gave her a guarded look. “No problem. I was hoping to hit the guy in the leg so we could catch and question him. Didn’t quite work out that way. I overcompensated my aim. I didn’t want to risk shooting you by mistake.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Yeah.” Sam touched her arm gently. She would have expected him to crush her to his chest, do the manly-man protective thing, but he didn’t. He was being careful about how he handled her. He knew enough to give her distance, as though he’d dealt with situations like this before.
Chloe realized she was thinking of him as Sam now, and not Ralston. Sam, her savior. Super Sam. Oh, what the heck, he’d earned some girlish gratitude. She was just glad her mind was starting to function again.
A babble of voices came from the hallway. Was her hearing just coming back or had they been out there all along? She slid off the bed, feeling a little unsteady.
“Where are you going?” Sam demanded.
She gestured helplessly at the door. “My aunt. My cousin. People. They’re wondering what’s going on.”
Sam held up a hand. “Let me.”
He pulled open the door, looking like the sexy tradesman from a bored housewife’s daydream. From where she stood, all she could see was the curve of Sam’s shoulder and his denim-hugged backside. That would set the family’s collective imagination spinning. Go me.
While he stood in the hallway, Chloe changed into a pair of yoga pants and a T-shirt. She saw with disgust the nightgown she’d been wearing had splatters of blood on it. She balled up the garment and threw it in the garbage can. There was blood on the sheets, too, and glass on the floor, but suddenly she was too exhausted to deal with any of it. She perched on a corner of the bed far from the blood, wishing she could just lie down.
No, no lying down. Not here. She could still feel the echo of a hand crushing her face into the bed.
“How are you doing?” Sam asked as he came back into the room.
The question wasn’t the vague politeness of a stranger. To her utter surprise, Sam crouched in front of her, studying her face. His expression was concerned, almost tender. He reached out, catching her hands gently in his. His skin was cool and wonderful, the gesture infinitely comforting. “Look at me,” he said. “You’re going to be okay. I’m here.”
Chloe met his eyes. A subtle shift came over his features, a tightening of the lips, his pupils eating up the steel-gray irises. There was concern there, but something else now, too. Desire. Possession. He lifted her hand to his lips, brushing the lightest of kisses across the back of her fingers.
The gesture was courtly, barely qualifying as a true kiss, but a flood of tingling arousal swamped her skin from head to foot. No one had ever touched her so intimately with so little flesh.
She gasped lightly, and the skin around his eyes flinched, a predator narrowing his focus. Now it was her neck that prickled with the faintest frisson of fear.
It was too much. Chloe looked down, unable to hold his hypnotic gaze a moment longer. Heat flooded her face.
“Chloe?”
His voice was soft, intimate. It sucked her down further, so she fought it, clawing her way back to the present. She’d just been attacked. Sam had chased the bad guy away.
Memory slammed back, ripping the cobwebs away.
“I wanted to fight,” she said. “I wanted to cry out.”
He made a noise as close to a sigh as someone like Sam Ralston would make. “You did what you needed to. It’s called surviving. That’s how we’re programmed.”
She took a steadying breath. “You didn’t freeze. Neither did your friend. How did you just happen to be there with guns?”
“I always carry.” In a blink, his face was back to his blank-wall setting. Sam rose and put an appropriate distance between them.
Chloe folded her arms, feeling suddenly as if a fire had been doused, leaving her in the cold. What had just happened? Had she asked one question too many? Too bad, because every answer he gave prompted a dozen questions more.
There was a sharp rap on the door. Sam opened it, looking relieved. Kenyon pushed his way in, a grumpy look on his face. His blond hair looked mussed, as if he’d been pushing his hands through it. He stopped, giving Chloe a once-over. “You all right?”
“Sure,” she replied.
“Anything?” Sam asked his friend.
“Nope. The security here means well, but what can you expect?”
Sam swore lustily. “How can that happen? I shot him in the shoulder. He was bleeding.”
“They don’t have our training. Trampled the trail. Messed it up.”
Chloe caught the shut-up look Sam shot his friend. What training?
Kenyon either didn’t notice the look or pretended not to care. “So what was that guy after?”
“The wedding dress,” Sam replied, gesturing toward the place where it hung.
Kenyon gave it a curious look. “Seriously?”
Then something seemed to catch his eye. Suddenly alert, he crossed to the wardrobe. He pulled a small Maglite flashlight from the pocket of his cargo pants and shone it at the beading around the gown’s low neckline.
Chloe got to her feet, still feeling shaky. “What do you see?”
“Interesting decoration. It’s not all crystals.”
Chloe had noticed that, too. There was elaborate embroidery all around the neckline, much of it gold wire couched with silk thread and dotted with seed pearls. Dozens and dozens of set stones had been added to the design, giving a shimmering fire to every movement of the dress. “The headpiece has similar decoration. I think the pearls might be real.”
Kenyon looked up, an odd expression on his face. “So are the stones.”
Chloe gulped. “What do you mean?”
He gave a wry smile to Sam. “You remember last March?”
“That can’t be right,” Sam said dully. “Tell me you’re kidding.”
“You know your guns, I know my luxury goods.”
Sam cursed. “We should have known the moment this turned up in Jack’s safe. Though how he ended up with them...”
“Were you looking for a wedding dress?”
“No.” Sam suddenly looked offended. “What in the nine hells was Jack up to?”
“What are you talking about?” Chloe demanded, her voice going shrill.
Kenyon pulled out his light again and played it across the bodice of the dress, making the stones dance with white fire. “These are diamonds. Whatever bride belongs to this dress could have bought a small country with this dowry. In fact, if I’m right, one almost did. I think these are the lost diamonds of the Kingdom of Marcari.”
Chapter 5
Chloe’s gasp hit Sam hard. He whipped around, alert to whatever had startled her and ready to smash it. But nothing was there. Her shock had simply been at Kenyon’s words.
Nothing like a fortune in lost diamonds to stop a conversation cold. And what were they doing in Jack’s safe? Sam ground his teeth. He wasn’t big on surprises, and this was a whopper.
He edged closer to Chloe anyhow. That kind of ice on the lam meant danger permeated the air like a fine mist. The scum who’d attacked her would have friends. The first one who touches her will lose an arm.
The ferocity of the thought rocked him. He felt far too