Shattered Blue: A Romantic Thriller

by Jane Taylor Starwood

  The truth slammed into her heart: She could fall in love with Matthew Brennan, might already be half in love with him.

  And that was crazy. They’d only known each other—what? Two days? She didn’t believe in love at first sight, or second, or third. Love took time to grow. That’s what she’d always thought. But what if she was wrong? What if she was really, seriously, falling for him?

  The possibility scared the living daylights out of her. Because she wasn’t ready. She might never be ready.

  But how could she tell him that? He’d said he would wait for her, but how could she expect that now, after what had just happened? It wouldn’t be fair, making him wait for some miraculous healing that might never come. He deserved more than that. A lot more.

  He was standing there watching her, his expression wavering between anxiety and hope. She’d never had that effect on anyone in her whole life. What could she say to him? Nothing made sense. It was too soon, too fast, too much. She was sinking, flying, bouncing from high to low and back again in the blink of an eye, the beat of a heart.

  She tried to slow her thoughts, took deep, calming breaths. She wasn’t suffering from panic, she told herself, just confusion. Massive confusion. Okay, maybe a little panic, but she could handle it. Would handle it. Another minute. All right. Now. Say something. Anything. No, not just anything, something—wise.

  She let out the breath she’d been holding and perched on the nearest chair before her knees had a chance to give way. Okay. Something wise. She opened her mouth with no idea of what was going to come out, and Matt jumped into the breach.

  “Do you want me to go?”

  Startled, she looked up at him and said, without another thought, “No, don’t go.”

  Damn, look at her, Matt thought. Look how incredible she is. So beautiful, so sad and vulnerable and smart and funny and real. He wanted her so badly he felt it in every bone in his body. Wanted her in his bed and in his life. And he’d nearly blown it.

  He pulled up a chair, sat facing her, careful not to let their knees touch. “Shane, listen to me. I won’t let it happen again. From now on, you’re in charge, I swear it on all my ancestors’ graves. If you want me to lock my damn penis in a chastity belt, I’ll do it.”

  Shane stared at him in shock, her mouth agape. Unbelievable. He’d done it again.

  She pictured Matt wearing nothing but a huge iron chastity belt and she snorted out an unladylike guffaw that released her, blasting away the panic, dismantling the fear that she’d lose this astonishing man before she’d had a chance to win him.

  She laughed so hard that she doubled over, clutching her stomach, letting the relief of it carry her away. “Matt,” she managed between gales, “you’re insane.”

  Matt’s heart soared as he laughed with her, filling his heart with the sight of her. But, beneath his profound relief, he knew that resisting the sensual pull of this woman—who was at that moment laughing her guts out in front of him, giving herself over to it completely, without a trace of self-consciousness—was going to be the hardest thing he’d ever done.

  He wondered how long it would be before she trusted him enough to tell him what had happened to her, why she was so afraid to let go. She wasn’t naturally cold, that was abundantly clear, so it had to be something pretty bad. The realization terrified him. What if she never got over it?

  He didn’t know what he’d do if he found out someone had hurt her that way, someone he could reach. Just thinking about it lit a spark of rage, a hunger for vengeance he wasn’t sure he’d be able to control.

  But right now she seemed to need his sense of humor more than anything else. Her laughter had simmered down to fits of giggling. He handed her a napkin and she wiped tears from her eyes.

  “I haven’t laughed like that since I was a little girl,” she said. Her eyes were shining when she looked into his. “Thank you for that, Matt.”

  They looked at each other for a long moment.

  “You know something?” she said finally. “I’ve decided you’re good for me.”

  “That’s great,” he said. “Because I’ve decided you’re good for me, too.”

  He got up and poured her a glass of water from the pitcher on the counter.

  She took it and drank, watching his face. “What are we going to do about this, Matt?”

  “This? You mean—”

  “Us. You and me. This crazy thing that seems to be happening between us.”

  “I have a suggestion,” Matt said.

  “I’m listening.”

  “We take it slow, see where it wants to go.”

