He glanced toward the corridor, out of which his problematic sexy siren would issue. Check him out. No longer the poster boy for doing the sensible thing. Even so, he didn’t want to get into it with his mother today. “I’ll talk to her, if you want,” he offered.
“Oh, thank you, darling. She’ll listen to you. It’s not too late to change her major back.” His mother’s voice was relieved.
“Okay, Mom.” He hung up, and dove back into the fridge again.
Nell appeared in the doorway just as he was laying out French toast, grilled ham, and orange juice on the table. She looked damp and rosy and fragrant. She gazed at the food-laden table, her eyes big.
“Hope you’re hungry,” he said.
She sat down with a murmur of appreciation and tucked in a gratifying amount of what he’d cooked. After breakfast, they sipped their coffee and stared at each other across the table. Neither of them were able to hold the other’s gaze for more than a few seconds without looking away, or laughing. Jesus. Look at him. Giggling. Touching her toes under the table, with his own bare feet. Acting like a goofy kid.
But it was getting on toward ten-thirty, and he had to get his shit together. “I have to get down to the office,” he said reluctantly.
She glanced at the clock. “Me, too. I’m going to be late for the lunch prep, as it is.” She let out a gasp when his hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. She stared at it.
He did not let go. “You are going where?”
Her eyes got big and wary. “Duncan. Let go of my arm.”
“Just answer my question.”
“Isn’t it obvious? To work! At the Sunset Grill! Remember?” She yanked at her wrist again. “Hello! I work there six days a week!”
“After what happened to you last night, you think I’ll let you walk out onto the streets? Just like that? Like nothing even happened?”
“Let me?” She straightened up. “You aren’t going to ‘let me’ do anything. I do not have to ask your permission. For anything I do.”
“Wrong,” he said.
She stared at him, outraged. “Excuse me?”
“If I hadn’t been there last night, you’d be dead, or God knows what else. I changed the course of things. That gives me responsibility. That gives me a say. So deal with me, Nell. You don’t have any choice.”
Her eyes were wide. “Let go of my arm. You’re scaring me.”
“Fine,” he said. “You should be scared. It’s about fucking time.”
He slowly let go of her wrist. She rubbed it, avoiding his eyes. “You don’t understand,” she said. “I am flat broke. The Fiend situation ate up all my savings. I’m already a month behind on my rent. I don’t even have money for cab fare if I don’t get out there and go to work.”
“I’ll give you money, if you need some,” he said.
Her face tightened. “That’s not a solution, Duncan.”
“No? And having you waltz out into the street, you call that a solution? They picked you up off a main thoroughfare, Nell. In downtown Manhattan, in front of multiple witnesses! By now, they know who I am, and where I live. They’ll nail you down. Count on it.”
She shut her eyes, looking exhausted and lost. “Duncan, I don’t have any choice but to work. I have to pay my rent, and I—”
“Oh, yeah. You mean that place with the bugged phone, the compromised alarm, and the hostile vidcams?”
“I still have to pay for it, and find some other place to—”
“Here,” he cut in rashly. “Stay here. With me.”
She gazed at him for a few moments, blankly.
“There’s plenty of room,” he urged her. “The security’s excellent.”
Nell tossed up her hands. “Duncan,” she said helplessly. “That’s very sweet, but it’s premature, and in any case, I still have to work.”
“No, you don’t. And it’s not premature, after last night. Work on game texts, if you have to work on something.” He stared at her back for a moment. “I don’t need help with the rent or the groceries, Nell.”
“I noticed that.” Her voice was acid. “So what does this mean?”
He shrugged. “What does it sound like?”
She swiveled her head, fixed him with a piercing gaze. “It sounds to me like I’d be kept.”
“It sounds to me like you’d be safe,” he countered.
“Safe, and sexually available to you, twenty-four hours a day?”
That made him angry. “Would that be so terrible?” he demanded.
She shook his words away with an angry flip of her hand. “The sex is not the problem.”
