Snowed in with the Boss
Jessica Andersen
Snowed in with the Boss
Jessica Andersen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#ub0a74af8-41f8-5ca4-a558-5f720a4a55da)
Title Page (#u0b0a0537-bf9d-5b10-8e0c-584665f52253)
About the Author (#ud087118a-ed9d-5fb3-9d9d-76b13844173b)
Chapter One (#u482d890f-31cc-5774-bd8f-426f03b09f3b)
Chapter Two (#uc890c78c-e8c1-50ca-a822-33c33f73f425)
Chapter Three (#ucb2b3450-e66b-5dcd-be54-f6fd3bde5239)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Though she’s tried out professions ranging from cleaning sea lion cages to cloning glaucoma genes, from patent law to training horses, JESSICA ANDERSEN is happiest when she’s combining all these interests with her first love: writing romances. These days she’s delighted to be writing full-time on a farm in rural Connecticut that she shares with a small menagerie and a hero named Brian. She hopes you’ll visit her at www.JessicaAndersen.com for info on upcoming books, contests and to say “hi!”
Chapter One (#ulink_c359fa8a-2d50-53cf-8a3c-9de4d526e7dc)
“We’ll reach the estate soon,” Griffin Vaughn said to his executive assistant, Sophie LaRue, as their rented SUV thundered down the Colorado highway, headed into the mountains.
He was driving; he preferred to drive himself rather than hire limos because he disliked putting his safety in someone else’s hands, professional or not. Sophie sat in the passenger seat, her entire attention focused on the breathtaking Colorado scenery. The sweeping vista was shadowed by the distant Rocky Mountains, and the entire scene was overhung by an ominous gray winter sky.
At Griffin’s words, she glanced over at him. “I hope so. We need to be done at Lonesome Lake and back down off the mountain before the weather hits.”
In her mid-twenties, with wavy, dark blond hair and light brown eyes almost the same color, Sophie was a knockout, hands down. The cinnamon-colored sweater she wore beneath a stylish wool coat accented her undeniable curves, and her neatly tailored pants managed to be simultaneously professional and sexy. Even a cynical, “been there, done that, got the scars to prove it” businessman like Griffin could appreciate the aesthetics. However, that didn’t change the fact that she was a dozen years younger than his thirty-nine, and she was his employee, both of which meant she was way off-limits, even if he was looking. Which he wasn’t.
Yet he kept feeling the need to fill the silence that stretched between them as the highway unwound beneath the rental’s wheels. The fact that he bothered trying to make small talk, which he wouldn’t have done with Sophie’s middle-aged, über-experienced predecessor, Kathleen, just went to prove what Griffin already knew: he was badly off his game.
He was tired, hungry and irritable. His meeting in New York City had started off bad and had gotten worse the longer he and Sophie stayed, forcing him to pull the plug after only two days of negotiations. He’d decided to return home to San Francisco and see if things went better long-distance, only to have his private jet delayed several hours on the tarmac while air traffic control tried to reroute them around a series of major snowstorms that were blanketing the Midwest.
The frustrations and delays had all added up to Griffin being in an admittedly foul mood by the time they’d finally taken off. That was why, when he’d gotten the voice-mail message that renovations to his Rocky Mountain retreat in the Four Corners region of Colorado had been delayed yet again by another “accident,” he’d ordered his private plane to set down near Kenner County. Griffin had suspected for some time that his contractor, Perry Long, was taking him for a ride, and it was past time to deal with it.
The pilot, Hal Jessup, had warned him that there was some serious weather on the way, but Griffin had been adamant. He might not have sewn up VaughnTec’s acquisition of the HiTek memory module he was jonesing to get his hands on, but he was going to get something done on this trip, damn it. He was going to deal with Perry Long, once and for all. The swindling contractor wasn’t going to know what hit him.
Besides, according to the weather forecast, they had a few more hours before the blizzard hit. That should be plenty of time for him and Sophie to drive out to the estate, get a look at the renovations, and then drive back down into Kenner City, where Sophie had already booked them into a decent B and B. She had also arranged for them to meet with Perry the following day, weather permitting. And it damn well better permit as far as Griffin was concerned. He was done with the contractor and his excuses.
“Looks like someone’s getting a jump on being stranded in the snow,” Sophie said as they rounded a corner and an accident came into view up ahead. Behind a row of cherry-red flares, a battered pickup truck was stuck partway in a ditch off to the side of the road. A police cruiser and tow truck were on-scene, their lights flashing brightly in the gloom. Several men were huddled around the rear of the entrapped vehicle, working on securing a winch to the rear axle.
“Don’t let the weathermen talk you into blizzard-induced hysteria,” Griffin said. “They’re in cahoots with the grocery stores, trying to sell out all the bread, eggs and milk.”
She grinned a little and lifted a shoulder. “I’m a California girl. I’ve never been in a snowstorm before. Until three days ago, I’d never even been on a plane.”
Griffin stifled a wince at the reminder of just how green his new executive assistant was. He’d told the retiring Kathleen to find her own replacement—someone efficient with no social life to speak of, who wouldn’t mind working the crazy-long hours required by his position as head of VaughnTec. He hadn’t bothered reminding Kathleen that his new assistant should be middle-aged and highly experienced, because he’d figured that would’ve been a given.
Yet Kathleen had hired green, gorgeous Sophie LaRue and disappeared on her retirement cruise. Worse, she had either left her cell phone behind, or she was ignoring his calls, in a blatant signal of “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.” Griffin should know; he was a master with that line. But he’d given up after a while anyway, because what good would it do him now to bark at Kathleen? She’d retired. What happened next was up to him.
He’d been tempted to un-hire Sophie the moment she’d walked through his office door, introduced herself, knocked him for a loop with an instant blast of sexual chemistry, and five minutes later spilled most of a pot of coffee on a stack of important papers. But Kathleen had already shown the new executive assistant the basics of the job, and Griffin was in the middle of delicate negotiations to acquire a memory module that was vital to his newest handheld computer PDA. All of which meant he didn’t have the time to interview or train another assistant. Besides, he trusted Kathleen, and figured she must’ve seen something in Sophie, some reason she thought the two of them would click. Kathleen had always had a knack for reading people, and predicting which employees would work well together. Trusting that even if he didn’t see it right off the bat, he’d let his new assistant stay on the job, and they’d both done their best to make it work.
He’d overlooked her occasional bouts of inexperience and nerves, and the clumsiness those nerves seemed to bring out. For her part, she’d worked the long hours without protest, and often took paperwork home with her when she left for the night. And if he’d caught a hint or two that Sophie reciprocated the raw physical attraction he felt for her, they were both doing a fine job of gritting their teeth and ignoring it. They’d been working together nearly a month now, and they’d achieved a functional, if tenuous, boss-and-assistant relationship.
“The cop’s waving for us to pull over,” she said now as they rolled up to the accident. “I hope your license is good.”
“If it’s not, I’m blaming it on you,” Griffin said, only halfway joking as he stopped the rental and lowered the window.
“Afternoon, folks,” the cop said, taking a not-very-casual look from Griffin to Sophie and back. “If you’re planning on spending the night in the hotel, you missed the turn by about a mile. Nothing much up this way except pines, rocks and ice.” The officer looked to be in his late thirties. He was tall and dark-haired, with vivid blue eyes that were cool and assessing, and didn’t look like they missed much.
