Shivers Box Set: Darkening Around MeLegacy of DarknessThe Devil's EyeBlack Rose (Shivers (Harlequin E))

by Barbara J. Hancock

  He seemed so normal. No different than a million other nondescript patrons who came and went. I noticed him even less than most because I was too excited and impatient for my aunt’s return. If I’d offered him the coffee we often brewed so people could leisurely sip and browse, would he have spared us? Is there anything I could have done to stop him? In the nightmare’s grip, I struggle to be smarter, more observant and clever enough to save us all. But I am never a superhero. I’m always just a young woman with a pendant in her pocket and an invisible target on her chest.

  I don’t think I really doubted my absolute safety until the knife penetrated my skin. By the fourth or fifth blow, I was on the floor, screaming, never to believe it again.

  The nightmare is all physical sensation. The fierce plunge of the blade into my body. The burning pain, the wrenching movements as the knife is pulled and plunged again and again. I wasn’t a large woman. My attacker wasn’t a giant of a man, but the blade between us had seemed huge and powerful. Because he held it, I had been diminished and he had been transformed into an unstoppable fiend.

  Only for those few bloody moments, but they had changed my life.

  It rained all night with frequent episodes of thunder rumbling in the distance and lightning eerily illuminating the unfamiliar room where I tried to sleep. Morning came too soon and not soon enough. I was sleepy and grumpy with myself for being nervous as I made my way downstairs. In between jarring nightmares of blood and pain, I had remembered the feel of O’Keefe’s sensitive fingers on my face all night long. At some point the two blended and I couldn’t tell where darkness ended and the light began.

  * * *

  A white box had been delivered with my breakfast tray. I don’t know who’d brought it to my door. Mary, Mrs. Scott or O’Keefe himself? The box and the tray were just there on a wheeled cart that must have glided noiselessly into place. Nestled in white tissue paper within the box was an antique ivory robe made of fine silk. I lifted its gossamer folds and it felt like nothing in my hands. Pure creamy air. Beneath it were several sets of underthings crafted of some iridescent fabric like woven spider’s web. Unbelievably soft. Unbelievably revealing while at the same time so simple I couldn’t protest.

  I had to wear something for my sitting…or at least to walk to my sitting.

  I’d thought to wear yoga pants and a tank, but obviously O’Keefe had more sophisticated tastes.

  Each step I took down toward O’Keefe caused the liquid shimmer of the robe to tease my thighs. Each step reminded me that the whisper of bra and panties I wore beneath the silk displayed more than they covered. I’ve never been a prude, but this was bold for me. Even more so because of my reaction to O’Keefe’s touch the night before.

  I’d like to say the house appeared more welcoming and normal by the light of day, but I was still put off by its neglected atmosphere. It wasn’t only the dust and the decor. The air was stale. So many rooms closed off and forgotten. I couldn’t help remembering the sound of the door from last night. Somewhere someone had opened and closed one of the doors I now passed. Yet no one else was supposed to be living here.

  O’Keefe’s studio was in what was once a conservatory. I don’t think that was really a thing in the 1960s. Again, more of a recreation of what a Victorian conservatory was meant to be, but the leaded glass panes did a good job of looking ancient and, though numerous, they let in very little light. Perhaps if the rain ever stopped…

  Though it was late summer, the damp and lack of sun made me shiver. I liked that there were space heaters glowing in the corners. Not only for the heat, but also because they broke the ambience of having stepped back in time.

  “I’ll create many charcoal sketches while you’re here. The sketches are my way of memorizing your form. Later, when you’re gone and I’m alone and sculpting, the sketches will be a reminder of your curves and angles and shadows. Try to relax and hold perfectly still,” O’Keefe said.

  He didn’t stop in his business of preparing materials. I was left arms akimbo, staring at a velvet couch draped in a sheet and positioned in the center of the room. Curves and angles and shadows, oh my. The pause alerted him to my discomfort because he finally turned. His gaze fell on me—evaluating and assessing. It didn’t help.