“Oh? Then what is your fucking problem, Nell? Is it money? Yeah, I’ve got a lot of it. Big fucking deal. I worked for it. You want to punish me for having it? Fuck that! That’s not fair!”
“No,” she snapped. “It’s not that.”
“Then why are you so uptight about accepting any help from me?” he snarled. “Because it is starting to mortally piss me off!”
She held her hand over her mouth for a moment and cleared her throat. “My mother was a prostitute,” she said.
Of all the things she could have said, that was the very last one he expected. “Huh?” he floundered. “You don’t mean…the lady who…”
“No. That was Lucia, my adoptive mother.” Nell’s voice was colorless. “I’m talking about my birth mother. Her name was Elena Pisani. She wasn’t a streetwalking kind of prostitute. She was always kept in style by her lovers. Nice apartments, beautiful clothes, jewels, spas. But in the end, that part’s just window dressing.”
A heavy silence followed her words, and Duncan struggled for something intelligent to say. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked.
She fixed him with her blazing look, the one that took his breath away, scared him and aroused him, all at once. “I remember her hammering out the details of each new mutually beneficial arrangement. As soon as she was done, off I’d go to another boarding school. Until the guy got bored. Or she found a richer client.”
He searched for a place to put this new and extremely dangerous information, but it wouldn’t stick to anything. “Ah. Oh. I, uh, see.”
“Do you?” She looked away. “It looked all right on the surface, I guess. She handpicked her lovers. They were always rich. She lived in beautiful places. But her whole existence was in function of her patrons. Their egos, their convenience, their tempers. She didn’t have energy to spare for me. Being beautiful, charming, seductive, and entertaining is hard work. Doesn’t leave much time for a kid.”
“I…ah—” He floundered for something to say that was not either stupid or offensive, but he couldn’t think of anything.
“I don’t want that,” she said. “I don’t want a man to be in the center of my life, and me circling around him, anxiously scrambling to please him. Hell with that. I’ve got plans. I have ambitions of my own.”
“I never meant to imply that,” he said, helplessly.
“I’m sorry this embarrasses you,” she said. “It embarrasses me. But I want you to know why I feel so strongly about this. I am not for sale. Not to anyone, for any reason. Not even for protection from the Fiend. Now, or ever. Because that mutually beneficial arrangement you were talking about last night? It’s not a good bargain, whatever it might look like. Not even if the sex is great. It wouldn’t benefit me. On the contrary. Eventually, I’d start to feel about two inches tall.”
He pondered what she said for several moments. Then he walked slowly around her, pried her clasped hands apart, and held them tightly.
“You misunderstood,” he said. “It was just semantics.”
She stared into his eyes, trying to peer inside his brain. “Was it?”
“I would never dream that you were for sale.” His fantasy of the sexy secret affair with the juvenile waitress flashed guiltily through his mind, but the point was moot, because Nell was not that girl.
Nell was infinitely more than that girl. More complicated, more fascinating, mo
re trouble. And she never needed to know about his politically incorrect horn-dog fantasies. He lifted her hands to his lips. “What happened between us can’t be bought,” he said. “For any money.”
She heard the raw, blunt sincerity in his words and blushed. “Thank you for saying that,” she said softly.
He kissed her hands in answer, and couldn’t stop kissing them. Those long, tapered fingers, those pink oval nails. Funny. He’d never noticed a woman’s hands before.
“But I still have to go to work,” she persisted. “Maybe if you could spot me the cab fare this morning, I’ll pay you back from my tips.”
He bit down on his frustration. “I will drive you,” he ground out. “On one condition. You do not leave the restaurant until I come to pick you up and take you to my office. No errands, no breaks, no shopping, no bank machines, no Starbucks coffee, nothing. Is that clear?”
She sighed heavily. He cut her off before she could object again.
“Let me put it this way,” he said. “Do it as a favor to me. Because I care. I’m scared for you. I’ve earned that much.”
