Zinnia breathed deeply. “A paranoid matrix?”
“I agree with you. This entire affair has the finger-prints of a matrix all over it,” Nick said softly. “A matrix who undoubtedly knew or suspected that my father was also a matrix.”
“And didn’t trust him?”
“Right.”
Zinnia thought that through. “Talk about conspiracy theories. If what you’re saying is correct, then whoever funded the Third Expedition was also part of it.”
“He was there when my father made his discovery, whatever it was. He understood the significance of it. After he killed my father and the other four men, he took the journal. When he returned, he concealed the records of his own involvement so that there was no way he could be traced to the expedition. And then he systematically erased all documents relating to the venture.”
“Nick, hang on here. You’re going too fast for me. If the killer has had the journal safely hidden for the past thirty-five years, why would the rumors about it have suddenly started up in the past few months?”
“From what I know of the rare-book trade,” Nick said, “I’d guess that the journal may have been lost or stolen recently. It was resold to that collector in New Portland who then died.”
“And poor Morris Fenwick came across it in the estate sale.”
“I told you that whoever searched Morris’s shop the other night was not actually looking for anything,” Nick said. “There was no pattern to the way the place had been torn apart.”
“Which meant that the killer knew the journal was not there. He just wanted the police to think Morris had been murdered for drug money.”
Nick nodded slowly. “The murderer had already commissioned a fake journal from Alfred Wilkes. He planted it so that Polly and Omar would find it and sell it to me. He wanted to put me off the scent.”
Zinnia wrapped her hands around her damp iced coff-tea glass. “Whoever he is, he must not have realized that you’re a high-class matrix.”
“Maybe he thought he could fool me, even if I was a matrix.”
“Very arrogant of him. But, then, this entire plan is breathtakingly arrogant.”
“Yes.”
“Nick, are you sure about all these conclusions? This is a very heavy-duty conspiracy theory, even for a matrix-talent like you.”
“I’m as certain as I can be without hard proof. I have to find out who financed my father’s last expedition.”
“Thirty-five years have gone by,” Zinnia said gently. “And the records have been destroyed.”
Nick’s eyes burned with a fierce light. “Even a matrix-talent would have a hard time getting rid of every single clerk, accountant, and secretary who worked in the budget offices of a large university thirty-five years ago.”
Zinnia frowned. “I see what you mean. There must be a few left who would recall the source of the funds for the Third Expedition. Probably retired by now, though.”
“We can trace them through their pensions. I’ll have Feather make some calls this afternoon.”
Zinnia smiled. “You’re incredible.”
“Is that a compliment or an accusation?”
“Never mind. What do I get to contribute to this new plan?”
“You’ve made your contribution.” Nick picked up her hand and brushed his lips across her palm. “You are my inspiration. If it weren’t for you, I would never have been able to put it all together so clearly and quickly.”
She thought he was teasing her, but when she met his eyes she realized that he was deadly serious.
“Thanks,” she muttered, “but I have higher aspirations. Being your inspiration just isn’t enough for an overachiever like me.”
“What do you want to do?”
Zinnia leaned back in her chair. “Why don’t I talk to Professor DeForest again? Maybe he’ll have some other interesting tidbits that you’ve discounted.”
“Waste of time. The guy’s got more than one screw loose.” Nick reached for the phone that sat on a small table near a lounger.
“What are you going to do now?”
“Tell Feather to start looking for retirees from the University of New Portland’s budget office.”
“And when you’ve finished that?”
He gave her a sidelong glance that held a new kind of speculation. “I thought we could go for a swim.”
“I don’t have a suit.”
“There’s one in the cabana. Red. You can change while I’m giving instructions to Feather.”
Chapter
19
* * * * * * * * * *
The hot red swimsuit fit perfectly.
Naturally.
One of the really annoying things about matrix-talents was that they had a knack for estimating the distance, length, height, or width of just about anything. Show them a diagram of a complex multidimensional mathematical figure and they could quickly tell you the approximate angles of every intersecting line and the volumes of each defined space. Show them a woman and they could estimate her bra size.
Zinnia figured Nick probably had the coordinates of her measurements plotted on a matrix that he had stored somewhere in his very different brain. She wondered wistfully if he studied it occasionally when he was alone at night. Matrix masturbation was no doubt an interesting phenomena.
It was too bad that matrix-talents were not as good at personal relationships as they were with the spatial kind, she thought.
She walked to the edge of the pool and sat down. For a few minutes she watched Nick do laps. She marveled that he did not cause the water to boil as he sliced through it. The energy he was radiating was palpable.
The sleek muscles of his shoulders glistened wetly. His powerful strokes propelled him forward with the lethal grace of a marauding shark-cuda. He had been raised in the Western Islands, Zinnia reminded herself. He had learned to swim in treacherous seas, not in a safe backyard swimming pool.
Midway through a lap Nick changed course and swam to meet her. When he reached the side, he braced himself in the deep water with one hand on the tile very close to her leg. He used his other hand to shove gleaming wet hair back from his high forehead.
