Protect Me, Love Part 7

"Nick, I'm afraid I have a very big favor to ask of you," she began.

"What's that?" he asked, wiping his mouth with one of the coa.r.s.e paper napkins from the deli.

"I left something at my apartment, something I can't get along without." She rushed on before she could lose her nerve. She'd told many untruths since going into hiding. It was much more difficult to lie to him now, especially since just this morning she'd pledged to be truthful with him from now on. "I take medication," she said. "For my stomach." "I didn't know that." He looked skeptical. "I don't like to talk about it," she said, "but if I don't get my pills I'll be very sick. I'd go get them myself, buta"" "No," he interrupted, raising his hand as if to stop her. I'll1 go. You stay here and rest." "I'd actually like to take a bath," she said, not proud of herself for how good she was at making her story even more believable. Still, she had to let him finish his sandwich. She was subjected to further maddening moments while he bundled his self into an extra sweater and wound a long scarf around his neck in preparation for reentering the blizzard that continued to rage outside. Nick was on his way out the door at last when he turned toward her. "Don't let anybody in," he said. "Absolutely n.o.body till I get back. Will you promise me that?" "I promise," she said, feeling yet another lie stick in her throat. He pulled a gun from his pocket and pressed it into her hand. She opened her mouth to protest, then shut it again. As much as she hated guns, she'd be wise to go armed on the trip she had in store for herself tonight.

Chapter Fourteen.

Nick was gone at last. Delia could hardly believe she'd finally gotten him out the door. Now she missed him. The hotel room, though fairly small, felt empty and echoing. She bundled herself up quicklya"extra socks, a second sweater, her heavy bootsa"and left only ten minutes or so behind Nick, but not by the front entrance. He might have asked the desk clerk to watch out for her. Nick was definitely protective enough to do that. Delia wondered if he would hover over her quite so closely if it wasn't his job to do so.

Ordinarily, she might have found such attentiveness suffocating. Yet Nick's attentions made her feel warm and peaceful, as if she'd been tucked up inside a thick, soft blanket that kept her from b.u.mping against the hard edges and sharp corners of life. She'd had enough experience with such collisions to make a little swaddling very welcome. Unfortunately, for the moment she'd chosen to slip out from beneath the blanket of Nick's protection. She was on her own.

Delia crept down the narrow back stairs of the small hotel and let herself out through the heavy, steel fire door that damped shut fast and locked tight with a d.i.c.k behind her. The alleyway was dimly lit and cold, with snow sifting down from the strip of open sky between the buildings several stories above her head. Covered trash cans lined the scarred brick walls and were already crowned by inches of white. A single bulb in a metal cage over the doorway did little to disperse the gloom. Delia s.h.i.+vered, though the layers of clothing she was wearing didn't really let in much cold. She hastened down the alleyway, relieved that there were no tracks other than her own in the snow. She couldn't imagine even the most enterprising street criminals out plying their nefarious trade on a night like this, but there was no such thing as being too cautious in New York City.

The thought reminded her that she was embarking *upon a mission that was anything but-cautious. A woman alone traipsing around the waterfront after dark could be a target for all kinds of danger no matter what the weather. She pulled her cap down around her face. Any signs of her femaleness were m.u.f.fled under the bulk of sweaters and her long, shapeless coat. The cap plus a scarf wrapped around the lower half of her face completed the camouflage. Luckily, when she left the alley for the thoroughfare, n.o.body was paying much attention to her anyway as they trudged along through the storm.

Delia turned her thoughts and planning toward what came nexta"how she would get from here to the Seaport. Most seasoned New Yorkers were in the habit of mapping out their mode of transportation before going anywhere. They would weigh one alternative against the othera"taxi, car service, bus, subway. The decision often depended on the destination and the relative safety and speed of the route traveled to get there. Tonight, Delia's decision would be determined by the elements. A taxi would be impossible to find. Car service would take too long getting here. Besides, street level traffic had to be in a state of nearly terminal gridlock as the snow piled up and the roadbed became more and more slippery. There was a bus straight down Broadway to Lower Manhattan but no bus lane to facilitate progress through the snarl of vehicles. She was too far away to walk it, either. Subway was the inevitable solution.

