“You barely know him.”
“He just didn’t strike me as the type.”
“I didn’t think so, either,” Brynn said. “But then, I never thought he’d give me an ultimatum like he did.”
“What ultimatum?”
Brynn shut her eyes, swearing to have her mouth sewn shut. If Lexi didn’t remember—which wasn’t surprising, considering nine years had gone by— Brynn certainly didn’t want to remind her. “It was nothing. Something silly back in college.”
“Oh, yeah. I remember now. ‘Have sex with me or we’re through,’ right?”
Annoyed that she’d remembered—and even more so that Lexi didn’t seem particularly outraged on her friend’s behalf—Brynn forced an almost imperceptible nod.
“Don’t tell me that’s still bugging you. That ultimatum is the college boy’s time-honored weapon of last resort. As a reformed ‘good girl,’ I should know. I heard it a few times myself.”
“You never mentioned it.”
“Why should I?”
Brynn wished she could dismiss it as casually as Lexi had. But she couldn’t. She’d really believed that Cade had felt something special for her. He’d hurt her deeply with that ultimatum—and even more so by taking up immediately with Rhiannon. He’d then gone on to carve many more notches in his bedpost, leaving other girls pining for him, or so Brynn had heard.
“Look at this through adult eyes, Brynn. He’s grown up since college, and even if he’s not your ultimate dream man, he’s a good candidate for a sexual adventure or two. The most important question is, does he still get the old furnace blazing?”
Brynn let out a laugh, shifted her eyes away from Lexi’s and, without conscious thought, fanned her face with her hand.
When she again glanced at her friend, Lexi was peering at her with an arrested expression of discovery. “You’re holding out on me. You have spent some up-close-and-personal time with him, haven’t you?”
“A little.” The admission made Brynn uncomfortable. She didn’t want to worry Lexi with the sleepwalking problem. And if Trish heard about what had happened, she’d probably haul Brynn off to a sleep clinic and refuse to let her work as resident manager until she’d been cured. Brynn knew from experience that sleepwalking wasn’t easy to cure.
Realizing that Lexi was still waiting for an explanation of the time she’d recently spent with Cade, she said, “Nothing serious happened between us.”
“You mean, nothing sexual?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Oh, Brynn, why didn’t you give the guy a try? Just days ago you were saying how Antoine doesn’t do it for you. The breakup will have to be handled diplomatically, considering he’s Trish’s cousin, but why not let Antoine know it’s over and see how great sex could be with a lover like Cade?”
Brynn shrugged as if the matter wasn’t very important to her. As if she hadn’t been asking herself those very questions all night and day. But she’d always answered with another question: would she be able to remain emotionally detached if she made love to Cade?
He had a way of making her feel things too deeply, such as the anger and sense of betrayal that had stayed with her for way too long. If she ever did something as stupid as falling in love with him again, he’d surely shatter her heart. He wasn’t a one-woman type of guy, and he wasn’t interested in anything more than sex.
Maybe that was why she’d been devastated—because his kisses had made her believe he was. What was worse, they still did.
No, she couldn’t get intimately involved with Cade unless she could see him as merely an enjoyable pass-time. A carnival ride. A sexual adventure.
Why couldn’t she accept that and get on with it, like any good urban adventuress would?
HE WAITED UNTIL ALL THREE innkeepers were busy elsewhere—Trish away from the inn, Lexi in the kitchen and Brynn in the backyard telling her guests about the colorful history of Athens. Even Mrs. Hornsby, the sharp-eyed old busybody, listened, entranced, beneath the big old magnolias, pines and dog-woods.
The upstairs floor of the inn was entirely his.
Cade lost no time making the most of the opportunity. With a tool he carried with him everywhere, he opened the locked doors and quickly searched each room for anything telling. Unfortunately, he found very little.