“I see the suit fits.” He surveyed her with undisguised satisfaction and something that could have been possessiveness.
“Perfectly.”
He smiled. “And just your color.”
She gazed down into his face and saw that his eyes still burned with the remnants of the fires of the focus link. “Do you have any other hobbies besides swimming?”
He looked surprised and then slightly baffled by the question. “Swimming isn’t a hobby. I do it because it’s an efficient way to exercise. I don’t have any hobbies.”
“I see.” Typical obsessive matrix. There was no middle ground for them. Things were either compelling enough to warrant full attention and energy or they weren’t worth doing at all.
He watched her closely. “Do you?”
“Have hobbies?” She shook her head ruefully. “Not really. I’ve been too busy with other things for the past few years. Someday I’d like to have a garden.”
“You’ll have to move out of that loft apartment if you want to have one.”
“I know.”
“You’d need a house and some land.”
“Yes.”
He was silent for a moment. Then, very deliberately, he put his hand on her bare thigh. He stroked slowly downward, briefly cupping her knee. She flinched at the touch of the cool water. Then the heat of his palm warmed her.
When he looked up again she saw that his eyes still burned. This time it wasn’t just the smoldering embers of the focus link that blazed in the depths of his gaze.
“Have you made a decision?” he asked. She knew what he meant. “Yes.”
“Is that yes you’ve made up your mind, or yes you’ll have an affair with me?”
“Yes to both.”
“Zinnia, my talent may not drive me crazy, but you surely will.”
He se
emed to explode out of the water. Laughter and exultation flared in his eyes. His hands closed around her waist.
“Wait,” she yelped. But it was too late.
He pulled her off the edge and toppled back into the pool with her in his arms.
“Take a breath,” he warned.
The shock of hitting the cold water made her gasp.
Nick’s teeth flashed in a wide grin. He plunged below the surface, drawing her down into the depths with him. The sudden sense of weightlessness made her feel giddy and disoriented.
He swam with her through the silent blue water world, his hold on her sure and confident. Down they went, into the deepest portion of the pool.
When they reached the bottom he tightened his grasp and soared back toward the light. Just when she thought she could not hold her breath a second longer, they broke the surface together.
“Beast.” She laughed as she clutched his shoulders. “I’ll get even for that. And you’ll never know when it’s coming.”
“I can’t wait.”
The amusement in his eyes metamorphosed into sexual hunger with a speed that shook her to the core. His mouth closed over hers, searching, demanding, exciting.
When he raised his head a long time later she could feel her fingers trembling. If it had not been for his hands anchoring her against him, she would have floated away.
“I want this to be a real affair,” he said.
“I don’t see how much more real it can get.”
His mouth tightened with impatience. “I mean I don’t want to play any more games.”
“Games?”
“We’re not going to pretend that I’ve hired you as my interior designer.”
She made a face. “Just as well. I don’t think anyone was buying the interior-designer story. Not after those photos in Synsation. But, Nick, I have to warn you, dating me is probably not a good way to pursue your big plan to gain respectability.”
“Don’t worry about my respectability. I can buy that the same way I can buy everything else.” His eyes darkened. “Except you. No one could buy you, Zinnia.”
She touched his throat. “Or you.”
“Neither of us is for sale.” He smiled with an almost savage satisfaction. “We’ll make it official tomorrow night.”
“What happens tomorrow night?”
“I’m going to take you to the Founders’ Club Ball.”
She raised her brows. “Nick Chastain and the Scarlet Lady at the annual charity event of the year? Oh, my. That will certainly liven up the conversation in certain circles.”
“Be sure to wear red.” He bent his head and took her mouth once more.
She realized what he intended and managed to tear her mouth free long enough to protest. “Nick, for heaven’s sake, not here. The waiter may come back at any moment.”
“He won’t come back until I call him.” He held her with one hand and peeled the top of her swimsuit down to her waist in a single motion. He stared at her as if he had never seen another woman in his life.
“You are so beautiful.”
She knew full well that no objective observer would label her beautiful. But that only made his words all the sweeter. He was a matrix. Beauty was far more complex and multileveled for him than it was for most people. She framed his face with her hands. “So are you.”
He lifted her partway out of the water and bent his head to take one taut nipple between his teeth.
She shivered. Water streamed from her hair down her arched back. She sank her nails into Nick and took fierce pleasure in the shudder that went through him. A glorious sensation of wild heady freedom flowed in her veins. She abandoned herself to her own womanly power.
Nick worked the red swimsuit down over her hips. A moment later it floated out of sight. His eyes gleamed as she slipped her fingers beneath the waistband of his suit.
She flattened her palms against his thighs and savored the feel of hard muscle beneath firm skin. Then she pushed the suit downward until it disappeared into the depths. She cradled his rigid erection in her hand.
He drew in his breath. “I told you, you’re an inspiration to me.”
