Anne Stuart's Out-of-Print Gems

by Anne Stuart

  He didn’t have any time to waste. “Out of my way,” he snarled, shoving at him. He’d forgotten Osborn’s training. Those deceptively soft hands shot out and caught him, and Osborn managed to pull him off balance, before Daniel loosened himself and tossed the man away.

  Unfortunately he tossed him toward the glass doors. Osborn went crashing through, landing in a heap on top of the incendiary device. For a moment Daniel didn’t move, hoping to God Osborn was knocked unconscious, hoping that for once Suzanna had listened to him and made her way down the hill, hoping that there was some way out of this mess that had blown up out of nowhere.

  Osborn rose, the box in his hand. “I always wanted to die for my country,” he said, a fanatic light gleaming in his eye. “Crompton,” he murmured, “you’re toast.”

  Instinct took over. Daniel hadn’t realized he could move so fast. He could hear the metal contacts click together just as he leapt over the balcony. The force of the blast sent him head over heels, and then he was falling, falling, over and over, through the tall pines, down the steep cliff to the rocky ledge below. The flames were behind him, shooting into the sky, black and inky, and he knew Osborn was dead. As he would be, once he hit the ground.

  He could hear her scream of disbelieving horror. And then everything went black, as the granite ledge rushed up to meet him, and his last thought was a faint regret that he’d never told Suzanna he was in love with her. And now it was too late.

  SUZANNA SANK TO HER KNEES in the mud. “No,” she moaned. “No, no, no.” But there was no answer to her strangled cries. Just the crackle of the blazing house as the fire consumed it, and the cry of the wind in the trees overhead.

  “Daniel,” she whispered, but there was no answer. She scrambled to her feet, clawing her way back up to where the house had stood. The heat was suffocating, the smoke choking, the house caving in on itself. “Daniel,” she screamed in her raw voice, but there was no answer. In that tiny clearing that had once held a magic cottage and now held only a blazing inferno, there was no one left alive to hear her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Suzanna had no idea how long she knelt in the clearing, blasted by the heat of the burning building, or what made her struggle to her feet. She moved back down the narrow trail like a robot, her mind a deliberate blank. She had only one thought. Daniel was dead, and she had to run—away from the men who killed him, and away from the knowledge of his death. She needed to run as far and as fast as she could, find some place to crawl into. And then maybe she could mourn.

  The Jaguar sat parked at the bottom of the hill, directly over the spot where Jackson’s sedan had been incinerated. Daniel would have liked to have made ashes of that car, as well, with Osborn inside. She wondered whether he’d started the fire. If he had, it would have been an accident. Despite the ruthlessness in his voice, he wouldn’t have murdered Osborn in cold blood. And he wouldn’t have destroyed his beautiful house.

  Osborn must have rigged something, determined to destroy them all. And she had escaped.

  It was no comfort, none at all. She stared at the hunter-green luxury car and wondered what kind of luck she’d have hot-wiring the thing. She opened the passenger door, expecting the blare of antitheft devices. Instead she got a discreet little buzz, so quiet and well-bred that it took her a dazed moment to realize that Osborn had left the keys in the ignition.

  She slid into the driver’s seat and slammed the door behind her. It was blisteringly hot in the car, oddly so, considering the early morning hour. She jerked the seat forward and turned the key, half expecting the car to explode. It started with a throaty purr, and she tore back down the narrow, rutted dirt road with a complete disregard for the elegant car she drove.

  She punched on the air-conditioning. Her hands were trembling, her mind a careful blank. All she wanted to do was drive, and keep on driving, as far away from her conscious thoughts as she could go.

  For a moment she closed her eyes, trying to hear Daniel’s thoughts, to find out for sure if he was really dead. Nothing answered her, not even the breath of an emotion. Daniel Crompton was gone, wiped out, incinerated from the face of this earth. Cinderman was cinders.

  She heard the faint moan of anguish, and she shoved a fist in her mouth to quiet it. She couldn’t let go now. She had to get away, as fast as she possibly could. She just had to wait until she found a place to hide.

