Crystal Cove (Friday Harbor #4)(11)

“Nope. He wants you.”

Justine sighed inaudibly. “I’ll be there.”

“Nine o’clock on the dot,” Priscilla reminded her. “He doesn’t take well to people being late.”

“I’ll be there. Bye.”

Ending the call, Justine scrambled to the bathroom, tore her clothes off, and jumped into the shower. After a brief but thorough scrubbing, she got out and towel-dried her hair.

She rummaged through her closet until she found a sleeveless knit dress with a drawstring waist, and a pair of flat white sandals. Pulling her hair back into a low ponytail, she swiped on some ChapStick and applied a couple of flicks of mascara to her upper lashes.

As Justine strode across the small yard, she risked a glance at the second-floor window, but it was empty. She had to admit it: She was curious about Jason Black, who kept his private life under such tight control.

Entering the back door of the inn’s kitchen, she pulled the bottle of Stoli from the freezer. She measured two shots of biting-cold vodka into shot glasses, and settled them into a small high-sided silver tray filled with crushed ice. Carefully she carried the tray upstairs.

The quietness of the inn was disrupted only by discreet sounds: the opening and closing of a drawer, the muffled ring of a phone. As Justine approached the Klimt room, she heard a man’s voice inside. It sounded like he was in the middle of a phone conversation. Should she knock? She didn’t want to interrupt, but it was nine o’clock. Schooling her features into a polite mask, Justine rapped her knuckles lightly on the door.

Footsteps approached the threshold.

The door opened. Justine had a brief, dizzying impression of midnight eyes and hard features, and a sexy disorder of short black hair. He gestured for her to enter the room, pausing just long enough to tell Justine, “Don’t leave yet.” He looked at her directly.

The glance lasted only a half second, but it was nearly enough to knock Justine backward. His fathomless eyes—shrewd and opaque as blackstrap molasses—could have belonged to Lucifer himself.

Justine responded with a dazed nod and managed to set the tray on the table without spilling it. She was so unsettled that it took her a minute to realize he was speaking in Japanese. His voice was mesmerizing, a quiet baritone wrapped in shadow.

At a loss for what to do, she went to one of the windows and looked outside. The vestigial light was melon colored at the horizon, darkening to a black-plum meridian overhead. The fissure of a crescent moon gleamed white and clear like a claw mark in the sky.

A night made for magic.

Her attention returned to Jason Black, who paced slowly as he talked. He was a big man, elegantly lean, the easy athleticism of his movements hinting at deep tracts of muscle beneath the crisp white button-down shirt and khakis. Leaning over the table, he scrawled a few words on a notepad. A stainless-steel Swiss Army watch gleamed on his wrist.

His face could have been honed from amber, the cheekbones steeply angled. Weathering at the outward corners of his eyes betrayed a pattern of sleepless nights and restless days. Although his mouth was set in ruthless lines, his lips looked soft, as if erotic tenderness had been kneaded into the surface.

“Forgive me,” he said, shutting off the phone as he approached Justine. “Tokyo is sixteen hours ahead of us. I had to get in one last call.”

His manner was relaxed, but Justine had to fight the instinct to step back from him. Even though she knew he posed no threat to her, she had the sense of him as a dangerous creature, a tiger behind a thin glass wall.

“Of course,” she said. “Your Stoli is right over there.”

“Thank you.” His gaze didn’t move from hers. He extended a hand. “Jason.”

“Justine.” Her fingers were swallowed in a deep grip that sent a jolt of warmth to her elbow. “I hope your room is satisfactory.”

“Yes. However…” Releasing her hand, he said, “I’m curious about something.” He nodded toward the glazed earthenware flowerpot on the table. It contained a double-stemmed moth orchid, each stem bearing an inflorescence of snowy-white blooms. “I asked for an arrangement of white flowers. But this—”

“You don’t like it? I’m sorry. First thing in the morning I’ll get you another—”

“No. I—”

“It would be no trouble—”

“Justine.” He lifted a hand in the peremptory gesture of a man who wasn’t used to being interrupted. She fell instantly silent. “I like the orchid,” he said. “I just want to know why you chose it.”

“Oh. Well, it’s nicer to have a living, breathing plant in the room instead of a cut bouquet. And I thought an orchid would go with the Klimt artwork.”

“It does. Clean, elegant…”—a barely perceptible pause—“suggestive.”

Justine smiled wryly. The orchid bloom, with plush petals resembling lips and furled folds and delicate apertures, was nothing short of flower  p**n . “If there’s nothing else,” she said, “I’ll be going now.”

“Do you have to be somewhere?”

She glanced at him in bemusement. “Not really.”

“Then stay.”

Justine blinked and knitted her fingers together. “I was told you’re not much on small talk.”