  “Slow is good,” Shane mused. “Sloooow,” she repeated, stretching it out into an exaggerated drawl.

  “Okay, so, what about the chastity belt?” Matt said, his eyebrows raised.

  She grinned. “Keep it handy. And please don’t make me laugh again, I’m too exhausted.” She looked at the kitchen clock. “It’s almost one in the morning, Matt. I hate for this, um, interesting evening to end, but I really have to get some sleep.”

  Matt stood, held out his hand for her. When she put her hand in his and stood in front of him, he brushed his lips across her knuckles, then traced his fingers down her cheek.

  “Good night, Shane,” he said. “Sleep well.”

  She smiled up at him and then he turned and strode to the door. As he was reaching for the doorknob, he stopped, turned back, and pulled something out of his jeans pocket. “Here, you better hang onto this,” he said, all seriousness. He worked a small key off a key ring and handed it to her.

  Shane frowned, looking down at the key in her hand. “What’s this?” she said.

  “The key to my chastity belt,” Matt answered with a straight face.

  Shane stared at him, then burst out laughing again. “You’re killing me! Didn’t I just ask you not to make me laugh again?”

  He grinned at her. “Oops.”

  “Come on, Matt, what does this really open? It looks like a jewelry box key.”

  “Just hang onto it, okay? I’ll tell you some other time.” He kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Go to bed, Shane,” he said, then he walked out the door, whistling tunelessly.

  Shane stared after him, the key clutched in her hand. A full heart and exhaustion rooted her to the spot until she shook herself, locked the door, turned out the lights, and started dragging her leaden feet up the stairs.

  That’s when she remembered she hadn’t put Furball and Fiona in their cage.

  Damn. She heaved a huge sigh, shoved Matt’s key into her pocket, dragged her feet back to the kitchen, stepped into the garden clogs she kept by the door and shrugged into her barn coat. Then she turned on the outside lights, took the flashlight from its hook in the laundry room and walked out into the star-spangled New Mexico night.

  Shane stood still for a moment, hugging herself, breathing in the cold, crisp air. All around her, the darker shapes of the hills gathered in the darkness. Looking up at the tallest hill west of the house, she thought she saw a shadow move, quickly disappearing behind the boulders at its crown.

  Coyote? Goosebumps rose on her skin. She hurried around the house to find her cats and tuck them safely away for the night.

  SIXTEEN

  At twelve minutes past one a.m., Jordan watched the outdoor lights come on. Mr. Blue emerged from the kitchen door, walked to his truck and drove away. Then the lights went out.

  He couldn’t see into the house from his hiding place because there were too many trees in the way. But he knew what had been going on in there. Rage burned in his gut as he pictured Shannon naked and writhing beneath that low-class fool, that common laborer. He imagined those hard hands roaming her smooth, taut body, that beer-guzzling mouth kissing her, taking his rough pleasure with her.

  A growl ripped from his throat as he pushed to his feet. He lowered the binoculars and let them dangle from his neck while he paced the hilltop, his leg muscles protesting hours of crouching behind the boulders.

  Jo
rdan was growing bored with watching and waiting. It was passive, weak, and it went against his grain. He was a man of action. A powerful man who saw what he wanted and took it. He’d proved his prowess again and again. The only one who had ever bested him—when he was younger and weaker—had paid the ultimate price.

  His throat burned with bile as it always did when he thought about his twin, Tyler the Golden Boy, Tyler the Good. Tyler, who had forcibly banished him to boarding school because of that little incident with Shannon, shutting him out of his own family. His brother had planted drugs in his room, blackmailed him, threatened him. All for that little blue-eyed bitch.

  On the other hand, Tyler was dead. Not missing and presumed dead, but really, most sincerely dead. Tyler the Dead. Jordan laughed.

  Down the hill, the outside lights came on again. He focused his binoculars on the door and saw Shannon emerge with a flashlight. What was she doing? Then he heard her calling those stupid cats. She must have forgotten to put them in their cage. Distracted, no doubt, by the obscene things Mr. Blue was doing to her body. Things only he should be allowed to do.

