Chapter 6
From: witchywoman Bware: hi is anybody out there Miles checked the message he’d sent out, in the dialog box in the chat room. No bites yet. He turned to his other computers. He was futzing around in several chat rooms, using different characters and e-mail idents. Nobody interesting had come by, but it was early yet.
He still marveled that he could dick around in cyberspace and actually get paid for it. He was racking up the billable hours as a cyber-consultant in Con’s Geek Eater investigation, pimping his various fantasy personas in chat rooms where nerds and geeks hung out.
Mina, aka witchywoman Bware, was his most succesful lure so far. She got lots of attention. He was hoping for a hit from Mindmeld tonight. He’d been the only one who’d wheedled Mina into a private u2u room and asked about her childhood, under the guise of wanting to know her better. Miles had spoon fed him Mina’s hard luck story in a self-deprecating tone that he was proud of; junkie mom, deadbeat dad, raised by grandma, but Gran was dead, sniff sniff…going to college because of Gran’s inheritance…etc, etc. He might actually turn out to be good at this social engineering stuff. And Mindmeld, who had confessed that his name was Jared, seemed to have a hidden agenda.
Miles could smell it. Like a fart in a car.
He turned away from the monitors, with their soothing blue glow. It was oddly depressing, being in his basement lair again. The McCloud brothers had kicked his ass until he rented a place in Seattle, just a room over someone’s garage, but it was good to be independent. Still, it made no sense to rent another room in Endicott Falls for two months while his folks’ basement stood empty. He didn’t have money to burn.
The problem was, the place reminded him way too much of his longtime crush on she-who-must-not-be-named. He’d spent years in this hole, listening to tapes of her playing her sax. Watching video montages of her. Wanking off to wishful, erotic scenarios where Cindy had an epiphany from God, and started seeing him as something other than a convenient adjunct brain. An external hard drive she could program to do her coursework while she went out partying with other guys. And he shouldn’t even go there. God knows, enough guys had already been there before him. A path had been blazed, by God.
A flash on the screen. A response to his query. He shot across the room on the rattling swivel chair. Excellent. Mindmeld himself.
R U still there witchywoman Bware
He dove for the keyboard, typed. Yes hi how R U
Good tnx did U like my abstract
Jared had sent Mina an abstract he’d written on using roex filters to represent the magnitude response of auditory filters. Miles intuited that it was either a love offering or a sort of test, so he’d ripped the sucker apart. He grabbed his notes, and began to type. Yesbut I have problems wt roex filters—fits 2 notched-noise masking data R unstable unless filter is reduced 2 a physically unrealizable form & there’s no time domain version of roex (p,w,t,) 2 support…
His hands clattered away. His reasoning was that if Jared was a garden variety boy dweeb trolling for sex and validation, he would be scared away by a girl who showed him up, and Miles wouldn’t waste any more time on him. But if Jared was the Geek Eater, he would lick his slobbering lips and make another move. And Miles might start earning the money Connor was paying him. He wanted some results.
It was embarrassing, but he felt a constant need to prove himself to those McCloud guys. They were so good at every freaking thing they did. Hanging out with them was a sure recipe for a bitching inferiority complex. He gritted his teeth and coped, partly because he wanted to learn the crazy stuff they knew. Mostly because he really liked them.
Still. Every one of those guys, Seth included, was a super-solvent, successful sex god and ninja maniac. Fucking unreal. It would give him a lot of satisfaction to make a contribution to Con’s investigation. Helping nail the Geek Eater would be a coup. A big self-esteem fluffer.
“Hi, Miles.”
The soft voice from behind him made him levitate about five inches out of his chair. He spun around, heart pounding. Geek Eater, Jared, Mina, McClouds, utterly wiped out of his mind in an instant.
“Fuck,” he gasped out. “Cindy? What are you doing here?”
Cindy stood there, smiling uncertainly, backlit by the light that spilled down the stairs from the kitchen, front lit by the eerie blue glow of the computers. She was wearing a lace-up red thing that clearly demonstrated that the wearer had no need for a bra.
“Your mom told me you were down here,” she said. “Erin told me about the car bomb, and the cops, and Sean, all that stuff. Totally wild.”
