"OK. Maybe I should have said something sooner. But-"
"You"re as bad as that-that pompous bag of hot air I work for!"
"n.o.body"s as bad as that," Zach said, hoping for a smile and getting only an even harder glare. "Look, I didn"t know a thing about this. I told you, I didn"t expect you or anyone else from that office. Not tonight. Not anytime."
"And I told you, I left messages on your voice mail."
"What is there in "I"ve been out of town" that you don"t understand?"
"The purpose of having voice mail," she said coldly, "is so one can check one"s messages, in town or out!"
"Yeah, well this one didn"t. Couldn"t." Zach ran his hand through his hair. "If it helps, I"m sorry."
"I bet."
"I"ll call Bengs and explain that none of this was your fault."
"No," she said quickly, "no, don"t do that!"
He looked at her. She was an interesting sight. The bottom of his robe, probably six sizes too big for her, was puddled at her feet. Her hair was surely what she"d call a mess, but he loved the sight of a woman"s hair when it looked as if she"d just risen from bed. She had those black smudges under her eyes. The big bag she was clutching was the final touch of glamor.
She was a mess.
And beautiful, yeah, that same word again.
Suddenly he didn"t want the evening to end like this.
"Listen," he said, "listen, uh..." He tried to remember her name and drew a blank. J something. "Listen, Jeannie..."
"It"s Jaimie."
"Jaimie." He paused. "Let me make up for what"s happened. Give me a minute, let me get a jacket and some shoes, and we"ll go out for dinner."
"Thank you," she said, with exaggerated courtesy, "but no."
Another spike of lightning sizzled through the room.
"You"re right. Going out in this weather would be crazy. We"ll order in. What would you like? Italian? Chinese? Thai? There"s a little place just opened, serves South American food, the best Peruvian stuff you ever had."
Jaimie stared at the man who was Zacharias Castelianos. The man who was absolutely not an Aristotle Ona.s.sis lookalike.
She hated him for the torment he"d put her through... but the fault was really Bengs"s. He"d sent her on a wild-goose chase, and now, the wild-goose was inviting her to dinner.
It was tempting. So tempting. How often did a woman meet a man like this?
"Jaimie."
Her eyes met his. The fire was there again. She could feel her heart beating. Fire was not her thing. She knew women who played with it and she"d never understood why they would when surely you could, surely you would end up getting burned.
It was illogical. Totally illogical. And she was always-she was always logical.
"Say yes."
"No," she said in a voice that didn"t even sound like her own, "no. I have to go. I have a plane to catch-"
"You should take off that robe."
If her heart thumped any harder, he"d hear it.
"Otherwise, how can we know if your suit has dried?"
"Really. Mr. Castelianos-"
He came toward her, his pace lazy, his eyes never leaving hers.
"It"s Zach."
"Mr. Castelianos-"
He reached out. Caught one end of the robe"s sash. Slowly, wonderfully slowly, he tugged her toward him.
"What do you prefer? Straight American? Or something more exotic?"
She could feel the color sweep into her face. "What?"
"For dinner. What do you want?"
He smiled. Oh, what a smile he had. And what was wrong with her that she"d even think such a foolish thing about a stranger who was clearly out to seduce her?
"I don"t..." She swallowed. "Mr. Castelianos. Really. I am not-"
"Something exotic," he said softly. "I"ll bet that"s you."
"No! It isn"t. I am not-"
The lights blinked. Off. On. Then off again before blazing back on with the ferocity of a thousand suns. A sound louder than thunder, louder than the roar of a jet breaking the sound barrier as it swept low over the Texas plains, swept through the enormous room.
The building seemed to sway.
A scream broke from Jaimie"s throat.
"s.h.i.t," Zach said, as the condo was plunged into darkness.
CHAPTER FOUR.
The blonde grabbed him as if he were a tree and she were a morning glory vine.
She wound her arms around his neck and plastered her body to his. She felt warm and supple and it struck him as amazing that he could be aware of that even as his brain was telling him that whatever had just happened was not good.
