“It’s my bloody yard and I’ll walk in it if I damn well please,” Amanda spit out furiously, whipping her hair back from her face. “How dare you scare me like that—how dare you!”
“I’ll dare more than that if I ever see you put yourself at risk like that again, lassie! I’ll bloody well turn you over my knee and beat your pretty little arse until you can’t sit down!”
“Ooh!” Amanda stared at him, maddened by his ego. “I am sick to death of you manhandling me whenever you get the urge…”
“Tough!” he roared. “You dinna like being manhandled? Stay out of dark corners! And another thing—why the hell are there no floodlights in the corners of this yard? There’s a bloody murderer on the loose, and except for the sidewalk, it’s dark as a bleedin’ peat bog out here. I want that rectified immediately.”
“You want? You want? Just who the hell do you think you are, MacLaughlin, my daddy?”
Tristan was outraged. “Your daddy?” he snarled. Quick as a cat, he reached forward and buried his fingers in her hair, gripping her skull in his large hands and tilting it back until her throat arched. “Your daddy?” He’d give her a demonstration that ought to prove he wasn’t some old man bawling out his daughter. “Lass, did your daddy ever do this?” His head lowered with obvious intent.
Did he think he was going to kiss her? Just like that, after scaring ten years off her life and making her wet her pants? The hell!
“Get your hands off me, MacLaughlin!” Amanda demanded fiercely, reaching up and grasping his wrists, trying to pry his hands away from her head. It was like wrestling with warm, hairy granite; they didn’t budge. She took a quick step backward, attempting to throw him off balance, but it was a less than successful tactic, as he simply took a step forward. She could feel his breath hot on her mouth. “Damn you, let me go!”
“Tristan?” The voice from the sidewalk was breathy and feminine. “Are you out there? Who are you talking to?”
Tristan released Amanda so quickly she staggered. While she was still reeling, off balance, he swore under his breath and turned toward the lighted walk. “Go back inside, Bunny,” he growled. “I’ll be right in.”
Amanda peered around him and watched as a pretty brunette in a pink skintight dress whirled on her stiletto heels and walked back toward Tristan’s apartment. “Obedient, isn’t she?” she muttered. “Does she come when you whistle, too?”
“Verra funny,” Tristan snapped.
“Bunny, huh?” Amanda edged her way around his large body, moving closer to the lighted walks and safety. “Cute name.”
Tristan took a threatening step toward her. The light from the porch glinted off the lenses of his glasses, turning them opaque, obscuring his eyes. “And what sort of name is Teddy, then? At least Bunny’s name suits her gender.”
Up to that point, Amanda had been cautiously edging away, but Teddy’s name stopped her in her tracks, and her chin shot up to a mutinous angle. “What the hell do you know about Teddy?” she demanded belligerently. “Have you been talking to Rhonda?”
“No.” But he might. He just might.
“Good. Teddy is none of your damn business.” Amanda whirled around and stalked to her apartment. “Go back to your bunny rabbit, Lieutenant,” she flung over her shoulder. “I’m going in.”
He was right on her heels. “I’ll see you to your door.”
“Oh, for…” Amanda bit off her words and picked up her pace. There was no sense arguing, so she would just save her breath. She had her key out by the time she reached her door and she unlocked and opened it, stepped inside, then whirled to face him. With one hand on the door frame and the other holding the door partly ajar, she leaned out, tilting her head up to catch his eyes. “Don’t go grabbing me again, cowboy,” she snarled. “I refuse to put up with it.” Then she slammed the door in his face.
“Blood-y hell!” Tristan slapped his open palm against the door frame in frustration. He glared at the closed portal with its glossy, chocolate-colored paint. He certainly didn’t care for his physical reaction to this night’s encounter, not by a long shot. What had happened to his usual level-headed detachment? He couldn’t seem to summon it. His heart was thumping up against his rib cage, his blood was racing hot and heavy through his veins, and facing it squarely, he acknowledged that his behavior had been far from professional when she had made that crack about being her daddy. If Bunny hadn’t interrupted…oh, shit, Bunny! Swinging away from Amanda’s door, he loped down the stairs to his own apartment.