“Yeah.” His voice was thick. He coughed. “It was, uh, intense.”
Cindy rolled her eyes. “Those McCloud guys can’t do the simplest thing without it turning into a life or death drama.”
Miles let out a noncommittal grunt.
Cindy perched her taut ass on the edge of his worktable. Faded jeans showed off her smooth, tanned belly. A silver ring gleamed in her navel. If she turned around, the waistband would be just low enough to show off the Celtic knotwork tattoo. It pointed at the crack of those pert buttocks. As if any more attention needed to be drawn to them. He shifted in his chair. Crossed his legs, to hide his inevitable reaction.
“You lost the specs,” she commented. “Are you using contacts?”
“Nah. Got laser surgery a few months ago.”
“Oh. Wow.” Cindy twisted her hands together, at a loss. She looked different. Her face was spattered with freckles, hair yanked into a ponytail. Her eyes looked shadowed. Too much partying, probably. No makeup. She was ten times cuter without all that crap on her face.
“So?” she said brightly, throwing up her hands. “What’s up? What are you doing up here? I thought you were sick of this town.”
“I thought you already knew everything worth knowing.”
“Oh, come on, Miles,” she said softly. “Don’t.”
He shrugged, with bad grace. “I’m teaching a karate class at the dojo up near the Arts Center,” he said.
“Oh!” Her eyes widened, impressed. “That’s cool!”
“And I’m doing some sound gigs. Got one tonight for the Howling Furballs, up at the Rock Bottom,” he went on grimly.
“Yeah? I know those guys. Maybe I’ll come. And oh. The Rumors have a gig next week, and our sound guy just bagged. Could you—”
“No,” he said curtly. “I don’t want to do sound for the Rumors.”
He’d done free sound for years for the Vicious Rumors, the band in which Cindy played sax. Just to stare at her, to be near her. Chump.
Cindy wrapped her arms across her belly, a thing she did when she was tense. “OK. Uh…maybe I’d better not see if I can make it to the Furballs’s gig tonight, then.”
She waited for him to tell her to please, please come. He sat like a lump, and let her wait. Let her see how it felt. He’d waited for years.
“OK,” she said. “I have a good imagination. I’ll just pretend that we’re having a polite conversation, being as how we’ve been friends for years. Let’s see. You would start with, hey, Cin, great to see you, how’s life? Oh, yeah, Miles. Same old same old. Band camp is crazy, plus I’m working at the Coffee Shack in my free time, so if you get the urge for a Mexican Iced Mocha, come on down, and I’ll frappé one up for free. For sure, Cin, you bet I’ll be there for that iced mocha, with bells on. Great, Miles, I’ll be waiting for ya. Other than that, just gigs with the Rumors, pick-up bands, weddings. And I’m getting my own place, in September.”
“Yeah?” He broke his own vow of silence. “Who’s the lucky guy?”
Cindy touched her tongue to her upper lip, a trick that drove him crazy with lust. “Um…there’s no guy. I’m not seeing anybody.”
“Wow, sounds like a state of emergency,” he muttered sourly.
“It’s a group house. With Melissa and Trish. In Greenwood.”
“And your mom can manage her mortgage plus your rent?”
Cindy looked hurt. “Nobody’s going to pay my rent. What do you think I’m doing, busting my ass with three million jobs? Jeez, Miles.”
“I just figured you’d hook up with some guy with a Maserati and a baggie full of coke, and be his happy little concubine,” Miles said.
Splotches of color bloomed on Cindy’s face. “Ouch,” she whispered. “That was really cold and nasty.”
That was Miles Davenport. Cold as an iceberg. Nasty as a pile of fresh dogshit. He sat there, glaring, and didn’t take it back.
“You’re still mad about what happened at Erin’s wedding?” Cindy’s voice was tight. “It’s been a whole year! Forgive me already!”
“I’m not mad,” Miles lied. “I’m just not particularly interested. And if you don’t mind, I’m working down here, not just dicking around.”
She brushed angry tears out of her eyes with the backs of her hands, and turned to go. “Fine,” she muttered. “Fuck you, too, Miles.”
