The audience, apparently concluding that she was part of the act, went into a frenzy. The performers rose to the occasion in several senses of the word. Sequins and portions of black leather underwear fell to the stage at Amaryllis’s feet. The musicians redoubled their efforts.
Out of the corner of her eye, Amaryllis saw a figure stagger through the dark blue curtain and emerge onto the stage. He stood there, dazed and blinking in the unrelenting glare. He clutched his shoulder with one hand. His hair was standing on end, and his elegant suit was rumpled, but there was no mistaking his identity.
Madison Sheffield.
He spotted Amaryllis at the same instant that she recognized him. Rage replaced the confusion in his eyes. He took one step toward her and then apparently realized that he was standing in front of an audience. He swung around and tried to flee back through the stage curtain.
Lucas came through the heavy velvet drapes in a long, low rush. He plowed straight into Sheffield. The two men crashed to the floor and rolled toward the front of the stage.
The musicians went wild. The overworked sound system shrieked in protest. Amaryllis could smell the performers’ sweat.
Lucas managed to straddle Sheffield. He slammed a fist into the senator’s jaw.
The audience went orgasmic.
“Vivien was obviously blackmailing Sheffield with the contents of the file that Professor Landreth left with her.” Amaryllis, seated on the sofa in front of Lucas’s exotic fireplace, pulled up her knees and hugged them. She still shivered from time to time, even though the room was warm. “It’s hard to believe.”
“I’m sure Sheffield’s hoping the cops will find it hard to believe, too.” Lucas picked up the two glasses of moontree brandy that he had just poured and walked toward Amaryllis. “He told the police that the reason he happened to be backstage at the SynCity tonight was because he was investigating the club’s activities. Fulfilling a campaign promise, as it were.”
Amaryllis gave a ladylike snort. “Likely story. He can hardly deny his motive for murder now that they’ve found what’s left of the file.”
Lucas nodded as he sat down beside her. “It was in the restroom sink. That was the source of the smoke you smelled. Sheffield apparently tried to burn the file after he shot Vivien, but he must have had trouble keeping the fire going. It was a charred mess, but his name was all over what remained, together with a lot of observations about his lack of ethics. All neatly typed and annotated, I might add. Nothing illegal, but the accusations of unethical behavior could have ruined him.”
“Professor Landreth was always very thorough. Well, so much for the expertise of Mr. Stonebraker. He never did find the file. I had to do it myself.”
Lucas raised his brows. “That’s one way of looking at it.”
“I trust he’ll give you a refund.”
“I’ll be sure to ask for it.”
Amaryllis frowned. “Professor Landreth realized that Senator Sheffield was focusing in an unethical manner. He documented it in that file. But why did he give the file to Vivien?”
“Landreth was probably afraid that Sheffield would try to snatch the file before he was ready to go public with his accusations.” Lucas cradled the brandy glass in both hands. He gazed thoughtfully into the fire. “He must have figured that no one would think of searching for the evidence in the dressing room of a syn-sex stripper.”
“He was right. Poor Vivien. She must have realized that she was in danger tonight. That’s why she phoned me. But I got there too late to save her. I wonder if she called the guard?”
“Wouldn’t have done any good. The cops found the guard a block away getting drunk in a bar. Said some guy gave him a hundred bucks to get lost for a couple of hours.”
“Sheffield was safe. With the music pounding away, there was no way anyone would have heard the shot.”
“No.” Lucas put down his brandy glass and reached out to catch Amaryllis’s chin on the edge of his hand. His eyes were more intense than the jelly-ice flames on the hearth. “You should never have gone to that club tonight. Do you know what I’ve been through?”
“Now, Lucas, I had to do something when Vivien called. There was no time to track you down at the restaurant.”
“Damn it, I went through all five hells when I got that message on your answering machine. And that was nothing compared to what I endured when I realized that you were somewhere in the darkness behind the stage. The alley door was locked. I had to find and break a window to get into the back of the club. You should have called the cops if you couldn’t find me.”
“In retrospect, I can see that you have a point.”
“A point? I’ve got more than a point. I’ve got the whole damn argument.”
“Lucas, be reasonable. I didn’t know that Vivien was in imminent danger. She didn’t tell me that. All she said was that things were getting a little out of hand. One would think that if she had felt she was in real jeopardy, she would have called the police herself.” Amaryllis paused. “Come to think of it, why didn’t she do just that?”
“Because, as you just pointed out, she was a blackmailer. At any rate, that’s not what I want to discuss here.”
The phone rang.
Amaryllis smiled brightly. “Better get that. It might be the police. They may have a few more questions to ask you.”
“I’ve already answered more than enough questions tonight.” But Lucas released her to grab the phone. “This is Trent. Oh, hello, Stonebraker. We were just talking about you. Amaryllis tells me I should get a refund.”
Lucas fell silent as he listened to whatever Stonebraker was saying on the other end of the line. Amaryllis sipped her moontree brandy and stared into the fire. It was nearly three in the morning, but she still did not feel normal. Her pulse no longer pounded, and she was able to breathe properly, but she felt strange. Exhausted, yet unnaturally, painfully alert. She was practically tingling with an overstimulated sense of awareness. Memories of the evil, questing tongue of talent flickered at the edge of her mind.
