Risking It All. Beverly Bird

off the balance monthly. But there was always that nagging question of what if?

      What if something catastrophic happened to her and she needed to lay her hands on a few thousand dollars in a hurry before she paid the card off again? What if the firm didn’t reimburse her quickly enough and when an emergency came up, she was a few hundred dollars short because this expense was on there? What if there was no money left for groceries or for the electric bill or…

      “You’re not looking too good there, lady.”

      Grace turned sharply at the sound of McKenna’s voice. The abrupt movement, coupled with the fact that she hadn’t breathed right for probably thirty or forty seconds, almost had her passing out. Her vision got fuzzy around the edges.

      “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

      “You brought me here.”

      “The cabbie was supposed to be holding you for ransom.”

      “I threatened him and he let me go.”

      “You what?” She was appalled. He’d end up back in jail before the night was out on a totally unrelated charge and what would that do to her career?

      “You need to calm down, honey,” McKenna said. “Seriously, you’re pale.”

      Honey. He was calling her honey again. “I thought we agreed on ‘lady.’” Or had it been Ms.?

      “By any name, you’re white as a sheet.”

      “Has it occurred to you anywhere in that warped brain of yours that maybe you’re the cause?”

      He seemed to honestly think about it. “I guess warped is a step up from stupid. Is it?”

      “I never said you were stupid!” she screeched.

      People around them took several quick, alarmed steps back. Grace caught the movement out of the corner of her eye and she was horrified at herself.

      She wanted to cry, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried.

      “Ms. Simkanian?” the desk clerk said tentatively.

      Grace spun back to her. She was holding out her Visa, the receipt, and a twenty-dollar bill. Grace snatched all of it from her hand then somehow found the presence of mind to be polite.

      “Thank you. Thank you very much. I’m fine now.”

      “If you say so,” McKenna said.

      She all but galloped out of the lobby. Part of it was the fact that she was afraid the cabbie would get tired of waiting for her to come back and call the cops. The other part was that she just wanted to get away from McKenna.

      It was going to be a very long night.

      Chapter 3

      Aidan watched his attorney whip through the hotel door. What exactly did he have on his hands?

      He wasn’t a man who gave undue thought to his problems. Life was full of them, after all, and he knew what mattered in life. Family mattered. Love mattered, not that he’d ever want any of his buddies to hear him say that. The love of a good woman, the love of a niece or nephew who thought he was one step short of God, yeah, those things mattered. He tried to shrug off everything else.

      Big problems could trip him up for a few strides, sure. But he’d been blessed with very few big things going wrong in his life until lately.

      Grace Simkanian was a small problem, but she was nagging at him anyway. For reasons that totally escaped him, he liked her. He liked the heat of her temper and her cool rigidity and her mind. But she didn’t like him and at the moment he had big problems that mandated that his attorney at least tolerate him.

      He really ought to fire her, but he didn’t want to.

      She came back into the lobby, then she cut through the air beside him, heading right past him.

      “I guess this means we’re staying?” he asked, going after her.

      She stabbed the elevator button. “For $762 plus tax, you damned well better believe I’m staying.”

      Aidan whistled under his breath. The big guy with the firm liked good rooms.

      He caught her hand to stop her assault on the defenseless button. She did the same thing she had done all night when he’d gotten too close. She stopped breathing before she bristled. That intrigued him.

      If he was going to succeed in disliking her, he was going to have to strip her of all this mystery she had going on, he realized. There was nothing more deadly than a beautiful, mysterious woman.

      He leaned closer to her anyway, stopping only when his face was inches from hers. He kept holding her hand. He needed another beautiful, mysterious woman in his life right now like he needed a firing squad, and the fact that this one obviously believed he was guilty made her all the more treacherous. But he whispered to her all the same.

      “In…out,” he said.

      “What?” She gasped the word and suddenly he could feel her trembling under his touch. Oh, man, he thought. Beautiful, mysterious and trembling.

      “Inhale, exhale,” he explained. “That’s what I meant.”

      “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

      “Sure you do. You’re not breathing.”

      “I’m breathing.”

      “Not well. And your pulse is going off like a machine gun.”

      “What kind of mind uses machine guns in an analogy?”

      He tightened his grip on her wrist. She tugged at his hold but she wouldn’t embarrass herself by going into all-out war to dislodge his grip.

      “Maybe a criminal mind,” he suggested. “Maybe dark characters excite you.”

      “Excite—” She choked then broke off.

      “You,” he finished for her.

      “Go to hell.”

      “I might, for what I’m thinking about doing to you right now. You know, there are only so many miles of legs, so much dark, tossed hair a man can stand.”

      That did it to her. She panicked and wrenched away from him. When she was free, she attacked the elevator button again, slamming her palm against it. She looked close to tears.

      Good show, Aidan thought. Beautiful, mysterious, trembling and tears. Oh, yeah, he was on a roll here. The thought doused him enough that he stepped back suddenly to give her room.

      “Sorry,” he said shortly.

      She turned her head to glare at him. “For behaving like an ignorant ass?”

      “That, too.” He couldn’t resist. “And for turning you on.”

      Her eyes went huge. “You did not—”

      “Lady, you were as ‘on’ as a bug in a rug.”

      “That’s ‘in’!”

      “Well, actually, it was snug, but that brings us back to fit, and that takes us to—”

      “Shut up!”

      Yeah, he thought, he rattled her. He really rattled her and he didn’t understand why. All this mystery was going to make for one very long night.

      The elevator finally came and Grace all but leaped inside. It was crowded but that offered her no hope. Everyone spilled out into the lobby and left her alone with McKenna. She pressed herself into a corner as the doors slid shut again.

      If he got out of line now, she could kill him without risking witnesses. And she wouldn’t give a damn about her credit card bill, either, when she fled the scene.

      He stood in the middle,