True Bliss (8 page)

"A couple of weeks. I've bought a house in Medina."

Almost all routes to Hole Point ran through Medina. "So we're neighbors." And despite his urgent need to see her again, he'd waited two weeks to come here.

Sebastian's slashing brows drew together. "Five minutes from your gate to mine. That's all hogwash, isn't it? The stuff in the papers? You won't be leading a bunch of bra burners in a revolt against me?"

She picked up a glass, filled it with water from the faucet, and drank. Her thoughts jumbled. Sebastian had never been conniving. He wouldn't show up here, kiss her silly, then use

her reaction to that kiss to make her back off from throwing any obstacles in his professional path.

He hadn't been conniving? Had he?

She'd never believed he was a rapist, but he hadn't contacted her to deny it—and he'd left town with Crystal, the girl he was reported to have raped and made pregnant.

"Hey, Bliss?" She heard him get up and approach. He set an elbow on the counter beside the sink and looked into her face. "Chilly?" He gave a little laugh.

Through the windows, afternoon sunlight shimmered over Lake Washington. Bliss stared at it. She'd come to love her little estate on the water, her haven with the quiet souls who came to find a peaceful place to work.

"They got it wrong, didn't they? Someone printed your name by mistake because you used to belong to this ball-breakers' group—when you were teaching at the university, maybe?"

Bliss looked at him and felt again the force of disbelief that he was here, that he stood so close he almost touched her. He had touched her. How he'd touched her. He'd kissed her and she'd kissed him back. They'd held each other.

"Bliss, say something." Hardness replaced question in his eyes, in the set of his commanding features. "I can't believe you'd be small-minded enough to let these people use you. Not out of spite, or something."

"You . . . Sebastian, you came here because of a press release, didn't you?"

"I was coming here before I saw the press release."

"Were you?"

"Yes."

"Why should I believe you?"

He stood up sharply. "Because I don't tell lies, dammit."

"Don't you?" Bliss drew herself up, too. "Forgive me if I feel like laughing at that statement."

"I'm damned." He stepped away, shoved his hands in his pockets, turned away, then back again. "I don't know what to

say to you. You are chairing the silly little committee. You are trying to get back at me. Shit!"

Bliss put the glass in the sink.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he said. "I forgot. You don't like bad language, do you?"

"No."

"Forgive me. I'll try to do better."

"I don't like liars or cheats, either."

"God— No one calls me a liar or a cheat."

"Because you're so successful you've been able to buy respectability." She leveled a steady gaze at him. "Have you been able to buy new memories for people, too. Have they all forgotten you raped your wife—before you married her?"

Beneath his tan he paled.

Bliss rubbed her eyes. "You'd better go."

"Amazing," Sebastian said softly. "You've been waiting for an opportunity to say that to me. All this time you've been waiting. And drying up inside while you waited."

The words smarted. Bliss locked her knees and felt her skin turn cold. "Have you finished?"

"Almost. A normal woman would have made a life for herself by now instead of waiting around for an opportunity to strike back for something that happened when she was a kid."

"Are you suggesting you don't think I've had a life without you?"

"Well, have you?"

"My life isn't your business. It might have been once, but not now. You made it clear you didn't want it to be. Please send Bobby in to me."

He hesitated, then she saw him make up his mind. "Okay. Fine."

"We like the gate kept closed. Perhaps you'd take the time to get out of your car and see to that as you leave."

Sebastian opened the door. "I'll do that. Nice to see you again."

"Yes, very nice."

"Bliss"—he paused in the doorway—"I don't advise you to lead an attack on me."

"Oh. Why's that? What would you do, shoot me?"

"Don't say stupid things. I wouldn't harm you physically, but I'd make you look a damn fool in front of all these people who think you're such hot shit."

"So long, Sebastian."

"Lady professor still carrying a torch for childhood sweetheart."

"How . . . Get out!"

"Leading a vendetta against him because she never got over being spurned."

Bliss turned her back on him.

"Jealous because he left town with someone else on the night when he was supposed to take her to Reno to get married. Mad as hell because she thinks he fucked her over—or because he didn't. Sorry about that."

