“Are you sure?”
He hesitated, dark brows tightening a little as he contemplated the question. “Well, now that you mention it . . .”
She held up a hand, palm out. “Don’t go there, Truax.”
He shrugged. “Probably wouldn’t fit, anyway.”
“Probably not.”
She watched him work his way through the curry and salad and decided that some of the tension in him had eased. But she could still sense the dark currents shifting under the surface. Whatever was going on with Ethan, she was pretty sure that it involved something deeper and more disturbing than the less-than-happy ending of the Dexter Morrow case.
She heard the muted hum of Ethan’s electric shaver when she went past the bathroom door. Earlier she had heard the shower running. She stopped in the middle of the hall and stood thinking for a long moment.
Then she made up her mind. Tightening the sash of her robe, she opened the door. Warm, steamy air enveloped her. Ethan stood in front of the mirror, a towel wrapped negligently around his waist. She had a sudden urge to run her palms along the sleekly muscled contours of his back.
He looked at her through the fog that cloaked the mirror. She caught her breath when she saw that the brooding, enigmatic shadows had returned to his tiger eyes.
“You don’t have to shave before you come to bed anymore,” she said, trying to keep her tone light. “We’re married now, remember?”
Okay, was that the third or fourth time she’d managed to use the M word this evening? She had lost count.
He switched off the razor and set it very deliberately on the counter. “I remember.”
She could have sworn that the temperature in the small, intimate room rose several degrees. She was suddenly transported into the tropics. A sultry, sensual awareness tingled through her.
Given his odd mood, she thought, maybe opening the bathroom door had not been such a good idea.
But it was too late to change her mind. Ethan was moving through the steamy mist, closing in on her with that supple, controlled energy that was so much a part of him.
When he reached her, he caught her face between his hands, fingers sinking into her hair. His mouth closed over hers. The fierce, hot urgency emanating from him made her tremble in response.
His kiss was compelling and demanding. It transformed the tingles of awareness into snapping, arcing, sizzling electrical impulses. Every nerve in her body lit up. She hoped she was not actually glowing.
Ethan worked the kiss, tasting her, wooing her, summoning the response he wanted—no, needed—from her. His powerful hands moved down to her waist. He unknotted the sash that bound her robe and slipped the garment off her shoulders. It fell to the floor, pooling at her feet. Her nightgown was next.
When she was naked, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, holding her so tightly she could scarcely move. Excitement flooded through her veins.
With a soft little murmur of pleasure and anticipation, she clung to him, her fingers biting into his sleekly muscled shoulders. Her breasts were crushed into the curling hair of his chest.
The towel that had encircled his waist disappeared. She felt his erection, heavy and hard, pushing against her bare thigh. In spite of the gathering storm of passion, a flutter of unease drifted, ghost-like, through her.
There was something a little off here.
Although Ethan’s mood had lightened for a time during dinner and afterward, the bleak, edgy quality was back. He was channeling that dark energy, either consciously or unconsciously, into raw, sexual hunger.
This was not the first time he had made love to her while in the grip of this dangerous mood during the past several days. What had he said at dinner? Something about sex being his stress-reduction technique of choice.
Perhaps “dangerous” was not quite the right word to describe the blaze she sensed burning in him. She certainly did not fear for her own personal safety. Ethan would never hurt her. But she knew that he was using sex as a temporary antidote for some poison that was attacking his spirit.
What really worried her was that she was quite sure that a few good orgasms were not going to effect a permanent cure for whatever it was that ailed him.
His hands closed around her waist, lifting her off her feet. She assumed that he was going to carry her out of the tropics and into the bedroom. Instead he swung her around and set her down on the counter next to the sink.
She drew a startled breath when the cool tiles made contact with her bare buttocks, but before she could grasp the fact that she and Ethan were not headed for the bed, he had moved between her legs.
She could feel his desire beating at her, a hot desert wind.
“The shower and the shave were supposed to slow me down.” He touched her clitoris, stroking slowly. “You shouldn’t have interrupted.”
“It’s okay.” She was already damp. Reaching down she took him in her fingers. “You don’t have to go slow. Not every time. Sometimes fast is good.”
“For me, maybe, not for you. I want it to be good for you.”
“Ethan, it’s okay.” She drew him closer, brushing the broad head of his heavily engorged penis against the damp opening of her body, doing everything she could to tempt him. “You don’t have to always be in control. Not with me.”
He groaned. Every muscle in his body tightened.
“Zoe.”
He gripped her thighs and pushed himself into her, driving deep and hard. She wrapped her legs around his waist and held him tightly while he hurtled toward his climax and whatever brief peace it would give him.
3
Arcadia Ames came awake riding a rush of nerve-screaming adrenaline. She opened her eyes, listening intently, shivering with reaction. Heart pounding, she tried to breathe slowly but it was impossible. She needed air.