“Interesting,” Lucas murmured. “Possible. Yeah, don’t worry, Amaryllis gave the cops a stern lecture about the necessity of reopening an investigation into the circumstances of Landreth’s death. I think they’ll do it.” He paused again. “Right. Talk to you later.”
Amaryllis looked at him as he hung up the phone. “Well? What did your brilliant private investigator have to say?”
Lucas’s mouth curved faintly. “He said he’ll consider the refund when he gets around to billing me.”
“I should think so. What else did he have to say?”
Lucas stopped smiling. “He said he just learned that the New Portland city police picked up Merrick Beech late this afternoon. Miranda Locking was with him. They were boarding a plane to the Western Islands.”
“Beech and Locking? Did they have anything to do with tonight’s events?”
“Doesn’t look like it. But they apparently admitted that they paid those thugs who attacked us that first night in Founders Square.” Lucas stretched his legs out in front of him. His face was grim. “Said something about wanting to teach me a lesson.”
Amaryllis shivered. “That’s the last of the answers then. For both of us.”
“Yeah.”
Amaryllis turned her attention back to the fire. “It feels weird somehow.”
“What does?”
“Knowing that it’s over.”
Over. The single word hung in the air between them. It was over. Everything was over.
Amaryllis realized then that her self-imposed mission to discover the truth about Professor Landreth’s death had been inextricably bound up with her relationship with Lucas. The two were not really connected, she told herself. Yet in a way, they were.
Her mission had ended. The end of the affair was inevitable, too. In fact, it was already in sight. She thought about all the forms she and Lucas had filled out for Synergistic Connections. She recalled the interview. It would not be long now
.
“Yeah.” Lucas rested his head against the back of the sofa and watched the fire through slitted eyes. “It feels weird.”
Amaryllis didn’t need telepathy to tell her that he was thinking the same thing that she was thinking. A great sense of loss welled up inside her.
From out of nowhere Amaryllis felt the tendril of psychic energy seeking a link. Lucas was reaching for her with his mind. This was not the fierce, white hot demand he had sent out earlier when he had been searching for her in the darkness backstage at SynCity. This was a tender, gentle brush of talent questing for synergistic wholeness.
“Lucas.” Amaryllis wrapped her arms more tightly around her knees. She tried to blink away the dampness she could feel in her eyes. “It would probably be better if we didn’t do this anymore.”
“Probably.”
“According to every syn-psych theory in the book, we’re all wrong for each other.”
“Yeah.”
“It would be stupid to take this relationship any further,” Amaryllis insisted. “Neither of us wants to risk repeating the mistakes of the past.”
“You think we’re both afraid of the past?”
The perception in his words startled her. She stared into the flames. “I’ve been telling myself that doing the proper thing was a matter of responsibility and duty. But maybe you’re right. Maybe in the end it just comes down to a fear of the past. We both have reasons to be afraid.”
“Are you going to spend your whole life being afraid?”
Amaryllis was stunned. An entire life spent living with a fear of the past stretched out before her. Every action guided by fear. A marriage based on avoiding fear. It was a dreadful vision.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Are you?”
“I hate to think of myself as a complete and total coward.”
She frowned. “You’re no coward.”
“Neither are you.”
“Where does that leave us?” she asked.
“Marry me.”
Amaryllis whirled around on the sofa to stare at Lucas. Shock waves went through her. At first she thought she had not heard him, that she had conjured the words in her own mind.
He hadn’t moved. His head still rested against the back of the sofa. His eyes were still narrowed as he gazed into the flames. The Iceman.
“It’s okay,” he said without any trace of emotion. “I know the answer. Just thought I’d give it a try.”
“Oh, God, Lucas, I thought you’d never ask.” Amaryllis threw herself into his arms. “What took you so long?”
He caught hold of her mentally and physically. Brilliant beams of psychic energy poured through a crystal-clear prism. Power crashed in glorious waves.
When Amaryllis opened her eyes, she discovered that she and Lucas were safe inside his secret island grotto.
Chapter
17
He made love to her there in the hidden grotto, just as he had dreamed of doing. He undressed her slowly beside the fathomless green pool, peeling away blouse and slacks and layers of neat, serious underwear. Her skin glowed pale gold in the firelight that passed easily through the illusory stone walls of the cave. He cupped one graceful, elegant breast in his hand, marveling at the perfect shape and texture of it.
Amaryllis fumbled with the buttons of his shirt and the fastenings of his trousers until he grew impatient with the slow torture.
“Wait.” He sat up beside her and yanked off his clothes with a few brusque movements. Then he stretched out slowly above her.
She reached up to splay her fingers across his bare chest. “I love the feel of you.”
Lucas longed to ask if she loved him as well as the feel of him, but he told himself he would not push his luck. She had agreed to marry him. It was enough for now. Everyone said that when the match was right, love came after marriage.
When the match was right.
This has to be right, Lucas thought. If it wasn’t, he was doomed.
