Page 78 of Hotter than Wildfire

He stepped forward as she backed up to the bed. Ellen put her knee on the bed, rolled over, held her hands up. There was no need for words at all. As naturally as breathing, Harry covered her body with his, slowly entering her as he kissed her. Everything slow and gentle, because the moment called for it. he slid into her fully, kissing her deeply and soon his breathing speeded up and she could feel his stomach muscles tensing to start moving in her.

She held him with her hands on his hips. “Not yet,” she whispered and he stilled. Content with being inside her and kissing her.

Ellen arched as she opened her legs wider so he could seat himself fully in her. She didn’t want him to move because that would speed things up and she wanted to freeze time, hang on to this one moment forever, she thought as she memorized every inch of him she could with her fingertips. This moment was so very precious.

Because this time tomorrow she’d be gone and would never see him again.

FIFTEEN

April 14

Monday morning, they drove into the city center in the little convoy again, all three driving down into the underground garage. When they got out of the vehicles, the men surrounded the women in a tight tense knot of security.

Women because Nicole insisted on coming in to work, too. She said she’d go crazy staying home in bed, as Sam insisted. She was fine, just fine.

They went up in the elevator in a tight cordon of men, no one talking and no one smiling. At the 9th floor, the doors opened onto a creative type, standing there with carefully tousled, gelled hair, a tight sharkskin suit and with a tasteful stud piercing a very cute, surgically sculpted nose.

He took one look at the three huge men glowering at him and scampered away to another elevator.

As the men walked them down the hall, their entire body language was a Dirty Harryesque come on punk, make my day.

When the door of Nicole’s office closed behind them, Ellen opened her mouth and Nicole held up a finger. “If you apologize one more time, I swear I will scream. And then Sam and Harry and Mike will come running and we’ll never get anything done at all.”

Ellen felt so miserable. Nicole looked tired. The spotting had stopped almost immediately yesterday but she’d spent the day in the hospital undergoing tests before coming home and she clearly hadn’t slept well. There were slight bruises under her eyes.

Of course that was nothing compared to what was under her own eyes, because she hadn’t slept at all last night. She hadn’t even been able to close her eyes, staring wide-eyed at the black ceiling, listening to Harry’s heartbeat, savoring his solid warmth by her side, waiting for the dawn.

Thinking awful thoughts. Knowing what she had to do and dreading it.

“All right.” Nicole hung her jacket up neatly on a perfumed hangar and hung that on the brass clothes tree. “I’ve got an urgent translation for a Luxembourg bank to finish and you’ve got to save me some more money. So let’s get to work.” She sat down to her desktop and slid in her portable hard disk.

Her tone was brisk, but her movements were slow. She was battling her way through this in a way Ellen recognized and respected.

Nicole could use a thousand excuses and no one would think less of her. If she wanted to stay home today—and all next week or even all next year—her husband would be more than happy. But she had a company to run and people who depended on her for their livelihood and clients who expected her to deliver a good product in a timely fashion so here she was, tired and shaken, but ready to start her working day.

The least Ellen could do was offer her a little something. Nicole had been ridiculously behind with her accounts. Ellen had made her a simple, rational system that would be easy to keep up and was working hard on finding ways to save on taxes.

Ellen settled down at the desk, reaching down to the case at her feet. She was using Harry’s laptop instead of Nicole’s because she’d worked on Nicole’s files over the weekend and her spreadsheets were there. “I nailed another couple of thousand in tax deferrals and with a little luck I think I can set up a slightly different corporate structure for you so that you can deduct more stuff. That’ll save you at least ten thousand in taxes over the next five years.”

“Wow.” Nicole tipped her head to the left of the monitor and gave her a dazzling smile. “That’s great. Thank you so much and—" She held up an elegant pink-tipped finger, “Don’t apologize again. If you apologize I’ll do you bodily harm. Don’t forget I can be meaner than Sam or Harry or Mike. I don’t think any of them could hurt a woman, but I can. Don’t make me hurt you.”

Ellen had opened her mouth to thank her, and to apologize once more, but she closed it. The idea of Nicole wrestling her to the ground was so ridiculous, she just had to smile.

“Hold that thought.” Nicole’s processor beeped and she bent over the keyboard. “Go save me some more money. Lunch is at twelve thirty. Goat cheese salad, grilled vegetable sandwich with focaccia bread, sliced apples for desert, everything washed down with green tea. I ordered the same lunch for the men. It’s a good thing these walls are fairly sound-proofed because you’d hear the groaning from here. Now let’s concentrate.” And she disappeared into her monitor.

Ellen opened Harry’s laptop and plugged in his Bose headset. The laptop he’d given her was loaded with fabulous music. She loved isolating herself from the world with music when concentrating on work. In a second, she had a spreadsheet program open and Billie Holiday purring in her ears.

Okay.

Ellen was going to do extra good work for Nicole today. She was going to set her up with a specially-designed program that would automatically calculate the best billing method and Nicole’s commission, weighted for urgency of the translation, technical difficulty and rarity of the language combination, together with a streamlined tax statement structure. It was going to be her goodbye gift to Nicole.

Before disappearing.

She’d struggled with this decision all night, staring dry-eyed into the darkness, held close to Harry’s heart.

There was no way around this except for straight ahead on the hard rocky road of necessity. Montez would be after her forever. Year after year of fear and hiding. Of being afraid to be out in the open, of forcing her new friends to live under a shadow.

It was very likely that what Nicole had found out was the extent of what a civilian could discover. The next steps had to be taken by law enforcement officers, preferably the FBI.