AMANDA BROWNING – Enemy Within (страница 4)

‘Don’t worry, I haven’t lost a paying passenger...yet,’ she shot back with all the aplomb she could muster, while surreptitiously rubbing her hand down her trousers in an attempt to stop the tingling.

His lips quirked. ‘I don’t like the way you said that. Could you, by any chance, be flirting with me, Hanlon?’

She froze, the animation dying out of her face. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—flirt with him, for to do so would be flirting with danger. Mentally and physically, she backed off. ‘Hardly! Women like me don’t flirt with men like you,’ she enlarged with distaste.

‘You say that as if you’ve met men like me before. Was it one of them who sent you running?’ he queried shrewdly, but only managed to put her on an even keel again.

Secure in the knowledge that men like him and Jean-Luc were too vain to see they might not be the be-all and end-all, Mickey curved her lips with icy amusement. ‘Strange, isn’t it, how men always imagine it must be one of their kind who makes a woman the way she is?’

‘That’s because it usually is,’ Ryan observed watchfully. ‘You’re saying you’re different?’

She laughed, turning to the door once more. ‘I’m not saying anything.’ She refused to be drawn into a personal discussion with him.

Ryan followed her out into the hangar. ‘You don’t need to, Hanlon; your silence speaks for you.’

Unseen by her antagonist, Mickey briefly closed her eyes. ‘Back off, Ryan. You’re my passenger, not my confessor.’

Behind her, he laughed. ‘Do you have anything to confess?’ he challenged, then came to an abrupt halt as she swung to face him.

He had pushed her an inch too far, and her finger stabbed at his chest. ‘If you want a confession, here’s one. I’ve made mistakes in my life, but the biggest one was having anything to do with you!’

Hands hooked into the belt loops of his jeans, he looked down at her mockingly. ‘Why so touchy? Have I hit a nerve or ten?’

Mickey turned away in a movement that was distressingly nearly a flounce. ‘Not even close. I just got out of bed the wrong side this morning,’ she snapped, trying to recover lost ground.

‘If you’d been in it with a man, it wouldn’t matter what side you got out of,’ he sent after her, bringing her round again, cheeks flaming.

Painful memories rose dangerously near the surface, of reckless, selfish taking. But nothing was free. Pleasure had to be paid for. Passion could be a curse, a greedy monster. ‘Sex isn’t the answer to everything!’ she spluttered angrily.

For once Ryan didn’t laugh. ‘If it isn’t the cure, it’s often the cause.’

Mickey was beginning to feel she was being put through an emotional wringer, and every time she tried to free herself she just went round again. ‘Thank you, Dr Freud, and goodnight. For someone who says he won’t work with a woman, you keep harping on the fact that I am one,’ she accused.

‘Just trying to figure out what makes you tick, Hanlon,’ Ryan answered smoothly.

‘Better men than you have tried, and failed in the attempt,’ she shot back, and regretted it immediately when his lips curved drily.

‘Froze them all off, did you? I can’t say that surprises me. So it shouldn’t surprise you to hear you might just have met your match,’ he observed softly, with an undertone which set her heart knocking.

Alarm shot through her system before she could suppress it. ‘You’re forgetting your own rules, Ryan,’ she reminded him, far too breathlessly. She felt vulnerable, and it was a bad feeling, because she knew the enemy was as much within as without.

‘Ah, but then rules are made to be broken. You intrigue me, Hanlon, and that means you might just be worth making an exception of.’

CHAPTER TWO

THE Crest Motor Hotel was a well known landmark in Prince Rupert, sitting on its bluff overlooking the harbour. Mickey had only ever admired it in passing. Entering the lobby, dressed in working clothes as she still was, made her feel that all eyes turned her way. Lord, how she hated that sensation! It plunged her back into another time, when every move she made had drawn avid attention, when she had felt the sting of shame burning her flesh and it had been as if a scarlet ‘A’ had been emblazoned on her forehead.