“Duncan—”
“Whoops! Sorry. Let me take that back, about earning anything. It’s not about earning. No way. No economic metaphors here. No, sir.”
She tried not to smile. “Don’t make fun of me. This is serious.”
“Christ, yes! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”
“But I have to go to that seisìun at Malloy’s, too. I have a date to meet my sisters later this evening,” she informed him. “I have to go.”
“I’ll take you to that, too. And then I’ll take you home.” He stared keenly into her eyes, and added, deliberately, “My home.”
She cocked her head at him. “Surely you have better things to do than chauffeur me around the city and listen to Irish tunes in a pub.”
“No. Just, you know, making money. But I’ve got enough of that to piss you off already, so I might as well slow down, right?”
Her eyes flashed. “Do not make fun of me.”
“Sorry,” he said meekly. “I would really like to meet your sisters.”
That mollified her. “All right. But that’s a dirty trick, you know.”
He blinked up at her, all innocence. “Trick? What trick?”
“You get me softened up, and go into supercontrol mode.”
He grunted. “Whatever works.”
They stared at each other, and, like always, the oxygen in the air between them began to combust. But she darted back when he reached for her. “Uh-uh! We’re late, remember?”
He headed for the shower, trying to breathe his spring-loaded, rock-hard boner down and concentrate on the task at hand. First, haul out his old SIG Sauer 229 and a full clip of ammo. Root around in his utilities drawers for the shoulder holster. Identify the suits in his closet that were tailored to accommodate it. Then bathe, dress. Pull it together. His heart pounded. His palms were damp.
Only the thought of her in his bed again tonight consoled him.
Chapter
7
Nell listened, guiltily, to the sound of the shower through the bathroom door. Thinking of his amazing, powerful naked body in there under the pounding stream, water and soapsuds cascading over his contoured muscles. So tempted to just peel off her clothes, and—
No. He was never quick. It would be long and wet and steaming and soapy and marvelous, and they would both forget all practical issues such as making money, safeguarding her self-respect, meeting her professional obligations. She was already missing the lunch prep. He’d completely disarmed her. Wrapped her around his little finger.
Or maybe she was wrapped around something more substantial.
She stared at the suit he’d slung upon the bed. She didn’t know much about fashion, having remained deliberately ignorant, but she recognized the cut and fine finishing of costly men’s clothing when she saw it. Thousands of dollars lay there on that rumpled bed, in those smooth, graceful silver gray garments. He looked so good in his clothes.
She went back out into the front room. The roses still lay where she’d forgotten them on the telephone table. They hadn’t been put into water, what with one thing and another, and they were looking shabby.
Which was a shame. She grabbed the flowers, with the half-formed intention of looking for a vase in the kitchen. What a sweet thought, last night, for him to stop and get her roses. Some of the roses disintegrated, bruised petals scattering over the gleaming wood floor. She gathered them up, hesitated for a moment, and pulled a handful of silky petals off the wilting bouquet.
She carried them into his bedroom and slipped some into the pockets of his suit jacket with them.
He was all brusque practicality when he came out of the bedroom, clean-shaven and fragrant. Their cautious truce lasted all the way down to the Sunset Grill, but as she was getting out, he pulled her toward him and gave her a hard, possessive kiss. “One more thing, Nell.”
“It’s always one more thing,” she grumbled. “Enough things.”
“That’s for me to decide,” he said, with his usual breathtaking arrogance. He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. An extravagant, eight-hundred-dollar one. “Take this. Keep it. No arguments.”
She rolled her eyes. “I was going to buy one today anyhow.”
“You can’t,” he said. “You swore a blood oath that you would not leave the restaurant until I came to get you. Remember?”
A shivery burst of laughter shook her. “A blood oath?”
“Fuck, yes. Take it. Don’t fight me on this. Keep it until I have a chance to take you phone shopping. My number’s programmed in.”
