Intimate Surrender

“I’ve tried to think about what I might have had lying around about our NPIR project but I’m coming up empty. Why don’t you refresh my memory? What did you find?”

“Nothing! I wasn’t thinking about NPIRs or anything else computer related. I didn’t go anywhere near your stupid desk, except that time with…you.”

“Yet the note you left was written on my own personal stationery, which I just happen to keep in the top drawer of that stupid desk.”

She stared at him for a long moment, then she drew a deep breath. When she spoke, her voice sounded weary. “What do you want, Peter? Why follow me out here to the middle of nowhere? You could have yelled at me over the phone.”

He refused to let himself be sidetracked by how fragile she suddenly looked. “I want some answers. What did you learn about our project?”

“I didn’t learn anything! I told you that. I never even gave work a thought that night. If you’ll remember, you didn’t give me time to think about much of anything but you.”

They stared at each other for a moment and he remembered again the wild passion they had shared. Or at least he thought they’d shared it. Had it all been feigned on her part? All those long kisses, her sighs and moans, the way she acted as if she couldn’t seem to get enough of him?

That was the part that he was finding most difficult to accept, he finally admitted to himself. He had been enthralled with her, completely entranced. He had wanted her with a fierce hunger unlike anything he’d ever known before.

While she had been as cold-blooded and calculating as an asp.

“Did your brother tell you to sleep with me?” he asked.

With a swift intake of breath, she stared at him, her brown eyes huge in her pale face. In any other woman, he might have almost believed she looked hurt. But he obviously couldn’t trust anything his instincts told him about Katherine Crosby.

“That’s insulting to Trent and to me. I shouldn’t even justify it with a response but I will tell you that he knows nothing about this, about the two of us and that night. If he did, he would be livid.”

Peter slapped the folded tabloid at her. “Hate to be the one to break it to you, sweetheart, but there’s not a person in Portland who doesn’t know by now.”

She gazed at the paper for a moment, nibbling her lip again. “Okay so everyone might know we kissed. As for the rest of it, no one else has to know anything about that. We were both carried away by the champagne and the night and the whole thing. Matters never should have gone so far. We should both just forget it ever happened.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, you have no idea,” she murmured.

At her words, another wave of anger washed over him. The intensity of it had him jumping to his feet and stalking to the fireplace. He hated that she could just dismiss the night they had spent together. Forget it ever happened. Right. As if he could just forget the most erotic night of his life.

He turned back to her. “A smart man never forgets his mistakes. And, sweetheart, this was one hell of a mistake.”

“For both of us.”

“The difference is, you knew exactly what you were doing—and who you were doing it with.”

“That’s right. I set out to seduce you from the moment I walked into that ballroom. It was a brilliant strategy, wouldn’t you say? All I had to do was convince you to take me home with you, make love all night until you fell asleep, then comb through your office on the chance—slim to none though it was—that I might find some tiny snippet of information in your loft about your super-router that we could use at Crosby Systems. Right. You caught me. That’s me, Katie Crosby, corporate spy. Trent sends his little sister out to sleep with all his business rivals.”

“I wouldn’t put anything past the Crosbys.”

Something flashed in her dark eyes, something that looked like anger and hurt and maybe even a little sorrow. “Okay, that’s enough,” she snapped. “I would like you to leave now. I’m sure you don’t want to spend another moment in the belly of the beast.”

She rose as if to show him out but as soon as she stood, what little color remaining on her face drained out like wine spilling from a tipped glass and she swayed. Peter reached out instinctively to keep her from toppling over, then helped her back onto the couch.

“What’s wrong? Are you ill?”

Her chin lifted. “What do you care?”

“I don’t,” he snapped. “Maybe I just happen to be fond of these particular boots and don’t want you yakking all over them.”

She glared at him. “Your precious boots are safe. I’m not going to yak, as you so charmingly put it. I stood up a little too soon but I’m perfectly fine now.”

He only had to take one look at her to know she was lying, but then why should that surprise him? The woman wouldn’t know the truth if it jumped up and bit her in the behind. With hollow eyes, her skin three shades past white and her mouth pinched like a shriveled apple left in the bottom of the bushel, she sat there and expected him to believe everything was fine.

“I didn’t see signs of anybody else when I arrived. Who else is out here with you?”

She paused as if she didn’t want to answer him, then she finally shrugged. “Usually the ranch foreman and his wife live in quarters at the rear of the house, but they’re away for a few days.”

“You’re alone?”

“Not if you count two dogs, six barn cats, a dozen horses and two hundred head of cattle.”

He studied her pale features again, suddenly chagrined at himself for bursting in on her, guns blazing. She might be a lying Crosby but she didn’t look well at all.

Crosby or not, he didn’t like the idea of her being out here alone. A thousand things could happen to an ill woman on her own at an isolated Wyoming ranch, especially with the storm percolating out there.

“If you’re done yelling at me, I really would like you to leave now.” Somehow she managed to inject regal condescension into her words, even with her pale features.

“I really think I should stay,” he found himself saying.

Her eyes widened and he didn’t miss the way her hand clenched over her stomach, as if just the idea of spending another moment with him was enough to make her insides churn.

“No. No, you shouldn’t. The weather report said a nasty storm is heading this way. You’ll want to fly back to Portland before it hits.”

“It’s already here. Can’t you hear that wind? The reports I heard before I landed said this area was due for at least two feet of snow. I won’t be flying anywhere tonight.”

“If you heard the storm reports before you left, why fly out here in such a rush? Acting on a whim like that hardly seems like typical behavior for the cold, ruthless CEO of Logan Corporation.”

Nothing he had done since he’d seen her in that hotel ballroom had been typical behavior for him. He had seen the reports of an approaching storm in this area before he left Portland, but not even flying into the eye of a hurricane would have kept him grounded.

He had known he was foolish to leave but he had been so angry he hadn’t cared about anything but running her to ground, after three long months of searching.

“It doesn’t matter why I left,” he answered. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m not in the mood for your macho posturing, Peter. I don’t want or need you here.”

“Fickle little thing, aren’t you? Three months ago, you certainly wanted me around. If my memory serves—and believe me, it does—you couldn’t get enough.”

She glared at him, though he saw yet another blush heat those cheeks. “Which am I? Ruthless corporate spy or sex-crazed nymphomaniac?”

“Good question. One I would certainly like to know the answer to myself.”

Before she could give voice to the heated response he could see brewing, a powerful gust of wind rattled the windowpanes and moaned under the eaves of the log ranch house.

The two lamps burning in the room flickered in unison then went out, pitching the room into darkness lit only by the fire’s glow.