He then bugged the phones in Trish’s and Brynn’s rooms. He would have bugged Lexi’s phone, too, but she lived in a house of her own. Brynn’s cell phone, unfortunately, was nowhere to be found. She probably carried it with her. He’d have to find a way to bug it later. A wealth of information could be learned from phone calls.
Most importantly, he installed a motion sensor on Brynn’s bedroom door. With the sophisticated new lock she’d had installed, she would never notice the tiny motion sensor. No one would be leaving this room—or entering it—without his knowing.
He then returned to his own room, booted up his laptop and uploaded the digital photos he’d taken of the inn’s staff and guests. A click of the mouse sent the images whizzing through cyberspace.
BRYNN STAYED BUSY for most of that Friday afternoon, preparing for the evening party, catering to guests who hadn’t gone off for the day and trying the entire time not to notice what Cade was doing or whom he was doing it with. He hung around the inn with his camera and a notebook—presumably to work on his book—while he held court with the other guests, all seemingly enthralled by his work as a travel writer.
Brynn managed to avoid him until late that afternoon, when she found herself virtually alone with him in the television room. Although Mrs. Hornsby sat in a rocker near the window, the bulky, grim-faced woman was snoring over a mystery novel that lay abandoned in her lap when Cade strolled in. Brynn, who’d been dusting furniture and adjusting the cushions on the sofas, couldn’t very well stop her work and run out, although she was tempted to do just that.
Cade dropped down into an armchair and greeted her with a smile that any woman would have found impossible to ignore.
Hoping that Mrs. Hornsby’s presence would prevent him from initiating intimate conversation, Brynn took refuge in the relatively impersonal subject of his career. While plumping the sofa cushions, she said in an offhand way, “So, I heard that you’re a travel journalist.”
“I suppose you did.”
When he said nothing more, she glanced at him in mild surprise. She’d expected him to elaborate at least a little. Instead, he lounged silently in the chair, his elbow on the armrest, his chin in his hand, and watched her. The silence made her uncomfortable.
“You never seemed interested in writing, as far as I remember,” she said. “Or in traveling, for that matter.”
“People change.” Another moment of disarming silence went by before he added, “At least, some people do.”
Uneasiness knotted her insides. She knew he was referring to her behavior last night, when she’d left him as sexually frustrated as she had in college. Conscious of Mrs. Hornsby sitting within easy earshot, Brynn ignored the implication, yanked the dust cloth from the pocket of the pinstriped apron she wore over her jeans, and turned her effort to polishing an end table. “I thought for sure you’d work in some kind of law enforcement capacity.”
“Where’s the future in that?”
She halted her polishing and stared at him. The 180-degree change in direction suddenly struck her as incomprehensible. He’d always been intensely interested in police detective work, FBI profiling techniques and the noble cause of putting dangerous criminals behind bars.
In fact, there’d been times when his passion on the subject had bothered her. She’d had gut-wrenching qualms about how he might react, how his feelings for her might change, if he learned too much about her younger days—specifically, the ones she’d spent at a certain Florida beach community. Of course, that worry had applied to virtually everyone in her life.
Although she hadn’t particularly liked Cade’s passion for hunting down criminals, she’d understood it. His maternal grandfather had
been a cop. Cade hadn’t known him very well, but he’d taken to heart stories of his valor. The old man had obviously passed on to his young grandson an enthusiasm for confronting the bad guys. Brynn would have staked her life that Cade would specialize in some area of law enforcement.
And though it was none of her business, and, in many ways, she had to admit he was wise to choose the safe, potentially lucrative job of travel writing, she was ridiculously disappointed that he hadn’t pursued his dream.
“Do I sense disapproval?” he asked incredulously. “Of my writing career?”
“Not disapproval. Who could disapprove of a writer’s career when he’s already published several books?”
“But you’re not especially impressed.”
“It’s impressive enough.” She turned back to her dusting.
“But…?”
“But…” Oh, why couldn’t she keep her opinions to herself? “…it just seems that you sold out.”
“Sold out.” He narrowed his eyes as if to decipher unintelligible words.
