Good to Be Bad (Double Dare Book 1)

by Patricia Ryan

  “I can understand why you were skeptical,” Emma conceded grudgingly. “But I did try to tell you. Twice.”

  “By last night you’d given up on it, though,” he noted soberly. “And that was when it really mattered. Why didn’t you make one last attempt to tell me the truth before we...” He glanced meaningfully at the chaise longue.

  “I didn’t want you to hate me. By that time I was...” Crazy about you. Head over heels. But she couldn’t tell him that now. No complications, he’d said. I can wash my hands of you. “I was afraid you’d hate me, and now you do, so I was right.” Indeed, any real affection he might have felt for her had apparently evaporated in light of this afternoon’s revelations. If she were to tell him now that she felt something for him she’d never felt before, and that she thought it might be love, he would still hate her, and he would still leave; only she would have humiliated herself. It did not seem like a brilliant plan.

  “I don’t hate you,” Gage said. “I just...” He turned away, rubbing his neck.

  He just didn’t care anymore. Which was worse?

  He wandered over toward the desk to replace the items he’d swept onto the floor earlier. One of them was the sheet of Plaza stationery on which she’d been writing. “What’s this?”

  “A list. I was working on it when you came. It’s just a way of organizing my thoughts.”

  Gage sat down at the desk with the list in front of him, retrieved his reading glasses and put them on. Emma came up behind him and reread her list over his shoulder:

  1. Zara agrees to sell Mac the ray gun for $2,000,000. Why so much? Who is Mac’s client?

  2. Emma agrees to impersonate Zara and transact the sale. Gets gun.

  3. Gold-eyed man follows Emma into subway, snatches bag, pushes Emma onto tracks. Just a bum? Addict? Knows about gun? Police semiresponsive.

  4. Emma’s house ransacked. Nothing stolen. Gold eyed man? Looking for gun? Police unresponsive.

  5. Mom missing from Zara’s, signs of struggle? Gold eyed man? Kidnapping? Police semiresponsive.

  Gage turned to look at Emma. “You called the cops?”

  “As soon as I got here.”

  “Do they think your mother was kidnapped?”

  Emma took a deep breath, dreading that possibility, but knowing she had to deal with it. She’d be useless to her mother if she gave in to hysterics over this. “No, they think she just stepped out to see a movie or do some shopping,” she said. “They sound pretty sure of themselves, but they really don’t know any more than I do, at this point. They said people are always jumping to the conclusion that loved ones have been kidnapped, but that rarely turns out to be the case, and there’s no reason to worry until you get a ransom demand. There was no note left in the apartment.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I looked around and didn’t find one.”

  “I went there looking for you,” he said.

  “You did?”

  “Didn’t occur to me to search for a note, though,” he admitted. “You have a naturally deductive mind.”

  “Thank you,” Emma murmured, accepting the compliment as a gesture of cordiality. So. He was going to keep things civilized between them. She supposed that was a good thing. Crossing to the bedside phone, she said, “If Mom was abducted, the kidnappers will probably call Zara. I tried to call her as soon as I got here, but it still goes straight to voicemail. I’ll keep trying.”

  She dialed Zara’s number. “They’re coming!” shrieked Candy Carmelle’s frantic voice on the recorded message. “Don’t you see them? You must see them!” Emma held the phone at arm’s length, but the scream—a long, full-throated, extravagant howl of pure terror—still resonated in her ears.

  Gage’s mouth fell open; he heard it from all the way across the room.

  “My mom.” Emma rolled her eyes.

  “Maybe the kidnappers will give her back,” he muttered, then winced and quickly apologized.

  Beep. “Call me,” Emma said. “Now. It’s about Mom.”

  Emma pressed the switch hook and dialed her home phone to see if MacGowan Byrne had returned her call, or if Zara had called again from Australia, but there were no messages. She wished Zara had called. She could be in danger from the gold-eyed man, too; there was no real way of knowing, and she had no idea when her sister planned to return to the States.

  Gage picked up the pen and started writing on the sheet of paper.

  “What are you doing?” she asked as she came over to him.