  It was still unbearably hot. The heat was coming from the empty back seat, and she wondered whether the heating system in the car was malfunctioning, sending warmth out the back ducts. She couldn’t afford to spend the time checking. She cranked the air-conditioning higher, shoved her bare foot down on the accelerator and kept going, pulling out onto the narrow paved road with a skid of tires.

  The blessed numbness lasted less than an hour. It lasted until she happened to glance at the digital clock on the leather-and-wood dashboard, in time to see that it was now only eight o’clock. The conflagration at the cabin had happened in a deathly short period of time. It was the hour for Daniel to regain his visibility. But Daniel was gone—there was no more body to appear.

  The first sob took her by surprise, shaking her body. The second one was even worse, tearing her apart, and out of sheer self-preservation she slowed her manic speed, as the tears streamed down her face and her body was racked with sobs. “I can’t stand it,” she wept, pounding the steering wheel. “He can’t be dead.” She glanced in the rearview mirror, to make sure no one was pulling up behind her as she crept along the road, her body shaking with misery.

  In the rearview mirror appeared the disheveled face of Daniel Crompton. “I’m not,” he said blandly.

  Suzanna promptly ran into a tree.

  What little self-control she’d still owned disappeared as the car stalled out, and she buried her face in her hands. She heard the rear door open, heard her own driver’s door open, but when he put his hands on her she lost it completely, screaming at him, beating at him, fury and pain and relief exploding from her in a wild rage.

  He was so strong. He simply pulled her into his arms, out of the car, held her flailing fists with one hand, tucking her against him as he sank down on the grass. And then she began to weep, great ugly sobs that tore her apart.

  He said nothing. His body was strong and so hot that it spread warmth through her suddenly chilled flesh. His hand was soothing her tangled hair.

  She had no idea how long her crying fit lasted. The spasms that racked her body slowed, then stumbled to a halt, and she was simply lying in his arms, weak, wasted, the tears finally gone.

  “I hate you,” she said in a small, pained voice.

  “Why?” It was an eminently logical question, what she’d expect from him. Even as his hands were stroking her, soothing her.

  “Because you let me think you were dead. You somehow managed to sneak away and hide in the back of the car, and you never said a word….”

  “I didn’t sneak away,” he said. “I jumped over the balcony when Osborn detonated the device he’d rigged.”

  She lifted her head. Her face was wet with tears, and he smoothed them away with his deft thumbs. “You couldn’t have,” she said. “It was a sheer drop, onto granite. You’d be dead.”

  He shrugged. “Interesting, isn’t it? I blacked out, but I’m most assuredly not dead. I feel kind of stiff and sore, but apart from that I’m in one piece. I managed to crawl to Henry’s car, but I’m afraid I passed out in the back seat. I wasn’t in any shape to say anything.”

  She looked at him in awe. “Does that mean you’re invulnerable, as well? You can’t die?”

  The idea didn’t seem to please him. “I have no idea. Obviously I can survive a fall like that. We’ll simply have to find someplace where I can experiment a bit more. Damn,” he said abruptly.

  “What?”

  “The specimen I was working on. It’s gone.”

  “So is the house,” she said mournfully. She’d loved that house.

  He shrugged. “Houses can
be rebuilt. I don’t know how I’ll ever find more green slime. Unless Beebe has some squirreled away. I want an antidote, and I’m not going to come up with one if I can’t figure out what it was in the first place.”

  She managed a watery smile. “You mean you don’t want to be Cinderman after all?”

  “Not particularly. What about you?” he asked, pushing her hair away from her tear-damp face. “You want to spend the rest of your life doing a mind-reading act?”

  “No,” she said, just looking at him, at the face she’d never expected to see again. “But I do like going without my glasses.”

  He managed a wry grin. “Maybe we’ll let you keep your powers. You feel ready to continue on?”

  For a moment she didn’t move. “Where are we going?”

