The Dangerous Hero (5 page)

For the next few hours they'd both been dazzled by the force of their sexual attraction. He'd caressed her on the beach, and a bit later, in her father’s boathouse, where things had gone even further. It had seemed perfect. Not just the sex, but the feeling of finding someone who was the right match. He'd started envisioning an entire future for the two of them—lots of sex and laughter, sports and games, while she went to school and he worked on his book. They would both be in the Boston area, so it was possible. She’d be living in a college dorm, and he in his crappy apartment in Cambridge, but that could work, couldn’t it?

No way.

His host had waited until Viola had gone to bed that night before dragging Stephen outside and threatening to have him arrested if he didn’t promise never to lay a hand on his daughter again. Percy had seen the two of them stagger ashore, fall down in the wet sand, and get it on.

Stephen had been so horrified and embarrassed at the thought of being observed by Viola’s father that any chance he might have had to make a case for himself was cut out from under him. When Percy had angrily declared that a man of his age could go to prison for having sex with a girl of under eighteen, Stephen had been shocked and scared. Percy had made the whole thing sound so sleazy and wrong. All his fantasies about an idyllic relationship between himself and Viola were strangled at birth. She was, as Percy kept shouting at him,
only
seventeen
.

Looking back on it now, Stephen was struck with how young he, too, had been. And how stupid. Percy had great force of personality. He was famous for running roughshod over anybody who opposed him, and he did it with a certain flair and charm that made him almost impossible to resist. Stephen was no pushover. In most relationships, he was the leader, not the follower, but Percy was his mentor, and the alpha male in his own household. His daughter, it seemed, was sacrosanct.

He'd felt he had no choice but to do as Percy ordered and back off. So he had left the Cape, left Viola, and, as it turned out, left his mentor forever. Percy had twisted something that had been sweet, hot, and loving into something resembling a porn movie. Stephen couldn’t forgive him. In later years, their infrequent interactions had grown hostile, as each of them slammed the other’s books.

As it turned out, he hadn’t needed Percy’s help in his career. He was a published novelist within three years. A couple of years after that, his third Bartholomew Giles novel hit the
New York Times
list, and he was, officially, a bestselling novelist.

Now Viola was back. She hated his books, but the attraction between them was stronger than ever. This time he wasn’t going to let her go.

Pulling out his phone, he scrolled down to the number Jeff had given him and initiated the call.

Chapter 4

Viola woke with a start, her heart beating fast. The phone. Shit. She had forgotten to turn off the ringer. She usually did that at night, since being jerked out of sleep was such an uncomfortable feeling. It reminded her of the days when Derek kept calling her at odd hours, freaking her out.

The thought of her ex gave her a sick lurch in the stomach. Stop that, she ordered her stomach. He was gone. History. No more thinking of the creep. No more vulnerability. Own it!

Feeling a lot better, she groped for her phone. The screen informed her helpfully that the time was 12:25 a.m. She hesitated. She didn't recognize the number.

Curiosity won out, as usual. Moving the slider, she held the small device to her ear. "Yes?"

"Oh, good," drawled a male voice that she wouldn't have expected to recognize as instantly as she did. "I’ve been hoping you'd say yes to me."

It was him. Stephen Silkwood. Holy shit.

"Don't hang up," he added. "Did I wake you? I’m sorry. I need to talk to you."

"How did you get this number?" She pushed herself up in bed, brushing her tangled hair out of her face and still trying to get her bearings.

"Jeff Slayton hooked me up with the faculty directory. He and I are hanging out a bar we used to frequent when we were students. I came outside to call you."

Rubbing her sleep-gummed eyes, she tried to parse this. He and Jeff had both said something about being friends, but for some reason she'd imagined this to be more casual and collegial, based on Jeff's professional interests in history and Stephen's role as an author. "You and Jeff went to school together?"

"College, yeah. Over at Penshurst. We were roommates for a couple years. I'm staying with him for the weekend."

Which meant—
work
, brain—he was still in Rolling Meadows. He hadn't gone back to wherever it was he lived. He must be calling her from only a couple of miles away.

