Charade

by Sandra Brown

  “I never said—”

  “Boy, you could teach the would-be studs in Hollywood something about ego. I’ve never met anyone as full of himself as you. Keeping your unfinished work under lock and key as though it were a national treasure,” she scoffed. “You might really be something if your cock could ever swell as big as your head.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Not at all. It’s very sad.”

  Losing patience, he said, “I just didn’t want you to expect something from me that I can’t deliver.”

  “Then you’ve got what you wanted, because I expect less than zero from you. It was a one-night gig. Our glands had a terrific time together. It didn’t mean anything beyond that.”

  “Bullshit,” he said emphatically.

  “You got off. I got off.”

  “Several times.”

  She saw red but kept going. “We each got what we wanted from the other. End of story.”

  “That’s pure crap, and you know it, and I know it,” he shouted. “If it hadn’t meant anything, I wouldn’t be here trying to explain myself, and you wouldn’t be about to explode.”

  “Ordinarily you just love ’em and leave ’em without notice, is that it?”

  “Yes.”

  She batted her eyelashes and splayed her hand over her chest. “Well, I’m honored by your consideration, Mr. Pierce. Truly I am,” she drawled in a parody of a southern belle.

  “Cut it out, Cat.”

  “Go to hell, Alex.”

  Glaring at her with frustration, he swore beneath his breath. After a moment he said, “We wouldn’t be having this fight if…if…”

  “Stop stuttering and give it to me straight. It’s a little late for diplomacy. If what?”

  He came closer, until he was looming over her. Lowering his voice to a sexy rasp, he said, “If it hadn’t been so fanfuckingtastic.”

  Her heart was already racing with anger. His inflection made it flutter with awakening desire. She wanted to scratch out his eyes while also wanting to melt against him.

  “You really have an inflated self-image, don’t you?” she said, moving away. When she was at a safer distance, she turned to face him. “Do you expect me to swoon when you talk dirty? Who do you think you are, one of the heroes of those trashy books you hack out?”

  He slammed his fist into his opposite palm. “Jesus, was Arnie ever wrong.”

  “Your agent? What’s he got to do with this?”

  “He advised me to level with you, to lay all the cards on the table. He said that would be the best way to handle the problem.”

  “You talked to your agent about how to ‘handle’ me?” Her voice rose to a shrill note of fury and disbelief. “Consider your ‘problem’ handled, Mr. Pierce. I’ll even make your final farewell speech for you.”

  Aiming her index finger at his chest, she said, “Don’t call me. Don’t come to my house. Make no effort to see me or contact me. You’re a prick. You’re not a tenth as wonderful as you think you are. I don’t ever want to lay eyes on you again.”

  She drew a deep breath before firing the last volley. “Did you get all that, you son of a bitch?”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  It was high tide, but Cat sat well away from the foaming surf. Her chin was propped on her raised knees, her arms linked around her legs. She stared at the horizon to which the sun had surrendered, but not without a spectacular fight. The sky was still alight with a vermilion glow that was gradually being relinquished to an encroaching indigo.

  Sensing someone nearby, she turned and was astonished to see Dean making his way toward her. He dropped down beside her on the sand.

  When she found her voice, she asked, “How’d you know I was here?”

  “I called your office in San Antonio this afternoon. Your assistant informed me that you were taking a few days’ vacation in Malibu. Were you going to come and go without even notifying me?”

  “Yes,” she replied candidly. “We didn’t part on the best of terms.”

  He looked chagrined. “Actually I called today to apologize. I behaved like an idiot that night at your house.”

  “It’s water over the dam. Don’t worry about it.”

  She sensed him studying her profile. He hesitated, then said, “Forgive me for saying so, but you look a little worse for wear. In fact, you look like death warmed over.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “Who?” When he said nothing, she turned her head. He was frowning at her for playing dumb. She returned her gaze to the waves. “I’ve slept with him.”

  “I guessed as much. So what’s the problem? Is there another woman in the picture?”

  “He claims there’s not. I’ve seen no evidence of one.”

  “Dark dealings in his past?”

  “Something he called ‘garbage,’ but he wasn’t specific. I think it had to do with his resignation from police work. Plain and simple, he courted me, made me want to be with him, but he wants only recreational sex.”

  “And you’re still attracted to him?”

  Cat the Courageous always told the truth no matter how brutal it was, even to her own self-esteem. “I’d be lying if I said no.”

  “I see.” He took it one step further. “Are you in love with him?”

  As though her finger had been pricked, she gave a sharp cry and dropped her forehead onto her knees.

  Dean said, “I take that as a yes. Does he know?”

  “God, no. I played the scene well, I think. I gave him a tongue-lashing and ordered him out of my house. I even threatened him with my Lalique vase if he didn’t leave. I doubt he took the threat of bodily harm seriously, but he left anyway.”

  Raising her head, she stared out across the waves, so steeped in misery that she wasn’t aware of the tears on her cheeks. “I’m sorry, Dean. This must be awfully difficult for you. Thank you for listening.”

