Chapter 7
Sean winced as the bathroom door slammed shut in his face.
Ouch. On the plus side, it had been a fabulous stroke of luck to catch her in the shower, giving him the perfect opportunity to dust her stuff with beacons. Tonight he was a firm adherent to the classic McCloud school of thought; plant bugs first, apologize later.
He’d been trying to figure out how to spare her the adrenaline rush when she came out of the bathroom, to say nothing of the embarrassment should she prove to be buck naked. Unfortunately, he hadn’t come up with any bright ideas in time. His brains were fried.
The door burst open, and Liv marched out, no longer wrapped in a towel. Her skimpy silk robe was swathed around her so tight, it showed every detail of her taut nipples. Christ, she was pretty. He loved that uppity, chin-in-the-air posture.
“You practically gave me a heart attack.” Her voice was chilly with royal hauteur. “Are you nuts? What are you doing? Did you sneak in?”
He snorted. “Can you see your mother inviting me in?”
“Don’t answer a question with a question. It’s snotty and annoying. What are your intentions, Sean? Should I scream for help?”
“Please don’t.” His smile faltered. “I didn’t know your number. Your parents would have me wrapped in chains and sunk into a lake if they saw me, so sneaking was my only option. Sorry I scared you.”
“How did you get in?” She flounced past him, dug through her suitcase for her comb. “I thought there were policemen outside. I thought they had alarms all over the place. For all the good it’s done me, I might as well be in my own place.”
He shrugged. “The cops didn’t see me. I slithered alongside the hedge, climbed the maple, crawled onto the oak that grows up next to the roof. Then I came in through the attic gable window, which was not alarmed, for your information. Through the crawl space, down through the trapdoor into the laundry room…and here I am. Piece of cake.”
“What enterprise.” She wrenched the comb through her hair.
“I wanted to see how safe you were in the bosom of your family.”
He couldn’t stop staring, though he could tell it made her uncomfortable. She pulled her robe tight, evidently unaware of how the sheer silk showcased her awesome body. Her white throat bobbed.
“So?” she demanded. “What did you conclude? How safe am I?”
“Not at all,” he said flatly. “If T-Rex is a tenth as good as me, he could be sitting right where I am now. I’m betting he is. Somebody should tell your folks this. That somebody probably should not be me.”
“Yes, they’re prejudiced,” she admitted. “But if you hadn’t stopped us from getting into the car, I’d be dead right now.”
“There is that,” Sean agreed. “Did that earn me some points?”
“With who?” She laughed nervously. “With my mother?”
“I don’t give a shit about your mother. I’m only interested in you.”
She fended him off with sarcasm. “I’m so honored,” she said. “But you were way, way down there into the negative numbers, point-wise.”
His mouth twisted in a humorless smile. “Am I up to zero yet?”
She dragged the comb through another tangled lock. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know why you’re here, what you want, why you care. What does zero mean? A blank slate? Like nothing ever happened between us? I’m sorry, but I just can’t pretend that.”
He shook his head slowly. “I wouldn’t want you to.”
They stared at each other until Liv’s eyes dropped. She dug the comb into another thick snarl, her fingers trembling.
So she wasn’t immune. Angry, but not indifferent. Triumph leaped inside him, like flames. He wrenched his gaze away from her face. The wad of condoms was stiff in his jeans pocket, digging into his thigh. T-Rex. He had come here to talk to her about T-Rex.
“So you have no clue who this guy is?” he asked. “Most stalkers are known to their victims.”
“Yes, I know that,” she said shakily. “But I have no idea.”
“No jealous ex-boyfriends?”
She shook her head again. “Not a one.”
“I don’t see how an ex-boyfriend of yours could be anything but jealous, princess.”
The statement hung in the air. She lifted her chin. “Are you jealous, Sean?”
He clenched down on the hot flare of excitement. “What, you mean, I count as an ex-boyfriend? I rate the list? I’m honored.”
Her gaze was penetrating “Don’t wiggle out of the question.”
He took a deep breath, and threw it out there. “Is this a sneaky way of asking if it was me who burned your store and rigged a bomb in your car? Is that what those idiots have been telling you?”
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
“My brothers can vouch for me, if there’s any doubt,” he told her. “But even if I were so jealous I was sick with it, I would never hurt you, Liv. Not you, nor any other innocent person. Never. Is that clear?”
She stared into his eyes, and nodded. “That’s clear,” she said.
“You believe me?” He could hardly believe it.
“I believe you.”
He let out a jerky sigh as something inside him finally relaxed.
