Passion

by Marilyn Pappano

  John knew so much. Could he be telling the truth? Was there any chance in the world that he was Simon Tremont?

  No. Because there was one major undeniable, unquestionable piece of evidence in the other John’s favor: back home in Rebecca’s office and in Candace Baker’s office in New York, there were copies of a manuscript containing over 175,000 words which brilliantly followed the outline submitted over a year ago and which also included changes made to that outline by the author via correspondence with his editor in the interim. Every single word seemed to prove that this man wasn’t Simon Tremont. Whatever claims he made, whatever he believed, he couldn’t claim ownership of that manuscript.

  Despite what he knew about Resurrection, he hadn’t written it.

  That meant he couldn’t possibly be Tremont.

  A streak of lightning flashed across the sky at the same time the thunder rumbled. It made Teryl flinch, and it brought John out of his preoccupation to wearily continue. “For the last eight months, I’ve done everything but write. I’ve hiked so many miles in the mountains that I left trails where none had ever been. I knew every curve and every stone and half the fish in the stream that ran past the house. I watched TV and listened to music and read months-old newspapers. I knew how much I was drinking, how much I was sleeping, and how damned little I was writing.” He paused, and his voice grew lower, even more somber. “The book was killing me.”

  She wondered how it would feel to do the same job and do it brilliantly day after day for eleven years, then to awaken one morning to find out that you could no longer do it. Writers wrote; it was that simple. What happened to them when they no longer could? What happened when they faced a blank computer screen, or pad or notebook, and nothing came out? What became of a writer who couldn’t write?

  “I kept trying,” he went on, “but where I used to write twenty pages a day without stopping, now I was struggling to do four or five. Where I kept ninety-five percent of my original work, suddenly I was doing second and third and even fourth drafts. Finally, last week, I decided I needed a break. I hadn’t been in to the city for months. I would go into Denver and relax—do some shopping, pick up my mail, call my sister. I would forget about work for a while, and when I went home, I would be able to work again. At least, that was what I hoped.”

  But there was no mail—no Tremont mail, at least—waiting for him in Denver, Teryl knew, because Simon Tremont had sent a change of address to both the agency and Morgan-Wilkes back in February. She remembered getting the note in the mail—remembered wondering briefly why he had chosen to move to Richmond, remembered far more her excitement. Now that he was living in the area, she had thought, maybe she would get to meet him.

  Wishes were funny things. Four months ago she had been wishing to meet Simon. Now that she had, she wished she hadn’t.

  “I drove to Denver Friday afternoon and picked up my mail. Normally, after four months, the mail would fill a couple of boxes. Instead, all I had was foreign copies of two books and a half dozen letters from Janie. There was nothing from Rebecca, nothing but the foreign editions from Morgan-Wilkes. There were no reminders about the deadline, no fan mail, no royalty check. I thought it was odd, but it was too late to call Rebecca. I figured I would take care of it later.”

  The next morning the announcement that Simon Tremont was coming out of seclusion to do an interview in New Orleans was all over the news. She had seen it on television herself, had read it in the paper. Surely John had seen it, too. Had it pushed him over the edge? Until that time, had he kept his delusions to himself? Had the fantasy that he was the world’s most popular author been a private one that only he enjoyed, or had he shared it with others? If he had, if he had made claims that were now being publicly refuted, had the news been more than he could handle? Was that what had compelled him to travel to New Orleans, to take her hostage, and make this long trip to Richmond seeking evidence that didn’t exist?

  He had heard the news on television, he acknowledged, and had confirmed it in the Denver, Chicago, and Dallas newspapers that the hotel had obtained at his request. He had known it would be impossible to reach Rebecca at the office on a Saturday and equally impossible for him to stay in Colorado and do nothing, and so he had come up with the plan to go to New Orleans and later, if necessary, to Richmond and New York. He had gone home to pack, to get all the paperwork that would prove his claims—paperwork which was destroyed by fire soon after he got there. Destroyed, along with the house, by a fire caused by three bombs.

