At quarter until eight she went into the bathroom and checked her hair, then sprayed a touch of her favorite perfume on the side of her neck.
She straightened her blouse and tucked it into her waistband, then stared at her reflection and told herself she was once again being silly.
And then he was there...standing at her counter, his gaze going around the room and then landing on her with a smile. “I’ve always loved bookstores,” he said.
She nodded. “All that paper scent and being surrounded by such knowledge,” she said.
“Exactly,” he said, his blue eyes brightening as if pleased that she apparently felt what he did when in a bookstore. “At work I’m surrounded by technology, have the latest Android phone, all the computer gadgets imaginable, but I still like the weight of a real book in my hands.”
At that moment a couple of students came in and as Dora waited on them she kept one eye on Mark, who wandered the store looking at the various offerings. He was a curious man, reading labels and studying contents of the items he perused.
There had been several moments when they were having coffee the day before that his gaze had been so intense on her that she’d felt he was studying the contents of her.
Her breath grew tight inside her chest, making it difficult to breathe. Despite this, she finished ringing up the students. It’s just another cup of coffee, she told herself, and yet she had the feeling that she was about to make yet another big mistake in her life.
* * *
Amanda Burns slammed the door to her tiny apartment and tossed her laptop case and purse on the sofa, which was half-smothered by decorative throw pillows.
She’d like to take one of those pillows and smother Ben, the rotten rat. Melinda had assigned them a research project and they were supposed to get together this evening to work on it. But Ben had done it alone and presented the papers to Melinda that day, making him the official golden boy of the moment.
Amanda fought the impulse to reopen her apartment door and slam it once again, needing a release of the anger that ripped through her.
Ben Craig was a sneaky snake who would undercut Amanda whenever possible to get and to stay in Melinda’s good graces. This wasn’t the first time he’d done that.
Instead of slamming her apartment door once again, she shoved a couple of the pillows onto the floor and sank down on the sofa, picking at a cuticle until it was bloody.
It was hard to believe that she’d once had a bit of a crush on the handsome grad student. Ben, with his short auburn hair and dark eyes, had an intelligence and a suave unruffled manner that had instantly drawn Amanda to him.
However, it hadn’t taken her long to realize there was only one person he adored more than himself, and that was Professor Melinda Grayson.
Amanda stuck her finger in her mouth and realized she’d just managed to ruin a perfectly good manicure. Somehow, that was Ben’s fault, as well.
Amanda adored Melinda, too. The beautiful, bright woman was not just Amanda’s professional role model, but also her personal heroine. She was so gorgeous, so intelligent, and her strength absolutely amazed Amanda.
She’d been through so much with the kidnapping. They’d beaten her and broken her arm, and yet before she was fully healed from the awful ordeal she was back teaching, unwilling to let her students down.
And that creep Ben had gone behind Amanda’s back to make himself look good and make Amanda look like a slug. Amanda could positively wring his neck.
On impulse she jumped up from the sofa and went to the tiny closet in the small bedroom. She opened the door and looked up on the top shelf. Nestled next to a large shoebox containing a pair of red cowboy boots that had been an impulse buy was a tin lockbox, half-covered by a nubby light blue blanket. The locked box was positive proof of Melinda’s complete trust in her.
Amanda closed the closet and returned to the sofa, where she once again sank down and pulled a pink flowered throw pillow against her chest.
Ben could knock himself out sneaking around to complete projects and presenting them to Melinda to garner favor, but that box on Amanda’s closet shelf spoke of who among the two grad students Melinda trusted the most.
She still remembered the night Melinda had shown up here clutching the tin box tight against her chest. It had been the evening after the day of her release from her captors and there hadn’t been a hint of the confident, strong woman.
Melinda had looked small and frightened, her green eyes huge as she’d handed Amanda the box and explained that it had all of her important papers inside.
“The key is in my desk drawer at the college,” she’d said, and then had jumped when a car squealed around the corner outside. She’d wrapped her thin arms around her body, as if to stanch an inward tremble, as if to protect herself from further harm.
“If anything happens to me, then you’ll have everything safe here,” she’d said.
Amanda’s heart had fluttered with fear for her mentor. “Do you expect something else bad to happen to you?”
Melinda had given her a rueful smile and raised the arm with the cast. “I didn’t expect this to happen to me,” she’d replied. “Would you keep this safe for me here?”
Amanda had assured her she would. What Melinda didn’t seem to understand was that Amanda adored Melinda so much she would do anything for her...anything at all.
Chapter 3
The coffee shop was almost empty when Mark and Dora walked in just after eight. It would be closing its doors in half an hour and there were only a few students seated at a couple of the tables.
Mark motioned her to where they’d sat the day before. “Black, right?” he asked as she sat down.
She nodded, ridiculously pleased that he’d remembered the way she drank her coffee. She remembered that he had used a packet of sugar in his, no cream.
Within moments he returned to the table and sat across from her, a smile lighting his handsome features. “I have to admit, I’ve been looking forward to this all day. I only have other colleagues here in town, and our conversations tend to be all about the crimes.”