“I still want to know how you knew about the bomb,” she said.
Sean stared down at the pink hooked rug. “It’ll sound strange.”
“Try me.”
It took a while to puzzle out the best way to describe something so intangible. “I have…feelings. When I’m in a combat situation, I get warnings. Prickles on my neck, tingling in my balls. I was trained to act on it without thinking. It only works if you trust it blindly.”
Her clear white brow furrowed. “You mean, like, intuition?”
“You could call it that,” he said. “Maybe it comes from growing up with my dad, I imagine. You know about his illness, right?”
“Yes, I heard that he was—”
“A nutcase? Yeah. He saw danger everywhere. Every place was a potential minefield. Anything, a pen, a jar of nails, a carton of milk, could be a bomb in disguise. It was stressful, living with the guy.”
“Oh. Uh, wow,” she murmured. “I see how that might—”
“Skew your perspective, yeah,” he finished, matter-of-factly. “My brothers and I didn’t have any other point of reference. Dad’s bad guys were behind every tree.” He paused, reflecting. “It’s not that far from reality, now that I think about it. Look at T-Rex. You never know.”
She was shaken. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not trying to make you feel bad for me,” he said impatiently. “I’m just showing you my train of reasoning. The letter was part of it. You said T-Rex wanted to make you burn. He used the word ‘explosive.’ That made me think about Kev’s truck exploding, which reminded me of a dream I had. Kev was in it, and he was worried about your car.”
She was oddly gratified by that. “My car? Kev? Really?”
“Yeah. So I saw you and Madden walking towards your car, and it all came together. The note, the explosion, the dream.” He lifted his hands. “There it is. My convoluted mental processes laid bare.”
Her thoughtful eyes stayed on him, making him twitch. “This is the part where you tell me I’m a lunatic, right?”
“I don’t think you’re a lunatic,” she said. “Or if you are, I’m lucky that you are. I’d be blown to bits if you weren’t. So thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me. I didn’t have any choice.”
She looked perplexed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He shrugged. “It means what it means. I’m not playing word games. It’s not something I did voluntarily, so thanks are meaningless.”
Liv wrapped her arms across her tits. He got real busy trying not to think about how soft and lush and hot she must be under there, all perfumed from her various girl goops. He forced his mind back on track.
“I was wondering if you’d let me look at T-Rex’s e-mails,” he said.
Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
The question stymied him for a moment, but there was no reason not to tell her the naked truth. “Because I’m interested. Because I don’t want you to get hurt. Because I’m so curious, it’s fucking killing me.”
“Ah. Well. If you put it that way,” she murmured.
She pulled out a laptop out of her suitcase, sat down and tippety tapped on it. The light from the screen lit up her face, serenely lovely in concentration. She gave him a quick smile, and laid the opened computer on his knees. “I opened the folder. There are nine of them.”
The dates ranged the past three weeks. He clicked and read them in sequence. They were just as she had described. Pseudo-poetic slime. Clingy declarations of obsessive love, minute observations of her physical charms, comments on her clothing and activities. The last three had suggestions that grew more sexually explicit with each succeeding letter. His jaw tightened as he read them. Scumbag asshole.
He nodded, snapped her laptop closed, and handed it back to her.
“So? What do you think?” she asked, setting it aside.
“My first impression is self-conscious, artificial,” he said. “Like he’s following a template.”
“The fire and the bomb weren’t artificial,” she said.
“No, they sure weren’t,” he agreed. “Thanks for letting me look.”
“You barely looked.” Her tone was faintly accusatory. “It took you, what, two minutes?”
“I have a photographic memory,” he told her. “I’ll be reading those e-mails all night long.” His gaze swept the dim room and came to rest on the chemistry textbook on the bedside table. He leafed through it. “Wow, here’s a blast from the past. I thought you hated this thing.”
“I did hate it. I only liked it when your brother was explaining it.”
Sean nodded. “Yeah, Kev was a genius at making that stuff interesting. He got his undergrad degree in two years. Could have done it in less, if he hadn’t had to work nights. He was already working on his thesis when he…” He stopped, swallowed. “Ah, shit. Never mind.”
“You were pretty brilliant at it yourself,” she said, to break the poignant silence. “You didn’t even need the textbook.”
His short laugh hurt his burning throat. “Son of a bitch cost eighty bucks. Why buy it when you can read the one at the library?”
“You never took notes at the lectures, either, but you always remembered everything,” she said. “It made me so jealous.”
