Anne Stuart's Out-of-Print Gems

by Anne Stuart

  “Fine,” he said in a muffled voice. “Take your shower.”

  HE WAITED UNTIL THE DOOR shut behind her. The pain was lancing through his body—intense, sweeping shafts of agony. He heard the water running, the sound of it hitting her body as she stepped beneath the spray, and then he let go, sinking down on the bed as the shivering swept over him. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. He stared down at his legs, but they were vague, out of focus, and he knew it had happened again.

  Once more he was invisible. And he didn’t know how in hell he was going to explain that to Suzanna Molloy.

  Chapter Seven

  Daniel Crompton had been properly reared, the only child of elderly, intellectual parents. His mother had very strict rules of propriety, and even as a toddler he’d been expected to behave as a gentleman. At the advanced age of thirty-four he knew perfectly well that he ought to leave the room and return when he was once more visible.

  He wasn’t going to.

  “I’m going out,” he called through the closed bathroom door. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.” He heard her sputtered protests as he walked heavily to the front door, opened it, and closed it quite loudly. And then he moved, his sneakered feet silent, to the very corner of the room and sat down gingerly on the bed.

  “Crompton, don’t you dare leave me!” Suzanna shrieked, sticking her head out of the bathroom door. Her hair was wet, she didn’t have her glasses on, and her brown eyes focussed myopically around the confined space, moving past the spot where he sat patiently, not lingering. “Damn the man,” she muttered, moving back into the bathroom, leaving the door ajar.

  He wondered idly whether he could get up, move across the room and peer inside the bathroom door without her hearing him. He’d never had any voyeuristic tendencies—even when he was a hormone-crazed teenager he’d been more interested in the anatomical anomalies of the centerfolds than their unlikely charms.

  But he found he had a sudden urge to see what Suzanna Molloy looked like under her T-shirt. Whether she was curved and soft, sleek and muscled, or a combination of the two. Oddly enough, it didn’t really matter to him. For some reason he wanted her—whether she was plump or lean. It was her brown eyes, her stubborn mouth, her wary nature that turned him on. It made no sense, but then, little had in the last twenty-four hours.

  He’d just risen when she came back out of the bathroom, and he had to bite back the groan of disappointment. She was already partly dressed, wearing a plain white pair of panties and a T-shirt that read When God Made Man She Was Only Kidding. Her hair was combed back from her freshly scrubbed face, and she was wearing her glasses once more. He froze, afraid to give away his presence, and looked at her.

  Come to think of it, maybe he wasn’t disappointed. She had long legs, beautiful legs, not Barbie doll legs but the kind that could wrap around a man. She hadn’t bothered with a bra, and the T-shirt clung to her wet body, her wet breasts, and he watched her, wishing he could see her nipples, cursing because the room was too warm.

  She had an elegant grace when she thought no one was watching her, and she crossed to the door to put the chain up. “Where is that man?” she muttered underneath her breath, peering out the window. Of course, there was no sign of him, and he watched, wondering what else she was going to say.

  She moved over to the mirror that hung above the cheap pine dresser. It should have reflected his own body, as well, but it didn’t. He stood there, seeing what she was seeing, judging what she was judging.

  “All right,” she said out loud, pulling her hair back away from her face. “So you’re no great beauty. No one ever said you were.”

  He was tempted to disagree, but he wisely kept his peace, wanting to hear more. “And just because the great Dr. Daniel Crompton happens to be unfairly blessed with more than his fair share of looks, it hasn’t got a thing to do with you. At least I don’t have to look at him for a while. Pretty is as pretty does, and the man is overbearing, cold-blooded and arrogant.”

  He wondered about that. It seemed a fairly accurate assessment. He did tend to be overbearing—otherwise he wasted too much time trying not to tread on the tender feelings of utter fools. Arrogant…perhaps. He knew what he wanted, what he was interested in and what bored him. What interested him right now was Suzanna Molloy. Not to mention the strange things that kept happening to his body. But oddly enough, he found his oblivious roommate a higher priority.

