Daniel knelt down on one knee, unlaced my combat boots and pulled them from my feet. Silently, we undressed each other until we were both naked in front of the fire. My belly protruded a very little, just enough to round out my abdomen. He didn’t notice.
This was the first time I’d seen him naked. Daniel had the kind of body I liked—tall and lean and athletic. His limbs were loose and casual at his side, he moved gracefully and easily. He didn’t rush anything, and I liked that. I like self-control.
Daniel Razor has that rare masculine combination of beauty and intelligence. It was hard to separate the two. If he hadn’t been great-looking, would I have stuck around long enough to notice he had brains? If he didn’t have brains, his looks alone wouldn’t have been enough to hold my interest. Intelligence isn’t always obvious in a gorgeous man. I was stunned by how breathtaking he was and I wondered how I’d ever get used to it.
Then I remembered I didn’t have to because he was marrying Anastasia in June.
He held my face in his hands and kissed me. We were the same, he and I. I could criticize him all I liked for going to extremes to protect Joel. I would have burned the fucking mansion down to play the violin.
But Razor mansion had survived fire, earthquake and Charlotte Dawson. Razor had defeated me. He was ruthless about getting what he wanted and I hadn’t been.
But I was learning.
I lifted my mouth to his ear and whispered. “I’m pregnant.”
chapter five
♫
HE STEPPED back and peered at me as though he didn’t hear correctly. Then his eyes darkened and his mouth set. “Don’t. Not you. Christ, I couldn’t stand it.”
“You couldn’t stand a baby?”
“I couldn’t stand it if you tried to manipulate me too. Fuck. Everyone plays that game with me. It’s childish and it won’t work. If you want something, just ask. I promised you I’d never leave you. You don’t have to fake a pregnancy to make me help you. I have no desire to be a father. I’m not going to marry you. I’m marrying Anastasia.”
“You’re not the father.”
The look on his face ... stunned, distrustful and then there was a flash of pain.
“You’re not kidding,” he said finally.
“No. I’m pregnant. Almost twelve weeks. It’s Joel’s.”
I thought he’d fall apart or walk away in disgust or demand proof. But he just stood there, not moving. His expression was the softest I’d ever seen on him and I had a glimpse of what he must have been like as a boy before his dad was killed. Before he had to grow up in a hurry.
He looked like a regular guy getting the news that his wife or girlfriend was going to have a baby. But I wasn’t his wife and I wasn’t his girlfriend and it wasn’t his baby I was having.
He kissed me, and not like he would kiss his future sister-in-law.
“You’re not angry?”
“I’m not angry.” He laughed. “I’m amazed. And glad. I’m going to be an uncle.”
That’s not what I wanted to hear. But it made me more attractive to him. The look Daniel gave me was warmer than I’d ever had from him and I’m only human—I responded.
He kissed me like it was our baby I was having. And for this little bit of time I had with him, I pretended it was our baby.
Daniel made love to me on the rug in front of the fire. He was ecstatic, hard, but also shy, asking me if penetration was okay, which made me crazy in love with him. I remembered an article Susan had found online about sex during pregnancy.
“It’s definitely okay,” I gasped. My libido was surging from the pregnancy hormones. They also made me vomit so there was a flip side. My breasts tingled when he kissed them.
But for all my magical thinking about us being a couple, there were three of us in the room—me, Daniel and Joel. Daniel could only love me through his brother. He did love me; his feelings were clear in every touch. This was not just sex. He was in love with me but only because Joel was his medium. Like a mirror image of himself or a portrait in his soul, Joel was Daniel’s alter ego. Joel Razor contained the feeling, emotion, love and torment that Daniel could not express. Maybe that’s why Daniel needed Joel. Joel expressed what his brother was feeling like an emotional proxy.
Daniel’s feelings for me were being channelled through an agoraphobic missing man. Without Joel, they could not be sustained.
“I’m glad it’s you he’s going to marry,” he said. His voice was thick.
“Why?”
His eyes were impossible to read.