  He touched the corner of her lips where a tear had found a resting place. “The man’s a fool to throw away the chance of having a relationship with you. What more could he want?”

  “I doubt Alex knows what he wants. He’s restless, searching for something.”

  “Or running away from it.”

  “Possibly. Or maybe he’s just innately and unconscionably selfish.”

  Even as she spoke the words aloud, she didn’t entirely agree with them. During their night together Alex had been tender and passionate, and as involved with her fulfillment as with his own.

  Or was she deceiving herself in order to salvage a little pride? Probably. He was very good at charming and disarming. Surely he could take what he wanted from a woman and at the same time make her feel cherished.

  She rolled back her heels and stared at the toes of her sneakers, thinking back to the instant when she’d first seen him. The chemistry had been instantaneous and explosive, something very powerful and like nothing she’d experienced before.

  Just thinking about it now made her shiver. “Let’s go inside,” she said. “I’m getting cold.”

  Sitting at the kitchen bar sipping coffee, Dean said intuitively, “There’s more on your mind than this crime novelist.”

  “I never could keep a secret from you.”

  “You can act convincingly for other people, but I can tell when you’re troubled. Something was wrong the night I came to San Antonio. You denied it, but I knew you were lying. When are you going to confide in me, Cat?”

  From the pocket of her sweater, she withdrew three envelopes and slid them across the bar to him. “You might find these interesting reading.”

  He looked at her curiously, then opened the envelopes and shook out their contents. After reading each of the newspaper clippings several times, he looked up at her, mystified. “These were mailed to your home address?”

  “The first and second ones came a couple of weeks apart. The third came the day I left.”

  Dean studied the envelopes. “These give nothing away.”

/>   “Except that they bear a San Antonio postmark.”

  “Three transplantees from different areas of the country. Three bizarre accidental deaths. A fall through a plate glass window, a drowning in an automobile, and a slip of a chainsaw. Jesus.”

  “It sounds like a Brian DePalma movie, doesn’t it? Guaranteed to raise goosebumps.”

  Dean tossed the clippings onto the bar, his contempt obvious. “Some wacko with a macabre sense of humor sent them to you.”

  “Yes, that’s probably all it is.”

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Neither am I,” he confessed. “Have you showed them to anyone else?”

  “Jeff. The first two. He doesn’t know about the third one.”

  “What was his opinion?”

  “Basically the same as yours: a wacko playing a bad joke. He told me not to worry about them, then in the same breath said that if I received any more, I probably should show them to the police.”

  “Have you?”

  “No. I’ve been stalling, hoping for an explanation.”

  “I’m sure they’re no cause for alarm, Cat. But there’s always the possibility that a kook who’d send anonymous messages through the mail is capable of doing something even kookier.”

  “I realize that.” Beyond frightening her, the clippings had resurrected doubts and ambiguities she’d laid to rest long ago.

  “Dean,” she began hesitantly, “you knew me before my transplant, perhaps better than anyone’s known me. You went through the entire ordeal with me. You were around during my highs, and when I sank as low as I could sink.

  “Likewise, you knew me equally as well following the transplant. You’ve literally been there through sickness and in health. If anyone could draw a personality chart on me, it would be you.”

  “I follow, but what’s your point?”

  “Am I different?” Her eyes met his directly. “What I’m really asking is, did the transplant change me?”

  “Yes. Before it, you were dying. Now you’re not.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean,” he said, matching her impatient tone. “You want to know if you underwent a personality change following your transplant. Which will lead to the inevitable question: Is it possible for character traits of the donor to be transmitted to the recipient via the transplanted heart? Right?”

  She nodded.

  Dean sighed. “You’re not seriously giving that bunk any consideration, are you?”

  “Is it bunk?”

  “Positively. Good God, Cat. Be reasonable.”

  “Bizarre things happen for which there are no scientific or logical explanations.”

  “Not in this instance,” he said stubbornly. “You’re an intelligent woman and probably know more about your anatomy than most students in premed. The heart is a pump, a mechanical part of the human body. When it’s busted, it can often be repaired or replaced.

  “I’ve seen countless hearts laid open during surgery. They’re made up of tissue. None of them had little pigeonholes where fears and aspirations and likes and dislikes and love and hate were stored.

  “The concept that the heart is a treasure trove of emotion and feeling has inspired some great poetry, but clinically it’s total bullshit.

  “However, if these clippings have disturbed you to the point of wanting to locate your donor’s family, I’ll do all I can to help you.”

  “I made it clear that I never wanted to know anything about my donor,” she reminded him.

  Dean was unaware of it, but on the night of her transplant, she had picked up a hint of her heart’s origin. She wished she didn’t know even that tiny clue. But, like a pebble in her shoe, she was constantly aware of it. Recently it had become even more worrisome.

  “Maybe I should rethink my position,” she said reluctantly.

  He stood up and pulled her into a strong hug. “I’m sure these accidents are a wild coincidence. Someone has picked up on it and is playing a cruel prank on you.”

