Wicked Burn

by BETH KERY

  Niall laughed. “I hadn’t realized we were.”

  Anne ignored her. She took a quick drink of her ice water, as though her mouth had just gone dry.

  “I’ll be damned if Vic Savian himself isn’t staring at the back of your head right now like he thought he just discovered the secret of the universe in your hair.”

  “Vic . . . Savian?” Niall asked slowly.

  Anne set down her water glass and averted her eyes for a second before she glanced back surreptitiously to the bar.

  “Sure, Vic Savian. The playwright?” she muttered under her breath. “The Hesse Theater—not to mention Chicago—scored a real coup by signing him on as the director and resident playwright. He’s won the Pulitzer several times, not to mention dozens of other awards. But the man hates New York. Genuine article of the West, you know. It’s a miracle he agreed to live this far east.” Her expression shifted subtly, as if she’d just put two and two together. “Oh, and the first play they’re doing is one of his. It opens next week. It’s been in all the papers. One of the professors in the Theater Department has been working with an assistant of Savian’s to get a program going where a few students can help out on the set, get some good experience in the trenches. Of course, he had to especially encourage the boys to apply, since the girls immediately filled up the roster. Vic Savian is one hell of a sexy beast.”

  That was it. The last remnant of Niall’s self-control slipped away.

  She twisted around in the booth and stared. Her eyes met his immediately.

  He stood out at the crowded bar, or at least he did to her. He was sitting and leaning forward, but even so, his head topped everyone around him. His shoulders were broader than anyone else’s, too, especially emphasized as they were by a well-cut brown blazer. The shirt that he wore underneath looked starkly white against his dark skin. Even though his posture might look relaxed to a casual observer, Niall sensed his alertness, his focused attention.

  For a few seconds they just looked at each other, both of them motionless.

  Then a dark-haired woman at the bar spoke to him. Vic’s chin shifted to the side to catch what she said, his steady gaze on Niall fracturing slightly.

  Niall turned around quickly, as if she’d been given an unexpected reprieve from the snare of his eyes.

  Anne hadn’t missed the charged, nonverbal exchange. “Do you know Vic Savian, Niall?”

  Her hand shook slightly when she took a drink of water. “No. Yes. Sort of.” Niall cleared her throat, realizing how stupid she sounded. Her heart pounded in her ears so loudly she wondered if a blood vessel would break.

  “He actually lives across the hall from me at Riverview Towers. At least for part of the week he does,” she added lamely.

  Anne grinned hugely. “He does? Holy shit, you are one lucky woman! Ever see anything worthwhile, like him coming out in the morning to get his newspaper just wearing his boxers? And why the hell didn’t you ever tell me that Vic Savian lived twenty feet away from you?”

  Niall grimaced. She’d seen plenty worthwhile in regard to Vic. She also knew firsthand that he didn’t wear boxers. In her experience, Vic didn’t wear anything beneath his jeans but smooth, warm skin. She shivered slightly in nervous excitement at the same time that a wave of nausea swept through her. The man from her wild night of raw, sublime sex suddenly possessed a name and the outlines of an identity.

  And she could feel his stare on her again.

  “I didn’t know who he was,” Niall said when she realized that Anne was waiting tensely for an answer. “You said he’s a playwright? That’s so strange.”

  “Why would you say that?” Anne asked in puzzlement.

  “Because he hardly talks at all,” Niall muttered.

  Anne looked like she was about to pursue that vague reference before she raised her eyebrows and flipped her napkin onto the table in an affected casual gesture.

  “Well, he just got up from the bar, and he looks like he has every intention of coming over here. Savian obviously has something he wants to say to you, Niall.”

  THREE

  Niall wondered about Anne’s statement, however, when Vic approached their booth but didn’t utter a word. Just when he seemed about to say something, his gaze flicked over to Anne. Niall experienced a moment of panic in the tense silence. She stared up at him, taking in his all-too-well-remembered image—the long, jean-clad thighs, the rugged, stoic facial features, those singular light gray eyes. He looked good in the casual sports jacket—he looked very good—but his clothing couldn’t quite disguise the animal-like, sinewy grace of the man beneath them.

