Our Little Secret (37 page)

Rubber screamed against cement, a long, high-pitched noise that raised the hairs on her neck at the same time as it thrilled her heart. The car flung itself into a ninety-degree turn in front of the Creighton house, rocking to rest on the grass, headlights blinding.

“Lauren!” A yell came from behind the lights.

“Drew?” She stood, squinting, holding her arm up to shield her eyes from the glare. It didn’t help. Two circles of white filled her vision, with black to either side. She couldn’t find him. Uncertain, she stared into the light, waiting.

Hurtling out of the darkness beside the headlights, Drew scooped her into his arms, crushing her to him.

“Lauren! Thank God, you’re safe!”

Frantic kisses brushed her brow and pressed against the side of her head. Choking on a sob of relief, she tucked her face beside his neck, clinging tightly while
aftershocks of fear trembled through her. For a few seconds she simply breathed in the smell of him, thrilled that she could know him by just that one sense, that the feelings he stirred were so familiar and so safe.

Drew’s hands touched her face, coaxing her head back so he could look at her. In the bright light, she watched as the last jagged edge of worry disappeared from his eyes.

“Oh, God, Lauren,” he moaned and took her mouth in a fierce kiss. She fell into it, opening to him, soaking in the need that seemed equal to her own. She wrapped her arms around Drew’s shoulders, and gave back in passion what she didn’t dare say in words.

Words like
I love you
.

“Creighton!”

They parted as Drew looked toward the house. Chapman stood in the doorway, motioning at Drew to come inside.

“Get over here. You gotta see this for yourself, or you’ll never believe it.”

He gave Lauren a puzzled look. “Do you know what he’s talking about?”

“Well, um, maybe.”

Her admission appeared to cause concern. Taking her hand in a firm grip, Drew pulled her along as he followed Chapman inside and up the stairs.

She had to admit to being curious. There had been that crash behind her as she’d fled, and the headboard had looked awfully sturdy…

She bumped into Drew as he came to an abrupt halt at the entrance to his dad’s bedroom, staring. Paul Pierson stood beside the bed, naked body pale except
for the livid red of his face, furiously tugging at the cuffs holding him to the headboard. The overturned nightstand had spilled a variety of sex toys across the carpet.

Chapman smirked. “Seems your girlfriend had a little fun at the senator’s expense.”

Drew turned amazed eyes on Lauren. “You did that?”

Lauren stared, then tried to hide a smile. She wouldn’t have called it
fun
, but she couldn’t deny responsibility. “I guess I did.”

Pierson looked up at their voices, his scowl turning darker as he spotted Lauren. “You! You’ll pay for this, you little bitch. Trying to humiliate a United States senator—you won’t get away with it.”

Drew dropped her hand and stalked toward Pierson. “I beg your pardon,
Senator
,” he said, his voice dangerously calm. “What did you call Miss Sutherland?”

Pierson turned on him, aiming his fury at a new target. “You heard me. And you’re both going to hear from my lawyers.”

Lauren couldn’t resist a glance at the withered remains of his arousal. Muffling her giggle with a snort, she looked away quickly.

Her amusement didn’t improve Pierson’s temper. Heedless of his nudity and the handcuffs holding one arm back, he faced Drew with defiance. “I see what’s happened here. The two of you have apparently conspired to embarrass one of your father’s political opponents. If you and your little slut girlfriend think you can—”

Pierson broke off with a flinch as Drew stepped into
range, drew his fist back and aimed at the senator’s jaw.

Chapman caught it before the punch could land. With Drew’s arm in a lock, he turned a cool look on Pierson. “You have a point, Senator. This incident is sure to have political repercussions. Perhaps we should take pictures to document it. Your wife could so easily misunderstand the situation, based solely on the facts.”

Pierson’s face drained of color.

Drew spoke through gritted teeth. “One punch, Chapman. You can say he hit his head on the nightstand.”

“Sorry, no.” Chapman released Drew’s arm. “But I trust you’ll understand when I send Miss Sutherland a large bouquet of flowers to thank her for this memorable moment. It more than makes up for your death-defying drive over here.”

“Yeah, sorry about that last tree.” After a glance at Lauren, Drew asked Chapman, “You mind if I take Lauren to her room so she can get dressed?”

“Go ahead. But don’t take long, I have a few questions for her.”

