Never Sleep With Strangers

by Heather Graham

  With his grizzled face and sad eyes, Joe looked at him steadily. “No, I don’t guess it can ever really be okay, because I don’t know if I can forgive myself.”

  “Joe, for the love of God, I forgive you. You have to forgive yourself. It didn’t matter then, it doesn’t matter now. Unless, of course, you pushed Cassie off the balcony?”

  Joe’s eyes widened. “No, Jon, I swear, I never went near Cassie that day. I wouldn’t have hurt her. I never would have hurt her….”

  “Yeah, well then, let me by, will you?”

  Joe stepped aside. Jon could hear some of the others gathering in the library across the way and he hurried toward the castle doors. He paused at the coat tree for his jacket, patting the pocket and finding a pair of gloves.

  Snow had piled up, so he had to slam his shoulder against the door to open it.

  He stepped out quickly. It was damned cold. But the cold embraced him, the air was fresh and the castle grounds were encased in a crystal glaze that was as beautiful as it was deadly.

  He walked along the snow-covered gravel path, sinking at least a foot with each step. Walking out toward the stables, he saw old Angus MacDougall with a shovel.

  “Morning’ sir!” the groom called out.

  “Mornin’, Angus. Are you and the horses doing all right in this?”

  “Aye, sir, that we are! I’ve got the stables warm as toast, burning wood in the stove. In fact, if you get too cold in that lofty castle, sir, you come on over and join me. Ah, me boys will surely be along within the next few days, and we’ll have the place shoveled up fer ye, Mr. Stuart.”

  “Sure, Angus. Got another shovel? I’ll set to the pathways with you now myself.”

  Within minutes he was shoveling snow, and it felt good. Good to move his shoulders, to use his arms, to feel the movement of his muscles.

  Sabrina had nearly reached the bed when she heard the voice, deep, husky, menacing.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  She came to a stop and spun around.

  At first she couldn’t see who had come into the room. Mere slivers of light penetrated the narrow windows, and for a second she couldn’t place the voice. Then she realized who it was, and she remained frozen in place, her heart thundering.

  “What am I doing?” she retorted with a show of fury, her heart pounding a million miles an hour. V.J. lay on the bed. He stood in the doorway, blocking it.

  There was no way out.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded. “V.J. is…V.J. is…”

  He started moving toward her.

  Strange morning, Jon thought as he worked. The simple manual labor of shoveling—so often nothing more than a royal pain in the butt—felt really good. He could think and shovel mechanically. And expending his tension was good—it just might keep him from sending a fist, or his head, into a wall. He had suspected many things. Now he knew them for facts. And actually, he hadn’t been lying; none of it really mattered. It was strange to think back. He’d been so young when he’d first met Cassie. Oh, he’d had his share of relationships, had his heart broken a few times and broken a few hearts in turn. Then he’d met Cassie. She’d known the ropes about life, about publishing. She’d been fun, wild, and when she’d been busy, he’d seen other people.

  He’d met Sabrina.

  He’d known that love at first sight was unlikely, that emotions needed to be explored, but he’d loved every little thing about her. Her naiveté, her charm, her strange wisdom. He’d loved touching her. And he’d thought that he’d been equally good for her. But she’d left, and no matter what he’d tried, she’d refused to see him.

  That’s when Cassie had come to him, with cancer, and she’d been so afraid, hadn’t wanted to be alone. He’d been wrong to marry her, because he hadn’t really loved her that way, and maybe her knowing that had caused her outrageous behavior. They had just kept hurting one another, and it was damned sad, because he had meant to be strong for her, meant to be, if not the husband and lover she had hoped for, the friend she really needed. But the games had become too much.

  “Hey! Got more shovels?”

  Jon looked up. Thayer was outside, flexing his arms.

  “Sure. Angus, we’ve got more shovels, right?”

  Angus nodded happily.

  Thayer started shoveling; a few minutes later, Joe joined them, as well.

  Then Brett appeared. He watched for a while, then he started shoveling, too.

  Pathways quickly came into being. Then Reggie appeared. “So there’s where you boys go when you can’t ante up!” she called from the castle steps.

  Brett saluted her. “Come on out and shovel, Reggie.”