  “Adding item number six to your list. ‘Gold-eyed man holds knife on Gage—’”

  “A knife?”

  “—‘And demands whereabouts of ray gun. Police vaguely amused.’”

  “What... what did you tell him? The gold-eyed man?”

  “That he must be blind, ’cause you’ve had the gun taped inside your coat all along, and he can come get it anytime he wants, and if I ask him real nice will he please find another train to push you in front of.”

  Emma snorted. “Har har.”

  Gage grinned and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “Nothin’, just... you’re kinda cute when you snort.” He looked down and started doodling something below the list. “Look, maybe things didn’t work out too great between us, but I really don’t hate you. I know you think I do, but I don’t. Just for the record.”

  “I know.”

  He nodded as his drawing took the shape of a chaise longue. “Good.”

  “Sorry to interrupt your artistic endeavor,” Emma said as she took the sheet of paper from him, “but I might need this.” She stuffed it into the tote bag, next to her jewelry box. Plucking the gold coat off the chair back, she put it on, then hefted the tote.

  Gage stood up. “Where are you going?”

  “Zara’s apartment. If my mother comes back, I’ll want to know right away. Besides, I really don’t want to stay at my house, the way it is now, and I’m gonna want to change the locks before I spend another night there. I’ll order in some dinner and spend the night.”

  “I don’t know if that’s safe, with everything that’s happened. I don’t like the idea of you being alone.”

  “I’ll put the chain on the door. I’ll be fine.” Amazingly, she meant it. A week ago she would have expected herself to crumple in the face of this ongoing crisis, but instead she was rising to it. More and more, she was keeping her head, thinking on her feet, taking action. She’d faced risks and come out unscathed. She’d dealt with strangers without wimping out, and if she found herself on the phone with a kidnapper, she’d deal with him, too. She’d handled things and would continue to handle them, and all without a stitch of underwear.

  “I’m coming with you,” Gage said.

  “Gage—”

  “For your protection.”

  “I don’t want your protection.”

  “Plus, between the two of us, I’m the only one with a phone. You’re gonna want to keep checking your voicemail and calling Zara, right?”

  “I can use the doorman’s phone.”

  He gave a disgruntled sigh. “Humor me.”

  “I don’t want to humor you.”

  “If you don’t let me come with you, I’ll just have to pester that dutiful doorman to keep buzzing up every ten minutes to check on you.”

  She glared at him. “You know, underneath all that Southern charm, you’re really incredibly stubborn and patriarchal and overbearing.”

  He grinned. “You find me charming?”

  “No!”

  “You just said so.”

  “I didn’t mean it.”

  “Did so.”

  “Did not.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “Absolutely, positively, unequivocally not!”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IS CHINESE FOOD okay with you?” Emma asked. “I found this take-out menu from a Szechuan place down the street. They deliver.”

  Gage couldn’t tear hi
s gaze away from the tattered poster for Reptile Bride taped to one of the doors of Zara Sutcliffe’s sleek black entertainment unit. The lurid artwork depicted Candy Carmelle in all her pneumatic splendor, her skintight wedding gown artfully torn to reveal a generous expanse of bosom. She was screaming as a reptilian humanoid seized her in his talons. “Huh?”

  “Szechuan. Yes or no?”

  “Yes.” Gage took off his jacket and draped it over the arm of the couch.

  “Can I borrow your phone?” They’d found a rhinestone-encased iPhone amid the jumble of cosmetics and hairstyling implements on her mother’s dressing table, but it was password-protected. Emma had tucked it in the back pocket of her jeans anyway, wanting to keep it nearby in case it rang.

  He handed her his phone and she punched out a number. “Hello, Golden Palace? This is a take-out order.” She paused. “Sutcliffe. Uh, yeah, go ahead and put it on my account.” Covering the phone with her hand, she whispered to Gage, “Serves Zara right for getting me into this... Yeah, I’m still here. Okay, let’s see.” She squinted at the menu. “I’ll have a number 17, a number 24 and a 31. Now, when you say hot and spicy, how hot are we talking?” She paused again. “No, I want it hot. No, no, no, extra hot. Put in twice as much pepper oil as usual. Twice as much. Two times.”

