How much of a prisoner would she be? Would he insist on sleeping in the same room? Would he allow her to keep her car keys now that her car would be parked right outside the house? Would she be able to go to work Monday morning? To call her mother and tell her she was home? To visit with D.J. the way she always did on weekends?
Would he expect to keep her bound in her own home?
She could kick up a fuss. She could refuse to tell him where she lived. She could develop a little backbone and simply say no. No, you’re not going to stay at my house. No, I’m not going to help you. No, I won’t be your prisoner anymore. She could try again to escape. The first time he stopped for a red light or in traffic, she could jump out of the Blazer and run like hell. She could scream bloody murder. She could get him arrested. She could get him locked away for a long, long time.
Or she could help him. She could do what he wanted and get him out of her life. Although she still thought he was emotionally unstable, she wasn’t afraid of him now, not really. He’d passed up too many chances to hurt her. For the most part—except for those few miserable minutes each night—he had treated her well. He had fed her, had allowed her as much freedom as he realistically could. He hadn’t kept her tied up any longer than was necessary, he hadn’t gagged or blindfolded her, hadn’t assaulted or raped her. He hadn’t even taken advantage of the sex she had offered.
It sounded crazy—incredibly crazy—but she believed she could trust him, at least to some extent. She didn’t believe he would kill her. She didn’t believe he would hurt her. She didn’t believe he was capable of hurting anyone, with the possible exception of Simon Tremont.
She could help him. She could go along with his plans, could let him stay at her house, could take him into the office tomorrow when no one was working. She could let him try to convince her that his fantastic story was true. When he couldn’t prove his claims… She wasn’t sure exactly what he would do, how he would react, but that would be a good time to take whatever steps were necessary to get him out of her life. Maybe she could get in touch with his sister; maybe Janie could arrange private help for him so they could avoid bringing the police into the matter. At this point—home and feeling reasonably safe—she wasn’t interested in seeing him arrested or involuntarily committed to some psychiatric hospital. The idea of John—haunted, wounded, and all too human—locked up with all the other crazies was one she didn’t want to face. She didn’t want to be in any way responsible for it.
And what if he did prove his claims? What if he did convince her that he was Simon Tremont and the man in New Orleans was the fraud, the crazy, the criminal?
What a story that would be, worthy of the number one slot on the Times list for the next five years.
“Which way to your house?”
She twisted in the seat to face him. “If you’re going to stay with me, if I’m going to help you, we have to have a few ground rules.”
He gestured for her to go on.
“I’m not going to be a prisoner in my own home. I have to be free to go to work. I have to have access to my car and to the telephone. I have to be allowed to live my life. You trust me, and I’ll treat you the same as any other guest in my home.” She finished, then remembered the most important thing. “You won’t tie me up anymore. You can’t. I won’t allow it.”
“I thought I made it clear last night that it wouldn’t happen again,” he said evenly.
She remembered his solemn offer of the knife so she could cut the telephone cord to ribbons. She hadn’t looked beyond the tremendous relief she’d felt at knowing that that particular wire couldn’t be used against her again. She hadn’t realized that, for him, the gesture had been symbolic, inclusive of all bonds.
“Do you agree with the rules?”
He nodded.
She glanced around to see where they were, then spoke again. “Take the next exit. My house isn’t far.”
As he changed lanes, she blew her breath out in a heavy sigh. She was committed now. She had agreed to providing him with a place to stay and to helping him prove—or disprove—his claims. She prayed she wasn’t making a mistake.
John followed her directions through a commercial district and into one of Richmond’s older neighborhoods. The houses there were gracious, large, and old, most of them built seventy-five to a hundred years ago. There was lots of money in this neighborhood, although, according to Teryl, none of it was hers. When she directed him to turn off the wide, winding street, it was onto a brick drive that passed between two massive brick columns. The gate was ornate, wrought iron with curlicues and lace that formed a fanciful G on each half. A quarter mile in, he turned into her driveway, a broad lane, not quite wide enough for two cars, that wound back a few hundred yards before ending in a clearing at the back of her house.
From the front it was a plain little house, beige stucco, two small stories with a red tile roof, arched windows, and a little square stoop tiled with terra-cotta. In back, there were more arches—over the windows, around the door, and supporting the second-floor balcony that ran the length and the width of the house and shaded the patio on warm summer days.
There was also a courtyard, now doing duty as a parking court, and a fountain, lavishly decorated with thousands of small mosaic tiles in no particular pattern. There was no water in the fountain, though. It had been filled with rich, black soil and served as a planter for lush, red geraniums divided through the center with a swath of white petunias. There were other flower beds nearby, other plantings—vines that snaked their way around the arches and up to the roof, compact trees that were perfectly proportioned to the house, ivies and begonias, periwinkles and lots of roses in red, yellow, pink, and white.
It was a pretty little place, he thought, even if it did look as if it belonged in the Southwest—Arizona, California, or perhaps someplace more exotic, like Morocco—than in Richmond, Virginia.
He shifted into first gear, set the parking brake, and shut off the engine. “Is this where you live?”
She nodded.
“It’s a dollhouse.”