Delia slogged toward the corner. She'd have to consult the map below ground on the wall next to the token booth. She didn't travel this way often enough to have memorized the train routes. She knew buses better because they were her preferred form of public transport. Her years of paranoia made her feel safer in a vehicle where she could see out the windows into the surrounding world. She also liked the fact that, unlike on a subway, she could jump off a bus at any corner. Still, the underground had to be her choice tonight. She s.h.i.+vered again at the thought of how unfamiliar she was with her destination. She knew very well that the surest way to get yourself into trouble in the city was to stop using your head. Going into strange territory after dark was definitely not a wise move. For Delia, however, this evening's journey was not about using her head as much as it was about following her heart. She hunched her face into the folds of her scarf and hurried toward the subway entrance.

NICK DIDN'T LIKE leaving Delia alone, but he could tell she was trying to get rid of him. He guessed she needed some time on her own. He could understand why she might want to slow her world down for a while right about now. He would have preferred to hold her in his arms as she slept or, better yet, to take that bath she'd mentioned with her. The thought of water glistening across the perfect roundness of Delia's b.r.e.a.s.t.s and her sleek thigh lifting out of a foam of bath bubbles made him all but groan right here in the hallway outside her apartment door. He'd have run out into the stormy night and searched the city up and down for bubble bath if that would make this fantasy come true.

Nick cleared his throat and adjusted his jeans to accommodate the sudden snugness in the area of his zipper. He couldn't escape the fantasies of her that flitted regularly across his mind. She was even more beautiful than five years ago, when she'd been on the skinny side, lovely but spare in the flesh department. She'd acquired just enough of that flesh since then. She was a provocative and appealing girl five years ago. Last night, when he slipped her nightgown from her shoulders, he'd discovered a voluptuous woman.

He could see her now, and feel her, too, the way she moved in his arms. Her hips rolled in a rhythm so sensuous he'd been lured along as her partner in a dance of love. Everywhere he touched her, she responded like a rapturous instrument beneath his fingers, playing exquisite music just for him. He'd been attracted to her five years ago as Rebecca Lester, though his code of professional ethics had kept him from doing anything about it. He'd wanted her then but with a much paler pa.s.sion than what had set him burning last night. Delia was fully a woman now. She knew what a man needed and also what she needed herself. Yet he sensed she hadn't learned these things in the arms of other men. He sensed she'd been very alone for a very long time. The intensity of her hunger told him that. He wished he could be satisfying that hunger for both of them right now.

Nick did groan this time. If he didn't stop tormenting himself with such thoughts, he'd be running back to the Tivoli before he had a chance to accomplish what he'd come here to do. He reminded himself of how much Delia said she needed those pills from her medicine cabinet and did his best to return his attention to her apartment door. The slip of paper was still there, exactly where he'd left it. That meant no one had been here. n.o.body had pulled on the door, anyway.

Nick let himself in using the key Delia had given him and was immediately a.s.sailed by the scent of evergreen. He experienced a small twinge in the area of his heart. He might have switched on the lights for a better view of the blue spruce, but he'd already decided to maintain a low profile while he was here. A flashlight would be the best way to do that. He had to content himself with a glance at the tall, tapering silhouette against the glimmer of streetlight filtering past the window blinds. Even that brief glimpse made him think of colored lights reflecting in the windowpanea"colored lights dancing over Delia's soft skin .... Nick shook himself hard enough to make those lights wink off in his imagination. He flicked on the flashlight in his hand instead and trained the beam onto the floor and away from the windows as he headed for" the bathroom. He resolved to wrap a tighter rein around his fantasies, but he doubted even his willpower was that strong.

A few minutes later he was letting himself out of Delia's apartment with her pill bottles tucked into his jacket pocket. His mind was still on those fantasies he'd been having only moments before. He was pondering what their power might be indicating about his feelings for Delia and what he should do in response to those feelings. Usually, Nick didn't do a lot of pondering. He was more of a straightforward, action kind of guy. These uncharacteristic, deeper thoughts took up most of his attention as he bent to secure yet another small strip of paper between the lower section of the door frame and the door. All he felt was the first edge of the blow. Then everything went black.

