Sheer Pleasure

by Patricia Rosemoor

  Thankfully, Helen didn’t lecture her the way Annie thought she might. She kept cool, even in the face of Annie’s insistance about going to work as usual.

  “So, will there be an actual investigation now that you’ve been attacked?” Helen asked, as they got into her old Jaguar, a leftover from her dot.com salad days.

  “They took fingerprints.”

  “What if the stalker has never been arrested?”

  Annie relaxed against the leather seat, the smell of which reminded her of Nate when he was dressed for a wild ride on the Harley. “Then he’ll be harder to find.”

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “That I think the cops were a bit skeptical, since there were no signs of a break-in. I think they suspect a disgruntled boyfriend.”

  “Nathaniel Bishop.”

  “Give it up, Helen. He’s never had keys. Nor has anyone but you.”

  “Hmm.”

  Annie was glad when Helen sank into a thoughtful silence. She was tired of defending Nate to her best friend. He was always there for her, every time she needed him. He charmed her and excited her and seduced her and protected her.

  And she loved him.

  Even thinking it made her nervous, but Annie could deny it no longer. She loved Nate Bishop. Admitting it to herself was thrilling…and scary. Now what was she going to do with the information? For the moment, she chose to tuck it away until she was more comfortable sharing, but the thought sat at the back of her mind as Helen parked and they went to their separate businesses.

  Upon entering her office, Annie got another unpleasant piece of news—a message from Gloria, who was sick with some stomach bug. Great. She would be working alone all day. Then again, at least she wouldn’t have to be giving any further explanations for a while.

  But that one ray of sunshine dissipated the moment she saw Clive Hardy outside the shop. He was admiring the new window, which she’d just unveiled.

  Not looking forward to being alone with him, she steeled herself when he swung open the shop door and stepped inside.

  “I was very angry with you, Annie,” Hardy began as he stalked toward her. “I couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t let me in before…but now I do.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes, of course. You wanted to surprise me.” He glanced back at the display window. “You were thinking of me when you created your new masterpiece.”

  Annie frowned. “What in the world gave you that idea?”

  “You know me so very well.” He turned back to her and practically ate her up with his intense gaze. “I might be mild mannered on the outside, but as only you know, underneath my business suits, I’m really Superdick.”

  Annie choked. “Excuse me?” Part of her wanted to laugh, but this guy really creeped her out.

  “I know you want me, Annie, and now you can have me,” Hardy said, his tone wheedling. “With that harridan who works for you gone, we have the whole shop to ourselves.” He reached out as if to touch her.

  Leaping back, she slapped at his grabbing hand. “Get out.” She was so angry, her pulse was thundering through her ears.

  His features puckered. “No more games, Annie, not between us.”

  “I’m not playing a game. That’s an order. Get out and stay out! I don’t need your business bad enough to put up with you anymore.”

  “You can’t kick me out of here!” he protested.

  “Either go on your own or I’ll call the police and they can escort you out. And I’ll get a court order to make sure you stay away from me, too. The police are going to want to talk to you, anyway,” Annie informed him, just in case they hadn’t gotten to him yet. “I’ve told them all about you, you—you pervert.”

  With a furious glare, Hardy backed away from her toward the front door, muttering, “I’ll make you pay for that, bitch!”

  Annie’s pulse jagged even harder at the whispered threat. Her attacker had whispered, had called her a bitch, as well. Clive Hardy? Could it be?

  He slammed out of the shop, and Annie’s mind whirled with the possibility.

  She hadn’t exactly gotten a look at her attacker. Or been able to tell how big he was. He’d been strong, though.

  Just as Hardy so obviously thought he was. Superdick? She shuddered.

  “Good riddance to bad rubbish!”

  She was sure the cops would have a good laugh at this story when she filled them in later. Something nagged at her about the encounter though, something she couldn’t quite put together.

  On the alert for a return performance, Annie never quite settled down all day. Not that she was jumping at shadows—she simply had this overwhelming sense of unease that wouldn’t let her alone.

  The phone ringing had her jumping out of her skin. She grabbed up the receiver, expecting to hear some new whispered threat. So it was quite a relief to hear a familiar voice saying, “Hi, beautiful. How’s your morning so far?”

  “Nate!” Thank heavens. “Gloria is out sick and I had a visit from the customer from hell, Clive Hardy. I’m beginning to think he might have been my midnight visitor.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He came on to me, but don’t worry,” she added quickly. “Nothing happened. I sent him packing and told him never to darken my doorstep again.”

  “Have you notified the authorities?”

  “I will,” she promised.

  “Good. I got hold of my security guy. He can come take a look at your place this afternoon to see what he can do for you.”

  “I can’t get away.”

  “I can make the time.”

  Thankfully, she’d given him a set of keys that morning so that he could see to Rock while she was at Helen’s. “What would I do without you?” she asked.

  “I hope I’ll never have to know.”