His pronouncement made her smile. “This estate used to belong to the Grayson family. They were a big name locally in the early part of the century. This was where the groundskeeper lived. The house is a replica of the family home—which is farther down the drive—only, of course, this one is much smaller since a groundskeeper didn’t need space or luxury. I don’t guess they gave any thought to the fact that Spanish or Mediterranean or Moorish architecture—whichever style it is—doesn’t work well on such a small scale.”
Unbuckling his seat belt, he opened the door and climbed out. Damp heat and the fragrance of flowers greeted him. “It works well enough,” he said, joining her at the front of the truck. “It just looks…”
“Like a dollhouse.”
As they crossed the courtyard, she dug her keys from her purse and unlocked the back door. The layout, John saw when he stepped inside, was simple. The front and back doors opened into a narrow hallway that ran the length of the L-shaped house. The living room, just visible through the door up ahead on the right, formed the short leg, and the kitchen and dining room, on the left, made up the longer leg. If the upstairs was the same size—and given the width of the balcony he’d noticed, he would bet it was smaller—the entire house was maybe a thousand square feet, probably less. The whole thing would have fitted neatly inside the office and living room in his house.
As he closed the door behind him, she adjusted the thermostat on the hall wall, turning it low enough to bring the air conditioner on. Then she simply stood there, looking awkward, apparently feeling uncomfortable in her own home. In spite of their truce, he knew that she really didn’t want him here, invading her space, still controlling her life. Would it make a difference to her if she knew she would handsomely benefit from their brief association? If he told her, showed her, proved to her, that she would be a wealthy woman when this was over, would it make her any happier about the circumstances?
Not likely. Especially since she wouldn’t believe him.
Probably the only thing he could do that would make her happy was disappear. Then she could convince herself that the last four days were only a bad dream. Then she could go back to worshiping Simon Tremont. Then she could forget that John Smith had ever existed.
Shoving his hands into his hip pockets, he passed her and went into the living room, stopping near the sofa. The room was small, but it didn’t seem so. The sense of space was due in part to the three sets of French doors that filled one wall and led outside to the courtyard and in part to Teryl’s style. It was comfortable without being cluttered. There was a sofa in wide blue and white stripes and a big armchair in a nubby white fabric of the sort meant for settling in, fronted by a hassock almost as big as the chair itself and in the same fabric. The tables at each end of the sofa were open, two tiers, wood and glass, the same as the shelves tucked in wherever there was space. There were baskets all over, one holding magazines, others filled with books, dried flowers, and fragrant potpourri. The curtains at the door, were white and sheer; he could see the bright reds, pinks, and yellows of the flowers outside through them.
It was an easy room to be in… or, at least, it would be if Teryl wasn’t standing so uncomfortably at the door.
He turned to look at her. She’d been wearing the same dress for three days now, had sat for hundreds of miles in it, had slept in the less-than-comfortable confines of the truck in it. It was wrinkled and limp and had definitely seen better days, but she still looked lovely in it.
Sweet damnation, how he would like to take it off her.
For a long time he continued to look at her, and after a nervous moment, she looked back. How could two people, each half of the same relationship, see each other so differently? he wondered with regret. He looked at her and saw a beautiful woman, a woman he wanted to be with, a woman he wanted right this moment to make love to, while she looked at him and saw a man she wished she’d never met. A man she couldn’t trust. A crazy man.
Maybe she was right. Maybe he was crazy. Living the way he had after Tom’s death—drifting from place to place, from job to job, barely living while he tried dying—wasn’t normal. Retreating into the mountains and cutting off virtually all contact with the outside world for eleven years wasn’t normal, either. Neither was kidnapping an innocent woman, taking her hostage, and forcing her against her will to help him. Or wanting her so damned badly—while she was still his hostage, still his victim—that she haunted his sleep.
Maybe he was crazy in those ways.
But not about Simon. He knew he had created the pseudonym. He had written the books. His alter ego was the man Teryl adored, not that arrogant, smug, condescending bastard she had met in New Orleans. He knew those things, knew them beyond a shadow of doubt, knew them as surely as he knew he wanted Teryl.
But she didn’t know.
She leaned one shoulder against the arched doorjamb and folded her arms across her chest just beneath her breasts. If she knew what a provocative pose it was—fabric pulled taut across her breasts, then falling loosely practically to her ankles, revealing a hint of the loveliness of her body while concealing everything else—she would move immediately. She would pull the material away from her soft nipples, would round her shoulders so the dress fell, unimpeded by curves, all the way to the hem, or would raise her arms higher, providing better camouflage.
She could cover herself in armor from head to toe, but she could never erase the memories he had of her naked in bed beneath him. She could never make him forget how sweetly rounded her breasts were, how taut her nipples had become, how slender her hips were, how soft and tantalizing the curls between her thighs were. She could never make him forget the heat he had stirred inside her or the way she had fitted him so tightly. She could never reclaim from him the sound of the soft whimpers she made or the feel of her body clamping hard around him or the flush her skin took on when she came or the way she turned all soft and weak when it was over.
She could forget, but she could never make him forget.
