Shadow Dance

by Susan Andersen

  “Ow.” He brought his knuckle up to his lips and sucked on the little red spot. “There’s no need to turn vicious, lass. I just wanted one little bite. I’m hungry.” He attempted to look pathetically underfed—not an easy endeavor for a man over six feet four inches tall and weighing in excess of two hundred pounds.

  “Ah, poor baby.” Amanda reached across the restaurant table and picked up his hand. “Let mama kiss it better.”

  He let her carry it to her lips before he said, “It hurts real bad, Mandy. But a prawn would make it feel a lot less painful.”

  Amanda’s lips curled in an involuntary smile against his knuckles before she loosened his hand and gave him a stern look. “Forget it, Tristan. If you wanted prawns, you should have ordered them yourself.”

  “Aw, come on, lass! One flaming little prawn. I offered you part of my oyster ginger beef.”

  “Yeah, knowing you were perfectly safe doing so. No one in their right mind would eat that stuff.”

  “Hey, it was good.”

  “Big recommendation, coming from a man who eats peanut butter straight from the jar with a spoon.”

  Tristan grinned at her, and for an instant, Amanda stilled. She loved that smile. She would do darn near anything for him when he flashed it, and he probably knew it, too, the rat. When he was hungry, she had discovered, the man was totally lacking in scruples. She struggled to hang on to her principles for almost forty-five seconds. Then she planted her elbow on the table, propped her chin in the palm of her hand, and smiled back at him.

  And gave him the prawn.

  Amanda lived on the memories of their night out for quite a while. Between her schedule and Tristan’s, it was difficult to manage enough time simply to be together, let alone to go out on worry-free dates. And that evening had been so special. But nearly two weeks later, she was beginning to believe their rare night out had been nothing more than some wishful dream she’d had.

  She was taking refuge in the bathtub. Again. But it was either that or send Tristan packing, and that she couldn’t bring herself to do. Dammit, she had never expected to fall in love. And doing so, she discovered, wasn’t the be-all-and-end-all romance books ritually promised it would be. All it did was heap confusion on an already overburdened and volatile range of emotions. She had found the past few weeks baffling.

  Amanda wasn’t a romantic. She hadn’t personally viewed many happy marriages. She had known before she was old enough to articulate the thought that she didn’t want to emulate her parents’ union, but in the ten years since leaving the high-rent battleground they’d called home, she had only met two couples whose sense of belonging to each other she had envied. Two couples, out of so many. Too few marriages appeared to be blessed. Meanwhile, all around her she had observed the frenzy of her friends falling in love, but she had judged it an ephemeral emotion, for it never seemed to last.

  She had been infatuated three times in her twenty-eight years, but even in the deepest throes of attraction, Amanda hadn’t once mistaken her feelings for love. She therefore had not been prepared for the strength of the emotions that Tristan unleashed in her. Even upon first making love, when she had told him that she loved him, she had suspected it was the sex more than the man that held her enthralled. It was quite a jolt to discover she wasn’t the cool and fastidious woman she had always believed herself to be. And professing her love, she had feared, was merely a justification to beautify the fact that Tristan, with the slightest touch, could reduce her to such a basic and primitive level that she no longer even recognized herself.

  Sexual enslavement. She rolled the taste of it around her mind the way a connoisseur might test a fine wine on his tongue. It tasted quite nice—and convenient. It would let her off the hook for that embarrassing demand that Tristan discard his ubiquitous condoms. It still made her squirm to remember the way she had taken one away from him and tossed it into the wastebasket one day, telling him that as much as she appreciated his sense of responsibility, she had dusted off her old diaphragm and gone in to have the fit checked, and she really didn’t want to feel anything between them again. They had exchanged health histories, so it wasn’t as if she were taking a physical risk. But they were still bold words from a heretofore sexual coward, and if she could only convince herself that he had her sexually enthralled, then she wouldn’t have to accept responsibility for them.

