Tasting Fear (21 page)

But she was afraid, it was late, it was raining, and he really needed to know what the hell she was so afraid of.

And also, incidentally, if her knees were dimpled.

“I’ll drive you home,” he said.

“Oh, no. Thanks, but I couldn’t. It’s okay, really,” Nell babbled. She leaped, waving her arms at the next cab that went by, even though its meter light was off. “I’ll just, ah, walk. Until I find one.”

Or the Fiend finds you.
She and her sisters had promised each other to take cabs. Not that it had helped Nancy, who’d been nabbed right out of a crowded hotel restaurant. Surrounded by people she knew.

“No,” Burke said. “You’re not walking. It’s late. And it’s raining.”

She opened her mouth to slap him down politely. Who did he think he was, anyway, announcing what she would do or not do?

Then she looked into his eyes, and the commentary in her mind just…stopped. It was dark. No cabs were stopping. Her neck was prickling in the worst way. The business crowd had gone home, and this part of Midtown was dismal and deserted at night.

The man was scary in his own right, but he was not the Fiend. She was not a brainless bimbo, whatever he might think, with that provocative, hiring-young-women-just-for-scenery comment. She could handle him.

She licked her dry lips without thinking and regretted it when his gaze flicked right to them—and stuck there. “Um, thank you.” Her voice felt dry, was scratchy.

These were the last words she managed to speak. They walked together in silence. She was strangled by shyness. For God’s sake, she’d just accepted a job from this man. They had plenty of things to talk about, but still, her voice was huddled up into a tight, scared ball in her throat. He led her down into the underground parking garage near his office building. She stumbled on the steep concrete slope, clutching the folder that held the game outline she was supposed to study tonight. He caught her elbow and held on to it, all the way to the sleek silver Mercedes that answered his remote beep with a pert flash of its lights.

He helped her into the car and closed the door for her. Her voiceless condition did not improve, even after the necessary interchange about the best route to take to her SoHo address.

After a few minutes of driving, he spoke up. “What are you afraid of?”

There were so many answers to that question, it scrambled her circuits, left her floundering. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“You looked scared when you were waiting for the cab.”

His perception made her feel naked. “Ah, wow,” she said. “I didn’t…that is to say, I’m surprised you noticed that.”

He slanted her a quick glance. “Why is that?”

Yikes. Now he’d think she was judging or criticizing, and only thirty minutes after hiring her. “It’s just odd,” she said, evasively. “It’s intuitive of you. I wouldn’t have thought you were the type.”

He frowned into the windshield. “Why not?”

“I don’t know,” she said, helplessly. “You never noticed anything in your field of vision at the restaurant. You never made eye contact with anyone. You always order the same thing. You have an extremely narrow range of focus. Intuition requires…well, openness.”

“Openness?” He laughed. “You think I’m closed, then. You and my family. That’s Duncan for you. Thick as a brick wall.”

“I don’t think anything of the kind,” she retorted primly.

“I do have a narrow range of focus,” he said. “But there’s a flip side. Whatever gets into that narrow range, I see. Every last detail.”

She flushed. “Well, thank you. I appreciate your interest, but—”

“But you haven’t answered my question. What are you afraid of?”

Her chest bumped with nervous laughter. “Good God. You’re like a dog with a bone.”

“Pit bull, my family calls me,” he agreed easily.

She shot him a quick, nervous glance. “Family? So you’re—”

“Married? No. I’m talking my mother, brother, and sister. So?”

Nell blushed, both for her loaded question and his matter-of-fact answer. There was no reason not to tell him. There was nothing to be ashamed of. But still, it was scary and flesh creeping, and this guy had just become her new employer. And it was none of his damn business.

He waited. She could feel his insistence in the profound silence between them. He just sat there, motor idling, waiting.

“It’s a long, complicated story,” she said warily.

“We’re stuck in traffic,” he said. “Entertain me.”

True enough. They were motionless in a gridlocked snarl.

“It started a few weeks ago,” she began. “When my mother died.”

He shot her a startled glance. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

She acknowledged his words with a nod, and went on, simply and sequentially, with the whole crazy tale. The burglar, the necklaces, the mysterious letters. The clotheshorse, the murdered jeweller and his family, the attack in the stairwell, Nancy’s attempted abduction in Boston. The crazy, winding story got them all the way down to her apartment.

