by Gina Wilkins
Thoroughly shaken by his words, Tara cleared her throat and tried to think of something to say. It was just as well she’d limited herself to one question for now, she thought dazedly. She wasn’t sure she could handle any more answers like that one!
Blake gave a rough laugh and set his soda can on the counter. “Sorry you asked?”
Tara put her glass on the table. If she didn’t know better, she mused, she would think that Blake’s confidence was as precarious as her own in some areas. “I told you,” she said, finding her voice again, “I’m not sorry about anything that has happened between us.”
Blake reached out and snagged a hand around the back of her neck, pulling her toward him for a long, thorough kiss.
“When this is over—when you’re safe—we’ll talk,” he promised, his lips moving against hers.
She pressed her lips to his again, then drew back far enough to ask, “What are we going to do tonight?”
“Are you hungry?”
“No.”
“Neither am I.” He kissed her again. “Want to watch TV?”
She slid her arms around his neck, feeling the warmth of his skin through the thin satin robe that was all she wore. “No.”
“I suppose we could play poker.”
She smiled against his lips. “I don’t have any money.”
His arms went around her waist. “I suppose strip poker would be a waste of time, considering how little we’re wearing.”
“I suppose you’re right.” She wondered how she could want him again so much, so soon.
Funny, she’d never considered herself a particularly passionate woman before. Sex had simply never interested her all that much. But that had been before Blake had shown her what she’d been missing.
She pressed closer against him, satisfying herself that she wasn’t the only one who was aroused. “Blake?”
He nuzzled against her temple. “Mmm?”
“Let’s go back to bed.”
For the second time that evening—the second time ever for her—she found herself swung off her feet and into a man’s arms. And, as his muscles rippled beneath her hands, his arms supporting her as solidly as steel bars, she found that she liked it every bit as much as she had before.
TARA WAS MORE than a bit nervous at the thought of meeting Jeremy Kane. Refusing to raid Stephanie’s closet again, she dressed in her own freshly washed jeans and aqua-striped T-shirt, sliding her feet into the inexpensive canvas sneakers Blake had bought to go with the casual outfit. She styled her hair the same way Stephanie had the day before, resulting in a cap of frivolous copper curls. And she lingered over her makeup, again copying Stephanie’s efforts. When she was finished, she was relatively certain that few of her friends, or even her family, would have immediately recognized her.
“I can’t get over how different you look,” Blake said, sparing her a quick glance when she appeared in the kitchen.
He’d been amusing himself while he waited for her by juggling. Tara smiled as she watched five apples from a bowl on Stephanie’s counter dance in the air in front of him. “That’s pretty impressive.”
His grin was roguish. “I’ve been told I have very talented hands.”
“And I have your fingerprints all over my body to prove it,” Tara responded in a contented purr, slowly running her palms down her sides.
To Tara’s utter delight, Blake fumbled, and two of the apples crashed to the floor. He managed to catch the other three, though not particularly gracefully. “That,” he told her, “was unfair.”
She laughed. “Do I smell coffee?”
“It’s in the pot. Help yourself.” He knelt to retrieve the fallen fruit, still looking a bit disconcerted that she’d managed to rattle him.
Feeling quite pleased with herself, Tara reached for a coffee cup.
After breakfast, Blake drove Tara to an old theater a few blocks from the City Market in the heart of Savannah’s restored historic district. He explained that Jeremy had managed to procure the currently idle theater for his rehearsals that week.
He tapped on the back-alley door, which opened almost immediately. Tara looked up at the face of the very large man who stood there, wearing a stretchedto-the-limit black T-shirt with Jeremy Kane’s name emblazoned in fancy letters across a massive chest. The man looked fiercely intimidating—until he spotted Blake and smiled.
“Hey, Blake.”
“Hey, Pete. This is Tara.”
“Ma’am.” Pete extended a hand the size of a dinner plate. It completely swallowed Tara’s when she placed hers tentatively into it.
Pete pumped her hand solemnly, then released her and took a step backward. “Jeremy’s waiting for you.”
He turned to lead them past a bewildering display of props and sets and out onto a stage on which a dark-haired man and two beautiful red-haired women stood looking at a refrigerator-sized steel cage. The man turned around when they entered. Tara’s breath caught in her throat.
Jeremy Kane. She’d been an admirer of the famous illusionist since she’d watched his first television special back home in Honoria.
He was still a spectacular-looking man, she couldn’t help noticing as he approached. He was in his early forties, his raven-black hair touched with silver at the temples. His eyes were so dark blue they were almost navy, and his smile was as dazzling and magical as his internationally famous performances.
“You must be Tara,” he murmured in a deep voice she’d heard only through television speakers before. He took her hand in his.
Momentarily starstruck, she returned his smile. “Yes. And you’re Jeremy Kane. I’ve been a fan of yours since I was a teenager.”
And then, realizing how her words had sounded, she blushed and stammered, “Not that you’re that much older than I am, of course. I mean, you were very young yourself when you got started.”
Still holding her hand, Jeremy laughed. “I assure you, I took no offense. It’s always a pleasure for me to meet someone who enjoys my work.”