He felt like shit for making her cry. “Cin,” he called out. “Stop.”
She stopped at the door. “What?” Her voice was small and hurt.
“What do you want?” he asked wearily. “Do you need to pass an exam? Do you need somebody to help you move? What the hell is it?”
She sniffed. “I don’t want any favors. I just miss shooting the shit. Watching Battlestar Galactica with you. Can’t we just be friends again?”
Miles swallowed. Yeah, sure, she missed being adored by her panting, drooling personal slave. Of course she missed it. So did he.
But he couldn’t afford to adore Cindy. It tore him to pieces.
“I’ll burn you some copies of my DVDs. I’m too busy to lie around watching the tube, Cin. I have a life.” He rummaged through the disc tower. “Battlestar Galactica? You want Firefly, too? I have the movie.”
Cindy’s face contracted. “That’s not the point. You stupid dork.”
Miles threw up his hands. “Then I don’t know how to help you.” She was so fucking pretty, her eyelashes glittering with tears.
She blinked at the screen. “Who are you chatting with?”
“Oh, that.” He turned to look, and grimaced in dismay. guess ur busy, bye 4 now, Jared had written.
“Oh, shit,” he moaned. “I lost him. Damn!”
“Lost who?” Cindy’s wet eyes brightened with curiosity.
“It’s a work thing. For Connor. I’m not supposed to talk about it.”
“Aw, shut up.” Cindy peered at the monitor. “The gain and asymmetry of a parallel compressive gammachirp filter is comparable to…jeez, Miles, what does Con have to do with this techno stuff?”
“Nothing. There’s this predator who’s killing science geeks,” he admitted. “I’m creating characters with profiles similar to his victims. Then I put them out there in cyberspace, and hope he’ll hit on me.”
“Brr.” She squinted as she read the screen. “WitchywomanBware? You mean, you’re a girl? Oh, Miles. That’s, like, kinky.”
His face got hot. “It’s just the way I work. This guy Jared really likes Mina. I was hoping he’d make a move, but he’s wandered off.”
“Sorry.” Cindy shot him a sidewise glance, and read. “Chatter personal profile: Mina. Where’d you come up with that?”
“Dracula. We’re hunting a vampire. Not the sexy TV kind. The kind who sucks out your blood and kicks your corpse out of its way.”
Cindy shuddered. “Creepy. That is so negative.”
“Dealing with serial murderers will do that to you,” Miles said loftily. “Get out of my dungeon, if I’m too creepy for you.”
Cindy leaned closer to read the box headed Physical Description. “Height, five feet, four inches,” she murmured. “110—115 pounds. Eyes, dark brown. Hair, long, dark. Bra cup size?” Miles had duly filled in B-cup. Under Distinguishing Characteristics, he’d typed, pierced navel.”
“Hmm,” she murmured. “So, um…basically, you told this guy that you were me.”
Miles’s rolling chair shot back and hit the table behind him with a crash. Cindy jumped back, eyes big. “That’s the thing about you that bugs the shit out of me, Cin,” he snarled. “You think it’s all about you. It’s not, OK? So take your perky tattooed ass and get it out of my face.”
Cindy squeaked, and fled.
Miles dropped his head onto the keyboard and swore, the most vicious, horrible epithets he could come up with.
It didn’t help worth dick.
“Change your name? Run away? You’re out of your mind! You’re giving in already? Where is your backbone? Where is your pride?”
Her mother’s ringing tone made Liv’s head throb. Reasoning with Amelia Endicott was difficult under the best of circumstances, and these were far from the best. “Pride isn’t the issue,” she said. “I just—”
“An Endicott does not hide and cower and skulk! You should be proud! Grateful for the sacrifices your family has made so that you could have all these privileges! Go look at the statue of Augustus Endicott in front of the library, and reflect upon all that he did for you!”
Yeah, giving T-Rex a perfect opportunity to blow her head off with a sniper rifle, at his leisure. Liv squeezed her reddened eyes shut to block out her mother’s outraged countenance. Right now, cowering and skulking sounded very good to her. Very calm and restful.
