by Anne Stuart
“Ready?” she asked brightly, inanely.
“Yes.” He opened the door, waiting for her to precede him. That was one thing she could say for him—the man had impeccable manners when he chose to use them. It was hardly reassuring.
She didn’t know what she expected as they walked down the broad sidewalks of Park Avenue. He stared straight ahead, his mind seemingly a million miles away, and she hurried to keep up with his long strides. She half expected the people rushing past them to stop and stare, to point out the murderer and his consort. But the people of New York were far too involved in their own affairs to notice the tall, haunted-looking man as he strode down the street.
She reached out to catch his arm, to slow him down. He stopped, turning to look at her, and for a moment his bleak expression lightened with a look of wry amusement. “Out of breath?”
She was, but she quickly tried to cover it. “We aren’t running a marathon, are we?” she countered. “How far away is Bellingham’s office?”
“Just another block. We have plenty of time,” Once he stopped he didn’t seem inclined to move, and the hordes of people simply surged around them, like the Red Sea parting.
“Then why were we running?”
He glanced around them, and shrugged. “I’ve been in prison too long.”
“Is that why you haven’t left the apartment since you got there?”
“Is that what your father told you? I haven’t become agoraphobic. At least, not yet. I don’t imagine I’ll have much time to develop the affliction. Unless Mark can manage to pull a rabbit out of a hat.”
“If you don’t think Mark can get you off on appeal, why don’t you hire another lawyer?”
“I don’t think anyone can get me off on appeal,” he said lightly. “My fate is sealed, and it’s a waste of time and energy to fight it. Besides, I have a certain amount of loyalty. I’ve known Mark since we were in high school, and he’s stood by me. How was dinner?”
The change of subject was so abrupt she almost blew it and told him the truth. That she hadn’t gone out with Mark and had no intention of doing so. “Fine,” she said instead. “Mark’s very charming.”
Richard made a noncommittal noise. “Let’s go see if he’s able to charm my father-in-law and the prosecutor, shall we? I expect that’s beyond even his abilities.”
“Will you tell me the truth if I ask you one question?”
His dark eyes were hooded, and his thin mouth turned up in a taunting smile. “If you can stand the answer.”
“Why did you want me to come with you today? You aren’t worried about being recognized, and you don’t really have a problem with being out on the streets, do you?”
He considered it for a moment. “I’d say I have at least half a dozen reasons. Are you certain you want to hear them?”
No, she thought. “Yes,” she said.
“Number one, I didn’t want to be out here alone. I’ve spent too much time being confined during the last year, and the thought of being allowed to walk free in the city terrified me.”
“Nothing terrifies you.”
“If you want my reasons, don’t pass judgment on them.”
“Sorry. Reason number two?”
“Number two, your father thought it was a good idea, to make certain I actually got there. Number three, I want Mark to see us walk in together, arm in arm, so that he won’t be so sure of his ability to charm anyone he wants into his bed. Number four . . .” he ruthlessly overrode her protest, “I want General Scott to see you with me, to know that all his warnings came to nothing, that another innocent female is in my clutches, and there’s not a damned thing he can do about it.”
She didn’t say a word, shocked into silence.
“Number five,” he continued smoothly, entirely aware of her tumbled reactions, “I simply wanted your company, and I knew your father could command it.”
She tried to speak for a moment, cleared her throat, and tried again. “That’s five reasons, most of them sick. You said there were at least half a dozen.”
“Number six,” he said, with a charming, predatory smile, “was the irresistible urge to see just how far I can push you. I make you very uncomfortable—you aren’t certain whether you despise me, or if I simply scare you half to death.”
“You don’t scare me.”
“Liar. Every time you look at me, you think about what I was convicted of doing.”
“And I don’t despise you,” she continued stubbornly.
“Another lie. You’re frightened of me, you hate me, but you’re also fascinated by me.”
She didn’t bother to deny that one. “Why do you think I stay on here?” she said, raising her chin to meet his dark gaze. “Apart from helping my father, it happens to be a very interesting case. I think it will make a terrific book.”
You aren’t staying because of the case, Cassidy,” he corrected her gently. “And it’s not my wife’s death that fascinates you. It’s me.”
For a moment she was silent, as mesmerized by his wicked beauty as he’d accused her of being. And then she marshaled her defenses. “I’m fascinated by the size of your ego.”
He tucked his arm through hers, his large hand covering hers, and there was no escape. She trembled, but she didn’t pull away, letting him draw her down the sidewalk. “You see,” he murmured, “just two harmless souls on a stroll down Park Avenue. Who would have thought about the darkness that lurks beneath our pleasant surface?”
“There is no darkness in my life,” Cassidy snapped.
He glanced down at her. “Yes, there is,” he said gently. “I’m in your life.”
The conference room at the office of Bellingham and Stearns resembled nothing so much as an armed camp. Jerome Fabiani and General Scott were sitting on one side of the broad mahogany table, hands folded, faces set in identical expressions. On the other side sat Mark, looking deceptively rumpled, Sean, and Till Elder, Sean’s publisher for the last dozen or so years, as well as a handful of suits Cass didn’t recognize, lined up on either side of the table.