  So he said.

  Fire she might have believed, but bombs… Bombs made an outrageous story even more so. People simply didn’t go around planting bombs in reclusive writers’ houses. The man she knew as Simon, while not the nicest or most likable man she’d ever met, certainly didn’t seem the mad bomber type. He didn’t strike her as unbalanced… although in describing his personality, the word egomaniacal did come rather quickly to mind.

  So the man held a high opinion of himself. So he was arrogant, obnoxious, and made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. That didn’t make him an impostor. Or an arsonist. Or an attempted murderer.

  When she finally spoke, she made a conscious effort to disguise her skepticism. “So you believe someone destroyed your house in order to destroy the personal records that document your writing career.”

  He looked at her then, his expression hopeless. “In part.”

  She didn’t want to know, didn’t want to hear him say the rest of it, but she asked anyway. It was as if she couldn’t help herself. “And the rest?”

  “The son of a bitch can’t claim to be Simon Tremont if the real Simon Tremont is around to prove him a fraud. In order to continue being Simon, he needed—needs—to get rid of me.”

  Delusional and paranoid. God help her.

  Something of what she was thinking must have shown on her face, because unexpectedly he laughed, a bitter chuckle that drained away as soon as it formed. “I don’t blame you for thinking I’m nuts. I stood there last week looking at what was left of my house, thinking someone had tried to kill me, and wondering if it had something to do with all those news stories about Tremont. I thought maybe the last seventeen years had finally gotten to me. I thought maybe I really was crazy. But, Teryl, I swear to you, everything I’ve said is absolutely true. I created Simon Tremont. I wrote those books. Now someone’s trying to take it all away from me, and I’ve got to stop him. I have to.”

  She stared silently out the windshield. The glass had been treated with something that made the raindrops bead up and immediately slide away. She could use a coating of the stuff on her own car. She was always having trouble seeing in the rain. D.J., whose prize possession was her black Camaro, said it was because Teryl never washed the car or cleaned the windshield. Her father said it was because wiper blades needed changing at least once in a blue moon. She supposed they were both right. Car maintenance didn’t come high on her list of priorities.

  And everything on that list had just been bumped one slot lower by one major new priority: getting John Smith out of her life.

  Even if some pathetic and traitorous part of her would, in some way, miss him.

  No, not exactly miss him. She would miss the potential she’d seen in him that first night. She would miss the charming, interesting, sensual, intelligent man she’d met Tuesday.

  Lightning brightened the southern sky, and in the near distance a small explosion sounded as a transformer blew. As the lights on the opposite side of the street went dark, Teryl shivered in spite of the heat inside the truck. When she was a kid, storms had often played a role in those nightmares of hers. At times, the storm merely induced the dream. Other times, it was a part of the dream, the rumble of thunder and the heavy, threatening darkness broken only sporadically by the brilliant strikes of lightning combining to create a menacing atmosphere more than capable of scaring a cowardly small child back to wakefulness.

  “Are you okay?”

  She felt John’s gaze o
n her, on her hands clenched tightly together in her lap, but she didn’t look at him. With the truck’s engine turned off, it had taken only moments for the steamy heat to replace the cooler air inside. Now it was hotter inside than out, because they were shut off from the rain’s cooling effect. Her skin was clammy, her cheeks flushed, her forehead dotted with perspiration, and the air was almost too heavy to breathe. Was she okay? Not by a long shot… but then, she hadn’t been okay since Wednesday morning when she had foolishly insisted that he couldn’t just kidnap her and he had calmly replied, “I already have.”

  Without waiting any longer for an answer, he started the truck, turned the air conditioner to high, and directed both center vents her way. The cold air made her shiver and immediately began easing the tightness in her chest.

  “Let’s go on,” he suggested, shifting in the seat, readjusting his seat belt. “We can probably drive out of the storm before long.”

