by JoAnn Ross
"Why?"
"Why not? You're beautiful and spirited, Tara. There are times I think you were created from sunlit shadows just to torment me. And how, just when I believe I have a handle on you, you slip back into those shadows and I realize I have no idea who you really are."
His voice was thick. Husky. Tara thought she detected a wee bit of repressed anger in the deep, rough tone. "I'm not that complicated. Oh, I'll admit that I can be a bit stubborn, and—"
"Shut up." His tone was mild, but his eyes were not. "I need to say this." He stood and put his hands on her shoulders, not roughly, but with enough strength to let her know that he wasn't backing off. Not this time. "And you need to hear it."
Tara looked up at him, seeing the man she'd first been drawn to. His dark, untamed looks would send any woman's heart racing.
"You're a gorgeous puzzle wrapped in an enticing enigma, Tara Delaney. And being a man who's always enjoyed women and puzzles, it wasn't all that surprising to me when I discovered that I couldn't get you out of my mind. That you were always there, night and day, when I was awake, and when I was sleeping. Especially when I was sleeping."
He sighed heavily and ran the back of his hand down the side of her face. "Ah, Tara. The dreams I've been having ever since you arrived in town have been the most erotic and frustrating I've ever had."
"Surely you've dreamt of other women."
"Hell, yes. Like all guys, I've had my share of sexual fantasies. But you're more than a fantasy, more than an obsession. And believe me, sweetheart, I know obsession."
His expression turned grim. His eyes were harder and colder than she'd ever seen them. They reminded her of the piece of obsidian she was wearing around her neck. "Gavin—"
"Later." His tone was brusque and sharp. Realizing how he'd sounded, Gavin cursed softly. "It's time you learned the truth about how I ended up in prison," he said. "But I don't want to spoil dinner with such an unsavory tale. We'll talk later."
He wasn't offering her a choice. But since it was Gavin's story to tell, Tara decided to let him tell it his own way. In his own time.
The dinner was delicious. When Tara began gathering up the dishes, Gavin took the plates from her hands.
"I'll do those."
"But you cooked, so it's only fair—"
"I don't mind. Actually, to tell the truth, I'd like some time alone. To think things through."
Tara realized that it wouldn't be easy to explain to the woman you were sleeping with how you happened to be convicted of murdering a former lover. Wanting to give him the space and time he needed, she said, "I'll be in the study."
"Fine." He managed only a parody of a smile that didn't soften, even after she'd pressed her mouth against his grimly set lips.
After loading the dishwasher and fortifying himself with a stiff drink, Gavin followed the tap, tap, tap of a keyboard into the study.
Tara was hunched over a ledger, her fingers skimming over the calculator keys of a laptop computer.
After returning from her visit with Noel, she'd changed into a pair of gray leggings and an oversize sweatshirt touting the wonders of a famed San Francisco chocolate company. Her feet were encased in thick gray-and-green striped wool socks. A yellow pencil was stuck haphazardly into her bright hair. She was holding another between her teeth. Every so often she'd stop her rapid calculations, mutter something and make a notation on the ledger. Then her fingers would resume flying over the keys.
Gavin leaned against the doorjamb, enjoying the pleasure of watching her undetected. And as he did so, he tried to come up with a reasonable, logical explanation for his attraction to Tara Delaney.
She was beautiful, but he'd known more than his share of lovely women and had never before suffered such a constant, irresistible pull. Brigid had said Tara was smart as a whip, but so were most of the other women he'd dated. A man who bored easily, Gavin had outgrown gorgeous airheaded bimbos by his twentieth birthday.
The lovemaking they'd shared proved she was a great deal more passionate than the cool accountant image she worked so hard to project to the rest of the world. But passion, Gavin knew all too well, was often fleeting. When he'd first met her, and even more so after he'd kissed her, he'd figured that once they made love, his curiosity would be satisfied, his passion sated.
But now he knew that he'd been fooling himself. Because despite having agreed that their affair would end when her month was up, he was too fascinated with her to be satisfied with a brief, intense fling. He wanted something from her, dammit. And although he still wasn't sure what, Gavin suspected a lifetime would be a good beginning.
As if sensing his thoughts, Tara whirled around.
"I didn't hear you!" Her heart was pounding a million miles a minute. From being startled, she assured herself. It certainly didn't have anything to do with how damn sexy he looked leaning nonchalantly against her doorjamb. Liar.
"You looked a million miles away." He crossed the room on a strong stride that reminded her of a cougar stalking its prey, stopped beside the desk and looked down at the ledger sheet. "How's it going?"
"Brigid had many talents," Tara said, leaning back in the chair and stretching out the kinks in her back. "But bookkeeping definitely wasn't one of them."
Gavin began massaging the knotted muscles at the base of her neck. "She probably had a lot of company." He vowed never to let Tara see his checkbook register.
"I suppose so. But she was supposed to be running a business."
"Are you saying it was in the red?"
"No." She shook her head, dislodging the pencil. "Actually, she was making an amazing profit. But she certainly couldn't have known it from her record keeping."
Gavin wondered why, if Tara was determined to shut down Brigid's business in order to return to the fast lane in San Francisco, she was spending so much time trying to unravel its financial state. He was tempted to ask, but didn't want to make her feel he'd pushed her into a corner. "We need to talk."
With the gentlest of touches, he lifted her to her feet. "But first I want you." The pad of his thumb strayed over her lips, which parted in response to his sensuous touch. "I want you under me. I want to be inside you."
He ran his strong hands down her back, over her hips and pulled her against him so she could feel the full extent of his arousal. "I want to feel you around me, all tight and hot and wet."
The provocative words caused a familiar rush of warm pleasure. "Yes."
He scooped her into his arms and carried her out of the room. Later, Tara would wonder how he'd managed to make it up all those stairs. But somehow, he did, kissing her all the while, without missing a step.
Their hands tore at clothing, ripping it, scattering it carelessly around the room. Gavin was drunk with her. With the need to touch, to taste, to possess. He craved her with every screeching atom of his being.
He tore away the skimpy blue panties and flung them away before dragging her onto the bed, where they rolled over and over—frantic hands stroking moist, heated flesh, greedy mouths devouring sharp, painful breaths. The animal had burst free of its civilizing restraints; it was dark and dangerous, with jagged teeth and razor-sharp claws. It was relentless.
She trembled as his hands raced over her damp fragrant skin, finding erotic flash points she hadn't even known existed. When his fingers dipped into the warm, moist center of her female body, gathering up the honey flowing there, she dug her fingernails into his back and arched against his touch in a mute plea for more.
"Gavin…" She sobbed out his name as she writhed beneath his tormenting touch. "Oh, God. Please." Tara didn't care that she was begging, if that's what it took to satisfy this raw, painful need. She was gasping for breath, every nerve ending in her body threatening to implode as the line between pain and pleasure blurred.
"Not yet." His thumb played with the ultrasensitive nub, drawing a moan from between her parted lips.
Painfully aroused, he watched her, watched the stunned pleasure that turned her
eyes to the deep, dark hue of a storm-tossed sea, saw the thrill that burned fever bright on her cheeks as his touch delved deeper, seeking forbidden secrets.
She was wet. And hot. And she was his. Never had he felt such a need to possess a woman. Pamela had been like a mirage on a hot desert highway, always remaining just out of reach. That had never bothered him, since whenever they were together it was as if his head had disengaged, leaving his body to take over.
But sex with Tara was different. Because she was different.
Her body was taut and trembling. When his tongue dove between her lips he tasted passion. And promise.
"You're mine," he growled, lifting her yet higher off the mattress.
"Yes," she gasped as he pressed his mouth against the heat between her legs. As he began to feast, she cried out, writhing beneath the onslaught of that wicked tongue, that hungry mouth. Her hands flew over her head, her fingers gripped the scrolling on the wrought-iron bed. She was as taut as a bowstring and her breath was coming in harsh, shallow draughts.
"I want you," she gasped as the waves of need swelled. "Now."
"Soon, baby. I promise."
He pressed her hard against his mouth, his teeth scraped against ultrasensitive flesh as his tongue dove deep.
Her climax convulsed her entire body in cataclysmic release and she screamed out his name, not in pain, but in the absolute mindless pleasure of the moment.
His own hunger reaching explosive proportions, he surged into her, pumping wildly. And only when he felt her shudder with another release, did he allow himself to empty, heart, soul and seed.
Later, they lay together, arms and legs entwined, her head on his chest, his chin resting on the top of her head. Her body was still warm, her hair damp. She felt as good in his arms after sex as during, and it crossed Gavin's mind that somehow, when he hadn't been looking, she'd become far more important to him than he'd planned when he'd first decided to take her to bed. Far more important, he feared, than she'd planned.
He took a deep breath, gathering the strength to talk about the worst period of his life. "Contrary to what you've heard, Pamela wasn't exactly married," he said quietly.
Pamela. The dead woman's name conjured up the image of a cool, Alfred Hitchcock blonde in designer suits and very good pearls.
"But she wasn't exactly divorced, either. She was separated from her husband, a billionaire Dallas developer rumored to have mob ties."
Pamela was a mobster's moll? Tara struck the Hitchcock image from her mind and replaced it with a mental picture of the women in every bad thirties gangster movie she'd ever seen.
"He wasn't the stereotypical movie gangster," Gavin said. "He was intelligent, with a degree from Rice in business, and social and political ties in every corner of the state, including, especially, the capital."
"For a time, before his house of cards came tumbling down, both political parties wanted to run him for governor. Pamela told me that one of the reasons she stuck with him, even when he began abusing her, was because she wanted to be First Lady." Gavin sighed, "like him, she definitely fit the image."
As the peroxide-blond moll wearing too much makeup changed back into the bejeweled socialite, Tara experienced a surge of a sharp, primal emotion she recognized immediately as jealousy.
"Rumors began circulating about some crooked land dealings for property along a planned freeway route. That garnered some attention from the press. As it turned out, it was only the tip of the iceberg, and pretty soon, all the media was piling on. Including me."
"You?" She'd promised herself that she'd remain silent, let him tell his story in his own way, but she was confused by this.
"Before Morganna, before prison, I was a political cartoonist for the Dallas Morning Herald. In fact, I'd been syndicated for about six months before it all hit the fan."
"Oh, my God! You're G. D. Thomas?"
The fact that she recognized his name, which meant she also knew his work, bolstered his ego. "That's me. Gavin Dylan Thomas. Gavin for my maternal grandfather, and the Dylan because my dad ran across his books in the prison library. I think the guy was probably the only literary figure Pops was familiar with." Gavin had often thought that the fact that his father had also loved the bottle had given him something in common with the Welsh poet.
"Your cartoons ran in the San Francisco Chronicle on Mondays and Fridays. I thought they were wonderful." His pen had been dipped in acid, his wit deadly and right on the mark.
"Thanks." He sighed, thinking back on those days when his career had begun taking off and he'd mistakenly thought he had the entire world in his greedy hands.
"I always wondered why the paper quit carrying them."
"It's a little difficult to find gainful employment in prison. The minute the grand jury indicted me, the syndicate handling my work let me go." The letter from the lawyer had been brief and to the point, referring him to the morals clause in his contract. "The paper was a bit more generous. They kept me on the payroll until the jury verdict came in, even though they didn't run any of my stuff."
"That's horrible. Especially since you were innocent."
"A jury of my peers voted otherwise," he reminded her. "Anyway, to back up, I was enjoying delving into Carrington's questionable business practices, then skewing the guy on the editorial page. The series was nominated for a Pulitzer, which was how I got picked up by the syndicate."
"Then one day, Pamela came by the office with some papers that tied him directly to the mob, and it was only luck, sheer bad luck, that she ended up showing those papers to me. She'd come looking for the columnist who was following the story, but he wasn't going to be around for some time, so she agreed, reluctantly, to see me. She and her husband were separated at the time, and the divorce looked as if it was going to be a long, nasty, drawn-out affair. Carrington was not going to open up the vaults for her, and she was determined to get her share of the wealth she'd married into."
Tara looked up at him. "So she wanted you to help her destroy her husband so she could get his money?"
"That's about it, in a nutshell." Gavin's smile was grim. "It wasn't a bad deal. She'd use me and I'd use her. And in the end, we'd both get what we wanted."
"Pamela was, without a doubt, the most naturally seductive woman I've ever met. She radiated sex like the sun radiates heat. The fact that she was absolutely without morals made her all that more fascinating."
Since she had no idea what to say to that, Tara didn't respond. But she did wonder, if that was the type of woman Gavin was attracted to, what he was doing with her.
"Her husband was like a lot of powerful men," Gavin continued his story. "He had a deep visceral need for absolute control, over everything and everyone around him. It was bad enough to have his wife leave him as soon as his reputation started getting sullied, but to have her flaunting her affair with me—the guy who was publicly goring him on the editorial page every day— was too much to take. So he had her killed."
"And set you up to take the fall." It was not a question. It was also not unlike the plot in all those old gangster movies.
"It was a very clever frame. Especially when it turned out that Pamela was pregnant."
"Pregnant?" Tara's blood chilled. She stared up at him, distress shimmering in her eyes.
"DNA tests proved it wasn't my baby," he assured her, remembering all too well the pain he'd felt thinking there was a chance an unborn child of his had been murdered. "But the prosecutor pointed out that Pamela had told friends—and supposedly me—that it was my child, and suggested that I killed her because I didn't want the responsibility of a child. Since a guy who draws cartoons for a living doesn't conjure up an image of a grown-up in most people's minds, the jury bought it."
"Why would she tell people it was your baby if it wasn't? And whose was it? Her husband's?"
"Not a chance of that. No, tests later proved she'd gotten pregnant by her real lover—the guy who was going to kill her husband for her."
"I reall
y don't understand."
"Neither did I until Trace—who was on the Dallas P.D. at the time, and refused to let the case die a natural death—untangled all the loose ends. He found out she'd been sleeping with Carrington's lawyer, a guy who knew where all the bodies were buried, so to speak."
"He was the one giving her the information she passed on to you."
"Very good, Nancy Drew." Gavin ducked his head and gave her a quick kiss. "The plan was to let everyone, including Carrington, think I was the new guy in her life. Carrington, being a possessive kind of guy, would show up at the house to beat my brains out, and she'd have no choice but to shoot him in self-defense."
"And inherit everything."
"That was the plan. Trace found two one-way tickets to Cancun in the lawyer's office. Unfortunately, Carrington got to her first. And since I was the logical suspect, he managed to kill two irritating birds with one stone."
"After the tests proved Pamela's other lover was the father, he told police about their little plan to kill Carrington. He confessed to get off the hook when it came to charges involving her death, and he also admitted that when he'd arrived at the house the night she died, he'd seen Carrington leaving."
"Carrington was brought in for questioning, started ranting and raving about how powerful he was, and how he'd make certain Trace ended up handing out parking tickets for a living, then damned if he didn't have a major coronary right there in the station. He made a deathbed confession, so to speak, and I was out."
"This is the so-called technicality that got you out of prison?" Tara said, incensed at the false rumors that were circulating about him.
"That's it."
"You should say something." She was on her knees now, trembling with pent-up anger and frustration. "You have to let people know what really happened."
Gavin liked the idea that she could get all fired up in his defense. He reached up and ran a hand down her thigh. "What would you have me do? Call a press conference and announce that the good citizens of Whiskey River don't really have a killer living in their midst?"
"That's not such a bad idea," she considered.