She had done everything she could to make sure that would never happen to her again, down to wearing non-feminine clothes, and yet, with a feeling of almost hysterical irony, she found herself once again the centre of attention. What was everyone thinking? That she and this handsome, incredibly sexy man were going upstairs to...? She battened down hard on the thought. She was getting paranoid. It was guilt talking. Guilt because she couldn’t ignore the attraction she felt. But only she knew that; everyone else was probably thinking she looked a mess!

Shakily she adjourned the mental court inside her brain which constantly sat in judgement of herself. Yes, it was her appearance which caused comment, and for the first time in years she regretted leaving her designer clothes behind. Tonight she could have done with the boost to her confidence that a fashionable suit would have provided.

As she followed in Ryan’s wake, paradoxically comforted by the thought, she quite missed the fact that the reason people turned to look was because of the natural pride and confidence in her bearing.

Ryan’s suite was on the top floor, above the hustle and bustle of the town, and walking into it was like entering a haven of peace. For all of thirty seconds. It took that long for Mickey to walk inside, take an appreciative look at the comfortable furnishings, and turn round. Whereupon she had the fortune, or misfortune, to be in time to see Ryan Douglas turn the key in the lock, before removing and pocketing it securely. The shock had her eyes swinging to his face to meet an expression so grim that her stomach lurched.

‘What are you doing?’ The question came out in a husky waver, and, dismayed to sound so wishy-washy, she dredged up enough steel to add demandingly, ‘Why have you locked us in?’

He chose not to answer immediately. Removing his hat and coat and tossing them on to a chair, Ryan strode menacingly towards her, halting almost painfully close. ‘Not us, Hanlon, just you. We have some talking to do, and I don’t want you running away.’

The statement was hardly designed to ease the erratic thumping of her heart. She had no idea what was going on, but she didn’t like it anyway. It was hard not to think of all those scary tales of kidnapping, but she told herself this was Ryan Douglas, not some thug. All the same, she was determined to camouflage her growing tension at finding herself in the midst of this new and startling situation.

‘Isn’t this a little extreme for talking over flight plans?’ she attempted to joke, while looking for a means of escape. It didn’t take long to realise they were too high up for there to be any safer exit than the door.

A fact Ryan was fully aware of, and, although he had taken the precaution of locking the door, he still kept himself between her and it. Moreover, he didn’t laugh. ‘Cut out the chit-chat and just tell me where they are,’ he commanded, in a voice which could have shattered rock at twenty paces.

If she’d hoped for instant enlightenment, at his words the darkness only deepened. Completely at a loss, she stared at him, deciding he was utterly mad, and wondering why nobody else had ever noticed it. Hadn’t someone once said the way to handle madmen was to humour them? It seemed to her to be a wise course.

She manufactured a faintly questioning smile. ‘You’ll have to tell me more than that. Where are what? What exactly are you talking about?’ she queried with as much concern as she could muster.

It went down like a ton of bricks. An angry hand slashed through the air, cutting her off so abruptly that she flinched. ‘You know damn well!’

Mickey struggled to make sense of it all. She could feel an incredible anger coming at her in waves. She had never experienced such violent animosity before, not even when the news of her involvement with Jean-Luc had broken, making her the butt of universal condemnation. All at once her knees began to tremble, and her heart to race. This sounded like trouble with a capital ‘T’, and she couldn’t even begin to defend herself until she knew the reason. So she had to continue fighting in the dark.

‘All I know is that you’re crazy! You lure me here under false pretences, lock me in, and then make irrational demands! Whatever you’re looking for, I haven’t got it!’ It was good to feel angry, for it smothered her anxiety.

Ryan moved like lightning to catch her by the shoulders and shake her roughly. ‘God, I should have known you’d be bloody perverse. You’re in it too, aren’t you? Right up to your sweet little neck!’

Though nothing made sense, when danger threatened Mickey acted instinctively. Her foot lashed out, the heavy boot connecting with his shin with a highly satisfactory thunk, and as he yelped and released her she had the presence of mind to quickly put herself out of range beyond the couch. From there she watched him rub his sore leg briefly before straightening to glare at her. She held up a faintly trembling hand to keep him at bay.