Outside The Lines:: Third Person Narration Read online

  She tipped a little closer too, hoping something of hers winked at him. “Then maybe whoever did the previous one doesn’t know how to do valuations.”

  “That would be Dan.”

  She froze. “Dan Masters?”

  “Yep.”

  “I thought it was you,” she said, still whispering.

  He shook his head slowly. “He’s an expert,” he said softly.

  Their eyes were inches apart. Small puffs of steam came out of their angry mouths. Johnny was emitting a lot of heat. Time to back off.

  She tipped closer and said, real soft, “Apparently not.”

  Johnny’s eyes hardened. It was like a steel cage clicked shut over them. “See you in court, Jauntie,” he whispered like a lover.

  A fissure of heat exploded inside her belly and a cold shot of fear trickled down her chest. She was a veritable weather front.

  She was also screwed.

  Dan Masters was more than an expert, he was one of the most well-respected accountants in Mergers & Acquisitions. He’d done buyouts for Fortune 100 companies. He probably did valuations in his sleep.

  She hadn’t known she was going up against him. Not that she would have declined, but she might have…she didn’t know. Done something different.

  No. There was nothing she’d have done different.

  But if this went to court, if her perhaps enthusiastic valuation went up against Dan Masters’, she was going down in flames.

  She straightened slowly.

  “I get it,” she puffed at him softly. “You don’t like to be wrong.”

  “I don’t like to have my clients fucked with.”

  Piercing green and filled with anger, his gaze held hers in silence. They glared at each other for a few beats. Then, because staring Johnny Danger in the eye was not always a wise thing to do, she snapped the goggles down onto her face.

  “You say fuck too much.” She turned to face the mountain. “You probably do fuck too much. You should go to confession.”

  He laughed. “And you should take a ski lesson.”

  She glared down the hill in silence, across the snowy tundra awaiting her, then took a puffy death grip on the poles and started to push off.

  “Jesus, not like that.” He reached out and grabbed her elbow. “Are you always this reckless?”

  “Never,” she assured him vehemently, sliding sideways as her feet started going down the hill, while his hand held her back. “Never, ever, am I reckless. First time ever.”

  Which wasn’t true at all.

  It was the second time.

  Her skis continued their downhill slide at an oblique angle away from them. Johnny didn’t release her arm, so she ended up gradually lowering herself to the ground on her bottom, which was, all things considered, the safest place for her bottom to be, rather than pitched up the side of an evergreen tree. They were all over, looming ominously just beside the dangerously narrow ski run. Shouldn’t the runs be wider? And have bumpers? Like a bowling alley?

  Johnny looked down at her partially reclined body, his grip the only thing keeping her from plunging to almost certain death. He shifted sideways, as if he knew how to shift sideways in skis. How nice for him.

  Then, in some gymnastic-like move, he crouched down beside her, so their bodies were beside each other. His hand was still holding her up.

  “Never, huh?” he said softly.

  “Well, once,” she admitted. “When I was fifteen.”

  “What happened when you were fifteen?” His voice was quiet, not like they were telling secrets or anything, but then again, they were. Only he didn’t know it.

  She looked into his eyes. “I went skiing.”

  He stared for a second, then burst out laughing. It made his hard green eyes crinkle at the corners, relaxed his grimly handsome, five-o’clock shadowed face into a drop-dead, make-your-heart-stutter smile, all aimed at her.

  Actually, when she was fifteen and recklessly skiing, she also recklessly slept with Patrick O’Faolain, the blue-eyed hoodlum with a smile like sin and a heart of fool’s gold who’d charmed his way onto their ski bus trip and into her hotel room and she’d sworn off recklessness and blue eyes and skiing ever since.

  But now she was at the top of a ski slope, sitting in the snow, looking up at a guy whose last name was Danger, and she admitted it, she was feeling kind of reckless. Kind of breathless. With a hot little shiver cording through her, deep inside, down low. It was hot and thrilling and woke her up in places she didn’t know had been asleep.