  “I’m sorry. I always forget this part might be…”

  “Almost impossible,” I finished his sentence.

  Why had I come? Why had I decided this would be part of my healing process? I hadn’t been an exhibitionist before the robbery. I knew my scars didn’t make me ugly. I was toned. I was strong. The network of fine white lines left on my breasts and abdomen didn’t define me.

  But I froze facing that settee and his artistic eyes.

  I couldn’t go forward or back.

  “Ms. Knox. Samantha…” Not Sam. “We have only one week and I will need every minute,” O’Keefe began. He walked toward me and my heart began to beat faster. Because I knew I was going to do it. I was going to slide out of the ivory silk robe. Out of the gossamer whisper of panties and bra.

  But it was going to be much more intimate than I’d expected when I’d been back in Abingdon behind my walls and closed off from connection. Already his deep, rusty voice washed over me, persuasive and appealing, almost hypnotic in its calm focus.

  I’d heard him lauded as a genius. I’d sat and looked at the piece at La Roux for over an hour. It had featured a woman looking into the distance, her hands on her stomach and her long hair flowing in an unending breeze. It was called Mourning Walk. I had brought the charcoal sketch of it he’d mailed to me because I couldn’t bear to leave it at home. His work called to something deep inside me. Maybe the darkness we seemed to share.

  He stood near me. I unfroze and tilted my chin; otherwise the tip of my nose would have been uncomfortably close to his chest. And then his long, strong fingers lifted to my face. I inhaled and held my breath as their sensitive pads explored—cheek, chin, the hollow of my neck, the ticklish dip beneath my ear. My lips. Oh, I tried not to react, but I couldn’t help it. The air I’d sucked in moments before trailed out in a shaky sigh as his thumbs traced my lips. His gaze followed everywhere his hands explored. He was memorizing but also discovering what his sculpture needed to convey beyond skin and muscle and tissue and bone.

  Closed off from connection? One soft touch from O’Keefe and it was as if I’d never built any walls at all.

  “He didn’t cut your face,” he noted. He sounded less distracted by his process and more interested in me.

  “No. The police thought he aimed for my heart and…got carried away,” I replied.

  Now his hands paused on either side of my face and he cupped it gently. My eyes met his and I was startled by the sympathetic emotion there, so dark and so deep. But, of course, a great artist would have to have depth of feeling.

  “We don’t have much time,” he said and his fingers trembled on my skin.

  Something about the tremor frightened me. Not because it showed emotion or lack of control but because the calm he portrayed was a sham. I didn’t yet know who O’Keefe was, but I did know calm wasn’t a word I would ever use to describe him. Intense, maybe. Or compelling. But far from calm.

  “I need to get undressed,” I said, a reminder for him and for me.

  If we had been lovers or were destined to become lovers, I might not have had the courage to put it so bluntly. But this was supposed to be all business. Never mind that my body was saying otherwise.

  He stepped back and turned away so that I could pretend it mattered whether he was facing me or not. He was still in the room. In moments, he would be tracing every part of me on the sketch pad he’d prepared nearby.

  The problem?

  My lips still tingled from the soft brush of his thumbs and my nipples were pebbled in spite of the space heater’s glow.

  * * *

  The sheet was cool against my skin. I sat on the antique sofa as if it was an examining table, the plush velvet so odd in place of paper. I’d co
pped out and initially left my underwear on. I’m not sure why. I was barely more covered but worlds less brave. At that thought, I shimmied the tiny bits of fluff off and kicked them to the side. Courage mattered to me now more than it ever had before.

  He turned when he heard the sheet rustle and I looked everywhere but at his eyes. The dark polished floor, the rain trailing down the glass panes all around us, his boots coming closer. My sudden attraction to him had caught me off guard. For a long time, I’d chosen companionship based on a million qualifiers—how well did I know the man, could I trust him, could I take him if my trust proved wrongly placed? I’d dated a lot of very safe men.

  O’Keefe wasn’t safe.

