Having an affair with her would have been the best way to keep tabs on her every movement and control the situation until he was ready to get out. He knew she was attracted to him, knew she’d had a couple of short-lived affairs that proved she hadn’t completely given up living. But he’d underestimated the strength of her devotion to her cause, and after the way she’d stiffened in his arms when he kissed her, he had to accept that she wasn’t going to change her mind. If he persisted, he would completely turn her off and she’d stop regarding him as a personal friend.
He’d have to cut his losses there, but he didn’t like it. He’d felt almost like a teenager again, in a lather of anticipation. He saw now that he’d handled things clumsily with that “accidental” meeting at the restaurant, Susanna knowing she’d have to leave and arranging for a watcher in the restaurant to call her pager as soon as Rip sat down at their table. Very high-school-ish, and Milla had immediately seen through it.
So he’d back off. That didn’t mean he’d give up. Eventually, he’d have her, because he was like her in one critical area: he never gave up.
* * *
Milla noticed when she changed her birth control patch the next morning that she had only a month’s supply left, with no refill, so she made a note to call Susanna’s office and get a prescription called in. She was always careful about birth control because she was aware of the risks she ran of being assaulted. She literally made a note, writing it down, because she didn’t trust herself to remember otherwise. She felt both lethargic and nervous, wiped out from the stress of the night before and yet oddly on edge, waiting for something to happen.
She had slept like the dead. Handling True had been stressful, but Diaz—the short time she’d been with Diaz had left her feeling as if she’d been caught up in a tornado and hurled over half the country before being dumped into an ice-cold bath. Terror, fury, laughter, desire, despair—all had chased through her in rapid succession. The effects of so much adrenaline dumping into her system had left her shaky, and then she’d crashed.
And yet, the first thing she thought of when she awoke was how Diaz had looked crouched before her, smiling in the lamplight. And because she wasn’t completely awake, her imagination had then drifted and placed them in different positions altogether, with him crouched over her, his eyes heavy-lidded and that same small smile on his lips as he slowly penetrated—
She blocked the fantasy, shuddering with delight even though she refused to let her imagination take her any further. That was far enough, anyway, to shock her. She had desired other men before, imagined making love with them. But none of them, not even David, had ever tempted her to veer from the course she had set herself.
Diaz did. Sleeping with him would be a mistake on a personal level, but what scared her was the chaos it could cause in their working relationship. For Justin’s sake, she didn’t dare change their status. And yet, knowing that, she still wanted to, yearned to taste him and touch him and feel him inside her.
Diaz had never kissed her, had scarcely touched her hand, but with one smile he had completely wiped out her memory of True’s taste.
She had to get herself under control before she did something stupid. If she read him right, Diaz would disappear if she got clingy and started making any emotional demands on him, and she didn’t trust herself not to do that. She hadn’t felt this way since . . . well, she’d never felt this way. With David, she had felt absolutely secure in his love. There hadn’t been any reason for emotional insecurity. Diaz, however, was David’s polar opposite, and he might offer her a few things, but emotional security wasn’t in his repertoire.
She was doing what women always did, she realized: obsessing. She should put him out of her mind, concentrate on controlling herself and doing what had to be done every day. The day-to-day business at Finders was way more important than her libido.
While driving to work, she put in a call to Susanna’s office, only to be told, after holding for five minutes while she threaded her way through heavy morning traffic, that Susanna wanted her to come in for a checkup, since it had been two years since the last one.
Damn. Sighing, Milla made an appointment, scribbled the date on her note reminding her to call Susanna in the first place, and hoped she’d be in town to keep the appointment.
The first thing she saw when she entered the office was Brian hanging over Olivia’s desk. But his voice was only a murmur, and his eyes had that intent, sleepy look men got when they—
Her eyes widened, and she shot a disbelieving look at Olivia, who was leaning forward with her arms folded on top of her desk, which pushed her breasts together and upward. She was smiling up at Brian.
So it wasn’t just her, Milla thought. Lust was busting out all over.
Joann stuck her head out of her office. “Amber Alert in Lubbock!”
Within a minute they all had descriptions of the child, a three-year-old girl snatched from her front yard; the vehicle, a dark green, late model Ford pickup; and the driver, white male, early thirties, long blond hair. The Lubbock police would handle the actual apprehension, but Finders called all their associates in the Lubbock area and got them on the streets and highways, armed with cell phones and a description of the truck and driver. People going about their daily business might be listening to tapes or CDs and not hear the alert over the radio, or just be remarkably inattentive to what was going on around them.
Forty-five tense minutes later, the truck was spotted and police notified. The driver, when a cruiser flashed his lights at him, pulled over without fuss. It turned out to be a dispute between a divorced couple, the little girl was his daughter, and not only was she happy to be with her daddy, she began crying when the officers took her away from him.