweater, she felt the coldness of his skin beneath. Was it her imagination or did it seem even colder than it had before?
Surely not
, she immediately told herself. It had to be her imagination. His skin had been like ice for two weeks. You couldn’t get any colder than ice. Could you?
“Don’t worry,” she told him as they crossed the outer office toward the main entrance, hoping she sounded more reassuring than she felt. “Something will come up that will make everything okay.”
He looked at the hand on his shoulder, then lifted his own to cover hers. He was about to say something when the creak of the building’s exterior door below erupted, sounding even louder than it had when she and Nathaniel had entered. Some kind of watchman, she thought. Nathaniel was right—nobody came to work this early in the morning on a weekend. She hoped. Panicked, she turned to look at him and saw that he’d heard the same thing.
Thinking fast, Audrey pulled him toward a sofa situated to hide the copier and make the office look less officelike. There was just enough room behind it for the two of them to crouch unseen. But Nathaniel stumbled in the dark, pitching forward against Audrey. She was able to turn around and steady him before he fell—some—and together, they managed, fortunately, to make it to the floor behind the sofa without causing a ruckus.
Unfortunately, however, they didn’t land in the most comfortable position, with Audrey on her back and Nathaniel atop her. He was able to catch himself on his elbows before he would have crushed her, but he didn’t have time to do anything more, because the outer office door opened, and they heard someone whistling.
Whistling the “William Tell Overture” of all things. Though, Audrey had to admit, it was the perfect accompaniment for her rapidly beating heart. The staccato hammering of her pulse, however, wasn’t due entirely to the fact that there was someone on the other side of that door who could walk in any minute and find her and Nathaniel in flagrante delecto. It was also due to the fact that it wasn’t just the “delecto” that was “flagrante” at the moment. It was also the Audrey. In fact, at the moment, the Audrey was more “flagrante” than she’d ever been in her life. And it had far less to do with the security guard out there than it did the illegal enterer on top of her.
She felt Nathaniel’s weight pushing down on her from her chest to her thighs, his warm breath stirring the hair at her temple and dampening her skin. His body was cold at first, but within seconds of coming into contact with hers grew hotter, something that only heightened her own body heat. She did her best to keep her breathing shallow, but every time she inhaled, her chest rose to press harder against his, and even that small contact made her senses come alive. It must have had the same effect on him, because she felt him grow hard where her thigh was wedged between his legs, and the knowledge that he was becoming so aroused only doubled her awareness of him.
The whistling outside grew louder, drew closer, and Audrey gulped in a breath to hold it. But that only trapped the scent of Nathaniel inside her, intoxicating her. She saw the beam of a flashlight arc over the wall above her and closed her eyes, as if that might make her disappear. But all it did was make her more aware of the man lying atop her. Of his hard body pressing into hers, of his mouth, so close that she felt his lips graze her cheek, of his cock pushing against her leg as if demanding release. Then the whistling was moving away again, and the door to Edward’s office was closing, and then the outer door was closing, and then, suddenly, Nathaniel was kissing her and kissing her and kissing her, and she was wrapping her arms around him and kissing him back.
His mouth was hungry on hers, insistent, demanding. She felt his hand seize her rib cage, the curve of his thumb and forefinger cradling the lower swell of her breast, and she lifted her arm to rope it around his neck, giving him better access. He immediately covered her breast with sure fingers, palming her generously before skimming lower again, down to her hip. It was as if he wasn’t sure where to touch her, so he touched her everywhere, lingering nowhere, setting fires all over her body. She drove her fingers into his silky hair and splayed them open over his back, then cupped his nape and shoulders, then started all over again.
For long minutes, they clung to each other, warring for possession of the kiss, neither willing to concede. It was Nathaniel who finally came to his senses long enough to point out the precariousness of their situation, then offer a solution to the problem.
“Come home with me,” he whispered breathlessly into her ear before nibbling the lobe. “I want to make love to you, Audrey. No security guards, no ghosts. Just you and me and my bed. All day.”
A shudder of heat shot down her spine at his roughly uttered words, bundling in her belly like a pile of hot embers. Embers that had been smoldering for years, ready to burst into flame at the first breath of air that stirred them, only to be gusted to explosion by a single embrace. It had been so long since she had felt like this. So long since a man’s touch had set her body on fire. So long since that coil of heat in her midsection had snugged tight with the promise of delicious release to come. So long . . .
So long . . .
Audrey had always loved sex. She’d become active in college and had been with a half dozen men before Sean entered her life. With her, sex had always been spontaneous, vigorous, and adventurous. She’d been an uninhibited and playful lover, both demanding and generous in her exploits. And although Sean had been more conventional in his lovemaking than she and had drawn the line at some of the things Audrey enjoyed most, sex with him had been, for the most part, enjoyable, and, for the most part, satisfying.
Since his death, she’d almost forgotten what it could be like between two people. Had almost forgotten the tempestuous sensations a single touch could arouse. As if cued by the thought, Nathaniel dipped his head to the sensitive curve where her shoulder joined her neck and brushed his lips over the tender flesh. At the same time, he nudged the hand on her rib cage higher to cradle her lower breast before covering it completely. She sucked in her breath at the shiver that coursed through her, tangling her fingers convulsively in his hair again.
“Come home with me, Audrey,” he repeated roughly.
And then, without even realizing she had made a decision, she pressed her lips to his forehead and told him, “Yes.”