Flash and Fire (16 page)

“I didn’t send him. I have no idea how he found out about this, but I’m going to.” Her hand tightened on the telephone as anger curled within her like a snake preparing to strike. “Do you need anything?”

“Prayers come to mind.”

Her voice softened. “You know you’ve already got those. I’ll talk to you soon. Call me if there’s anything I can do.”

She rang off and had to restrain herself from hurling her phone against the wall.

“That goddamn son of a bitch!”

All the while he was trying to talk her out of her clothes, he’d been trying to rape her mind instead. Her thoughts ended in abrupt fragments as she created different ways for him to die.

How did he find out about Whitney, even before she did?

But if he did, why hadn’t he gone to the station manager with it? Grimsley had been completely surprised by her news announcement. That meant he hadn’t been forewarned by Alexander.

What was going on?

It didn’t make sense, but there seemed to be no other reason for Alexander’s sudden interest in her. It wasn’t as if he lacked for willing companions.

Amanda’s head began to throb.

She dropped it between her hands and closed her
eyes. What she wanted was to crawl into bed and pull the covers over her head. She was in no mood to work on the five-part series that was going to air beginning next week.

But the work wasn’t going to go away just because her head felt like there was a war party going on in it, complete with a frenzy of pounding drums.

With a sigh, she switched on her computer.

Over four hours later, she was still at it. Sometime during that period, Carla had slipped in and brought her a tray with a pot of coffee and two roast beef sandwiches. Amanda loved roast beef sandwiches. But tonight, her appetite had been decimated. The sandwiches were still there, almost untouched. The pot of coffee, though, was just about empty.

Amanda felt exhausted and wired at the same time.

She had been tempted to turn on the TV set earlier to catch Pierce on the news. She assumed he’d be covering Whitney’s story. But she knew that if she heard him following up her story, she wouldn’t have been able to handle it.

As it was, the very thought of the man and his deceit made her furious.

Besides, she didn’t feel up to hearing what the news media had done to the story and, consequently, to Whitney. She might be part of the news process, but she didn’t condone the relentless way members of the fourth estate attacked a story at times, like great white sharks in a feeding frenzy.

Glancing at her wristwatch, she sighed. How had it gotten to be so late? It was ten minutes past midnight. Amanda stretched.

Ten minutes past midnight and her coach had long since turned into a pumpkin.

She heard the door open behind her, but was too tired to gather the energy to even turn around. The muscles in her neck and shoulders felt as if they were permanently and uncomfortably fused together.

“Carla, why aren’t you in bed?” Amanda said without turning around as she lifted her hair from her neck. “Never mind. Since you’re up, would you mind very much massaging my shoulders for a second? I’d really appreciate it. I think I’ve got knots there the size of boulders. I guess the tension’s just about wiped me out.”

Carla made no reply. Instead, Amanda felt the hands on her shoulders as they began to gently knead the muscles. Amanda sighed as she felt them skillfully work at alleviating the hard bands of tension throbbing there. Slow, sure, strong movements worked their way up to the sides of her neck.

Amanda’s head dropped forward.

“Oh yes, yes,” she breathed in relief that bordered on elation. She felt all her limbs going limp. “Yes, right there. You’ve got it. Don’t stop,” she murmured. “I’ll give you anything you want, just don’t stop.”

The deep male laugh made her stiffen instantly.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that you had an erogenous zone right there.” Pierce stroked the sides of her neck, bringing his hands to rest at the base of her throat.

Amanda swung around to look up at Pierce. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Working out the kinks in your neck.” He glided a fingertip along her throat. “Are they mine?”

Her eyes narrowed as anger warred with desire. “Partially. How did you get in here?”

“Carla let me. I was passing by and saw the lights on. I figured you were up and maybe needed someone to talk to.”

“If I did, it wouldn’t be you.”

He didn’t know what had made him drive by her house after he had left the studio at eleven-thirty. Curiosity, probably. When he saw lights on in two of the rooms, he’d decided to stop and see if she was up. And maybe finally satisfy his craving.

He leaned a hip against the desk. “I listen pretty well. It’s part of the job.”