He flipped the textbook shut. “Dad taught us to remember what we heard. For him, taking notes was a sign of mental sloppiness.”
“Wow,” she murmured. “That’s rigorous.”
“Rigorous. Yeah. Good word to describe Eamon McCloud. The trick is to make your selections as the data comes in. You organize the important stuff. The rest you toss into the garbage.” He paused. “I throw away the garbage. But I remember all the important stuff perfectly.”
Her eyes grew wary at his tone. “Oh yeah? And what stuff is that?” She picked up the comb and dug it into another hank of her hair.
He flinched when she yanked it through. “For Christ’s sake, would you stop that? Give me that comb.” He plucked it out of her hands and held it out of reach when she tried to grab it back.
She lunged for it. “Sean, this is not funny—”
“Sit,” he ordered. “On the bed.” A brief wrestling match ensued which he promptly won, and soon she was seated on the bed, clamped in the vee of his thighs. He grabbed a lock of her hair and started in on it. “Where were we? Oh, yeah. We were talking about what’s important enough to remember, and what’s insignificant enough to forget.”
The position was intimate. Her silk-clad hips were so smooth, so hot where they touched the inside of his thighs. His body thrummed.
“Sean,” she whispered. “I’m not comfortable with this.”
“Your hair will be,” he assured her. “Just relax, and let me be your lady-in-waiting for a few minutes. It’s no big deal.”
She was silent as he worked slowly up the length of the lock of hair, smoothing out every little tangle until it combed smooth and easy down the entire length. He laid that lock over her shoulder and chose another one, taking it patient and slow, like he had all the time in the world. Drawing it out, as long as he possibly could.
“So, ah, what do you think is important enough to remember?” she inquired, in a brisk, let’s-move-on type of voice.
He draped a smooth, perfect lock of hair over her shoulder, and chose another one to lavish his attention on.
“You,” he said.
Oh dear. This was like one of her private middle-of-the-night fantasies. Sean, materializing in her bedroom and telling her she was important to him. She could not fall for this lethally dangerous hooey.
“Oh, get out,” she quavered. “Let go of me. This is a bad idea.”
He grabbed her around the waist as she tried to get up. “I remember every detail,” he said. “From the moment I first saw you. What you wore, how your hair was dressed, the smell of your shampoo. Everything. 3-D, full sensory overload. I can’t shake it.”
She twisted and gave him a quelling glance. “Shut up, Sean. That is just so much calculated bullshit, and I’m not falling for it.”
“The first day, at the construction site, you wore a white blouse,” he said softly. “Your skirt was blue. Your hair hung down to your ass.”
“Construction site?” She frowned. “I met you at Schaeffer Auditorium. At your brother’s class.”
“I’d seen you before,” he told her. Every slow stroke of the comb through her damp hair was a caress. “All the guys on the crew were talking about the big boss’s gorgeous daughter, back from prep school. Then one day you came to the site with your dad. You didn’t even notice us poor bastards staring after you. Tongues dangling to our knees.”
She racked her brains, trying to remember. “I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true,” he said. “You wafted past, looking off into the distance. There goes the porcelain princess. You can look, but you can’t touch.”
“I am not made out of porcelain,” she whispered.
“I know that. I know exactly how warm and soft you are.” He tossed the comb onto the bed, and ran his fingers through her hair, fanning it out over her shoulders. “I’ll tell you a guilty secret,” he murmured. “I wasn’t auditing Kev’s class to learn organic chemistry. I knew that material by the time I was twelve. I came for you, Liv.”
Sean McCloud in full-out seduction mode was deadly dangerous. She groped around for something to deflect, distract. “Is it true that you bombed the teacher’s bathroom when you were in sixth grade?”
He froze, and started to vibrate with laughter. “Wow. Of all the ghosts from my past, that’s the one I least expected. Who told you that? Was it that asswipe Blair Madden? He always was a fucking snitch.”
“Just answer the question, please,” she said primly.
“Aw, hell. It was just a couple of molecules of gunpowder packed into a milkshake straw, duct taped shut with a fuse attached. I wouldn’t dignify that by calling it a bomb. I did wire the door to that stall shut, so no one would use it, and when Harris headed in to take his afternoon dump, I sneaked in and lit the fuse. I wanted to teach him a lesson. I didn’t want to blow his ass off.”
She twisted around to see his face. “Why did you do it?”
He shrugged. “I was angry at him. Kev aced all the math tests. Harris accused him of cheating. As if Kev needed to cheat on seventh grade math. He was already studying theoretical physics. On his own.”
