No One But You

by Maureen Smith

  “Easier said than done,” Althea snarled. “A young girl is missing, and God only knows what’s being done to her.”

  Damien said nothing. He probed her dark, tumultuous eyes, wondering if she was remembering her own horrifying ordeal.

  Swallowing hard, she averted her gaze, jerking her chin toward the printout in his hand. “Find anything else?”

  Damien scanned the few remaining pages and shook his head. “Just more messages between Claire and her friends. She and Courtney must have continued their conversation over the phone.”

  Althea nodded, setting her own stack of pages on the antique sofa table behind them. Unbidden, Damien’s mind was filled with vividly erotic images of what they had done on that table, images of her long, luscious legs wrapped around his hips as he pounded into her. Just thinking about it made him hard.

  Damn. And he’d been doing so well, too.

  When he arrived at the apartment, he’d forced himself to ignore the way her snug T-shirt outlined the firm, ripe swell of her breasts, the way her sweatpants molded the lush roundness of her bottom. Even the sight of her slender bare feet, the toenails painted a deep red, had threatened his self-control. But he’d kept himself in check, kept his mind on the case.

  Now he felt his concentration slipping a little. It had been a long day, and Althea’s tantalizing nearness on the sofa, combined with the cozy fire and the soft music playing in the background, didn’t help matters any.

  It was time for him to leave.

  But before he could rise from the sofa, Althea said, “Can I ask you a somewhat personal question?”

  Damien hesitated. “Go for it.”

  “Does it bother you . . . You know, reading something like that, being reminded of that whole stereotype . . .”

  He just stared at her, unblinking.

  “You know,” she prompted, nervously twisting her hands on her lap, looking like she suddenly regretted bringing up the subject. “You know,” she repeated, sounding just a touch flustered.

  Suppressing a grin, Damien leaned back slowly and spread his arms across the back of the sofa, posturing like he had all the time in the world. “I don’t know what you’re asking me, Althea,” he drawled, enjoying himself immensely. “You’re gonna have to be more specific.”

  She gave him an aggrieved look. “I’m talking about the stereotype about black men.”

  “There are a lot of stereotypes about black men. Which one, in particular, are you referring to?”

  She glared balefully at him. “The one that Claire and Courtney were talking about. The one about black men having, uh, being, you know—”

  He arched an amused brow. “Hung like horses?”

  He stared at Althea, marveling at the deep flush that spread across her cheekbones. He could hardly believe the blushing woman before him was the same one who’d boldly stepped to him at the club, invited him back to her apartment, then spent the night doing unspeakable things to him and with him.

  “You know very well that’s what I was talking about,” she grumbled.

  Damien flashed a crooked grin. “I wanted to make you sweat a little. Now I can’t even remember the original question.”

  Althea rolled her eyes in exasperation. “I asked you if the stereotype bothers you. When I read Claire’s question to Courtney, I was a little offended. I wondered if you were, too.”

  “Do you think I should be?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not for me to say how you should or shouldn’t feel.”

  “Why were you offended?”

  “Why? Well, because I find most stereotypes—especially stereotypes about my people—vulgar and offensive.”

  “Yes, but do you think there’s any truth to this one?”

  “I—” She met his wicked gaze, then dropped her eyes and blushed furiously.

  Damien threw back his head and roared with laughter.

  “I almost walked right into that one,” Althea muttered, a sheepish smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

  Grinning and shaking his head, Damien rose from the sofa and grabbed his car keys off the coffee table. “It’s getting late. I’d better go since we have to be up early.”

  Althea walked him to the door. “Thanks for coming over. And thanks for dinner, even though it was supposed to be on me.”

  He turned at the door and smiled down at her.

  She smiled back.

  He forgot what he was about to say.

  They gazed at each other.