  I felt that all the way to the once-nicked rib bone that still throbbed when it rained.

  Oh, I’d checked out his reputation. He wasn’t a player. Not one with a bad, searchable record anyway. I hadn’t come all the way across the country without making sure he was professional and trustworthy. He was known as eccentric, but ethical.

  “I think up for today,” he murmured and suddenly his hands were in my hair.

  He lifted my auburn curls off my shoulders and fastened them with a hairpin high on my head.

  “There,” he said and I made the mistake of lifting my gaze from his boots to his face.

  The question was: How eccentric? And just how professionally detached did I want him to be?

  He looked down at me so intently. I wasn’t sure I’d ever been so observed. Not even in the long months that followed the stabbing. How many doctors and specialists had I seen who had never looked up from my injuries to my face?

  “I could spend the entire morning on the curve of your neck,” he said, lightly grazing the spot he meant with his fingers.

  I suddenly wished he didn’t mean with pencil and pad but rather lips and tongue. I closed my eyes and tried to send the wish away. He had drawn and sculpted dozens of other women. Possibly dozens upon dozens. It wasn’t smart to become aroused by what must be all about shapes and angles and curves and shadows to him. I swallowed and opened my eyes. I steeled my resolve with a few metaphorical kicks to its wavering ass.

  And I let the sheet slide to my waist.

  This time, he drew in a breath. I saw his broad chest expand beneath the white oxford he wore open at the neck. Sometime that morning, he had carelessly rolled the shirt’s sleeves to his elbows, revealing muscular forearms used to wrestling clay.

  I wondered about the marble statues again. If those muscles were also the result of hammer and chisel work…

  Then I thought about nothing but his hands, strong, gentle hands that he used to “see” his work.

  “Where is he? This man who hurt you?” he asked.

  His fingers brushed the worst of the scars. Across the full swell of my left breast, it traced for several inches, a long white line barely raised from the smooth skin around it. I remembered when it was red and angry and hurting. I felt the phantom of that pain now because of his empathy.

  I looked at his face, startled by the tightness that had come over it. His brown eyes were heavy and his lips were pressed together. I could see the sharp angle of his jaw that indicated he had clenched it.

  “He died in another robbery six weeks later. A security guard shot him.”

  I remembered the relief I’d felt. And the disappointment. Six weeks into my recovery, I’d still been weak and hurting. A quick and clean death had seemed too good for the man who’d made me scream.

  “Good,” O’Keefe growled.

  He turned away to pick up his pad.

  He drew furiously for a while, but gradually the process seemed to soothe him. Before long we were engaged in a give and take like nothing I’d experienced before. I lay exposed before him and I knew he’d draw more than my toned body. I couldn’t help that some of what his art might reveal was a sudden hunger for him in my startled eyes.

  * * *

  O’Keefe walked in the garden while I ate lunch. I didn’t know if he ate at all, but he showed me the kitchen before he paced off, and I found it as well stocked as could be expected. There was no iced tea and no dessert. In Virginia, no self-respecting kitchen would be without pie, even one owned by a mysterious bachelor. In my travels since the attack, I’d learned to adapt. While I devoured a turkey on rye and guzzled juice, surprisingly starved and dehydrated following a morning spent barely moving, he was out among the statues. I shivered at the thought of them welcoming him into their vine-clogged domain. Then, in an oddly erotic turn of thought, I thought about O’Keefe wrapped in a myriad of white marble limbs.

  Yes. I know.

  I needed a date.

  It hadn’t been that long since I’d parted ways with a fellow runner who’d wanted to focus on training for a marathon in Madrid. Our time together had been lukewarm at best and warm and fuzzy only when the mood demanded.

  My desire for O’Keefe indicated that I’d been wading in the shallow end of the pool for too long.

  One soft touch from his nimble fingers and my body had recognized what he could do for me that no one had for a very, very long time.

  As I finished my juice and washed my dishes in the sink, I heard the garden door echo from another part of the house. The statues have let him come back to me. A very odd thought that made goose bumps rise along my bare arms.