DELIA WAS RUNNING late for her rendezvous on the waterfront. Unfortunately, actually running was out of the question. Otherwise she'd have been racing down John Street as fast as her feet could carry her. Even on an ordinary night, this part of Lower Manhattan was all but deserted after workday hours. Tonigilt, the falling snow added to the emptiness. The buildings here were tall with gray stone facades, and the street was narrow. The streetlights were on, but mostly they illuminated the halo of blowing snow immediately circling each lamp. The rest of the street was as gray as the fronts of the buildings. All sound was m.u.f.fled, including the whistle of the wind up from the riverfront a few blocks ahead. Delia could feel that wind, even if she couldn't hear it, slapping against the narrow strip of her face that remained exposed. She pulled her scarf up higher till only her eyes were visible and did her best to hurry on.

She thought she'd become accustomed to isolation in these five, solitary years, but that was nothing compared with how alone she felt right now. She might have been a s.p.a.ce explorer stranded on some bleak, white moonscape with gray phantom shapes rising on either side.

She considered backtracking to Fulton Street, which might be less deserted, but she was already past the hour when she was supposed to meet whoever had written her that card. She couldn't allow herself to think of that person as her father, though her heart ached to do so. She wanted more than anything for her father to be alive. She'd forced herself to shut out the thought of him all these years. Now it came rus.h.i.+ng back, springing tears to her eyes. She dabbed at them with her gloved hands, afraid they might freeze. That would be all she needed tonight, to have her eyes suddenly iced shut in addition to the rest of what she had to deal with. The absurdity of that image threatened to drive a burst of hysterical laughter from her throat. She gulped to keep it there and slogged on.

The snow was deepening and drifted. No shoveling had been done yet.

Offices in the vicinity had probably let their workers go home early. The walkways would have been less buried then, no need to shovel till the snow stopped or at least till very early the next morning, before everything opened up again. Delia pressed on, her body bent against the chill of the wind, lifting her feet with each difficult step as if she were walking through a knee-high desert of snow. Actually, she was doing exactly that. Another image to add to the general creepiness of this experience. Thank heaven, she could finally see the comparative breadth and brightness of Pearl Street just ahead. She hurried toward it, like a bedouin toward an oasis.

Delia had visited South Street Seaport several times in her solitary explorations of the city. On a normal evening this area east of the cobbled gateway at the junction of Pearl and Fulton streets would have been an exception to the general desertion of nighttime Lower Manhattan. The street would be occupied by diners from the restaurants, revelers from the taverns and c.o.c.ktail lounges, strollers browsing the shops and gazing up at the spotlit masts of the Seaport Museum's antique sailing s.h.i.+ps moored along its piers. Christmas was an especially festive time in this part of town. Carollers costumed in memory of the nineteenth century Age of Sail performed on street corners. Father Christmas might even appear among them or the Ghost of Christmas Past. The shops were done up at their yul-tide best. Brightly lit Christmas trees perched high up in the crow's nests of the museum s.h.i.+ps. Delia had come down here last year at this time and found it all delightful.

There were no carollers tonight, no revelers or strollers or browsers, no Father Christmas, either, though she could readily imagine a ghost of some kind or other materializing out of the gloom. Still, there were more lights here and the thoroughfare was wide, closed to traffic had there been any. Along this broad, open stretch, the snow had drifted away from the center of the street and up against the buildings on either side. Delia found that more shallow center track and was able to pick up her pace some. She had no compet.i.tion for her position on the pathway. The shops were all closed, and the restaurant windows were empty. Not even a stray, stalwart tourist was out here to brave the wrath of winter. Delia couldn't help suspecting more strongly than ever that she was on a fool's errand.

She glanced up for rea.s.surance toward the rigging of the Peking, the crown jewel of the Seaport's permanently docked sailing fleet. If the lit-up trees were there, their sparkle was lost behind the blizzard, which roiled even more thickly here at the edge of the East River where it began to widen into New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean beyond. Delia sighed. She could have used that glimmer of holiday cheer fight n was her heart threatened to waver from its determination to follow the instructions on the Christmas card crumpled into the inside pocket of her coat. She'd turned left from Fulton onto South Street, and there was still no one in sight, n.o.body up the block to Beckman or past it, n.o.body under the FDR Drive, which vaulted on its ma.s.sive steel framework high above South Street. Delia could see well enough even in this dimmed light to know that she was alone here.

