He told Emily he loved her.
“Screw this,” Jacob snarled, and laid Marco out cold.
Standing alone on the big back porch late that night huddled in the depths of her ancient barn coat, Jaimie sighed.
Who would have imagined that such a scene would end happily? But it did.
Em had gone from despair to joy so fast it had made Wilde heads spin. Now, she and Marco were sitting around the fireplace in the great room with the rest of the family, Emily tight in the circle of her lover’s arms, exchanging private smiles that spoke of love and promise and, yes, of passion.
Passion.
Desire.
Hunger.
Jaimie turned up the collar of her coat, then dug her hands deep in its pockets.
She didn’t want those emotions from Steven.
But she had wanted them from Zacharias. His passion for her had been—it had been the most exciting experience of her life.
What a fool she’d made of herself with him. Running had been stupid. Even now, all these weeks later, she wasn’t sure why she’d done it.
Embarrassment? At what? She was a grown woman. Grown women had sex. Dammit, she’d had sex. Not a lot, but she’d been with men.
Had she run because of the circumstances? Because it had been a hookup? A one-night stand?
Maybe it wouldn’t have been a one-night stand if she had stayed in his bed. Or maybe it would have been; he hadn’t made any attempt to get in touch with her since that night, but there could be a trillion reasons he hadn’t, starting with the fact that men’s egos were about as fragile as cobwebs—she had three brothers, after all—and the fact that she’d walked out on him after what she could only describe as a stellar performance might just have damaged his.
“Goddammit, James, what does it matter?”
“They say it’s a bad sign when you talk to yourself, sweet sister.”
Jaimie swung around. Lissa had come out on the porch, all but hidden inside what looked like a hundred layers of sweaters and sweatshirts.
“It’s a worse sign when you try to look like the Michelin Man,” Jaimie said.
Lissa shrugged. “I forgot how cold it gets here in the winter.”
Jaimie turned back to the railing, leaned her arms on it and stared out into the night.
“It isn’t winter yet. And how could it get cold here? This is Texas.”
The sisters laughed softly. The idea that it didn’t get cold in Texas was something they’d both had to deal with. Southern Californians and Easterners were besotted with the notion that it was always hot in Texas, never mind that the northern part of the state had winters that were cold, hard and snowy.
“So,” Lissa said after a couple of minutes, “you want to talk about it?”
“Talk about what?”
“Puh-leeze, James. Do not give me that ‘Talk about what?’ crap.”
“Puh-leeze, Melissa. Do not give me that ‘James’ crap.’”
Lissa sighed. “You even refer to yourself as James.”
“I do not.”
“You do. When you’re ticked at yourself about something, or when you’re struggling to be logical—”
“I never struggle to be logical. I am always logical.”
“Bull.”
“Listen, Melissa—”
“And I never, ever, ever, ever, call myself Melissa. Neither does anyone else. You, on the other hand—”
“OK, OK, enough. I don’t even know what we’re arguing about.”
Lissa looked at her sister. Then she sighed.
“We aren’t arguing. I asked you if you wanted to talk about it, and you figured you could get away with ignoring me.”
“I wasn’t… Talk about Em, you mean? Well, I’m happy for—”
“Something’s going on with you, Jaimie. What is it?”
“Nothing’s going on with me. Well, my job. Did I tell you I snagged a bunch of new—”
“Is it a man?”
“Is what a man?”
“If it is, that’s good. Because it’s never a man, not with you. It’s always school. Or studying for your CPA exam. Or getting a job with the biggest, bestest accounting firm, or the biggest, bestest real estate firm, or…”
“There’s no such word as bestest. Jake would take off your head if he heard you say something like that.”
“I don’t need our brother, the grammar maven, to tell me there’s no such word as bestest, and you’re just trying to avoid the topic. Something’s doing with you. Even Emily noticed, and we both know she was pretty much out of it until a little while ago. So, you gonna tell me? Or am I gonna have to nag you about it until our eyes roll up into our heads and we both pass out?”
Jaimie laughed, just as Lissa had intended.
She gave two seconds’ consideration to telling her sister about The Big Mistake. The night with Zacharias Castelianos. The night she could not forget.
No. Lissa would tell her what an idiot she’d been, and she already knew that.
“Ve hef vays of making you talk,” Lisa said, doing a bad imitation of a Nazi interrogator. “Something is happening in your life, and I want to know what it is.”
Well, something was happening. Something she wouldn’t feel dumb talking about and maybe Lissa had advice she could use.
“OK. Something is.” Jaimie looked at her sister. “There’s this guy who’s, I guess you’d say, very interested in me.”
“Ah.” Lissa grinned. “I knew it. Come on. Tell Mother Melissa everything.”
“See? You just called yourself…” Jaimie sighed. “The thing is, it’s not what you think.”
Lissa raised her eyebrows. “I’ll bet it is.”
But it wasn’t.
Jaimie told her about Steven. About how pleasant he’d been at the start. About how he’d pursued her. About how, gradually, he’d made her feel less and less comfortable.
And, finally, about what had happened a couple of nights ago.