  But my next thought was worse.

  We’ve spent the morning on my top half…and now it’s time for the afternoon session.

  Chapter Four

  O’Keefe’s dark hair was heavy with the damp drizzle he’d strolled through while I ate. It highlighted the thick mass of waves and made it gleam. Then when we returned to his studio, his cheeks showed more color and his hands were cold as they brushed past my ear to loosen my hair and let it fall.

  “Only the hair this time,” he said, before turning away.

  It was uttered in a totally neutral and professional manner. Not hesitant. Not bossy. Not a request or an order.

  Just an inevitable pronouncement of what was to be.

  And yet I sensed that he wasn’t as professionally detached as he pretended to be.

  I let the sheet slip to the floor and I curled my legs to the side as if I was going to pick up a book and begin to read. What I truly wanted was for O’Keefe to join me on the velvet settee. He hadn’t touched this time. Not to measure the slight curve of my lean hip. Not to gauge the softness of my thighs…or the temperature of other things.

  He did position me several times, but each time he drew less until I sensed a frustration in him that I attributed to lack of progress.

  “Am I doing something wrong?” I finally asked.

  I was stiff and sore from long moments spent in the worst position yet.

  “No,” O’Keefe said.

  He jumped up and closed his pad.

  “I’ve lost focus. Probably best to begin again tomorrow.”

  I stood and gratefully stretched a cramp in my quad. It was 3:00 p.m. according to the grandfather clock that had just chimed in the hall. I’d been mostly naked all day. I didn’t reach for the sheet. When I straightened, I saw that maybe I should have. His dark eyes watched my movements. He had forgotten the pad in his fingers.

  It was mutual.

  It didn’t even matter to me if he’d wanted every woman he’d ever sculpted. O’Keefe wanted me. Maybe the attraction accounted for his loss of focus.

  I could have grabbed for the sheet. Or him. Either would have been a cop-out. I could have hidden behind Egyptian cotton or a hard, fast lay and either one would have been a lie.

  Because if I was ready to move on from safe relationships, then I was also ready for a real connection. O’Keefe was as real as it got. I saw it in the depths of his eyes. His empathy with my pain. His anger. His art. I had exactly one week to begin something I hoped might last much longer.

  “Tomorrow then,” I said.

  I scooped up the robe, but shrugged into nothing but the barely there panties and bra. I had been too
careful with my bravery for too long. It was time to show some real courage.

  I draped the robe over my arm, then I slowly walked away.

  Chapter Five

  The beach was as neglected as the garden. I picked my way down a rocky staircase cut into the cliffs. Only my burning need to run after the inactivity of the day made me brave its crumbling, uneven treads.

  Before the attack, I’d been in fairly good shape. I’d resisted second helpings of the ever-present pie. I’d met regularly with my favorite aunt—the same one who owned La Roux—for Zumba in Abingdon followed by unsweetened ice tea. The solitary running came…after. The need to be better and stronger outpaced my aunt’s ability to keep up. We still met occasionally when I was in town, but we’d never reclaimed the free and easy laughter and camaraderie of before.

  She always asked about my jewelry and I always had nothing new to say.

  The old iron rail wiggled in my grasp and I wished for nylon rope and a carabiner or two long before I reached the bottom.

  I made it to the sand with my pulse elevated and sweat trickling down my back. I dutifully stretched, trying to find some Zen in the moment, but all around was discord and strife. The breeze was brisk after yet another storm and white caps crashed into the debris-strewn shore. Clouds roiled overhead as if the atmosphere of Thornleigh wanted to hold them and wring every bit of violence from them before they were allowed to trail away.

  * * *

  I only had time for two miles before darkness fell and I knew I needed light to climb safely back up to the house. Fortunately, running on sand would give me the maximum bang for my time-crunched buck. I’m never one to take a latte intermission in the middle of a run. Once I’m in the zone, even on a long stretch of coast that would have lured others with shells and never-ending views, I don’t stop.