  “Don’t you dare!” Jon warned her firmly.

  Dianne stepped out behind her, followed by Camy.

  “Maybe Reggie’s a bit—” Joe began.

  “Don’t you say it!” Reggie warned.

  “I wasn’t going to say old—I was simply going to say mature!” Joe protested.

  “The hell you were!” Reggie chastised.

  “Diane’s young and strapping. Come on out here and work, woman!” Joe challenged her.

  She was dressed for it—in black pants, black boots, heavy black sweater. She walked out into the snow, heading toward Joe, who was ready to hand her his shovel. But as she reached him, she smiled, bent down to pick up a handful of the white fluffy stuff, and pelted him right in the face.

  “Hey, man, she got you!” Brett called out.

  Joe wasn’t about to take it lying down. He squatted, whipping up huge snowballs to cream first Dianne and then Brett.

  Jon started to laugh. He was hit in the shoulder. Dianne had turned her attack on him. He started to throw a snowball back at her and felt a thud on the back. Spinning around, he saw that Camy was slinging snow as well. The white stuff began soaring everywhere. In minutes the group had grown. Anna Lee—so desperate to run up and take a nap—was back. Joshua had joined in. And it was, in fact, hard to tell who was who anymore, they were all so covered in snow.

  Even old Angus got in on it. He had a mean curve and was dishing out more than he was getting.

  In the midst of the fight, Jon began to look around. Where was Sabrina?

  Almost everyone seemed to be there.

  Except Susan, V.J., Tom and Sabrina.

  Susan, V.J., Tom.

  And now Sabrina.

  Jon began to dust himself off, running toward the house.

  “V.J. is sleeping,” Tom stated with annoyance.

  “Sleeping!” Sabrina exclaimed.

  “Yes. She’s tired. Why are you trying to wake her up?”

  Sabrina looked from Tom to V.J.—the way her friend slept, like a corpse laid out in a coffin, hands folded over her chest. She started toward the bed again, not trusting Tom’s words.

  If V.J. was dead, Tom had killed her. And now she was alone with Tom. And there was no way out….

  “Why do you want to wake her up?” Tom demanded again, irritated.

  “The red…on her neck…” Sabrina heard herself say. Stupid! She should have turned, walked away, gotten help. Let Tom think that she believed V.J. was sleeping.

  “The red on her neck?” Tom said.

  He frowned, striding into the room. Sabrina shrank back from him, going to the opposite side of the bed to keep something bulky between them. Yet when she looked down, she realized that V.J. was merely wearing a cameo at her throat, on a red satin ribbon that nicely accented the color of her navy and red dress.

  Her chest was rising and falling.

  Her eyes suddenly opened. She saw Sabrina on one side of her, and Tom on the other. She jerked upright. “Good God, what is going on here? Does a woman have to suffer an audience when she wants to take a nap?”

  “I don’t know what Sabrina was doing!” Tom exclaimed, throwing up his hands. “She came in here to wake you up!”

  V.J. frowned, looking at Sabrina. Sabrina shrugged with a rueful smile. “I was worried abou
t you.”

  V.J. stared at her blankly, then smiled. “Oh, I guess I missed the confessions. I’m sorry. I was dressed, I was ready…. I just stretched out to catch a few winks, and I guess I went out like a light.”

  “Sabrina!”

  Sabrina jumped, startled to hear her name bellowed with such ferocity from down below.

  “Sabrina!” Again, closer.

  She turned from V.J. and hurried to the door just in time to see Jon throwing open the door to her room. She stepped into the hallway.

  “Jon!”

  He spun around. She saw the naked concern in his marbled eyes as he stared at her down the length of the hallway. She was suddenly ecstatic. V.J. was alive, Jon was in love with her and all of their fears were unfounded.

  “Jesus, I was worried!” he said, walking down the hallway to her, a smile on his lips.

  She smiled, too, because he was ready to embrace her. But he was covered in snow.

  “You’re all wet!” she exclaimed.

  He nodded—and took her determinedly into his arms. “We were having a snowball fight, and I realized you were missing. And V.J. was missing. And Tom.”

  “I seem to be missing everything,” V.J. said dryly, stepping into the hallway.

