Rarities Unlimited 02 - Running Scared

electronic key somewhere in Las Vegas and just happens to know that it belongs to your room and how to get to that room without asking directions?”
    Her mouth opened, then closed. “I can’t explain that part.”
    “Then maybe you can explain why you’re so eager to put a halo of innocence around a piece of work like Cherelle Faulkner.”
    “That ‘piece of work’ is as close as I come to family,” Risa shot back. “We’re sisters in everything but blood. She wouldn’t set me up like that.”
    “You keep saying it often enough, you might convince yourself.”
    Risa came to her feet on a surge of adrenaline and rage. “What do you know about friendship? You don’t have any friends! You’re too cold and calculating to know what it’s like to need—” Abruptly she stopped talking and turned away from him. She didn’t want him to see the tears that burned beneath her anger. “I’m sorry. That was way out of line. You go ahead and believe the worst of Cherelle because she dresses sexy and doesn’t spend her time doing good works for charity. Just don’t ask me to sing along with the chorus.”
    “You didn’t think I was cold in the elevator,” Shane pointed out with deadly calm. “I’ll concede the calculating part, because I remembered the camera and didn’t fuck you blind for the entertainment of the men on God duty.”
    Risa winced at the cutting edge of his voice. Angry, impatient, thoroughly irritated with her. Part of her agreed that Shane had a right. Another part of her wanted to scream that Cherelle was her friend. Her only friend. They’d been through too much together to ever betray each other.
    “I can’t believe she sicced that thug on me,” Risa said.
    The stiff line of her back and the strain thinning her voice made Shane feel like slime for pushing her. She’d been through enough in the last few hours without him hammering on her about what a double-crossing bitch her childhood friend was.
    Silently he walked over and put his hands on Risa’s tense shoulders. She jerked with surprise, then didn’t move again.
    “Do you have any idea what went through my mind when I saw that goon pointing his gun at your back?” Shane asked quietly.
    She shook her head.
    He bent until his lips were a whisper away from the nape of her neck. “If I could have killed him, he would have died where he stood.”
    The warmth of his breath as much as the certainty in his words sent a quiver through her.
    “And that was before we were lovers,” Shane said. “I don’t know why you have such a hold on me. But you do.”
    She took a shivering breath. “Lust. That’s all. Just . . .” Her voice died when she felt the warm tip of his tongue touch her nape once. Lightly. “. . . lust”
    “If I thought that, I would have slept with you before I hired you,” he said. “You wanted me the first time we met at Rarities. I wanted you. Easy math, right? A hot week in the sheets, handshakes all around, and off we go on our merry, separate ways.”
    “R-right.”
    “Wrong.” He tasted her again. Lightly again. He didn’t trust himself to really kiss her. He wanted her now even more than he had earlier. A lot more. Now he knew exactly how good it would be. “It’s deeper than lust. You knew it. I knew it. And we both ran like hell. Can you at least admit that much?”
    She wanted to refuse. She couldn’t. “It scares me.”
    “Me, too. Then I looked at a monitor and saw that son of a bitch trying to shoot you. I went crazy. I don’t even know how I got to you. All I know is that I’m through running away from whatever it is that pulls us together. I want to . . . help you.”
    The thought of Cherelle casually screwing her old friend made Shane want to splinter every bone in Cherelle’s high-mileage body. But he didn’t think Risa was ready to hear that. She might never be.
    It was too bad Risa didn’t feel that kind of bone-deep attachment to her lover.
    Not that Shane was surprised about the lack of feeling on her part. According to his father and mother, he just wasn’t the lovable sort. So, like his father, he had settled for being rich. Unlike his father, for Shane rich wasn’t enough.
    But Shane hadn’t learned that about himself until he saw a thug in a Hawaiian shirt setting up to kill Risa.
    “How do you feel about it?” he asked. “Still want to run?”
    “No. Yes.” She gave a broken laugh. “I don’t know.”
    He could have slid his hands over her, kissed