Judging from that hazy look in her eyes, he thought it was a fair bet at that moment that she wasn’t trying to forget anything.
“What—” Breaking off, she cleared away the hoarseness from her throat before trying again. “What do you want to do now?”
He knew the sort of answer she wanted—let’s unpack, let’s get dinner, let’s watch TV—but he had no interest in those answers. They had wasted enough time in the last few days packing and unpacking, had eaten enough meals together, had watched enough television together. He wanted more. He wanted activity. Conversation. Stimulation.
He wanted arousal, passion, completion, exhaustion.
He wanted sex.
He walked toward her, covering the distance in his own sweet time, coming to a stop directly in front of her. “I suppose seducing you is out of the question.”
His regretful, yet hopeful words took her by surprise, making her eyes widen, her breath catch, her muscles tighten. She tried to hide it when she spoke, but the slight tremble in her voice gave it away. “That isn’t going to happen.”
“Why not? You were more than eager Tuesday night. You were agreeable Thursday night. You were pretty damned willing last night. What’s different now?”
She didn’t answer his question. Instead, she simply repeated her answer. “It isn’t going to happen. I can’t let it. You can’t make it.”
He studied her for a moment, then smiled a little. “You’re wrong, Teryl. I can make it happen.” He saw the misunderstanding darken her eyes and immediately dispelled it. “I’m not talking about using force. If I were going to rape you, I would have done it Wednesday morning before we left the hotel. I would have done it again that night, when we were lying in your bed. Hell, we never would have gotten farther than Slidell if that was what I’d had in mind. But I’m not talking about rape. I’m talking about making love. I’m talking about kissing you, about touching you here…” He stroked his hand along her jaw. “And here…” Just the tips of his fingers brushed across her breast, lingering only long enough to start the sweet rush of sensation that would harden her nipples. “And here…”
She caught his wrist before he reached below her waist. Her neat, short nails were pressing hard against his skin, creating four little half-moons of pain. “Another rule,” she said, her gaze locked with his, her voice little more than a whisper. “Keep your hands to yourself. I don’t want them on me.”
He lowered his voice to match hers. The softness enclosed them in an air of intimacy. “You don’t? Then why are your breasts swelling? Why are your nipples hard? Why are you getting wet? Why are you trembling?”
Dropping his wrist, she turned away, quickly putting the width of the hallway between them. “You’d better decide what’s more important to you: meaningless sex or getting access to Rebecca’s files on Tremont.”
Mimicking the position she’d abandoned—arms folded across his chest, shoulder braced against the doorframe—he studied her. “Meaningless sex, Teryl?” he asked quietly. “Is that what you think it was?”
Her cheeks flushed, and she avoided his gaze. She also avoided answering. Instead, she climbed the first few steps before glancing in his general direction again. “Why don’t you bring the suitcases in, and I’ll show you which room you can use.” Without waiting for his response, she went upstairs and disappeared from sight.
Meaningless sex.
He had known that going to bed with her when he had lied to her from the start wasn’t a good idea. She had believed that he’d gone to her hotel room with her that night for no reason other than lust, for nothing more than a few hours of passionate sex and mutual satisfaction. Then he’d told her his full name, had told her his story, and her insecurities had kicked in. The man she had loved, had lived with and wanted to marry, had deceived her, had merely used her. That experience must have made it easy for her to believe that he, too, had used her, that the
sex had been simply a means to an end, that—if not for his need to get into Rebecca’s office—he never would have been in Teryl’s bed.
Insecure or not, if she believed that, she was a fool. He had wanted her in spite of his need for her help, not because of it. He had wanted her—still wanted her—because she was a beautiful woman, because he liked being with her, because he liked the way she smiled, the way she walked, the way she talked, the way she kissed. He had wanted her because he’d gone so damned long without sex, because lust was a powerful need, because her actions had told him that she would be willing, because instinct had told him that they would be good. It had had nothing to do with Simon.
For those few hours Tuesday night, he had forgotten that Simon even existed.
But maybe he was being arrogant. Maybe meaningless was how she felt about it. Maybe, for her, Tuesday evening had boiled down to one thing: sex, pure and simple. Maybe he was the one who had been used. If he hadn’t offered to spend the evening with her, maybe the man posing as Simon would have been in her bed instead, or the waiter at Pat O’Brien’s who had served her drinks with more attention than was necessary, or the cab driver who had leeringly watched them in his rearview mirror. Maybe John’s presence in her bed that night had simply been a matter of luck that had had nothing to do with him and everything to do with fulfilling the fantasy of a nameless, faceless, anonymous fuck.
I always thought it would be fun, just once in my life, to be wicked in New Orleans.
Instead of the desire, instead of the attraction and liking that he’d been convinced was mutual, maybe that was all it had been.
Maybe he’d simply been her fun.
Chapter Nine
Sunday morning D.J. awakened with a headache, bruises up and down her arms, and an overall stiffness that added about ten years to her thirty. Stretching her legs out, she realized that she was lying on a bare mattress, that she was naked except for the sheet wound around her arms and wrists, and she hurt when she moved.
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