  It felt surreal to be staring up at him in the midst of a crowded restaurant.

  Niall grasped for something to say, but nothing came.

  Nothing.

  She blinked when he abruptly queried her in his typical laconic fashion.

  “Where’d you go?”

  Niall forced a smile despite a rising sense of panic. “I just got back from a business trip to Tokyo.”

  She thought she saw irritation flicker across his handsome face at her unintentionally stiff reply, but it was gone in an instant. A small smile shaped his lips, deepening the lines that parenthesized his mouth.

  “I thought maybe you’d cleared out . . . decided the neighborhood was too dangerous or something.”

  Niall stared. His grin had widened just enough to display that deadly, slightly off-center front tooth. The humor and heat that flashed into his eyes left Niall speechless. She hadn’t expected him to subtly tease her, so how could she have prepared herself for the potent result?

  Talk about pure, distilled sexuality. If only Vic could package it, he’d be a billionaire.

  She laughed nervously. “Of course not. I have to travel quite a bit with my job. I just got back yesterday.”

  He nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving her. She recognized the tiny, almost imperceptible movement he made with his closed mouth, a slight roll of his angular jaw while he considered her unhurriedly. Just looking at his mouth and thinking about his teeth made a dull ache of longing expand from her lower belly downward.

  “Vic.” A female voice broke Niall’s trance. She glanced over and saw the attractive, statuesque brunette who had been speaking to him at the bar. Niall thought she seemed vaguely familiar. There was nothing indistinct about the hard look she gave Niall, however. Despite the woman’s obvious irritation at her, she smiled when Vic turned.

  “Our table is ready,” she said brightly.

  “I’ll let you get back to your dinner,” he said with a brief nod of apology to Anne.

  “There’s nothing to get back to,” Anne piped up with a broad smile. “Nothing but the crumbs.”

  His eyes met Niall’s briefly before he started to walk away. Niall tried to smile but suspected she only grimaced. He stopped abruptly after he’d taken a step.

  “Would it be okay if I called you?”

  Niall, Anne, and the brunette waiting for Vic all froze simultaneously.

  “Yes,” Niall finally croaked. Her eyes widened when he continued to stare at her.

  “I don’t have your number. It’s not listed,” he said after a silence that lasted for only a few seconds, but seemed like eons to Niall.

  He’d wanted to call her? He’d tried to call her?

  “I’ll get it for you,” Niall managed eventually when her shock faded.

  She fumbled in her bag, finally pulling out her business card and a pen. She wrote her cell phone number on the back, pointedly avoiding the significant looks and barely repressed smug grin that Anne was giving her from across the table. “Either work or my cell is fine. I never had a line installed in the apartment. Too temporary,” she stated lamely as she handed him the card.

  He nodded once before he took it and followed the dark-haired woman away from their booth.

  “It’s okay, Niall,” Anne said as she choked back laughter once he was out of hearing distance. “You can breathe now.”

  Anne to
ok the first cab in the queue outside of The Art; Niall, the second. Niall adored Anne, of course, but she was all too glad to escape her friend’s nearly nonstop questioning in regard to Vic Savian. By the time Anne had gotten into the cab and waved good-bye, Niall was fairly confident the older woman knew that Vic and Niall’s relationship consisted of more than occasional glimpses of one another and neighborly hellos.

  Niall’s proclivity to blush at the most inopportune moments ensured that.

  Her cabdriver rocketed down Randolph Street at an alarming speed, but Niall didn’t even notice. She was too busy picturing Vic as he looked down at her while she sat at the booth, too preoccupied with replaying his request for her phone number.

  It had been wrong of her to give it to him without a shred of hesitation, just as it had been wrong of her to give him her body without a thought of refusal.

  Hadn’t it?

  Both things had felt so right and natural that refusing him had never even occurred to her on either occasion.