  As for his being cold-blooded, that seemed to have changed recently, in more ways than one. He was hot, burning up, with a kind of dry heat that could set something on fire. And he was even hotter when he looked at her.

  Even if he was invisible, his body was capable of reacting humanly enough. Staring at her breasts in the mirror, he found he was getting aroused. That was odd, as well. He usually got turned on when he had a naked, willing woman in his bed. His erections, his lovemaking, as well as everything else, were always ruthlessly efficient.

  Not tonight, however. He shifted his jeans, deciding he might be better off sitting down on the bed. He lowered himself slowly, silently, gingerly, then realized with sudden horror that the reflection of the orange quilted bedspread suddenly wrinkled.

  Suzanna froze. She whipped around, staring at the spot where he sat motionless on the bed, and for such a fierce young woman she looked scared spitless.

  “Daniel?” she managed to croak.

  He didn’t say a word. If he could just hold himself still, she’d probably decide she’d imagined it. Except that the quilt was bunched up beneath him, and if she tried to straighten it, she’d run right into him.

  “You’re here, aren’t you?” She moved toward him, and he had to admire her courage in the face of her controlled panic. “I don’t know how, but you’re here, in the room. I can feel you watching me. Say something, damn it!”

  Still he kept silent. She’d be better off not knowing. There was no guarantee he could keep her from Osborn, Armstead and their nasty crew, and if they found out what had happened to him, things would go from bad to worse.

  It was more than obvious what Beebe Control Systems International wanted from him, and he’d been a fool to blind himself to their machinations. People didn’t kill for patents and copyrights, they didn’t sabotage labs and risk killing their major researcher, unless they decided they had what they needed.

  What they needed was something they could use to control the world, and they thought he had it. They thought he was the one man who’d finally created cold fusion. And they weren’t going to use it to solve the world’s energy crisis. They were going to use it for weapons.

  When the stakes were that high, the lives of two little people didn’t mean a hill of beans. He’d heard that line somewhere—he couldn’t remember where—but it seemed to fit. The less Suzanna Molloy knew, the better.

  But the problem was, she looked as if she was about to cry, and he knew she wasn’t the sort of woman who cried easily or often. The thought of her tears didn’t distress him any more than the possibility of her throwing up after she found Jackson’s body. He wasn’t the kind of man who fell apart at the sight of a woman’s tears.

  But for some reason he didn’t want to see her cry.

  “I’m going crazy,” she whispered to herself in sudden panic. “I’ve got to get out of here.” She dived for her duffel bag, dragging out a pair of jeans, and it took all his self-control not to leap for her, to try to stop her. He was counting on her to calm herself down, so he wouldn’t have to reveal himself, when the utilitarian black phone beside the bed shrilled.

  It startled her into a quiet scream; it startled him into moving. He saw the shift of the mattress in the mirror, but Suzanna was too busy staring at the phone.

  She started toward it, and he knew he had to stop her. It might very well be only the desk clerk, but he doubted it. They’d been found already.

  Her hand was on the receiver, hesitating, when he finally spoke.

  “Don’t answer it,” he sa
id.

  He couldn’t see her face now, just her straight back, the tension in her shoulders. And then she moved her hand, turned and stared at the empty beds. “Where are you?” she asked with remarkable calm.

  He rose. She was still staring at the disarranged bed—she didn’t know he was coming closer, close enough to touch her, close enough to pull her into his arms.

  He resisted the impulse, but just barely. She’d been through enough, and he was about to put her through more. “Right here,” he said softly.

  And Suzanna Molloy, tough and fearless, collapsed in a dead faint at his feet.