  Not that Tristan had appeared to object, necessarily. Actually, for some odd reason, he seemed to get a huge kick out of it whenever she acted cheeky. And enslavement was such a hard word to swallow, when used in relation to oneself. For a woman of her temperament, it held connotations she found darn near impossible to live with.

  Besides, sexual enslavement alone didn’t explain the flash of pure joy that surged through her veins when Tristan had announced he intended to move in with her. Since the day she could afford to, she had jealously guarded her privacy. It had been a relief to finally have a place of her own again where she would no longer be at the mercy of a roommate’s whim or personality. But it was entirely different in Tristan’s case. She liked him living here. No, the truth was, until about two hours ago, she had loved it, pure and simple.

  She’d been content to simply talk to him for hours on end. And it astounded her how many things Tristan had to say to her. It was almost as if he had been storing up conversations all his life, just waiting for the right person to come along and listen to him. He had a wide range of knowledge—much wider than her own, actually—and when he was relaxed and they were alone, he could be so interesting and funny and playful.

  That he possessed a sense of humor at all still amazed and delighted her. She had been so sure he didn’t have a humorous bone in his entire body before she had come to know him. But not only did he possess a dry wit, a lighthearted side to his personality was beginning to emerge. And he was turning out to be something of a tease.

  Besides, if all she wanted was continued sexual gratification, why did she harbor this burning need to know everything about him? Why was she nursing a latent desire to make a home for him to atone for what she suspected was a barren childhood and lonely adult life? Why did she watch him with his homely mutt and wonder what he’d be like with a baby? She’d never before considered such a thing; it had never even occurred to her to do so. Have a child? It would have meant not dancing for too many months.

  If this was only sexual infatuation, why were her favorite moments spent curled up in his lap, just being held quietly, head pressed to his chest, listening to the surge of his blood through his veins? Why couldn’t she stop telling him she loved him every time he made love to her? She didn’t say it to drive him into a sexual frenzy. That was merely a bonus.

  No, some things you can’t go on denying forever. This was love.

  But there was nothing simple about it. These weren’t simple times.

  In a perfect world, she and Tristan would have had time to adjust to their new feelings. Not that she knew for certain Tristan’s feelings matched her own, as he had never actually said so. But she’d decided to assume he cared for her as much as she cared for him until such time as he said otherwise. In any event, in a perfect world, a woman would have time to explore and test her new feelings. She wouldn’t have to contend with calls from a psychotic killer.

  Duke continued to call at irregular intervals in the early morning hours, and Amanda thought it was a measure of the general insanity of her life these days that his brief conversations no longer had the power to reduce her to jelly. It just went to show that one could become accustomed to anything, eventually. She didn’t pretend the calls had lost all power to disturb her, but Tristan’s large and comforting—if sometimes infuriating—presence in her life lessened the impact that had originally driven her into a blind panic.

  But the calls were a constant reminder that hers wasn’t an ordinary situation. And then, of course, there was the gun.

  Amanda intensely disliked what her newly purchased gun represented.

&nbs
p; In the gun shop with Tristan on the day he had moved into her apartment, she had instinctively put her hands behind her back when he had held out the pistol for her to try. It wasn’t until that detested lack of expression had settled over Tristan’s stern face that she had finally reached for it. As her hand had sagged beneath the gun’s unexpected weight, she’d felt a flash of resentment for the emotions that bonded her to this complex man. It was ridiculous, the lengths to which she would go to prevent that hated blank mask from taking up permanent residence on MacLaughlin’s face. She had no business owning a gun. She was a dancer, for God’s sake, not Annie Oakley.

  At every opportunity he could devise, Tristan drove her into the hills outside of town for target practice. Amanda admitted she was becoming quite comfortable handling her pistol, cleaning it, and loading it. And being a woman who liked to excel at anything she tried, she even enjoyed growing more proficient at hitting the bull’s-eye target. With a minimum of effort, she could almost pretend it was only a game, or a new challenge to be mastered. But then today, without warning, Tristan had substituted a police-issue target for the bull’s-eye, and Amanda had refused to pretend any longer.