  She waited. Gage grinned.

  “Okay, great, and throw in a liter of Coke and a couple of pints of hot-and-sour soup. Yes, extra pepper oil in that, too. Thanks. Bye.”

  “Maybe I don’t like my Chinese food extra hot,” he said.

  “Maybe I don’t like my burgers well done.” She shot him one of those nyah-nyah grins that made her look like a mischievously precocious little girl, and it tickled him someplace deep inside his chest, which bugged the hell out of him, because he wanted to be over her completely, and of course he wasn’t. No complications, remember, cowboy?

  “Actually,” he said, “I’m partial to spicy food. Somehow I wouldn’t have expected you to be, though.”

  “Virgins have to get their kicks somehow.” She tossed the menu and phone onto the couch and grabbed her tote bag. “I’m gonna take a shower. If the food comes before I get out, would you sign for it? I thought we could eat on the terrace since it’s so mild tonight.”

  Gage scratched his chin as he watched her saunter down the hall, open the door to the white bedroom and close it behind her. A minute later he heard a shower turn on.

  It was still running twenty minutes later when the doorman buzzed; Gage had to search for the intercom. The guy from Golden Palace was on his way up.

  Gage signed for the food and carried it out to the terrace, where he’d already set the little wrought-iron bistro table with plates, chopsticks and glasses. He’d been tempted to raid Zara’s well-stocked wine rack, but recalling Emma’s lack of tolerance for alcohol, he decided against it. The terrace, a narrow rectangle enclosed on three sides by brick walls and on the fourth by an ornate railing, looked out onto a secluded little rear courtyard, above which loomed yet more apartment buildings. Dozens of plants hanging in baskets and sprouting from tubs imparted a lushly tropical ambience to the terrace, but left little space for furniture; there was the tiny table with its two chairs, a padded wooden lounge chair with a folded afghan at the foot and barely any room to walk around them. Looking down, Gage saw six identical balconies below him; there were rows of them to the left and right and above him. How, he wondered, did these people keep from going stark raving bonkers with only fifteen square feet of outdoors to call their own?

  He went back inside to hunt for soup bowls in the kitchen cabinets, during which he came across a fat candle in a brass holder. Why not? He brought it out to the terrace, set it in the middle of the table and lit it. Because it’s romantic, that’s why not. If he was serious about washing his hands of Emma Sutcliffe and this city, he’d kill the atmosphere.

  Disgusted with himself, he blew out the candle.

  “Why’d you do that?”

  Emma stood in the open doorway to the terrace, her skin creamy and golden in the setting sun, her hair twisted on top of her head in a haphazard way that made him want to rip all the pins out and bury his face in it. Worst of all was what she had on: a white T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Button fly jeans.

  “Is something wrong with the candle?” Emma stepped onto the terrace and leaned over the table, her arm brushing his. She smelled damp and sweet, like his mother’s magnolia tree after it rained.

  “No.”

  She met his gaze. The low, slanting sun lit her eyes from within; he could see right through them. “Then why’d you blow it out?”

  He looked down and noticed something he wished he hadn’t: she didn’t seem to be wearing a bra. Sighing, he said, “I don’t know.”

  Casting him a curious look, she plucked the matches from his hand and relit the wick. “I like candles.” She blew out the match and sat in the chair Gage pulled out for her. “In Maine, I had them all over the house. It was the right kind of house for them, though, a quaint little Victorian. On winter nights I used to light dozens of them in the bathroom and then get undressed and slide into a nice hot bathtub and read whodunits for hours.” She twisted the lid off a container of hot-and-sour soup and inhaled the pungent steam that wafted out, her eyes closing in rapturous anticipation. “Mmm. Ready to start sweating?”

  “I think I already am.” Gage took his seat and opened his own soup.

