When their mouths met, everything else seemed to fall by the wayside. Perhaps brought on by their near fight, the kiss quickly turned hot and impatient. Kyle gripped her hips and guided her backward, trapping her against the front door. Rylann tugged his T-shirt over his head and then ran her hands over the solid muscles of his chest as their mouths came back together. She moaned his name, needing to feel all of him against her, wanting to be as close to him as possible right then and there.
Apparently driven by the same need, Kyle yanked her T-shirt off, then hooked his hands into the waistband of her yoga pants and panties and hastily pushed them down her hips. Eager to hurry up the process, Rylann helped him out, kicking her clothes aside as he made fast work of the button and zipper on the fly of his jeans.
As their tongues clashed and fought, she pushed his jeans down, and a thrill of excitement coursed through her when his heavy, hard shaft brushed up against her stomach. He reached into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet, and found a condom.
“Hurry,” she panted urgently, watching as he ripped open the wrapper and rolled the condom on.
He slid his hands under her bottom and lifted her up against the wall, positioning himself right between her legs, where she was wet and ready for him. He gazed down at her heatedly, his hair falling into his eyes. “As long as we’re doing this, for however long it lasts, there’s no one else. Got it?”
She tightened her arms around his neck. “There’s no one else I want.”
Seeming to be satisfied with that answer, he thrust hard and deep, entering her in one stroke. Rylann threw her head back against the door and moaned. “Oh God, it’s so good.”
Kyle held her firmly against the wall and began moving inside her, his voice deep and husky. “It’s perfect.”
LATER THAT EVENING, Kyle sat alone in Rylann’s living room, toying absentmindedly with his glass of wine while he waited. Apparently, she was the “duty assistant” that night, which—judging from the emergency page she’d received from an FBI team wanting a search warrant—was something like being a doctor on call.
They’d been curled up on the couch together, pretending to watch a movie but mostly just making out like a couple of sixteen-year-olds, when her pager went off. She’d checked it, apologized with a quick kiss, then had headed into her bedroom to return the call in private.
The normalcy of the moment, the everydayness of it, had made Kyle realize that this was how things could be between them. Cozy weekend nights together, a good bottle of wine, hitting pause on the TiVo remote while one of them had to sneak off for a work call. A far cry from his “play hard” days spent wining and dining the girl of the week.
But as he sat there on Rylann’s couch, listening to the murmur of her voice from the bedroom and waiting for her to join him again, he knew there was no place he’d rather be.
Yep, it was official.
He was falling for her.
Panic set in upon that realization, and in his mind’s eye he saw himself pulling a Road Runner and bolting lightning-quick, cartoon-style, out of the apartment. She’d come out of the bedroom after finishing her call and would find no trace of him except a half-empty wineglass and the gaping hole of a man running top-speed through her front door.
Or he could go with option two.
Stay and do whatever it took to convince a certain stubborn, sassy assistant U.S. attorney that this was more than a hot, casual fling.
Undoubtedly, that was a risky proposition. He wasn’t even one hundred percent certain that he was ready for a commitment, and more important, he had no clue how—or if—he fit into Rylann’s world. She loved her job; anyone could see that. Even when the phone rang at ten p.m. on a Friday night and interrupted a mighty fine make-out session, she’d had a gleam in her eye that said some thug out there was about to be served up a steaming-hot plate of Prosecutrix Pierce whoop-ass.
He heard her cell phone ring again, then a short moment later she came out of the bedroom.
“Sorry,” she said with an apologetic smile. She set the pager on the coffee table, then picked up her wineglass and curled up on the couch. “I left a message for the emergency judge and had to wait for the clerk to call me back.”
“Did you get your search warrant?”
“We did.”
“What kind of case?”
She took a sip of her wine. “Terrorism. The FBI got a last-minute tip about a guy being deported tomorrow at six a.m. who they believe is connected to a radical fundamentalist group operating in Chechnya. They want to search his apartment and personal effects, but he’s refusing consent.”
Of course that’s what it was. Because everyone took calls from the FBI and helped take down radical terrorists at ten p.m. on a Friday while wearing yoga pants and casually sipping a glass of wine.
“You amaze me, Rylann,” he said, in all sincerity.
And that’s when he made up his mind.
She could set all the rules she wanted—but this was one matchup against a federal prosecutor he intended to win.
Twenty-eight
WHEN THE WEEKEND was over, duty called once again.
On Sunday evening, after a four-and-a-half-hour flight, Kyle handed his overnight bag to the valet and walked up to the front desk of the Ritz-Carlton San Francisco.
“I’ll be in your former neck of the woods,” he’d told Rylann on Saturday morning as they’d stood in her doorway saying good-bye.
“You’re going to San Francisco?” she’d asked. “What for?”
“You’ll know soon enough.”
She’d looked him over with a curious expression. “What are you up to now?”
Despite all her valiant efforts, Kyle had refused to give anything up under cross-examination. He had a lot riding on this trip, since the next twenty-four hours would drastically impact the launch of Rhodes Network Consulting. Either his actions would go down as one of the cleverest ideas in marketing history, or he was about to make a complete ass out of himself.
Only time would tell.
The front desk clerk smiled as Kyle approached. “Welcome to the Ritz-Carlton. How can I help you?”
“I have a reservation, under Kyle Rhodes.”
The clerk glanced up from the keyboard, her sudden recognition evident, then went back to typing. “I see we have you booked in one of our Club Level suites, staying with us for one night.”
“Could you arrange for me to have a late checkout tomorrow?” he asked. “I have a morning meeting that might run long.” Or maybe not. At this point, he gave it 80/20 odds he didn’t even make it past the front door.
“Certainly, Mr. Rhodes.”
Just then, Kyle’s cell phone vibrated. He checked and saw he had a new text message from Rylann.
KNOCK ‘EM DEAD, DIMPLES. WHATEVER THE HECK IT IS YOU’RE UP TO.
“Is there anything else I can do for you this evening?” the front desk clerk asked.
With a smile, Kyle tucked his phone back into his jacket. “Nope. I think I’ve got everything I need.”
SHORTLY BEFORE TEN the following morning, Kyle climbed into a taxi outside the hotel.
“Seven ninety-five Folsom Street,” he told the driver. When the taxi pulled to a stop a few minutes later, Kyle peered through the window and checked out the modern, six-story office building before him. After paying the driver, he stepped out of the car and adjusted his tie.
Time to face the music.
Portfolio in hand, he pushed through the double doors and took the elevator up to the sixth floor. He watched as the floor indicator counted upward at what seemed to be an excruciatingly slow pace, finally springing open to reveal a simple, minimalist-style reception area.
A receptionist sat behind a white and gray marble desk, her eyes going wide as saucers as soon as Kyle stepped out of the elevator. The wall behind her was devoid of any artwork, bearing only the company’s all-too-familiar name in lowercase letters: