She thought of the life in store for her. No more wandering on hiking trails, staring at the mountains. No more walking on fog-bound beaches, watching the surf wash away the tracks of the seagulls. No more cuddling at night in her armchair in the ramshackle house in the pines, reading fantasy and sci-fi and romance novels. No more morning jogs, watching the sunrise. No more poring over book catalogs as she decided what to stock. No more ripping opening boxes of shiny books, leafing through crisp pages, making notes of what to read later. No more reading to starry-eyed little kids at Story Hour.
Nope. She’d be a lonesome rat in a cage in an antiseptic condo. Running on a treadmill in a basement room. Crammed into hose, heels, and a power suit. Ferried back and forth in a car service to a job that bored her silly. Locked in a bank vault. She shuddered with inner cold.
“…have the courtesy to concentrate on what I’m saying, Livvy! Didn’t you hear me at all?”
“Sorry,” she murmured. “I’m kind of wiped out.”
“Concentrate,” her mother snapped. “Your father and I have decided that you and Blair should announce your engagement.”
That snapped her right to attention. She stared at them wildly. “What engagement? What on earth are you talking about?”
“I hate to rush you, Liv.” Blair’s voice was earnest. “I know you want to wait until you’re sure, and I respect that. But we don’t have to get married right away. It’s just theater.” He grabbed her hand and dropped a gallant kiss on the back of it. “For now,” he added coyly.
“You have to move fast, now that McCloud is showing his hand,” her mother said. “We’ll work out the details later.”
She blinked “What hand? What does Sean have to do with this?”
Blair and her mother exchanged glances. “You mean the possibility hasn’t even crossed your mind?” Her mother’s voice was pitying. “That we’ve identified your stalker? Liv. Honey. Wake up.”
Liv was so startled, she let out a burst of laughter, which turned quickly into a phlegmy coughing fit. “You think that Sean is the stalker?” she gasped out finally. “But that’s totally ridiculous!”
Blair’s face hardened into that pompous, judgmental mask that had always stopped her short whenever she’d been in danger of sliding down the slippery slope into being his fiancée. “There are precedents,” he said stiffly. “His father was severely mentally ill. He’s trained in the use of explosives. He’s worked as a mercenary. His twin committed suicide. He’s unstable. I went to school with him, Liv. I know what he’s capable of. He set off a bomb in the teachers’ bathroom in the sixth grade. He had no concept of civilized behavior. He was constantly fighting, constantly mouthing off. The teachers were desperate.”
“Uh, Blair? Small detail. He was twelve.” She couldn’t keep the irony out of her voice, even though she knew she would pay for it.
Right on cue, her mother let out a distressed huffing sound. “Here we go again. Defending him again, just like old times. You never learn.”
“Reality check, people,” Liv announced, looking around at each of them in turn. “Sean McCloud saved my life today. Yours, too, Blair.”
Her father leaned over, groaning, and clutched his chest. Amelia leaped to his side in an instant, making anxious, solicitous sounds.
Liv had seen the melodrama before, so she turned back to Blair. “I cannot believe that Sean would ever do that to me.”
“Of course not,” Blair said. “You think the best of people. That’s very well and good, in normal life, but this is not normal life. Sean McCloud is strange. His family is strange. What’s happening to you is strange. Don’t you feel how the strangeness matches up, like a puzzle?”
Nope. Sure didn’t. She shook her head. “I don’t get your reasoning, Blair. Why did he stop us from getting into the car?”
“Because he wanted to impress you. He wanted the glory of saving you. He wanted you to be grateful to him. He staged the whole thing to make you feel vulnerable. Don’t you see? It’s so obvious.”
There was no point in telling the truth to Blair when he had that look on his face. Sean McCloud did not have to throw himself in front of a bomb to impress her. All he had to do was crook his finger and smile.
Barely that. He could just be his own charismatic self. Watch the women drop like flies. Herself being the first to hit the pavement.
Whoever T-Rex was, he had an rotting dead spot inside him. In her recent crash course on arsonists, assassins, serial killers and rapists, she’d learned that they were usually loners, failures. Men with no interpersonal skills, no talent at relating with women.
Sean McCloud had no problems relating to women. He had to beat them away from himself to breathe. As for his interpersonal skills, well. The man was capable of talking her into multiple orgasms on the phone. Weird though he might be, there was nothing dead about him.
And since none of these reflections could be profitably shared with the present company, she changed the subject. “Why didn’t anybody tell me about Kev McCloud committing suicide?” she asked.
Blair and her parents exchanged uneasy glances.
“It didn’t seem relevant, dear,” her mother said.
Liv stared at her. “He was my friend,” she said quietly.
“Friend, my foot,” Amelia said tartly. “He was deranged, and probably dangerous. It’s tragic that he didn’t get the help he needed in time, and I’m very sorry for his family, but you were my first concern, honey, not him. You needed to make a clean break, and telling you hard-luck stories about those unfortunate McCloud boys would have just made things more difficult and confusing for you.”
Liv twined her fingers together. Her hands were cold and clammy, white beneath the grime. Her eyes stung with tears. Maybe her mother was right, but that didn’t make it easier to swallow.
The last time she’d seen Kev McCloud, he’d been sweat-soaked, wild-eyed, raving about people who were trying to kill him. She’d had no idea at the time that he was mentally ill. He’d scared her out of her wits when he scribbled down that coded note, shoved his sketchbook into her hand, and told her to take it to Sean and run, or they’d kill her, too.
She’d run, all right. He’d been pretty damned convincing.
Poor Kevin. He’d been so sweet. Funny and brilliant. Sean had been immensely proud of his brother’s genius, his accomplishments.
It broke her heart. And speaking of heartbreak, that had been the same day as that horrible five minute conversation with Sean at the jail. The five minutes that had ended her innocence and split her life in half.
She stared down at her hands, realizing how badly she stank of smoke. She got up, knees wobbling. “I’m going to take a shower.”
“Excellent idea,” Amelia said. “You just relax. We’ll take care of all the details. Shall I have Pamela bring you up a sandwich?”
Her stomach clenched unpleasantly at the thought of food.
“Nothing,” she said. “Thanks. ’Night.”
She hauled herself up the stairs, and made her way to the bedroom. She stumbled, but her exhaustion had a jittery, excited edge.
Because Sean had flirted with her? Please. He flirted with every woman he saw. He was programmed that way. It was nothing personal.
Even so, thinking about Sean was so much more fizzy and fun than thinking about the tar pit of her family life, or the ruins of her bookstore. Or T-Rex, out in the dark somewhere, thinking about her.
She shuddered. T-Rex’s attention felt like a foul lake of toxic waste, lapping up against her consciousness. The only thing that helped was the foolish fancy that Sean McCloud was thinking about her, too.
That evened out the score. Just enough so that she could breathe.
It was just a mind game, of course. Sean didn’t care about her, she knew that. But who cared? If the trick worked, she would use it.
She stumbled in the dark room, tripping over her suitcase, but hesitated before flipping on the bedside light. She had no desire to announce to
any malevolent presence outside that someone was in the bedroom. She flipped on the light in the internal connecting bathroom and left the door a few inches open. A fine sliver of light was enough.
She perched on the bed, and doubled over, pressing her face against those ugly, baggy pajama pants. How pathetically lame, that she hadn’t grown out of this lingering obsession. After thousands of dollars’ worth of head shrinkage, she and her therapist had concluded that she badly needed to transgress against her family’s control. Well and good. She still needed to transgress, evidently.
What better way to distract herself from all this crap than to drag out her fantasy man, with his gorgeous body, his warm lips, his clever hands? Watch Liv forget the past, her pride, her own goddamn name.
It was ironic. Their affair had lasted one month. They’d never even had sex. He’d just worked her into a hot, sweaty fever on the phone, telling her how it would be when they finally did the deed. What he would do with his hands, his tongue. And all the rest of his manly stuff.
Her on her bed, beet red and speechless with longing. Him, slouched in the phone booth, slipping in quarter after quarter so he could keep on stroking her, touching her. Torturing her with words.
In the hindsight of sexual experience, she knew how improbable his promises were. They’d done nothing but spoil her for the real thing.
She’d been almost eighteen that summer. She hadn’t known anyone her own age in town, after being shuffled from one elite private school to another. She was shy, withdrawn. The only constant in her life were books. They had been her refuge—until she met Sean.
It started with that summer school course. She’d gotten a C+ in chemistry her senior year, trashing her perfect four point average. Her mother’s response had been to bully the school into letting Liv retake a summer school equivalent with the hopes of adjusting her grade.
It was a waste of time, since she was already accepted into the college she wanted, and had no further interest in chemistry. But no. That C+ was a moral failing, to be corrected by wholesome discipline.
Her mother never imagined what kind of trouble was going to saunter into Schaeffer Auditorium. So much for wholesome discipline.
The lecture hall had been nearly empty. Most of the students were swimming at the Falls. Liv had been there, though, dutifully scribbling notes. It was surprisingly interesting. The grad student lecturing was great. Kev McCloud was his name, a tall, skinny guy with blond hair that stuck out all over his head. When he talked about chemistry, his eyes lit up like green flashlights. That enthusiasm was contagious.
Then the door to the hall creaked open. She turned to look, and bye bye, carbon structures. That was the last note she ever took.
The guy in the doorway looked as out of place as a wild panther. Luxurious blond hair. Sleeves ripped off a denim work shirt, showing off thick, ropy arms, broad shoulders. The lecturer, who she learned later was his twin, said “Don’t come to my class late, you furry little punk.”
Shocked murmurs and giggles swept the room. The pantherlike apparition was unfazed. “Lighten up, you tight-assed geek,” he replied.
The guy lecturing rolled his eyes and launched back into his lecture. The panther turned, scanned the hall. His eyes lit on her.
She looked down, face hot, heart tripping, as he paced to the back of the auditorium. He found her aisle and began slithering towards her between rows of seats. She was hiding in the back behind her hair, the hall was nearly empty, and he was coming to sit with her. She’d entered a parallel universe. The sky had fallen. Time ran backwards. Pigs flew.
“Is this chair free?” His voice had been so low and soft.
This one, plus ninety others exactly like it is what she should have said, to spare herself a decade and a half of obsession and regret. But she hadn’t.
She’d jerked her head yes. Sealed her own fate.
His body lowered itself with sinuous, catlike grace into the chair. His shoulders were so broad, he exceeded the space alotted to him.
His bare arm touched her own. Oh. He was so…so hot.
His arm was thick with sinewy muscles, glinting with sun-bleached hair. She was frantically conscious of that scorching contact between his arm and hers. It was connected to every nerve in her body.
He smelled like herbal shampoo. His hands, resting on jeans-clad thighs, were long and battered, covered with scratches, ink stains.
Things like this never happened to her. She let her hair fall across her face and vibrated with emotion, studying whatever she could without turning her head. The holes in his jeans, the split tops of his boots, mended with silver duct tape. The class ended. People rustled and murmured. It made no sense that such a gorgeous guy should single her out. There had to be a punch line. She braced herself for it.
Then he brushed her hair to one side and looked behind it.
She made a squeaking sound that only a dog could hear. Every strand of her hair transformed into an exquisitely receptive sensory organ. Hot-cool ripples of excitement chased themselves over her skin.
He looked into her face, his eyes full of intense curiosity. She was immobile, open-mouthed. Vibrating. Seconds passed.
“Wow,” he whispered.
And that was all it took. She was his. Heart and soul. Lost.
Liv dashed the tears out of her eyes and heaved herself up off the bed. She tossed her smoky, nasty clothes into a pile and plucked her cream silk robe out of her suitcase with the tips of her fingers, hoping not to smudge it. Which reminded her of the greasy handprint on Sean’s T-shirt.
Of course. True to form. Everything referred right back to Sean, in an endless, obsessive feedback loop. Seeing him had brought back so vividly the way he’d made her feel that summer. Strong and connected, so aware of the grace around her. Certain that all her dreams could come true, because Sean’s very existence was proof of that.
How unbelievably innocent she’d been. How stupid.
The closest she’d come to that feeling, post-Sean, was when she finally decided to open her bookstore. Well, hell. So much for that. Maybe it was just a mirage. An ephemeral cocktail of endorphins.
She stared at her pale, pinched face, the hell-hag snarl of hair. She must have looked like such horrific crap when he’d seen her today.
And it did…not…matter. Goddamnit. Let it go. Forever. Let a hot shower wash it away.
Done, purified, she wrapped a towel around herself, opened the door—and would have screamed, if her lungs had been capable of sucking in air.
Sean McCloud was sitting on her bed.
Chapter 7
Sean winced as the bathroom door slammed shut in his face.
Ouch. On the plus side, it had been a fabulous stroke of luck to catch her in the shower, giving him the perfect opportunity to dust her stuff with beacons. Tonight he was a firm adherent to the classic McCloud school of thought; plant bugs first, apologize later.
He’d been trying to figure out how to spare her the adrenaline rush when she came out of the bathroom, to say nothing of the embarrassment should she prove to be buck naked. Unfortunately, he hadn’t come up with any bright ideas in time. His brains were fried.
The door burst open, and Liv marched out, no longer wrapped in a towel. Her skimpy silk robe was swathed around her so tight, it showed every detail of her taut nipples. Christ, she was pretty. He loved that uppity, chin-in-the-air posture.
“You practically gave me a heart attack.” Her voice was chilly with royal hauteur. “Are you nuts? What are you doing? Did you sneak in?”
He snorted. “Can you see your mother inviting me in?”
“Don’t answer a question with a question. It’s snotty and annoying. What are your intentions, Sean? Should I scream for help?”
“Please don’t.” His smile faltered. “I didn’t know your number. Your parents would have me wrapped in chains and sunk into a lake if they saw me, so sneaking was my only option. Sorry I scared you.”
“How did you get in?” She flounce
d past him, dug through her suitcase for her comb. “I thought there were policemen outside. I thought they had alarms all over the place. For all the good it’s done me, I might as well be in my own place.”
He shrugged. “The cops didn’t see me. I slithered alongside the hedge, climbed the maple, crawled onto the oak that grows up next to the roof. Then I came in through the attic gable window, which was not alarmed, for your information. Through the crawl space, down through the trapdoor into the laundry room…and here I am. Piece of cake.”
“What enterprise.” She wrenched the comb through her hair.
“I wanted to see how safe you were in the bosom of your family.”
He couldn’t stop staring, though he could tell it made her uncomfortable. She pulled her robe tight, evidently unaware of how the sheer silk showcased her awesome body. Her white throat bobbed.
“So?” she demanded. “What did you conclude? How safe am I?”
“Not at all,” he said flatly. “If T-Rex is a tenth as good as me, he could be sitting right where I am now. I’m betting he is. Somebody should tell your folks this. That somebody probably should not be me.”
“Yes, they’re prejudiced,” she admitted. “But if you hadn’t stopped us from getting into the car, I’d be dead right now.”
“There is that,” Sean agreed. “Did that earn me some points?”
“With who?” She laughed nervously. “With my mother?”
“I don’t give a shit about your mother. I’m only interested in you.”
She fended him off with sarcasm. “I’m so honored,” she said. “But you were way, way down there into the negative numbers, point-wise.”
His mouth twisted in a humorless smile. “Am I up to zero yet?”
She dragged the comb through another tangled lock. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know why you’re here, what you want, why you care. What does zero mean? A blank slate? Like nothing ever happened between us? I’m sorry, but I just can’t pretend that.”
Edge Of Midnight (The Mccloud Series Book 4) Page 9