Blake cleared his throat and managed somehow to insert himself between Jeremy and Tara, breaking off their handshake. “How’s the family, Jer?”
Jeremy’s expression was openly speculative as he looked from Blake to Tara and back again. “Gwen and the children are quite well, thank you. They’ll be joining me on tour late next week, when school lets out for the summer.”
“How old are the kids now?”
“Harry is six and Beatrice just turned four. Would you like to see a recent photograph?”
“I would,” Tara said.
Jeremy smiled, waved his fingers, and magically produced a wallet-sized photograph, which he gravely offered to her. She couldn’t help wondering if he always kept it up his sleeve, or wherever it was he’d produced it from.
Smiling in delight at the illusion, she looked at the photograph of Jeremy’s family. Though Jeremy was known for surrounding himself with gorgeous redheads in his act, the woman he’d married had brown hair, a face that was more pretty than classically beautiful, and a smile that looked serene and perhaps a bit shy. The children had inherited their father’s more striking looks, both of them having his dark hair and dark blue eyes. The mischief in the boy’s face and the echoing glimmer in his little sister’s beaming smile made Tara suspect that Jeremy’s wife had her hands full.
“A very nice-looking family,” Tara said as she returned the photograph,
Jeremy looked at it for a moment with love and pride visible in his expression, and then his fingers waved and the photograph vanished. “Perhaps you’ll meet them someday. You would like my wife, I think.”
“I’m sure I would.”
“Jeremy.” A heavily pregnant, auburn-haired woman who might have been a year or two older than Tara appeared from backstage and approached them with a cellular telephone in her hand. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but you need to take this call. It’s Mortie.”
Jeremy nodded. “Noelle, you know Blake, of course, and this is his friend, Tara.
Noelle is my personal assistant,” he added by way of explanation for Tara’s benefit. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll try to make this quick.”
Blake looked at his watch as Jeremy moved away. “Stephanie should be here soon to help you learn what Jeremy wants you to do in the act,” he told Tara. “I have to leave now. I’m meeting someone.”
“We’ll take good care of her, Blake,” Noelle said in her musical voice. “Tara, let me introduce you to Paula and Monica, who are working as Jeremy’s stage assistants on this tour.”
Tara hesitated, looking at Blake. “You’ll be careful?”
He leaned over to kiss her, not seeming to care whether anyone was watching. “I’ll be careful,” he promised. “Have fun, sweetheart. But not too much,” he added with a ferocious scowl in Jeremy’s direction.
Noelle tucked her hand companionably beneath Tara’s arm. “My, my,” she murmured, sounding quite amused as she looked in the direction in which Blake had disappeared. “I’ve known Blake for a long time, and I was beginning to think I would never see that look in his eyes.”
“Er—what look?”
“The one I saw when you were smiling at Jeremy,” Noelle replied with a chuckle. “Blake has most definitely taken the fall—and it’s about time.”
WHEN BLAKE walked back into the theater a few hours later, he found that Tara had been cut neatly in half. Her head was laughing inside a box while her feet wiggled furiously in another box some seven feet away.
“Jeremy,” Blake said with a heavy sigh. “Why is it that every time I leave someone in your safekeeping, you feel compelled to slice’n’dice them?”
Tara giggled, turning her apparently severed head to smile broadly in Blake’s direction. “Look at me, Blake. I’m doing magic!”
“Well, to be more precise, you’re having magic done to you,” Blake said with a chuckle. “You were planning to put her back together, weren’t you, Jer?”
Jeremy smiled. “I think that can be arranged.”
He waved his hand and Paula and Monica, the two redheads currently on tour with him, efficiently brought the two halves of the box back together. With a few dramatic gestures and ceremonies, they lifted the lid and Tara popped out.
“Arms up, Tara,” Jeremy prompted. “The way I showed you before.”
Her arms lifted obediently, spread into a posture that invited enthusiastic applause. Blake obliged.
Stephanie appeared suspiciously soon afterward, her red hair a bit mussed. Blake murmured, “I thought Tara’s feet had suddenly grown bigger.”
Stephanie punched his arm. “Where have you been?”
“Busy.” Blake draped an arm around Tara’s shoulders, unable to resist brushing a quick kiss across her flushed cheek. “Having a good time?”
“It’s been fascinating,” she admitted. “I had no idea how much work went into setting up these performances. Jeremy has let me see a few of his illusions up dose, and I’ve given my word that I’ll never reveal anything I’ve learned.”
“Under penalty of permanent dismemberment,” Jeremy added congenially. He looked at Blake. “She’s going to do great.”
“Didn’t I tell you she would?”
“What about you? Have a productive day?”
Blake rubbed the back of his neck. “Not as much as I would have liked.”
“Sorry to hear that. Anything I can do?”
Blake shook his head. “You’re doing enough. Thanks.”
One of the young redheads tapped Jeremy’s arm. “Paula and I are going to do some sight-seeing if we’re finished for the day. Stephanie’s been telling us about some of the cool spots in Savannah, and we’d like to go check them out.”
Jeremy nodded. “Have a good time. But be careful.”
