Shadow Dance

by Susan Andersen

  Tristan lurched up off the bed and was across the room in two giant strides, the jeans still clutched in one big fist. He jerked her to her feet and pulled her against him with his free arm, burying his face in her hair. “I love you, Amanda, lass. God, how I love you!” He pulled her head back and rocked his mouth over hers, thrusting his tongue deep with a desperate kind of urgency.

  Amanda felt her heart explode. She wrapped her arms around his neck and stood on tiptoe, kissing him back for all she was worth. Not even the jeans’ scratchy cardboard tags, digging into her bare back, or the butt of his gun, gouging her right breast, could mar her joy. He’d said it! Oh, thank you, God, thank you. Tristan MacLaughlin loves me.

  Tristan raised his head. “Thank you for the present, Mandy.” He gave her another quick, hard kiss and released her to look the jeans over once again.

  “Try them on.” Amanda grinned. The spellbound expression on his face as he examined his present made her feel like Santa Claus. “The first day we met you, Rhonda said all you needed was a pair of jeans to look like a hairy version of the Soloflex hunk.”

  Tristan’s brows knit above his nose. “The what hunk?”

  “Soloflex. It’s an advertisement for body-building equipment. It features this guy with a really nice body, wearing a pair of jeans—and nothing else,” she added with relish. “Try them on.”

  Tristan shucked out of his slacks and dragged the new jeans up his long legs. He tucked in his white shirt and did up the fly. Then he squatted and stood up. “The fit is bloody perfect. How’d you do it?”

  “I’m a genius.” She patted his rear with feminine appreciation. “You look good. I wish I had more time…”

  “Well, if you hadn’t spent an hour in the tub,” Tristan growled.

  “If I hadn’t spent an hour in the bathtub, MacLaughlin, you’d probably be back downstairs in your own apartment right now.”

  “Yeah. I kept expecting to be evicted the entire ride back to town.”

  The doorbell rang. “Rats,” Amanda muttered and grabbed up her robe. She whipped it around her body and tied the belt. “That’s got to be Rhonda. C’mon out and show her your pants.”

  With his customary caution, Tristan stayed out of sight until he verified the identity of Amanda’s visitor. The fewer people who knew he was living here, the safer she would be. She had said the dance world was a small one, and he didn’t want word of their relationship making the rounds. He didn’t know where the connection lay—if Duke was actually a dancer like Rhonda believed, or just some kind of dweller on the fringes. One way or another, though, it appeared he was definitely tapped into the dance community.

  “Hey, kiddo, get your clothes on,” he heard Rhonda say the instant the door opened. “It’s time to roll.”

  Amanda listened to Rhonda rave over the fit of Tristan’s new jeans as she dressed, and, taking pity on him, she hurried. In the past few weeks, she had discovered to her amazement that Tristan was actually quite shy around women if he wasn’t dealing with them in a professional capacity. For the most part, he was comfortable in Rhonda’s company—more so than that of most women. But her unapologetic, insouciant sexuality occasionally baffled him. How was he supposed to respond to half the things she said? he asked Amanda one day. Usually, when he ran across a woman who talked and acted the way she did, he was in the process of slapping cuffs on her and throwing her into the wagon to be taken downtown and booked.

  The slight flush staining Tristan’s neck and face confirmed Amanda’s intuition when she emerged from the bedroom moments later. He was standing with his shoulders hunched, big hands stuffed into the front pockets of his new jeans and his professional mask firmly in place as he listened to Rhonda rattle on. Amanda patted his rump, raised up on her toes to kiss him good-bye, and went off to work, happier than she had any right to be.

  She wasn’t so cheerful by the time she left the Cabaret after the last show. Damn the real world for butting into her happiness. And damn Randy Baker in particular.

  “He’s not about to accept responsibility for his actions,” she snarled at Rhonda on the ride home. “My God, he’s immature. Five’ll get you ten he carries a picture of his car in his wallet.”

  Amanda had been running late because she’d had to spend time layering makeup on her bruise to camouflage the result of Tristan’s graphic demonstration this afternoon. The Cabaret’s costumes were skimpy in the extreme, and Charlie had a tendency to become very peevish indeed if a mark on one of his dancers marred the total effect. Charlie’s opinions were widely known: you could knock yourself black and blue—it made no difference to him. But it had better not show.