  “She was sleeping. Sabrina barged right in, acting as if she were certain I had throttled V.J.,” Tom said, shaking his head. He slipped his arms around V.J.’s middle, and his voice became husky as he spoke. “Don’t you know? I could never hurt V.J. I’m in love with her.”

  Sabrina was silent. V.J.’s husband had passed away, but wasn’t Tom still a married man?

  As if reading her mind, Tom said, “My wife and I are separated, amicably. And when the divorce is final, V.J. and I are going to be married, and we’re going to spend the rest of our lives, however long that may be, together.”

  Sabrina found herself smiling, stepping away from Jon to place a kiss on Tom’s cheek. “Good for you.” She gave V.J. a big hug.

  V.J. was blushing slightly. “I guess I dozed off again this morning because I’m not as young as I used to be. And last night Tom and I were up for hours and hours, talking and…well, you know, talking and—”

  “Oh, my God, the old folks were shagging away!” someone announced from the other end of the hall. Brett, hands behind his back, was walking toward them.

  “Brett…” Tom began angrily.

  “No, no, dear, I’ll take this one,” V.J. said gaily. “Brett McGraff, don’t you dare call us old folks. Reggie is old. We’re merely on the downside of middle age,” she huffed. “And just what are you doing here, anyway?” she asked.

  “We had this perfectly good snowball fight going, and all of a sudden I see Jon here realize that he’s been away from Sabrina for more than ten minutes. I figured she was snug and warm in the castle, so…”

  “So?” Jon demanded, hands on his hips, a brow raised, a slight curl to his lips as he took a step toward Brett.

  Brett grinned like a cat. He drew one hand from behind his back and threw a snowball at Sabrina.

  Perfect aim.

  It caught her on the chin, and snowflakes danced around her.

  “Jon!” V.J. said. “Are you going to let him do that to her?”

  “Certainly not,” Jon said.

  “Oh, I can take care of myself on this one,” Sabrina announced, already heading toward Brett.

  Brett turned to run. As he did so, he said, “We missed you, too, V.J.!” And he caught V.J. with the snowball he had carried in his other hand.

  They all tore after him.

  Brett was fleet, and he made it out of the house. But once there, he was in trouble. The others, who had still been pummeling one another, saw the attack on Brett and joined in. Within seconds he was unable to return fire. He was laughing, down on his back. V.J., her dress sodden, knelt on one side with Sabrina on the other, all but burying him in snow.

  Laughing, Sabrina realized that Jon was standing back a little, amused by the whole thing.

  “Jon!” Brett whispered to the two women. “I’m mush already. Get Jon!”

  And so they did. It was fun to see his expression change as they turned their focus on him.

  He sprinted a good distance away and kept up a steady barrage of return fire for an admirable amount of time. Old Angus was the one who finally helped them get him. “Back him against the stables yonder, bur-ry the boy!” he suggested.

  So Jon, too, wound up flat in the snow, Sabrina straddling him. He was laughing so hard he couldn’t ward off her snow assault—but then he suddenly shifted, rolling, and Sabrina was the one on her back in the snow, pelted by handfuls of the soft, light, fluffy stuff.

  “Cry uncle!” he warned her.

  “Never!”

  More snow. “Cry uncle!”

  “Not on your life!”

  She was nearly buried alive. “Come on now, give in, cry uncle!”

  “Never, never, never—uncle, uncle, uncle! You will get yours!” she told him.

  He smiled and answered softly, “I’m counting on it.”

  He stood, drawing her to her feet. The entire crowd was completely soaked, except for Reggie, who had apparently been issuing battle instructions from the castle steps. Laughing, they stamped their feet and shook themselves off.

  “That was great fun. Maybe we should all be snowbound more often!” Dianne said.

  Smiling, friendly, natural, she looked her age—just barely an adult, young and fresh and enthusiastic. Sabrina found herself thinking that Dianne might be capable of a few macabre pranks, but never murder.

  But then, everyone in the group was laughing, having fun, with a strange innocence.

  Yet even as she considered how innocent they all seemed, she noticed that there was blood in the snow by her feet.

  “Someone is bleeding,” she said.