  “Back to Santa Cristina. They’re not going to let us be, Molloy. We can’t keep running. I’ve got to go back and face them.”

  “What about me?”

  “I’ll take you someplace safe, if we can think of it.”

  She shook her head. “I’m staying with you.” She ought to tell him. She’d almost lost him once—now was the time to tell him.

  But she couldn’t. He sat there looking at her, cool and composed, despite the streak of dirt on his face and the twigs and leaves in his long hair. He wasn’t the kind of man she could easily say “I love you” to. He’d probably ask her to define it scientifically.

  She smiled wryly. “Any objections?” she added.

  “Would you listen to them?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then I’ll save my breath. Let’s get moving. I want to be off the road by six o’clock.”

  She climbed off him reluctantly, wondering if she was imagining the way his hands clung to her for a moment before releasing her. Wondering if he’d thought of her when he vaulted over the balcony to what should have been a certain death below.

  “Do you want to tell me what happened back there?” she asked. “Did you start the fire?”

  He looked bleak for a moment. “No,” he said. “To both questions. I’ll drive.”

  She could have argued, but in truth, her knees were weak, her hands were trembling, and all she wanted to do was crawl into the soft leather seat of the Jaguar and look at him. “All right,” she said.

  He threw her a mocking glance. “Docile all of a sudden, are we? What happened to the tough creature who ate male chauvinist pigs for breakfast?”

  She glanced down at the T-shirt she’d grabbed in the darkness: The Truth Shall Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off. Apt enough for today. “She’s tired,” Suzanna said wearily. “I’ll be more than ready to go ten rounds when we get back to California.”

  “I’ll be looking forward to it.”

  DANIEL DECIDED he didn’t like Jaguars. Or, at least, he didn’t like this particular one. Not that it didn’t have plenty of power, a smooth ride and a decent radio. It even came equipped with a CD player, but since the late Henry Osborn’s taste in music had tended toward marching bands and motivational tapes, he made do with the FM.

  But it had a soft, leathery bucket seat, and Suzanna lay curled up, miles away in her own soft, leathery bucket seat. And he wanted her curled up next to him, with her head in his lap, her blond hair spread over his thighs.

  It had been quite a night. So active that he should have used up his sexual energy for the next six months. He’d certainly used up his supply of condoms.

  So it made no sense that the very sight of her, the sound of her soft breathing, the scent of her, would be driving him crazy with lust.

  And that’s all it was, he told himself self-righteously. That’s all he believed in. Chemistry, animal attraction. For some reason he and the cantankerous Suzanna Molloy made a perfect match. It wouldn’t last, of course. But it certainly was far stronger than anything he’d felt in his entire life.

  He suspected it was the same for her. For a moment he wished he had her uncanny ability to read other people’s thoughts. He would have liked to know what went on behind those warm, wary brown eyes when she looked at him. She hadn’t come to bed with him like a woman who was used to that sort of thing. She’d been hesitant, shy, disarmingly so. Out of bed she was a tiger—in his arms she was surprisingly unsure.

  He was used to sexual athletes. Wonderwomen, who knew what they wanted and how to achieve it with the minimum of fuss. Suzanna had been uncertain, and he’d had to woo her, each time breaking down her resistance.

  He wondered whether he was going to have to woo her when they got back to Santa Cristina. Or whether he’d be able to stop her in the first lonely place he found and take her standing up, her legs wrapped around his hips, her nails digging into his back.

  He adjusted his jeans, shifting in the seat, and glanced over at her. She was asleep, and he could see the pale mauve shadows beneath her eyes. She needed to be left alone, to recoup her strength and self-assurance. The past twenty-four hours had thrown her off balance, from lying on her back beneath him to watching the house explode into flames, thinking he was inside.

  He had never stopped to consider what it might mean to her. He’d never thought that someone might care so much if he met a fiery end. His own elderly parents would most likely accept it as they accepted everything. With calm, measured practicality. His parents weren’t much for emotion, only intellect, and now that they were in their late seventies they seemed absolute strangers to any kind of feeling. They’d mourn, of course, but probably more for the waste of potential than for their only son.