He looked straight into her eyes, his fingers clamped around her wrist, and she realized that she could not win. He simply would not let her go unless she gave in, and for God’s sake, why didn’t she? She was fighting just on principle, just to be contrary. She couldn’t afford this silliness.
She slipped the phone into her purse. “Thank you,” she said.
“Keep it in your apron pocket at the restaurant, while you’re working,” he said. “I’ll be calling, to check on you. And I’m going to give you holy hell if you’re not reachable. Believe it.”
She snorted at him. “I’m shaking in my boots.”
The guy worked fast. Fucking her, already.
John chewed the inside of his own cheek until he tasted blood.
Antonella disappeared into the Sunset Grill, still smiling. Her face rosy red. Probably saddlesore from being fucked all night long. Slut.
Burke’s silver Mercedes pulled out into Eighth Avenue traffic.
It made him angry, and he was already chronically angry, dealing with Haupt night and day. He was starting to consider recreational murder, just to unload, or he was going to start having panic attacks.
Amazing, that the guy was fucking her already. She’d been so celibate all those weeks that John had been watching her. Such a good little girl. Sleeping alone, with her piles of books, like a sexy, succulent little nun. Not anymore. Dirty whore, spoiling it. She would pay for that.
Not that John wasn’t still going to enjoy his own turn when it came, as it inevitably would. But he would have to punish her severely for spreading her legs. Soiling herself with that rich prick. Just like her sister, cheating on him with that randy carpenter. Who was slated to die a slow and ugly death. Just as soon as it was convenient for John.
Maybe Burke would join the carpenter on John’s special short list. He wondered idly if the youngest girl was as much of a slut as her sisters were. Probably more so, with that tattoo, her nose ring, her painted van. What the hell. He’d fuck them all. Punish them all. And punish them, and punish them. Thinking about it made him hard.
But speed dialing Haupt’s number on his cell wilted him fast. He gritted his teeth, resigned to the scolding he was about to receive.
The stinking geezer picked up, with no salutation. He just waited for a report, line open. Telegraphing his disgust with silence
.
“She’s back at the restaurant,” John said. “Burke brought her in his own car. Looks like he’s fucking her.”
“And upon what do you base this deduction?”
John’s lip curled at the old fart’s choice of words. “The way he stuck his tongue down her throat was my first clue.”
“Tell me about Burke,” the old guy challenged him.
John rifled through the documents he’d spent a long night collecting. “Bad news,” he admitted. “Ex–undercover field agent from the NSA, turned successful businessman. Designs software for the NSA, the CIA, Homeland Security, and various others. Close connections with various law enforcement agencies. I had difficulty getting info on him. Most of it’s top secret.”
“Ah. You must be happy, John. Now you have a plausible justification for your incompetence, eh?”
John tapped the console of the SUV with his fingernails and considered various tasty options in killing this old shitbird. After he’d gotten paid, of course. In fact, he was starting to consider fucking the old goat out of the entire prize. It was the only thing that could make this constant, grinding humiliation worthwhile.
“It does make things more complicated,” he said carefully.
“Yes, and the idiot carpenter with his violin complicated things for you too, eh? And he was no secret agent. Did Turturro have any luck with the younger sister?”
“No,” he said, after a painful pause. “He combed that crafts fair for hours. Apparently she never showed up.”
“Of course she did not. She is not an idiot, unlike others I could name. Stay on Antonella, John. Do not delegate. Do not lose her again. Your hired muscle so far has not failed to disappoint. Did she take anything with a listening device with her when she went to Burke’s apartment?”
“Just the laptop. It has a short range, however.”
“I’m no longer interested in excuses. Find a place to receive the frequency, no matter where she is. Failure is no longer an option.”
Haupt hung up on him. John’s teeth ground until his jaw ached.
He was going to need to kill something soon. And he had a feeling it was going to be that prick who was fucking Antonella. Yes, that would be good. John was still smarting from the man’s brazen challenge.
Tasting Fear Page 29