  “That’s what I told myself after I received the first one. Even the second. Then I received the third. That’s when I saw something that had previously escaped my notice. Apparently you didn’t notice it either. Although I don’t know how we could have overlooked something that significant.”

  He set her away from him. “What is it?”

  “Look at the dates, Dean. Each of the fatal accidents occurred on the anniversary of the victim’s transplant. And,” she added slowly and quietly, “it’s also the anniversary date of my transplant.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Alex stared into the black screen of his computer. The blinking green cursor wouldn’t move. The damn thing hadn’t moved for days—not since his fight with Cat.

  She fought like her namesake, he thought, remembering how she arched her back and hissed at him, all but going for his face with her claws. A woman with her spirit hated like hell being manipulated, and he had blatantly manipulated her into bed with him. Her reaction had been about what he’d expected.

  He rolled his head across his shoulders and rested his fingers on the keyboard as though getting down to business, for real this time.

  The cursor continued its incessant, stationary blink. It seemed to be mocking him, winking puckishly, tickled to death that he’d come down with a bad case of writer’s block.

  For days he’d been trying to write a love—correction, a screw—scene. Up to that point the book had been going fairly well. He’d even bragged about it to Arnie. The plot had been slowly but methodically unfolding. He had captured the setting so well that he could almost hear the dripping water in the sewer beneath the gritty city streets. His characters were innocently being led by him into perilous situations.

  Suddenly and without warning, they’d balked. Every last one of them had dug in his heels and announced, “I’m not going to play anymore.”

  The hero was no longer capable of heroics and had turned into a sap. The villain had gone soft. The informers had turned mute. The cops had grown disinterested and inept. The central female character…

  Alex propped his elbows on the edge of his typing table and plowed all ten fingers through his hair. The main female character had led the mutiny. Suddenly dissatisfied with the role he’d created for her, the bitch had cast it off and simply would not resume it.

  This broad was no cream puff. She had a mouth as sassy as her ass, which he had described in lusty detail when he introduced her to his readers on page fifteen. But she was also extremely feminine and vulnerable, much more so than he had originally intended. He suspected that, while he wasn’t looking, she’d taken liberties with that aspect of her personality. In a weak moment, he’d let her get away with it. Now it was too late to correct.

  It was time for the hero’s conquest of her, but the tenor of their bedroom scene wasn’t developing as Alex had outlined it. Somewhere between his brain and his fingertips, the creative impulses had been redirected like the train tracks in a railyard. Some force other than himself was throwing the switches.

  The hero was supposed to push up her skirt, tear off her panties, get in, come, get out, and leave her screaming invectives and threatening to sic her boyfriend, the villain, on him.

  The scornful and sarcastic hero was to match her insult for insult and threat for threat, and leave her in the shabby motel room with her torn panties and orgasmic blush as mute testimonies to her gullibility and moral decay.

  Instead, every time Alex tried to write the scene, his mind’s eye saw it differently. The hero caressed his way beneath her skirt. Instead of roughly jerking down her panties, he slipped his fingers inside them. Touching her there nearly sent the poor bastard into orbit. He fondled her until she was ready and wet, and only then did he gradually work her panties down her legs.

  Once inside her, he wasn’t in any hurry to come and get out, either. She wasn’t at all what he had expected; she was softer, sweeter, snugger.
He completely ignored Alex’s orders to nail her and get it over with.

  Confused by the emotions that assailed him, and contrary to habit, the hero raised himself above her and looked into her face. A single tear was rolling down her cheek. He asked what was wrong. Was he hurting her?

  Hurting her? Alex’s mind screamed. Where did that come from? He’s not supposed to care if he hurts her.

  No, he wasn’t hurting her, she told him. The only way he could do her harm was to tell her boyfriend the villain about this. He would hurt her. She was a victim of chronic abuse, she said. Did he believe she would stay with a slime bucket like the villain if she had a choice? No. Circumstance dictated that she stay with him.

  That’s crap! Alex mentally shouted. She’s a tramp. Can’t you see that, you dope? You’re being had. You’re being screwed at both ends.

  The hero gazed into her limpid blue eyes, sank more deeply into her silky heat, breathed in the fragrance of her wavy red hair—

  Wait a minute.

  She was supposed to be a blonde. A bottle blonde. It said so on page 16. What had happened between page 16 and page 104 to change her hair color and her character? And when had he started using adjectives like limpid and silky? When he’d lost control of his own book, that’s when.

  The cursor continued to blink, unmoving.

  Alex shoved back his chair and left the table. His fingers refused to strike the necessary keys and that’s all there was to it. Hey, it happened. Even to the best of writers. Even Pulitzer prize winners got logjammed occasionally. No telling how good The Grapes of Wrath would have been if Steinbeck hadn’t had creative lulls every now and then. Stephen King probably had off days when the words just wouldn’t come.

  On his way to the window, Alex noticed the near empty whiskey bottle on the bookcase. It seemed to be thumbing its nose at him.

  When he’d left Cat’s house, she was bristling with anger and brandishing a lead crystal vase. Acknowledging that her fury was more than a little justified, he’d driven straight to a liquor store.