  Hurrying down the hall, she heard angry voices coming from the little alcove where the hall met backstage. She wasn’t crazy about the idea of being an unwilling witness to someone’s argument, but her options were severely limited. It was five minutes until the dancers opened the show, and the only route to the wings lay that way.

  “…Hands on me again and I’ll chop them off at the wrists!”

  Amanda came close to being bowled over by the furious redhead who burst out of the alcove. It was Sherry McMann, the woman who’d been hired to replace Maryanne, and although Amanda’s curiosity was piqued, she really didn’t have time to do more than wonder who Sherry’d been talking to. She picked up her pace.

  Without warning, a rough hand on her forearm jerked her to a standstill. Startled, she looked up into Randy Baker’s angry face.

  “You goddamn bitch!” he snarled. “I hope you’re pleased with yourself. You’ve been telling lies about me right and left.”

  Amanda was stunned by the attack, but anger quickly replaced astonishment. She pried Randy’s fingers from her arm. “Been sneaking feels again, Randy?”

  Red color mottled his cheeks. “What’d you tell her about me?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, grow up. I didn’t say a word to Sherry. I didn’t have to. It’s your tendency to put your hands where they don’t belong, not my mouth, that’s getting you into trouble. Keep your mitts to yourself and you won’t have a problem.” She turned away with apparent indifference, but impotent fury at his adolescent disregard for anyone’s feeling but his own weighed coldly in her stomach.

  “You frigid cunt,” he said furiously to her back. “You think you’re so much better than anybody. Maybe if you had a little attention from a real man, you wouldn’t be so goddamn snooty.”

  In the car with Rhonda now, Amanda mimicked his parting shot. “Well, baby, someday you’re gonna get yours.” She shook her head in disgust. “I told him I’d had a real man, which was what had taught me to know the difference when I was confronted with a punk kid.”

  Rhonda had been laughing, but now she sobered. “I don’t know, kiddo. What with everything else, I don’t like the sounds of this.” She pulled up to a light and looked over at Amanda’s profile as her friend morosely stared out the window. “And I don’t even like to contemplate what MacLaughlin’s gonna have to say about it.”

  Amanda’s head snapped around. “MacLaughlin’s not gonna say anything, because MacLaughlin’s not going to hear about it. I don’t need Tristan to fight my battles for me.”

  “Amanda Rose, you’ve been receiving telephone calls from a murderer. Randy Baker threatened you. Don’t you think Tristan would wanna know?”

  “You weren’t there, Rhonda; you didn’t hear Randy. He’s a twenty-four-year-old man with a high school stud mentality. It’s his damn immaturity that makes me want to scream. His saying you’ll get yours is like saying your mama wears combat boots. He’s no killer.”

  “All the same, kiddo…”

  “I’ll say something tomorrow, okay? But for what’s left of tonight, I’d just like to forget about it and pretend Tristan and I are a regular couple without any special problems.”

  “Fair enough.” They parted at the stairs and Amanda let herself into the apartment.

  “Tristan?”

  “In here.” She followed the so
und of his soft voice into the bedroom. All the moisture left her mouth as she stopped dead in the doorway and stared at him. He had obviously just taken a shower, for he was sitting on the side of the bed with a towel over his head, briskly rubbing his hair. He was wearing his new jeans—and nothing else. Drops of water glistened here and there on his wide, muscled shoulders and long, strong back, and Amanda wanted to crawl all over him, licking them off.

  “I found the slip in the bag.” Tristan’s voice was slightly muffled by the towel. “Sixty-eight dollars is a lot of money for a pair of jeans, lass.”

  “I thought you said you were an American, MacLaughlin.” Amanda inched nearer and studied every exposed inch of Tristan’s body. “Any true-blue American knows the value of a pair of jeans. You can wear them every day for two years straight, and they just keep looking better and getting more comfortable.”

  “Bet they’d smell bloody awful, though.”

  “You wash them between wearings, you idiot.” She was standing directly in front of him. “God, Tristan, you look so hot.”