She might have pulled out the card and read it again, but that wasn't necessary. She'd committed its message to memory. She was in the right place, but she wasn't here at the right time. Or maybe the sender of the card had been put off by the weather, or thought Delia would be, and decided not to come. Whatever the reason, Delia appeared to have made this trek for nothing. Under other circ.u.mstances, she might have stopped to note that she'd meanwhile had the unique experience of s...o...b..und Lower Manhattan and that what lay around her right now really was a beautiful sight. Unfortunately, she wasn't in the proper frame of mind to be receptive to that beauty at the moment. She was mostly frustrated and suddenly aware, with a growing acute-hesS, of how cold she was becoming.

"d.a.m.n," she muttered, and stamped her foot, both to punctuate that frustration and against the numbness creeping upward from her toes.

All of a sudden she remembered Nick. She was almost shocked to realize that she actually had not thought of him more than a few times since she'd left the Tivoli and not at all since exiting the subway at the World Trade Center. Up to that point he'd been solidly planted in her thoughts for what felt like an extremely long time. Her fixation on her waterfront destination and quest had driven even handsome, fascinating, maddeningly compelling Nick Avery from her near-obsessed mind. He was very likely back at the Tivoli by now, or certainly close to arriving there. He'd be terribly worried to find her gone.

Delia peered through the snow searching for a pay phone and spotted one near the corner of Beckman Street. She hurried toward it, pulling off a glove to rummage in her coat pocket for a quarter. She was in the habit of keeping phone change there along with a spare subway token or two. Her fingers had hum bed considerably. They weren't as adept as usual at telling the shape and size of one kind of coin from the other. It took her the full distance to the phone to fish out the quarter she needed. She was intent upon not allowing her cold, clumsy fingers to drop it when she spotted a Stooped figure emerging from the gloom across South Street under the FDR Drive. Whoever it was hesitated, still too far away and obscured by the veil of falling snow for Delia to make out anything other than that this person wasn't very tall. Her father hadn't been very tall, either.

Delia's heart skipped into her throat. "Daddy," she cried out. "It's me. Topsy. I'm here."

The figure didn't move. Delia was still holding the quarter in one hand and the receiver in the other. She dropped the coin and plopped the receiver back into its carriage on the front of the phone box. The face of that box was covered in s.h.i.+ny chrome almost as reflective as a mirror even in this subdued light. In that instant, Delia registered movement reflected across the chrome face. Yet, she was standing still. Her long-honed, self-protective instincts leapt instantly into place, and she spun around fast to catch the man behind her just enough off guard that he stepped backward in surprise.

Delia had the impression that this was the man from the Waldorf stairway nearly hidden now beneath almost as much clothing as she was wearing. She didn't take time or brain power to do more than let that impression flit rapidly past. She remembered the gun in her pocket. Her hand was into her coat and out again, brandis.h.i.+ng the pistol before even she knew she was going to make that move.

"Get away from me or I'll shoot you dead right here," she screamed with a vehemence she also hadn't antic.i.p.ated.

He hesitated only a second, then turned and run back up Beekmart Street into the camouflage of the storm and was gone. Delia knew that she could have held him here at gunpoint while she used the phone to call Nick. She also knew how long it would take him to get down here and how difficult it would be to keep this man at bay till then. She couldn't call the police, of course. Her fear of being arrested herself precluded seeking official help. She'd computed all of that in the seconds it took to draw the gun and shout her warning. She let her would-be a.s.sailant escape and watched him go. By the time she turned back toward South Street, the small, stooped figure was gone, too.

Then, something very strange happened. Like a film rolling backward, Delia found herself seeing again what had happened just before she'd registered movement in the chrome faceplate of the telephone. In that moment the figure across South Street had started suddenly forward with one arm raised and head lifted. Maybe this person was trying to warn Delia against the danger behind her. She suspected this might be so, but that wasn't what made her gasp as the scene flashed back to her now. In that fleeting instant she'd seen the face of the person scrambling toward her across South Street. She'd seen the face, and she knew who it was.

Chapter Fifteen.