“You made me promise not to leave you and I warned you, Charlotte, I’m not a good genie. I can make things happen but at a cost.” He moved between my legs, parting them. “The cost is that now you are tied to us forever. And I’m glad ... because I want you too.”
I lifted my hips and Daniel plunged his cock inside me.
*
I DON’T know what time it was when I was awakened by a noise outside Joel’s bedroom. I had left Daniel asleep in his bed after we moved from the library to his room to have sex a third time. We were insatiable. Sex was one thing. Spending the night with him was another. I wasn’t ready to take it all in—whatever this was between us.
I was thinking clearly on one point at least—Daniel Razor wasn’t going to get custody of the baby. We felt something for each other but it wasn’t enough to surrender my flesh and blood to him. I was going to study the violin one way or another and the baby was coming with me. I needed time alone after spending the evening with him to process.
But in Razor mansion, one is never alone.
I lay very still under the duvet and listened. The sound was coming from the dumbwaiter shaft. The sound of the motor had awakened me. Someone had activated the mechanical lift from the kitchen.
Not a natural sound that could be chalked up to Old House Noise (thank you, Detective Lewis) but definitely a manmade sound. A whirring sound, moving steadily up the shaft until it arrived at the loft and was inside the apartment. The door slid open.
I hunched under the covers like a coward instead of finding a weapon.
Joel’s closet. I could hide there.
Fully awake and sitting up in bed, I stared at the closet door. It was the first place the intruder would look and I’d be trapped.
Joel’s room was spacious. An entire wall was taken up by a bank of windows that looked out toward the Bay, flooding the room with natural sunlight during the day. At night, the glow from glittering San Francisco at the foot of Nob Hill cast the room in dull yellow but enough to make out shapes in the room. Joel designed the room to offer maximum interaction with the outdoors without actually having to go outside. There was enough light in the room to see the outline of the closet. I debated making a run for it when I heard a noise and turned to look at the door.
The door knob was slowly turning.
Then silence. A beating heart kind of silence. Someone was waiting on the other side of the door, stopped. Frozen, waiting, wondering if they had awakened me.
I pressed my face against the pillow and held my breath. The door swung open wide enough to admit a faceless person.
Terrified, my breath came in shallow, short gasps.
He or she wore a headband with an LED light; the blue beam shone in my eyes. I couldn’t see who it was behind the light but rage overcame my fear and that helped. I would beat whoever it was to a pulp if they tried anything.
The shape came toward me, stood at the side of the bed and looked down. My eyes squeezed shut. I tried very hard to control my breathing to appear as if I were asleep.
“Charley? Are you asleep?”
Joel.
My heart was in my throat as I bolted upright. “Joel! Oh my God.” I caught his hand and yanked him down to me. “Are you all right? Where have you been? Daniel and I have been worried sick!”
“I’m sorry, Charley. I came up through the dumbwaiter. It was a tight squeeze but worth it just to see you again. I only have a few minutes. Listen, pleas
e listen, I have to explain and there’s not much time.”
“No, there’s time—there is! Now that you’re here—you’re back! You don’t have to explain. Daniel told me about the girl—the friend of Anastasia’s. Joel, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not going to call the police so you don’t need to hide anymore. Listen, we found your journal so we know why you’re running. But what happened between Daniel and me was a mistake. It’s you I want.”
He switched off the light on his headband and it took several seconds for my eyes to adjust to the dark. “I love you, Charley. But I don’t think what happened between you and Daniel was a mistake. It’s something you both wanted from the beginning. My brother thinks he owes me. He thinks he doesn’t have a right to be happy because I’m not. Seriously, he’s better off without me. I’m a fuck-up.”
I shook my head vehemently and pulled him into my arms. “You are not,” I whispered, trying to make him understand. “You are a gentle, sweet man. Your brother loves you. He doesn’t care about the rest of it. He would rather have you back—social anxiety, agoraphobic, all your quirks and oddities—your brother would rather have you back with him then go through life without you. Daniel needs you, Joel.”