Griffin saw the edge of a pointed star on the cop’s uniform shirt beneath his heavy parka, and made the connection. “Sheriff Martinez?”
The cop’s eyes narrowed. “Do I know you?”
“We spoke on the phone when your people needed access to my estate. I’m Griffin Vaughan.” Griffin nodded in Sophie’s direction. “My assistant, Sophie LaRue.” When there was no immediate response from the sheriff of Kenner County, a flutter of long-unused instinct stirred the fine hairs at Griffin’s nape. “Do you want to see our IDs?”
Martinez shook his head, and finally relaxed a degree. “No. It’s fine. Sorry. Things have been…complicated around here lately. We’re giving everyone a second and third look.” The sheriff paused. “Are you two headed up to Lonesome Lake?”
Griffin’s new estate had been named for the large, spring-fed lake on the property, one of only a few open bodies of water in the immediate area. The lake was located near the main entrance to the sprawling grounds; the driveway cut straight across the middle, running over a sturdy cement-pylon bridge. The promise of summer-time fishing, along with a hell of a mountain view, had sold Griffin on the place. The lowball price hadn’t hurt, either, though in retrospect it should’ve been a red flag. Since he’d taken possession of Lonesome Lake, the property had been one long-distance headache after another.
Griffin nodded in answer to the sheriff’s question. “Just a quick in-and-out. I gave the live-in couple the month off because of the reno, and the construction crew has undoubtedly gone home to wait out the weather, but I wanted to get a look at the place before we sit down for a meeting with Perry tomorrow.”
“You picked a hell of a time to visit.” Martinez glanced at the sky. “They’re saying this storm could take a couple of days to blow through, maybe more.”
“We’ll be back down in the city before it starts,” Griffin said. “I don’t have any desire to be snowed in up there until after the reno is complete.” And certainly not with his executive secretary. Lonesome Lake was intended for family, not business.
Griffin had bought the estate to be a getaway for him and his three-year-old son, Luke, and Luke’s male nanny, Darryn, both of whom were waiting for him back in San Francisco. The estate was intended to be a luxurious “just the guys” cabin, a place that would let him retreat from the hoopla that came with being a multi-millionaire under the age of forty who made regular appearances on the Steele Most Wealthy list and almost all of San Fran’s “Most Eligible Bachelor” roundups.
Those lists invariably included personal tidbits such as his divorce from songwriter Monique Claire, his single father status, and the fact that he’d been a decorated marine technical specialist before taking over struggling VaughnTec and making it into a megacorporation.
Back when Griffin had been in the military, he’d built weapons and tracking tools out of whatever he’d been able to scrounge from the field. As a civilian, he focused more on handheld computers, but the gadget-building theory was the same, and the self-discipline and ruthless logic he’d learned in the battle zones had served him well in the business world.
Unfortunately, his military service only added to his dossier as far as the San Fran socialites were concerned. That, combined with his net worth and dark good looks, had made him the target of too many gold diggers to count. In fact, he’d stopped counting the wannabe Mrs. Vaughns around a year ago, right around the time he’d stopped dating. His lack of interest had only increased the pressure from the gold diggers, which was why he’d bought Lonesome Lake. He needed to get the hell away from his work and the city he’d grown up in, and he wanted someplace comfortable to do it.
Which was great in theory, but so far had been seriously lacking in practice, due to the construction glitches.
Griffin had hired Perry as his general contractor based on the Realtor’s recommendation and a handful of local references, and had signed off on a basic updating of the forty year-old structure. At first, the contractor’s reports of things needing immediate repair or replacement had seemed reasonable enough. As the months had dragged on, though, and the schedule had doubled, and then tripled, Griffin’s patience had decreased in direct proportion to the budget’s increase. Now he just wanted to put an end to whatever the hell was going on up at the estate, regardless of whether that meant a sit-down with Perry…or lining up a new contractor.
“We should get moving if we’re going to beat the storm,” he said pointedly to the sheriff.
Martinez glanced up the road, though Lonesome Lake was a good ten miles further along the two-lane track leading into the foothills. “Do me a favor and call me when you get back to Kenner City, so I know you made it down off the mountain safely, okay?” The sheriff rattled off a number. “Got that?”
Sophie nodded and entered the number in her sleek, sophisticated PDA, which was one of VaughnTec’s newer designs. “Got it.” Once she had the number keyed in, she tucked the handheld into the pocket of her stylish wool coat, keeping it close at hand.
Still, Martinez didn’t look satisfied.
Getting the distinct impression that the sheriff wasn’t at all happy with their plan, Griffin lowered his voice and said, “What aren’t you telling us?”
Martinez grimaced, and for a moment, Griffin didn’t think he was going to answer. But then the sheriff said, “Look, there have been some…incidents in this area lately. First, there was that body that turned up, the dead FBI agent?” At Griffin’s nod of remembrance, he continued, “Well, after that, we found an abandoned car with a baby in it. A baby, for God’s sake. And then one of our crime scene analysts was attacked the other day not far from here, further on toward Lonesome Lake. The weather’s been playing hell with our ability to process the scenes, which is logjamming the investigations…and to top it all off, the Feds think there’s a chance that Vincent Del Gardo might still be in the area.” The sheriff shook his head. “Logically, those incidents probably aren’t all connected, but…Just be careful up there, okay?”
Griffin muttered a curse under his breath, but nodded. “Will do.”
“Call me if you need anything.” The sheriff stepped back and waved them on their way, but his eyes remained dark as he watched them pass.
His figure had barely begun to recede in the distance before Sophie said, “Who is Vincent Del Gardo?”
Griffin knew he probably should have told her about the recent problems near Lonesome Lake, but to be honest, he’d all but forgotten about them. Between the HiTek negotiations, Kathleen’s retirement and various other business matters he’d been juggling against his responsibility as Luke’s father and his desire to be involved in as many pieces of his son’s life as he possibly could be, he simply hadn’t given much thought to the issues in Kenner County. He’d assumed the matter would be settled by the time the estate was completely renovated and he brought Luke and Darryn out for a visit. So he hadn’t bothered updating Sophie on the situation.
Besides, it wasn’t like he’d planned to bring her out to Lonesome Lake. Between the stalled negotiations, the air traffic delays and the continued problems up at the estate, it’d just been the most practical solution under the circumstances.
More or less, he thought, glancing at the ominous sky overhead and considering just how much of his decision to drive out had been motivated by practicality, and how much had been the bloody-minded stubbornness Kathleen had accused him of more than once. He could feel the storm gathering, and a piece of him wondered if they might not be better off turning around and heading back down to the city without doing a walk-through of the lake house. But he was bound and determined to get something done today, and besides, the best Doppler money could buy said they had a few hours’ leeway.
So instead of calling it off, he answered her question, saying, “Vincent Del Gardo is—or was—head of the Del Gardo crime family in Las Vegas.” Griffin recalled what Martinez had told him a few weeks earlier, when the sheriff had called to ask for permission for the county’s newly assembled crime scene unit, the Kenner County CSU, to search the estate and surrounding property. “About three years ago, Del Gardo was put on trial for ordering a hit on Nicky Wayne, head of the rival Wayne crime family. Del Gardo was convicted, but he escaped from the courthouse jail and disappeared. A few months ago, the body of Special Agent Julie Grainger, who’d been working the Del Gardo case, was found on a Ute reservation near here. Since then, Sheriff Martinez’s people, the KCCU, the Feds and the reservation police have been investigating the murder. About a month ago, they figured out that Del Gardo used to own Lonesome Lake, and came to suspect that he might’ve been hiding out in the area.”