  That was bad.

  Because Johnny Danger was the darkest spot set against the brilliantly blue sky. Which described him perfectly: dark danger. And that hot little shiver was just the sort of thing that could get a girl in trouble. Make her think she wanted a taste of his particular brand of danger. But better women than Juliette had been eaten alive by Johnny’s dark, sensual allure.

  “What am I going to do with you, Jauntie?” he said softly.

  She looked up into his green eyes and dark allure and frowned. “Go home and tell your client he’s a wanna-be criminal.”

  The smile snapped off like a light switch. “How about I tell yours you’ve never done a valuation before in your life?”

  She gasped. How did he know that? But it didn’t mean she wasn’t good at it. She had all the right qualifications. And she’d seen something Johnny’s partner hadn’t, which if you slowed down to think about it, was a bit concerning. For him.

  Unless it was she who was wrong.

  “Ha,” she said bravely, struggling to her feet for the third time. “She wouldn’t believe you. You represent her two-timing husband.”

  “Better than a three-timing wife.”

  She looked over suspiciously. Then she snapped her gaze forward and stared down the snowy hill.

  “Okay, look.” He gave a long-suffering sigh. “So you don’t die and leave me with Buck Billings on my caseload, I’ll give you some pointers on how to get down the mountain without dying.”

  “I don’t want your pointers,” she snapped. “And you deserve Buck Billings on your caseload.”

  He ignored her. “There are two ways to get down.”

  Despite her irritation, she was intrigued. “What’s the first?”

  “You walk.”

  She blinked. “Walk?”

  “Yep. Take off your skis and walk. It’ll take awhile, but you won’t get hurt, and you won’t go too fast.”

  That was appealing. “What’s the second way?”

  “I get you down.”

  A tiny lightning bolt sizzled through her body. “I’m scared to ask.”

  He smiled again, and this time it wasn’t a sizzle inside her. It was a long, slow, belly flip. “I show you how to ski.”

  “Right.” She looked down the hill. “Are there any other options? Like maybe you just sort of push me, like if I was too scared to jump out of a plane?”

  “You don’t push people out of airplanes.” He adjusted his jacket. “I’m going to let go,” he warned. “Tilt that lower foot down, angle it, and wedge it in the snow, yep, like that.” He looked at her. “See, you’re doing it. Sort of.”

  She squinted at her foot. “This isn’t skiing.”

  “It’s stopping. That’s a crucial part of skiing.”

  “I don’t think you get it. I’m very good at stopping.”

  He gave her a slow smile. “So, we do it the other way, Jauntie. The ‘going’ way.”

  She blew out a breath. The warmth of it steamed up the interior of her new goggles a little. She didn’t think they were very good goggles. Johnny swooshed on his skis in a pretty little arc and came up on the downhill side of her. My, he was large. He was all dark manliness against the ferocious white mountainside.

  He showed her how to stand and bend and angle her body, gave her a mini-lesson right there as they tottered at the top of the hill. He seemed like he knew what he was doing, so she paid attention, and in a few minutes, had learned enough basics
to avoid dying. Maybe.

  He looked her over doubtfully. “Okay, here’s how we’re going to do this. I’ll go first, you follow me—”

  “What?”

  “I’ll go down first, and you—”

  She narrowed her eyes. “What?”

  He paused. It was a careful pause. The pause of someone who’s just realized they crawled into a cave with a bear. “Or, you can go first,” he said slowly, staying with the theme of ‘careful, it’s a bear.’

  She exhaled through her nostrils. “Really?”

  He sighed. Swept his gaze down the mountain, then back up. “I’m pissing you off, right?”

  “Johnny, you could piss off a rock.” She manhandled him aside with her elbow and slid forward a few inches. The hill dropped away in an ominous, non-bunny-like way. “I’ll be fine.”

  Juliette didn’t know who she was telling, him or her, but she was fairly certain she hadn’t convinced Johnny of anything but that she was a nut case. He cast another highly dubious look at her and her swishy new ski clothes, then shrugged and pushed off.

