She grabbed his sleeve. "I just have one question," she said, when his eyes came back around to hers, and she suddenly floundered in her purpose.

She lowered her voice. "Why haven't you tried to see me?"

"I believe you made it clear where I stood in your life." One side of his mouth suddenly slid into a grin. "I thought I would leave you to contemplate your future with me. Do you miss me yet?"

She narrowed her eyes. "I see," she said, recognizing his conceit for what it was, "you thought by ignoring me, I'd want to see you?"

The fact that she was standing in his office answered her question for him.

His eyes touched her lips, and it occurred to her there was nothing indifferent or businesslike about him when it came to her presence. "To use your cliche, 'all is fair in love and war.' You want to make war. I am only interested in making love."

Unwillingly flustered by his outrageous reply, she opened her mouth, torn between shock and ire. "You' re an ass, Ryan."

"Thank you, Rache." Bent slightly, he touched his lips to her hair. "My opinion of your charm is only superseded by that of your hat. Then again," he drawled, "everything south of that hat and north of your charm, reminds me of why I'm in love with you, too."

Rachel stared in disbelief. Did he even realize what he'd just said?

The noise in the office behind him grew louder as it sounded like the meeting he'd left had adjourned itself without him. "Mr. Donally?" A man from the office stood at the door. "We're nearly finished in here. Do you wish us to conclude without you?"

His hands still in his pockets, he turned. "I'll be there in a moment."

Covering her cheeks with her cooler hands, Rachel hastily sought to regain her composure. She was aware that she was in his way.

A strange tender light came into his eyes as he caught her staring at him. "Is there a particular reason you came by today, Rachel?"

Her gaze touched the doorway to his office, and she shook her head. She could not tell him about Devonshire here. "It can wait."

"I have a business engagement to attend tonight," he said, then proceeded to tell her he was busy for the rest of the week, which Rachel highly doubted under the circumstances of his earlier admission. She refused to allow him to manipulate her into missing him. Nor did she believe that he was in love with her, deciding his statement had surely been a figure of speech.

"Will you be going to Paris?" she asked, wondering about his other acquisition.

"If I did, would you come with me?"

Rachel looked into his eyes, started to tell him absolutely not, when he took her chin into the warm palm of his hand and bent over her mouth. "We could make love all night in satin sheets." His breath fluttered over her lips. "You can dine off silver and gold, bathe in chocolate. We could sin to our hearts' content."

She blushed hotly, and he laughed. Then his mouth lowered, and he was kissing her.

A hot openmouthed hungry kiss that pinned her feet to the floor. He tasted like rich coffee, and she went from uncertain to willing in the time it took for her to breathe.

No one kissed like Ryan. Not in her entire life had any man touched every one of her five senses as he could with only his mouth. He could make her hot and buttery-but instead of sinking against him in abject surrender, Rachel wedged her palms between them. His heart pounded in his chest. Dragging in a breath, she broke away.

"You haven't yet earned the right to ask me to go with you anywhere. I don't officially consider myself your wife."

"You are to me." His smile turned wolfish, a contrast to his temper when it came to managing everything about her. "Maybe I'll unofficially give you a child, and in nine months you'll unofficially be a mother."

He eased his fingers around her jaw and traced the contour of her cheeks. Then recognizing her silence for the shock that it was, he lowered his hand. "If you change your mind about missing me, let me know, and I can do something about it."

Breathing hard, Rachel watched him walk back to the office, his gait fluid, an attractive figure in black, and knew exactly why he was so successful at high-level negotiations. "You don't play fair, Ryan," she whispered.

"I never did," he said over his shoulder. "You should know that about me by now."

Weary of dealing with accountants, bookkeepers, and her own heart, Rachel welcomed Johnny's telegram two days later asking for files on the Forth project in Scotland. At least his request gave her something to do in a company that ran with the efficiency of a Swiss clock and didn't seem to need her at all.

Ryan kept himself busy. So could she.

But her resistance to him was a hollow victory, she considered, as she closed the ledger on her desk. Behind her, the sun was beginning to set.

Stewart entered her office. He still wore an overcoat in the summer heat and carried his hat, prepared to leave for the day. "Are you sure you will be all right alone, mum?"

He liked to hover, and she tried to soften her censure. He meant well. "You're not obligated to arrive early every day and stay late because I am here."

Color crept up from his collar. "Perhaps not. But most of us realize what you are trying to do for the company, Miss Bailey."

His words touched her. For she was not sure of anything anymore.

"Not that I would disparage Mr. Donally. He has treated us-"

"You don't need to defend what you feel to me, Mr. Stewart."Rachel didn't know what else to say. She understood the sentiment. She also knew that if Ryandismantled D&B, she would never be sure that he would not do the same to her someday if he decidedthat she'd served her purpose in his life.

Not that she could serve any purpose in his life.

Truly, she could not be more conflicted. "Go home, Mr. Stewart." She smiled. "I will see the doors locked when I leave."

"I have not yet found all of the records for the Scotland sites that Mr. Donally requested," he said. "They

're gone. Someone else has been in the vault."The one thing she had learned about D&B's longtime senior secretary was that he was territorial about his space. "Couldn't the files just be misfiled? The storage cabinets were moved when the basement waspainted in June. Perhaps something got out of order in your system."He looked doubtful. "Maybe there is a chance-""You do not have to search now." Rachel sensed he was about to spend the rest of the weekend looking for lost files. "Tend to it Monday, Mr. Stewart."

"Mr. Donally requested my services on Monday. His secretary is out of the office-"

"Did he consider that you are needed here?"

"The arrangement is only for a few hours during the day until his return from Paris."

Ryan was going to Paris?

"Evidently, something has gone wrong with a business deal he is conducting, and he will be traveling there

to close negotiations." Stewart replied to her expression. "I presume that is why he stayed in town rather than retire to the country as he always does on the weekend. He is leaving tonight."