She wasn’t going to let go of her anger, she swore to herself. She wasn’t. “I’m not part of your job, so get out.”

Pierce gave no indication that he was about to leave. “Those were pretty big knots I felt in your shoulders. Since you obviously blame me for them, turn around and let me finish massaging you.” He grinned, and she could feel the waves along her skin. “I kind of like hearing you moan like that. Tells me what I’m in for.”

At times like this, she really wished she had gone in for some sort of self-defense training. She would have liked nothing better than to have him on the floor, with the toe of her shoe pressing into that smug face of his.

“What you’re in for is a lot of pain if you don’t leave right now,” she bluffed.

“Amanda.” He laughed the way a person would at a silly, headstrong child. “I don’t know what sort of self-image you have, but I’m sorry to disappoint you. I am not afraid of you.” He twirled his finger over her head, indicating what he wanted her to do. “Now shut up, turn around, and let me help.”

She wondered what the penalty in Texas was these days for justifiable homicide.

Chapter Seventeen

Amanda vacillated between demanding that Pierce leave immediately and relenting enough to let him stay. There was no denying the fact that, louse or not, Pierce was giving her a massage that was resurrecting her out of the realm of the living dead.

Weighing both sides, she chose to smother her anger. It was counterproductive; there were unanswered questions between them regarding Whitney.

“All right.” Somewhat warily, Amanda turned her chair around, then lifted her hair off the back of her
neck. “You are good at this, so go ahead.” Very carefully.
Amanda bowed her head forward.

The long, pale column she exposed was more than passingly inviting. And he had never been one to ignore an invitation. Pierce leaned over and pressed a kiss softly to the back of her neck.

Amanda jolted as the touch of skin to skin sent electric waves charging right through to the very tips of her breasts. Clutching the arms of her chair, Amanda was halfway out of her seat. Anger added color to her features. ‘What the hell—?”

He laid a gentling hand on her shoulder, urging her back down into the chair. She had all the signs of going up like a rocket.

“Calm yourself, Mandy,” he drawled easily, his voice a direct contrast to the pressure of his fingers. “I was just getting the area primed, that’s all. And you do have one lovely, tempting neck.”

Amanda let out a slow breath. It helped steady her pulse. “Do you know that you drawl when you’re trying to hit on me?”

He was more entertained than insulted. “So?”

His hands were working the stiffness out of her shoulders. And with it, some of her animosity. “I’m trying to figure out which is the real you.”

He smiled to himself. She was telling him more than she realized. He’d been preying on her mind, which was encouraging. It was only fair, seeing as how she’d seemed to have taken up residence in his.

“They’re all me, Mandy. All bits and pieces of a whole.” With long, sure strokes, Pierce feathered his fingers along the slope of her neck.

Amanda struggled to keep a sigh from emerging. With effort, she gathered her thoughts together. She had to keep him talking. If she did, maybe he wouldn’t notice that she was dissolving into a puddle beneath his hands.

“Where did you learn to do this?”

Her question made him think. He couldn’t remember the first time he had done it. He had just always known how. “I didn’t learn it. It’s a gift.”

Amanda wondered if the Guinness Book of World Records knew about this man’s ego. “Next you’ll tell me that women love you for your hands.”

The chuckle was low, deep and sensual. Like his touch, it seeped under her skin, making her yearn.

“Among other attributes.” Pierce paused, debating whether to say more.

What the hell. He’d tell her for the novelty of it. He’d never told anyone before.

“My grandmother had rheumatism. It acted up whenever she drank, for some reason.” A smile with no feeling behind it twisted his lips. Amanda saw it in the reflection on her computer screen. “It acted up a lot. She liked to have me massage her shoulders then.” The old woman’s image rose up before him, and it felt like yesterday. The memory caused a faint zigzag of fear to dart through him, like the old days. “Made me do it for hours.”

He’d felt Amanda straighten slightly beneath his hands. He never talked about his family, his real family, or what there was of it, to anyone. There was no reason to. He didn’t know why he was doing it now, except that maybe he owed Amanda something. Or maybe he thought she’d understand some things better if she knew.