  Hanging up, she was in a better mood, if hungry again. And customers were streaming into the shop. Because Gloria was out, Annie couldn’t leave the store for lunch, so she called Helen for a rescue. Awhile later, her friend brought her a sandwich, a brownie, iced coffee and the news that Nick had done one of his disappearing acts again.

  “How can you be sure with Nick?” Annie asked, then took a bite of the sandwich.

  For the moment, she was between customers. Only a pair of young women were browsing.

  “I checked for your keys and they’re gone.”

  “You checked everywhere?”

  “I keep them in one place—my top drawer in back. And they’re not anywhere to be found, and neither is Nick. I wanted to talk to him about the keys—I thought maybe he had them for some reason. Now who knows when we’ll be able to ask him?”

  “He may be back later. He could be on a shoot.”

  “His backpack is gone.”

  Annie asked, “And you know this how?”

  “I checked his place. I have his keys, too, you know.”

  “Nick had no reason to go to my place,” Annie said thoughtfully. “Who else knew the keys were there?”

  Helen shrugged. “I never told anyone but Nick.”

  Maybe the spare keys being gone at the same time someone had gotten into her place without a sign of a break-in was just a coincidence, but Annie thought not. And from Helen’s expression, Annie guessed they were on the same wavelength. More information for the authorities.

  Her chance came soon after Helen left and Annie had taken care of a customer who came in for a pair of panties, claiming she had somehow lost hers. Right.

  Detective John Sanchez called her from the district office and identified himself as being in charge of her case. She told him about Clive Hardy and about the missing spare keys. But when he asked if she thought Hardy would have known about the keys, much less had the opportunity to get at them, she had to answer honestly. No.

  Detective Sanchez asked her to call him if anything else happened, and said that he would keep her informed from his end.

  Throughout the afternoon, thoughts of her stalker plagued her whenev
er she wasn’t busy with a customer. Why couldn’t she put it together? This was happening to her, so she was the best person to figure it out, right?

  The spare keys seemed to be central to figuring out the identity of her stalker, considering there had been no sign of forcible entry to her place.

  Who, other than Helen and Nick, had access? Helen’s employees, she guessed, but they were mostly college kids and didn’t even know her.

  Wondering if security guards normally had keys to everything, Annie guessed she should ask Nate about it. She hadn’t ruled out Harry Burdock, after all. If he had free access to all the businesses, he could have gotten into Helen’s Cybercafé and found Annie’s keys. Her initials had been on the ring so that Helen could easily identify them. Maybe he had, too. That would explain how those photographs of her in her home had gotten into her personal mail, she thought, remembering the big man she’d suspected was the security guard.

  The last customer had gone and Annie had locked the front door before she remembered she hadn’t opened the day’s mail. Wondering if she should leave it until the next day, she thought about going to Helen’s place alone and decided against it. She’d wait until her friend was ready to leave for the night, which gave her plenty of catch-up time.

  It wasn’t until she’d gotten to the bottom of the stack that she found the plain manilla envelope sans stamps or address.

  Now what?

  Pulse hammering, she held the envelope in her hands for a moment before opening it. A peek inside revealed more photographs. Annie closed her eyes, fearing to look as she slid them out of the envelope across her desk.

  Then she faced her worst nightmare.

  Stunned, she could hardly breathe as she spread the photographs out like a hand of cards. But rather than kings or queens, the images on the deck were of her and Nate, tracing their progress as they’d made love in the display window.

  The display…Superdick…that was it!

  She searched the window area for a camera—one of those spy tools the cops had talked about—but found nothing. Then, looking at the photos again, she realized the angle wasn’t head-on. They’d been taken from above, thereby avoiding the fabric for the most part—probably snapped from the second floor of the building across the street.

  Annie stuffed the evidence back into the envelope, headed out the shop’s rear door and made for the stairs.

  Nate needed to know about these. He needed to know that Clive Hardy had been aware of the Superman costume beneath the mannequin’s suit. And Hardy couldn’t have known if he hadn’t been keeping watch on her somehow while she’d worked on the window. That’s what had bothered her about his visit.

  By the time she got to the third floor, she was breathless and yet energized. And so walking into Nate’s office and not finding anyone there was disheartening. He had to be around, she thought. He would never leave the place unlocked.

  “Nate?” she called, before entering his private office.

  Empty.

  “Damn! Nate, where the heck are you?”

  She needed to share this latest evidence, and the man she loved was the only one to whom she would dare show these pictures. Unless the police insisted, she amended, not liking that thought one bit. It might have been dark in that display window, but the camera work had been professional. Both she and Nate could be identified…not to mention their various body parts.

  Never having seen the inner office before, Annie thought how much it reminded her of Nathaniel. Of a lawyer’s office. Dark woods and neutrals. No bright colors. No artwork. Nothing to set it off. No trace of the man she’d fallen for.

  She couldn’t deny it any longer: she really was in love. And she had a dilemma that she needed to solve, and soon. She needed to believe in Nathaniel as well as in Nate. They were, as he had reminded her more than once, the same man. She couldn’t help the panic in her chest every time she tried to merge them in her mind.

