"It is." Reed stared thoughtfully at his sandwich. "I don't think I appreciated it enough as a kid. Or
maybe I just thought that's how it was supposed to be. Not anymore."
Taylor watched his expression. "Do you mind if I ask you something personal?"
"Go ahead."
"The path you took—fast-track, high-powered, lots of money, and high visibility—it seems kind of incongruous with the rest of your family. What motivated you?"
"I did." Reed propped an elbow on the counter. "I had a more high-profile plan for my future, complete with all the things you just mentioned. I had the academic ability to get scholarship money and financial aid. I took advantage of it. And here I am."
There was an edge to Reed's tone, one Taylor hadn't expected.
"You're not happy with your decision?"
He shot her a look. "Am I being analyzed?"
"No, just questioned. You don't have to answer."
"Let's just say I'm doing a little restructuring of my life, based on months of soul-searching and reconnecting with some strong, solid values I'd begun losing touch with. Going home for Christmas brought the whole thing front and center for me. It drove home some fundamental truths I'd been struggling to find, or maybe just to remember."
The way Reed said that brought a new and not very welcome thought to Taylor.
"These truths and restructuring, do they involve a woman?" she asked cautiously.
He turned to face her, his midnight gaze intensifying as he realized what she was asking and why.
Slowly, he shook his head, his focus shifting to the here and now. "Nope. No woman." A meaningful pause. "At least not yet."
The tension in the room escalated, its foundation steeped in something far more immediate than Taylor had anticipated. She'd opened this door on her own. The problem was, she wasn't sure she was
equipped to walk through it.
That didn't mean she didn't want to.
"I'm glad," she heard herself say, responding to both parts of the equation.
"Are you?"
"Yes."
"Good. So am I." He stood up, pulling her to her feet as he did. He tugged her closer, tipped up her
chin, and kissed her.
The kiss was explicit, sexually charged, yet not overpowering. Reed took her mouth in gradual degrees, his palm massaging the back of her neck as his lips opened hers and his tongue slid inside, lightly caressing. It was as if he was intentionally holding back, determined to take only as much as she was willing, or emotionally ready, to give.
She didn't know what she was ready for. But she knew this felt better than anything had felt in a very long time.
She moved closer, gripping Reed's biceps and tilting back her head to give him better access. He took
the cue, pulling her against him, nudging her arms up around his neck, then slanting his mouth across
hers and kissing her senseless. It was a wildly erotic awakening, hot and slow and shivering with promise.
Maybe too much promise.
Taylor flattened her palms against his chest and pushed, her breathing uneven as she put an arm's length between them, trying to regain her equilibrium.
Reed made no move to pull her back. He just watched her, his own breathing unsteady. "Should I apologize?"
Mutely, she shook her head.
This time, he stepped closer, capturing her chin with his forefinger and bringing up her gaze to meet his. "Are you sure?"
"Yes." Taylor found her voice. "Of course I'm sure. You didn't just kiss me. I kissed you, too."
His expression remained solemn. "I know. That doesn't mean you're not regretting it now. You've got lingering memories of this kind of thing that aren't exactly pleasant."
She wasn't as much surprised by his sensitivity as she was touched. "Nothing about what just happened reminded me of Gordon. And, no, I'm not feeling regret. I'm feeling confused and off balance."
"And you like being in control."
"Not of others, but of myself, yes."
"I can relate to that." Reed picked up his bottle of water and took a swig. "So we'll go slow," he determined, setting down the bottle. "For now."
Taylor's brows rose. "For now? What does that mean?"
"It means, until we speed it up."
"And when will that be?"
"When you're ready." His knuckles brushed her cheek. "Don't worry. There won't be any miscommunications. I'll be able to tell." A corner of his mouth lifted. "And, if I'm wrong, you can
always use some of the intercepting techniques I'll be teaching you on me. You'll be a pro by then."
Taylor laughed. The laughter felt almost as good as the kiss.
* * *
The man stood outside, across Seventy-second Street
, ostensibly pausing to check his watch. He
glanced up at Taylor's apartment building, a bitter glint in his eyes.
Reed Weston had been up there for hours. That was unacceptable. It wasn't part of his plan. No man was. Not Reed, not anyone. Only him. He'd have to deal with this. Before things got out of hand.
Turning up the collar on his coat, he walked away.
12:45 A.M.
Considering how exhausted she was, Taylor thought she'd fall right asleep. After zero shut-eye last
night, a strenuous self-defense lesson with Reed, and the unexpected follow-up to that lesson—well,
all that constituted enough physical and mental activity to make her assume she'd be dead to the world.
No such luck.
Sighing, she sat up in bed, pulling up her knees and wrapping her arms around them. Talk about emotional complications. Reed Weston was a huge one. He'd come along at a time when she was vulnerable. That was bad. And she was attracted as hell to him. That was worse. If they got involved, there was every chance it would be for all the wrong reasons.