Richard didn’t release her until they walked into the room, until he was certain everyone had seen his possessive gesture, and Cassidy wanted to scream out denial, fury. She said nothing, taking in each man’s expression. Mark looked disturbed, the general, sorrowful, her father, pleased. And she didn’t trust any of them.
“Sorry if we’re late,” she murmured, slipping into a seat between her father and Till.
“Not at all,” Mark said genially. “We’re not quite ready to begin.”
A small buzz of strained chatter began to fill the room, and Till leaned over, putting his hand on Cassie’s. “Glad to see you back, Cass,” he murmured. “Your father’s a reprobate, but he loves you, and he needs your help on this one. I think he’s bitten off more than he can chew.”
“Why don’t you tell him you won’t publish it?” she whispered back.
“I’m a businessman before I’m a friend,” Till replied with Brahman dignity. “It’ll sell like mad.” Richard had taken a seat beside Mark, and he was sitting there, unmoving, as his lawyer whispered in his ear. He was directly across from General Scott, and there was no missing the waves of hatred and fury that were emanating from his father-in-law. Richard met his gaze blandly.
Jerome Fabiani went on the offensive. “I don’t know what the point is to this meeting,” he announced in the golden voice that had made good use of the newly reinstated death penalty and assured him a future in politics that he was already beginning to work on. “Mr, Tiernan has been tried and found guilty by a jury of his peers. He’s going through the appeal process, and despite my best efforts, he’s presently free to walk the streets. If his counsel wanted more time to prepare his case then he shouldn’t have gotten his client out of prison on a technicality. Each day that Richard
Tiernan is out of custody is a day that society is endangered, and I have no intention of allowing that state of affairs to continue longer than necessary.”
Sean dove right in. “A man is innocent until he’s been proven guilty, Fabiani.”
Fabiani looked at Sean with contempt. “He has been proven guilty, Mr. O’Rourke. You know that. Once we get through the farce of his appeal, I’m expecting the state of New York to do its duty. Barring any kind of nonsense like the death penalty being repealed again.”
“I’m not really worried,” General Scott spoke up. “Someone will take care of him in prison. Even the dregs of humanity draw the line when it comes to slaughtering your own children.”
Richard didn’t show the slightest anger; instead a slow, taunting smile curved his mouth, faint enough to chill Cassidy’s blood. Scott’s response was immediate, as he lunged across the table, and it took several of the men there to hold him back, as Richard rose, elegant, disdainful. “I don’t really know what I’m doing here,” he murmured in a bored voice. “You can work it out among yourselves. I’m going for a walk.” Across the room his eyes met hers, distant, challenging. “Cassidy?”
She hesitated. She didn’t want to go and stand by him, to leave this room and walk away with a man capable of such hideous crimes. And yet, was he capable? Had he done what he’d been convicted of doing? Or was he the most misunderstood, most cruelly victimized man in the world?
No, the man standing there, commanding her presence, was no victim. And much as she wanted to ignore him, she had no choice. Not with Sean kicking her under the table. Not with her own unruly nature calling out to him.
They watched her as she rose and crossed the room to him. All those men, passing judgment, some with disbelief, some with contempt. She went to him, because she had to. And because she wanted to.
He didn’t say a word until they were back out on the street. He was walking faster than ever, and she had to break into a half run to keep up with him, but she didn’t try to slow him down. He needed to move, fast, away from his devils. And she was willing to go with him.
They ended up in a bar on Sixty-ninth Street. It was dark in the middle of the afternoon, an old bar, redolent of ancient spirits and a lifetime of tobacco, and Richard went straight to a booth near the back, not bothering to check whether she followed him. To her amazement she’d no sooner sat down than a grizzled, elderly bartender appeared with a glass of whiskey and ice. “What would the lady like, Richard?”
He glanced at her. “The same as me, Ed. But not as strong.”
She waited until the bartender left, staring at the man opposite her in surprise. “I thought you never left the apartment?”
“There’s a service entrance in the kitchen, you know that as well as I do.”
“I didn’t think anyone ever used it anymore.”
“I do,” he said, leaning back and staring at her across the table. “Why did you come with me?”
He always asked the most difficult questions. “You told me to.”
“You don’t usually pay any attention to what I tell you to do. If I’d realized you were so malleable, I would have been more creative. Why don’t you stop fiddling with that button and unfasten it?”
She’d been toying with the high button of her suit jacket, and she pulled her hand away. “I don’t want to.”
“It’s warm, you’ve been racing after me down a crowded street, and you’re buttoned up tighter than a battleship. I’m not asking, I’m telling you. Unfasten the goddamned button, or I’ll do it myself.”
The second glass of whiskey appeared in front of her, lighter in color, and then they were alone again, in the almost deserted bar. She reached up and unfastened the button. “I don’t want the drink.”
“Drink it.”
“I don’t want it . . .”
“Drink it.”
She picked it up, took a sip, and grimaced. “I hate Irish whiskey.”
“How’d you know it was Irish?”
“I’m my father’s daughter. Unfortunately.” She took another sip anyway, letting it burn down her throat, between her breasts. It stopped some of the panic that had been building up inside her.