Nick heard the the sirens before he actually knew what they were. The sound jangled through his brain, but it was only noise to him at first, and far off, too. Noise and identification hadn't yet come together. His head hurt, and that caught his immediate attention. He'd been hit. Maybe he couldn't connect things up because he had amnesia or brain damage. It occurred to him, first through a fog and then more sharply, that if he could make this observation about amnesia or brain damage, he probably didn't have either. At that instant he also knew that the noise was a police siren, and he could guess the most likely reason he was hearing it. Somebody in this building must have seen or heard what happened to Nick, maybe the thud of him falling to the floor after being zapped from behind. Maybe he'd cried out. He couldn't remember. Very possibly, the witness hadn't even opened his or her apartment door to look out. They just called 9-1-1 right off. New Yorkers were like that. They'd be cautious about putting themselves in danger while trying to help all the same.

The cops were just about here, and Nick had to disappear fast. Part of him might have opted for some official help with whatever was happening to Delia, but asking for that help wasn't in the job description, especially not now that he knew who Delia really was. She'd still be among the FBI Wanteds for the Denver case. There's no statute of limitations on murder. Nick shrugged off the thought, shook his head clear and pulled himself the rest of the way up off the floor. He wasn't yet feeling a hundred percent, but he had to make tracks out of here, anyway.

He took longer getting back downtown than he had coming up After slipping down the rear stairs and out of the fire door at Delia's building, he employed a standard diversionary tactica"ducking into a building, watching to see if he was being followed, then ducking out another entrance. Ordinarily he'd have taken several cabs in winding directions, but the snow had slowed traffic too much to make that workable. Whoever clouted Nick from behind would have too little trouble tailing him from one traffic jam to the next. He traveled much of the way on foot before darting into a subway for the remainder of his trip to the Prince Street stop.

Having Delia out of sight worried him much more than the lump forming behind his left ear, more even than finding out who'd given him that lump. It was bad business for a bodyguard to leave his client untended. He was feeling very uneasy about having done that even before the desk clerk at the Tivoli called out as Nick hurried past.

"I don't think Your friend is upstairs," she said. There was a hint of indignation in the way she said that. Her name was Mindy. She'd let Nick know on several occasions, in both subtle and not so subtle ways, that she found him interesting. He'd only noticed that because she had a punky look about her that reminded him a little of Rebecca, the way she'd been five years ago. Tonight he barely noticed Mindy or her petulant manner at all. He had Rebecca, in the flesh as Delia, to concern himself with now.

"You said to keep an eye out for her. Right?" "Yes, that's right."

Nick had mentioned his concern for Delia on the way out earlier. Mindy's resentful tone suggested maybe that hadn't been too smart a move on his part.

"I live to please," she gibed, "so I called your room a while ago and guess what?"

"What?" Nick couldn't help his impatience. "Well." She dragged out the word and dangled the pencil she was holding from her fingers. "You're not going to like it."

And you're not going to like the way I jump over that desk and throttle you if you don't get to the point, Nick almost said out loud.

"Come on, Mindy. What gives?" he managed instead. "You wouldn't want to get me in trouble with my client, would you?"

"Is that what she is? Your client?"

"Yes. She's my client." Nick had pulled his gloves off on his way into the lobby. He clenched his fists and dug his fingernails into his palms now to keep himself from doing that jumping and throttling he'd been thinking about a moment ago. Cajoling rather than bullying was the way to go here, no matter how maddening it might be.

"Then you just may be in trouble after all," Mindy said, "because she took off."

That was exactly what Nick didn't want to hear. "Did you see her leave? Which way did she go?"

"I didn't see a thing. All I know is n.o.body answered when I rang your room, and I rang two or three times."

Nick barely remembered to mutter, "Thanks," as he bolted for the stairway, which was a faster route than waiting for the Tivoli's antiquated elevator. There was still hope that Mindy could be wrong. Delia might have slept through the phone ringing or maybe she was still in the bathtub at the time. Unfortunately, the race of his pulse and the dryness in his throat were telling Nick that neither of those was the case. Sure enough, when he got to his room, n.o.body was there.

His first thought was that something could have gone wrong at PEI. The way Delia was so dedicated to that job of hers she'd have gone running back there to take care of things despite the weather or the danger.