“Yeah, so do I.”

Lauren had forgotten she was dressed in a robe, with only underwear beneath it. When Drew left she’d been fully clothed. Seeing Senator Pierson’s condition, she supposed he did have a few questions.

She explained it to him briefly while she got dressed, then again in more detail for Chapman when they convened in the living room. Drew listened quietly at first. When she mentioned Pierson’s hand on her leg he narrowed his eyes, and when she got to the part where he grabbed her arms, Drew jumped up and paced. By the time she finished she was glad Pierson had been taken
away, because she didn’t think Chapman could have prevented the beating Drew was ready to give.

He was furious with Pierson. She understood, was flattered, even. But the more distance she had from the event, the more excited she felt about her part in it. The proper and perfect Lauren Sutherland who had come to Washington, D.C., would have handled things differently.

Drew was the one who’d seen the potential for change in her; he even encouraged it. It was part of why she loved him. That, and the way he cared about standing up for what was right and correcting what was wrong. And his tight butt and amazing shoulders. She might tell him about that part.

But not the rest. She didn’t want to be one of those women he hated, the ones who used men for what they could get out of them. Because that sure was how it looked. She broke out of her self-imposed prison and wanted an adventure, and she’d grabbed the first man who offered one. But wanting to keep him hadn’t been part of the plan.

“We still don’t know where Meg is,” she said aloud, not even knowing who to ask about it. The house had been crawling with FBI and Secret Service agents, a few of whom were still there.

Chapman looked up from his notes. “Doesn’t matter. As soon as this hits the news tomorrow morning, they’ll come in, you can count on it. They’ll know it’s safe.”

The front door opened behind her for what might have been the thousandth time that night, but the voice she heard in the foyer was one she’d been waiting for.

“All you had to do was shoot him.” Gerald was lecturing someone in a superior tone. “That shouldn’t be difficult to figure out, even for someone on your rung of the evolutionary ladder. Don’t you Neanderthal types excel at those basic skills—eat, sleep, and kill things?”

“You’re the only one who came close to killing someone,” Renke growled. “That shot could have hit your Romanian friend if it had been any higher.”

“Not likely, Bozo, since I knew exactly what I was—Lauren!” Spotting her in the living room as she jumped up, he complained, “I’ve had the most awful night, consorting with emotionally stunted G-men and gun-wielding thugs.”

Lauren looked appropriately shocked. “You poor thing, it sounds terrifying.”

“You have no idea. You came alarmingly close to losing me.”

She led him to the sofa where she sat down next to Drew, patting the cushion beside her. “Where’s Mihaly?”

“Gone already. He took off in his car to scout some areas looking for Meg. It’s driving him crazy that she’s out there, probably scared, and with some other man.” He grinned. “Isn’t love wonderful?”

Not when it was one-sided. She was sure Meg’s feelings for Mihaly went beyond fondness and friendship but was less sure of Drew’s feelings for her.

“Hey,” Drew greeted Gerald. “Glad to see you’re alive. We’ve been waiting to hear from you.”

Chapman laid his notes on a bookshelf and folded his arms. “Yes, tell us about it. I’d be fascinated to know why you ignored my direct orders and risked the lives of two other men.”

Gerald leaned close to her, rolling his eyes. “These law enforcement types think no one else can plan an operation or capture a criminal. Like it’s rocket science.” Peering around her, he said, “Andrew, I hope that associating with these men hasn’t damaged your good nature and sense of decency.”

Drew gave him a wry smile. “I think I’m okay.”

“That’s a relief.” He squeezed Lauren’s hand. “Sometimes he may act like one of them, but he’s worth hanging on to.”

Somehow, she kept smiling. Hanging on to Drew was not a topic she wanted to think about right now. A premature sense of loss pierced her heart at the thought of him leaving. He would go soon enough. She wasn’t ready to accept it graciously and didn’t know how she ever would be.

“I’d like to hear what happened,” Drew told him.

Gerald settled into being the center of attention. “Well. You know we thought we were going to meet Senator Creighton and Meg. And when we drove by the area Senator Pierson had told us about, there was a car on the side of the road with its parking lights on. We thought it was them.”

“Not exactly.” Renke’s voice came from behind her, and Lauren realized he’d followed them into the living room, probably to hear Gerald’s version of what happened. Judging from his sour tone, he found it a bit inaccurate. “Not all of us were so trusting and naïve.”

