get out of it for a week. Considering it was the longest conversation they’d ever had, Miranda thought she should make him angry more often. ‘You must have done the close-protection course.’
‘Stop changing the subject.’
She sighed heavily as they rounded a corner. ‘I think you’re overreacting a tad to my having tea at the Waldorf, don’t you? Was I dancing on a table when you got there?’
Tyler stopped so suddenly he had to yank her back into place when she got a couple of steps ahead.
‘Whoopsies.’ Miranda giggled when she almost tripped over, tipsy on the headiness of her success.
He let go of her elbow when she was steady on her feet. ‘You don’t get it, do you?’
‘That this is strike two?’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I heard you. One more strike and—’
His body loomed over her, the tip of his nose barely an inch away from hers as his voice rumbled, ‘Get in the damn car.’
Miranda hadn’t even noticed it was there and, frankly, with his mouth in kissing distance, she couldn’t care less. She angled her head in a move that suggested she was about to fit their lips together and lifted her chin, reducing the gap to millimetres. Then she looked deep into cobalt-blue eyes and whispered, ‘Make. Me.’
The gaze glittering with promise of the danger she so desperately craved wandered lazily over her face. His warm breath mingled with hers while her heart thundered so loudly she could hear it in her ears. It didn’t matter that they were standing in the middle of a street in Manhattan. It didn’t matter that there were people everywhere and dozens of cars driving by and that pretty much everyone in the universe had a camera on their phone. All that mattered was how badly she wanted to be kissed.
There was nothing beyond burning need and him.
When her heavy-lidded gaze lowered to his mouth she saw a corner of it tug upwards.
‘You don’t want to do that,’ he said in a low, husky, unbelievably sexy voice before moving his head so he could whisper in her ear. ‘I’m more trouble than you can handle.’
It was as if he’d placed all of her fantasies within her grasp. Endless possibilities spun around and around in her head in ever decreasing circles with Tyler as the focal point. Miranda blinked at him while he leaned away from her and reached for the door. She turned towards the vehicle and blindly took a step forwards when a thought finally made it through her dizziness. They were just two small words but the weight of their importance felt immense.
‘We’ll see...’
The voice that said them wasn’t hers; it was the sultry voice of the siren she’d always suspected lived somewhere deep inside but had been afraid to seek out. Now she realized the temptress had been with her each time she stepped out of the changing room, had fed on his reaction and was gaining the strength she needed to break free.
As Miranda got into the SUV and he slammed the door shut she experienced the crippling fear that stemmed from the threat of its imminent release.
She didn’t know what scared her more: having the siren’s call answered by someone she would drag to disaster or having it ignored and remaining isolated and alone, endlessly calling out to someone who would sail through her life without stopping to take a second look.
ELEVEN
It took intense concentration for Tyler to focus through a blinding rage so he could drive them back to the mansion.
Discovering she’d slipped out through a hidden door in a mural-covered wall at the back of the changing room meant he didn’t have to suffer the humiliation of knowing she’d tiptoed out behind his back. But the thought someone might have taken her made him experience his second wave of unwarranted panic in a handful of hours. The realization she’d stood in front of the hidden door while he checked the space both eased his mind and made him angry as hell.
The latter feeling grew when he had another moment of clarity. He’d been played since the moment they got there.
By the time he’d searched the store, tracked down Janice and interrogated her until she confessed Miranda had left in a cab there wasn’t a rock in the state of New York he wouldn’t have turned over to find her. The mayor’s head of security would rue the day he’d given him the scope to ‘do whatever he needed to do’ when he locked