“I see,” she murmured.
“Harris got Kev suspended. That pissed me off.”
His hands were busy in her hair, stroking slowly down its length. She turned, caught him pressing a lock of hair to his lips. He dropped it, lifted his hands, his face mock-guilty. “Oops,” he whispered. “Sorry.”
She looked away, stifling a giggle. This was nuts. She’d almost died today, and this man was making her act like a silly girl.
It was so easy to laugh with him. It was one of the most seductive things about him, and practically everything was seductive about him.
She’d been so shy back then. Not only with boys. With everyone. But once she got over her initial slack-jawed stupor at how gorgeous he was, Sean had been just pure, goofy fun to be with. He made her feel smart and witty. Never made her feel like she’d run up against a blank wall of incomprehension. Never made her feel like what she said was being picked apart and twisted to serve someone else’s hidden agenda. He just listened to her, thought about what she’d said, and responded.
It was effortless, it was wonderful. It was magic.
And it still was. Damn him to hell, it still was. Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Or at least to repeat that saying.
She steeled herself. “Has it occurred to you how weird this is? Sweet-talking me, after what you said to me the last time we met?”
His stroking hands stopped, and his body went very still. “No, actually,” he said warily. “I was just enjoying being close to you.”
“So that conversation is one of those insignificant things you decided not to remember?” She was horrified to feel her throat start to quiver.
He didn’t answer. She felt the heat of his face, pressing hard against her shoulder. “I remember it,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” She shoved his knees apart to free herself, and kept her back to him while she adjusted her robe, and her face. “You must have a split personality. There’s the sweet, cuddly Sean, and there’s the cruel, horrible Sean. Is it fun to wind women up and then watch them flap around when you dump them? Do you secretly hate women?”
“No.” His mouth was a hard, unhappy line. “I don’t. Not at all. I especially don’t hate you. I’m sorry I did that. I had my reasons.”
For some reason, this infuriated her all the more. “What an odd thing to say. Shove somebody off a building, then run downstairs, stand over their broken body, and say, “Sorry, but I had my reasons.”
“Liv, I—”
“I know your reasons. Having a clingy chick like me glomming onto you bored you. So why are you here? I’m the same damn person, just older and stodgier. If I bored you then, I promise, I’ll bore you now.”
“You never bored me,” he said.
“So had you found someone more exciting than me? Someone more sexually skilled? And that was your way of getting rid of—”
“No,” he said. “Christ, no. Can we please just start again?”
“No, Sean. We can’t.” She spun on her heels and headed towards the door, but as she grabbed the knob, he seized her from behind, sliding his arm around her waist and pulling her back against his body.
“No. Wait,” he pleaded. “Just a second, Liv. Please.”
She gathered her breath to scream. He clapped his hand over her mouth. She bit, squirming. “Shh,” he crooned. “You have a right to be mad. Bite me, kick me, just don’t force me to cope with your mother.”
She betrayed herself with the muffled snort of laughter. He carefully lifted his hand away. “If you don’t want to deal with my mother, don’t break into her house,” she said. “You’re suspiciously good at it. Is burglary the career path you finally settled on?”
“No. Believe it or not, breaking into houses is not something I do on a regular basis. I only broke into this house because you were in it.”
He sank to his knees. She backed away, suspicious of the wicked gleam in his eye. “What the hell are you doing now, for God’s sake?”
“Begging for mercy. Trying to come across less threatening. I’m too tall. Do I make you nervous?” He lurched towards her on his knees.
“Certainly.” She backed up until she hit the wall. “And kneeling does not make you look harmless. It makes you look ridiculous.”
He grinned. “Cool. I get all kinds of mileage out of ridiculous.”
“Not with me you won’t,” she warned. “The clown game will not work with me. I am so not charmed, you get me? Not. Charmed.”
He lurched across the room towards her on his knees. “Being scolded by a tough, unrelenting bitch goddess in a silk robe is just about the most fun I’ve had in fifteen years.”
“Stop it! I cannot believe we are having this conversation. I should be screaming about the armed intruder in my bedroom.”
He blinked at her innocently. “How do you know I’m armed?”
“Oh, just a wild guess? You look like the type.”
“I do? Aw, shoot. And I thought my disguise as a normal person was working. Usually I don’t pack. It makes me tense. But I was already tense today, what with bombs and whatnot, so I brought my trusty SP 101 Ruger.” He pulled up his jeans, showed her the revolver in the ankle holster. “I’ve got a knife on the other leg. And my hands and feet could be considered lethal weapons, if you wanted to be picky about it.”