“You bought your getaway from the Mob?” Sophie asked. She had a faint wrinkle between her eyebrows, which he’d learned signaled that she’d just made a mistake, or thought he had. He’d actually learned to pay attention to the tiny frown, because when she wasn’t dumping coffee on him, she had pretty good instincts.
“No way.” He shook his head in adamant denial. “Del Gardo owned the property through a shell company. It was well-hidden, and not something that even the best due diligence would’ve turned up. The Del Gardo family went into a financial skid after Vincent disappeared, so they liquidated a bunch of assets, including Lonesome Lake. My purchasing the place was totally on the up-and-up. Once the Feds figured out the connection between Del Gardo and Lonesome Lake, though, and given that Agent Grainger’s body was found in Kenner County, they wanted the KCCU to go through the house, just to be sure Del Gardo wasn’t hiding there. They searched the mansion backward and forward and didn’t find anything. I think they even did a few flyovers of the mountainside, looking for infrared signatures and such. Nothing. Del Gardo is long gone.”
Sophie pursed her lips. “Sheriff Martinez seems to think otherwise.”
Griffin glanced over at her, but beyond her faint frown, he couldn’t read her mood from her face. He’d noticed before that for a young woman who by her own admission hadn’t seen much of the world, she had an unusual ability to hide her feelings.
“The place is clean, but if you’re worried about Del Gardo, you can stay in the car while I look around,” he offered. “I just want to see what’s finished and what’s not, and check whether the problems that Perry has been reporting are actually as bad as he says, or if there’s something else going on up at the estate. It shouldn’t take more than an hour, and then we’ll head back into Kenner City.”
But she shook her head. “You wanted me to come along to take notes and pictures, and that’s what I’m going to do. It’s my job.” She said the last with a hint of defiance.
Griffin nodded and slowed as the road curved and a set of pillars came into view, flanking a crushed stone driveway. “Here we are.” He turned the SUV between the pillars and followed the gravel drive, which quickly gave way to the lake-spanning bridge. He eased up on the gas and let the rental roll to a stop at the edge of the bridge. “Welcome to Lonesome Lake.”
Even in the gray light of the approaching storm, it was just as gorgeous as he remembered from the one time he’d visited prior to buying the property. On that day, several months earlier, the lake had been clear and blue beneath a perfect sky. Now, it was a flat expanse of white, wearing a dusting of snow over the frozen surface. The bridge, which arrowed straight across a narrow point of the lake, was a wide expanse of brick-inset concrete, with knee-high brushed-steel railings on either side to prevent cars from swerving into the water. On the far shore of the lake, the driveway went back to crushed stone and continued up through the tree line, where the lowlands merged with the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
Partway up, rising above the level of the trees surrounding it, the large estate house looked as though it was built into the side of the mountain itself. The structure, which followed the angle of the earth beneath it, was a blend of rustic logs and modern glass. It ascended the mountain, level by level, and was topped with a partially finished solar-paneled roof. When the roof was completed, the solar panels would catch the sun and help power the massive home. For now, the estate relied on two huge diesel generators, which ran everything except the propane stoves and the well water and filtration system, which used battery-powered pumps. Off to the left of the main house, the roofs of the detached guesthouse and large barn were just visible, as well. Several smaller structure, including the lean-to that housed the generators, as well as a woodshed where the firewood was kept, were below the level of the trees, hidden among the pines.
Griffin was proud that he was able to offer his son such a cool getaway, and a place where they could be just a family, away from the pressures and posturing of San Fran society. He glanced at Sophie. “What do you think?”
“It’s lovely,” she breathed.
“Yeah,” he agreed, the view reminding him why he’d bought Lonesome Lake rather than one of the other half dozen places he’d considered. He’d liked the isolation, yes, and he’d been able to picture himself fishing in the lake with Luke, year after year. But he’d also been drawn to the wildness of the location, the grandeur of the views and the sheer presence of the architecture.
It was a hell of a place, that was for sure.
Suddenly anxious to get inside the buildings and take a look around at what had—or hadn’t—been done, he hit the gas and sent the SUV thundering across the bridge.
They were halfway across when he heard a banging noise, as though the SUV had backfired.
Moments later, the concrete surface ahead of them cracked, then sagged. Adrenaline jolted through Griffin as the SUV dropped a few inches, tilting. The damned bridge was giving way!
“Hang on!” he shouted as he hit the gas hard, flooring it. The SUV’s tires screeched and the vehicle lunged forward, but it was too late. They were already sinking. Falling.
Sophie screamed as the steel railing gave way with a screech and groan. The nose of the SUV yawed downward. Griffin locked up the brakes, but that didn’t help. Nothing did.
The vehicle slid ten or fifteen feet, then dropped straight down and smashed into the frozen surface of Lonesome Lake.
The crash noise roared inside the vehicle, counter-pointed by Sophie’s choked-off scream. Ice chunks flew up on either side of them and the airbags detonated with a whumpf, cushioning the force of the impact, but also pinning Griffin back against the driver’s seat as the SUV nosed beneath the lake surface. Cursing, he fought the springy airbag, fought his seat belt, trying to get free.
The spiderwebbed windshield crumbled inward under the water pressure and frigid water poured in over the dashboard, dousing him. Freezing him. A clock started up in his head, timing how long they’d been in the water, and how long they could stay there, which wasn’t long at all.
The SUV paused for a moment, hung up on a chunk of pylon, then slewed to the side and started to sink once again.
Griffin didn’t know how deep the lake was at that location, didn’t want to wait around and find out. They had to get out of the vehicle, had to reach the mansion and get themselves dried off and warm, or else hypothermia would set in quickly. He didn’t know why or how the bridge had given way just as they were crossing it—maybe the passage of the construction trucks had weakened it, or the last freeze-thaw cycle had done irreparable damage. But that didn’t matter just then. What mattered was getting him and Sophie to safety.
Knowing they’d gone from a business drive to a life-or-death situation in an instant, Griffin shoved his business persona aside and drew on the man he’d once been, the soldier who’d saved lives, and taken them. Fighting past the airbag, he kicked the windshield all the way out, letting in a new gush of water but clearing the way for escape. “Come on,” he said. “We can—” He broke off, cursing bitterly as he got a good look at Sophie.
She was out cold. And the water was rising fast.
ON THE OTHER SIDE of the lake, the bald man leaned up against a tree and watched the SUV sink into the frozen lake.
He would’ve liked a cigarette to congratulate himself for a job well done, but his wife had nagged him to quit a few years back. So instead, he stood there and watched as the ice-laden water rose up around the heavily tinted rear windows of the four-by-four.
He couldn’t see in through the tint, but there was no sign of the vehicle’s occupants trying to escape. If Vaughn and his secretary were in a position to get out, there would’ve been doors flying open, and occupants scrambling out to safety. Which meant they were already dead, or close enough to it that the distinction was academic.
It was for the best, really, he thought, feeling no grief or guilt for the dead, but rather the sense of another box checked off on his to-do list. He didn’t have anything against Vaughn and the woman. They had simply been in the way of more important things.