“You majored in criminal justice,” she reminded him.
“Are you telling me you think I should have been a cop?”
“Or a fed. A judge. A prosecutor. I think those lines of work would have suited you.” She rubbed harder at the smooth, glossy finish of the oak table, watching him surreptitiously in her peripheral vision.
He leaned forward in the chair, rested his forearms across his knees and studied her profile. “You’ve never struck me as the cop-groupie type.”
“The cop-groupie type!” She clutched the dust cloth in her fist and turned to him, ready to give him a quick, hard, verbal right hook. But she reconsidered. He’d called her a prude once, and just moments ago insinuated that she hadn’t changed. “A cop groupie, huh?” She rested the fist with the dust cloth against her hip and tilted her head in contemplation. “A fascinating idea, really—to shamelessly pursue macho men in uniform for tawdry sexual kicks.”
His mouth flexed and laugh lines creased beside his amber-brown eyes. “Okay, so you’re not a cop groupie. But you’re the first nongroupie of the female persuasion I’ve ever known who’d actually encourage a guy to be a cop.”
“I wouldn’t encourage just any guy to be a cop.”
“Then why me?”
“You were always fascinated by police work, and…and by being one of the good guys.” That, she realized, had been the driving force behind his zeal. She wasn’t even sure how she knew. “You were passionate about it. It was part of you. And I’m sorry to hear you’ve left that part behind.”
Surprise entered his eyes, then turned into something deeper. As if she’d somehow touched him. “I was passionate about other things, too.”
Her heart took a leap, and she felt the sensual warmth rise in her again. Yes, she remembered very clearly. He had indeed been passionate.
She wrenched her gaze away from his mesmerizing one and resumed polishing the end table. He was simply too good at luring her into an erotic state of mind.
She couldn’t have been more relieved when, moments later, the Kappa Alpha guys trooped in to watch the Braves game on the big-screen television. Mrs. Hornsby quit her snoring to watch the game, too.
Brynn kept herself busy by serving drinks and snacks, thereby avoiding further conversation with Cade. At least she had made up her mind on the question of whether or not to sleep with him. She wouldn’t. If a conversation about his job had the power to stir her emotions, how could she ever survive sexual involvement?
Then again, how could she ignore the potent sexual attraction she felt for him when she felt it for no one else?
Okay, so maybe her mind wasn’t entirely made up.
Her attention was torn from her inner debate when the baseball game was interrupted by a special newscast. A headline banner ran across the television screen: Serial Abductor: “The Pied Piper.”
The anchorwoman announced, “Just in from police—three separate incidences of women disappearing from their homes in Georgia this summer have now been linked to a single abductor. Police recently received in the mail photographs of all three women, along with a note that read, ‘Dancing to my tune now.’ The note was signed, ‘The Pied Piper.’ So far, no ransom has been demanded. Police believe the abductor befriended each victim prior to her disappearance. More on this story at eleven.”
Brynn recognized the case her brother was investigating—the abductor he’d warned her about, although he hadn’t mentioned the sensational details about the photos and note. He’d merely warned her to beware of strangers because some creep abductor had been targeting women “just like her,” whatever that meant. John had also told her that they didn’t know if the women were still alive. Brynn shuddered at the implication. The thought that her brother dealt with such dangerous psychos in the course of his work hit her harder than ever before.
Had she been crazy, telling Cade he should have been a cop? He was much better off as a writer! She should have praised his change in career plans, not criticized it.
Most of the men gathered around the television had paid little attention to the broadcast, other than to grumble about the interruption to the ball game. Cade, however, had seemed to focus intently on the newscast. And though someone who didn’t know him probably wouldn’t have noticed, Brynn suspected he’d been disturbed by it. Not just concerned over the news, as she was, but angered by it.
An odd reaction.
But then he laughed at something a Kappa Alpha was saying, and returned his attention to the Braves game. Brynn assumed she’d misjudged his fleeting reaction.