  Jordan felt his rage about to veer out of bounds and consciously brought himself back under control. Patience was the key to this game. He couldn’t allow his anger to force him to move too quickly against Mr. Blue, either. It would be bad form, and risky, to leave a trail of bodies behind before he was ready to vanish for good.

  He’d begun his search for the money, but he’d barely started on the outbuildings. He’d made a quick foray into the house while Shannon was out for her run this morning. To cut it that close got his blood racing, and it felt good. But now he counseled himself, once again, to be patient. After all, it might not even be here, on her property. She might have hidden it elsewhere, maybe in a safe deposit box or even an offshore account.

  As he watched Shannon go back inside the house, as he watched the lights go out again, Jordan renewed his resolve. He would use his powerful will as a dam against the righteous anger surging in his blood and continue with his plan of slow erosion. Inch by inch by inch, he’d force his prey into a corner until her every nerve screamed. Then, and only then, would he open the floodgates on his magnificent rage and end the game.

  He thought about those blue bottles all around Shane’s place: stuck on trees, fences, eaves, gates. He’d run a search for “blue bottles” and found a bunch of superstitious nonsense about trapping evil spirits. He’d give her an evil spirit, all right, one a million blue bottles couldn’t catch.

  Jordan stood on the hilltop beneath stars sparkling like shattered diamonds against a blue-black sky, and he smiled.

  SEVENTEEN

  Shane shot straight up in bed, her heart slamming. Then she realized the blood-curdling shriek that had awakened her out of a sound, if brief, sleep was only Fred, announcing his presence on the patio roof outside her bedroom window. What a way to wake up. She swung her legs out of bed, a slow smile spreading over her sleepy face as she thought about last night.

  It had been nearly two a.m. before she’d corralled the two disgruntled cats, got them into their cage, and laid her weary head down. Then, her thoughts, so full of Matt and everything they’d said and done—and might have done—had kept her awake until sheer physical exhaustion finally overwhelmed her.

  She shoved one foot into a slipper, then noticed that the paperback mystery she’d been reading was sitting closed and face up on her nightstand. That was odd. Though she always felt a little guilty about treating a book that way, even a second-hand paperback, she kept her place by leaving them open and face down. Now she’d have to find where she’d left off. That was annoying. She couldn’t imagine why she’d closed it. She must have been distracted.

  The other slipper was nowhere in sight, so she got down and found it under the bed. Something else was under there in the shadows, besides a whole litter of dust kittens.

  “Time for a little housekeeping,” she muttered, knowing nothing would get done along those lines until after her show. Oh, well, she could live with a little dust. A live-in housekeeper—any kind of housekeeper—was one of the few things she missed from her former life. That, she had to admit, had been handy.

  The object she pulled out from under the bed was one of the framed snapshots she kept on the nightstand. In it, her solemn nine-year-old self stood in front of the Southampton beach house next to her beautiful, distracted mother and handsome, indulgent stepfather.

  They’d called that house the “cottage,” which had puzzled her as a child. Everybody knew a cottage was a small, cozy house surrounded by gardens, not a huge, airy mansion on the beach. To call it a cottage had seemed pretentious to her even then.

  Shane stared at the photograph, wondering how it had gotten from her nightstand to beneath the bed. Had the cats been up here recently? Whenever she got in the house, Fiona made a beeline for her bedroom, but she was more apt to curl up and snooze on the bed than play with random objects. Maybe she’d jumped to the nightstand, knocking the photograph to the floor, and then Shane had kicked it under the bed without noticing. The shape she’d been in last night, that was more than likely.

  As she was setting the photo down next to the one of her six-year-old self riding on her father’s shoulders, Fred let loose again. She stuck her fingers in her ears until he was done, then she went to the east-facing picture window, pulled the sheet aside and tapped on the glass, shooing him off the roof.

  “Go on, Fred. Scat! Yeah, I know you’re hungry. I’m coming.”