Gerald clutched his chest in mock alarm. “Forgive me. Agent Renke, with godlike foresight, sensed a trap and saved the day.”

Renke snarled, “I followed procedure and took precautions, which turned out to be a smart move.”

“Yes, it worked out well when you surprised the bad guys and wrestled that gun away, saving Mihaly’s life. Oh wait, that was me.”

“Asshole,” Renke muttered.

Chapman pinched the bridge of his nose, then waved his hand at Gerald. “Just get on with it. Skip the part we know and get to what happened after you decided to run amok.”

“Huh. You’d think they’d be more appreciative,” he confided to Lauren.

“I’m sure they will be when they hear they hear what happened,” she assured him.

He patted her cheek like an elderly aunt. “That’s so sweet, hon. You have faith in people.” He peeked around her to turn his fond smile on Drew. “What’d I tell you? This one’s a keeper.”

“Gerald…”

Drew’s warning snapped him back to storytelling mode. “Right. The guys Agent Chapman has been trying to track down are sitting right in front of us, and what does Mr. Big Government Agent tell me to do?”

He obviously wanted a response, so she shook her head. “I don’t know. What?”

“Run away! Can you believe it? Of course you can’t. Neither could I. I knew we had to catch these guys or Meg and Senator Creighton would still be in danger, and so would you.”

“That’s bull. We would have caught them,” Renke began, but stopped at another hand gesture and head shake from Chapman. “Forget it,” he grumbled. “Tell it in your own special way.”

Gerald seemed to take it as a compliment, and continued. “I have to tell you, Agent Chapman was no help.
Apparently he gets a little tense in a crisis situation.”

She stole a look at Chapman. If he kept grinding his jaw like that, he was going to end up with another migraine.

“So I turned the volume off on the phone and took matters into my own hands. I crept around the back of the car to the other side where Agent Renke could see me. And you know me, if I’m creeping through the undergrowth, something must be seriously wrong with this picture. Even a moron would know that, so I thought there was a chance he would figure it out.”

“Which he did,” Lauren said. Renke deserved at least one positive comment.

“Sort of, but don’t get ahead of me.” He brushed off Renke’s part in the story. “I had to crawl back around the car, and I mean on my hands and knees. Look at the dirt on these trousers! It’s—”

Drew cleared his throat.

“Right. So I waited behind the driver’s door. I knew they would roll down a window so they could shoot Mihaly, who was getting close. That would be our only chance to take them by surprise. Which was exactly what happened. Simple deductive reasoning.”

He looked at Chapman and Renke to make sure they appreciated how right he was and how dense they were not to figure this plan out themselves. “The guy’s hand came out holding a gun, and I grabbed it and twisted. The gun went off, but he didn’t drop it. So, I bit him. Works every time. The guy screamed like an enraged bull and opened the door, which knocked me down, which knocked the cell phone out of my pocket, where he stepped on it and broke it.” Gerald looked at Renke. “You might want to bill the government for that.”

Renke’s lip curled with disgust.

Gerald shrugged. “Your loss. Anyway, I grabbed the guy’s ankle and knocked him down. That’s when Mihaly ran up to us, stuck a big black gun in the guy’s face, and I let him take over.”

“You let him take over.” Chapman shook himself out of his mesmerized state and turned to Renke. “What happened with the other guy?”

“The man in the passenger seat jumped out when the cat fight started on the other side. I had my gun on him before he could turn around.”

“Because he’d seen me creeping around the car earlier and he knew something was wrong,” Gerald said. “Right?”

Renke gave him a resentful stare. “Right.”

Chapman looked slightly ill. “I’m glad you’ll be writing up that part, not me,” he told Renke.

Lauren imagined the whole report would be a masterpiece of creative writing.

Beside her, Gerald gave a slight gasp and grabbed her hand. “I just realized you were alone with that despicable Senator Pierson. Did he try to hurt you?”

“Um, not exactly.”

Drew moved his arm from the back of the sofa, slipping it around her shoulder to pull her closer. “Don’t worry,” he told Gerald. “She handled it.”

She had. She wasn’t sure how Drew felt about that, but she was pleased with herself. She credited Drew with helping her find her new confidence, but she owed a little to Gerald, too.