  Her phone started to ring at the same moment that the cab made a tight turn down Wacker Drive, making her purse slide along the backseat. Niall lunged for her bag before she’d righted herself. She swallowed heavily when she saw the 217 prefix of the caller’s phone number.

  Wasn’t that an area code from downstate Illinois?

  Surely Vic wasn’t calling her already. He’d just walked away from their table not ten minutes ago!

  “Hello?”

  “Niall?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Vic.”

  “Oh . . . hi,” she said breathlessly. The cabdriver made another wild left turn down Lake Street, causing her to grip tightly at the opening of the hard plastic window that separated the driver from his passengers in order to keep her body upright. The way the guy drove, he was lucky to have a little protection from what Niall assumed were frequently irate customers.

  She floundered both physically and mentally in the seconds of silence that followed.

  “You headed back home?” Vic finally asked.

  Niall closed her eyes and let his voice wash over her, allowing it to still her wildly chaotic emotions. She loved the sound of it. The vague thought struck her that Vic Savian was not a man who should use the phone. Phone talkers couldn’t abide extensive silences, feeling the need to fill the unbearable void of nothingness. His words were as spare and lean as the man himself, calling to mind a stark, rugged landscape that was far, far from being simple.

  “Yes. It’s going to be an early night for me. I’m a little tired after my trip,” she murmured.

  “Tokyo, you said, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Another short silence followed. This time Niall sank into it . . . embraced it instead of fighting it. Her eyes remained closed. Her whole world narrowed down to the fragile, temporary connection with a man via the means of a technology she couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

  Where, exactly, was he as he talked to her? In the entryway of The Art, protecting himself from the cool November wind? Or perhaps on the sidewalk with theatergoers strolling by, arm in arm?

  Outside, Niall decided unequivocally. A man like Vic embraced the elements, never shunned them. She could picture him perfectly—his broad shoulders hunched slightly, his back angled to the street in an unconscious gesture of self-protection . . . not from the elements but from people’s prying eyes.

  What did his attractive, dark-haired companion think about Vic’s absence as he talked to Niall and she sat alone at their table, waiting?

  Those were all distant thoughts that had nothing to do with what she asked him next.

  “Where did you grow up?”

  “In a li’l pissant town called Avery, South Dakota, just outside the Black Hills. I’ve lived in Montana for the past fifteen years, though. Why?”

  “No reason,” she murmured. “I like your accent, that’s all.”

  “I don’t have an accent. You do, though.”

  Niall laughed softly at his matter-of-fact declaration. She could picture the small smile curving his lips perfectly. She pressed the phone tighter to her ear, thoroughly mesmerized, wanting him closer, even in this nonphysical sense.

  “What accent is that, exactly?”

  “The one that sounds like you grew up on the North Shore . . . Glencoe? Lake Forest?”

  Her eyelids popped open. His assumption and something in the tone of his voice had stung her—although he had been entirely correct . . .

  “Kenilworth, actually.”

  “Ummm.”

  The cabdriver made another wicked right into the circular drive in front of Riverview Towers. It hurt, his little grunt of acknowledgment, as if she’d suddenly confirmed something nasty about herself to him, as if growing up in an affluent neighborhood was a shameful crime.

  “I should probably go. I’m home,” she said huskily, realizing that the words sounded far more intimate to her ears than she’d intended.

  “I’ll probably be working late tomorrow but I’d like to have dinner with you afterward if you’re available.”

  “I’m available,” Niall said rapidly. She closed her eyes in mortification when she realized how that must have sounded to him. His quick bark of masculine laughter suggested that he’d liked her response, however.

  “I’ll give you a call around eight and tell you how things are looking on my end. Okay?”

  “Okay. Have a good night.”

  “Night.”

  Niall was distracted as she walked through Riverview Towers’ luxurious lobby. She didn’t realize why she was so preoccupied until she reached her front door and glanced over at the entrance to Vic’s apartment. Against her will, the powerful image rose in her mind’s eye of what she must have looked like lying spread-eagled on his hallway floor, her dress around her waist, flushed from multiple orgasms, vibrant life surging thickly in her veins.