Satisfied, the man pantomimed flicking an imaginary cigarette butt to the ground and pretended to grind it into the frozen soil. Then he settled his loaded knapsack more comfortably on his back and turned away, headed back uphill toward the barn at the rear of the house.
He had a job to do. It was as simple as that. And anyone who got in his way was going to become a statistic, real quick.
Chapter Two (#ulink_fa7c2cfd-200c-5632-aedd-0f0c41f5c2c7)
Sophie awoke to panic and pain. The panic was locked in her chest, squeezing her lungs and keeping the screams inside. The pain was in her head, making her dizzy and weak. And she was freezing—not just a little “time to go put on a sweater” chill—but a deep, bone-hurting cold that surrounded her, consumed her.
She struggled against the sensations, trying and failing to push away from whatever terrible nightmare gripped her. Then the world shifted, reeling around her. Light intruded, forcing her to squint against the stabbing glare.
“That’s it, Sophie. In and out,” a deep, masculine voice said from very close by. “You can do it. Breathe in and out.”
The pressure on her lungs let up, and some of the pain cleared. The world stopped spinning and she could move again. Moments later she could see again, though seeing didn’t do much to clear her confusion, because she found herself lying on her back, with her handsome boss, Griffin Vaughn, leaning over her.
In his late thirties, with short dark hair that was frosted with silver at the temples, Griffin was a hard, no-nonsense businessman with chiseled features and elegantly arched brows. He was clipped and to the point, and rarely let his face show the slightest hint of emotion. Which was why it was shocking to see worry in his dark green eyes, and hear it in his voice when he said, “Hey. Welcome back to the land of the living. You scared the heck out of me.”
“Sorry,” she said inanely, too aware that his face was close enough that if she reached up just a little, they’d be kissing. Which was the sort of thought she usually relegated to the “don’t go there” section of her brain, along with thoughts of her mother’s illness and her own crippling debt load.
She stared up at him, blinking, trying to figure out what had happened. As she did so, she realized she wasn’t really even that cold anymore, just numb, almost going to warm now, kindling to heat. She smiled, dazed. Griffin didn’t smile back, though. Instead, he touched her cheek, though she barely felt it. “You’re freezing.”
“Not really. I’m actually sort of warm.” Her voice sounded strange, a deep rasp she wasn’t used to, and her throat hurt with the effort.
His expression went hard. “That’s even worse, because it means you’re going into hypothermia. We’ve got to get moving. Come on. Your arms and legs are working fine—nothing’s broken. I could carry you, but I think it’d be better if you walked and got your blood moving.” He eased away from her and stood, then reached down to pull her up. The world tilted beneath her feet and she sagged against him, feeling his hard, masculine muscles beneath his sopping-wet button-down shirt.
Wait a minute. Why was he wet?
Her fuzzy brain finally sharpened and she became suddenly cognizant of the fact that he wasn’t the only one who was wet to the skin. Her own clothes were glued to her body, cold and soaking. And it was freezing out; a sharp wind cut through the pitiful protection of her wet clothing, and as she watched, a few fat flakes of snow drifted down from the leaden sky above. The blizzard, she thought, heart kicking with belated panic. The bridge!
She gasped as she remembered the accident, the pop of the airbags, and then—
What then?
Heart hammering, she pulled away from her boss and looked at the lake. The bridge was a wreck, with a big section missing from the middle and chunks of cement hanging from mangled steel reinforcements. There was no sign of the SUV.
“Wha-t-t-t…” The last word turned into a stutter when huge shivers started racking her. With the exertion of standing and beginning to move around, the numbness she’d been feeling had changed to a huge, awful coldness. Wrapping her arms around her body as her muscles locked on the chills, she turned to Griffin. “You pulled me out-t-t?”
“Come on.” He slid an arm around her and urged her uphill. “We’ve got to get up to the house.”
He was shivering, too, she realized. She could feel the tremors racking his large, masculine frame, could hear them in his voice, warning her that the two of them were far from out of danger. They could very well freeze before they reached safety.
As if called by the thought, a storm gust whistled across the lake and slammed into them, nearly driving them to the ground. Wind-driven snow peppered them, the icy pellets stinging Sophie’s hands and face. The pain was a sharp heat against the background of bone-aching cold.
“It’s not supposed to s-start snowing until l-later,” she stuttered, not even able to feel her lips moving.
He didn’t answer, just started walking, keeping a strong grip on her waist and urging her onward. Knowing he was right, they had to get moving, she put one foot in front of the other, forcing herself to keep up with his long-legged strides.
From the feel of gravel beneath her low-heeled boots—which were not designed for snow trekking—she figured they were following the driveway. She couldn’t see it, though; it was covered with a layer of white. Snow had already blanketed the ground and frosted the trees, and more of the cold, wet stuff was plummeting down from the sky every second. Sometimes it drifted along, white and fluffy, looking almost pretty. For the most part, though, it blew sideways with stinging impact, eventually forcing her to slit her eyes against the storm. She put her head down and tried to shut out the cold and the snow, tried not to focus on anything but trudging along.
You’re still on probation for this job, whether he’s admitting it or not, she told herself. Now is not the time to wimp out.
Granted, she could argue some seriously extenuating circumstances, and even a terrifyingly in-control man such as Griffin would have to give her a pass on losing it just now. But thinking about it that way, like it was a test she needed to pass, gave her the strength to keep pushing forward.
She needed this job more than he had any reason to understand. She knew he thought she was too young and inexperienced to fill Kathleen’s size-ten shoes, but she was bound and determined to do just that, because if she lost this job…
No, she wouldn’t think about that, either. She’d just keep walking, keep proving herself.
They struggled against the wind, headed toward the mountainside house, which had seemed very close when they’d been driving over the bridge, but now felt very far away. Eventually they passed into the tree line and the wind abated slightly, but the steady incline of the driveway sapped Sophie’s strength, and the temperature was dropping with the incoming storm. She’d all but stopped shivering, which she knew was a bad sign, and a glance at Griffin showed that his face reflected the gray of the sky, and his lips were tinged with blue.
They didn’t have much time left.
He caught her look, met her eyes, and in his expression she saw only determination, and a flat-out refusal to admit defeat. Sounding far more like a drill sergeant than the efficient businessman she’d come to know over the past month, he growled, “Move your ass. That’s an order.”
If he’d coddled, she might have given in. Instead, the grating rasp of his voice had her stiffening her spine, gritting her teeth and forging onward as the snowfall thickened, going from stinging ice to fat flakes that whipped around them, swirling and turning the world to white. They were no longer a mismatched pair of boss and assistant—they were just two very cold human beings struggling to reach the basics: shelter and warmth. Safety.
Sophie’s breath burned in her lungs, and her muscles felt dead and leaden. She stumbled and caught herself, stumbled again and would’ve fallen if it hadn’t been for Griffin looping a strong arm around her waist. His silent strength urged her to keep going, not to give up.
Then, miraculously, the snow-covered surface beneath their feet changed, going from gravel to rough-edged cement bricks. Sophie jerked her head up and peered through her ice-encrusted lashes, and gave a cry of joy when she saw that they’d reached a parking area that encircled a central planting bed. Beyond that was the modern, pillar-fronted house.
“Come on, we’re almost there!” Griffin said, shouting encouragement over the howling wind.
