Nightfall

by Anne Stuart

  She opened her door, prepared to shut out the sound, when her name reached her. And then she was lost—it would take a better woman than she was to resist the urge to eavesdrop.

  She moved down the hallway in the direction of those voices. They were in Sean’s office, the door ajar, the lights dimmed, and she could smell the peaty scent of the good Irish, hear the faint chink of ice. Tiernan must like his on the rocks, she thought inconsequentially. Her father drank his straight.

  “. . . Not sure she’ll cooperate,” Sean was saying, just a little too loudly. “She’s got a mind of her own, and always has. Takes after her mother, though she’s not the bloody bitch Alice is. Still, I wouldn’t put it past her to castrate a man who looked at her the wrong way. She’s a fierce woman, I’ll tell you that outright.”

  “Should I be frightened?” Tiernan’s voice was much softer, yet Cassidy could hear each word distinctly.

  Sean snorted. “I’m just telling you she’s not the easy mark you might think she is. And there’s no guarantee she’ll stay here any longer than she has a mind to. Family loyalty is a forgotten virtue. She looks after herself first, and me and her mother come a long ways behind.”

  “She sounds like a survivor.”

  “She’s needed to be. Her mother, if you can believe it, is even worse than me.”

  “It’s a little difficult to imagine,” Tiernan drawled.

  “I’ve been having second thoughts. Why don’t I see what my publisher can do? There are hundreds of savvy, smart women in New York who’d give their eyeteeth to collaborate on a book like this.”

  “I wasn’t looking for eyeteeth.”

  “Richard,” Sean said, sounding even more drunk, “I want you to be good to my girl.”

  There was a long silence. Cass could feel the color flame in her face, and she waited for Richard to speak. To say something, anything, that would clarify what in hell’s name was going on. Why had Sean brought her here? For Richard Tiernan?

  Finally he spoke, and Cass could have punched the wall in frustration. “You ought to go to bed, Sean. Your daughter’s an early riser, and I expect she’s going to want us hard at work by nine o’clock.”

  “Cassie has a singular disregard for the realities of life, such as insomnia, hangovers, and the artistic muse. These things come on their own schedule.”

  “I don’t think I have a hell of a lot of time to waste,” Tiernan said.

  “Then the two of you can start without me,” Sean said brightly.

  Another silence. “Make up your mind, Sean.”

  “I already have. Mabry blames me, you know. For some reason she’s very fond of you. You have that effect on women, don’t you? The ability to charm them.”

  “I don’t charm your daughter.”

  “The hell you don’t. I’ve known her all her life. She’s a stubborn creature, and she’s fighting it like mad. But I’ve never seen her look at anyone the way she looks at you.”

  It was all Cass could do to keep from screeching a protest. She stayed silent, eavesdropping, riveted to the spot.

  “And how does she look at me?” He sounded cool, only vaguely interested, and Cass could feel her shame and embarrassment rise.

  “I’ve been trying to define it to my own satisfaction. Partly like a child looking at a train set, one he wants desperately but knows he can’t have.”

  “Why can’t he have it?”

  “The price is too high.” Another noisy sip of whiskey, as Sean’s voice grew even more maudlin, as his insights drew dangerously sharper. “For the rest, it reminds me of the way people watch the polar bears in the Central Park Zoo. As far as I know, they’ve never hurt anyone, but people watch them and they remember the one in the Brooklyn Zoo who ate the kids,”

  Cass listened to his faintly slurred words with a sense of outrage that only increased with the amusement in Tiernan’s voice. “So I’m a toy she wants but can’t afford, one that will turn around and eat her. Is that it?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s time you went to bed.”

  “You’re right. Mabry will be wondering what happened to me.”

  “I doubt it,” Tiernan said. “She must be used to you by now.”

  Cassidy moved quickly, ducking into the nearest doorway. The kitchen was shrouded in darkness.

  She waited there, scarcely breathing, as Sean emerged into the hallway.

  His grizzled gray hair stood up wildly around his ruddy face, and his raisin dark eyes looked oddly sunken. For the first time he looked old, and Cassie stared at him, unseen, as the mortality that had been looming over her settled on her shoulders.