That Steven had been waiting for her when she arrived home. That he’d accused her of having sex with the man who’d been kind enough to give her a lift and with a client—that was how she described Zacharias—she’d gone to see in New York. The language he’d used. His threatening tone. His threatening posture.
Lissa listened. She didn’t interrupt, but her eyes grew cold, her mouth hard.
“Has he touched you? Tried to hurt you?”
“No. Not really.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Jaimie shrugged. “This will sound stupid, Liss.”
“I live in La La Land, remember? Nothing sounds stupid to me.”
“Well…sometimes I think he’s following me. But he isn’t.”
“You know this because…?”
“I’ve turned around and checked. And he’s not there.”
Lissa’s expression was unreadable. “There’s more, isn’t there? I can tell, James. There’s definitely more.”
Jaimie hesitated. If she told her sister the rest, she’d sound crazy.
“Jaimie? What else?”
“The other day, I came home from work.” She paused, cleared her throat. “It felt as if someone had been in my apartment.”
“Did you call the cops?”
“No. I mean, what would I have told them? Nothing was missing. Nothing had been moved. I just—I thought maybe my underpants weren’t stacked the way I always stack them.”
Lissa thought of teasing her sister about stacking her underpants, but there was a tone in Jaimie’s voice that was upsetting. The whole thing was upsetting, especially since Jaimie wasn’t given to flights of fancy.
“Maybe you should rethink calling the police,” she said quietly. “Let them talk to this guy, put a little legal scare into him—”
“Really, it doesn’t work that way. I have no grounds for any kind of accusation, and the police would have no grounds for confronting him.” Jaimie took a long, deep breath. “Tell the truth,” she said briskly. “You’ve been out in Holly
wood so long, you’re not interested in being a chef anymore, you want to be a screenwriter. And the story you just got from me is perfect for—what do they call it? A treatment.”
The sisters laughed. Then Lissa slung an arm around Jaimie’s shoulders.
“I love you, Jaimie Celeste Wilde.”
“Don’t!”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t call me that. He calls me that. Celeste. He says it suits me better than my real name.”
“And what’s his name,” Lissa said, trying to sound casual. “A real winner, I bet.”
“Steven. Steven Young.”
“Uh huh. Well, what does Mr. Steven Young know?” she said, still aiming for casual even though the fact that her sister’s admirer called her by a name that really wasn’t hers was what convinced her that he wasn’t an admirer at all.
He was a stalker.
* * * *
That was how she described Steven Young to Caleb, much later that night.
Lissa had paced her room, trying to come up with a way to help her sister. No cops. Valid enough. There was nothing for cops to use as grounds for an arrest.
For one crazy second, she considered flying east and confronting the man herself, but all that might do was make him even angrier and an angry stalker would surely not be a good thing.
She considered going to her brothers and asking them to help.
It took less than a second to discard that as a very bad idea.
Her brothers would get that lockjawed look she’d seen on their handsome faces before.
“We’ll take care of it,” they’d say, and they would.
Steven Shitass Young would find himself in an alley missing a few teeth and, in this instance, possibly with a couple of other body parts in plaster casts.
Uh uh. Getting her brothers involved was not a good plan. Jake and Travis and Caleb were intelligent and successful, but they were not men to rely on words when fists were called for.
Well, Caleb might. Not rely on words, necessarily, but he’d done all kinds of secret stuff at that Agency, whatever its real name.
Surely, he’d know ways to work behind the scenes.
A little after midnight, Lissa crept quietly along the upstairs hall. Caleb, Sage and their baby were staying in his old room. She figured Sage and the baby were asleep by now, but Caleb had always been a night owl.
She stood outside the door, listening. Then, she took a breath and tapped lightly on it.
“Caleb?” she whispered.
The door opened almost immediately. Her big brother, shirtless and barefoot, wearing only gray sweatpants, peered at her.
“Liss? What’s wrong?”
Lissa put her finger to her lips. “I have to talk to you.”
Caleb rolled his eyes. Lissa had spent a year at Le Cordon Bleu. Then, she’d headed for Hollywood to become a chef. He’d always thought it was a mistake. She should have gone there to become an actress. Drama had always been her thing.
“Lissa. Listen, it’s been a long day. Surely this can wait until morning.”
“Surely, it can’t,” she said.
Caleb frowned, grabbed a sweater from a chair, pulled it over his head and stepped into the hall.
She led him down the stairs, then outside. Jesus, he wasn’t wearing shoes. His feet would be chunks of ice in a couple of minutes.
“Liss? What’s going on?”
She made that same finger-to-the-lips gesture again, took him across the grass—the frosted-over grass—to a paddock. At the railing, she stopped and turned toward him.
“We have a problem.”
“We do,” Caleb grumbled. “My effing feet—”
“Forget your feet. We have a problem, and it involves Jaimie.”
Caleb’s eyes focused tightly on his sister’s face.
“Tell me.”
So she did.
She told him everything that Jaimie had told her, watched his eyes narrow, saw the set of his jaw turn to stone.
“This SOB has a name?”
“Young. Steven Young.”
“Seems to me that Mr. Young needs to be taught what a mistake it is to mess with a Wilde. I’m glad you told me about this. Jake and Travis and I—”
Lissa punched her brother in the arm.