He grabbed the phone, pressed nine for an outside line and punched in the PEI number. He clutched the receiver altogether too hard through three long rings till the connection was made. His heart leapt when he heard, "h.e.l.lo." It was Delia's voice.

"Delia?"

"You have reached the office of Protective Enterprises Incorporated," her voice said.

"d.a.m.n it."

Nick pounded his thigh once, hard, with his balled-up fist, as the voice on the telephone droned on. He'd reached the PEi answering machine. He'd hoped against hope that at least Lily, the temporary worker, would be there, but "of course she would have closed up and gone home by now, especially with this storm going on. Still, maybe Delia was there in the office and monitoring phone messages. That would explain why she didn't have the service picking up instead of the machine. He s.n.a.t.c.hed at this very slender possibility as if it had some real chance of proving true.

"Delia," he said as soon as the voice message ended and the answer recording began. "Are you there? It's Nick. Pick up if you're there."

He listened desperately for her to do what he asked but heard only silence in return.

"Delia, are you there?" he asked again while his pleading tone was recorded for posterity.

Still no answer came until finally the connection clicked off and a second later the dial tone began. Nick slammed the phone down. Where the h.e.l.l was she? He paced the short distance from phone table to window. Outside, snow swirled and blew in the dim remnants of illumination that made their way up through the storm from the streetlights below. She was out in this, but he had no idea where. He also had no idea why, and that was driving him craziest of all. He'd told her to stay put. Why hadn't she done that? What could be important enough to take her out of this room into danger?

Another possibility crossed his mind and made his heart pound faster than ever. What if she'd been taken out of here by somebody else? He measured the likelihood of that. There were two ways into the Tivoli at ground level. The rear entrance was guarded by a heavy, metal, safety-locked door. n.o.body could come through that without a tank or at least an automatic weapon and a lot of noise. The only other entry was straight into the lobby, and Mindy wouldn't have missed that. She didn't miss much. She also wouldn't let anybody past her she didn't know. She might be resentful of Nick having a woman in his room, but Mindy would do her job all the same.

What about the fire escape? There was one from the street to Nick's window, just like every room in the hotel. Fire regulations said it had to be that way. Nick re, roe inhered the handprint on the greasy surface of Delia's bedroom windowsill. He leaned closer to his window and peered out at the sill. No marks there, and none on the fire escape platform, either. No hand-prints on the sill, no footprints on the fire escape. The snow was coming down hard and could have covered prints over. Still, Nick reasoned, there would have been at least indentations or some sign left behind, wet marks on the carpet inside the room or something like that. He made a quick inspection but found nothing. He was almost certain n.o.body had come in this way.

All that remained was the outside chance someone could have slip peA by Mindy downstairs. No matter how unlikely Nick figured that to be, he had to check it out for sure. He could have called down to the front desk, but he tore out of his room and headed for the stairway instead. He had to do something that required movement. If he was forced to stand pa.s.sively on the end of a telephone line one more time, he just might jump straight out of his skin. He was that agitated, and a good deal of that agitation was because he knew he'd fallen down on the job. He'd left Delia alone. If he wasn't so h.e.l.l-bent to get down to the lobby as fast as he could, he might have stopped and kicked himself very hard in the behind.

DELIA ROUNDED the corner onto Mercer Street with her head down. That seemed to be the best way to keep snow crystals from bombarding her face. The snowfall hadn't slowed any in its intensity and now had taken on an icy edge that p.r.i.c.kled her cheeks then melted there in a frigid sheen. If she hadn't been hustling along as fast as she could go, she would have been quite cold even in her heavy overcoat, which was now frosted white all over.

Delia trained her eyes just far enough ahead on the sidewalk to keep from running into anybody, though she was pretty much alone on this narrow street. She looked up fully just once to see the entrance to the Tivoli a couple of buildings away, then ducked her face back into her scarf while she scurried even faster and imagined how bright and warm the lobby would be. Consequently, Delia was pretty much barreling along when she plowed straight into somebody moving equally fast out of the hotel entrance. That somebody was Nick.