He double-parked, listening with no visible reaction. The longer she talked, the more self-conscious she felt. He probably thought she was a paranoid nutcase. Or worse, an attention-mongering nutcase.

“So, anyway. That’s why I’m scared,” she finally concluded. “All of us. Nervous, and scared, and confused. Do you want to fire me now?”

He frowned. “Why the hell would I do that?”

She shrugged, feeling silly, but before she was required to come up with a coherent reply, a guy opened the SUV in front of them, got in, and pulled away—leaving a perfect parking spot. Unheard of.

Burke pulled into it. “I’d better walk you up to your door.”

Oh boy. How very gallant of him. If only her heart would stop acting like it was trying to pound its way out of her chest. “Don’t worry about it,” she told him, with a breathless laugh. “It’s a fourth-floor walk-up.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I work out.”

She glanced at his body, strangled another crack of laughter into a dry cough. She led him into her building.

Up, up, up. The stairs never stopped. She stopped in front of her door, glad for an excuse to be that breathless and red. “I appreciate the ride and the company,” she said. He nodded, and kept standing there. Like a mountain, a monolith. “I’m not going to invite you in,” she blurted out. “Not for coffee, or for drinks, or…ah, anything.”

“Of course,” he said. “You hardly know me.” But he did not leave.

“So?” she prompted. “Why are you standing there? What do you want from me?”

“Something I can’t have, I guess.” His voice was low. He reached out and touched the end of a dangling fuzzy ringlet that had escaped the bun. “I got the strangest sensation today. In the restaurant.”

“Yes?” Her lips trembled. She pressed them together hard.

“I got the feeling that you were trying to get my attention.”

Duh, Einstein.
“Well, I suppose I kind of was,” she fluttered.

He tugged the curl, watched it rebound. “You’ve got my attention.”

“Um”—she laughed, nervously—“now that I have it, I’m not sure what to do with it.”

“There’s a lot you can do with it,” he said. “It’s multipurpose.”

“Ah,” she whispered. “Um, really.”

“Yeah, really. You’d be amazed.” He wound the curl around his finger. “Once you’ve got my attention, it’s hard to shake.”

“I noticed that. The way you stared at that computer, a herd of elephants could have trooped by. But I’m not doing anything with your attention tonight. Thanks again, for the ride.” She hesitated. “Good night.”

“Is your sister here?”

She considered saying yes, just to defuse the tension, but she could not lie to those penetrating eyes. “She’s driving to Delaware,” she said. “She designs jewelry. She works the crafts fair circuit.”

“You and your sisters have a lot of nerve, wandering around all alone when a stalker’s out there gunning for you.”

She bristled. “We have no choice! We have to make a living!”

“You have an alarm, at least?”

“Yep. Top of the line,” she said promptly.

He leaned against the wall. “A dog might be a good investment.”

His position crowded her into the tiled corner. “Oh, please,” she said. “Not a chance. You have no idea how small my apartment is.”

“No, I don’t,” he said. “And I guess I’m not going to.”

“No,” she whispered, licking dry lips. “Not tonight.”

The words slipped out, their obvious corollary being that he might well get lucky some other night. He smiled. The look in his eyes set off fireworks, in her mind, chest, thighs. Her face felt like it was on fire.

He pulled his cell out. “Let’s exchange mobile numbers,” he said. “If you have a problem, call. Whenever. Any time of day or night.”

“Thank you. That’s very kind,” she whispered. She groped in her bag for a pen and her little notebook.

He frowned. “Just program it in,” he suggested. “You’re not going to want to dig in your handbag for a number in an emergency.”

“I don’t have a mobile phone,” she admitted.

He stared at her, as blank as if she’d announced that she was a space alien. “You what? You’re insane!”

Nell’s chin went up. “Thank you for sharing your opinion.”

“Here!” He held out the phone he’d pulled from his pocket. “Take mine, for Christ’s sake! I have four more!”

“No, thank you,” she said, in her snippiest tone.

He slid the phone into his pocket and studied her face with hypnotizing intensity. “There’s just one thing I need to know before I go,” he said. “Or I won’t sleep tonight.”

She tilted up her chin, trying to breathe. “Know what?”