Reed had said they'd take it slow—until they took it fast. That was as ambiguous as it was unsettling.
She just wished she knew the rules. Every relationship had them. Usually, she defined them. In this
case, they seemed to be defining her.
God, this was so unlike her. In-control Taylor. Take-care-of-everything-and-everyone Taylor. Emotions-safely-under-wraps Taylor.
Unraveling-like-a-ball-of-yarn Taylor.
She pressed her fingertips to her throbbing temples, trying to massage away the pain and the insomnia.
Yeah, right.
It was no wonder she couldn't sleep. She was on emotional overload. Not only that, she couldn't stop thinking about that bizarre, frightening incident at the cemetery on Saturday. Had the guy really just
been an eccentric visitor, some sleazy weirdo, or had he been there specifically for her?
This speculation was pointless. The guy was gone. The incident was over. She was blowing things way out of proportion.
The telephone rang. Shrilly. Insistently.
Taylor jolted awake, her entire body breaking out in a sweat. The digits on her clock radio said
3:55 a.m. The last time she'd been awakened by a middle-of-the-night phone call was when Gordon's boat exploded and Steph died.
She flipped on her lamp and stared at the telephone's LCD display. It read "private." Just like last time.
Trembling, she lifted the receiver. "Hello?"
"You're alone." A strange male voice, its pitch fluctuating unnaturally, grazed her ear. "Good girl.
Keep it that way—for everyone's sake."
A click, and the line went dead.
CHAPTER 10
FEBRUARY 3
6:45 P.M.
WVNY
It had been a crank call. It had to be.
Taylor told herself that for the hundredth time since last night. The voice had been disguised, fake. Its synthesized quality and varied pitch suggested it had been transmitted through one of those voice-changing gadgets—gadgets that were available to the general public and could be bought over the Internet for less than
fifty bucks.
So maybe her caller had been a bunch of adolescent guys playing games. They could have punched in random telephone numbers, one of which happened to be hers. Then, when they heard a woman's
voice, they'd decided to go for the dramatic.
Or maybe it had been Chris Young. Maybe he'd been going for payback for that talk she'd had with
his parents two and a half weeks ago.
No. Impossible. Her telephone number was unlisted. Chris couldn't get it. Neither could anyone else. There wasn't any connection between the call and Saturday's incident at the cemetery. They were two unnerving, coincidental, but unrelated events.
Struggling out of her jacket, Taylor gave up the pretense. It was no use. No matter how hard she tried, how much logic she used, she couldn't calm her jitters.
She hadn't shut an eye the rest of the night. She'd lain awake, trembling, waiting to see if the caller
would try again. He hadn't. But she couldn't relax. As a result, her attention span at school today had been lousy. To make matters worse, Chris Young had shot her an odd, searching look when she'd
blown by him in the hall, her posture stiff, her expression glazed. Was he checking out the results of
his handiwork?
God, she was a mess.
She made her way to the broadcasting booth. Passing by the operations department, she poked her
head into the kitchen—where at least four staff members were gathered around a box of rapidly disappearing Krispy Kremes—long enough to offer a wave and an apologetic smile.
"Hi, guys. Sorry I'm late."
"Hey, no problem." Bill Warren, who handled Sports Talk, the two-hour radio spot directly preceding hers, shot her a lopsided grin. "I figured if you weren't here by seven, I'd do the show for you. I'd be
a huge hit."
"Yeah, right." Jack Taft, the program manager, set down his coffee mug—which read #1 MANAGER
OF THE STATION THAT TRIES HARDER— and made a snorting sound. "You'd lose half our listening audience by the time you took your first call."
"No way," Bill protested, his grin broadening. "I'm a real intuitive guy. Just ask around."
"That's not necessary," Taylor reassured him, forcing a smile. "Your reputation precedes you. You're
a pussycat." She had to focus on business. She had a ton of work to cram into the hour before she went on the air. As it was, her e-mails would have to wait until afterward. That wasn't a hardship. It just meant she'd be leaving late. But, hey, she never slept anyway, so what difference did it make? As for whatever important paperwork was on tap, Laura would be in and out during radio breaks to brief her. For now, she needed to touch base with her producer. "Where's Kevin?" she asked.
"In the studio," Jack replied. "Waiting for you. He's already got a line of call-ins queued up. It's going to be a busy night."
"Good. The busier, the better. I'm not up for a monologue tonight."
The program manager shot her a sympathetic glance. "Tough weekend?"
"The toughest."
Jack respected that and dropped the subject. "Okay, enough chitchat. Bill, break's over. You're back on in forty-five seconds. Taylor, grab a doughnut—or whatever's left of one—and head down to the booth."