  Tristan dropped the towel around his neck and looked up at her. “Yeah? Show me, lass.”

  “I’m all sweaty.” He was peeling her out of her shirt.

  “Aye, so you are, darlin’. I like you that way.”

  He was perfectly serious. Amanda had always thought being bathed and perfumed was a prerequisite to making love, but although Tristan made love to her when she was squeaky clean and sweet, he wasn’t fastidious about her state of hygiene. It had shocked her a bit at first, but his lovemaking was as honest and unaffected as an animal’s out in the wild, and she had ultimately decided that if he didn’t mind her a little bit musky, then she wasn’t going to let her own self-consciousness interfere with their pleasure either.

  “Y’smell like a woman.” Tristan buried his face between her breasts and Amanda bowed her body around him. She pushed at his shoulders until he was sprawled out on his back across the bed. Then she did what she had wanted to do since walking through the bedroom door. She planted kisses from the center of his strong chin, down the smooth column of his throat, across both his shoulders, and down his chest. With her tongue and teeth, she worried the flat brown disk of his nipple beneath its light mat of hair. Slowly she moved downward, licking up errant drops of water, stringing kisses and light bites along the hard ridges that defined his muscular stomach. Her hands raced ahead to unfasten his jeans and push them down to his knees.

  With a growl, Tristan shoved up his elbows as her long, capable fingers wrapped around his erection. He watched her descending mouth. “Ah, God, Amanda, never tell me you’re going to…ahh, God, lass!” She was and she did.

  Amanda reveled in her sudden power over him. She had never dominated him sexually. She was usually too thoroughly dominated herself to make the attempt. But this time it was his thighs that sprawled wide, and his hips that arched in silent plea, and his hands that buried themselves in her hair, molding the delicate bones of her skull as reverently as though he were holding a priceless golden chalice. She glanced up and found him watching her, and she hummed with self-satisfied contentment. He groaned, his fingers clenching against her scalp.

  The phone rang shrilly, and Tristan’s hands dropped leadenly to his sides. Amanda raised her head and rested her forehead against the rigid muscles of his abdomen. Fury exploded. “Damn him! Damn him!” She leaned across Tristan’s legs and snatched up the receiver. “Not now,” she snapped. “I am sick and tired of getting calls at this hour of the morning from a man who won’t even identify himself. Tomorrow I’m calling the police and getting an unlisted number!” She slammed the receiver back in its cradle. For good measure, she unplugged it. Then she burst into tears.

  Tristan didn’t tell her she was better off receiving telephone calls than not. It was the only means they had for keeping even the weakest of tabs on Duke’s movements. Time enough in the morning to tell her that she wasn’t getting an unlisted number. He gathered her in his arms and rocked her. “Shh, Mandy, shh, now. Don’t let the sod get to you. Besides, it was a timely interruption. There’s been something I’ve been wanting desperately—”

  She wiped her eyes against the swell of his pectorals and looked up at him. “I thought that was what I was just giving you.”

  Laughter rumbled from deep in Tristan’s chest and she pulled back a little in order to see his white, crooked-tooth grin. “Oh, darlin’, that you were. But even more than that, I’ve been dying to hear you say that you love me just once when you’re not all hot for my loving.”

  Amanda forgot her anger. She hugged Tristan hard. “Well, shoot. I thought you were going to ask for something terribly difficult.” She pulled back until she could look into his eyes. “I love you, Tristan MacLaughlin,” she vowed solemnly. “I have never in my life said that to another man. You’re my very first.”

  His tone was peremptory. “I’m your flamin’ last.”

  “Yes. I believe you are.” Her mouth was very solemn but a smile lurked in her eyes. “I do love you.”

  He rolled her onto the sheets. “Ah, Mandy, lass. I love you, too. I’ve not said that to another woman either.” His teeth nipped her lower lip and tugged on it. “I love you.” The tip of his tongue moistened her lip when he pronounced his I’s. “I love you. I love…”

  It was very late, and Tristan was feeling boneless with satiated exhaustion by the time he finally groped around the floor and found the plug for the telephone. Yawning, he plugged it back in.

