Hot Ice by Nora Roberts Page B

strode back into the next room and began to rifle her cases.
    “Dammit, Doug, those are my things.”
    “You’ll get them back, for Chrissake.” Choosing a handful of cosmetics at random, he started back to the bath.
    “That moisturizer costs me sixty-five dollars a bottle.”
    “For this?” Interested, he turned the bottle over. “And I thought you were practical.”
    “I’m not leaving this room without it.”
    “Okay.” He tossed it back to her and dumped the rest on the vanity. “This’ll do.” As he passed through the suite again, he stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette and litanother. “We’ve got just about enough,” he decided as he crouched down to close Whitney’s case. A little swatch of lace caught his eye. He lifted out a pair of sheer bikini briefs. “You fit in these?” He could see her in them. He knew better than to let his imagination go in that direction, but he could see her in them and nothing else.
    She resisted the urge to snatch them out of his hand. That was easy. The pressure that formed low in her stomach as he brushed his fingers over the material wasn’t as easily controlled. “When you’ve finished playing with my underwear, why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
    “We check in.” After a moment, Doug tossed the little excuse of lace back in her bag. “Then we take our bags down the service elevator and get back to the airport. Our flight leaves in an hour.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
    He snapped her bag closed. “Didn’t come up.”
    “I see.” Whitney took a stroll around the suite until she thought her temper might hold. “Let me explain something to you. I don’t know how you worked before, and it isn’t important. This time”—she turned back to face him— “this time, you’ve got a partner. Whatever little plans you have in your head are half mine.”
    “You don’t like the way I work, you can back out right now.”
    “You owe me.” When he started to object, she took a step closer, drawing her book from her purse as she moved. “Should I read off the list?”
    “Screw your list. I’ve got gorillas on my ass. I can’t worry about accounting.”
    “You’d better worry about it.” Still calm, she dropped the book back into her purse. “Without me you’ll go treasure hunting with empty pockets.”
    “Sugar, a couple hours in this hotel and I’d have enough money to take me anywhere I wanted to go.”
    She didn’t doubt it, but her gaze remained level with his. “But you don’t have time to play cat burglar and we both know it. Partners, Douglas, or you fly to Madagascar with eleven dollars in your pocket.”
    Damn her for knowing what he had, almost to the penny. He crushed out his cigarette, then picked up his own bag. “We’ve got a plane to catch. Partner.”
    Her smile came slowly, and with such a gleam of satisfaction he was tempted to laugh. Whitney slipped on her shoes and picked up a tote bag. “Get that case, will you?” Before he could swear at her, she was moving to the door. “I only wish I’d had time for a bath.”
    Because of the ease with which they rode the service elevator down and walked out of the hotel, Whitney imagined he’d used that escape route before. She decided she could drop a letter to Georges in a few days and ask him to store her things until she could pick them up. She hadn’t even had a chance to wear that blouse yet. And the color was very flattering.
    All in all it seemed like a waste of time to her, but she was willing to humor Doug, for the moment. Besides, in the mood he was in they were better off in a plane than sharing a suite. And she wanted some time to think. If the papers he had, or some of them at any rate, were in French, then it was obvious he couldn’t read them. She could. A smile touched her lips. He wanted to ditch her, she wasn’t fool enough to think otherwise, but she’d just made herself even more useful. All she had to do now was persuade him to