5
THE BIDDING STOPPED at one hundred twenty thousand, and the painting of a wilted corsage was sold to some social butterfly who would hang it on her wall so her fluff-brained friends could ooh and ahh over it as if the damn thing had real merit.
Anger percolated through his veins and throbbed in his temples with such fierceness that he had to shoulder his way through the crowd and leave the gallery. A hundred twenty big ones—while his own vastly superior work went for mere hundreds, if he was lucky.
He strode out the door and down a bustling Atlanta street at a furious pace, longing to wreak violence on something or someone, to give in to the all-consuming rage. And for the umpteenth time, he swore he understood the mindset of Jack the Ripper. He’d read the theory that the killer had been a suffering Impressionist painter. Too bad his notoriety as the Ripper hadn’t brought attention to his art. Of course, they would have hanged him. Which might have caused his work to fetch even higher prices.
The black humor in that irony helped to calm him. He didn’t consider himself a violent man, and he couldn’t let the injustice of the art world get to him like this.
He had to keep in mind that soon his work would command top dollar at galleries around the world. And his name would be known not only by art patrons, but by everyone who read newspapers or watched the news. Because he had devised a way to cash in on notoriety without having to die for it.
Approaching an exclusive shopping district, he slowed his pace to a stroll in order to peer into the faces of the women he passed. Each drew him in her own way. Each possessed a unique beauty that he could easily translate into art. And he knew he could persuade any of them to sit for him. Ironically enough, he had discovered his aptitude for art while using it as a ruse to get close to wealthy women. Long before that, he’d made his living by charming the fairer sex into parting with money they didn’t particularly need, anyway. In return, he gave them the thrill of his attention.
Women always loved him. He made sure of it.
But, at the moment, he had no need to woo any more women for profit, or to hunt for exceptionally striking models. He’d already chosen the ones that would take him where he wanted to go. He’d spent years deciding on these particular ones, and, so far, his thorough research and preparation had been paying off. Things were moving along according to plan.
As he crossed a side street with a chatt
y mob of mostly female shoppers, he passed by a patrol car. Casually he averted his face from the cop behind the wheel and merged deeper into the concealing crowd. Not that he worried about being collared. He’d been very careful in his latest ventures and didn’t believe the cops had any idea what he looked like.
It was just an old reflex, to hide from the law. The one time a mark of his had turned on him and pressed charges, he’d spent hard time behind bars. He didn’t let the memories of the disrespectful treatment he’d suffered at the hands of Atlanta cops upset him anymore. Because now he had the upper hand. Now, they were dancing to his tune.
His spirits lifted at the thought, and self-satisfaction added a bounce to his step. The plan he’d concocted to elevate his status in the art world was serving more than one purpose. The delicious irony of it all delighted him.
He was, quite simply, a master at his game, and the world would someday marvel at his ingenuity.
And clamor to buy a painting by the artist formerly known as the Pied Piper.
THE WEATHER ON FRIDAY evening was perfect for a cookout, without the oppressive humidity or heat so common to late-August days in Georgia. More like an evening at his mountain home in Colorado, Cade decided, leaning against a column on the inn’s front porch as he watched the crowd.
Brynn and Lexi had decorated the yard with red and black streamers around trees, balloons on the porch columns, Go Dawgs! signs and a Skin Those Wildcats! banner that spanned the entire roofline. A glance down the street in either direction showed that almost every yard was decorated, with students and alumni milling around, drinks in hand. Laughter and music blared from the sorority and fraternity houses lining the street.
Tables draped in red surrounded by black folding chairs were set up in the front yard of the inn, with a long, central table bearing food, buffet-style, for registered guests. Lexi, with a little G for “Georgia” painted on her face, flipped hamburgers and chicken breasts on a nearby grill. Coolers were stocked with icy beer and soft drinks. Classic rock music played from high-quality stereo speakers.
Sex and the Sleepwalker Page 6