Bunny looked up from her seat on the couch as Tristan barreled into the apartment, and he stopped just inside the door. Clearly she had been left alone long enough to feel less than thrilled by his tardy reappearance. Regarding him petulantly, she snapped her compact closed and tossed it, along with a golden tube of lipstick, into her purse. “It’s about time you got back.”
Ace tried to climb up into her lap, but she brushed him aside, fastidiously picking off the hairs he left on her dress with his customary, uncaring abandon.
“Aye, I’m sorry I was so long.” Tristan stared at her helplessly. Hell. Now what should he do?
Ace tumbled from the couch in a graceless heap, picked himself up, and came over to his owner. He balanced precariously on his hind legs until he could plant his fat front paws on Tristan’s shins, wagging his tail so furiously his entire hind section was a dark blur. Tristan bent down and picked him up, absently rubbing his head.
From Bunny’s baleful expression, Tristan could see it was going to take a great deal of sweet-talking on his part to reestablish the malleable mood she’d been in before Ace had commenced barking at the window. The dog’s abrupt howls had interrupted a situation that had shown every indication of becoming an evening of serious sexual enjoyment. But the sexy pink dress that he had rearranged earlier was pulled tidily back into place. Her hair was combed and her lipstick was freshly reapplied, and it didn’t take a genius to see that the mood had definitely been broken.
Shit. After he’d spent the best part of the evening, too, culling her from the crowd of cop groupies at a bar not far from the precinct. He had been enjoying her company, and not merely for the prospect of a little sexual relief. They had danced a little and drunk a little. She had talked a lot, mostly about fashion, of which he wasn’t particularly interested. But still, that meant he hadn’t had to rack his brain trying to come up with a subject of conversation that might interest her, and that was a good thing, since the world knew light conversation was not his strong suit. Also a definite plus, she, as opposed to some women he could name, thought his gun was extremely sexy.
Tristan set Ace down in his basket and walked over to the couch, his body throbbing with unspent needs and aggressions. Okay, he decided with an inward sigh as he sat down next to Bunny. There was no point in moaning and groaning then, was there? He would just have to start over again. Running a finger down her cheek, he bent over her and murmured, “I really am sorry I left you alone so long.” He lowered his head.
“Who was that woman, Tristan?”
The descent of Tristan’s head abruptly halted. “Who?” He pulled back fractionally to look into her face. “Oh, out in the yard, you mean?” Bunny just looked at him. “Uh, that was just my landlady.” Rubbing the edge of his thumb over her cheek, he lowered his head again. Almost there. Only, suddenly, he found himself just going through the motions, for it was starting to feel all wrong.
“Do you always kiss your landlady good night when you have another woman waiting in your apartment?”
With a whispered curse, Tristan pushed away, throwing himself next to her on the couch. His head flopped to the back of the davenport and he stared at the ceiling. “I didn’t kiss her.”
“Well, excuse me.” Bunny dug through her purse and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She lighted one and looked around for an ashtray for the spent match. Not finding one, she placed it in a saucer on the coffee table. “From my vantage point it looked like you were preparing to pull her
down on the cold, hard ground and give her the hottest fucking of her life.” She blew a stream of smoke at him. “I guess it slipped your mind that you’d already brought someone home for that express purpose.”
“You’re daft,” he muttered, knowing she was right. He hadn’t acknowledged it consciously before, but he supposed he had picked up Bunny in the first place because he’d been having trouble sleeping nights, thinking about Amanda Charles lying in her bed practically right above his head. He had tortured himself night after night, wondering about the kinds of things he hadn’t thought of since he’d gone through puberty. Wondering about the color and size of her nipples, what she wore to bed—did she wear anything at all? It was only a sexual attraction, he repeatedly told himself, and he kept waiting for it to burn itself out on the altar of her indifference. But it was bloody well stronger than anything he had ever experienced before.