  Not when the new target was a life-sized outline of a man.

  Tristan turned back from pinning the target on the tree and watched Amanda as she unloaded the gun she had just finished loading moments before.

  “Amanda?”

  She looked up at him, and he knew he was in for a battle when he spotted the mulish slant that hardened her soft mouth, the defiance in her violet-blue eyes. “I’m not shooting at that, MacLaughlin.”

  “It’s just a target, darlin’—same as the bull’s-eye.”

  “Baloney. It’s a man. You want me to learn to shoot a man.”

  “What I want,” he snapped as he closed the distance between them and took the gun from her hand, “is to teach you to defend yourself.” He reloaded the weapon and extended it to her. “You think if Duke comes calling you’re gonna be able to politely rebuff him with words? A posh accent’s not going to affect that bleeder’s heart. Take the frigging gun and practice on the target.”

  Amanda averted her face and her right hand remained stubbornly at her side.

  “Take it, Amanda.”

  She turned her head and looked him squarely in the eye. “No.”

  Tristan drew in a deep breath and silently counted to ten while he exhaled it. “I could hit you, lass. I could bloody beat you to a pulp. And there isn’t a thing you could do to stop me.”

  Spontaneously, a smile flashed across Amanda’s face, diluting her anger. “No, you couldn’t,” she replied with complete confidence.

  “No, you’re right. I couldn’t.” He tucked her gun in his waistband. Without warning, his right had whipped out and secured both of her wrists while his left hand, despite her enraged attempt to stop him, easily divested her of her jeans and panties. One large foot swept her feet out from under her, and before she could regain the breath that her sudden descent into the dust had knocked from her lungs, he was on top of her, ruthlessly spreading her legs and pinning her to the hard ground with his weight, unmindful of the painful bits of brush and rock that dug into her exposed backside. “But Duke could.” His voice was cold and clipped. “Duke would rape you, beat you, bite you—fucking kill you. If he got the chance.”

  “Get off me, you limey bastard.” Tears swam in Amanda’s eyes, but she stared at him without blinking, willing them not to fall.

  “I’m not English, Amanda. I’m an American.” Tristan rose to his feet and leaned over to extend a hand. Amanda ignored it and scrambled to the spot a few feet away where her panties and jeans lay. He watched her as she picked on embedded pebble out of her hip and brushed herself off. “But, just for the record,” he continued quietly, “my lack of parentage originates in Scotland.” He waited until she was dressed and extended the gun to her once again.

  Amanda snatched it from his hand and spent the following hour in grim silence, taking aim at the target. She wasn’t half bad, and Tristan wryly wondered if that was because she pretended it was him she was shooting at.

  When she still wouldn’t talk to him on the ride back to town, Tristan began to worry. He tried several conversational gambits; she ignored them all. With every mile that passed in tight-lipped silence, grim specters of Amanda stomping into her apartment, packing his gear, and telling him to hit the road rose to haunt him. But although she tried her best to bounce the front door off his forehead, the word “eviction” wasn’t uttered when they arrived home. Instead, she locked herself in the bathroom and took one of her eternal baths. Tristan sank into the couch and pondered the methods that women use to make men sweat.

  Ace climbed up on his lap, and Tristan stroked him absently. Until today, he had soft-pedaled the threat of Duke to Amanda, but the truth was, Tristan had been growing increasingly uneasy. Duke had terminated his calls to Tristan at the time of Joy Frede’s death. At the very least, Tristan had expected him to call to gloat. But the killer’s silence had been sudden and complete. About the same time, the calls to Amanda had begun.

  The tone of Duke’s conversations with Amanda was odd. Tristan had no way of knowing for sure, but Joy Frede’s roommate had said she was under the distinct impression that the phone calls Frede received had been threatening. Duke’s calls to Amanda were anything but. And calling to admire Amanda at irregular intervals seemed to pacify the man, for there hadn’t been any outbreaks of violence in the past few weeks. But how long would it last?