Through the whipping ice pellets, she could see the details that distance had obscured: the touches of stained glass on either side of the carved main doorway, and the intricate stonework and terraced landscaping leading up the walk. There were no lights, no sign of habitation, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was the promise of getting out of the wind and—please, God—getting warm and dry.
The possibility spurred her on, and she felt a renewed burst of energy from Griffin, too. Together, they hurried up the wide stone steps leading to the front door. She grabbed the knob and twisted, her fingers slipping in the icy wetness. Her breath hissed between her teeth. “It’s locked. D-do you have a key?”
“It’s in the lake with the rest of our stuff.” He cast around, kicking at several half-buried rocks that were frozen into the planting beds on either side of the entryway. When one came loose, he grabbed it, returned to where Sophie was waiting and used the rock to smash one of the narrow stained glass panels. The glass held against the first two blows, then gave way on the third, shattering inward in an act of destruction that would’ve bothered Sophie under any other circumstance, but in this case seemed very much like Griffin himself—direct and to the point.
He took a moment to clear the sharpest shards away from the edges, then stuck his arm through, and felt around.
“No alarms?” Sophie asked.
“Not yet,” he replied, face set in concentration. “Too many workmen to bother. Besides, the cops are, what? Half an hour away? Forty minutes? Not worth it.”
The reminder of how isolated they were, even more so with the incoming storm, brought a renewed chill chasing through Sophie. If Griffin hadn’t gotten them safely out of the SUV, it might’ve been days, maybe longer before rescue personnel arrived. By then it would’ve been far too late.
Then again, if they didn’t get warm soon, the same logic could very well apply.
The click of a deadbolt followed by the snick of a door lock came through the panel. Sophie twisted the knob, and nearly fell through when the door swung open beneath her weight. Griffin grabbed her and they piled through the door together. He kicked the panel shut at their backs, closing out most of the storm. The air went still, save for the draft that whistled through the broken window.
But it wasn’t the sudden quiet that had Griffin cursing under his breath. It was the sight that confronted them, laying waste to any hope of an easy fix to their predicament.
“Oh,” Sophie breathed, because there didn’t seem to be much else to say.
The place was a wreck.
They were standing in a grand entryway—or what might’ve been a grand entryway in a previous life. Just then, though, it was bare studs and two-by-four construction, with electrical wiring spewed haphazardly around and the flooring pulled back to the plywood subfloor. The skeleton of a stairwell rose up to the right, leading to a second floor that wasn’t much more than framework, and Sophie could see straight through to the back of the house, where nailed-down tarps seemed to be substituting for the back wall.
Worse, it wasn’t much warmer inside than out, and she didn’t hold much hope for a working heat source if the rest of the place looked as rough as the entryway. No doubt the hot water heater was off-line. Probably the electricity, too.
“Son of a bitch.” Griffin took two steps away from her and stood vibrating with fury, his hands balled into fists. “That thieving bastard. Look what he’s done to this place. That no-good, lying—” He snapped his teeth shut on the building tirade, and shook his head. “Never mind. I’ll kill him later.”
Sophie was startled by the threat, and by how natural it sounded, as though her slick businessman boss might actually be capable of hurting his contractor. Then again, she realized, looking at him now, this wasn’t the Griffin Vaughn she’d grown more or less used to over the past month. He was wet, cold and angry, and should’ve looked like an absolute mess in wringing wet business clothes furred with globs of melting snow. But he didn’t. He looked capable and masculine, and somehow larger than before.
He glanced over at her, his eyes dark, but softening a hint when he looked at her. “Let’s get moving. There’s got to be at least one room that still has walls and a working fireplace. That may be the best we can hope for.”
Sophie nodded shakily. Trying to force her rapidly fuzzing brain to work, she said, “The housekeeper and her husband live here, right?”
He snapped his fingers. “Good call. Gemma and Erik are gone, but they’ve been doing the repairs to their quarters personally. Erik didn’t want anyone else messing with his space. Which means there’s a good chance that their apartment is in better shape than this disaster area. It’s probably even still got electricity.” He gestured off to the left, where drywall had been hung in a few places, though not taped or mudded. “Their quarters are in the back corner.”
She expected him to head off and leave her to follow, reverting to business as usual now that they were, at the very least, out of the whipping wind. Instead, he took her arm, which probably meant she looked as bad as she felt. Telling herself she could be tough and self-reliant once they found someplace to hunker down and get warm, Sophie leaned into him as they walked down a short hallway, skirting drop cloths and torn-up sections of flooring.
“Obviously the generator’s not running, but it’s a standard model. I should be able to get it going again,” Griffin said, sounding as though he was thinking aloud. “If not, hopefully Gemma and Erik’s fireplace will be usable. I’d say we should try the guesthouse if we don’t have any luck here, but Perry stripped it last month after the pipes froze and burst, and the barn and woodshed have zero in the way of amenities.” He shot her a wry look. “If worse comes to worst, we can lay out some kitchen tile and build a campfire on it. There’s plenty of scrap wood.”
“True enough,” Sophie murmured.
Moments later, they reached a closed door. Griffin tried the knob. “Locked.” He glanced at her. “In this case, expediency trumps privacy.”
Putting his shoulder to the door, he braced against it, half turned the knob and then gave a sort of combined jerk-kick that looked as if he’d practiced it to perfection. The door popped open, swinging inward to reveal a simply furnished sitting room.
“Thank God,” Sophie breathed. Telling herself not to wonder where he’d learned how to pop a door off its lock without breaking any of the surrounding wood, she stumbled through the door.
Gemma and Erik’s apartment proved to be a small, simply furnished suite done mostly in neutral beiges and browns, with accents of rust and navy. There was a kitchen and bathroom off to one side of the sitting room, and two doors leading from the other side. Sophie made a beeline for the doors. One opened into a small office filled with landscaping books and magazines. The other yielded pay dirt, not in the neat queen-size bed and southwestern-print curtains, but in the dresser and his-and-hers closets, which were full of clothes.
Wonderful, warm, dry clothes.
There were also photographs everywhere, scattered around the room in a variety of wood and metal frames. Even though she was freezing, Sophie couldn’t help pausing for a quick scan of the pictures. She’d always been fascinated by families, and that was clearly what these photographs chronicled: a man and woman’s lifetime together.
The earliest of the pictures showed the couple mugging for the camera from atop a pair of bored-looking horses in Western tack, against a backdrop of purplish mountains and a wide-open sky. The woman looked to be in her early twenties, dark-haired and pretty, with regular features and an open, engaging smile. Her eyes twinkled with mischief. The man was maybe a few years older, blond and fair-skinned, with the beginnings of a sunburn. He was looking at her with an expression of complete and utter adoration.
The other photos showed the couple at different points in their lives together—their wedding; a baby, then two; family candids as the children grew. The man’s hair went from blond to white, while the woman’s stayed relentlessly—and perhaps unnaturally—dark brown, but her face softened with age, and living. There were other weddings, other vacations, until the last photo, which sat on the beside table and showed just the man and the woman, in their late fifties, maybe early sixties, wrapped around each other at the edge of Lonesome Lake, with the now-demolished bridge in the background.
The woman’s expression still twinkled with mischief. The man still had eyes only for her. That love, and the sense of family unity that practically jumped out of the photos, put an uncomfortable kink in Sophie’s wind-pipe, right in the region of her heart.