“Idiot,” she hissed. “What about what Jaimie needs? You take this bastard apart, you’ll feel better. So will I. But you don’t know how he’ll react. He needs more than a lesson. He needs to be caught in the act of following her. Jesus, breaking into her apartment and going through her things.”
“OK,” Caleb growled, “OK. You’re right. Any suggestions?”
Lissa blew a curl off her forehead.
“You’re the spook. You tell me.”
“Ex-spook. And it’s a stupid word.”
“Fine. You prefer to be called a spy?”
“I was an intelligence agent,” Caleb said, with dignity.
“Did you spy on people?”
“I did some reconnoitering, yes.”
“Meaning, you watched people without letting them know they were being watched.”
“What’s your point?”
“Did you protect people? Without them knowing you were protecting them?”
“Lissa…”
“Dammit, I’m not asking you to give away state secrets! Did you keep people safe by being around them without them realizing you were there for that purpose?”
“I provided certain covert services from time to time, yes.”
It was Lissa’s turn to roll her eyes.
“Well, don’t you know anyone who still does that kind of thing? Someone you can trust, someone you can rely on, someone tough enough to make sure nothing happens to Jaimie even as he gathers information?”
“Last I heard,” Caleb said dryly, “Batman was busy.”
Lissa folded her arms. “Just what we need. Comic relief… What?”
“There is this one guy,” he said slowly. “Tough as nails and smart as hell. I’d trust him with my life.” A quick, harsh laugh. “Actually, I have.”
“Well?”
“He’d need to find a way to ease into Jaimie’s life…” He paused. Then his lips curved in a slow smile. “He has one hell of a condo in Manhattan. He could pretend he wants to sell it.”
“Jaimie works in D.C.”
“Details,” Caleb said blithely. “He’ll come up with something, I’m certain of it.”
“Great! That’s great! What’s his name? And when are you going to call him?”
“I’m not going to call him.”
“But you just said—”
“This is the kind of thing I’d rather discuss in person.” Caleb dug his cell phone from the pocket of his sweatpants, hit the speed-dial number for the pilot of his Learjet, made a quick apology for waking him and arranged for his plane to be ready at 5:00 a.m. “OK,” he said briskly, after he’d ended the call, “I’ll fly out tomorrow.”
“Jaimie mustn’t know!”
“She won’t. If she asks, I’ll say something’s come up and I have to take a quick meeting, but I’ll be back by dinner.” He wrapped an arm around his sister’s shoulders and hugged her. “We’ll have our holiday weekend, just the way we always do, and by the time Jaimie returns to D.C. Sunday night, my guy will be on the case.”
Lissa let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.
“That’s fine. It’s excellent. I just hope he’s as good as you say he is.”
“He’s almost as good as I am.” Lissa rolled her eyes again and her brother grinned. “Trust me, sweetheart. Zach Castelianos is just what our Jaimie needs”.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Zach wasn’t an early-morning type.
Given a choice, he stayed up late, sometimes until the soft pink fingers of dawn stroked the gray sky.
There were things he liked about the hours that unfolded after sundown. Cities revealed the truths they’d kept hidden: Streets that were quiet and crowd-free. Sk
yscrapers that rose into the dark like silent sentinels. Owls swooped through the trees in Central Park. If you were quiet, a fox or a raccoon might run across a path ahead of you. Once, he’d even seen a coyote and he’d wished it well.
It wasn’t easy to make it in this world, for either men or beasts.
He liked the night away from cities, too. He’d trained and served in vast stretches of desert and on mountain peaks that reached for the skies and the stars blazing in them.
He’d always loved the dark hours, even as a kid.
His father had seen it as a sign of rebellion.
Night was night, he said. Day was day. It was against the laws of nature, God and man to try to replace one with the other.
When Zach had tried to explain that it had nothing to do with any kind of laws, his father had voiced his disapproval.
Sitting on his terrace in the chill day-after-Thanksgiving morning, a mug of coffee held between his hands, Zach snorted at the memory.
Voiced his disapproval? The old man never “voiced” anything, unless it was a command. What he’d done was beat the crap out of him for disobedience.
“If I say it’s a law,” he’d said, “it’s a law. You got that, boy?”
Zach got it.
He got everything. Beatings, demands, commands. That was how life was.
His father was in the service. A Marine. Even worse, a Marine sergeant major who had been the kind of badass drill sergeant that made the movie versions look like pussies.
Georgios Castelianos ruled the Castelianos household with an iron fist.
Up at dawn. To bed by nine. By the time you were four, you knew how to make your bed so that a coin dropped on it would bounce how to scrub your face and hands, how to slick back—not that a military crew cut left much to slick.
You were a Castelianos, you had rules to live by, you and your mom both, and God help you if you broke those rules.
Growing up, moving from base to base, Zach had known lots of kids whose fathers were Marine Corps strict. He’d observed their families and, yeah, it wasn’t always easy to live with dads and husbands who lived regimented lives.
What he’d never observed or seen were kids who were beaten for the bedding not bouncing that quarter high enough, or women who learned to cower even before the first blow fell.
Jaimie: Fire and Ice Page 11