  Guilt washed through her. She knew what rankled at her spirit. She’d told Vic that she was available.

  And Niall herself couldn’t decide if that was the ultimate truth or not.

  A pile of things had accumulated on her desk in her absence, each one seemingly more important than the last. Niall coped with her anxiety and excitement about seeing Vic that night by throwing herself into work. By the time she returned to her office from a late afternoon meeting, she wasn’t feeling any less jumpy about her date, but she did feel good about how much she’d accomplished that day.

  “Any calls?” Niall asked Kendra Phillips, her administrative assistant and good friend. When she heard the eager tone of her own voice, Niall realized that she was half hoping that Vic might have called, which was ridiculous. He’d specifically told her that he wouldn’t call until this evening. God, she was like a teenager with her first crush. The only difference being how wet her panties got every time she thought about Vic touching her. That aspect of her infatuation was definitely very adult.

  She must not have been hiding her eagerness very well, because Kendra gave her a slightly suspicious look.

  “Who were you expecting to call? Not Evan Forrester, I hope.”

  Niall blanched. She hadn’t spoken to Evan since the night that he’d practically attacked her in the hallway . . . since the night Vic had branded her with his touch.

  “God, no.”

  “Good, because I saw him at Toulouse during lunch,” Kendra said, referring to the upscale restaurant housed within the museum. “He really likes his martini lunches, doesn’t he? He cornered me and asked if you’d returned yet. I told him that I thought you’d be spending the weekend with your parents in Kenilworth.”

  “Nice one, thanks,” Niall said.

  “Mac said that Forrester was trouble from the first when it came to you, although he has to tiptoe around the issue, seeing as how Forrester is on the board,” Kendra said with a grin, referring to Alistair McKenzie, the director of the museum.

  Niall rolled her eyes. “If only Evan could be that subtle in return. The guy’s lik
e a Mack truck.” Kendra looked concerned about that statement, so Niall quickly changed the subject.

  “Any other calls?”

  “Here are your messages.”

  Niall glanced through the pieces of paper. Rose Gonzalez’s name caught her eye. What had the State of Illinois Public Guardian been calling her for? Niall wondered. Rose had patiently explained to her that she was wholly in charge now, not Niall. She knew that Rose usually left the office by five P.M. She’d have to call her first thing in the morning.

  “Your mom was one of the callers,” Kendra broke through Niall’s preoccupation. Her voice level dropped until it was just above a whisper. “She wanted to know if you wanted to attend church at St. Patrick’s before the three of you go out to Evergreen Park this Sunday. You’re supposed to call her on her cell.”

  Niall grimaced. How like her mother to suggest a good dose of Catholic-style guilt just when Niall was considering having a sexual fling with Vic. Alexis Chandler was damn scary sometimes, the way she could foresee events.

  And Niall did not plan to go to Evergreen Park this weekend. That was one of her mother’s well meaning, but thoroughly irritating, machinations. Niall had made it clear that the ritualistic, soul-wrenching Sunday visitations at Evergreen Park were a thing of the past.

  God, it made her feel slightly nauseated even to consider challenging her mother on the issue when she knew she was only doing what she thought was right. The lament of every child since Cain and Abel, no doubt, she thought sourly.

  “Thanks.” Niall started to walk toward her office, but she paused, her feet moving restlessly. “You go to plays a lot, don’t you, Kendra?”

  “Sure, when I can get Mark to let go of his death grip on the remote control for a few hours,” she teased, referring to her husband.

  “Ever seen a Vic Savian play?”

  “Yep. Misfit Cowboys and Aidan’s Fall. Are you thinking about seeing his new one that’s opening at the Hesse Theater? I’ve already got tickets.”

  Niall plucked at her wool skirt, averting her face. “I was thinking about it. Is he any good?”