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Gracie met Rocco’s dark and hard gaze. Something in his demeanour had changed. He was back into questioning mode. And then the full reality of her situation flooded back. She flushed and avoided his eyes. She felt like such a pathetic failure at that moment.
‘Gracie …’ he said warningly, and her insides flipped again at the way he said her name. It felt incredibly intimate.
She looked at him and squared her shoulders. She couldn’t go any lower in his estimation, and perhaps if he knew just how harmless she was he’d let her go?
‘I lived in Bethnal Green until this morning. But I lost my job two days ago and they wouldn’t give me my wages. I couldn’t give my landlord the full rent today, so he suggested I make it up to him in other ways.’
Gracie shuddered reflexively when she remembered his sweaty face, grabbing hands and acrid breath. Before she knew it Rocco had moved. She felt her right hand being picked up and he was inspecting the grazed and reddened knuckles. She’d forgotten, and winced slightly because they were still tender.
He speared her with a glance, ‘You hit him?’
She shrugged slightly, more mortified than ever now. She hated her instinct to fight. She’d had it ever since someone had picked on Steven when they’d been tiny. ‘He was backing me into a corner. I couldn’t get out.’
Still holding her hand, Rocco said grimly, ‘I suppose I should consider myself lucky you didn’t aim a swing at me too.’
Gracie looked up at his hard jaw and figured she would have broken her hand if she had. He was standing very close now, still cradling her hand. Her belly clenched and a coil of something hot seemed to stretch from her breasts right down to between her legs. And as if on cue she felt a throb, a pulse coming to life.
She pulled her hand away and started babbling. ‘I left my cases at Victoria train station in the left luggage. I should go and get them and find somewhere for the night.’
She was off the stool and backing away now, as if she’d forgotten for a moment why she was there in the first place, suddenly terrified at the weak longing that had sprung up inside her when Rocco had held her hand.
He continued to just look at her with his arms folded. ‘I told you before that you won’t make it to the next floor if you try to leave.’
Panic rose up, constricting Gracie’s voice. ‘You can’t keep me here. That would be kidnap. I only came to Steven’s office to try and find him. That’s all. I really don’t have an ulterior motive. I didn’t take anything and I didn’t know about the money.’
Rocco looked at the woman in front of him. Strange how his entire world had contracted down to her since he’d seen her in the lift. For a second that knowledge threatened to blast something open inside him, but Rocco reminded himself that she was providing him with the key to finding the culprit who’d had the temerity to think he could take advantage of him.
That was why he hadn’t thought about anything else.
It had nothing to do with the fact that just a moment ago, when he’d held her hand in his and seen her bruised knuckles, he’d felt rage within him at the thought of some faceless man threatening her.
To divert his mind away from those provocative thoughts, he asked, ‘Why did you lose your job?’
He could see her hands ball into fists. She was like a glorious feline animal, bristling and lashing out in defence, and a curious weakness invaded his chest. When he’d watched her eating ravenously he’d been mesmerised—first of all because he wasn’t used to seeing women eat like that, and also because it had reminded him of him. He would never forget what it was to be hungry.
‘I had issues with some of the customers.’
Rocco arched a brow and welcomed being forced to re-focus on the present. ‘Customers?’
She flushed pink. ‘I worked in a bar in a less than salubrious part of town.’ And then she said in a rush, ‘Just temporarily.’
Again Rocco felt a kind of rage growing within him—not at her, but for her. He could well imagine men finding her feisty allure something to challenge and harness. She was proving to be altogether far more of an enigma than she’d appeared that night just a week ago.
Out of nowhere, immediate and incendiary, Rocco had the desire to see her tamed and acquiescent, and he wanted to be the one to tame her. Sheer shock at the strength of that desire made Rocco blanch for a moment. Women like her should hold no appeal for him. It felt like a self-betrayal. Before she could see anything of his loss of composure, and wondering if he’d lost his mind completely, he strode forward and stopped in front of her, as if to prove to himself that he could stand in front of her and restrain himself from tipping her over his shoulder like some caveman. The surreal circumstances of their meeting and her connection to Steven Murray was causing this completely uncharacteristic response, that was all.
As implacable as a stone wall, he told her now, ‘You’re not leaving this apartment until your brother—’ He broke off and swore for a moment. ‘If he even is your brother, is found and brought to task for his actions. Now, give me the ticket for your bags and I’ll have them picked up.’
Scant minutes later Gracie found herself being shown into a sumptuously decorated guest bedroom. She still wasn’t entirely sure how she’d allowed herself to be bulldozed into submission, but on some very secret level she felt so tired. For the first time in her life she was being subservient to someone else and she couldn’t drum up the energy to fight it. She had no one to turn to and nowhere to go—literally. An uncharacteristic wave of loneliness washed over her.
‘There’s a bathroom through there, with a robe and toiletries. When your bags come I’ll bring them to you.’
Gracie looked around with wide eyes gritty with fatigue. Rocco was striding towards the door and she envied his seemingly unstoppable force. If she’d known there was a chance she might bump into him again there was no way she would have ever attempted to go to her brother’s office. She sighed. Too late for regrets now.
Rocco turned at the door, filling it with his broad frame. ‘We’ll discuss where we go from here in the morning.’
Some sliver of fight sparked within her. ‘You’ll let me walk out of this apartment. Because if you don’t—’
He cut her off. ‘You’ll what? Call the police?’ He shook his head and smiled with insufferable coolness. ‘No, I don’t think so. I’m sure you don’t want the police sniffing around your brother any more than I want the news leaked that I employed an inside trader.’