“Sure I’m proud of being an Endicott, Mother,” she said wearily. “But this guy is trying to kill me. I don’t want to be dead. That’s all.”
“Stop being overdramatic,” Amelia Endicott snapped. “Are you insinuating that I don’t care about your safety? I’ve tried your whole life to help you make all the right choices, and have you ever listened?”
Liv forced herself to exhale, and slowly inhaled again. “This is not my fault.” The words fell one at a time from her lips, like little rocks.
“Saying ‘it’s not my fault’ will get you nowhere. Just look at yourself!” Her mother gestured at the mirror on the dining room wall.
Liv looked, and wished she hadn’t. She was wild-haired, holloweyed, white-lipped, grimy. A chimney sweep from a Dickens novel, but for her out-of-control bosom. Just one more of the many things that offended Amelia Endicott. She’d tried for years to convince her daughter to get those indecorously bouncy boobs surgically reduced. Ouch. Not.
Her father gave her an uneasy look. “Honey, maybe you should ease off,” he murmured, in a wheedling tone. “It’s been quite a day.”
“All I want is what’s best for her.” Amelia’s voice quivered on the edge of tears. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“I know that.” Liv fought off the weariness that rolled over her like a tank whenever she argued with her mother. “The policewoman told me that changing my name and starting over is an option to consider when you’re dealing with a dangerous—”
“Not an option,” Amelia said crisply. “Not for you. Other familes prominent in politics or business make high security part of their lifestyle. They simply adjust their attitude and expectations!”
Liv sighed. “But I—”
“Your father and I are willing to invest in round-the-clock protection so that you can live your normal life as an Endicott!”
Liv tried again. “But I don’t—”
“I don’t want to hear that negative attitude,” her mother warned. “You’ll have to give up this whim of running a bookstore, of course. Far too much exposure. The same goes with library work. I can’t fathom why you ever wanted to do anything so dusty and fusty in the first place, but never mind. Let it go, and move on, honey!”
“But I’m not fit for anything else,” Liv protested. “All my training and education is in literature and library science.”
“You can do what I’ve been trying to persuade you to do since you were in college,” her mother announced triumphantly. “You can go into the advertising department of ECE! Any location you like, darling. Seattle, Olympia, San Francisco, Portland, Spokane. Location is virtual these days. You could work from home, with this new video conferencing technology. You’re so creative and imaginative, Livvy. You were wasted as a librarian, or a shopkeeper, for God’s sake. In fact, this whole thing might just end up being a blessing in disguise.”
Hah. Liv gritted her teeth. “I wouldn’t be any good at—”
“Nonsense. You’d be brilliant. And the best thing about it is that anywhere you worked, you’d be guarded by ECE corporate security! Imagine what a load off our minds, honey! Knowing that every day, you’re as safe as if you’re locked in a bank vault!”
Liv winced. “I’d go bonkers if I worked for ECE.”
“Stop doubting yourself, Livvy! We’ve always believed in you!”
Believed in who? Whoever this person was that Amelia Endicott so ardently believed in was light years away from the daughter she actually had. But there was no point in trying to make her understand.
“We’ll find a high security condo, wherever you decide to settle,” her mother went on. “You’ll have to give up all that hiking and running, but you can work out indoors. There’s always grocery delivery…”
Her mother’s babble faded into a faraway hum in Liv’s ears, as if she were alone beneath a glass bell. She thought of her mother’s collection of antique dolls in the parlor of her Seattle town house. Each stood alone, stiffly poised, a perfect ceramic smile on each painted face.
Pretty. Content with their lot. Happy to please. Compliant.
It was so painful, disappointing her mother for the umpteenth time. Forever rowing against such a powerful current wore her out, but this current was pulling her towards a deadly waterfall.
She thought of the life in store for her. No more wandering on hiking trails, staring at the mountains. No more walking on fog-bound beaches, watching the surf wash away the tracks of the seagulls. No more cuddling at night in her armchair in the ramshackle house in the pines, reading fantasy and sci-fi and romance novels. No more morning jogs, watching the sunrise. No more poring over book catalogs as she decided what to stock. No more ripping opening boxes of shiny books, leafing through crisp pages, making notes of what to read later. No more reading to starry-eyed little kids at Story Hour.