  Chapter

  18

  It seemed to Tristan that he had just fallen asleep when a strident ringing dragged him back to the edge of consciousness. He pried an eyelid open, but the prickles of grit irritating the sleep-starved membranes prompted its immediate reclosure. Had he turned on the alarm last night? No. He knew he hadn’t. Wrapping the down-filled pillow around his ears, Tristan burrowed into the mattress.

  An instant later he swore and flung the pillow aside. Amanda must have set the thing, for the bloody ringing wasn’t letting up. He ran a thickened tongue over his dry lips and fumbled blindly for the alarm.

  He had slapped at the button on top of the clock twice before it occurred to him that the sound might not be the alarm. He forced open an eye that felt as if it had been liberally sprinkled with sand. Umm. The bloody phone was ringing. Patting Amanda’s hip placatingly as she mumbled in somnolent irritation, he leaned over her and groped for the phone. Holding the receiver under his chin, he flopped back onto the mattress. “H’lo.” He covered the mouthpiece with his palm and yawned widely.

  Silence greeted his salutation, and suddenly Tristan was wide awake and cold as ice with the knowledge that he had made the biggest mistake of his life—of Amanda’s life. Of all the unforgivable, irresponsible…bluff, MacLaughlin. Bluff like you’ve never bloody bluffed before.

  “Hello,” he repeated with crisp authority. “Speak up. This is Lieutenant MacLaughlin of the Reno police. Miss Charles called us a few hours ago to lodge a complaint. Said she was the recipient of annoying phone calls. If you are the party responsible for harassing Miss Charles, you are under advisement that a tap has been placed on the phone, and—”

  “I thought she was different,” Duke’s hoarse voice cut across Tristan’s improvised cover-up. “But she’s just a worthless whore like all the rest.” For an instant, there was only the disturbed sound of his breathing. Finally, he whispered, “She’s a dead woman, MacPrick. I’m really going to enjoy taking care of her. I’ll make it extra special, now that I know she’s your woman.”

  The phone went dead.

  Tristan swore and replaced the phone on the nightstand. He climbed out of bed and pulled on his new jeans; then he stood for a moment, staring down at Amanda as she slept. How could he have done something so idiotic? He was supposed to be a frigging professional, for chrissake. God, lass, I’m so sorry.

  He picked up the telephone and placed two calls in rapid succession. He used up an additional fifteen minutes s
howering, shaving, and dressing in his customary suit and tie. Then, dreading it, but knowing that in all good conscience he couldn’t postpone it any longer, he woke Amanda.

  Amanda watched Tristan’s retreating back as he loped down the steps. He didn’t look back. Turning to Rhonda, she said coldly, “You can leave, too.”

  Rhonda studied her friend’s face in silence for a moment. Then she nodded, and her expression was a contradictory mixture of concern and disgust. “Fine,” she replied. “I’m outta here. Call if you need me.” The next moment she, too, was gone.

  Softly, Amanda closed the door and stood a moment, staring at the blank expanse of wood. Then, in frustration, she slapped the solid door with the flat of her hand and whirled away. Ignoring the curious glance of her watchdog as he glanced up from his book, she stalked into the kitchen.

  She was numb with fear, but more than that, she was angry—with fate. With Tristan. With Rhonda. With the faceless man who had the ability to terrorize her and turn her world upside down. Oh, hell. Mostly with herself.

  She had sworn, both to Tristan and to herself, that she wouldn’t cling to him or interfere with his work in any way. But dammit, she knew, with a stomach-twisting certainty, that Randy Baker wasn’t the man responsible for killing Maryanne and those other three women. Or for the disturbing phone calls. But would Tristan take her word for it? He would not.

  “It’s not that I’m discounting women’s intuition,” he said when she’d called him a pigheaded, thick-skinned, stubborn Scot. “You women are usually better than men at getting at the truth. But I also have a healthy regard for the law, lass. And I’ll not be ignoring Baker’s threats to you. Or the scratches on his arm that Rhonda told me about, either.” Then he wrapped his hand about the nape of her neck and pulled her up onto her toes. “And it’s an American I am, Amanda Rose. Y’canna seem to remember it.” He had kissed her hard, and moments later he was gone.