“Here.” Griffin appeared in the doorway behind her and tossed an armload of terrycloth towels on the bed, having apparently raided the bathroom. He moved past her and rooted through the dresser and closet, coming up with jeans, a shirt and thick sweater, along with two pairs of wool socks and a worn men’s belt. Then he headed back out, saying over his shoulder, “You take this room, I’ll change in the office.” Then he paused in the doorway. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She made herself move away from the bedside photo and start picking through the dresser. “I’m guessing we’re out of luck in the shower department?”
“Sorry. The pump is battery-powered, so we’ve got running water, but it’s going to be cold. I’ll have to get the generator going for hot water. First, though, I want to get us dry and see about starting a fire.”
Sophie nodded. “Of course.” As he left the room, she pawed through the dresser, telling herself not to waste time feeling squeamish about going through a stranger’s things. The worst of the bone-numbing cold had eased now that they were out of the storm, but getting dry and warm was still a major priority.
“I’ll reimburse them for the clothes,” Griffin said unexpectedly from the other room. “So stop stalling. If I don’t hear you getting naked in the count of ten, I’m coming in and doing it for you.”
From another man the words might’ve been a tease, or a threat. Coming from laconic Griffin Vaughn, who didn’t seem to suffer from the same zing of chemistry Sophie felt every time she was within five feet of him, they were simply a fact. As far as she could tell, he hadn’t even noticed she was female—theirs was purely a business relationship. Or rather, the possibility of one, if she worked very hard and managed not to dump any more coffee on him.
Unfortunately, she got clumsy when she was nervous, and something about the way he looked in the throes of negotiation—all stern-faced and dark-eyed, with a flash of excitement when he moved in for the coup de grâce—well, that made her all too aware that he was male. Which made her nervous, and therefore clumsy.
“Sophie?” Griffin called, and his low-voiced inquiry buzzed along her nerve endings like liquid fire, the heat brought by the thought of him undressing her, and focusing all that dark-eyed intensity on her.
But the threat got her moving, and she started stripping out of her wet, clinging clothes. “You don’t have to come in,” she called after a moment. “I’m naked.” She blushed at the echo of her own words, bringing stinging warmth to her cheeks. “Never mind. Forget I said that, okay?”
She grabbed the towels he’d left for her and scrubbed them over her skin, warming some life back into her chilled flesh, which seemed strange and disconnected, as though it didn’t belong to her anymore. Soon, though, life began to return—pins and needles at first, then stinging pain. Skin that had been fish-belly-white moments earlier flared to angry red, and she hissed with the return of feeling as she drew on a pair of borrowed jeans and a turtleneck, socks and thick sweater.
She soon realized that she and Gemma were built very differently: the other woman was taller and significantly narrower in the hips and bust. Doing the best with what she had, Sophie rolled up the cuffs to deal with the too-long jeans, and hoped the sweater was loose enough to disguise how tightly the clothes fit across her chest and rear. Like Griffin, she skipped borrowing underwear, instead going commando beneath her clothing.
Logic said that shouldn’t have felt daring under the circumstances, but she was acutely aware of the chafe of material against her unprotected skin as she left the bedroom. Not that he would notice, because he was all about business. Which was a relief, despite the fact that she’d developed a mild crush on him. Indeed, she only allowed herself the crush because he wasn’t interested. After what had happened at her last job, where she’d been romanced and played by a jerk of the first degree, and said jerk had set out to destroy her career options, the last thing Sophie was looking to do was get romantically involved with her boss. No thanks, not going there again.
Heading out of the bedroom into the main sitting area, Sophie found Griffin crouched by the fireplace. Kindling and mid-sized logs were neatly organized in a burnished copper tub to one side of the hearth, and a small drift of ashes and charred wood inside the fireplace suggested it was fully functional, which was very good news indeed.
Griffin had used some of the kindling to build a neat teepee, with crumpled paper in the center, and a trio of larger logs crossed in a tripod arching over the kindling. The setup, like the hip-check he’d used to open the door, looked practiced and professional, which didn’t fit with the image of the polished businessman she’d spent the past month assisting.
The Griffin Vaughn she worked for wore custom suits and monogrammed shirts, yet cared little for fashion. His entire focus was centered on VaughnTec. He was seeking to grow the company by shrinking their products even further while increasing the functionality of each unit. VaughnTec, which was part R & D, part mass market, combined cameras, computers, phones, music, video games and a host of other functionalities into small handheld units so simple that even the technologically challenged could figure them out within a few minutes. It was Griffin who’d moved the company in that direction when he’d taken it over from his uncle, Griffin who’d made it into the powerhouse it was today. He was ruthless without being cruel, cold without being unfriendly. But even when he was being his most cordial, she’d noticed, he maintained a thick barrier between him and the world, a reserve that she’d only seen soften when he was talking to his young son, Luke, on the phone.
Despite the pressures of Sophie’s job situation—i.e. that losing it was a real threat yet absolutely not an option—she had grown, if not comfortable with Griffin’s business persona, at least confident that she knew where she stood with him. He was polite but not terribly friendly, and had made it obvious that he considered her too young and green for the position. But at the same time, he’d been clear about his needs and wishes, and had given her ample room to perform the tasks Kathleen had laid out for her, which had mostly consisted of scheduling his travel and juggling calls, retrieving information and hunting up the occasional meal. All of those things were well within the skills she’d learned in the courses she’d taken for certification, and if she’d fumbled a few times when nerves had overcome training, he’d seemed to let those instances go. All in all, she’d found him a tough but fair employer. Yes, he was far too attractive for her peace of mind, but she thought she understood the Griffin Vaughn she’d been working for.
However, she didn’t know the Griffin Vaughn who was crouched down in front of the fireplace wearing a fisherman’s sweater and faded jeans, blowing a small ember into a flame, then feeding it strips of kindling until the fire flared up and lit the teepee he’d built so carefully. Logic and what she knew about her boss suggested that he should’ve looked like a man completely out of his natural element. Instead, he wore the borrowed clothes like they were old familiar friends, and he moved with neat economy as he built the fire up, coaxing it to accept the first of the logs. His towel-dried hair was engagingly rumpled, making him seem younger, though his face still gave away little of the man within.
Illumination from the flames danced across his forbidding features. The warm light was a welcome contrast to the dimness outside, where the world had gone to grayish-white and the day was fading hours earlier than it should have.
The fire drew Sophie forward, even as nerves warned her not to get too close to this new version of Griffin Vaughn. She stood beside him and stretched her hands out toward the fire, but felt little relief from the cold.
“It’ll need to warm the brickwork before much heat starts bouncing out into the room,” Griffin said.
“Were you an Eagle Scout or something?” she asked, unable to help herself, because too many things weren’t quite lining up between this Griffin and the one she thought she knew.
“Or something.” He rose, dusting the ash from his hands, and wound up standing very near her. Too near.
She could see the hints of hazel in his green eyes, saw them darken when tension snapped into the air between them. She was suddenly very aware of his height and strength, and the way the smell of wood smoke fit with the sight of him in jeans and a sweater—raw, masculine and elemental. And in that instant, she realized she’d been wrong about at least one thing: Griffin most definitely knew she was a woman. The knowledge was in his eyes, which were more alive than she’d ever seen them.
Heat flared suddenly, not from the fireplace, but within her. The warmth spread from her core to her extremities, which still tingled with the aftereffects of the freezing conditions, and the danger they’d survived together.