“And what about you? How do you feel about my quirks and oddities?” He pressed his fingers to his eyes, a signal that he was distressed. “That girl you mentioned. She wasn’t the only one. I hurt you too and I don’t even remember doing it.”
His anxiety levels were the highest I’d ever seen them. I couldn’t even imagine the courage it must have taken him to come back to his apartment and see me.
“I know, honey, I know. These past few months we had together, playing music and working—I know you. You wouldn’t hurt anyone intentionally. There’s an answer and we can fix it. Please, give me a chance to help you.”
He was already pulling away, preparing to disappear from my life.
“Joel, wait!” I commanded. “If you don’t remember doing it, then how do you know it happened?”
He stopped. His grey-green eyes were puzzled. “I’m not sure. It felt like I was dreaming it and then someone told me it was real. It was like the hypnotherapy sessions I used to have with Dr. Welland. Charley, I never wanted to hurt you. I love you. I’m sorry.”
“Please, let me help you. Is someone trying to hurt you? Is that why you ran away?”
“There’s no time to explain it all. Tell Daniel they used your phone to call me. I went downstairs to let you in but it wasn’t you at the door. I don’t know what happened after that. I woke up in a hidden room under the house. The rest of it isn’t important. Listen, Carsten wants my proxy vote and Wilma is helping him. He’s threatened to do something to Daniel if I don’t hand it over. I hid the proxy in the cello; without it, they’re powerless. Tell Daniel I’m signing it over to him. He’ll understand what I mean. They can hypnotize me this time and it won’t work. They can’t make me do something I know is wrong.”
“What do you mean they can hypnotize you? Joel, who is the woman in blue?”
“Talk to Dr. Welland; he’ll tell you. There is no woman in blue. We imagined her, Charley. We dreamt the whole thing. Remember that.”
His handsome surfer-boy face clouded with remorse. “I’m not a good guy for you. I wanted to be. I like you better than anyone I know, aside from Daniel. I’m sorry. Forgive me. I liked our duets.”
And then he was gone.
I should’ve tackled him, hog-tied him. I know that now. I didn’t then. I thought I had found the answer to how Carsten lured Joel out of the apartment. Blonde-haired Wilma was Carsten’s accomplice on the inside. It was all beginning to make sense. I thought I had it all figured out.
I couldn’t see the real danger staring me right in the face.
chapter six
♫
“HE’S IN THE mansion. Joel is here. I just saw him. Daniel, wake up! He was in my room. He came up through the dumbwaiter. He said to tell you he has the proxy and he’s signing it over to you.”
Daniel sat up in bed as naked as I left him. He was half-asleep, his dark hair tousled over his brow making him look about nineteen. “How long ago?”
“Less than two minutes ago. He was standing in my room. I don’t know how he got out. He was gone before I reached the door.”
Daniel threw on some clothes. Neither of us was in the mood to talk about what happened between us. Or why we fall into bed whenever we’re together. This wasn’t the time to talk about my pregnancy or his demons. He gripped my hand tightly and we raced down the stairs to foyer at the main entrance.
“Where are we going?”
“The kitchen before he escapes. You said he came up through the dumbwaiter? That’s the way he’ll get out. Tell me everything. Tell me everything he said to you.” Daniel’s face was set, worried.
I repeated everything Joel had told me about Wilma, the proxy and the cryptic message about his being hypnotized.
“Do you think that’s how they got Joel to open the front door? You said you locked it; only Joel and Marshall had the alarm code. Marshall couldn’t be recruited to open the door—it had to be Joel. Wilma stole my cell phone from the hallway, used it to call Joel and then returned the phone to the hall bowl where I found it an hour later. Joel said he didn’t remember anything after he opened the door. Hypnotic suggestion—how else could Carsten lure an agoraphobic guy out of his apartment?”
We had reached the kitchen. Daniel entered it first. It was a spacious Victorian kitchen, very much unchanged from when the mansion was built in the 1800s. White tiles covered the walls and there were no cupboards, only shelves that were lined with serving platters and cooking implements. The appliances were new, a state-of-the-art stainless steel gas range and restaurant-sized stainless steel fridge.