  “See you at the bottom,” he called over his shoulder.

  She wanted nothing more than to swoosh by and dust him. Unfortunately, she was made of caution and smarts, and having so few other native talents, she stuck with the devil she knew: stay safe.

  She skied down the bunny hill behind him, surreptitiously mirroring his every move. Or maybe not surreptitiously. Because he was going slowly, incredibly slowly, down a hill he’d probably mastered at five years of age.

  Was he…placating her?

  “How was your vacation?” she called to him sharply.

  Confusion drifted back up the hill. “My what?”

  “Your boat trip.” On Christmas. While I was working.

  “It was fine.” They skied a little further. “It wasn’t a vacation.”

  “Oh. Work, then. Working with the movie star.”

  He glanced back at her, his eyebrows near the line of his tight-fitting black cap. “Is there a problem, Jauntie?”

  “Not for me. I was working. You were…not vacationing. With the movie star.”

  A spray of white snow dusted the air as he switch-backed to the left easily. She followed clumsily.

  “She’s not a star,” he finally said, as if that were an answer. As if she’d asked a question.

  “You can leave now, you know,” she called out.

  A snort came floating back up. “Leave? Leave you, up here, alone?”

  “I’m all trained up. And it’s just the bunny hill.” The treacherous bunny hill.

  “It’s not the hill I’m worried about.”

  “Oh, just leave.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we have work to do.”

  She stared at his back suspiciously as it zigzagged slowly down the mountainside. “You didn’t bring paperwork with you, did you?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “Bastard,” she muttered, then raised her voice. “What if I don’t want to work on it with you?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “What if I say I’m on vacation?”

  “You’re back. I turned your Gone Fishing sign around and wrote your phone number on it.”

  She gave another gasp. “You did wh— How’d you get in?”

  “I broke in.”

  Her jaw dropped. Nothing came out. She was speechless.

  “Don’t worry,” he reassured her. “I locked up after.”

  She glared impotently at his fashionably-attired back. “Well, that’s too bad for you, Danger, because I have an alarm system. A silent one. With a camera.”

  “No you don’t.” He was right, she didn’t. She skied on in silent fury. “But you should get one,” he added.

  “Oh, I will,” she said through clenched teeth. “And a great, big, vicious dog. Who I’m going to give bits of your clothes to sniff, late at night when you’re up in the gym.”

  He didn’t seem too concerned.

  “What if I say no?” she called.

  He made a nice, effortless turn, switch-backing. As they passed each other, his eyes caught hers. “I’d say your client’s not going to be too happy that I drove all the way up here to get this figured out and you refused.”

  She muttered again, “Bastard,” then raised her voice. “Does the movie star know you’re a bastard?”

  A group of beginning skiers slid by and stared at her with wide eyes. Johnny’s head jerked around too. She flashed him a big, stupid smile.

  She didn’t know if the smile startled him or something else happened, but one moment he was skiing smoothly down the hill, looking at her dopey smile. The next, he just sort of…went over.

  It was glorious.

  He wobbled on his skis, those long, muscular legs, usually clad in Armani trousers and Berluti shoes, went flipping up into the air like a circus act, and landed flat on his back.

  She started laughing.

  He skidded around in an arc on the snow and came to a stop facing uphill, looking at her. She sprayed snow as she made a dramatic halt, palm out, still laughing, trying to act like she wasn’t.

  “No, really, Johnny, I’m not…it’s just…no, really, I’m not….” She was laughing too hard to get it out.

  “I know what you’re doing,” he said evenly.

  She wobbled down to him, a very competent wobble, then even skied around to his downhill side and pressed her skis into the snow and actually stopped herself. She was practically a master.

  She looked down at his prone figure. “You okay?”

  “Fine.” He started to get to his feet on an icy patch and his skis got away from him a little. He ended up halfway underneath her. She froze.