Damn that blond witch—what was she doing to him? She kept intruding into his life, where she had no business being. She had never given him so much as one miserly little smile, and still, he thought about her all the time. So tonight he had decided if he couldn’t have what he wanted, he would just damn well take what he could get. He had been disgusted with his half-assed fantasies of Amanda and tired of the frustration. In a buried corner of his mind, he had been determined to find himself a woman. He wanted the warmth of a real body, not the feel of his own hand as his mind churned out a raft of unrealistic dreams.
Bunny stubbed out her cigarette and stood up, pulling him out of his dark thoughts. “Like hell, I’m crazy,” she snapped. Looking down at him coldly, she stated without mercy, “Listen, buddy boy, I stood there and watched you with your ‘landlady’ for some time before I finally called your name. And let me tell you, you’d have to go some to find a more desperate individual. You ask me, you got the hots for that bitch so bad you can taste it. But you’re afraid to try for her, aren’t you? Big, strong cop,” she sneered. “Well, listen, honey, I think you’re probably right to keep your big mitts off that one. She looks the type who’d faint dead away if you ever suggested trying something other than the missionary position.”
Tristan regarded her levelly, his face expressionless. The malleable femininity that had first attracted him to Bunny was stripped away, exposing a woman who was older than he had originally assumed and worlds harder. The last of her innocent façade evaporated as she vented her scorn toward what she assumed was Amanda’s lack of sexual prowess. Damn, but he wished the evening had turned out differently. He had been so damn lonely lately. He could really use a woman’s sweet warmth tonight, and if she had just kept that foul mouth of hers shut…
Even now, he knew he could talk her around, if he wanted to. A few sweetly worded phrases, one denigrating remark about Amanda…
Abruptly, he surged to his feet. There was no sweetness to be found with this one. He had either been blinded by his own needs, or it had been nothing but a façade from the beginning.
“Here, put this on,” he commanded coolly as he picked up her coat and handed it to her. “Put it on,” he repeated as she stood, hands at her sides, staring up at him. “I’ll take you home.”
Bunny’s jaw sagged. “You’re taking me home?”
“Aye, I am.” He hustled her into her coat and out of his apartment. “In truth, Bunny, you can’t be all that surprised,” he said as they climbed the stairs to the street. “I liked you, lass, and I thought we’d do well together. But you can’t walk into a mon’s home and start sneering at him, pointing out his weaknesses, and defaming a woman you don’t even know, and expect him just to put up with it.”
“But I thought…”
“That I was desperate. Aye, I know.”
He opened the car door and ushered her in. Holding it ajar, he looked down at her, and for a few seconds they simply stared at each other in silence.
Tristan realized he had reached a turning point in his life. He wanted Amanda Charles. She was ruining him for other women. More, she was becoming more important in his life than even his career. There. He’d admitted it, instead of dancing around the fact the way he’d been doing every since he’d first clamped eyes on her.
The fact was, he might never get what he wanted. But he would never again settle merely for what he could get. It had to have some meaning; otherwise, what was the point?
“I’m lonely, lass. I can’t deny it,” he finally said quietly. “But, Bunny, I’m not nearly as desperate as you may like to believe.”
And, gently, he closed the door.
Chapter
9
A flower was delivered to Rhonda in the early hours of that same morning.
For several moments after the delivery boy left, she simply stood and stared down at the outline of a rose glimpsed through a green waxed-paper florist covering. Then she reached out hesitant fingertips to trace its outline through the paper before finally picking it up.
The faint echo of a door closing down the hall underscored the silence in the dressing room and she glanced over her shoulder, surprised to find the room empty. When had everyone left? Of all the evenings for Amanda to have her night off, it would have to be now, just when Rhonda was most in need of her company.