She stroked gently, fascinated by the size and feel of him. “I take back what I said earlier. Maybe being an inspiration for you is enough for an overachiever like me.”
“Come closer.” He braced himself and pulled her legs around his waist. An erotic thrill shot through her when she realized that she was completely open to his touch.
He reached between her thighs and found her erect clitoris. He pressed it slowly, deliberately.
Ripples of anticipation gripped her. “I want you.”
“You don’t know what real wanting is,” he said.
“Do you?”
“Yes.” He eased a finger inside her. “God, yes, I know all about it. It’s what I feel whenever I see you.” He pushed upward against the top of her vagina. “Or think about you.” He maintained the pressure inside her while he used his thumb on the small stiff nubbin that was a focus of so much sensation. “Or link with you.”
Zinnia’s eyes flew open. “So you do feel it.”
He smiled faintly. “You mean this?”
Power crashed across the metaphysical plane, questing for a prism. Zinnia responded as she had the very first time, as she always did to him, instinctively, eagerly, with a sense of rightness. The feeling of intimacy that was somehow sexual and yet far more than that, shimmered through the focus link.
“Yes,” she whispered. “This.”
“The first time it hit me I felt as if I’d stepped off the edge of a cliff.” Nick pushed slowly, heavily into her. “I wondered if I’d finally snapped, the way they say high-class matrix-talents do sometimes.”
“I thought I’d just met a real psychic vampire.” She held her breath as her body stretched to accommodate him.
“I would never hurt you.”
But you will, she thought. When Hobart Batt finds you the perfect wife, the woman who will fit into your grand plan for the future, you will marry her. And when you do, you will hurt me far more than you ever could with your psychic talent.
Nick thrust fully into her. In that moment she knew that he was not thinking about the nameless, faceless woman he would someday marry. In typical matrix fashion he was completely absorbed in the task at hand.
And that task was making love to her.
She would worry about the future when it crashed down around her, she promised herself.
On the metaphysical plane, vibrant energy pulsed through the crystal-clear prism. Zinnia gloried in the knowledge that, for a little while, whether or not he knew it, Nick was as much in love with her as it was possible for him to be.
Nick absently analyzed the pattern of the rain as it beat down on the glass roof. He felt as if he was still drifting, but it was an illusion. He was no longer in the pool. He and Zinnia were both wrapped in thick towels and stretched out on loungers that had been placed side by side.
Everything was supposed to be under control now. He had achieved his goal. She had agreed to the affair. So why couldn’t he get rid of the cold uneasy chill of wrongness that had settled in his gut.
It was as if some element or coordinate was still missing from the design. But he could not figure out what he lacked to complete the matrix. He only knew that it was not yet right.
“Nick?” Zinnia turned her head and smiled at him. Feminine satisfaction gleamed in the depths of her warm languorous eyes. “Something wrong?”
“I was just thinking.”
“Always a bad sign with a matrix.”
He ignored that. “Why did you agree to the affair?”
“Complaints already?”
“I’m serious.”
“You’re always serious.” She paused. “Or, almost always.”
“I just want to know why you decided to go ahead with it.”
“Nick, I know you’re a matrix and therefore inclined to obsess on details that don’t seem to fit into
the pattern, but some things you just have to accept.”
He gazed steadily at her. “Is it because of what we feel when we link?”
“No.” She smiled. “Although I’ll admit it’s interesting.”
“Is it because the sex is great?”
“No, but that’s very interesting, too.”
“Is it because you got tired of waiting for Mr. Right to show up and decided to experiment with me, instead?”
“No.”
“Is it because you feel sorry for matrix-talents in general and since I’m the highest-class matrix you’ve ever met you feel more than the usual degree of pity?”
“You’re starting to slip into paranoia, here, Nick.”
He levered himself up and looked down at her. “Tell me why you agreed to have an affair with me.”
“For heaven’s sake, isn’t it obvious?” She rolled off the lounger, tightened her grip on the towel, and started toward the cabana. “I decided to have an affair with you because I’m in love with you.”
Nick stopped breathing. By the time he managed to fill his lungs with air, she had vanished into the changing room.
And the patterns in the matrix had tumbled into disarray.
He was still reeling from the shock of Zinnia’s words three hours later when he walked into the richly paneled bar of the exclusive Founders’ Club.
She loved him.
She didn’t know it, but she had completely screwed up his entire world. He had been struggling to make her simple words fit into the matrix ever since she had flung them at him with such devastating nonchalance.
She probably hadn’t intended the words to be taken literally, he told himself for what had to be the seventy-sixth time in three hours. She had probably meant that she loved the sex. After all, she didn’t have much in the way of comparisons.
Which meant that she had undoubtedly confused passion with love. An understandable mistake for a woman who had never had another lover.
But even if that was true, he would never forget Zinnia’s words of love. They had warmed something inside him that had been cold for a very long time. He did not know what would happen if he doused the cheerful blaze. The thought of confronting the chill again was not an inviting one.