She covered her mouth.

"Don't do it, Chilly. I'll cut you to ribbons."

"Oh, no you won't." She rounded on him, her heart pounding. "I'm going to do the cutting. The shredding. With the help of my committee."

Four

He could get used to this. Oh, yes, this was the life Ron York had been born for. He stood on the terrace of good old Sebastian's newly acquired lakefront home and sipped a vodka martini.

Stretched on a chaise beside the pool, wearing a sleek swimsuit in her signature color—red, Maryan sighted Ron and waved.

He waved back. She was okay. Bearable. And she was his ticket to all this. In the two years since she'd picked him up in a Greenwich Village club, he'd learned a great deal. Most importantly, he'd learned he was never going back to being blond, blue-eyed Ronnie who earned his pretties as a fat man's butt boy.

The paper-thin platinum Piaget on his left wrist told him it was almost four. Sun polished the waters of Lake Washington and turned the surface of Sebastian's oval pool a blinding shade of turquoise.

"Ronnie! Ronnie, where's my drinkie?"

She drank too much, but that made it easier for him. Maryan was as sexually demanding drunk as sober, but she tired faster.

"Ronnie?" Her voice grew petulant.

He raised his own glass and called, "Just a minute, luv. I'll be right there," before going back into the plant-filled conservatory where a wet bar nestled in an alcove. Three cubes of ice and gin to the rim. That ought to see her on the way to nighty-night land in no time. At least he could hope. There was always the danger that he'd let her get too drunk before she got her jollies. Maryan would fuck till she got it off, even if they were

both in pain by that time. The secret was to cut off the booze before she was entirely numb, stick it to her like a steam hammer, then top her off with an industrial-strength nightcap.

Ron sighed and looked at himself in the mirror behind the bar. Not a millimeter of fat anywhere. And he looked great in these surroundings, great against the trappings of wealth.

Sebastian had fantastic taste.

And Ron had figured out what everyone else seemed to have missed; Sebastian Plato spent most of his spare time alone and his name hadn't been linked to a woman's for years, not seriously.

Ron smiled as he stepped gingerly over rough granite tiles between the terrace and poolside. The tiles were hot on the soles of his bare feet. There were other things around here that might be hot. Deliciously hot. Like cool, distant, powerful Sebastian, on a long, warm night. Ron shivered at the thought.

"What kept you?" Mary an asked when he sat on a chaise beside hers and held out the gin. Her voice was already slurred from the three gins she'd knocked back since they arrived. "I missed you, Ronnie." She dipped a forefinger in her gin, sucked it, and tucked the finger inside the crotch of his yellow bikini swimsuit.

"Careful, luv." Ron hardened despite himself. Another of his talents—he knew what he preferred, but he was always ready for sex, however it came.

Maryan wriggled her finger.

Ron almost dropped his glass. "Maryan! We wouldn't want to shock your brother's housekeeper."

Maryan blinked very slowly. "Don't give a flying fuck what his housekeeper thinks. Anyway, haven't seen the woman. I'm not even sure she's here. Mmm, Ronnie, you are such a big boy." She bared her gritted teeth and pulled him free of the trunks.

"Luvvie!" Ron giggled and glanced over his shoulder at the house. "Maybe we should go in and take a nap." Maybe they should go in and she should take a nap. The sooner he got her naked and did whatever she decided she wanted this time, the sooner she'd be snoring and he'd be free for a few hours.

Maryan squeezed. She held her tongue between her teeth and squeezed hard. "I want to do it out here. Let the old bag watch if she's around. Do her good. Maybe she'll give her husband a treat later. Take off your suit."

"God." At least there were no other houses close enough to overlook them. "What if Sebastian comes back?"

"She won't say anything to him. He always chooses staff with no ears or eyes. Likes his privacy."

Ron didn't have to be told that. "I meant, what if Sebastian sees us? ... Well, you know?" Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad idea. A better idea might be to get rid of Maryan and do a little skinny dipping in the pool until big, bad Sebastian showed up.

"Stand up, Ron."

He looked at her, and down at himself. "I can t, luwie."

"Stand up."

He felt flushed. "No, Maryan. Give me that towel. Come on, let's go inside."