  IT GAVE HIM A CHANCE to experiment. He knelt down beside her, sliding his arms under her limp body, and lifted her up. He might have been lifting a cloud of silk, and yet he knew by looking that Suzanna Molloy was a solidly built young lady. She smelled of shampoo and soap and toothpaste, clean and fresh and unbearably erotic, and he wondered just how conscienceless he was becoming. She was out cold, and he was sorely tempted to—

  Her eyes fluttered open. He was carrying her toward the bed, and he could feel her muscles stiffen in his arms, and knew she was about to scream. He couldn’t blame her. As far as she could see, she was floating through the air.

  He dropped her down on the bed, abruptly enough to surprise the scream out of her. She stared up at him, or at least, in his general direction, and the look of absolute horror on her face was far from flattering.

  “I thought you were glad you didn’t have to look at me,” he said.

  She jumped, startled. “Where are you?”

  “Standing right in front of you.” He wanted to touch her again, but he wasn’t sure whether she could handle it or not. Her nerves seemed to be on the ragged edge, and while he didn’t usually waste time worrying about other people’s needs, in this case it seemed to matter.

  “What happened to you?”

  He wandered over to the window, glancing out into the night. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “It has something to do with the lab accident. The green slime, I suppose. It certainly wasn’t anything I was working on.”

  Her head moved, her eyes following the direction of his voice. “This isn’t the first time it’s happened?”

  He smiled. She was sharp—he liked that about her. Almost as much as he liked her long legs and her breasts and her feisty tongue. “It happened this morning. Six o’clock this morning, to be exact. It lasted exactly two hours, and at eight o’clock I was visible again.”

  “You were there when I broke into your apartment.”

  “Yes.”

  “You were watching me. God, I bumped into you!” she said, remembering.

  “Yes,” he said again.

  “You weren’t going to tell me?” Her temper was returning, the color rising in her pale cheeks. “Were you just going to sit there and watch me undress, you pervert?”

  “Hardly a pervert. An interest in an unclothed female body of certain attractions isn’t the slightest bit abnormal.”

  “Certain attractions?” she echoed, reacting just as he’d expected.

  “Besides, I’m not certain how much I can trust you. Who’s to say you won’t go to the National Enquirer and sell your story?”

  “They wouldn’t believe me,” she said flatly. “Even tabloids have some standards. What else?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “There’s more than being invisible. You broke those doors at Beebe, didn’t you? And what about the elevator door?”

  “I seem to be fairly strong,” he allowed.

  “How strong? Arnold Schwarzenegger strong? The Incredible Hulk strong? Godzilla strong?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m still finding out exactly what’s going on,” he said, turning to stare at her. She still wasn’t wearing a bra, a fact which had temporarily escaped her. The jeans she’d pulled on were a tighter fit than the ones she’d worn earlier, and they encased her long legs. He sighed.

  “What do you want from me?” she asked quietly.

  “What makes you think I want anything from you?”

  “Don’t try to trick me, Dr. Crompton. You may have an IQ of 512, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us are idiots. You brought me along for a reason. What is it?”

  He considered it—and her—for a long moment. “You want the truth?”

  She nodded, pushing her damp hair away from her face. “It’s usually for the best.”

  He moved back, across the room, stopping in front of her. “There are a number of reasons.”

  She jumped when he spoke, startled. “Can’t you stay put?” she demanded wtih some asperity. “I can’t see you, you know.”

  “You’ll have to get used to me sneaking up on you.”

  “Charming,” she snapped. “Why did you bring me along?”

  He decided to be efficient. “Number one,” he said, counting on unseen fingers, “I wasn’t sure which side you were on. Your arrival at Beebe was, to say the least, suspicious. I thought you might have been behind the lab explosion, and it would be better to have you in sight.”

  “I wish I could say the same for you,” she muttered. “What else?”

  “Number two,” he said, “you were slimed as well as I was, though you didn’t get as thorough a coating. I wanted to see whether you were affected, as well. Number three, I need someone to help me observe the changes in my body, document them. They might prove debilitating, even fatal. I’ll need someone I can count on to record them. You’re a scientific reporter—I can trust you to keep track of what’s happening to me.”