“Oh, give me a break,” she muttered. “Lethal weapons, my butt.”
“I have a legal permit to carry concealed,” he assured her.
“Are you showing me all your macho hardware to impress me?”
He chuckled softly. “I don’t know. Would it work? What would impress you the most? Tell me. I’ll try to deliver.”
“Seeing you act like a grown-up, for once in your life,” she snapped. “Though actually, that wouldn’t just impress me. It would astonish me.”
His smile faded. He gazed at her, and rose to his feet. “What’s the grown-up thing to do?” he asked. “That’s a toughie, for a maturity challenged clown like me. The most grown-up thing would have been to stay away from you in the first place. I’ve already fucked that up. Next best would be to crawl back out of the rathole I came in. Slink back to the gutter with my tail between my legs. Is that what you want?”
Liv opened her mouth to say yes. The word would not form. She coughed, and tried again. “Don’t guilt trip me,” she said. “It’s not fair.”
“Hold your breath. I’m going to act like a grown-up for the first and probably only time in my life. Don’t blink, or you’ll miss it.”
“Would you just stop being ridiculous—”
“That’s what I’m trying to do.” His voice rang. “I need your help, though. Say it simple and clear, in a language that even a cement-head like me can understand. Say, get the fuck out of my bedroom, Sean, and stay away for the rest of my natural life.”
She swallowed, over a lump in her throat. “And you’ll go?”
“And I’ll go.”
Seconds ticked by. He stared, waiting. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. Seconds turned to minutes.
“You’re not saying it, princess,” he prompted finally.
Goddamn him. Her hot face quivered. She put her hands over her face before it could crumble. Sean watched her cry, unembarrassed.
She couldn’t stand it. She spun around, put her back to him.
“I’m getting more confused every second,” he said softly. “It’s dangerous to confuse me, baby. Ask anyone.”
She shook her head. “Just shut up. You sadistic bastard.”
“That’s a good start, but it’s not what I told you to say. Say it. Toss me out, if you’re going to, because the suspense is killing me.”
“Fuck you, Sean McCloud.” The words burst out with breathless violence.
“Sure, baby.” He sounded as if he were smiling. “In a heartbeat.”
“Don’t.” She forced the words out through the knot in her throat. “Don’t jerk me around. Stop torturing me.”
“I didn’t mean to.” He sounded puzzled. “I just wanted to talk. See T-Rex’s emails. Make you smile, since you had such a shitty day. I didn’t mean to make you cry.” She shivered, as his hand came to rest on her shoulder. “If you don’t want me to leave, what do you want?”
“Why even bother asking?” The words burst out with a bitterness she hadn’t known she felt. “I can’t get what I want. You taught me that.”
“I did?” He parted her damp hair, and pressed his hot lips against the back of her neck. “I’m sorry I did that. But you know what, Liv?”
“What?” she whispered.
He kissed it again. “Sometimes you can get what you want.”
She shivered, almost whimpering at the soft, hot caress of his mouth, the light pressure of his teeth against her sensitive nape.
“No. I can’t,” she replied, voice quivering. “The price is too high.”
“Sometimes the price is worth it.” The edge of his teeth dragged over her skin, then his lips, in a devastatingly gentle kiss.
“I’m crazy to let you touch me,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Crazy wild. I love the way your hair grows down to a swirly cowlick, right here at your nape. With that sexy beauty mark right beneath it, at four o’clock. So fucking beautiful, it just kills me.”
She shook with a shaky mix of laughter and tears. “Get real.”
“I am real. I remember every last one of them.” He circled his fingertips tenderly over the silk covering her shoulders. “Go on. Test me. I’ll draw you a map of the beauty marks on your shoulders and back. I memorized them, like the constellations. Then we can compare.”
“Yeah, right,” she muttered. “I know your slimy dog tricks.”
His lips moved over her shoulders, his breath a delicious caress. “I went nuts for the one on your left foot. About an inch above your big toe. I always wanted to just fall to your feet and smooch away at it until you were giggling like crazy. Then I’d work my way up. Slowly.”
Liv opened her eyes. The door to the bathroom hung wide open. Drops of condensation rolled down the full length mirror on it, making a surreal, striped field in which their dark forms were half reflected.
Sean’s eyes burned into hers. Her face looked almost frightened, eyes dilated. Her cheeks flushed hot, moist red. The sash of her robe had slipped loose, as if mischievous fairy fingers were teasing it open.
She didn’t move to stop them.