  He looked up from his low vantage point between her legs, and smiled.

  Now the thing with Johnny Danger was, he had weapons. Talent, determination, gaze, allure: he was a veritable arsenal of masculinity. And right now, he might have been laid out on his back, but he was between a woman’s legs, and there he was in his element.

  “Well,” she said weakly. “There’s nothing I can do about this, so we may as well set up camp for the night.”

  His smile turned positively happy. “Never give up, Jauntie. You never know what’s just around the corner, coming your way. Especially when there’s a man between your legs.”

  Her face flushed hotter. “What man?”

  Like a mountain rising, he pushed his body up on his elbows and pulled himself uphill a few feet until he was free of her, then rose smoothly to his feet.

  He’d been coming her way, apparently, and she wasn’t happy about it. Electrified, confused, angry, but not happy.

  She turned her back on him and went down the hill without another word.

  She reached the bottom alive and without any broken bones, which was more than she could have reasonably expected an hour ago. She felt proud. And grateful. She opened her mouth to be magnanimous about it and say thanks.

  He intercepted her grateful look and said curtly, “We can drive home and do this, or stay here and do it. Up to you.” He looked at her like she better chose right.

  She folded her arms over her chest. “I’m not leaving,” she said, implying that she had a room to stay in, which she did not, as she’d not planned on spending the night. But no way was she being herded out of her vacation by Johnny. Even if her vacation was almost over.

  He loomed at her a moment, then said curtly, “Fine. Meet me in the bar. One hour.” He swooshed around in a snowy little arc and skied off.

  “I don’t work for you, you know,” she shouted after.

  He lifted a gloved hand high in the air without turning, as if saluting the courage of the sentiment. His arm, clad in tight-fitting black, was a thing of masculine beauty as he skied off. Three women turned their heads to follow his progress.

  “Bastard,” she muttered, and looked up to the wall of windows that comprised the fourth floor of the resort.
It was a busy, bustling bar and restaurant. People’s faces peered out of every window. It was packed. He wanted to go over confidential client financials in there?

  Impossible. She could try to get a room, she supposed.

  Whoosh, her face flushed hot.

  No. No hotel rooms. Just public places, like bars or the sides of highways. Anything more private seemed like tempting fate, after the thrill of recklessness she’d felt a few minutes ago, staring up into Johnny’s eyes.

  But still, that bar was way too public.

  Her phone chirped. Oh good, she was back in range. She picked up.

  “Not that one,” Johnny’s voice said through the phone. “There’s another bar. Top floor, west side, banquet hall.”

  Mind-reader. She looked up and saw he was only about five yards away. “What are you, the NSA?” she called to him.

  His voice came back through the phone, “Yep, undercover. You’re being investigated. Just come quietly, ma’am.”

  For a second, she froze. All the blood that had rushed to her face a moment ago went flooding out again. Then she realized he was joking. He must be joking. Of course. It was a joke. Relief swarmed through her, buzzing bees in her blood.

  “That’s a joke, right?” she said into the phone, trying to sound sure.

  He glanced over his shoulder.

  “I didn’t know you had it in you,” she explained weakly.

  His eyes held hers as he spoke into his phone. “’Course not, Jauntie. Because you don’t know anything about me. One hour,” he said, and clicked off.

  It sounded like a threat.

  Chapter Four

  SHE SAT in the empty bar-slash-banquet hall forty-three minutes later, a good, reproving seventeen minutes early. Time enough to select a table and put her back to the wall before Johnny arrived.

  She took a table by the windows, set her huge, shapeless bag with the plethora of accoutrements she took most everywhere—pencils, pads of paper, calculator, vodka, lipstick, sugar packets—on the floor beside her chair, then plunked down the two grandé coffees she’d purchased in the overpriced café downstairs.

  Then, hurriedly, she did all the things she hadn’t planned on needing to do until she got home again: brush her hair; took off her long johns; pulled on jeans; swiped liner across her lips and eyes.