“I’m a beat-up iceman.” He watched her eyes as he caught one of her hands and pressed it to the spider-frog scar on his shoulder. “I spent too many years in the islands to ever be anything else.”
“No, you’re gorgeous. Spectacular. Unbelievably sexy.”
“I’m covered with scars and calluses. My manners are rough and so is my accent.”
She dismissed that with a wave of her hand. “Who cares? You’ve got gray eyes. I was very particular about wanting gray eyes on the Synergistic questionnaire, you know.”
For some reason he had to keep going. He had to make certain she knew everything. “I cheated on my talent certification test. I don’t have your high standards when it comes to that kind of thing.”
“You have your own code and you stick to it. That’s all that matters.”
“If I could have figured out how to fool the syn-shrinks at Synergistic Connections into thinking that I would be a perfect match for a full-spectrum prism such as yourself, I would have done it in a heartbeat.”
Amaryllis’s smile was brilliant. “It occurs to me that the counselors at the agency aren’t qualified to find a match for either of us because they’ve had no experience matching off-the-scale talents and prisms.”
“We’re opposites in a lot of ways, Amaryllis.”
“I’m not so sure about that. I feel closer to you than I’ve ever felt to anyone else in my whole life.”
A great sense of exhilaration drove out the last of his fears. “That pretty much sums up how I feel about you. It’s as if I’ve been waiting for you forever.”
“And I’ve been waiting for you.” She wound her arms around his neck. Her eyes gleamed. “Do you think I could interest you in using your psychic vampire talent to turn me into a love slave?”
“Actually, I was sort of hoping that you would use your amazing prism powers to turn me into a helpless victim of your relentless desire.”
“Hmm.” She drew a fingertip down to his bare stomach and then moved her hand lower. She cradled his heavy shaft in her palm. “The notion is fraught with possibilities.”
“Yeah.” Lucas sucked in his breath. The grotto walls shimmered and dimmed for a few seconds as he diverted psychic energy into old-fashioned self-control. “It is, isn’t it?”
“Oh, Lucas, I want you so much.” The teasing light in her eyes was replaced with unabashed need. She brought his mouth down to hers and arched herself against him.
The passion sparked between them, hotter than raw, unfocused psychic energy.
He reveled in the feel of her body. He worked his way downward, tasting the small valley between her breasts, the gentle curve of her belly, the inside of her thigh. When he touched the hot, moist flesh between her legs, she shuddered in his hands.
“Lucas.”
On the psychic plane, the crystal prism winked out of existence. The grotto walls disappeared. Lucas felt a surge of triumph. This time Amaryllis was the one who had lost control of the link.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered.
“You make me feel beautiful.” She shivered again and sank her nails into his shoulders.
Together they found the focus link again. Lucas did not bother to rebuild the grotto. He simply let the power flow in a shimmering river. The sense of deep intimacy enveloped him. He was a part of Amaryllis and she was part of him.
He moved back up along the length of her trembling body. He used one hand to guide himself to the entrance of her snug passage. Slowly he eased himself inside. She closed around him.
When Amaryllis cried out and convulsed in Lucas’s arms, he thought that he would lose the mind link again, but to his surprise, it held steady and clear. Unfocused talent flashed through the prism and ricocheted around the psychic plane.
Power and passion flowed together.
* * *
A long while later, Amaryllis felt Lucas disengage himself carefully from her arms. He slid his leg from between her thighs. She opened her eyes as he sat up on the edge of the sofa.
br /> “Lucas? Where are you going?”
“To check the fire. Don’t worry, I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll be waiting.” She turned onto her side, stretched, and propped her head on the arm of the sofa. She watched Lucas as he crossed the room to the hearth.
He was magnificent. Big and sleek and utterly masculine. The firelight gleamed on his strongly muscled flanks and broad shoulders. Just the sight of him sent little frissons of excitement through her thoroughly sated body.
She felt a brush of energy on the psychic plane and silently responded. Lucas held the intimate link with her for a few minutes while he crouched to adjust the supply of jelly-ice.
He finished his small task, rose to his feet, and braced one hand on the mantle. Instead of returning to the sofa, he stood gazing down into the flames.
“You’re brooding,” Amaryllis said.
In the flaring firelight, the fierce planes and angles of his face appeared harder edged and more grim than usual. “It won’t be easy, you know.”
As if she could read his mind, she understood. “I know. If you come with me to Lower Bellevue to celebrate my aunt’s birthday the day after tomorrow, we can tell my family together.”
He turned slowly to face her. With his back to the fire, it was impossible to see his expression. “What will you do if your aunt and uncle refuse to give you their blessing?”
“Marry you anyway. They’ll come around in time. They love me. All they want is for me to be happy.”
“Will you be happy with me?”
“I don’t see how I could be happy with anyone else,” she said simply.
“We’ll argue.”
“Everyone argues at times, even people who are matched through an agency.”
“You’ll probably pull that virtuous little founder act on me from time to time, and I’ll tell you that you’re prissy and straitlaced and too damn picky.”
She smiled. “And then you’ll remember that I picked you.”