He sank down onto one knee. “Don’t panic,” he soothed, as shocking erotic possibilities flashed through her mind. She shrank back, shocked, as he grasped her skirt—and lifted. Just a couple of inches. She quivered, trapped. She couldn’t retreat, with her back flat to the wall. “What are you doing?” she squeaked. “Let go of my skirt!”

He looked up with a triumphant grin. “Dimples.”

She wanted to sink into the ground. Oh, for willowy slender legs, like Nancy and Vivi. Having her chubby knees remarked upon by this guy, of all guys, was just too much to bear. “Oh, God. Get out of here.”

“No, no! They’re great. Really. I was hoping they’d have dimples.”

She shook her head. “I can’t handle this. Good night. Get lost.” She put all the commanding punch she could behind the word.

He rose slowly to his feet. Up, up, and still up. God, the guy was tall. And broad. And he smelled so seductively good, it was filling her senses. Scrambling her brain.

“You’re, ah—not moving,” she pointed out to him.

“No,” he agreed.

She tried to look stern. A tall order with that tremor in her mouth. “Why not?” she demanded.

He shrugged. “Because you don’t really want me to.”

The guy’s nerve was staggering. “Oh?” she snapped. “You read minds, do you?”

He shook his head, impassive. “No. I read faces, and bodies.”

She struggled for a moment with that. She was blushing hotly, which did not help her dignity one bit. “That’s very impressive,” she said primly. “But my face and body do not make the executive decisions around here.”

He leaned closer. “Of course they don’t.” His voice was a velvety, rumbling caress. “They have better things to do.”

She was still groping for a comeback when his lips touched hers.

She gasped at the sparkling rush of energy. The startled heat, unfurling through her body. Spreading out, like a rippling current of water. Too delicious to resist.

She rose up on tiptoe, and it all spun out of control. Before she knew it, she was pinned to the wall, kissing him madly. Forgetting everything except for how sweet, how good it felt. How much more she wanted, how bad she wanted it. He hooked her knee with his hand and pulled it up to clasp his muscular thighs, leaning against her so that the hot bulge at his groin pressed against her tender intimate places, in a slow, deliberate pulse that made her ache and squirm and moan.

His tongue slid inside her mouth, commanding and directing the kiss with implacable skill. His hand cupped her bottom, stroking.

She started to shake, terrified and disoriented. Something was spinning out of control. The heat, the light, the ache began to coalesce, sharpening, swelling into something huge and wild—

It burst, and her startled shriek was smothered against his hungry mouth. He held her tightly in his arms, while shudders of unbelievable, shocking pleasure wrenched through her entire body.

Her eyes fluttered open. His gaze burned her face. Her eyes were wet, her mouth couldn’t stop shaking. She couldn’t believe herself. A stranger? In her own
stairwell
? Her eyes shut against the pressure. So. That was what a screaming orgasm felt like. She’d always wondered.

He stroked her cheek gently, waiting. “Any new executive decisions coming down the pipeline?” he prompted softly.

All she wanted was to yank him inside. If this is what he could do to her fully clothed, in the stairwell—ah, God. It was too much.

Way, way too much. She shook her head.
No
. She mouthed the word. Had no breath to actually say it.

He stepped back, let go. “Sorry if I went too far,” he said. He turned, and headed slowly down the stairs. “Good night.”

She stayed there, immobile, until she heard the front door click far below. Then she fumbled with the keys, her hands trembling so hard she could barely hold them.

Once inside her apartment and the alarm armed, she sank down onto the ground as though her legs had no bones, and rocked, hands over her mouth. The keening sounds coming out of her made her throat ache and burn, as if a tuning peg were turning, ratcheting up the tension relentlessly, tighter, higher.

Furious with herself for being such a goddamn coward.

Duncan stared at the screen of the online version of
The Golden Thread Poetry Journal
and sent the pages to print. He reread the series of short lyric poems by Antonella D’Onofrio on the screen while the pages churned out of the machine. It was the tenth time he had read them.

He was baffled by them. Or rather, he was baffled by his reaction to them. It was complete gibberish, of course. He couldn’t figure out what the fuck she was getting at, for the life of him. But he liked the way the sequence of words made him feel. He kept rereading them, over and over. Grasping for that elusive feeling. Weird.