Cara Summers - Risking It All

No. She was not going to even think about the L word. L-O-V-E was not in her vocabulary. But as she lay there staring at him, she felt the little flutter near her heart begin again. Panic bubbled up. She had to get away from him to think.

After easing herself off the bed, she tiptoed backward to the closet, grabbed shorts, sandals and a shirt, then slipped as quietly as she could from the room.

SHE WAS GONE. Chance stood in the bathroom and struggled to keep panic at bay. When he’d woken up in an empty bed, he’d assumed she was in the bathroom. Their clothes were still lying where they’d dropped them, and her damn scent was still there. But there was no sign of Natalie. After moving out onto the balcony, he let his gaze sweep the grounds below. Relief streamed through him when he spotted her hurrying off in the direction of the beach.

Relief was pushed out by anger as he moved back into the bedroom for his clothes. What in the hell was she doing going off by herself? He dragged on trousers and pulled a shirt off of a hanger. They had roles to play, a job to do.

The next emotion to sweep over him was guilt. He should be lecturing himself on that score. Obviously, she was upset by what had happened between them during the night. Facing himself in the mirror, he tucked in the shirt and slipped into shoes. He could see the reflection of the bathroom door and the shower beyond. What had happened in there and later when he’d carried her into the bedroom had nothing to do with the masquerade they were involved in—or the job. He’d let his hormones take over.

No, that wasn’t the whole truth. Placing his hands on the dresser, Chance leaned forward and met the eyes of the man staring back at him. Self-deception was not something that he’d ever let himself indulge in. It hadn’t been merely hormones that had made him leave the poker game early. It had been feelings—feelings that he couldn’t name, let alone sort out.

And he’d been swamped by feelings again in the shower. Calli, Rachel, Natalie—all three of them had gotten to him. But in the end it had been Natalie he’d made love to. Natalie he’d dragged to the floor. Natalie he’d demanded say his name. He was certain of that.

What he wasn’t certain of was who Natalie had been making love to. Was it all role-playing for her? That was the question that he wanted to ask her, and it was not the question that should be foremost in his mind.

It was the job that should have his undivided attention.

Chance straightened and headed toward the bathroom. When he’d convinced Natalie to come with him to Brancotti’s estate, she’d thought she’d be working with a professional. He’d have to make sure that she was. Until they had the Ferrante diamond and were safely off the estate, he had to find a way to stop touching her.

But even as the thought went through his head, he knew that keeping his hands off Natalie would be next to impossible.

SHE WASN’T ACTING like a professional. Natalie admitted that to herself as she reached the water. The sunlight glinted off the surface so intensely that she lifted a hand to shade her eyes. The quiet water and light breeze signaled that the day would be hot. The one thing that she’d always prided herself on was that she never let anything interfere with a job.

But last night, they’d…for the life of her, she wasn’t sure what name to put to what they’d done to each other in that shower. All she was sure of was that when she’d seen Chance standing there in the doorway, she’d forgotten all about the job. All she could think of was having him.

Shoving down a fresh bubble of panic, she turned and started up the beach. What she needed was a bit of time to analyze what had happened. More importantly, who had allowed it to happen. From the time she was a child, she’d always loved pretending to be someone else. Her sisters had always enjoyed playing dress-up too, but for her it had always been about more than putting on outfits. She loved the whole process of getting into another person’s psyche. For as long as he’d lived with them, her father had always encouraged her to develop her skill for what he called “slipping into other people.”

With a dry laugh, she angled her path closer to the shoreline. Well, she’d “slipped” into some doozies last night. And the worst of it was, she’d enjoyed it. Never in her life had she felt so uninhibited, so wanton, so desirable. It had been wonderfully exciting until—

The cry of a gull had her shading her eyes and looking out over the water again. The white bird contrasted sharply with the wide expanse of blue sky. It called out again as it soared higher.

Freedom, Natalie thought. “Slipping into other people” offered her the freedom to escape from herself. Oh, she was her father’s daughter all right. But last night she hadn’t been able to completely carry off the charade. In the end, it had been Natalie who’d made love with Chance—in the shower and again in the bed. And…she’d lost a part of herself.

Stumbling, she pressed a hand against the tension in her stomach. Hadn’t she known from the first time she’d looked into his eyes that he could touch her as no other man could?

It wasn’t just the sex. It never had been just about the sex. That was why she hadn’t been able to get him out of her mind for three months. That was why she’d decided to don a disguise for her next encounter with him. She’d done it to protect herself and it hadn’t worked.

Natalie increased her pace and moved toward a part of the beach where tall grasses edged closer to the shore. She just needed to think. To plan. Choosing a spot near a lone palm tree, she sat down, drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them.

What in the world was she going to do about Chance Mitchell? With a sigh, she rested her head on her knees. She supposed the answer to that question was simple and quite out of her hands. In a few days, the job would be over, Chance would go off to work on another case, and she would revert to being Detective Natalie Gibbs. Everything would return to normal, except that the job she’d loved for the past three years no longer held any appeal for her.

With one hand she scooped up white sand and let it flow through her fingers as she considered another question. Who was Natalie Gibbs? A part of her was her father’s daughter, someone who loved dressing up and accepting the call to adventure. But she’d never before tried to analyze just what that said about who she was as a person. Why did she need to escape into other people? Or were they really “other people?” Just how much of Natalie Gibbs was in the people she slipped into? She scooped up more sand. There was a lot of her in the Rachel she’d created, and probably more of her than she’d thought in Calli. And if parts of her really were those other women, then did she know who she was at all?

Natalie wished that her father was with her so that she could talk to him about it. It wasn’t often that she allowed herself to wish for him. At eleven, a year after he’d walked away from them, she’d locked those feelings away. For the sake of her sisters and her mother, she’d had to be strong and in control. But every so often, the need and the emptiness slipped past her guard and filled her as they did now. Even if her father couldn’t tell her what to do, surely he could sympathize. Had he ever wondered who he was?

SWEARING UNDER his breath, Chance jogged along the beach. In the time it had taken him to get down the stairs and out of the villa, Natalie had disappeared from his view again. The moment he found her, they were going to have a talk, and he was going to get her word that she wouldn’t go off by herself again.

Then he saw her, sitting with her head on her knees, her shoulders slumped and he increased his pace immediately. Something was wrong. Natalie never sat like that, and for that matter, neither did Rachel or Calli. He thought of the woman he’d squared off with on that mat in the Meridian’s gym. She hadn’t given an inch. He thought of the woman he’d been with last night, the woman who’d matched each of his demands with one of her own.