  He’d thought Zara—or rather, Emma playing Zara—had been ridiculously attractive. But Emma herself—stripped of her sister’s vampish persona and scrubbed down to her own true, natural self—was downright mesmerizing. There was an untouched quality to her, and at the same time, a peculiar kind of ingenuous wisdom. The combination was powerfully compelling, and as he worked his way through the fiery meal, he found himself trying to remember exactly why he was supposed to be keeping his distance from her.

  Because she mounted a campaign of deception against you, that’s why. She’s no different from the general run of humanity, lying and cheating to get what she wants. Bottom line: she should have told you the truth before things got heavy between you, and she didn’t. She didn’t care enough about you to be honest when it mattered. All she cared about was losing her fucking virginity. You’re better off without her.

  “Do you think that’s possible?” she asked as she snagged an incendiary prawn with her chopsticks and tucked it between her lips.

  “Huh?” Gage’s chopsticks kept slipping; he’d never felt clumsier.

  She chewed and swallowed, chasing the scalding mouthful with a swig of soda. “Do you think it’s possible that my mother just... stepped out for a while, like the cops said?”

  Gage was finding that increasingly unlikely, given that it was almost nightfall and there’d been no word from her. And, of course... “There’s the overturned table,” he said carefully.

  “Maybe she knocked it over by accident.”

  Obviously, Emma didn’t want to accept the likelihood of foul play, not yet. That was okay; there’d be plenty of opportunity for her to freak out when the ransom call came. “It could have been an accident,” he said. “Absolutely. She could be out shopping or whatever. No need to start panicking yet.”

  Emma nodded distractedly and lifted a paper take-out container to peer inside. “There’s a little more of the chicken left,” she said, tilting it so he could see the torrid tidbits swimming in their bath of pepper oil.

  Gage shook his head. The skin was peeling away from the roof of his mouth and he was sweating in places that were physiologically incapable of producing sweat. Also, his butt was griping about the hard little cushionless iron chair. “I know when I’m licked.”

  “Well,” Emma sighed, rising to nest the empty containers together and stuff them into the bag the food had come in, “there’s one thing we know for sure. The gold-eyed man wants the ray gun. First he stole my bag, probably thinking the gun was in it, and then he pushed me onto the tracks.”

  Gage gathered u
p the plates and bowls and blew out the candle. “Why’d he try and kill you?”

  “So I couldn’t identify him. If that thing really is worth two million dollars, then stealing it is grand larceny.” She headed toward the kitchen with the paper trash; Gage followed with the dishes. “Okay, so he gets home and lo and behold there’s no ray gun in the bag.”

  “So he trashes your house, looking for it.”

  Emma crammed the refuse into the garbage can, then lifted out the bulging plastic bag and tied it off, her expression troubled. “He knows who I am from my driver’s license. He’s probably angry at being tricked.”

  “Yeah,” Gage said as he rinsed the dishes, “I’d have to say he wasn’t in the best of moods this morning when he got me in that alley.”

  Emma frowned at the bump on his head. “I’m sorry this has all gotten so out of hand. I’m sorry you’ve been pulled into it. Really.”

  He dried his hands on a dish towel, then reached out and stroked her cheek. “Anything for a lady in need.”

  Emma looked away, obviously discomforted. What could he expect? He was running kind of hot and cold.

  “I’m gonna go throw this down the garbage chute.” She carried the trash bag out of the kitchen; he heard her leave the apartment.

  Hands off, cowboy. You’re just fucking things up.

  Gage poured detergent into the dishwasher and started it, then began to wonder what was keeping Emma. It couldn’t take all that long to dispose of a bag of garbage. Suddenly apprehensive, he sprinted to the door and opened it.

  Emma was down the hall, by the door to the garbage chute. Standing between her and the apartment, his back to Gage, was a familiar-looking steroidal figure in a sleeveless T-shirt and gym shorts—the Neanderthal who’d asked him, this afternoon, why he didn’t know Zara Sutcliffe’s apartment number if he really was such a good friend of hers.

  “And afterwards,” the guy was saying, “we can maybe come back to my place and I’ll whip you up one of my special protein shakes.”

  “I don’t think so, Ronald.” Emma slid a baleful look toward Gage as he made his silent approach.