At Your Service (Silhouette Desire) by Amy Jo Cousins Read Free Book Online Page A

staying?”
    “At the Sherradin Hotel over on Broadway” she’d said, and flinched at the anger that bloomed over his face in an instant.
    “Are you an idiot? Do you know what kind of a place that is?” His voice had been loud, booming throughout the room. His eyes, which she’d once thought of as being like dark, starlit water, had been hard and jabbed at her like wrought-iron spikes. “Most of the people staying at that place are renting a room by the hour, whether they’re hooking or dealing. What the hell are you doing there?”
    Gathering her pride around her like a tattered shield, Grace had answered him calmly.
    “It’s cheap and the door has a lock.”
    “A lock? At the Sherradin, you’d better wedge a chair under the doorknob before you go to sleep.”
    “I do,” she’d said truthfully.
    At her short answer, he’d stopped and stared at her, flexing his hands on the smooth varnish of the bar like a man looking for something to strangle. Pride alone had kept her looking evenly back at him. She might be embarrassed to be living in a room at a hotel patronized almost exclusively by prostitutes and drug dealers, but she’d be damned if she’d be ashamed of it.
     
     
    After thirty seconds and a short, pithy curse, Tyler strode to the phone and started punching in numbers with stiff fingers.
    “Sarah, it’s Tyler. I need a favor from you, darlin’. Can you go over to the Sherradin Hotel on Broadway before you come in here?” He let out a short bark of laughter at the woman’s response. “No, not me. You’ll be meeting Grace.” He looked over to where Grace sat stiff-backed at the bar and grimaced. “That’s exactly what I said when she told me where she was staying. I was hoping you could meet her over there in ten minutes, help her pack her bags and bring everything back here. We’ll figure out where she can stay later.”
    When Grace started to protest, Tyler’s stare and the finger he pointed sharply at the chair next to her had her sitting without saying a word.
    “Thanks, Sarah. She’ll be out front.” Another pause, and this time when Tyler ran his eyes over her, Grace could feel the heat in them from across the room. “Don’t worry. She won’t open that smart mouth to argue. Thanks again.” He hung up the phone.
    “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but—”
    “Shut up and sit down.”
    “I am perfectly fine at the hotel.”
    “Grace.”
    The single word had her shutting up and sitting again. Tyler let out an audible sigh and pressed his fingers against his temples, shaking his head. When she worked up the nerve to meet his eyes again, she saw that all the anger had drained out of them and a calm sympathy remained.
    “Grace, when I hire someone, I like to think that they’ll be able to go home and get a decent night’s rest before coming back to work the next day. At that hotel, you’re as likely to get your throat slit as sleep through the night. Now, Sarah’s going to meet you there and you are going to check out this afternoon. We’ll figure the rest out later.”
    To her horror, Grace felt the tears fill her eyes again. She blinked them back. The thought of not having to sleep on nerves’ edge at every sound in the hallway was something she’d never thought to be so grateful for. But she wouldn’t cry, damn it. She stretched a hand toward him across the bar uncertainly. She let it drop after a moment, her palm resting flat against the silken grain of the wood.
    “Thank you.” She hoped he could hear the sincerity in her words.
    After a moment she looked down at her hand, feeling the break of the visual connection with Tyler like the sudden snapping of a taut cord. Would she ever get over the sheer presence of this man? As she watched, both of his hands came sliding over the bar to rest on top of hers, and the sudden catch of breath in her chest made it clear that, no, she might never get past this. His fingers curled around the sides of her hand to