Snowed in with the Boss. Jessica Andersen
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Название: Snowed in with the Boss
Автор: Jessica Andersen
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Зарубежные детективы
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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?
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 СКАЧАТЬ