“Everyone needs a little downtime,” she replied, wrapping her hands around the foam cup he’d delivered.
“Exactly.”
“So, tell me about this little girl of yours, your Grace,” she said, wanting to know more about him, about his personal life when he wasn’t chasing monsters and murderers.
She’d expected his features to soften with fatherly love, with pride, but instead tension straightened his shoulders a notch and no responding smile danced across his lips.
“To be perfectly honest, I don’t see her much. My work keeps me so busy.”
“You should make time for her,” Dora couldn’t help but chide him. She’d always wondered how her life might have been different if she’d been raised by a loving, caring father rather than her abusive, alcoholic father.
“I know, that’s what my ex-wife keeps telling me.” He paused to take a sip of his coffee and then carefully placed the cup back in the exact position it had been in before he’d picked it up. “But Grace is so...perfect.” A hint of a smile toyed at the edges of his lips.
An ache swelled up inside Dora as she saw that whisper of a smile touch his lips. It was filled with such awe, with such love, a love she’d never felt from any man before in her entire life.
“She’s bright and funny and so innocent it scares me,” he continued. “And somehow I always feel as if the darkness of my work clings to me and might taint her, might ruin her.”
“Every daughter needs her daddy in her life,” Dora replied. “And you’re obviously a good man, Mark. I’m sure you’d be a terrific father to her if you’d just let yourself, and you’ll never know how important it will be to her as she grows up to have a wonderful relationship with you.”
He raised a dark eyebrow. “I’m assuming by what you’re saying that you didn’t have a terrific father in your life?”
“I had the most miserable man on the face of the earth as a father and then when I was eighteen years old I married a photocopy of him.” She tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “They say that daughters tend to marry men who are just like their fathers. Needless to say in my case that was a big mistake.”
“Do you have other family? Mother? Brothers or sisters?”
It was the usual dance when two people met, the ferreting out of personal information in a social setting. “I have a mother, a sister and two brothers who I only recently met. Don’t ask,” she said. “It’s a complicated family tree. What about you?” She felt far more comfortable when the conversation was about him and not her.
“I’m the only child of two highly educated people who didn’t quite know what to do with me.” His eyes twinkled with a light of humor. “I’m not even sure they understand what exactly they did to get me.”
Dora laughed. “Oh, I imagine they figured it out, since you don’t have any siblings.”
“True,” he agreed. “But they were the cerebral types who were ill equipped to be parents. I was shuffled off to boarding school as soon as I was out of diapers. I suppose I should be grateful that they were wealthy enough to see that I went to the very best schools.”
“And then you decided to become an FBI agent?”
“Actually, the FBI chose me, I didn’t necessarily choose them. At the time I was involved with several different experimental classes that revolved around the topic of criminal profiling. I excelled and the FBI took notice. They made me an offer I couldn’t resist.”
“You love what you do?” Once again she could smell the faint scent of fresh soap and shaving cream that drifted off him. In the past she’d been accustomed to men who smelled of grease and sweat and cheap cologne.
“I love it,” Mark replied, and his blue eyes deepened in hue. “Although it often takes me to some pretty dark places.”
In the next moment Dora realized he’d drifted off into someplace in his head. The focus of his eyes grew fuzzy and his features went a bit slack.
He’d done the same thing the day before, drifted off for several seconds to a place inside his brain where nobody could follow him. She waited for several long moments and then softly called his name. Nothing. Hesitantly, she reached out and touched his forearm and said his name again, this time a little bit louder.
He gave her that heavy-lidded blink as his eyes regained their focus and he grimaced. “Sorry about that. I have a tendency to drift off. It’s one of the irritating qualities about me that destroyed my marriage. Sarah used to tell me that I was working half the time and when I was home I was lost in my own head. It didn’t leave much time for her.”
“Maybe she just needed to learn how to break through to pull you out of your mind. Or figure out how to join you there,” Dora replied.
Mark’s eyes darkened even more, transforming to the deepest midnight-blue. “I wouldn’t want anybody to join me in my head when I’m working a case, but I appreciate anyone who can pull me out of there.”
Dora smiled. “Then when you disappear like that I’m going to tap you three times on your arm and if that doesn’t do the trick I’m going to grab you by the hair and shake you.”
He laughed and it was the first time she’d heard the deep, exceedingly pleasant sound. “It’s a deal,” he agreed.
They both turned at the sound of the opening of the coffee-shop door. Ben Craig walked in and when he spied Dora he smiled. “Hi, Dora,” he said, approaching where she and Mark sat.
“Hello, Ben. Here for a late-night coffee fix?” she asked.
His handsome face wreathed into a wry grin. “For me this is an early-night coffee fix. I’ve got enough work on my desk to burn the midnight oil for the next couple of weeks.”
“Mark Flynn,” Mark said, and held out a hand to Melinda’s assistant.
“Oh, where are my manners?” Dora explained. She quickly made the introductions and then Ben headed toward the counter to get his drink.