  He started to lower his head. He heard her breath catch. Her lips parted slightly, as if she meant to tell him no. Or so he thought at first. But as he leaned closer, her sooty lashes fluttered and her eyelids drifted shut. He paused for a moment, his gaze roaming across her upturned face, temptation pumping through his veins like a potent drug.

  At the last second he brushed a light kiss across her forehead and murmured, “Lock up.”

  Her eyelids snapped open and she stared up at him, confusion and embarrassment mirrored in her dark eyes before she nodded wordlessly.

  And for the second time in less than a week, Damien walked out of her apartment and started down the long corridor, wondering what would have happened if he’d kissed her, wondering how far he could have gone before she stopped him. If she stopped him.

  As he rode the elevator down to the lobby and stepped out into the cold night, he was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he didn’t notice the pair of eyes hidden in the shadows, following his every move.

  He watched Damien Wade make his way to the black SUV parked near the front of the building and climb inside, fury boiling his blood, settling like a red haze over his vision.

  Fucking bastard!

  Once again, the FBI agent had intruded upon his time with Althea!

  After following her home from the office, he’d looked forward to spending at least one hour spying on her from his nightly hiding place. Dressed in one of his elaborate disguises—which allowed him to change his hair, eye color, facial features, height, weight, even race—he’d entered the apartment building and hung around for awhile, as he’d done on numerous occasions, just to prove that he could. No one recognized him. No one gave him a passing glance. He was a chameleon. Unable to resist, he’d taken the elevator to Althea’s floor and rang her doorbell. He’d waited, almost dizzy with anticipation, the thrill of the chase. He’d wanted her to look into his eyes and not recognize him, to smile politely and tell him he was on the wrong floor. But when she didn’t come to the door, he realized that she might be taking a shower, as she often did after a long day. He was tempted, so very tempted, to sneak inside and watch her bathe—he could have if he wanted to—but he decided not to take such a risk. Once was sufficient.

  And soon enough he would have her all to himself.

  But shortly after he returned to the parking lot to begin his nightly ritual, Damien Wade had shown up. And this time he hadn’t stayed in his SUV. He’d disappeared inside the building as if he had every right to be there, and he’d remained inside her apartment for more than two hours! Long enough to work his charm, to seduce her, to remove her clothes, to run his filthy hands over her body and mount her like an animal in heat.

  Rage blazed a fiery path through him at the thought of Althea—his Althea—lying with another man and giving herself to him with reckless abandon.

  Not her.

  Not his brave, beautiful Althea.

  Didn’t she know she belonged to him? Didn’t she know there could be no one but him for her?

  His pulse throbbed, pounding through his brain like a jackhammer. He thought of the many diabolical ways he could get revenge against Wade for taking what didn’t belong to him. How he would have loved to break into his SUV, to hide in the cold darkness until the agent emerged from the building, clothes rumpled, smelling of sex and her. How he would have loved to meet his gaze in the rearview mirror, to see the terror in Wade’s eyes before he calmly sliced his throat from ear to ear.

  Or maybe
he would kidnap the agent’s eleven-year-old daughter instead. A pretty little thing with an infectious smile and bright, intuitive eyes. He could get to her so easily. He could snatch her off the sidewalk as she walked the short block from her bus stop to her grandmother’s house after school. All it took was one crank phone call to the old woman’s house, a temporary diversion that would detain her inside while he grabbed her granddaughter. Or he could simply take India from her apartment on a Friday night when she was home alone while her whore of a mother was out partying. If Wade only knew how vulnerable his precious little girl was. Oh, to see the sheer anguish on his face when they discovered her missing, to behold the rage that would sweep through him like a hurricane. When he’d finished lashing out at his ex-wife for being so selfish and irresponsible, he would blame himself for not doing a better job of keeping his own child safe. And the guilt would ravage his soul and slowly eat him alive.

  What better revenge could there be?

  But, no, as tempting as it was, he could not deviate from his plan. Not now. Patience was the key. Patience, diligence, and cunning.