"Since I’m in town, I was wondering, are you free tomorrow? I’d really like to see you. Can we meet somewhere for lunch?"

"Lunch?" Although she knew she was awake, she still felt as though she were dreaming.

"Lunch, yes." She heard that teasing lilt enter his voice. "You could take me out to a nice restaurant."

"Why would I want to do that?"

"Considering what your vicious review is costing me in book sales, I figure you owe me."

She smiled in spite of herself. No sense of humor? Humph. "You're a successful novelist. Do you have any idea what a first-year assistant professor earns? I can't afford you."

"But you’re such an ardent feminist. Heaven forbid I should oppress you by offering to pay for our meal."

There was something provocative about the way he said "our meal," as if the date were a foregone conclusion. No way, she reminded herself, trying to stifle the little voice inside that was pleading, say yes, say yes,
please
say yes.

"Thank you for the charming invitation," she said, ignoring the inner clamor, "but I don't think I’m free for lunch tomorrow."

"Okay." He paused. "Is it because of what happened in the elevator? I don't usually attack women in elevators. I save that sort of thing for the beach."

Her breath caught.

"Viola." He paused, then pronounced the syllables of her name again, drawing them out: "Viola. I’m an idiot. Can you forgive me? I’m groveling here."

She felt laughter bubble up. "So, your memory has returned?"

"I apologize for the feeble neurons, but you gotta expect that from someone so much older than you. Are you legal yet?"

She let the laughter out. When he heard her chuckling, he began laughing too. "I don’t know why I didn’t know you as soon as I saw you. My only excuse is that you look different now from the way you looked as a gawky teenager."

"Gawky? Who're you calling gawky?" Her heart was doing joyous somersaults.

"I'm fond of gawky. I can still see you that way, tall and kinda awkward, all arms and legs and heart."

His voice had made her hot before, but now it was making her all warm and toasty. He really did remember.

"But what," he added, "was with the short black hair? Were you dyeing it?"

"I guess you wouldn't know about the teasing a redhead has to put up with in high school. You’re lucky it wasn’t blue or purple—I went with those colors for a while, too. It took me another year or so to grow out of the crazy transformations and get comfortable with my natural hair."

"I get it, I guess. But your natural hair is beautiful."

"Thank you."
Focus
, she ordered herself. "Stephen. You disappeared. You never called, never emailed. You were just...gone."

"I know." His voice turned serious. "I'm sorry. Your father insisted. You were underage, and I never should have touched you. You were just a kid, Viola."

"I wasn't underage. We had been friends all summer. I couldn’t believe it when you just walked out of my life."

"I thought I’d done something terrible. Betrayed your trust. I felt like a complete shit."

"Justifiably so. You were engaged to another girl."

"What? Who told you that?"

"Are you denying it?"

"Yes, I’m denying it. Is that what Percy told you? Fuck. Looks like your father did a number on both of us."

She felt confused. What did her father have to do with this? What had he meant by ‘your father insisted’? "What are you saying? I don’t understand."

"I’m saying it wasn’t true. I wasn’t engaged when I knew you."

"No?"

"Not at the time, no. I had been engaged in the spring of that year, briefly, but it was over long before I met you. I've never been married. I was single then, and I’m single now."

Wow. Had her father lied to her? Had Percy’s interference scuttled their romance before it had even gotten started? "So, if you weren’t seeing someone else, why didn’t you call?"

"Because Percy threatened to have me arrested for statutory rape." A pause, then he added, "You didn’t know?"

"Statutory rape? Are you serious?"

"Because you were under eighteen. Turns out you only needed to be sixteen to be legal, but I didn’t know that then."

"But we didn't even—" she paused not sure which word to use. Screw? Fuck?

"I know, but your father thought we had." He paused, then added, "We did do a lot of other stuff, some of which was probably illegal in the Puritan state of Massachusetts."

Her cheeks grew warm as she remembered some of those things. "But I
was
eighteen. I guess I was still seventeen when we met, but my birthday is in July. That weekend—that was in August, remember? I was already eighteen. An adult, officially able to vote, smoke, buy porn, and have sex with whomever I wanted."