  “Come on, Nate, where are you?” she muttered as she circled the room and came to a stop at his desk.

  She stared at his work area, so neat compared to hers. But then, this was Nathaniel’s desk, she reminded herself, not really Nate’s.

  Not knowing where he was or when he would be back was so frustrating. Annie was too anxious to stand around and wait. Maybe she ought to leave him a note and then go find Helen. But of course, there were no pens or notepads marring his perfect desk.

  Annie went around to the other side and pulled open the center drawer, where she found a pen. A look-see in the top, righthand drawer produced a pad of paper, which she pulled out. About to close the drawer, she hesitated when a piece of ecru stationery caught her eye.

  She sank down in his chair and stared. And when her heart settled, she reached in and pulled out a sheet with lacy texture across the top. The same stationery used by her admirer!

  “Annie, there you are.”

  Dressed in his leathers, Nate stood in the doorway, his gaze pinned to the delicate piece of paper in her hand.

  Her mouth went dry and she acknowledged how much she wanted him, even having found this…this proof of his perfidy. The single sheet slipped from her fingers, but she gathered herself together to open the envelope and spread the photographs over his desk.

  Aware that he was stalking across the room toward her, she said, “Nice work,” though her voice was as stiff as her shoulders.

  She watched him carefully as he glanced down at the photographs. His features froze into a mask and he met her gaze.

  “Where did these come from?”

  “You tell me.”

  He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You think I had something to do with this?”

  “Not at first, no,” she said softly, when what she really wanted to do was yell. What she really wanted to do was demand an explanation. Ask him how he could make her fall in love with him and then betray her like this. “Not until I found the stationery.”

  “I can explain.”

  “I’m sure you can.” He wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding his guilt, she thought, watching his face. “And you will. To the police.”

  That made him start and demand, “Why are you doing this?”

  “Me? I’m doing something I shouldn’t?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Believing I’m your stalker. That I would terrify you and try to hurt you.”

  “Oh, come on, Nate, admit it. What exactly have you been doing? Playing with my head so that I would turn to you and you could use creative sex to console me?”

  It made sense, considering she never had been physically hurt.

  Annie went over everything that had happened to her and realized that, as owner of the building, Nate had access to the café and to her keys. Why hadn’t she thought of that? He’d been around at just the right moment so often—because he had been the one stalking and photographing her. Only it was worse, because he must have had someone else photograph her.

  “Where did that conclusion come from?” he asked.

  Furious with herself for being so blind, for putting her emotions on the line, she said, “You’re always talking about danger—”

  “That’s Nate, not me.”

  “What?”

  “You see us as different men, right? Oh, no, wait…Nate’s not actually a man. I forgot. He’s a fantasy, so he’s entitled to be or do whatever he wants.”

  “So you’re admitting you did this.”

  Nate sighed. “No, Annie, I’m asking you to start seeing who I really am.”

  “I see, all right.”

  She tried to walk past him to the door, but he caught her upper arm and swung her around to face him. The breath caught in her throat and pressure built in her chest as she looked into his eyes.

  “No,” he said, “you really don’t see, or you would know that I played into your fantasies because I finally understood that’s what you wanted, what you demanded. You wouldn’t give m
e—Nathaniel—a break. I didn’t know what to do. And then I took a really good look at your displays and realized a direct approach was never going to work with you, that you would expect something more subtle and more exotic.”

  “You figured that out from my windows?”

  “And from talking with Nick.”

  “Nick?” Shocked, Annie tried to fathom her friend’s betrayal. “He was in on this?”

  “He wasn’t in on anything. I just asked him for some advice at the beginning because he knew you better than almost anyone.” Nate shrugged. “Then for some reason, he changed his mind and suggested that I stay away from you.”

  After she’d asked Nick to investigate him, Annie thought, remembering what he’d learned. “Who holds the mortgage to your building?”

  “What?”

  “Is it Frank Mancuso?”

  “Mancuso? Who has been filling your head with such nonsense? Helen?”

  “You know, it doesn’t matter.” Especially since she needed to end this. “Forget I asked.”

  “My father,” Nate said. “As much as he thought I was making a mistake, he gave me a personal loan, so that I could follow my own dream. It’s the reason I still do work for him occasionally.”

  Could she believe him? And if it were true, where had Nick gotten his misinformation? Annie remembered he hadn’t been willing to tell her the source.

  “Annie, am I getting through to you at all?” Nate asked, grasping her shoulders as if desperate.

  His mere touch sent desire coursing through her. Annie took a big breath and steadied herself. Nate might be her stalker, but he still had power over her. Realizing that made her start to panic again.

  “Let me go, Nate. You and I are through.”

  “Don’t say that!” His expression tight and angry, he nevertheless did as she asked. But he didn’t back off. “I want all of you, Annie, and you have to want all of me if this is going to work between us. Fantasy isn’t enough for me, and it shouldn’t be for you.”

  Her whole world had just been turned upside down and he seemed to be talking about love? Another ploy, perhaps?