  Aware that he would rather wait it out—after the accident that killed his brother, he must have a few nightmares of his own about driving in hazardous conditions, about risking the loss of control—Teryl was grateful for his offer.

  Although the rain didn’t stop, they left the thunder and lightning behind before they’d gone more than ten miles. She let the last taut muscles, those that ran from her shoulders up through her neck, relax and gave a loud, noisy sigh of relief. “Normally daytime storms don’t bother me so much,” she said, feeling foolish now that the anxiety had lessened. “I think it was just a combination of the storm and the heat and the mugginess.” And the conversation she’d been having with the man who had kidnapped her.

  John glanced at her but didn’t say anything.

  “My mother says everyone has quirks. She’s afraid of water. I don’t like thunderstorms.”

  “And I think I’m a world-famous author.”

  Back to that again. No matter how much she disliked the topic, no matter how uncomfortable it made her, everything led back to it. And why not? It was the reason she was here. It was the reason John had sought her out in the first place. The reason he’d offered to go sight-seeing with her in the Quarter. The reason he’d gone back to the hotel with her. It was the reason… She stiffened, not wanting to complete the thought, fighting it and—feeling like an idiot—having to face it anyway.

  It was the reason he’d made love to her.

  Somehow, in the last few days, that conclusion had escaped her. She had preferred to think that he, like she, had been swept away by passion, that lust had overcome good sense. She had wanted to believe that chemistry had played a part, that two people who had each been alone too long had connected in all the right ways. She had liked the idea of one wicked night, a one-night stand, two ships that pass in the night, and those sorts of things.

  But the simple truth was he’d had ulterior motives from the beginning. The moment she had announced to him that she worked for Rebecca Robertson, he had realized that he could use her, and he had set out to do just that. He had probably thought he would have to invest much more time, effort, and energy into his plan, but she had been so easy. All it had cost him was a few hours, a few drinks, and cab fare back to her hotel. Fifteen, twenty bucks, maximum.

  He couldn’t have bought a hooker so cheap.

  No wonder he had left her bed sometime in the night. She had been sorry to awaken and find him gone, but at the same time, she had thought it was sweet of him to spare her the morning-after-with-a-total-stranger discomfort. Sweet, hell. He’d gotten far more than he’d paid for. He had learned one of the most closely guarded secrets in New Orleans at that time: where Simon Tremont was staying. He had probably gone through her things, had probably found the envelope with Simon’s departure time on it. He had earned her trust, which had allowed him to walk right out of the hotel with her the next morning, had allowed him to kidnap her with no one—including her, damn it—any the wiser.

  And he’d gotten laid. Three times. A hell of a return on his investment. She told herself it didn’t matter. So what if sleeping with her had merely been part of his plan? So what if he’d taken her one wicked night and turned it into something even tawdrier, something sinister? So what if he’d screwed her because it was part of his plan and not because he’d found her enticing and tempting as she’d found him? It didn’t matter.

  Oh, but it did. It made her feel dirty. Ashamed. Foolish.

  Leaning to the side, she rested her head against the window. Be careful, D.J. had told her on the phone Wednesday night. These are my games you’re playing. She had thought she was grown up enough to play adult games, but she’d been wrong. The first time in her life that she’d tried to be daring and a little wild, and she had made big mistakes. In a city known for its decadence and party atmosphere, she hadn’t even managed to find the right kind of man—a no-strings, no-commitment sort of guy who was interested first, last, and only in sex. Instead, she’d hooked up with John, whose first interest was Simon Tremont, followed by Teryl’s job at the agency, his own delusions, and his plans for her. Sex had come pretty far down on the list.

  This never would have happened to D.J. No man had ever gone to bed with her feeling anything but desire, wanting anything but her. Even John would have forgotten Simon Tremont’s name if he’d been with D.J. She was the sort of woman who drove men to distraction.

  Teryl, obviously, wasn’t.

