He interrupted her thoughts and her fiercely beating heart. “You need to be careful with the game you’re playing. I’ve been letting you have the upper hand, been letting you win your little game, because it humors me. But be careful, Maria—don’t take it too far.” His hand spread out over her neck and his fingers pulsed against her windpipe in a shocking, sexual threat. “Trust me when I tell you that you don’t have to go out of your way to provoke my jealousy. I’m already jealous. I already want to kill every motherfucker who looks at you. I already want to take you home to St. Louis, tie you to my bed, lock the door and toss away the fucking key.”
Her heart began pounding so hard, she thought it might explode. She heard a roaring in her ears and her knees began to shake.
When he slid his hand from her throat to land on the vee between her thighs, Maria gasped and closed her eyes.
She heard a deep, tormented sound before he growled, “Now here’s the deal. I’m pissed, and I need to clear my head. And for that I need some clean, Midwest air to breathe. I’m going to finish my business with the motherfucker in my office and then you and I are catching a flight to Missouri.” He glanced up at the clock on the wall. “You have about an hour. Pack what you can, but other than that, don’t worry about it, I’ll buy you what we need when we arrive.”
A roaring began in her head. “Garrett, I can’t go with you. I can’t leave the hotel.”
“You damn sure can leave the hotel, and you will leave the hotel.”
“But I—”
“If you want to spend the next hour going through the motions with Beth instead of packing, that’s your business, I don’t give a fuck. All I care about is your little ass next to me on the plane.”
“Why?”
His eyes impaled hers with an icy look. “I told you already. I can’t breathe. Need some goddamn air.”
She swallowed and gave a last ditch effort. “If you want to go home, go, but I can stay here.”
“Not happening, babe.”
“Garrett—”
“Not fucking happening. Be ready in an hour,” he snapped as he turned and slammed from the room.
Chapter Nine
Maria hadn’t wasted any more time arguing with him or herself. She’d flown up to her room, pulled off the contentious dress and then slipped into jeans and a shirt. She’d packed an overnight bag in less than ten minutes, and had then spent the remainder of the time allotted to her going over all the minutiae of running the hotel with Beth. Thank God she’d been prepping the other woman for a week already, just in case something like this came up.
It had been an intense forty-five or so minutes with Beth, and now, as Maria sat in first class beside Garrett, she finally let go of worrying about the hotel, and thought about what in the hell she was doing sitting next to him on a plane to begin with.
Christ.
She’d had the thought before, and she was sure she’d have it again. The guy was a maniac.
But as he slid his hand over her thigh and he gripped her knee in a subtle caress that sent shivers down her spine, she closed her eyes and let the anxiety she was feeling slip away, concentrating only on the exquisite harmony that seemed to bleed through her entire being every time he touched her.
Please, God, let him be a maniac she could trust.
****
Maria sat back in the soft leather seat of Garrett’s Mercedes S-Class as he tooled down a winding road shaded by tall trees and flanked by a running path. The neighborhood was in the suburbs of St. Louis, and it was quiet, upscale, and about as far removed from what she was used to as could be. “Do you live here?”
“Yeah. The corporation bought the lake house as an investment, and since no one ever sees fit to make use of it, I decided to move in.”
Maria looked around in both directions. “I don’t see a lake.”
He tipped his head forward. “You will. We’re coming up from behind, but we can go check out everything tomorrow if you want.”
“Okay.” She agreed readily, as Garrett made a turn and then another, and after a moment, they were pulling into a driveway in front of a two-story house set in a hillside.
“Whose car is that?” she asked, staring at the late-model American-made sedan parked in the driveway.
The almost-relaxed look that had encompassed Garrett’s features since they’d sat down on the plane dissolved as he studied the car. “I don’t know. Never seen it before.”
He pulled up next to the car and studied the house. “It doesn’t belong to one of my brothers, not that they come here anyway.” he muttered, and then glanced at her. “Stay here while I check it out.”