  “Tom, your hand—maybe you’ve split it again,” V.J. said.

  “Don’t think so,” Tom said, stretching out his palms. “Nope. My hands are freezing, but no blood. It’s probably congealed!”

  “We should all get warmed up—only half of us were wearing gloves,” Jon said. “Someone has cut himself—or herself—good. Is everyone all right?”

  “Your cheek is bleeding,” Dianne mentioned to him.

  “Old shaving wound,” he said.

  “Brett, how’s that finger you cut?” Sabrina asked.

  “I don’t think I’m leaking blood,” he said. “But then, I’ve actually got several wounds, you know.”

  “Yeah, right!” V.J. exclaimed. “Poor, poor boy!”

  “Maybe it was me,” Thayer said, rubbing his chin.

  “You cut yourself shaving, too?” Ann Lee asked.

  “Yep. It was like a gusher—caught myself right under the chin,” he announced.

  “Maybe we should all attend a barber’s convention next time,” Joe said sorrowfully. “I did a number on myself yesterday as well. It was the shaving by candlelight, I think.”

  “That looks like more blood than a shaving knick,” Sabrina murmured.

  “Whoever is injured will surely find his or her wound,” Thayer said.

  “We need to get in and warmed up before someone suffers real frostbite,” Jon said.

  “Have we got enough wood to keep the fire in the library burning?” Thayer asked him.

  “Yep,” Jon said. “There’s a storage room in the dungeon. Want to lend me a hand?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m for a hot shower,” V.J. told them. “You men just go ahead and be men and make the place nice and warm and cozy, and we ladies will be down shortly.”

  They all moved into the castle, Jon and Thayer and Joe heading straight for the stairs to the dungeon.

  Sabrina started to follow Reggie on in, then noticed that Joshua had lingered behind and stooped down to see the blood in the snow.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked him.

  Startled, he looked up at her. “Nothing,” he said, and gave her a slightly baffled l
ook. “I just hope that whoever is hurt realizes it soon. This is a lot of blood.”

  “Maybe it just looks like more than it is. Why would anyone want to hide an injury?”

  Joshua grinned at her. “I don’t know—tough, crime-writing guys. Maybe they don’t want to look like sissies. Me, on the other hand…well, my hands are my life, my work. If I have a paper cut, I nurse the damn thing.”

  Sabrina laughed, then sobered. “Joshua, when Brett was thrown, you went back and kept looking around where he fell, as if something was wrong.”

  “Well, something was wrong. Brett had been thrown, and he’d hurt himself.”

  “No, no, I mean…”

  He hesitated, his eyes blank for a minute, then he shrugged. “It was nothing, really. I just needed to look. The artist’s eyes, you know.” He shrugged again.

  But Sabrina thought he was lying. There was something. Something he didn’t want to tell her.

  “Well,” he said, rising. “You should be doing the lady thing in the shower while I go do the manly man thing with the wood in the basement.” He grinned.

  She smiled in return. “I can help with the wood.”

  “Nice of you to offer, but you don’t think that six strong guys can bring up enough?”

  “Well, I was trying not to be sexist.”

  Joshua shook his head. “Do it V.J.’s way. Be sexist when it’s convenient. Go warm up. Your lips are blue, and your teeth are chattering.”

  Sabrina took him up on his advice. She saw V.J.’s door closing as she reached her room, and down the hallway, Dianne’s door closed as well. On a hunch, she walked across the room to Susan’s door and knocked. “Susan?”

  No answer.

  “Susan, it’s Sabrina. You can’t stay angry with all of us forever. Please, come out?”

  There was no reply. She twisted the handle. The door was locked.

  She exhaled thoughtfully. Evidently Susan was still royally pissed off. And it seemed that there was nothing she could do. She turned and slowly walked to her own room.

  Brett came up behind her.

  “Save water, shower with a friend?”

  “Brett!”

  He grinned and disappeared into his own room.

  Sabrina went in and headed for the shower. Once again she was grateful the hot water was holding out. It felt wonderful on her hands. She had idiotically, rushed out without gloves. She was probably lucky she didn’t have frostbite. She might have been the one bleeding all over the snow. The snow fight, however, had been fun.