Obsession Falls (28 page)

She said, “It’s a good thing I’ve been waiting for you to turn up, or you would now be sporting a hole in the middle of your chest.”

“Taylor Summers.” His hands were steady as he let them fall to his side. “You’re quick with that pistol.”

She had listened to him online; his voice was exactly as she expected, yet to have him say her name, the name so few people knew, sent another terrified jolt through her system. “Summer. My name is now Summer Leigh.”

“Summer Leigh,” he repeated.

“You’re a friend of the Hartmans?”

“A friend of a friend.”

Kennedy had connections. Of course. “You got my e-mail?”

“Joshua Brothers passed it on.”

“How did you find me?”

“I am good at what I do, and one of the things I do is strategic data retrieval. I needed a place to start, and your e-mail to Mr. Brothers provided that information.” Kennedy’s dark hair was trimmed and neat. He wore a black suit, a white shirt, a burgundy tie. He dressed like a businessman attending a stockholders’ meeting.

Yet the trappings of civilization were nothing but a disguise. Beneath the tailored jacket and starched shirt, his body was that of a dockworker, a wrestler, a warrior. Any smart woman would note the contrasts, and handle him with care.

Summer was a very smart woman. She fastened the safety on her Glock 26 Gen4, slid it into the holster, and straightened her jacket over the top. “It’s like a knit scarf. Pull one thread and the whole thing unravels.” Leaning down, she started to pick up the sheets.

Without warning, he was standing right in front of her.

She straightened.

He was tall, muscular, with big hands and big feet. How had he moved so quickly, so quietly?

He took her shoulders. He looked down into her startled face and fiercely asked, “Where have you been?” He didn’t give her a chance to answer; he pulled her into his body and hugged her, as if … as if she were a vanished lover, a wife believed lost at sea, the most precious memory of his life brought back to life.

She stood stiffly, cautiously, as she tried to judge his mood, the reason for his actions. Did he intend to surprise her? Hurt her? Was he nuts?

But he simply … cradled her. The heat of him surrounded her, eased into her bones, let her relax in slow increments. And that spelled trouble, because she hadn’t touched, hugged, loved anyone in over a year. Her body was starved for affection. “What are you doing?” she asked cautiously.

“A year. A year I’ve believed you were alive, wondered where you were, what you were doing, and now you’re here and you—” His voice caught as if snagged by a great emotion.

“We do not know each other.” She spoke definitively, wanting him to hear, to realize the truth. “We have never met before.”

“I do know you.” He slid his hand up the back of her neck and his fingers into her short crop of hair. He pressed her head, urging her to rest it on his shoulder.

She let him, testing his strength.

But it was her strength that was lacking. “So you don’t believe that stuff they said about me in the news?”

His snort was a masterpiece of derision. “That you had anything to do with kidnapping Miles? Why would I be so stupid?”

“I don’t think you’re stupid, but the news said Miles had fallen and had brain damage, so I didn’t know if he could clear me.”

“Not true. He was superficially hurt. We gave out the story about brain damage to assure the kidnapper Miles could not give us pertinent information that would lead to an arrest.”

“I’m so glad your nephew is okay.” She had worried.

“The important information which he was able to give me was that you were innocent.” He massaged her neck.

That felt good. “I’m glad he did that—but why did you then allow me to be destroyed in the media?”

“For Miles’s own safety, I had put out that he had no memory of the events. I could not contradict the police’s theory that you were involved. I hoped you would realize that I did believe in your integrity.”

“The reports drove me into hiding.”

“And drove me crazy with wondering where you were and what had happened.”

Sarcasm bubbled right to the surface. “Poor you.”

He hesitated, adjusted, changed his tactics. “I’m sorry. I know it must have been difficult to see your character destroyed.”

“Difficult?” An understatement. “I could not believe it was happening. I couldn’t believe the lies … my own mother. So she could go on
Dr. Phil.
” That was a relationship broken beyond repair.

“I am sorry. When this is over, we will do damage control.”