In the middle of the kitchen was a large butcher block work island where the chef and kitchen staff prepared meals for family, dinner parties, and functions.
It wasn’t dinner that Daniel and I saw lying prone on the butcher block with a carving knife stuck through her chest.
I crowded behind him in the doorway but he wouldn’t let me enter. My hand pressed to my mouth. I felt my eyes stretch wide when I saw the body.
A pool of fresh blood stained her maid’s uniform. Her blonde hair was loose about her face and her eyes were fixed open, staring at the ceiling. The color of her skin was a ghastly muddy grey.
Daniel sprang forward. He gently pressed his fingers to her neck though she was clearly dead, and then turned away and reached for the house phone to call the police. “Stay out, Charlotte. Don’t touch anything. I don’t want you caught up in this. We’ll both be suspects; I don’t want to give them any ammunition to charge us. Wake up Marshall. Let him know what’s happened but don’t tell him about Joel. I’m not telling Lewis anything about my brother either. As far as everyone knows, he’s missing—a long way away from here. I would like to keep it that way.”
He met my eyes and the message was clear. I nodded. “I won’t say anything. Joel didn’t do this.”
“Tell Marshall to wait for me in the library. You go too. I’ll be there soon.”
Daniel’s gaze traveled to the murdered woman. I know he was thinking the same thing I was thinking, despite our brave words.
Wilma was wearing an electric blue trench coat. The woman in blue.
We imagined her, Charley. We dreamt the whole thing. Remember that.
Joel had murdered the woman who had been posing as his mother.
*
CARSTEN TURNED the Mercedes onto the long sweeping gravel drive to the mansion. The soaring redwoods bordered the drive and shaded the car. It was Wednesday, less than twenty-four hours from the meeting of the board. If his insider had done what he paid her to do, he wouldn’t be cutting it this close. As long as he left the mansion with Joel’s proxy—that’s all he gave a shit about. If Daniel was able to get to the meeting and vote his share as well as Joel’s, Carsten was in a world of hurt.
The
whole point of this exercise was to keep both Razor brothers away from the stockholders meeting. Carsten’s larger goal was to keep them as impotent in the business as they were before they came of age.
The Razor brothers made it easy.
First Joel with his social anxiety and phobias dropped out of the scene. And then Daniel became too much of a playboy to take seriously—although many of the stockholders did take him seriously as John Razor’s son. On one hand, Carsten had a fundamentally useless CEO and on the other, he had a fundamentally reckless CEO. With careful manipulation, he managed to ease them out of the boardroom.
And then Daniel woke up one day, suddenly interested in learning the family business. What a job Carsten had to control him then, especially as Daniel didn’t share his vision for Razor Industries. The playboy who was best known for skydiving, white water rafting and society parties was suddenly being taken seriously. Young Daniel Razor was going to take Razor Industries into the future. This was a young man’s world, especially in San Francisco with tech start-ups mushrooming all around them. It was Daniel’s opinion the board was interested in, Daniel’s ideas they were writing down. It was Daniel’s vision they wanted to implement.
He approached the board with plans to build a new office in Seattle and that’s when Carsten became alarmed. Carsten advised against expansion for the sake of the shareholders’ dividends.
Daniel’s response was that the shareholders had invested in the company and they would be remiss not to increase that investment through periodically expanding and testing new markets.
It came to a showdown. The board sided with Daniel and Carsten was put out to pasture. Not literally, but in the decision-making process, his opinion no longer counted. Carsten Pullman had become very, very wealthy off Razor Industries; he had no intention of tolerating dismal dividends so Daniel could play at being a businessman.
Tallulah Cement was the answer until Joel Razor was given the task of designing the new building and balked at the takeover. Now Carsten had a new brother to contend with and this one was a recluse. He couldn’t gain access long enough to influence Joel.
Razor Edge: Razor Trilogy Three (Razor Thriller Romance Novella Book 3) Page 4