The Lady and the Lion Read Online Free

family. And I won't be calling every morning. Your secretary isn't hopeless, Dad, and you aren't nearly as absent-minded as you think; you don't need me to keep your life in order."
    He was silent.
    There was a great deal Erin would have to tell him eventually. As he'd said, they needed to talk face to face. But even though she'd managed to say more than she had expected to be able to, she wasn't yet ready to confront the problems head-on. She'd given him something to think about, and that was enough for now.
    "I'll call you in a few days."
    "Erin—"
    "In a few days. Dad. I love you. Bye." She cradled the receiver and stared at the phone for a few moments, feeling that a weight had eased even if it hadn't completely disappeared. She wasn't sure her father would patiently wait until she decided to call him again, but she hoped he would. And she brushed aside the faint pang of guilt she felt at having hit him with this just when he was preparing to take on a new assignment. Where her father was concerned, there would never be a "right" time, she knew.
    She rose from the edge of the bed before she realized where she was going, but wasn't very surprised that her steps led her directly to the balcony doors. He had given her the courage to begin confronting her problems, and she wanted to tell him that. She opened the French doors and went out into the cool darkness.
    He wasn't there. She knew. She felt it. There was an absence, an emptiness on the other side of the security screen. Still, distrusting her own senses, she couldn't help but ask softly, "Are you there?"
    Silence, except for the muted sound of the waves below.
    Disappointment and an odd sense of hurt swept over her, and Erin chided herself for the feelings. What was wrong with her? It wasn't as if they had an appointment out here, or that she could expect anything at all from him.
    "Idiot," she muttered to herself. Maybe he'd gone straight to bed, tired after work. Or maybe his job had ended and he'd checked out of the hotel.
    He was a stranger, after all. Just a quiet voice in the darkness that had eased her anxiety and shown her the right path to take. She didn't know him. Not his name. Not even what he looked like. And why did he matter to her? It was ridiculous. She'd wanted no demands, no obligations or expectations, and here she was upset because he wasn't where she'd expected him to be, where she wanted him to be.
    She reminded herself of all that. But she waited. The eastern horizon lightened, graying toward dawn. The first purple and pink tendrils of light turned red and then gold. The sun peeked over the rim of the ocean cautiously, then lifted, finally, to announce a new day.
    He didn't come.
    Keith hadn't expected it to be so difficult. He'd told himself firmly he wouldn't go out onto the balcony the third morning, and he managed not to. Instead, he had remained in his sitting room, gazing at the balcony doors, watching the dawn from that silent, lonely vantage point. When he finally went to bed, he didn't sleep well.
    His first clear thought on waking in the afternoon was of her. He wondered if she'd called the man in her life, if she was still worried. He wanted to know those answers with an anxiety that unnerved him—and made him angry. What on earth was wrong with him? For months, he'd been single-minded to the point of obsession, all his thoughts and determination, all his emotions, fixed immovably on the plans he had so cautiously put into motion.
    And now... He was so close he could almost feel hot breath on the back of his neck, the end of it all finally in sight, and at the very point when he most needed every thread of his concentration he couldn't get this woman out of his mind.

Two
     
    Dangerous wasn't the word for it.
    He didn't know what it meant, this fixation on a woman whose name he didn't know, whose face he'd never seen. The timing couldn't have been worse, he didn't like what was happening to him. He didn't like it because he couldn't