“You bet we will.”

“Why did you finally contact me?”

“Everything I read about you said you were a man who listened to reason, who was impeccably honest. I thought I could convince you I was innocent, and if by some chance you refused to see reason, I could make a deal with you to protect me, and you wouldn’t break it.”

“I never break my word.”

“I know.” Before her backbone disintegrated, she asked, “Don’t you want to know who took your nephew?”

“Yes. Of course I do. Will you tell me?”

“I will. When we have come to terms.”

“Okay.” How could he sound so … so reasonable? So willing to let her make the decisions?

Damn him. She had looked at his online portrait and decided that he was relentless, ruthless, analytical, cold, and the kind of man with whom she never, ever wanted to be involved. She was right about everything … except when he embraced her, he didn’t feel cold. And if this display of fondness wasn’t passion, it was a ploy to … to do what? What did he hope to gain?

He smelled good.

She took a cautious breath. Like pine and citrus, like the promise of Christmas with gifts waiting to be opened and long-anticipated surprises.

Not important.
What mattered were his intentions and his strategy.

He leaned his cheek against her head.

She closed her eyes and sighed.

If he had bad intentions and an evil strategy, he was cleverly disguising them with warmth, gentleness, and that alluring scent of sin.

He tilted her chin and kissed her. He took her quick breath of surprise as if she owed it to him. He sank his tongue into her mouth, dominated, explored …

Wait a goddamn minute.

She shoved him away. She backed up as fast as she could. She wiped her hand across her mouth. “No.” Because being hugged was one thing. Friends hugged. Friends did not French-kiss. “Who do you think you are?”

He stood with his chest heaving, his eyes intensely blue, his hands outstretched in appeal. “I’m the man who never gave up on his search for you. I always believed you were alive.”

Which was either charming or creepy, depending on your point of view.

She looked at Kennedy, at his businesslike demeanor interrupted by that one strand of dark hair that hung carelessly over his forehead, and those brilliant, persuasive eyes.

So … a vote for charming. “No matter.” She spoke to herself as much as him. “It doesn’t follow that within two minutes of our first meeting, you get to put your tongue down my throat.” She retreated toward the entry, the front door, and an escape route in case this guy turned out to be a rapist or a nut case.

Or … a man who thought she could be controlled through seduction.

Yeah. That had to be his scheme. Gain control by using her loneliness against her. “Do you try to sleep with every woman who sends you a drawing?”

“No. Only you.”

She bet he had a beautiful singing voice, all deep and baritone. “Well … well, we’re not lovers.”

“You liked my kiss.”

He made her knees shake, and she leaned her hip against the side table. “That doesn’t mean I’ll sleep with every guy who grabs at me.”

“I know that.”

But she didn’t trust him. She already knew when he chose, he moved quickly. “How do you know so much?”

“For the past year, I have stared at your picture every day and every night. I’ve read your e-mails, your work notes, your texts. I know who you slept with, who you didn’t, why you broke it off with your fiancés. Although you didn’t attend your father’s funeral, I suspect that his death broke your heart and your spirit.”

She expected him to research her, yes, but not like this. Not so that he could poke his finger at her emotions. “How dare you presume—”

Kennedy watched her; his blue eyes were brilliant, deep, intense. “I’ve read your high school diary.” He hadn’t moved.

She hadn’t moved. She still leaned against the table. But she felt stalked, trapped by his words, his height, his attitude. “Where did you get my diary?”

“From your mother. I paid her.”

She felt more betrayed by him for destroying her privacy than by her mother for taking the payment. Because she expected nothing different from her mother. “I thought
you
had standards.”

“I couldn’t meet you, yet I knew you the first time I saw your photograph.”

“Then you realize that I know how to be alone.”

“You may know how to be alone.” His voice had that deep, persuasive tone that made her knees buckle. “But you don’t know how to be with me.”

“All I need from you is safety.” Anything else was too dangerous.