Nothing moved in the darkness of her bedroom. There was enough moonlight to show her that the corners were empty. No one stood over her bed. No menacing figure loomed in the doorway. There was no telltale brush of footsteps from the living room or the kitchen.
All the available evidence reported by her eyes and ears assured her that the sophisticated security system Harry had installed had not been tripped. She was alone in the condominium.
But the sensation of being watched was so strong that she could not ignore it. Frustration and dread mingled inside her.
What was wrong with her lately? She’d had this weird feeling several times in the past couple of days, and tonight it was really bad. Maybe those months she had spent in Candle Lake Manor Psychiatric Hospital had affected her more than she had realized.
She had deliberately had herself committed to the loony bin as one step in a master plan she had devised to hide from her husband. Grant had wanted her dead. She had figured that he would never think to look for her in a private asylum.
But Candle Lake Manor had proven to be a disastrous choice. It had been run by a corrupt administrator who had allowed the thug-like orderlies to have the run of the place after hours.
Much of the late-night activity was relatively harmless. Some of the orderlies had sold drugs from the hospital’s supply room. Others had zoned out on the stolen meds. Most had just napped. But a few of the brutes had amused themselves raping the helpless, doped-up female patients.
The only good thing that had come out of her time at Candle Lake was her friendship with Zoe. The two of them had plotted their escape together. They had been forced to carry it out ahead of schedule because one night two of the vicious orderlies had come for Arcadia. She shivered at the memory of the attempted rape. If Zoe hadn’t heard the men taking her down the hall to the examination room that night . . .
No. Don’t go there. There was no reason to fear anyone at Candle Lake Manor. Ethan had pretty much wiped the hospital off the map last month.
The only thing she had to fear was Grant.
The bastard was supposed to be dead, but she knew him too well to believe in that very convenient skiing ac
cident in Switzerland. His body had never been found, supposedly buried under untold tons of snow. But her intuition told her that he had faked his own death and was now living under an assumed name somewhere.
Just as she was doing.
Very slowly she extended one arm, reached down and found the pistol that she always kept beneath the bed at night whenever Harry was away. The feel of the grip in her hand was somewhat reassuring. After the escape from Candle Lake, she and Zoe had each taken steps to acquire a greater sense of security. Zoe had signed up for self-defense lessons.
Knowing that Grant might someday decide to return from the grave, Arcadia had opted to buy a gun and had learned how to use it.
Pistol in hand, she slid her legs out from under the white sheets, got to her feet and went to the doorway to look down the hall. The light that was always on in the living room cast a gentle glow across the white carpet and the pale furnishings. None of the familiar shadows shifted.
She went forward cautiously, the silver-gray silk nightgown drifting around her ankles. When she reached the bank of electrical switches, she flipped all of them at once, illuminating every room of the condo, including the closets.
Methodically she checked every lock and every alarm on every window and the front door. When she was certain that all was secure, she turned off the lights again and went to stand at the window. She had deliberately chosen a condo on the second floor, not only because she thought it would be harder for someone to crawl through a window, but also because it gave her a better view of the pool and garden in the center of the complex.
She looked out into the desert night. In common with Sedona and several other Arizona communities, Whispering Springs did not have a lot of streetlights. Officially the idea was that heavy illumination of the residential and commercial neighborhoods interfered with the citizens’ and tourists’ enjoyment of the glorious nighttime skies. Arcadia suspected that was an excuse. She had a hunch that the local governments liked the notion of saving money on electricity bills. The good people of Arizona were not real keen on taxes.
The homeowners’ association to which she belonged had put in some low-level lamps along the walkways and around the fence that enclosed the pool. The glow from the weak bulbs did not extend far. When she looked down she saw a lot of shadows.
She watched for a long time, but with the exception of a prowling cat, nothing moved.
The phone warbled, startling her. She was annoyed to feel her pulse kick up again. Irritated by her own reaction, she walked across the room and hesitated before she willed herself to pick up the instrument. Damnit, she would not allow her nerves to control her.
“Hello?”
“You okay?” Harry Stagg asked without preamble.
She was surprised by the monumental relief she felt at the sound of his voice. She released the breath she had not realized she had been holding.
The muffled beat of heavy rock music played somewhere in the background on Harry’s end of the connection. She almost smiled. Harry was not a big fan of rock. Like her, he was a jazz aficionado.
“I’m fine,” she said. She allowed herself to relax against the back of one of the pair of white leather chairs that sat in front of the coffee table.
“You don’t sound fine,” Harry said. “You sound tense. Did I wake you? Thought you’d still be up.”
They were both night people. It was one of the many things they had in common. She did not want to explain that she had not been sleeping well since he had left and that she had tried to make up for it tonight by going to bed earlier than usual.
“No. I was awake.” She put the pistol down on the table and carried the phone back to the window. “How’s the job going?”
Harry Stagg was unlike any other man she had ever met; a far cry from the sleek, wealthy, powerful financiers and investors who had populated the world in which she had once moved. The exact opposite of Grant.