  But Suzanna hadn’t accepted his supposed loss with equanimity, or even a sentimental tear or two. She’d been shattered, and that rage of emotion, of raw feeling, frightened him as little else could. He didn’t want to mean that much to anyone.

  He glanced over at her. He could still see the salty traces of the tears that had run down her pale face. He didn’t want her to love him. It complicated things, it made him uneasy, unsure, and at a time when he needed to concentrate all his energies, all his intellect, on stopping Beebe.

  He turned his face away, staring out into the bright midday light as he drove south toward California and fate. He didn’t believe in love, and he didn’t have time for it. He’d have to make that abundantly clear to Suzanna Molloy. What they had together was a certain argumentative compatibility and a powerful sexual communication. It didn’t have to be cloaked in hearts and flowers. It wasn’t love.

  She shifted next to him, and he started guiltily. “Did you know,” she said, her voice cool and clear, “that I could hear some of Osborn’s thoughts?”

  “Interesting,” he replied.

  “Not as clearly as yours, though. Only a thought or two filtered through from him. Whereas with you I tend to hear far too much.” It was a warning, gently spoken.

  “Suzanna,” he said, suddenly feeling like the lowest creature of all creation.

  “You might turn the radio up,” she said quietly. “That might drown some of it out.”

  He leaned forward and did so, and the annoying sound of rap music filled the elegant car. It was probably the first time in its short history the car had been subjected to such an indignity. He deliberately envisioned her, naked, lying beneath him, legs spread and waiting, and he glanced over to see her reaction.

  No telltale blush. No reaction whatsoever. “That’s better,” she murmured, closing her eyes again.

  “We need to talk.”

  “Not now,” she said, turning her back on him. He could see the straight line of her spine beneath her T-shirt. It looked strong, it looked angry, it looked vulnerable.

  He’d give her time. And deliberately he concentrated on the antiestablishment, kill-the-Man rhetoric on the radio. For once it was something he could identify with.

  He drove steadily through the day. The only time Suzanna emerged from the cocoon she’d spun about herself was when he stopped at a fast-food restaurant. Even the sight of a hamburger and french fries couldn’t bring back the light in her eyes, but at least sh
e managed to eat an indecent amount. She said nothing about his choice of salad and milk shake, and he missed her razzing him. But he had the good sense to give her time and space. He simply looked at his salad and calculated how many grams of fat were in the dressing, shielding his thoughts from her.

  It was just after five when he pulled the car to a stop. It was getting dark already, the autumn light fading quickly, and he killed the motor, waiting for Suzanna to emerge from her daylong retreat.

  “Where are we?” she asked, looking around sleepily.

  “About ten miles from Beebe, if you take back roads and go across country a bit.”

  “Lord,” she moaned. “Don’t tell me you’re still trying to get me to walk?”

  “No. There’s an old place back in the woods here. I was thinking of buying it. We can hide out here for a while, at least until after eight.”

  She looked at him curiously. “Why don’t you want to go there until eight? Aren’t you wasting any possible advantage you might have?”

  “No.” He’d figured it all out while she slept. If he went in while he was invisible, he would simply be leaving Suzanna as the only available target. He already knew he wouldn’t be able to get her to stay behind, short of binding and gagging her, and he didn’t think she’d let him get away with that.

  She smiled wryly. “Thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “For your chivalry.”

  He slammed his hand against the steering wheel. “You know what it’s like, having a voyeur peering at my every thought?”

  “Hey, I don’t like it, either,” she snapped back, her tentative smile vanishing. “And it’s not your every thought. It’s just the occasional one.”

  “It’s still too damned many.”

  “I agree.”

  Silence, heated, angry, filling the car. “Let’s get out of here,” he said finally. “I don’t know whether anyone noticed us as we got nearer Santa Cristina. It’s a distinctive car.”