There was silence on the other end of the line. "And your father knew this?"

"Of course he knew. He's my father."

"He lied to me, then. Damn. Good old Percy. He lied."

"Well, he never even mentioned any of this to me." Viola’s stomach churned as she tried to square his story against her memories of her father’s behavior that summer. It was so different from what she had believed all these years. It was true that Percy could be overbearing at times, but she couldn’t imagine that he would have deliberately set out to destroy her happiness. "I can’t believe he meddled in my life that way. How did he even know that anything had happened between us? I never told him. Did you?"

"Of course not. He was watching us. He saw us together."

Now her face and neck turned scarlet. The nine years that had passed didn't do a thing to mitigate her embarrassment. "He was
watching
us?"

"You never knew any of this, Viola?"

"No." She could feel her teeth grinding. She had never known it, but that didn’t prove it wasn’t true. Her father had always been controlling.

"This is even more fucked up than I thought," he said after a short pause.

"No kidding."

"On the other hand," he said more cheerfully, "it was a long time ago. I’m still free, and Jeff tells me you’re divorced. So let me ask you once again, will you have lunch with me tomorrow?"

Oh jeez. What to say. Ever since he had walked into the auditorium yesterday, she’d been riding an emotional rollercoaster. If she accepted his invitation, that wild crazy ride would continue. Was that what she wanted?

She could picture him: his tall, rangy body with its hint of wound-up sexual energy stimulated her imagination, as did the thick, curly hair that seemed to invite a woman's caressing fingers. She thrilled to the memory of the look in his eyes when he held her against the wall of the elevator. Her body tingled with pleasure at the thought of him coaxing her into surrender. Not that much coaxing would be required.

There was no denying the attraction. And it was more than just physical. He was clever and amusing, and there was something about the battle of wits that had begun between them on the podium last night that had been fun.

Still, intentionally or not, he had ripped out her heart and stomped on it. What was to stop him from doing it again?

"Say yes," Stephen urged as the silence hung between them. "Give me a chance to make things up to you."

Viola stared at her fingers, which were crumpling the corner of the bed sheet. Was she even ready to start seeing a guy again? She had to do it sometime. She wasn't planning to spend the rest of her life living like a nun! Still...this guy? It seemed like a treacherous minefield.

"I don’t know. It's just that old attraction, resurrected. You don't even like me particularly, after that book review."

"Forget the book review. It’s not important. Listen—however much we may have changed on the surface, at heart we're the same people we were that summer at your father's cottage. We liked each other then. Why shouldn't we like each other now?"

She felt a shadow steal over her.
I'm not the same person. You have no idea. That old self is such a stranger to me now.

Maybe he could help her find herself again?

Or would he take what Derek had started and make it worse?

She thought about his dark hero, Bartholomew Giles. The truth was, distasteful though she found him, Bart was a fascinating character. How much of himself had Stephen put into his creation?

There was a rumble of thunder in the distance, but it sounded louder through the phone. She could hear the rain beating at her bedroom windows, and she thought she could hear it through the phone as well. "You’re not standing outside in the rain, are you?"

"I’m sitting in my car in a parking lot, but I got drenched as I ran out to the car. I’m shivering here. Are you feeling sorry for me yet?"

She laughed. "Not so much."

"There’s that laugh I remember," he said, his voice flowing over her, husky and warm. "Will you meet me tomorrow?"

What the hell. What harm could it do, a single lunch?

"Okay. Yes." She grinned into the phone. "But if I end up regretting this, you can expect an even nastier review of your next book."

Chapter 5

The Italian restaurant that Viola had suggested was crowded, but she managed to find a parking spot in the back. She and Stephen had exchanged several text messages during the morning on Saturday, settling on the place, the time, and the mode of transportation. Rather than allow him to pick her up at her home, Viola had insisted on bringing her own car. She had no idea how this meeting was going to go. If it went badly, she needed to be able to escape.