Maybe it was that danger that had her leaning into him, maybe it was the attraction she’d told herself to ignore all these weeks. Either way, she was suddenly very close to him, and he to her, their lips a breath apart.
A log shifted in the fireplace, sending sparks. The noise startled her, breaking through the sensual fog and slapping her with a shout from her subconscious. Danger!
Grabbing hold of herself, she took a big step back, away from the fireplace. Away from the man. As she did so, she was aware that he did the exact same thing, levering himself away. In that moment, she saw the shields drop back down over his expression, distancing him more surely than the floor space now separating them. Suddenly, he was no longer a regular guy starting a fire in the fireplace; he was a millionaire businessman who ate small companies for breakfast, and just happened to be wearing a sweater and jeans.
More important, he was her boss.
Heat rushed to Sophie’s cheeks and she berated herself for being stupid, for getting too close to the line with the man who had far too much control over her future, more than he even realized. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have—”
“I’m going out,” he interrupted, heading for the door, where he grabbed a pair of tired-looking boots and a heavy, bright-red waterproof parka, borrowing more of Erik’s clothing. “I want to look around a little and get the generators going. There are a bunch of outbuildings—barns, a guesthouse, that sort of thing. I want to make sure they’re as secure as they’re going to get before the main force of the storm hits. I’d appreciate it if you’d check the kitchen and see about some food. Do you still have your PDA in your coat?”
A unit of his own design, the PDAs combined a phone, computer and GPS functionalities into a single small unit.
Sophie nodded. “Yes, I do. But won’t it have shorted out?” They were seriously useful little machines, but still, they were machines.
“Sometimes the little buggers come back to life after they’ve gotten wet. Say, for instance, after a toddler tries to flush one of them.” His expression softened a hair at the tangential mention of his son, but his eyes stayed cool on hers, as though he was waiting to see what she would do next, how she would handle herself in the aftermath of the sensually charged moment they’d just shared.
She was going to ignore it, that was what she was going to do, Sophie decided on the spot. Just as he’d done.
Plastering a neutral expression on her face, she tried to drop herself back into the executive assistant’s role, even though it didn’t seem to fit quite right under the circumstances. She nodded. “Food and PDA. Got it. If I get the phone up and running, do you want me to call Sheriff Martinez and let him know what happened?”
Griffin glanced through a window, at the whiteout conditions outside. “Definitely. See if he can get someone out here to pick us up.” He lifted a shoulder. “It’s a long shot, but you never know. Maybe this is just a squall before the blizzard.”
A howl of wind hit the side of the mansion and rattled the windows in their frames, seeming to mock the idea. Somewhere else in the house there was a crashing noise, suggesting that Perry and his work crew hadn’t secured the construction zone sufficiently against the force of the incoming blizzard.
Griffin winced, but didn’t say anything, just jerked on the borrowed boots, shrugged into the coat and headed for the door.
He paused at the threshold and looked back at her. “I want you to lock the deadbolt after me, and keep it locked.”
He was gone before she could ask why that would be necessary, given that they were alone in the mansion. She flipped the bolt as ordered, but couldn’t help wondering who he was trying to guard her from. Himself? That didn’t make any sense.
She heard his footsteps recede, heard a distant door slam. Moments later, she caught a flash of his red parka as he headed, not around the generator shed, but rather straight across the parking circle and down the driveway.
He was going to look at the crash site, she realized, and the realization brought a shiver of fear as she clicked onto the one question she hadn’t yet asked herself about the situation—not how they were going to manage to wait out the storm, or what would happen if she and Griffin ended up face-to-face again and they weren’t smart enough to step away, but rather the all-important question they hadn’t had the time to ask before. Why had the bridge given out beneath them? Was it just bad luck?
Or had it been something more sinister?
Chapter Three (#ulink_739019cd-c65f-5f1f-bd9a-d65a81afdf3c)
The wind was sharp as hell and Griffin’s core temp wasn’t all the way back to normal, but he kept moving down the driveway, his booted feet sliding in the rapidly deepening snow. The visibility wasn’t great, but he was certain he could make it down to the crash site and back up to the mansion before the conditions became impossible. Besides, the longer he waited, the less likely he was to find anything useful.
If, of course, there was anything to find.
Maybe it was just a flat-out coincidence that he and Sophie had been in the SUV that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. Maybe it was simply that their vehicle had finally overloaded the time-stressed cement bridge and brought it crashing down.
Thing was, he wasn’t a big believer in coincidence. That lesson had been hard learned in the service, and his years in the business world had only reinforced his conviction that everything happened for a reason, and that anything could be prevented from happening twice if he was smart enough, disciplined enough. Controlled enough.
At the thought of control, he flashed back to what had just happened in front of the fireplace, when he’d almost lost the self-discipline he prided himself on. He’d very nearly given in to temptation and kissed Sophie. What was more, she would’ve welcomed his kiss; he’d seen it in her eyes, felt it in the tension-laden air.
The attraction was there, had been there from the first moment she’d walked into his office. He’d managed to tamp it down to an awareness, and she’d hidden the fact, as well. Most of the time, anyway. But that moment in front of the fireplace had shattered their pretense of disinterest. And damned if that wasn’t going to complicate things, big time, not just over the next couple of days if they wound up snowed in together, but over the longer term, as well. He couldn’t afford to get tangled up with another woman who wanted to trade affection for a step up in life.
It wasn’t that he thought Sophie was playing him, either. His instincts said she was exactly what she seemed: a young, relatively inexperienced woman who was getting a late start in the workforce for whatever reason, and was earnest in her efforts to do a good job. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t set her sights higher if he gave her reason to think it was a possibility.
That wasn’t ego talking, either. It was just the way he’d learned the world worked. And if that felt faintly disloyal to the memory of his own childhood, it couldn’t be helped. His parents had met and fallen in love in a very different time, and they’d been lucky to find a perfect match in each other. He’d tried to find the same sort of match and failed. Worse, the last failure had hurt his son, as well. There was no way he was putting Luke—or himself—through another such ordeal.
They were fine on their own. There was nothing wrong with it being just the guys. In fact, the only thing wrong with the arrangement was the extensive traveling Griffin had to do for work, while Luke stayed behind in San Fran with Darryn. Then again, it was a huge relief knowing Luke was safe at home, especially given that Griffin didn’t yet know exactly what sort of a situation he was dealing with.
His musings had occupied him on the half-mile trek down to the bridge. Now, as he got within sight of the wrecked span, he once again replayed those last few moments before it had given way. He remembered a banging noise, like a backfire. Or maybe an explosion. But seriously, what were the chances someone had rigged the bridge? And why?
Unfortunately, he could make an all too plausible case for the “why.” When Sophie called to set up the meeting with Perry, she’d mentioned that she and Griffin were planning to tour the estate that afternoon, before the storm hit. What if the contractor was more than just shoddy or a little crooked? What if the delays were only the surface of the problem, and Perry was actually up to something even more devious, something that he couldn’t afford to let an outsider see? The theory might seem pretty farfetched, but the contractor had given Griffin some seriously negative vibes the last few times they’d spoken. At the time, Griffin had assumed Perry was spooked by his run of bad luck on the project, and rightfully fearing for his job.