Hell, he shouldn’t have started this.

She watched his face. The screen hazed his image, but she saw emotions playing across it. “What did your mother say?”

The cynical smile spread, reaching his eyes.

“Nothing. She wasn’t there.” The next words came without any thought on his part. They just seemed to bleed through the crack he’d allowed to open. “She left me with my grandmother when I was six months old. I have no idea what she looks like. My grandmother didn’t believe in keeping pictures.”

Amanda wanted to turn around to look at him. Her initial inclination was to believe him, to want to put her arms around him and say she was sorry. But this was Pierce, who would say or do anything to get what he wanted. Was he telling her the truth, or was this just another lie he was using to get to her? She couldn’t tell, not intellectually. Emotionally, she had already made up her mind.

She continued watching his reflection as his hands worked magic along her spine. “Did you ever try to find her?”

“No.” The reply was quick, emphatic. “I figure we’re both better off if she stays lost.”

He believed that, she thought, and for a moment she ached for him. Amanda thought of Christopher, sleeping in his room. And of Jeff, who’d left them both without so much as a backward glance at his son. Though she worked with stories like this so frequently she should have become calloused to them by now, Amanda could never bring herself to understand how a parent could turn her back on her own child.

And she always empathized with the child.

“How could she just leave you?”

He heard the compassion and steeled himself. He didn’t need it. Compassion wasn’t what he was ultimately looking for from her. But if that was true, a voice mocked him, why was he saying anything?

“Easy. She didn’t care.” He had come to terms with that a long time ago. There was no reason for this tight feeling in his throat. “If she had, she would have remembered that Grandma was real heavy-handed when it came to discipline.”

Horror filled Amanda as images rose in her mind. “Your grandmother beat you?”

He laughed, recalling. Beatrice Alexander had favored a cat-o-nine-tails. The old woman had handled it with the dexterity of an Argentine gaucho.

“Only when she could catch me. Around the end, it got hard.” He’d run away a dozen times. The last was when he was fifteen. That time, running away had worked. No one had been interested enough to try to bring him back, not even to watch the whippings.

Pierce had stopped massaging her.

Amanda turned to look at him. He saw the empathy shining in her eyes. He expected it to make him angry. Instead, it seemed to draw the words out of him, even as he tried to stop them.

“I suppose I don’t really blame her now. She’d had it pretty rough. I heard once that she’d wanted to be a dancer when she was young. Grandma was a real hell-raiser at sixteen. She got pregnant and her one dream died.” He tried to imagine his grandmother as a young girl fumbling through her first time, and couldn’t. “Her husband ran off and left her with four kids to raise. It wasn’t easy for her. One got killed robbing a store.” His mouth curved a little. “A liquor store, aptly enough.”

Pierce stuck his hands into his pockets and sat down on the edge of her desk, facing her. “That was Uncle Harry. Uncle Bob joined the marines. She used to get postcards from him sometimes. But he never came back to see her—not that I blame him,” Pierce had only returned once himself. For the funeral. “Uncle Peter disappeared one summer. I think he was gay and couldn’t face himself—or her, which was probably a hell of a lot more frightening.”

Pierce took a deep breath, unconsciously bracing himself. “And then there was Billie. My mother.” Even the very word felt foreign on his tongue. He’d never called anyone that. She was just “that woman” to him. “Looking for love in all the wrong places.”

He had no illusions to see him through the fragility of childhood. None at all. He had been born a bastard. His mother had been a whore, pure and simple. She had done it with so many men, by the time she had gotten pregnant, she’d had no idea who the father was.

Pierce had a sudden urge for a cigarette. He reached for one in his pocket before he remembered that he’d left the pack at home. And that it was empty anyway.

“That’s why I became a foreign correspondent.” He laughed, trying to show how indifferent he was to the story he was telling her. It had been a long, hard road from that haunted fifteen-year-old boy to the man he was today. But only he knew that. Only he knew the sacrifices he’d made just to get an education, just to keep his soul from being sucked up by the vermin that existed side by side with the unsuspecting in society. “Hey, I cut my teeth on war zones back in good old Georgia.”