Predatory Game (GhostWalkers, #6)(3)
Saber sighed softly and shook her head. She was putting off the inevitable. She wasn’t walking home and she couldn’t very well stay where she was. She was going to pay royally for this, but what was one more lecture out of several hundred? Fighting for a deep controlling breath, she punched in the numbers, her fingertip unconsciously using a rather vicious stabbing motion on the blameless telephone.
Jess Calhoun lay sprawled out full length on the wide, leather, specially built futon, staring up at the ceiling in the darkness. Suffocating silence surrounded him, wrapped him up and pressed heavily down on him. The sound of the clock ticking was only in his mind. Endless seconds, minutes. An eternity. Where was she? What the hell was she doing out at two thirty in the morning? This was her night off. She wasn’t at the radio station working later than usual, he’d already checked. Surely she hadn’t been in an accident. Someone would have notified him. He’d called every hospital in the area, at least he could console himself with the knowledge that she wasn’t in any of them.
His fingers curled slowly into a fist, beat impotently once, twice, on the leather. She hadn’t told him she was going out. She hadn’t even called to say she would be late. One of these days he would be pushed too far by mysterious, elusive Saber Wynter, and he would just strangle her.
The first memory of her washed over him unbidden, reminding him it was his own folly that had landed him in such an uncomfortable position. He had opened the door ten months earlier to find on his doorstep the most beautiful child he had ever seen, worn suitcase in hand. No more than five foot two, she had raven-colored hair, so black that little blue lights gleamed through the riot of curls. Her face was small, fragile, with classic delicate bones and a faintly haughty nose. Soft flawless skin, full mouth, and enormous violet-blue eyes. She had an innocence about her that made him want—no, need—to protect her. She was shivering unbearably in the cold air.
She’d wordlessly handed him a piece of paper with his ad on it. She wanted the job at the radio station, vacated when his night crew had been killed in a car accident. The accident had left everyone shaken, and Jess had taken a long time before he thought about filling the position, but he’d recently advertised for someone.
It had been her eyes and mouth that had given her away. This was no child wrapped in a thin denim jacket several sizes too large, but a young, exhausted, exotic, disturbingly beautiful woman. Those eyes had seen things they shouldn’t have had to, and he wouldn’t—couldn’t—turn the young woman with those eyes away.
It had taken a moment to close his mouth and move back into the foyer, inviting her in. His hand had completely enveloped hers, yet he could feel the strength of her grip. Beneath the deceptive peaches-and-cream skin were muscles of steel. She moved with flowing grace, her carriage so regal he pegged her for a ballet dancer or gymnast. When she had finally offered a tentative smile, she had taken his breath away.
Jess raked a hand through his hair, cursing himself for inviting her in. From that moment, he had been lost; he knew with a certainty he always would be. Over the past ten months she had cast a spell and he didn’t even want out. He had never had a reaction to a woman the way he had to her. He couldn’t let her go, no matter how illogical that had been, so instead he’d opened his home, offering her the job as well as light housekeeping in exchange for a place to live.
Of course he’d investigated her; he wasn’t entirely out of his mind. He owed it to his fellow GhostWalkers, members of his elite military team, to know who was sharing his house, but there was no Saber Wynter in existence. It wasn’t exactly shocking, he suspected she was hiding from someone, but it was very unusual that he couldn’t find out every last thing about her, especially when he had her fingerprints.
The shrill ringing of the telephone sent his heart slamming hard against the wall of his chest. His hand flew out, the swift striking of a coiled snake, and snatched up the receiver. “Saber?” It was a prayer, damn her, a blatant prayer. He inhaled deep, wishing he could draw her into his lungs and hold her there.
“Hi, Jesse,” she greeted him breezily, as if it were noon and he hadn’t been climbing the walls for hours. “I sort of have this teeny little problem.”
He ignored the relief racing through his body, the tightening of his muscles at the sensual sound of her voice, and the instant hard-on that never quite went away when he thought about her—which was all the time. “Damn it, Saber, don’t you dare tell me you landed yourself in jail again.” He really was going to strangle her. A man could only take so much.
Her sigh was exaggerated. “Honestly, Jesse, do you have to bring that silly incident up every time something goes wrong? It’s not like I tried to get arrested.”
“Saber,” he said in exasperation, “holding out your hands with your wrists together is asking to be arrested.”
“It was for a good cause,” she protested.
“Chaining yourself to an old folks’ home to call attention to conditions is not exactly the right way to go about changing things. Where the hell are you?”
“You sound like an old grumpy bear with a sore tooth.” Saber tapped out a rhythm with a long fingernail on the booth wall, one of the nervous habits she’d never overcome. “I’m stuck out here near the old warehouses, sort of, um, like by myself—without a car.”
“Damn it, Saber!”