She rose to kiss his cheek, much as she would have if he were her overprotective big brother—the way most of Jeremy’s assistants seemed to view him, Blake had always thought. “See you later, boss.”
Jeremy turned to Noelle. “What are your plans for the evening?”
She smiled and patted her protruding tummy. “Junior and I are going to get some rest. And I promised Jeff I’d call him.”
Jeremy turned to Stephanie. “Steph?”
“Hot date,” she answered with an apologetic smile.
Jeremy heaved an enormous sigh and looked soulfully at Blake and Tara.
Blake couldn’t help grinning at his friend’s hangdog expression. “Would you like to join us for dinner tonight?”
Jeremy grinned. “I’d love to. Thanks.”
Blake was almost glad Jeremy would be joining them that evening. He’d spent the whole day replaying the night he and Tara had spent together, and the emotions that lingered inside him had almost overwhelmed him at times. He didn’t want to put a name to what he felt for her; he superstitiously imagined that calling it by name would give it that much more power over him. But deep inside, he knew the truth. And it scared him spitless.
He glanced at Tara, to find her smiling a bit too warmly at Jeremy. “We would love to have you join us,” she said. “I want to hear all about your career. You’ve led such a fascinating life.”
Blake felt a frown draw his eyebrows downward. Maybe having Jeremy along for the evening wasn’t such a great idea, after all. He’d had no idea that Tara was such a fan of the guy. She’d almost hyperventilated when he’d introduced them.
And he was a certifiable idiot for standing here stewing in jealousy just because she was smiling at another man.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said a bit more gruffly than he’d intended. “Tm hungry.”
“Oh, is that what you are?” Jeremy asked in a murmur meant for Blake’s ears alone.
Blake gave his friend a warning glare that didn’t seem to intimidate the other man at all.
“TELL ME how long you two have known each other,” Tara said over dinner in a quiet little seafood restaurant not far from the busy harbor area. “How did you meet?”
She watched as Blake and Jeremy exchanged a quick glance. Jeremy seemed to be silently asking just how much Blake wanted to tell her; Blake looked as though he was trying to decide. And Tara felt a pang at this reminder that there was so much about Blake that was still a mystery to her, so many things that Stephanie and Jeremy and Noelle knew that Tara did not.
“I’ve known Jeremy since I was just a kid,” Blake finally replied. “He was just getting started, working as an apprentice for an illusionist named Renaldo Ciccione. Renaldo was a friend of my father’s.”
“I taught Blake how to juggle,” Jeremy boasted.
“My mother taught me how to juggle,” Blake corrected him. “You merely improved on my technique.”
There were many more questions Tara wanted to ask. About his parents—what they’d done, how they’d died. About Blake’s past—who had taken him in when he’d been orphaned, how he’d ended up as a private investigator.
Blake looked at her, and she knew he saw the questions in her eyes. “Later,” he mouthed.
She nodded and turned back to Jeremy. “Tell me more about your wife and children,” she suggested, a topic he took up without hesitation.
She was beginning to believe that Blake had invited Jeremy to dinner as much to avoid being alone with her and her questions as to share his friend’s company. And his continued reticence hurt, especially considering the night they’d spent in each other’s arms.
BLAKE UNLOCKED the door to Stephanie’s condo later that evening and then stood aside to allow Tara to go in ahead of him. She seemed to take care not to touch him as she passed. She immediately turned on the overhead lights when she entered, dispelling the romantic glow of the full moon pouring through the glass wall of the living room.
“Stephanie won’t be spending the night here?” she asked without looking at him.
“No. She’s spending a lot of time with her boyfriend these days. He’s a doctor of some sort I think they’re talking marriage.”
“Have you met him?”
“She can still work and have children. Jeremy does.”
“But Jeremy’s wife is content to stay home and take care of their kids when he’s out on tour. In fact, she says there’s nothing she would rather do. Stephanie’s boyfriend works long hours in his medical practice. Someone will have to stay home to raise those kids, and it’s probably going to be Stephanie. She told me it’s what she wants. She’s tired of being on the road.”
“And what about you, Blake?” Tara turned to face him then. “Don’t you ever want to settle down? Do you ever get tired of being on the road?”
He sighed, and this time he was the one who looked away. But he answered honestly. “It’s all I’ve done for so long that it’s the only way I know how to live.”
“I suppose it’s a relatively easy existence. No ties, no commitments, no sticky emotional attachments. You don’t even claim your own sister most of the time.”
The edge in her voice piqued him. “That’s hardly fair. You don’t really know enough about my life to judge it.”
“No, I don’t, do I?” Sounding as though she felt she’d scored another point, Tara turned her back to him. She stood looking out the window at the river beyond, her arms crossed over her chest, her expression distant, pensive.
Remembering how her face had glowed with enthusiasm when he’d rejoined her at the theater earlier, Blake wondered what had abruptly changed her mood. “Tara? Are you upset? Have I said or done something wrong?”
“I’m fine.”
“Obviously you aren’t.” He risked taking a step closer, though something in her stance warned him not to touch her just yet. “What’s wrong? You seemed to be having such a good time with Jeremy and his assistants.”