  Besides, now that he thought about it some more, he realized that Wade had not emerged from the building looking like a man who had just satisfied his sexual urges. He’d looked distracted, even unsettled.

  Had Althea rejected his advances? Had she sent the bastard packing?

  A slow, knowing smile crept across his face. Of course she had. She was way too smart to fall for Damien Wade’s dark good looks and cocky swagger. She’d learned from past experience that she couldn’t trust a handsome face and a charming smile. And she knew better than to give herself to another man, when he was the only one who held her destiny.

  He never should have doubted her.

  Taking a deep breath, he smiled again, and felt much calmer. In control. Which was where he needed to be.

  It was time for him to pay a visit to the other woman who would help him achieve his ultimate goal. The woman who was an integral part of the unveiling of his masterpiece.

  With his purpose in mind, he started the car and headed toward his new destination.

  Chapter 19

  Suzette Thorndike’s hand trembled violently as she lifted a cigarette to her mouth and took a deep drag of nicotine. She held it in her lungs for a moment, then exhaled on a long, shaky breath, sending a plume of smoke into the cold night sky.

  She’d had to wait until her husband went to bed before she snuck out to the terrace to have a smoke. Spencer hated her “filthy addiction” and had been urging her to quit ever since they got married. Although Suzette had tried several times—chewing nicotine gums, using the patch, switching to different cigarette brands with increasingly lower levels of nicotine before turning to herbal and homeopathic remedies—nothing had worked. She’d even undergone hours of aversion therapy at a posh private clinic outside Baltimore, but thousands of dollars later, she still craved the taste of nicotine. She’d been smoking ever since she was fourteen years old. Old habits died hard.

  Besides, she resented Spencer’s constant criticism of what he called her “pathetic weakness” for cigarettes. Did she criticize him for some of his unscrupulous business practices, the shady land deals he’d made that had caused many families to lose their homes? Did she criticize him for being such a workaholic that he couldn’t go to the bathroom, let alone go on vacation, without taking his damn Bluetooth phone? Or did she, for that matter, criticize his permissive parenting style or his insistence upon spoiling his daughter rotten?

  No!

  She never, ever criticized Spencer. In fact, she’d spent the last three years proving to him just what a loving, supportive wife she could be. She tolerated Claire’s blatantly disrespectful attitude toward her, telling herself it would be unfair to ask Spencer to choose between his wife and his daughter, knowing he would never take her side anyway. She kept herself in excellent shape so he could wear her proudly on his arm wherever they went. She satisfied his every sexual whim, from the tame to the outrageously kinky, even when she found herself secretly wondering whether he was fantasizing about her or his beautiful daughter.

  She’d been a damn good wife to Spencer Thorndike. Yet there she was, freezing her ass off in the cold just so he wouldn’t know she’d had a smoke. Damn it, she shouldn’t have to sneak around in her own home just to get some stress relief. Didn’t he understand that she was supposedly as stressed out as he was over Claire’s abduction?

  Didn’t he know that keeping up appearances could take a serious toll on one’s health, mentally and physically?

  With a cold, narrow smile, Suzette blew out a jet stream of smoke through her nostrils and watched it dissipate into the gloom. Her craving for nicotine wasn’t the only thing that had driven her outdoors on that dark, wintry night. She’d needed a moment of privacy, an escape from the interlopers who had commandeered the house over the last forty-eight hours. She never thought she’d live to see the day that she would feel claustrophobic in a nine-bedroom mansion, but that’s precisely how she felt. Suffocated. Invaded. By the police officers huddled around the phone in anticipation of a ransom demand. By the endless procession of visitors—friends from their insulated little community, Spencer’s family members, his colleagues and business associates who dragged their wives along to make meaningless small talk with Suzette in an obvious attempt to get her mind off the crisis. And one could not forget the constant barrage of reporters camped out at the gate to the property, waiting for any scrap of news. Waiting for her, or anyone else remotely connected to the case, to emerge from the house so they could pounce with their questions. Is it true that the kidnapper took the time to de-stage the crime scene? Is it true that Claire might have known her abductor and unwittingly invited him into her home? Can you comment on speculation that Claire’s disappearance may be linked to the Pritchard abduction eight years ago?