“I will give you safety whether or not we have sex. But let me tell you this.” He paced toward her, taking his time, allowing her to flee. Or not.

She did not. Would not.

He said, “There are only two things I don’t know about you—where you’ve been for the past year, and whether or not we will set each other on fire when we have sex. I don’t know if you’re going to ever tell me about your lost year. But I’m betting yes on the second.”

“You’re obsessed.” Which sent a chill through her … and a most inappropriate heat.

“Yes.” He took her hands in his, put them palm to palm, intertwined their fingers in a slow, sensual tease. He leaned close, so close his lips were right above hers; his breath filled her nostrils, and heat rolled off him in waves. “Let me show you what obsession means.”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Summer closed her eyes.

If she took this step, if she let Kennedy McManus make love to her, she would have ceded control to him. She had not come through hell for that.

She opened her eyes. She shook her hands free of his. She pushed him away. This past year had taught her to adapt, to think on her feet. Events did not shape Taylor Summers. She shaped events.

So she clasped him around his ribs and looked into his eyes. In as prosaic a tone as she could manage, she said, “My drawings are on my iPad.”

She saw the flash of some emotion in his eyes. Fury, swiftly subdued? No, more likely irritation that his seduction plan had gone amiss.

“Let me get it.” She retraced her steps back down the corridor, through the laundry room, and out the back door. She unlocked her trunk, got her briefcase and duffel bag, and turned back to the house.

Kennedy stood in the door, his black hair rumpled by her hands. He watched her with the grim expression she had seen in so many of his photos.

“What?” But she knew what. He thought she had run.

He didn’t understand. She was done with running … unless Michael Gracie was chasing her.

She strode steadily back toward the house, toward Kennedy.

He moved aside.

The return to the living room was oppressive and silent.

She put her briefcase on the coffee table, pulled out her iPad, unlocked the hidden files, and passed him the tablet. “Here. Look through my drawings. I’ll go … wash my hands.”

She went back to the guest bathroom and used the facilities and, as she said, she washed her hands. Repeatedly. While staring into the mirror and reminding herself that spontaneous sex was always a disaster. At least … for her it always had been.

But still she wanted. Her body, starved for far too long of all but the most superficial of touches, needed to be held, to feast on passion and get drunk on the taste and the scent and the feel of a man.

Kennedy McManus smelled like memories of innocent love, looked like the stripper at a bachelorette party, and yes, he would be a banquet to the senses.

This stirring in her body was his fault, and she hated him for that.

Thoroughly she dried her hands. She opened the door. She walked back down the hall, stepped into the living room, and—

There he stood, holding the iPad, and gazing at her with narrowed eyes. He turned the tablet toward her. “You expect me to sign a letter of agreement saying I will get you your old life and good reputation back?”

He was so sure of himself, she couldn’t help but mock him. “Can you not do that?”

His eyes kindled with rage. His chest heaved—and by God, she could see enough to know it was a very impressive chest. “Damn you,” he said. “You’ve got me by the balls.”

She didn’t follow at first. Then she understood. “Because
you’re
responsible for letting your nephew get snatched? Yeah. Okay. I didn’t have to try and save him. I could have hidden behind a tree, pretended it had never happened. I could have reported it to the police and been guilty for the rest of my life. So don’t tell me you’re responsible. I made the choice.” Her voice caught. “
I
did.”

“I know that. You
chose
to help my nephew. That’s gold.” He paced toward her, picked up her left hand. He took her little finger between his thumb and forefinger. “And it would appear helping Miles cost you more than even I imagined.”

She extricated her hand from his, and closed her fingers into a fist.

At the time, losing her finger had not felt like a sacrifice. It had felt like survival. But now, she felt almost embarrassed, as if she were trying to guilt him. “I want my life back. I want my reputation back. I want to live without fear. I am charging you for my choice.”

He got in her face, nose to nose, compelling her to believe him. “I will pay.” He plucked a stylus out of his shirt pocket and signed the letter, then placed the iPad on the coffee table. “To the best of my abilities.”