  Tristan had his men working around the clock, but so far, the results had been negligible. He wanted the sod behind bars, but Duke was typical of his breed—he was intelligent and crafty.

  Tristan picked up Ace and placed him gently on the floor. He walked over to the bathroom and stood for a moment. Was she going to stay in there until it was time for her to go to work? Tristan’s hand raised to knock, but settled lightly against the woodwork instead. Turning away, he walked into the bedroom and sat down on the bed to wait, idly fingering a department store sack that rested next to his hip.

  Twenty minutes later he heard the bathroom door open and close, and he sat up straight. But Amanda walked past the bedroom doorway without glancing in.

  This had bloody well gone far enough. He pushed off the bed, prepared to follow her and have it out, but he hadn’t taken more than three steps across the carpet before she strolled into the room, carrying her gun. She didn’t look his way as she crossed to the nightstand, unloaded the weapon, and placed the gun and bullets in the drawer. She knew it drove him daft that she refused to keep it loaded. What the hell good would it do her without the bullets? He didn’t think that now, however, was a prudent time to resurrect that particular argument. He sat down on the bed again. Paper crackled beneath him and he raised his left hip to slide the department store bag out from under him.

  “You ever going to talk to me again, lass?”

  Amanda paused with her hand in her lingerie drawer and gave him a cool glance over her shoulder. “Eventually.”

  He watched her pull the pins from her hair and shake it loose. Remembering his error in believing she dyed her hair, he had once remarked how pretty her hair was, and wasn’t she lucky then to have naturally curly hair. She had smiled at him so sweetly and then said, “Thanks, MacLaughlin. It’s permed.” God. Women and their beauty secrets. Who could keep up with them?

  His mouth went dry when Amanda dropped her robe on the slipper chair, and he bolted upright. “Now, that’s not fair! Y’canna be giving me the cold shoulder, then go flaunting yourself in front of me.” She didn’t even glance his way, but a small smile curled her lips.

  “Come on, lass. I’m that sorry I made you mad. But I’ll not be apologizing for getting you to practice on the target. I’d bloody well do it all over again, if it meant making you more capable of defending yourself should the need arise.” His eyes ate up every movement she made as she stepped into a minuscule pair of silken panties, pulling them up
her long legs and smoothing them over her hips, and as she shook her full breasts into a matching bra. Without once taking his eyes off her, he pulled his glasses off, pinched the bridge of his nose, and reseated them.

  Amanda leaned into the mirror and brushed her hair with hard strokes. Deftly, she twisted it up off her neck. Her eyes met his in the mirror. “I bought you something,” she said. “It’s in that sack you sat on.” Dropping her eyes, she scouted around the top of the dressing table for hairpins.

  Dead silence greeted her remark, and Amanda glanced up at his reflection in the mirror. He was staring at the bag and she was arrested by the expression on his face. She turned to face him fully.

  “This is for me?” he asked.

  “Yes.” For once he hadn’t been stone-faced, and she had been enjoying his frustration. Besides, she figured he deserved to squirm a little after dumping her in the dirt and scaring the bejesus out of her. His action had driven home her vulnerability against a man’s greater strength, but she would be damned before she’d admit that maybe he had a point when he insisted she learn to use the gun with some degree of accuracy. His method still made her furious. As it was, Charlie was going to have a cow if she couldn’t disguise the spot that was turning purple high up on her thigh. And if she had fallen wrong, she could have been put out of commission entirely.

  But the look on his face now as he fingered the sack made a lump rise in her throat. Hadn’t anyone ever bought him anything before? “Open it, Tristan. It’s a present.”

  He looked up at her. Then he lowered his head and slowly opened the bag. He drew out a pair of stonewashed jeans.

  “I thought you could wear them when we go up in the hills,” she explained anxiously when he didn’t say anything. “Or when you’re off duty.” She watched him fiddle with the tags. “I didn’t get a chance to wrap it, and I know it isn’t much—”