  They stopped for the night in North Carolina, in an ugly little town somewhere south of Raleigh. The rain had slowed them, slacking off for a few miles here or there as they passed from one cell of bad weather into another but never stopping, never relenting enough to let John relax.

  Teryl hadn’t relaxed, either, though there had been no more storms along the way. Most of the afternoon had passed in silence while she stared out the window. On the few occasions he’d tried to start a conversation with her, she had cut him off with short, clipped answers before returning her attention to the sights outside. He wondered what she found so interesting there. He wondered why she suddenly no longer found him interesting.

  This time, for a change, he checked into a reasonably nice motel, the best of the three in town. They ate a silent dinner in the restaurant next door, then walked back to their room, protected by an overhang from the steady rain. He wouldn’t mind getting wet, he thought, listening to the splashes and the hollow echo of their footsteps on concrete. He liked walking in the rain, liked climbing to the top of his mountain and staking out a place on an outcropping of rock to watch it fall. Back when he was a kid, he had liked surfing in the rain, too, and the times he had accompanied Janie on her runs had almost always been in the rain. It was refreshing. Cleansing. And a pain in the butt for driving.

  Maybe tomorrow morning the clouds would be gone and the sun would be shining. Maybe they would make better time on the remainder of the trip. Maybe he would give up these potholed, congested, meandering two-lane highways and these depressing, shabby little towns and take the interstate the rest of the way in.

  And then what?

  It didn’t take a brilliant mind to know that Teryl was hoping to dump him as soon as she got home. Maybe she intended to go so far as to provide him with an introduction to Rebecca Robertson, but he doubted it. Most likely all she intended was to get rid of him. To do whatever was necessary to get him out of her way.

  It wouldn’t be that easy for her. He wouldn’t let it be.

  At the last room before the sidewalk took a left-hand jog around a corner, he stopped, pulled out a card key, and unlocked the door. The lamps they’d left burning when they had dropped off their luggage were still on, the television was still tuned to a twenty-four-hour cable news channel, and the air conditioner was humming efficiently. Even without stepping across the threshold, he could feel its cool breeze.

  Stepping back from the door, he gestured for Teryl to enter. “Why don’t you go ahead and get ready for bed?”

  She looked vaguely suspicious. “Where will you be?”

  “Out here
.” He shrugged. “I’m not ready to come in yet.” It was a lame response, but it was true, and he figured it was safer than telling the whole truth. He wasn’t ready to shut himself into a small room with her again. He wasn’t ready to sit on one of the beds while she took a shower, wasn’t ready to listen to the sound of the water running and know that she was naked and wet and touching herself in places that he would sell his soul to touch.

  Most of all, he wasn’t ready to face the after-shower time. The time when she was dressed for bed. The time when he finally got his first real privacy of the day. The time when he took his own shower. The time when—God forgive him—he had to tie her to the bed.

  After a moment’s hesitation, she went inside, picking up her suitcase as she passed the dresser, lifting it onto the nearest bed. He watched from the doorway as she took out bottles of floral-scented liquids and creams, that damned tank top, and those pin-striped shorts. He wanted to tell her that she could sleep in just the top—the shorts were too tailored to be particularly comfortable—or in nothing at all. He wanted to assure her that he wouldn’t touch her, wouldn’t force himself on her, wouldn’t take advantage of her.

  But she wouldn’t believe him. Hell, he wasn’t sure he believed himself.

  Besides, if last night was any indication, he wouldn’t necessarily have to force her. When he had knelt beside the bed to bind her hands, before she had realized what he was doing, she had been aroused. He had seen it in her eyes, had heard it in the ragged tenor of her breathing. He had noticed her swollen breasts, had watched her nipples harden until they strained, visibly taut, against the flowery print of her dress. She had wanted him, even being his hostage. Even believing he was crazy. Even though it shamed her. When she had taken his hand, he could have dropped that telephone cord, and she would have continued touching him. She would have let him touch her. She would have let him make love to her one more time.