Taylor gave him an appreciative look. "Is Rick around?"
"Yup. He's going over some audio details with Dennis." Dennis was a promising audio tech, a little shy, but being around this place for a while would change that. Besides, he had a few other newbies to commiserate with. Sally Carver was a perky blonde intern who was attending broadcasting school,
hoping to get a jump start into the production end of the business. And James Birney was a freckled, charming guy with a degree in advertising who was working in sales, trying to help bring in new
accounts.
As for Rick, he was just a great, all-around guy, who'd been having a tough time himself. His marriage was going down the tubes.
Taylor cleared her throat. "How's Rick doing? Are things any better?"
"Doesn't seem that way. He's not saying much."
"I'll go down there now." She glanced at the ravaged box of doughnuts, now a mass of crumbs and broken-off pieces, and rolled her eyes. "I'll pass on the snack." She headed off to her broadcasting
booth, determined to maintain her newly established, if fragile, composure.
That resolution lasted less than a minute.
"Hi, Kev," Taylor greeted her producer as she walked through the door. "Sorry to cut things so close."
"Not to worry, at least not tonight," Kevin assured her, punching off whatever phone line he'd been talking on. "Tomorrow night, now that's another story. We've got a live guest scheduled. The author
of Bad Kids, Worse Parents. She's a little on the schiz-y side. You'd better be here early to prep her."
"I remember. And I will. Promise."
Kevin's phone rang.
Taylor jumped as if she'd been stung.
Frowning, Kevin answered the call, scrutinizing Taylor as he dealt with the caller, asking the customary questions, getting what he needed, then queuing up the call.
"Do you want to tell me what that was about?" he demanded, swivel-ing his chair around to face Taylor.
She feathered a shaky hand through her hair. "What what was about?"
"Gimme a break. You just hit the ceiling at the sound of a ringing telephone. What's got you so freaked?"
"Life." Taylor gave a weary shrug. "I'm a basket case. 'Overreact' seems to be my middle name these days."
Before Kevin could respond, Rick walked in, followed by the new guy, Dennis, who was sorting through some disks.
He stopped behind Rick, who'd come to a halt and was scrutinizing Taylor.
"Hey." Rick's greeting was warm, but his smile didn't quite reach his eyes. He looked like hell, haggard and out of sorts. "I was getting worried about you. You're never this late."
"I know. I'm really sorry. It's been a rocky couple of days." Taylor refrained from saying more.
Dennis hesitated in the doorway, fidgeting from one sneakered foot to the other. "Rick, if you want, I'll leave these disks with you and sit in another night."
Rick inclined his head in Taylor's direction. "I told Dennis he could observe tonight's show, since it's
just us and no guests."
"Absolutely." Taylor waved Dennis in. "Tonight's fine. Things are just crazy because I'm late. Grab a
seat and watch Rick and Kevin work their magic. There's no one better in the business to learn from. Although if you were hoping for a doughnut, you can forget it. The last whole one disappeared into Bill's mouth a few minutes ago."
"You've got to be kidding." Rick grimaced. "That's a record, even here. That box lasted ten minutes."
"I'll pick up some more," Dennis offered. "That'll give you guys a few minutes to get started before I
start bugging you with questions. Be back in ten." He ducked out of the room.
Rick eyed Taylor with concern. "The tension in here's so thick, it's like walking onto a soap-opera set. What's up?"
"We were just getting to that when you walked in," Kevin informed him. "My phone rang and Taylor flipped out."
"Why?"
Both guys stared at Taylor, waiting expectantly for an explanation.
She sighed. "Look, a few things happened over the weekend that threw me. Can we just leave it at that?"
"No." Rick didn't mince words. "What things? Did that lawyer who's teaching you self-defense try something? Did he come on to you? Is that what this is about?"
"No." The ironic part was that what had happened between her and Reed had turned out to be the highlight of her weekend. "There was just some creep hanging around the cemetery when I visited
Steph's grave on Saturday. He came after me. I ran back to my car, and he took off. Probably a
mugger who changed his mind. Still, the whole thing spooked me. To top that off, I got a crank call
last night. Some weirdo o
n a voice changer who told me to keep sleeping alone. I guess the two things combined were a little too much."
"Taylor." Rick wasn't ready to let this go. "You're pretty levelheaded. Did you feel like that guy at the cemetery and the one on the phone were the same person?"
"My common sense says no. But my emotions are another story. So, yes, the whole thing got to me.
As for the phone call, what made it worse is that it brought back memories of when that detective
called to tell me about the boat explosion—" Taylor broke off. "Look, guys, can we not talk about this anymore? I'd rather concentrate on the show. It'll give me something tangible and normal to focus on, which will calm me down. Okay?"