Take My Breath Away…

Nicola frowned as she watched him push in numbers.

“Nick, it’s Gabe.”

There was a short pause, and then he began to fill her father in on what had happened. Clearly, Gabe wasn’t having any trouble prioritizing what they should be focusing on. He was not only reporting to her father—something she should be doing, but he was trying to dry out their clothes and making arrangements for them to be picked up.

While her mind was still stuck on…him and what she was going to do. What she should do and what she wanted to do were miles apart.

Spilled milk. You cleaned it up and moved on. That was clearly his attitude. And perhaps she should take her cue from him. What was done couldn’t be undone. Just forgetting about it and moving on was the practical solution. Except she wasn’t going to be able to forget what had happened. What they’d done. She drew in a deep breath, gave her head a mental shake. She had to get her focus back on stopping the robberies, catching the thief.

“The road crews are out, but travel is not recommended.” Gabe sat down in the pew and stretched one arm along the back. She felt the heat of it instantly.

“Your father is sending a helicopter for us. Its ETA is approximately forty-five minutes from now. So we have some time to kill.”

Her eyes collided with his, and for a moment her brain cells shut down again. Worse, she didn’t want to put any effort into resuscitating them. Everything inside of her yearned for him.

And he felt it, too. She could see that telltale gleam in his eyes and read the question as clearly as if he’d spoken it aloud.

Ready?

They weren’t even touching, yet she was definitely ready. Ready to go anywhere he would take her. Ready to take that glorious leap into the world of sensation only he’d shown her.

But she shouldn’t. They couldn’t. As much as she wished she could.

Focus, Nicola told herself. Time to summon up a mental list that didn’t start off with jumping back under the covers with Gabe Wilder.

It didn’t help her concentration at all when he smiled at her and the effect sizzled right down to her toes.

She drew in a breath she wasn’t even aware that she needed. “There’s a thief out there that we have to catch.” She said the words aloud for herself as much as Gabe. “I have a lot of questions. For starters, what are you doing here?”

“I’ll be happy to answer that as soon as you answer two questions for me.”

“Two?” She narrowed her eyes on his.

“I’ve already asked one of them. And then I’ll answer two for you. Deal?”

Nicola studied him and thought of the Gabe she’d known when she was ten. He’d been a tease then, too, often tormenting her to get her to push just a little harder on the court. “What’s your first question?”

“The curls.” He lifted a strand of her hair and rubbed it between his fingers. “I really miss them.”

“All you ever did was pull them.”

“It made you angry and you played better ball.”

Her brows shot up. “That’s your excuse?”

He grinned. “And I’m sticking to it.”

She saw the gleam in his eyes again, the one that had fascinated her when she was ten. And the intervening years had only increased its effect.

He tugged on the strand of hair he’d been holding. “Where have they gone?”

“That’s your first question?”

“Uh-huh.”

The only thing that kept her from rolling her eyes was the fact that the quickest way she was going to get the answers to her questions was to humor him. “I use a flattening iron.”

“Pity.” Then the smile faded from his eyes. “Who did you think I was when you made love to me?”

That was the biggy, Nicola thought. And it was one she wanted answers to, also. But she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to like them. “A stranger.” Not good. “An injured man.” Even worse. “I don’t understand it. You were right. I wanted you that day when I saw you in the office. I haven’t been able to stop wanting you. I didn’t know you, and you were injured.”

When he opened his mouth, she held up a hand to stop him. “And for the record, I don’t make a habit of crawling under the covers with every hunky-looking stranger I meet. The problem was I wasn’t thinking.”

That was true enough. But it wasn’t everything. And she needed to figure it out. If she could just get the right perspective, she could handle it. “You were lying on the floor and I had to bring you back to consciousness. The moment you opened your eyes, I recognized that you were the man in the office that day, and I wanted you. Just like that. I simply can’t explain it.”