"I see." Rachel folded her hands on the desk.

She wondered where Lady Gwyneth was, then remembered Brianna had told her yesterday at breakfast that her ladyship was visiting friends in Brighton.

When she looked up from her desk, Stewart had gone.

With the office silent about her, the clock on the shelf ticked away the minutes. The room was hot.

Restless, Rachel walked the empty corridor to the back stairwell that led into the basement. She shoved open the door, welcoming the cooler air.

The walls were built from an old medieval rock structure and served as a firebreak between the

irreplaceable records and the main building. She felt a draft at her feet and knew a ventilation system

circulated the air to help keep mildew at bay. Ryan had designed this portion of D&B after a fire destroyed their Southwark office five years ago. Each floor accessed the stairwell through steel doors. The stones were cold beneath her palm. She lit a sconce at the first-floor landing, surprised to see the vault door ajar.

Once in the basement, she lit a second lamp and held it up against the shadows. The room smelled faintly of turpentine. Once every two years the basement had to be resealed and painted. Wooden file cabinets filled the length of the room. Every document, receipt, and bill of lading D&B ever created or received was here. She disliked the dark, enclosed space. It felt like a crypt, but she soon found the room less distracting as she worked her way through the first row of file cabinets, skimming the labels, looking for anything related to the projects in Scotland, curious as to why they would be missing. Certainly, project records were of no use to anyone but D&B.

The vault door clicked shut.

Bent over a bottom cabinet, she lifted her head. It had only been a faint noise, a vibration in the air, but in the silence surrounding her, the sound was immediately recognizable. She couldn't see the other end of the room in the shadows.

"Is anyone there?"

Silence.

After a moment, she walked around a long row of cabinets. She reached for the door-hesitated-then set her hand on the knob. Locked.

She jiggled the knob. The key wasn't in place.

She didn't remember seeing a key.

Telling herself she wouldn't panic, she calmly returned a moment later with the lantern. She told herself again not to panic as she set the light down and searched on her hands and knees for a key that might have jostled loose from the lock. Damn Ryan and his fireproof contraptions. She attempted to shove a cabinet away from the wall.

How could the bloody door shut of its own accord?

Already feeling as if she couldn't breathe, she knew she was panicking. Rachel slapped her hand against the door, more worried about being trapped in the basement for the weekend than she was about the possibility of any intruder.

Only through enormous self-control did she finally slow her breathing so she wouldn't pass out. Her reticule was upstairs. The lamp in her office burned. The night watchman would notice that she hadn't left when he did his rounds, she thought-pulling her watch from inside her vest pocket and looking at the time-in four hours. When she didn't return home, Brianna and Lord Ravenspur would know-except they were attending an opera tonight. Ryan was leaving for Paris. Rachel held the lamp up to examine the oil, mentally counting the hours before it went dark.

Monday morning was a long way away.

Chapter 17.

R achel lifted her head from her knees. Her legs drawn to her chest, she'd been sitting in the darkness.

The lantern had sputtered out hours ago. A door slammed in the stairwell. The sound of descending footsteps brought her groggily to her feet.

A key jiggled in the door. The lock clicked.

Then Ryan was suddenly standing in the doorway. Backlit from the light in the stairwell, he stepped into the room and, at once, everything that had been dank and frightening no longer felt that way. She swallowed a sob and flung herself into his arms.

"Should I even ask...?" He left the question in the air.

"What kind of awful place did you build?" His collar muffled her voice. He smelled heady and spicy. His arms closed around her, and she remained against his chest. "I thought I was going to be here all night. What are you doing here?" she finally asked.

"The watchman found your reticule," he said against her hair. "He heard your pounding but couldn't find the key. Stewart wasn't home. So, he found me."

Holding her, he was so matter-of-fact. So utterly calm in the face of her panic, that she felt foolish to have burst into tears. Collecting herself, she stepped away from him, half-expecting recriminations for her stupidity. He didn't berate her.

"The door tends to close of its own accord." He held up a large key. "Stewart stores this in his desk. You're supposed to keep the key with you when you're down here." He turned and palmed the ledge above the door. Rachel watched as he revealed another key-as if she could have found the bloody thing in the rafters. "For emergencies, but Stewart is supposed to sign people into this room."

"I didn't know this room needed a key." No one had told her about the protocol. "The door was ajar when I came down."

"It shouldn't have been," he said, an undercurrent beneath his composure she hadn't detected before. "Rachel?" His tone lifted her gaze. "What are you doing here?"

"I was trying to find the Forth project records. Johnny requested them."

"And you had nothing else to do tonight?" She heard the frown in his voice.

Rachel looked at his clothes and realized he'd probably been pulled away from dinner. He should not look so good, she thought resentfully, aware that he didn't seem to be suffering the same trepidation as she was over their personal life.

"It isn't often I get to rescue you, Rache." His grin hinted of self-mockery. "Your self-confidence robs me of my reason to exist in your life."

Rachel dragged in her breath to speak. Movement on the stairwell above her drew his gaze. "The downstairs rooms are clear, sir," the watchman said from the landing.

Ryan took her elbow and climbed with her up the stairs. She glanced at his profile. "Then there was an intruder?"

"You're never to be here alone again. Do you understand?"

"I found a window open," the watchman said, when they reached the top of the stairs. "At least the bloke didn't steal or destroy nothing."

"How long did it take you to find Miss Bailey, McKinney?"

"Ryan"-she caught his arm to her-"it isn't his fault."

"No?" Four other men wearing blue uniforms were standing in the anteroom. "It's his bloody job to watch you while you're here. It's his only job." His hand went to her waist. "Get your things, Rache. My carriage will take you back to Ravenspur's."