"Delia, where the h.e.l.l have you been?" were the first words out of his mouth in almost the same tone of voice she'd heard him use against the creep who'd attacked her on the stairway at the Waldorf. Delia's imaginings of her longed-for arrival at the Tivoli had not included an angry greeting.

"You don't need to shout at me, and you can stop dragging me around, too."

He'd taken her by the arm and was pulling her back into the hotel lobby. The young woman at the reception desk watched them with considerable interest. Fortunately, no one else was present to see the scene Nick was making. Delia shook herself free of his grasp.

"I came back here, and you were gone," he said only a little less loudly and through gritted teeth. "I want to know where you went."

"I had some business to take care of." Shaking herself had dislodged a cloud of snow that settled in a wet ring around her on the lobby floor.

"I don't believe you. I called your office, and you weren't there."

"You don't believe me?" Delia's voice hit a louder register now. Five years of constant attention to keeping a low profile in public flew out the doorway into the snow. "Where do you get the nerve to accuse me of lying?"

She was lying of course, but at the moment that seemed beside the point.

"Look, for once I just want the straight truth out of you.

From the sound of that, Nick's anger was losing some of its heat while Delia's did the opposite.

"I told you I had business to attend to. Whether that business was in my office or not is none of your concern."

Her cheeks were flaming and not just from being stung by icy snow. She tore at her scarf to get it away from her face.

"what you dos my concern. It's also my job." She could hear the attempt at reconciliation in his tone, but she wasn't interested in reconciliation at the moment. For days now, she'd been angry at having her life invaded. Nick was catching the brunt of that acc.u.mulating rage.

"Your job is to do what I tell you." She didn't care how mean or surly that sounded. "You seem to be forgetting you work for me."

She expected that to get his masculine dander up. Maybe she even wanted it to happen so there'd be a cathartic confrontation and she could vent the entire depth of her frustration right here in this hotel lobby. If that was her intention, Nick wasn't cooperating. Instead of blasting back at her, he shrugged his broad shoulders then reached his arms around her and pulled her close to his chest. He didn't seem to notice how she was dampening his clothing with melting snow.

"I'm not forgetting anything about you. I haven't been able to forget anything about you for the past five years."

Delia took a long breath as if to inhale those words deep into herself. In that instant, more about her was melting than the snow on their clothing. When she let her breath free again, her angry tension gushed out with it. She sunk against him and might have crumpled to the floor if his strong arms hadn't held her firmly upright. All of a sudden she felt as if she might start crying. She would sob and sob till the bands of loss and fear and regret clamped for five years, maybe more, around her" heart finally loosened their hold. She'd be free from sorrow at last, a liberation she hadn't let herself even hope for. She caught her breath in sharply before that sobbing could begin. Otherwise, she feared, the deluge of tears might go on forever.

"Let's go somewhere and talk," Nick whispered softly against her soggy knit cap. Delia felt his head turn in the direction of the reception desk. He must also be aware of the public spectacle they had become. He was probably embarra.s.sed. He did live in this place part of the time, after all, and wouldn't want to make a scene here.

"Okay," she managed to croak as she clung to his closeness just a moment longer.

"There's a cafe in the next block where we can get something to eat," he said.

His words brought Delia's stomach suddenly back into focus for her, as if it hadn't been part of her anatomy till now. She tried to remember when she'd eaten. Oh, yes, a couple of bites of a deli sandwich back in Nick's room what felt like a very long time ago. "Are you hungry?" he asked.

Delia hesitated no more than an instant before pulling away from him far enough to look up into his face.

"Yes, I am," she said, and she wasn't just referring to the gnawing in her stomach. She knew right then that she was hungry for hima"his company, his protection and, later on, his body.

"Let's go," he said, taking her arm.

Nick glanced back briefly toward the reception desk, and Delia did the same. The young woman there was scowling at them openly. She looked like she was really upset to have them carrying on so emotionally in her lobby. Delia could understand that. Still, he couldn't help thinking how, at the Waldorf, the staff would act as if they hadn't seen a thing.

"By the way," Nick said as he opened the door to guide Delia through, "I got your pills. Do you need to take one now?"

Delia had to think for a moment what he was talking about. She'd all but forgotten the ruse she'd used for sending him off on his wild-goose chase so she could get away from him on her own.