She peeled off the wrapping, ripping the paper in several places where it was stapled together, and gently lifted a single, perfect, long-stemmed red rose out of the shreds of green waxed tissue. The discarded paper drifted unchecked to the floor, already forgotten as Rhonda raised the flower to her nose and inhaled reverently. Her eyelids slid closed beneath the sudden rush of bittersweet emotion that assailed her.
Oh, hell. Her eyes were prickling as if she were going to cry.
Which was too asinine for words. It was only a flower, for God’s sake.
Only…
She was twenty-seven years old, and she had never received a flower before this night.
Wasn’t that odd? Men had bought her meals and drinks and had paid for her tickets to shows and events; they had sent her chocolates and wine and champagne. One man had once bought her a darling stuffed animal; two had offered to buy her jewels, and many had offered to buy her clothing. The offers of clothing and jewelry she had been quick to discourage—and not always as gently as she might have—because it was simply too reminiscent of the manner in which a good many of the women in her old neighborhood had earned their living.
But never in her life had a man bought her a flower.
She slipped the stiff white card from its minuscule envelope and read it.
Well. Rhonda simply looked at it for a moment.
It was from Chad, and wasn’t that peculiar? She had been under the distinct impression that the situation between them was cooling. She knew her feelings had been losing their intense edge, at any rate, and she could have sworn that his were also diminishing.
She’d given this a great deal of thought during the past few days. And it seemed to her that she and Chad were too much alike—each living for the moment, occasionally to the detriment of the future; both exchanging sex as a sometimes satisfying, sometimes inadequate, substitute for love. He was her male equivalent. They were butterflies, constitutionally incapable of settling down. She didn’t know why, but she always seemed to be attracted to men she knew would move on.
On admittedly rare occasions she’d privately questioned a few of her less attractive quirks and shortcomings. So wasn’t it kind of funny then, in an ironic sort of way, that as a general rule, she still found such questionable shared traits rather exciting when she came across them in a man?
At least at first.
Inevitably, though, they began to irritate her—the need to live for the moment. The restlessness. The sleeping around as a means of finding approval—perhaps even as a means of finding love. The way the men she dated almost invariably came to feel that it was their God-given right to criticize her.
She would like to think that somewhere out there, there was a man with the ability to hold her attention forever and a d
ay—one who would accept her exactly the way she was and love her in spite of her faults. But those were just occasional fantasies. In reality, she doubted that such a man existed.
And in the meantime, firmly entrenched in the real world, she was always afraid she was going to miss out on something if she didn’t keep moving on.
But what she felt for Chad at this moment, as she brushed the velvet-smooth petals of the flower across her lips and inhaled its rich, unmistakable fragrance, were emotions singularly soft and sweet. It didn’t matter how transient in her life he might be, because for one brief instant in time, for the man who had sent her this perfect gift, the emotions she experienced very nearly equaled love.
The enclosed card requested her presence at an address she didn’t recognize, and it was signed simply, Chad. Rhonda glanced at the clock on the dressing room wall—2:27 AM. The invitation was for 3 AM.
She was awfully tired. But, still…
A woman didn’t stand up the only man to ever send her a flower, did she? That seemed like a perfectly tacky thing to do. It really was too bad Amanda wasn’t here. She’d probably know all about the etiquette covering this type of situation.
Oh, what the hell. She wasn’t that tired.
Rhonda used the stage doorman’s map of the city to look up the route she’d need to take in order to get to the address on the card. She wondered what kind of restaurant or hotel could possibly be in that area. She couldn’t tell for certain, of course, using only a map for reference, but if the address on the card was where she thought it was, this didn’t make sense. Because she could swear the area she had in mind was mostly a light industrial district.
As it turned out, that’s precisely what it was.
Well, kid, she thought sarcastically as she sat in her car in a dimly lighted parking lot at two minutes to three in the morning, staring up at the corrugated tin warehouse door of a computer manufacturer, when you’re right, you’re right. It’s good to know you haven’t lost your instincts.
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