She increased the pressure on his prick. "Do as I tell you, there's a good boy. Maryan makes sure you have a lovely life, doesn't she? Always? And she doesn't ask much in return. But she does like her few little pleasures."

What the hell—let 'em all look. Ron set down his drink. He stood up and Maryan pulled on his most sensitive flesh until she could study it from below with smiling relish.

"I'm a con . . ." She paused and swallowed from her glass. "A connoisseur. I pick these flawlessly." She ran her thumb over the tip of his penis. Her throaty chuckle became a gurgle of glee. She smacked his flank and watched him spring even harder.

"We need to talk," he told her, using another little trick: dis-association. "You were right when you said we'd have our work cut out here if we couldn't get Sebastian to leave quickly. From what I saw today—and from this place—I'd say he's digging in pretty good."

"Not now." Maryan slapped him again.

Ron flinched. "Inside, my love." Even a man of his single-minded powers was human. "I've been thinking. We've got to

be very careful to protect your interests." To protect his own interests.

"Mmm. You do a wonderful job of dealing with my interests."

"I read that local newspaper article. That's the woman, isn't it? The one heading the damned committee against us. That's the woman you think he may have come here to pick up with again?"

"Fuck me, Ronnie?" She plucked at red lace ribbon that closed her suit between her breasts.

"Concentrate. We've got a lot riding on this. Bliss her name is. Some professor? God, think of it." He'd thought about it and decided he recognized one of his own. Sebastian was bisexual. But a confused bisexual rather than sure of himself like Ron was. That could be changed, but if Sebastian started playing around with some old girlfriend who made him feel guilty, Ron's plans might be in danger. That wasn't going to be allowed to happen.

"Ronnie!" Maryan wailed. "You're ignoring me."

"I'm not ignoring you. I want you to ... I want to help you figure out a way to make sure Sebastian doesn't do anything we'd regret."

Maryan's next stinging blow snapped Ron's control. He reached for her glass but she clung to it, laughing and slopping gin. When he made a grab for the drink, she dunked her fingers in it and rubbed the cold booze over his penis.

He yelled and started to shrivel, and he grasped both of her wrists.

"Oooh!" Maryan shrieked. "So forceful. I can't have you ruining your big, strong image with that little apology for a cock, can I. We wouldn't want people talking about you being a friggin' little freak."

"That's enough." He began to yank her to her feet.

Her mouth, closing over him, made him forget what he needed to do.

Five

His dear sister was giving her lover a blow job.

By Sebastian's pool.

In broad daylight, in full view of anyone who happened to stroll by.

He threw the envelope on his bed and turned his back on the vision of Maryan staggering while she and Ronnie-baby helped her out of her swimsuit.

He should be grateful the housekeeper didn't live in and that he'd told her he wouldn't be eating dinner at home. As long as none of the gardeners or the pool crew turned up, the show outside would play to an empty house—an all but empty house.

But he didn't like it. He didn't like it one damn bit and he was going to kick Ron's ass out of town and drag Maryan off to some upscale drying-out tank.

"Sebastian! Sebastian, are you here?" Zoya's distinctive tones sounded from the foyer downstairs.

Grabbing up the shoe he'd already shed, he ran onto the open upstairs balcony, took the stairs two at a time, and skidded to a halt in front of his open-mouthed Head of Operations for Raptor Vision.

"Hi, Zoya. I thought you had dinner plans."

"I did." She frowned at him. "That was before I got a call from some reporter on a fact-finding mission."

Sebastian glanced toward the open-sided sitting room. A glass wall separated it from the conservatory. The downward

angle toward the pool, together with the screening plants in the conservatory, cut off any view of the coupling couple.

"This has been a hell of a day, Sebby."

"Mm." He calculated what it would take to get Zoya out of the house without making her suspicious. "What did you say?"

"I said, this has been a hell of a day."

"Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I want you to go home, make yourself a long, cold drink, and put your feet up. Don't give the job another thought till tomorrow." Smiling at her, he took her elbow and started toward the still-open front doors.

Zoya went several steps before planting her elegant feet. "I came to talk to you."