Now, as Griffin worked his way out to the place where the bridge had collapsed, testing each step as he went, he wondered whether Perry had perhaps been afraid of something else entirely, like his employer finding out about dire doings up at Lonesome Lake. And if so, whether the contractor had decided to slow him down, or worse.
When Griffin reached the edge and looked down, he cursed, giving up any hope he might’ve had of recovering his and Sophie’s suitcases or computer bags. There was no sign of the SUV, save for a rough patch where it had broken through the ice, and even that was rapidly smoothing over to snowy sameness.
“Son of a bitch,” he grated, liking the situation even less than he had before. For the duration of the storm, it looked like he and Sophie were going to be down to borrowed clothes and a doused PDA.
And each other.
AS TIME PASSED and Griffin still didn’t return, Sophie kept herself moving because she figured it was better than working herself into a state of panic.
Deciding she’d give her boss another half hour before she went out looking for him, she turned to the tasks he’d given her: pulling together some food and rebooting her PDA. She started by making a survey of the supplies in Gemma’s pantry, and quickly realized they were in pretty good shape in the nonperishable food department. The shelves were crammed with canned goods, along with glass jars of pasta sauce and homemade preserves. There was plenty of dried pasta, along with pancake mix and coffee, and even powdered eggs and milk.
“Looks like you’re prepared to be snowed in for the entire winter,” Sophie said to the absent housekeeper. The thought wasn’t particularly cheering.
Deciding to keep it simple, in case the meal had to wait while she went out looking for Griffin, Sophie added tap water to a can of condensed tomato soup, and broke out a box of mac and cheese, knowing firsthand that it tasted fine made with powdered milk and no butter. Once she had the pasta cooking, she headed out into the main room, where a welcome sight greeted her, namely the telltale wink of an LED light from her PDA.
“Aha. A sign of life.” Relieved by the thought that they might not be completely cut off from the outside world, she crossed to the unit and pressed a few buttons, shutting down the handheld computer and then powering it back up to see if it would come fully online.
When it did, it showed her a half charge on the battery and a weak but tenable network signal. Crossing her fingers that the call would go through, she phoned Sheriff Martinez.
He answered on the second ring. “Ms. LaRue? Are you back in the city? That was quick.”
“Hi, Sheriff. And no, we’re not even close to being down off the mountain.” Sophie sketched out the situation, trying to give the facts as calmly as she could, even though it wasn’t easy to keep a tremor out of her voice as she described their plunge into Lonesome Lake and the harrowing trek up to the house.
There was a long pause after she finished, and then Martinez said, “Okay, here’s the problem we’re going to be facing. That snow out there? It’s the real deal. The blizzard got here faster than predicted and is likely to be here for a good long time. Two days, maybe three. More importantly, the road up to Lonesome Lake goes through a pass that’s impossible to keep clear during a storm. Which means you’re going to be stuck there until the blizzard blows itself out.”
She heard something else in his voice, and asked the same question Griffin had earlier. “What aren’t you telling me?”
There was another, longer pause. “Maybe Vaughn should call me when he gets back in.”
“We’ll have to conserve the battery on this phone,” she said, too aware that unless Griffin managed to rescue their chargers from the SUV, they were going to have to make her half-charged battery last. “So why don’t you just tell me whatever it is that you’d rather tell him?” Nerves had her edging toward irritation more quickly than she would have otherwise. “I am a fully functional grown-up, you know.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the sheriff said politely, “but you’re not a highly decorated marine TecSpec with some serious combat experience.”
Her breath whistled between her teeth at that. “Are you saying that Griffin is?”
“Yes, ma’am. It popped up on the background check we ran as part of the Del Gardo investigation. So the way I’m figuring it, if you had to be stranded up at Lonesome Lake for a few days, you picked a pretty useful guy to be stuck with.”
“I didn’t pick him,” she murmured automatically, but her brain was spinning.
Eagle Scout, indeed. He’d been a marine, had he? Well, that probably explained the skills he possessed that were decidedly non-MBA-approved, and the quiet reserve that sometimes seemed as much about survival as it did business. And yeah, under their current circumstances it helped her to know that he could deal with dangerous situations better than the average tycoon—if there was such a thing. But at the same time, the revelation put a serious shiver down the back of her neck.
She hadn’t known about his military service. What else didn’t she know about him?
A tap at the door to the apartment had her spinning with a gasp. She relaxed only slightly when Griffin’s voice said, “It’s me.”
“What’s wrong?” the sheriff asked quickly, still on the phone.
“Griffin’s back.” She unbolted the door and let him through, then held out the phone. “The sheriff wants to talk to you.”
He nodded and shucked out of his gloves and parka, and hung them near the door, where a mat was set out to catch the wet. When he reached for the phone, his fingers brushed against Sophie’s. Warmth kicked at the contact, but she forced herself not to jerk away, forced herself to act as though she hadn’t felt a thing.
From the way his green eyes darkened, though, he knew. And he’d felt it, too.
So much for there being a safe distance between them. She had a feeling the next few days were going to be very dangerous to her equilibrium. But she needed this job. She needed to be able to stay in San Fran near the facility where her mother was being treated now, and she needed to make a good enough salary to cover more than the bare minimum payments on her various loans. Which meant she couldn’t risk making the same mistake she’d made at her last job. What was more, she couldn’t risk Griffin knowing about that mistake. Kathleen had overlooked the rumors and hired Sophie anyway, but Sophie had a feeling Griffin wouldn’t be nearly so sanguine about it. The members of upper crust San Fran society tended to stick together.
After a moment, Griffin nodded, though neither of them had said anything. Then he took the phone, headed into the office and shut the door behind him.
Sophie stood for a moment, staring after him. Irritation rose. Granted, he was the boss, and he certainly had the right to take private calls in private. Hell, he’d have that right even if their roles were reversed. But what could possibly be private about a conversation with Sheriff Martinez? Whatever the sheriff was telling Griffin, it had to be related to the situation out at Lonesome Lake…and that most definitely involved her.
Setting her teeth, she marched toward the office. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do when she got there, but that didn’t matter because the door opened before she reached it, and Griffin stood there, filling the doorway with his face set in harsh, unyielding lines.
She halted an arm’s length away, tension coiling in her stomach. “What’s wrong?”
“Perry’s wife hasn’t spoken to him since right after you called to tell him we were coming to meet with him.” He paused, and held up his hand to show her a slender wire attached to a round, circular metal scrap, which he held pinched between his thumb and forefinger. “And I found this down by the bridge.”
She stared. “What is it?” she asked, even though on some level she already knew.
“A piece from a radio-controlled detonator. The bridge didn’t just give way. Somebody blew the damn thing out from underneath us.”
GRIFFIN WATCHED Sophie’s color drain and hoped she didn’t pass out on him. If she did, though, he’d deal with it, just as he was doing his best to deal with the situation that was developing around them.
After finding the detonator scraps and evidence of a blast pattern, he’d raced back to the mansion, hoping to hell he’d find Sophie intact, that the bomber hadn’t been waiting for them to split up before he made his move. But there was no sign of the bomber, no evidence of another move.
So what now? He didn’t know.
His first instinct had been to not tell her about the bomb, which was why he’d talked to the sheriff in private. That wasn’t because he was trying to keep her from worrying, either. It was more that he was used to keeping the most important pieces of information to himself. Whether in battle or in business, information was power. Besides, he was used to being alone, dealing with things alone, and didn’t see any need to share.
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