Nope. She’d be a lonesome rat in a cage in an antiseptic condo. Running on a treadmill in a basement room. Crammed into hose, heels, and a power suit. Ferried back and forth in a car service to a job that bored her silly. Locked in a bank vault. She shuddered with inner cold.
“…have the courtesy to concentrate on what I’m saying, Livvy! Didn’t you hear me at all?”
“Sorry,” she murmured. “I’m kind of wiped out.”
“Concentrate,” her mother snapped. “Your father and I have decided that you and Blair should announce your engagement.”
That snapped her right to attention. She stared at them wildly. “What engagement? What on earth are you talking about?”
“I hate to rush you, Liv.” Blair’s voice was earnest. “I know you want to wait until you’re sure, and I respect that. But we don’t have to get married right away. It’s just theater.” He grabbed her hand and dropped a gallant kiss on the back of it. “For now,” he added coyly.
“You have to move fast, now that McCloud is showing his hand,” her mother said. “We’ll work out the details later.”
She blinked “What hand? What does Sean have to do with this?”
Blair and her mother exchanged glances. “You mean the possibility hasn’t even crossed your mind?” Her mother’s voice was pitying. “That we’ve identified your stalker? Liv. Honey. Wake up.”
Liv was so startled, she let out a burst of laughter, which turned quickly into a phlegmy coughing fit. “You think that Sean is the stalker?” she gasped out finally. “But that’s totally ridiculous!”
Blair’s face hardened into that pompous, judgmental mask that had always stopped her short whenever she’d been in danger of sliding down the slippery slope into being his fiancée. “There are precedents,” he said stiffly. “His father was severely mentally ill. He’s trained in the use of explosives. He’s worked as a mercenary. His twin committed suicide. He’s unstable. I went to school with him, Liv. I know what he’s capable of. He set off a bomb in the teachers’ bathroom in the sixth grade. He had no concept of civilized behavior. He was constantly fighting, constantly mouthing off. The teachers were desperate.”
“Uh, Blair? Small detail. He was twelve.” She couldn’t keep the irony out of her voice, even though she knew she would pay for it.
Right on cue, her mother let out a distressed huffing sound. “Here we go again. Defending him again, just like old times. You never learn.”
“Reality check, people,” Liv announced, looking around at each of them in turn. “Sean McCloud saved my life today. Yours, too, Blair.”
Her father leaned over, groaning, and clutched his chest. Amelia leaped to his side in an instant, making anxious, solicitous sounds.
Liv had seen the melodrama before, so she turned back to Blair. “I cannot believe that Sean would ever do that to me.”
“Of course not,” Blair said. “You think the best of people. That’s very well and good, in normal life, but this is not normal life. Sean McCloud is strange. His family is strange. What’s happening to you is strange. Don’t you feel how the strangeness matches up, like a puzzle?”
Nope. Sure didn’t. She shook her head. “I don’t get your reasoning, Blair. Why did he stop us from getting into the car?”
“Because he wanted to impress you. He wanted the glory of saving you. He wanted you to be grateful to him. He staged the whole thing to make you feel vulnerable. Don’t you see? It’s so obvious.”
There was no point in telling the truth to Blair when he had that look on his face. Sean McCloud did not have to throw himself in front of a bomb to impress her. All he had to do was crook his finger and smile.
Barely that. He could just be his own charismatic self. Watch the women drop like flies. Herself being the first to hit the pavement.
Whoever T-Rex was, he had an rotting dead spot inside him. In her recent crash course on arsonists, assassins, serial killers and rapists, she’d learned that they were usually loners, failures. Men with no interpersonal skills, no talent at relating with women.
Sean McCloud had no problems relating to women. He had to beat them away from himself to breathe. As for his interpersonal skills, well. The man was capable of talking her into multiple orgasms on the phone. Weird though he might be, there was nothing dead about him.
And since none of these reflections could be profitably shared with the present company, she changed the subject. “Why didn’t anybody tell me about Kev McCloud committing suicide?” she asked.
Blair and her parents exchanged uneasy glances.
“It didn’t seem relevant, dear,” her mother said.