She had met him last month when Ethan imported him from California to protect her while he and Zoe dealt with the threat from Zoe’s in-laws.
Physically Harry bore a striking resemblance to a living skeleton. When he smiled he looked like a Halloween decoration. But in the few weeks they had known each other she had come to believe that they were soul mates.
Harry’s card declared that he was a security consultant. From what she could tell, that term covered a great deal of territory. But she knew that in this instance it was a euphemism for bodyguard. Last week he had left to take a short-term position looking after the teenage daughter of a Texas businessman. The young woman was a senior in high school. She had been packed off to the West Coast to tour various California college campuses. The stated objective was to gather information that would assist her in deciding which institution of higher learning she wanted to attend. But according to Harry her primary interests thus far had been shopping and star-gazing.
“Routine,” Harry said. “The kid bought three more pairs of shoes today along with a couple of purses and a skimpy little shirt that shows off the ring in her belly button. She also picked up some jeans that are so tight I think she’s gonna have to paint them on with a brush.”
“You shouldn’t be noticing things like that, Harry. You’re a professional, remember?”
“Professionals are paid to notice every detail. After seeing her in that dinky little shirt, I’m pretty sure she’s had a boob job.”
“At her age?”
“I get the impression that kids her age in her income bracket put boob jobs in the same category as getting their teeth straightened.”
“Has she actually spent any time on a college campus?”
“We managed a solid fifteen minutes at Pomona and maybe half an hour at USC today.”
“Good schools. Does she have the grades and SAT scores for them?”
“Don’t know about that, but her daddy’s got enough cash to buy her way into any school she fancies.”
The rock music boomed louder in the background.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Some kind of teenage club. I’ll be lucky if I don’t need hearing aids after this gig.”
“How much longer is it going to last?”
“The job or the music?”
She smiled slightly. “The job.”
“Well, I gotta tell you, my heart nearly failed me this morning when she announced that she wanted to extend her stay to the end of the month. But luckily her daddy phoned and told her that she had to go back to Texas in ten days.”
“Do you have to fly back with her?”
“No. Daddy’s sending one of the people from his regular agency to pick her up here and escort her to Dallas. The only reason he hired me was because he wanted someone who knew the local scene while she was in Southern California.”
“So you’ll be home in ten days?”
There was a lengthy pause. For a few seconds she thought his phone had cut out. Then she realized that she could still hear the hard rock in the background.
“Harry?”
“I’m here,” he said in an oddly neutral tone of voice.
“Thought I’d lost you. Did something happen? Do you have to get off the phone?”
“No. Just realized I hadn’t thought of Whispering Springs as home, that’s all.”
“Oh.” She did not know what to say. The truth was that, although she had lived there for a little more than a year, she had only recently begun to think of Whispering Springs as home, herself. She was not sure quite when that had happened. Sometime after she had met Harry, she thought.
But whatever this place was to her, it was not Harry’s home, she reminded herself. His address was in San Diego. She should not forget significant facts like that.
“Yeah,” he said, no longer sounding the least bit neutral.
It occurred to her that she had just lost the thread of the conversation. “Yeah, what?”
“Yeah, I’ll be home in ten days, right after I put the kid on the plane,” Harry said cal
mly.
The certainty in his voice worked like a dose of some magic antidepressant medication.
“Sounds good,” she said.
Relief and a sense of happiness replaced the adrenaline that had awakened her earlier.
When she ended the call a short time later she felt steadier, calmer.
No longer afraid of the dark.
4
Ethan moved stealthily but she was awake and she felt him leave the bed.
She gave him a few seconds just to be sure he wasn’t headed for the bathroom. A person could have a legitimate reason for going in that direction in the middle of the night, she reminded herself. She would not get mad unless he started to get dressed.
She opened her eyes and watched him make his way across the small bedroom to the closet. He opened the door and reached inside. When his hand reappeared she saw that he had a pair of trousers in it.
“You know, you could have made a good living as a cat burglar.” She sat up in the middle of the bed and wrapped her arms around her knees. “You’re pretty good at sneaking out of a lady’s bedroom.”
He went still for an instant and then stepped into the pants. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Yes, I could see that.”
“Zoe—”
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on here, Ethan?”
“I couldn’t sleep.” He pulled a fresh black tee shirt over his head. “Figured you wouldn’t want me pacing your living room until dawn so I thought I’d take a walk outside.”
“A walk outside.”
“Yeah.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“Figured some fresh air might help.”
“Bull.” She flung the sheet aside and bounded to her feet. “You were going to walk out on me, weren’t you?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You were going to walk out on me in the middle of the night.” Belatedly she realized she was waving her hands. She hated when that happened. She folded them very tightly beneath her breasts instead, hugging her pain and outrage close. “I can’t believe it. I expected better than that from you, Ethan Truax.”