“Yeah,” Gabe said. “I think we’re in the same boat, Curls.”

For a moment neither of them spoke. She saw something flicker in his eyes and it triggered that tingling feeling inside of her. The one she’d felt when they’d been making love. That it was…just right.

She hurried on. “It never occurred to me that you were Gabe Wilder. Not then, and certainly not tonight. I’d just chased Gabe Wilder out of here. I’d even taken a shot at him, and he drove away in your SUV.”

“Did you manage to hit the thief?” Gabe asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I certainly didn’t slow him down any.”

“Wait here.” She watched him rise and walk down the side aisle, his eyes on the floor. He was nearly at the end when he stopped and crouched down. “Blood. Your aim was on target, Curls.”

Nicola felt her stomach knot, and she wasn’t relieved at all by the grim expression on Gabe’s face when he rejoined her in the pew. “Our thief got more than he bargained for this time.”

When she said nothing, he reached out and covered her hand with his. “First time you’ve shot someone?”

“Yeah.” As he linked his fingers with hers, she felt the knot in her stomach loosen.

“Why don’t you take me through it? Everything that happened from the time you arrived.”

She did. By the time she’d finished her narrative, Gabe knew three things. First, she had courage. But he’d already seen that when she was ten years old. Looking back, he could see that it had taken a good deal of it to accept his invitation to play basketball that day. Nearly as much as it had taken her to race up the aisle when she’d heard the sounds of a fight.

She was definitely a risk taker. And she had an excellent eye for detail. She’d spotted an abandoned car in the ditch that he’d missed and she’d seen the second statue. He didn’t imagine there was much that escaped her notice.

Maybe she was just what he needed—fresh eyes on the robberies.

“That takes us right up until I crawled under the covers with you,” Nicola wound up. “And none of what happened there pertains to the case.”

“Indirectly, it does, Curls. I think by crawling in with me, you just may have saved my life.”

She narrowed her eyes on him. “Don’t get overly dramatic. In spite of your injuries, you don’t seem much the worse for wear.”

The dryness of her tone had him smiling. “Who knows how long it would have taken for someone to have found me? Hypothermia can be life-threatening. I owe you.”

“For doing my job.”

He raised her hand and skimmed his mouth over her fingers.

Just that brief contact had sensation flooding her system. “Don’t,” she managed to say. “We need to concentrate on the case. On catching the thief.”

He had to agree with her on that one. But the pulse beating at her throat, the breathiness in her voice had him wanting badly to multitask. Reluctantly, he released her hand. “I still owe you.”

Nicola glanced back up at the statues. “At least the thief didn’t get St. Francis.”

Gabe followed her gaze. “No chance of that this time. I designed a new alarm system, a prototype that isn’t even in production yet. No one at G. W. has seen it. I called in a favor from a friend at the Denver Post and she wrote that feature article on the statue of St. Francis in last Sunday’s paper. I was hoping it might lure the thief out here.”

Nicola shifted her gaze to Gabe. “You set the statue up as bait? All of the other art pieces the thief has taken have been paintings. How did you know he’d come after it?”

“It was Father Mike’s idea. He thought it might be helpful to involve the statue. Whoever is behind these robberies seems to have an affinity for G. W. Securities’ systems. I was also depending on the statue’s spreading reputation for granting answers to prayers. There are a lot of eccentric collectors out there who would pay a lot for that.” He shrugged. “I also said a prayer that the trap would work.”

“St. Francis evidently answered it this time.”

“Except the thief came early and got away.”

For the first time, she heard a hint of emotion in his voice. And she thought of the anger and frustration he must be feeling. He’d had his hands on the thief. She turned and met his eyes. “He couldn’t have been happy when he didn’t get the statue.”

“That’s probably why my wallet, keys and car are missing—to let me know that I was helpless to stop it. I think that’s partly what the robberies are about—to let me know that G. W. Securities can’t prevent them. At least we haven’t until today.”