Liv stared at her. “He was my friend,” she said quietly.
“Friend, my foot,” Amelia said tartly. “He was deranged, and probably dangerous. It’s tragic that he didn’t get the help he needed in time, and I’m very sorry for his family, but you were my first concern, honey, not him. You needed to make a clean break, and telling you hard-luck stories about those unfortunate McCloud boys would have just made things more difficult and confusing for you.”
Liv twined her fingers together. Her hands were cold and clammy, white beneath the grime. Her eyes stung with tears. Maybe her mother was right, but that didn’t make it easier to swallow.
The last time she’d seen Kev McCloud, he’d been sweat-soaked, wild-eyed, raving about people who were trying to kill him. She’d had no idea at the time that he was mentally ill. He’d scared her out of her wits when he scribbled down that coded note, shoved his sketchbook into her hand, and told her to take it to Sean and run, or they’d kill her, too.
She’d run, all right. He’d been pretty damned convincing.
Poor Kevin. He’d been so sweet. Funny and brilliant. Sean had been immensely proud of his brother’s genius, his accomplishments.
It broke her heart. And speaking of heartbreak, that had been the same day as that horrible five minute conversation with Sean at the jail. The five minutes that had ended her innocence and split her life in half.
She stared down at her hands, realizing how badly she stank of smoke. She got up, knees wobbling. “I’m going to take a shower.”
“Excellent idea,” Amelia said. “You just relax. We’ll take care of all the details. Shall I have Pamela bring you up a sandwich?”
Her stomach clenched unpleasantly at the thought of food.
“Nothing,” she said. “Thanks. ’Night.”
She hauled herself up the stairs, and made her way to the bedroom. She stumbled, but her exhaustion had a jittery, excited edge.
Because Sean had flirted with her? Please. He flirted with every woman he saw. He was programmed that way. It was nothing personal.
Even so, thinking about Sean was so much more fizzy and fun than thinking about the tar pit of her family life, or the ruins of her bookstore. Or T-Rex, out in the dark somewhere, thinking about her.
She shuddered. T-Rex’s attention felt like a foul lake of toxic waste, lapping up against her consciousness. The only thing that helped was the foolish fancy that Sean McCloud was thinking about her, too.
That evened out the score. Just enough so that she could breathe.
It was just a mind game, of course. Sean didn’t care about her, she knew that. But who cared? If the trick worked, she would use it.
She stumbled in the dark room, tripping over her suitcase, but hesitated before flipping on the bedside light. She had no desire to announce to any malevolent presence outside that someone was in the bedroom. She flipped on the light in the internal connecting bathroom and left the door a few inches open. A fine sliver of light was enough.
She perched on the bed, and doubled over, pressing her face against those ugly, baggy pajama pants. How pathetically lame, that she hadn’t grown out of this lingering obsession. After thousands of dollars’ worth of head shrinkage, she and her therapist had concluded that she badly needed to transgress against her family’s control. Well and good. She still needed to transgress, evidently.
What better way to distract herself from all this crap than to drag out her fantasy man, with his gorgeous body, his warm lips, his clever hands? Watch Liv forget the past, her pride, her own goddamn name.
It was ironic. Their affair had lasted one month. They’d never even had sex. He’d just worked her into a hot, sweaty fever on the phone, telling her how it would be when they finally did the deed. What he would do with his hands, his tongue. And all the rest of his manly stuff.
Her on her bed, beet red and speechless with longing. Him, slouched in the phone booth, slipping in quarter after quarter so he could keep on stroking her, touching her. Torturing her with words.
In the hindsight of sexual experience, she knew how improbable his promises were. They’d done nothing but spoil her for the real thing.
She’d been almost eighteen that summer. She hadn’t known anyone her own age in town, after being shuffled from one elite private school to another. She was shy, withdrawn. The only constant in her life were books. They had been her refuge—until she met Sean.
It started with that summer school course. She’d gotten a C+ in chemistry her senior year, trashing her perfect four point average. Her mother’s response had been to bully the school into letting Liv retake a summer school equivalent with the hopes of adjusting her grade.