He leaned back against the vinyl banquette, staring at her. “So you are,” he said, cradling his own glass. “Fatherhood’s an interesting thing, wouldn’t you say? There are so many different aspects to it. There’s your own father, using you for his needs, blithely disregarding your well-being for the sake of his own inflated ego. Then there’s a man like Amberson Scott, whose life, outside his career, was entirely devoted to the worship of his little princess.” There wasn’t the faintest trace of irony in his voice, but the chill reached deeper into Cassidy’s soul, and she took another sip of the strong whiskey.
“And then, of course, there’s me,” he said, staring at his own glass with a cool, meditative air. “If you were to believe the media, and Jerome Fabiani, I’m a man who was so busy with my career and my womanizing that I barely noticed the existence of my children, apart from the act of creating them. Until, of course, the night I decided to kill them, along with their unborn sibling and their mother. I’m not sure what people think I did with their bodies. One theory is that they’re buried on a farm in Pennsylvania. I think one of the tabloids suggested that I ate them.”
Cassidy drained her glass in one swift gulp. She wasn’t used to drinking, and she hadn’t been eating much. The alcohol hit her like a sledgehammer. “Did you love them?” she asked, knowing she should keep her mouth shut, knowing she should run.
Tiernan looked at her, his eyes full of sorrow. “More than life itself,” he said simply. And she knew for the first time that he was telling her the truth.
HE’D MADE HER drunk. It should have amused him, that Cassidy Roarke, the daughter of such a notorious reprobate, couldn’t hold her Irish whiskey. It should have made him feel guilty. Or triumphant. He should have felt something, other than the cool, dead feeling in the pit of his stomach, and in the dark hole where his heart had once been.
She’d been close to bringing him alive, and he’d hated her, resented her for that. That cocoon of stillness and death that had shielded him was starting to unravel, all due to her presence, and he’d needed her too much to resist.
He still needed her. But he needed his distance as well. He should have just left that room, left the fat, smug faces and staring eyes of all those people who looked at him and saw a man who’d committed the foulest crimes against nature. All those innocent, condemning faces. All those fools.
But he wasn’t strong enough. He’d considered himself invincible, but he couldn’t walk away and leave her there, to listen to the things they would say about him. And he didn’t want to leave her with Sean, with Mark, with his father-in-law. Most of all, not with retired General Amberson Scott.
Scott could make a believer out of anyone. He could turn a Quaker into a Green Beret, a democrat into a republican, a dog into a cat. If Cassidy had any doubts at all about his guilt, Scott could wipe them out with the sheer force of his personality.
He couldn’t let that happen. He needed to keep Cassidy on edge, confused, doubting, afraid.
Of course, he could always tell her the truth. He watched her as she sat across from him, trying to gather her dignity around her like a torn shawl. How would she respond to the truth that he’d never admitted to a soul?
She’d probably run screaming out of the bar.
He needed to own her first. He needed to have her, body and soul, mind and spirit, before he let her know even an inkling of the truth. He needed her so tied to him that she couldn’t run, couldn’t struggle, that she’d simply accept, and do as he needed her to do.
The truth was his, and his alone. Sean thought he was getting it, but Sean’s ego was blinding him. No doubt he was writing a hell of a book, a landmark of a litera
ry creation. But it wasn’t the truth.
Richard was going to die with the truth. If state laws and the vagaries of the justice system gave him a reprieve from his death sentence, he was certain one of his fellow inmates would see to the matter. Scott was right—even the most hardened criminal drew the line when it came to the murder of children, and there were any number of people inside who might think they were buying their own way into heaven by disposing of him.
In the meantime, he had to get Cassidy Roarke back to her father’s apartment before anyone else returned. He had to get her back to her Gothic bedroom and put his hands under her skirt. He wanted to touch her, to get her wet, to make her want him. More than she already, reluctantly did.
And then he’d leave her. Aching, wanting, needing him. So that the next time, or maybe the time after that, she’d be ready. And there’d be no turning back. For either of them.
Chapter 8
THE BRIGHT DAY had darkened considerably by the time Richard steered her out of the bar. He’d managed to get her to drink another half glass of Irish whiskey, mainly by goading her, and she was in a delectably reckless state. One push, one hard push, and she’d fall, on her back, taking him with her.
The hell with waiting. He wanted her, wanted to lose himself in her body, the taste, the smell, the feel of her. He wanted to thread his hands through her wild hair and draw her mouth down his body, he wanted her willing to take everything from him, and then take more.
She stumbled slightly as she followed him into the elevator, leaning back against the burnished walnut and closing her eyes. She hadn’t rebuttoned her suit jacket, and he could see the silk blouse that was clinging to her, see the hollow between her breasts. He wanted to put his mouth there.
The elevator door slid open when they reached the twelfth floor, and he waited, hoping he’d have an excuse to touch her, knowing he needed no excuse. He doubted they’d get past the hallway.
She moved with careful grace, past him, and he let her go. For now. He stood aside while she fumbled with the keys, controlling his impulse to snatch them out of her hands and open the locks himself. The delay simply added to the anticipation. Each level of frustration was a challenge.