Page 55 of Dark Lover

She wished she could reveal that he didn’t have to worry about his file. He had every right to cover up his horrific past. She wet her lips. “I told you. I haven’t read it.”

He faced Nick. “Are ye tired of driving a Ford, Forrester?”

Nick raised his eyebrows.

“I’ll give ye one hundred thousand cash fer a copy.” Ian smiled.

“Only a hundred thousand? I can’t be bought, Maclean. And I like used cars, by the way. I like Fords. It’s patriotic. I’ve never wanted a Ferrari.”

“All men want Ferraris. Two hundred thousand dollars fer a copy.”

Nick shook his head. “We need the page, Maclean. We need it so the bad guys can’t have the power.”

Sam wanted to tell Nick to give him a damn copy of his file, and that was not professional of her.

“Name yer price,” Ian snarled.

“The page,” Nick said.

Ian laughed at him. “The page is worth hundreds of millions of dollars—to the right demon!” He gave Sam a cold look as if she’d betrayed him somehow, then whirled and slammed from the room.

Sam fought for control. It took a moment. “That went really well,” she said sarcastically. But what she wanted to do was to run after Ian and tell him that his secrets were mostly safe. He’d been desperate for just a copy of his file—he was desperate to know what everyone knew about him. And she felt for him. What was wrong with her?

Because he was probably going to make a point of selling the page of illusion to evil now.

Nick strode to his window, stared down at Hudson Street and cursed, a long string of mostly unrepeatable epithets.

Jan touched his arm. “I can break him, Nick. Without sleeping with him. He doesn’t have one drop of evil in him. His father is a Master of Time. Let me try.”

Sam went still.

“Go after him,” Nick told Jan tersely. “Do what you think best.”

Sam shook with outrage. She took a deep breath and managed not to change her expression. Jan hurried out, but not before she looked at Sam and said, “This is business.”

“Right,” Sam said. She turned to Nick, trying not to explode.

“What are you, smitten?” he asked. “Maclean has scars that will never heal. And that makes him a renegade.”

Sam shook her head, too angry to speak, and she strode out of his office. Jan was with Ian as he waited for the elevator. He was still flushed. Tension rippled through his body.

Ian jerked away from her when he saw Sam. He strode toward her, his eyes ablaze. “Don’t ever defend me again. I don’t need yer help.”

“Okay,” she said, to placate him.

“I don’t need yer pity, either. The past is the past,” he snarled. “I forgot it long ago.”

Like hell, she thought. “I don’t pity you, Maclean. And I’m sorry I happen to think you shouldn’t have gone through what you did, but then, I’m human. But hey, I will mind my own business from now on—except, of course, in regards to the page of illusion, because it’s my fault that you have it and it’s up to me to get it back.”

Behind them, the elevator door opened. He jerked his collar open, so hard that the fabric ripped. “Then we’re enemies now,” he said.

CHAPTER NINE

GERARD OPENED THE FRONT door and his brows lifted with surprise when he saw her.

Sam smiled at him. It was half past six and she was due at Hemmer’s at seven, but she hadn’t heard from Ian since he’d stormed out of Nick’s office at HCU. She was pretty sure their date with Rupert Hemmer was off. She couldn’t let that happen—and not just because of the DVD.

She was fairly certain he was with Jan, or making plans with her, because Jan sank her teeth into quarry like a terrier did a meaty bone. She wouldn’t let Jan work him.