  “Is that all?” She didn’t look particularly gratified at the trust he’d shown her, but then, he wasn’t expecting gratitude.

  “There are other considerations,” he said in his most offhand voice. “I wasn’t sure if you already knew what was happening to me, and I didn’t want you telling anyone about it. We’re better off keeping it a secret, at least for now.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Any other reason?”

  None apart from overwhelming animal lust, he thought to himself, smiling wryly. He didn’t think Suzanna was ready to hear that. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Who says I want to be your dogsbody?” she demanded.

  “You’ve got one of the major qualifications,” he said smoothly. “Your nature.”

  To his surprise, her face creased in reluctant amusement. “Are you by any chance calling me a bitch, Dr. Crompton?” she asked. “You must admit, I have plenty of reason to be irritable.”

  “Aren’t you always this way?”

  “You bring out the worst in me.” She pulled her legs up underneath her, and he could see she was beginning to lose her wariness. He wondered if she’d lose it enough to let him touch her. He doubted it.

  “I wouldn’t get too comfortable if I were you,” he said.

  She stiffened. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know who was calling here, but I don’t like it. I think we’d better leave. And you’re going to have to drive.”

  She cocked her head. “I suppose I am. I suppose I’m going to have to carry the bags, as well?”

  He nodded, then realized she couldn’t see. “I think being invisible will have its advantages.”

  “How long is it going to last?”

  “A reasonably educated guess would say two hours. That’s how long it lasted this morning. I disappeared at 6:00 a.m., reappeared at eight. I disappeared at 6:00 p.m. tonight, so I imagine…” He glanced down at his arm, but the watch attached to his wrist was just as blurred and out of focus as the rest of him.

  She seemed to guess what his problem was. “It’s seven-fifteen. If you’re right, that would give you another forty-five minutes.” She rose, and if the hand that pushed her damp hair away from her face trembled slightly, she ignored it. “You’re right, let’s get out of here. I don’t suppose you have any idea where we can go?”

  “Keep heading in the same general direction. I had a destinat
ion in mind.”

  “You feel like sharing it?”

  “Not particularly. That way you won’t know anything if we get separated.”

  “Charming,” she said, slipping her feet into her sneakers. “They can torture me, but I won’t be able to tell them anything.”

  “You’ve been reading too many bad books. Nobody’s going to torture anyone.”

  “It didn’t look as if your friend Jackson had too good a time,” she snapped. And then she closed her eyes, suddenly looking vulnerable. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Why not? It’s true. For what it’s worth, Jackson didn’t deserve what happened to him, but he wasn’t an innocent victim, either. He was somebody’s spy, probably Osborn’s, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he set the device that almost killed the both of us.”

  “Nevertheless, he was a human being, and he didn’t deserve to die like that,” she said sternly, grabbing her duffel bag and reaching for his bag, too.

  “Working on your sainthood, Molloy? It’ll take more than that to convince me.”

  She opened the door, patiently waiting for him. “I don’t need to convince you, Dr. Crompton. You weren’t blessed with many human qualities to begin with, and what little you had seems to have disappeared with the rest of you.” She smiled sweetly. “It’s just a shame you didn’t lose your voice, as well.”

  He couldn’t very well argue with her. The door was open, the light overhead illuminating her dark blond hair, illuminating the supposedly empty room. He had no choice but to follow her. He couldn’t even close the door behind him. Not with the desk clerk staring out, insatiably curious.

  “Are you going to take care of the doors?” he demanded, as she settled into the driver’s seat with seeming ease.

  “Damn,” she said, scooting back out to slam the motel door, then moving around to open the passenger door for him. He knew she was coming, and he deliberately didn’t move, letting her barrel into him, catching her arms in his strong hands, letting her chest rest against his.