“He’s one of the grad students who works with Professor Grayson, isn’t he?” Mark asked.
Dora nodded. “He and Amanda Burns are Melinda’s go-to people. They come into the bookstore a lot, ordering hard-to-find books for research or whatever Melinda needs. They seem like good kids, although Amanda can be a little intense at times.”
“Intense how?”
Dora took a sip of her coffee as she thought of the two students who worked with Melinda. “They’re both absolutely devoted to Melinda and I think there’s more than a little bit of competitiveness between them. Ben is fairly laid-back, confident, and Amanda seems unsure of herself, more frantic to do whatever is needed to please Melinda.”
“What is it about Professor Grayson that inspires such complete devotion?” Mark asked.
She looked at him in surprise. “You saw her. First of all she’s absolutely gorgeous and then add in all her achievements and her position of power here at the college. She’s an icon that many people admire and want to emulate.”
He gazed at her thoughtfully. “Are you one of her groupies?”
Once again Dora laughed. “Not exactly a groupie, although there are many things I do admire about her.” She wasn’t about to explain to him her familial ties to Melinda or how grateful she was to the sister she’d scarcely known growing up, the woman she still didn’t know well at all.
Melinda had been the least-expected person to do anything for Dora, yet she’d been there with Micah to get Dora on her feet and pointed in the direction of success.
“I find her kidnapping intriguing,” Mark replied.
Dora frowned. “I thought the general opinion was that it was some of her students who pulled a prank that somehow got out of control. How else to explain the fact that there was never a ransom note and she was released with the worst of her injuries being a broken arm?” Dora fought a shiver as she thought about how scared she’d been for Melinda when she’d been kidnapped.
“The whole thing is just weird.” Mark leaned back in his chair and took another drink of his coffee.
“On that, we both agree. I think there are several professors who are concerned that the same kind of thing could happen to them, that there’s a mysterious group of rogue students running around plotting the kidnapping of another teacher.”
Once again he leaned forward, pinning her in place with the intensity of his gaze. “Is that what you believe?”
Dora considered the question carefully. “To be honest I don’t know what to believe about everything that has happened lately here in Vengeance.”
At that moment she noticed that the young woman behind the counter was casting glares at them and pointed looks at the nearby wall clock that read eight-thirty.
“I think it’s time for us to get out of here,” Dora said, and then quickly drained the last of her coffee. She tried to tell herself she wasn’t disappointed that their time together had been so brief.
Mark finished his coffee before grabbing both their empty cups and walking over to dispose of them in the trash bin. Dora quickly gathered her things and, with a quick good-night to the impatient counter girl, she and Mark stepped out into the darkness that had fallen.
“As always, it was nice to spend some time with you,” he said as they lingered in front of the coffee shop.
“I enjoyed it, too,” she admitted.
“You know any good restaurants in town?” he asked, his eyes sparkling in the glow of the moon. “I’ve had a diet of nothing more than cold pizza and greasy burgers for the last three weeks. It would be nice to get a good steak or maybe some Italian for a change.”
“There’s Bailey’s Steakhouse not far from here
, and Manetti’s is a great place to go for Italian food.” She clutched her laptop close to her chest and held her breath. Was his question a prelude to an offer to join him for dinner? That would be more like a real date.
“A big plate of lasagna and some fat meatballs sound like just the ticket,” he replied. “Would you like to join me on Friday night for a good Italian meal?”
She’d hoped he’d ask. She’d hoped he wouldn’t ask, because now she had to make a decision. If she said yes, then she’d be going against every rule she’d made for herself three years ago when she began her new life here in Vengeance. Yet, she had a feeling that if she said no, she’d regret it for the rest of her life.
“That sounds wonderful,” she heard herself saying, and knew with both dread and a tiny thrill that she was breaking her biggest rule.
“Great, then why don’t I pick you up around seven on Friday night?”
“I’ll meet you there,” Dora countered. Though it sounded crazy, having her own transportation made it feel less like a date, less like a rule broken.
“Okay,” he said, obviously surprised. “Then I’ll see you at Manetti’s at seven on Friday if I don’t see you before then.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she agreed.
He frowned. “Do you have a way home? I didn’t realize how dark it was until just now.”
“I’m fine,” she assured him. She didn’t want him to know that she always walked home from the campus. She didn’t want him to be a gentleman and offer to see her home.
Meeting him at a restaurant was one thing, but having him know where she lived was something else. They each murmured an awkward goodbye and then he turned in one direction and she turned in the other.
She cast only one quick glance over her shoulder to find him gone, the night having swallowed him whole. She had a three-block walk to the small off-campus house that she called home.
It had been Micah who had found the house and bought it, telling her that he wanted her to focus on nothing but her studies until she got her degree and was on her feet. She’d never owned anything of her own and cherished everything about the house. She even loved the drafty upstairs bedrooms and the cranky air conditioner, the wooden floors that needed to be refinished and the creak of the staircase.
A Profiler's Case for Seduction Page 4