It was a waste of time, since she was already accepted into the college she wanted, and had no further interest in chemistry. But no. That C+ was a moral failing, to be corrected by wholesome discipline.
Her mother never imagined what kind of trouble was going to saunter into Schaeffer Auditorium. So much for wholesome discipline.
The lecture hall had been nearly empty. Most of the students were swimming at the Falls. Liv had been there, though, dutifully scribbling notes. It was surprisingly interesting. The grad student lecturing was great. Kev McCloud was his name, a tall, skinny guy with blond hair that stuck out all over his head. When he talked about chemistry, his eyes lit up like green flashlights. That enthusiasm was contagious.
Then the door to the hall creaked open. She turned to look, and bye bye, carbon structures. That was the last note she ever took.
The guy in the doorway looked as out of place as a wild panther. Luxurious blond hair. Sleeves ripped off a denim work shirt, showing off thick, ropy arms, broad shoulders. The lecturer, who she learned later was his twin, said “Don’t come to my class late, you furry little punk.”
Shocked murmurs and giggles swept the room. The pantherlike apparition was unfazed. “Lighten up, you tight-assed geek,” he replied.
The guy lecturing rolled his eyes and launched back into his lecture. The panther turned, scanned the hall. His eyes lit on her.
She looked down, face hot, heart tripping, as he paced to the back of the auditorium. He found her aisle and began slithering towards her between rows of seats. She was hiding in the back behind her hair, the hall was nearly empty, and he was coming to sit with her. She’d entered a parallel universe. The sky had fallen. Time ran backwards. Pigs flew.
“Is this chair free?” His voice had been so low and soft.
This one, plus ninety others exactly like it is what she should have said, to spare herself a decade and a half of obsession and regret. But she hadn’t.
She’d jerked her head yes. Sealed her own fate.
His body lowered itself with sinuous, catlike grace into the chair. His shoulders were so broad, he exceeded the space alotted to him.
His bare arm touched her own. Oh. He was so…so hot.
His arm was thick with sinewy muscles, glinting with sun-bleached hair. She was frantically conscious of that scorching contact between his arm and hers. It was connected to every nerve in her body.
He smelled like herbal shampoo. His hands, resting on jeans-clad thighs, were long and battered, covered with scratches, ink stains.
Things like this never happened to her. She let her hair fall across her face and vibrated with emotion, studying whatever she could without turning her head. The holes in his jeans, the split tops of his boots, mended with silver duct tape. The class ended. People rustled and murmured. It made no sense that such a gorgeous guy should single her out. There had to be a punch line. She braced herself for it.
Then he brushed her hair to one side and looked behind it.
She made a squeaking sound that only a dog could hear. Every strand of her hair transformed into an exquisitely receptive sensory organ. Hot-cool ripples of excitement chased themselves over her skin.
He looked into her face, his eyes full of intense curiosity. She was immobile, open-mouthed. Vibrating. Seconds passed.
“Wow,” he whispered.
And that was all it took. She was his. Heart and soul. Lost.
Liv dashed the tears out of her eyes and heaved herself up off the bed. She tossed her smoky, nasty clothes into a pile and plucked her cream silk robe out of her suitcase with the tips of her fingers, hoping not to smudge it. Which reminded her of the greasy handprint on Sean’s T-shirt.
Of course. True to form. Everything referred right back to Sean, in an endless, obsessive feedback loop. Seeing him had brought back so vividly the way he’d made her feel that summer. Strong and connected, so aware of the grace around her. Certain that all her dreams could come true, because Sean’s very existence was proof of that.
How unbelievably innocent she’d been. How stupid.
The closest she’d come to that feeling, post-Sean, was when she finally decided to open her bookstore. Well, hell. So much for that. Maybe it was just a mirage. An ephemeral cocktail of endorphins.
She stared at her pale, pinched face, the hell-hag snarl of hair. She must have looked like such horrific crap when he’d seen her today.
And it did…not…matter. Goddamnit. Let it go. Forever. Let a hot shower wash it away.
Done, purified, she wrapped a towel around herself, opened the door—and would have screamed, if her lungs had been capable of sucking in air.
Sean McCloud was sitting on her bed.