The lights hadn"t just gone out in here.
The gla.s.s walls in the living room framed not a city skyline but the dark grey clouds of an ominous storm.
Zach"s muscles tightened.
An act of terror? Anything was possible, especially for a man who"d seen the things he had. But there was one mother of a storm raging outside, the wind howling like the hounds of h.e.l.l. Lightning still slashed across the sky.
Look for the simplest explanation first.
The Agency had taught him that. It was a survival skill, a way of looking at things logically, and that was what he did as the blonde clung to him. He looked at the situation logically. A huge storm. Lightning. The roar that had been something other than thunder. The blast of light followed by darkness.
The odds were that a transformer had blown. Or a series of transformers. Anything else, the sky would already be lit by flame.
He needed information. Lights. Emergency equipment. Whatever was happening, he needed to take action.
But the woman in his arms was trembling. Her heart was beating as hard as that of a bird he"d plucked from the dirt after an explosion took out a Hummer, most of a building and the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who"d been inside it back in Kandahar.
He remembered the feel of the creature, warm and shaking in the palm of his hand, remembered wondering which was the greater miracle, that it had survived the blast or that it had survived at all in the f.u.c.king h.e.l.lhole that was Afghanistan.
What was the woman"s name again? Jaimie. That was it.
"Jaimie," he said softly, "easy. It"s OK."
She nodded, but she didn"t let go. Zach stroked his hand down her back.
"We"re fine, honey. Absolutely fine."
Another nod. Her hair brushed against his jaw. Soft. Silky. Apparently, she wasn"t one of those women who used a can of hairspray to control a hairstyle so it would look wind-tossed. Her hair smelled good, too, a combination of flowers and the sea, or maybe it was the smell of her, not just of her hair.
And what did that have to do with anything?
They were fifty stories up, enclosed in a gathering darkness so pervasive that his eyes-and he had excellent night vision-were only now adapting to it.
He looked past her, toward the windows, and sucked in a breath.
No lights. There was nothing out there. It was as if the city had disappeared, and he had an excellent view of things, considering that they were fifty stories up.
Fifty floors removed from the reality of the street.
The civilized man inside him said that could be a problem. The trained-for-anything warrior spoke over that voice and said that being up here was the equivalent of being behind castle walls, just in case the barbarians gathered at the gate.
Or had already gathered at it.
Which was, he thought grimly, what he had to determine.
Was this a replay of Hurricane Sandy, when much of New York had gone dark? Was it a replay of the big blackout of 2003, when a power surge had taken out a hunk of the east coast all the way from Ontario through Manhattan?
Or was something else going down?
"Jaimie?"
Her heart was still racing, but he could almost feel her gathering herself together.
"Yes," she said, and he heard the susurration of her breath as she took a step back.
He let go of her and tried not to think of how good it had felt to hold her against him. This wasn"t a time to start feeling the result of having been without a woman for a few weeks.
"OK," he said briskly. "Let"s see if we can find out what"s happening."
Her eyes met his. Good. There was concern in them, not panic.
"The storm?"
He considered lying and decided against it.
"I think that"s it...but we want to be sure."
He watched the tip of her tongue slide over her bottom lip.
"You mean-"
"I mean, let"s see if my cell phone works."
He took his iPhone from his rear pocket. She bent, felt for the shoulder bag she"d dropped when she grabbed him.
"Here," he said, "let me."
He found the bag and handed it to her. She fumbled with the zipper and pulled out her phone.
Each of them pushed a b.u.t.ton.
His phone lit.
Hers didn"t.
She gave it a little shake, said something under her breath.
"The d.a.m.n things never work when you-"
Zach held up his hand. He was online, clicking from site to site and picking up nothing until... Yes. There. Something was coming in. CNN. The reception on the news station was poor; whatever the anchor was saying was completely lost, but the text crawl at the bottom of the screen was clear.