  Suzette shuddered, chilled by the thought of how easily information could be obtained. How easily long-buried secrets could be exposed.

  It was this terrible fear that had plagued her for the last eleven years, eating away at her conscience like the deadliest of tumors. She’d worked so hard to put the past behind her, to erase all traces of the person she’d once been, the unspeakable things she had done. And then one day while snooping around in Claire’s bedroom, she’d stumbled upon something that made all her fears and nightmares coalesce into a moment of sheer, blinding panic.

  At the bottom of Claire’s lingerie drawer, she’d found a receipt issued by Charm City Investigations.

  And that was when she realized that the unthinkable had happened.

  Claire, who’d never made any secret of her hatred and distrust of Suzette, had hired a private investigator to dig up her stepmother’s skeletons.

  Suddenly the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

  Claire’s secrecy over the last month.

  The strange package that arrived in the mail one day from an unknown sender.

  Her increasing hostility toward Suzette, the way she’d often looked at her as if she knew something Suzette did not.

  Suddenly everything made sense. Claire intended to use Suzette’s past sins against her. If Spencer learned the shameful truth about his wife, he would divorce her faster than her parents had disowned her.

  She couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t lose her husband, the mansion, the respectability and prestige, everything she’d worked so hard for.

  Standing in the middle of her stepdaughter’s bedroom that afternoon, Suzette had been seized by a blinding rage, a rage unlike anything she’d ever felt before.

  Claire Thorndike had everything. A closet overflowing with designer clothes, shoes, and handbags. The latest and greatest gadgets—an iPhone, an iPod touch, a state-of-the-art computer and laptop. A chauffeur at the ready whenever she didn’t feel like driving her $60,000 car. A household staff that catered to her every need. An overindulgent father who did the same. Whatever Claire wanted she got, no matter how outrag
eous the request. Last year when she decided she wanted bigger tits, Spencer didn’t hesitate to shell out $15,000 for her breast implants. For her sweet sixteen birthday, he’d hired her favorite singer to perform at her party, an extravagant affair held on the grounds of the estate and attended by more than one hundred teenagers.

  Ungrateful bitch, Suzette had fumed as she stood in her stepdaughter’s bedroom three weeks ago. Claire would never know what it was like to be dirt poor, to struggle to stay awake in class because she’d worked a late shift at the mini-mart the night before just to help her parents make ends meet. Claire would never know what it was like to go to bed hungry because her four younger siblings had eaten her portion of dinner before she came home. And Claire would never know the pain and humiliation of having to share underwear with her younger sister and going to school dressed in raggedy hand-me-downs donated by local charities.

  Claire had more than any girl could ever ask for, yet it still wasn’t enough. She wouldn’t be satisfied until she had her father’s undivided love and attention. And in order to get that, she had to remove the only obstacle standing in her way: her stepmother.

  The joke’s on you, little girl, Suzette mused to herself now, suffering a pang of guilt when she remembered the relief she’d felt upon returning home on Sunday and discovering that Claire had been abducted.

  No amount of acting classes or community theater experience could have prepared Suzette for the performance she would give that day, tearing through the house shrieking Claire’s name before falling apart in Spencer’s arms. She had sobbed hysterically and railed at God just as angrily and bitterly as her anguished husband, repeating the theatrics for the benefit of the police officers who arrived shortly afterward to take their statements. And she’d made a show of dutifully taking the sedatives provided by the family physician, only to spit the pills into a wad of Kleenex when no one was looking.

  Lying in bed with her husband that first night, she’d kissed his tears away and assured him that Claire would be found and returned home safely, even though she knew there was a very strong chance that his daughter was already dead.