  She jammed her bare foot into the recovered slipper and shuffled down the hallway to the bathroom, mysteriously closed paperbacks and misplaced photographs forgotten.

  After Shane had fed the animals, paying a little extra attention to Fiona and Furball to make up for last night, and after she’d eaten her own breakfast and straightened up the kitchen, it was past ten and time to get busy in her studio. She’d slept too late to go for a run and her show was only nine days away. She hoped she hadn’t bitten off more than she could chew.

  Even with that on her mind, she couldn’t stop thinking about Matt, about what had happened last night. He’d made it abundantly clear that he wanted her, and each time she’d encouraged him, then shot him down when her body betrayed her. And yet he fell all over himself apologizing, like it was his fault she was so screwed up.

  How could a guy like that be for real? Just say, for the sake of argument, she told herself, he was for real. How long could she go on screwing it up before he wrote her off as a lost cause? On the other hand, how hard would it be to sleep with the guy? She wasn’t a twenty-nine-year-old virgin. She’d had sex before. A few times, in college.

  Yeah, and look how well that turned out. Her face still burned whenever she thought about those pitiful encounters, which, mercifully, wasn’t often. What was the point of torturing herself? It wasn’t as she were in control of her body when it happened. It was almost the reverse of a panic attack: She shut down, went catatonic until it was over. Oh, yeah, she was a real firecracker in bed.

  Maybe, just maybe, she mused, it would be different with Matt. He was different, and she felt different when she was with him. She felt like, given enough time, she might be able to let go with him, might feel safe enough with him. But what if she turned out to be wrong? What if she tried, if they got right to the verge of it, right on the edge, naked and panting and sweaty and oh-so-ready, and she couldn’t go through with it? Or she shut down in the middle of it—right in the crucial middle of it—like she always had before?

  What if, one minute, Matt held a warm, responsive woman in his arms, making passionate love to her, and the next minute he held a woman-shaped iceberg? Would he be so sweet then? So tender and caring? Would he still blame himself if she did that to him? He’d have to be a saint. Matthew Brennan was, to all appearances, a really nice guy, sweet and funny and romantic, but he was no saint. He was as male a man as she’d ever met, with all the requisite male needs.

  What was she supposed to do abou
t this? About him? She couldn’t figure this out on her own. She needed to talk to somebody. She needed to talk to Beth. It was time to tell her best friend the truth, or at least part of it, and seek her advice, before she went off the deep end and made a terrible mistake.

  In the kitchen, she punched in the gallery’s speed dial; Jessie picked up.

  “Hey, Shane, congratulations on the show.”

  “Thanks, Jessie. Is Beth there?”

  “She went down to Las Cruces for a few days. Linda’s baby came a week early.”

  Damn. “Is everything okay with Linda and the baby?”

  “Yeah, they’re great. She had another boy. Caleb.” Jessie hesitated on the line. “Is something wrong, Shane? You sound a little funny.”

  “What? No, I’m fine.”

  “You can call Beth on her cell if you want. You have the number, right?”

  “Yes, I have it.”

  “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”

  “I don’t want to bother her. It can wait. Can you ask her to call me when she gets back?”

  “Sure. I’ll leave her a note.”

  Shane hung up the phone and stared at it. Well, shit. She really wanted to talk to Beth, but she didn’t feel right calling her at her daughter’s, taking her attention away from Linda and the new baby. Besides, this was going to be a very long conversation, best conducted face to face.

  She started to turn away, then noticed that the message counter on the answering machine displayed a zero. That was odd. She was sure she’d saved that last crank call, the one with the whispered “Shannon.”

  Puzzled, she pushed the “Play Messages” button. The mechanical male voice said, “No new messages.” She waited several seconds for the voice to say, “Saved message, played back,” but it didn’t. The answering machine just sat there in cold, accusing silence.

  Goosebumps played over her arms. She hadn’t imagined that voice whispering “Shannon.” It wasn’t possible, was it? Had she deleted the message by mistake? She must have, though she didn’t remember doing it. She tried to think when she could’ve—