  She didn’t dare go back into the hallway and risk running into Richard Tiernan. The layout of the old apartment was circular—she could head through the kitchen and breakfast nook, back out into the front hall and make it safely into her bedroom without anyone being the wiser.

  She moved silently, resisting the impulse to open the refrigerator. After a day of picking at her food she was suddenly famished, but she didn’t dare risk spending a moment longer in the kitchen. Her nemesis seemed to have a talent for finding her there.

  The hall was dark, only the streetlights from the living room windows behind penetrating. She started toward her room, tiptoeing, and then stifled her sudden scream.

  “Cassidy,” Tiernan said, and his hand clamped around her wrist, stopping her flight. He’d loomed out of the darkness, more silently than she, and in the shadows she could barely see him. For some reason that was no comfort. “Did you hear anything interesting in your eavesdropping?”

  She yanked her hand free. “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t play childish games, Cassidy. I’d thought better of you. You were standing outside the study, listening to your father’s drunken fantasies. What did you make of it?”

  She wrapped her arms around her body, feeling hot and cold at the same time. “I don’t know what to think,” she said with perfect frankness. “Exactly what is it that Sean thinks I’m going to provide here? Editorial expertise, secretarial skills, what?”

  “What.” The word was brief, intensely suggestive.

  “Forget it.”

  “Try telling that to your father.”

  She was glad of the darkness then, glad it hid the flush that covered her cheeks. “You’re right,” she said with a shaky laugh. “He doesn’t listen to anybody once he makes up his mind. There’s no way in hell you’ll convince him you’re not palpitating with lust for me.”

  “I am.”

  The silence was thick, dark, impenetrable. She could feel him, standing too close, not close enough, feel the heat from his body that was somehow icy cold. And then she managed a nervous smile.

  “For a moment I thought you were serious,” she said, half-afraid he’d tell her that he was. Dead serious.

  “Where did you go tonight?” he asked instead.

  “Shopping, the movies, dinner,” she said brightly. “I don’t get to New York that often. I couldn’t find anything to buy, though, and I didn’t like the movie much, and of course I didn’t run into anyone I knew, even when I was in the park, so it got a little lonely, but then I . . .”

  “Then you started babbling,” he interrupted her. “Do you have a guilty conscience, Cassidy?”

  “Why should I?”

  “I can’t imagine. You don’t strike me as the sort of person who has even a passing acquaintance with evil. Unless, of course, you count your acquaintance with me.”

  She swallowed. “Are you evil?”

  He ignored the question. “Let me give you a piece of advice, Cassidy. If you’re feeling guilty, and you’re going to lie, the trick is to say as little as possible. There’s no reason you need to make excuses. Just answer any direct questions and keep your mou
th shut.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said faintly. “Is that what you did when they arrested you?”

  Even in the dark she could sense his wolfish smile. “Good night, Cassidy.”

  She stood, unmoving, as he disappeared down the hallway, and the quiet sound of the door closed behind him. She closed her eyes for a moment, then let out her breath, relaxing her clenched fists. She hadn’t even noticed how tense she’d been.

  He was a disturbing man. Even under the best of circumstances she would have found him unsettling. If she’d run into him during the course of her work, she would have steered clear of him. That kind of intensity, that kind of subtle, understated power was a direct threat, to the safe, comfortable life she’d built for herself in Baltimore, away from the rampaging demands of her family. It was a threat to her tenuous peace of mind. Perhaps even to her life itself.

  But there was no avoiding him in the five thousand square feet of Sean’s spacious apartment. No avoiding the pall that hung over the place, over his head. No avoiding the draw that she felt as well, to a man who was . . .

  Evil? Or merely troubled and misjudged?

  She couldn’t save him. She’d learned that early on, with her mother’s drinking and her father’s self-destructive ways. She couldn’t save them, she couldn’t save anyone but herself. She thought she’d outgrown the need to try.

  But there was something about Richard Tiernan that called to her. And the sooner she learned to shut her ears, block out the noise, the better off she’d be.

  SHE WAS ALMOST ridiculously easy to play. Richard should have been bored by the lack of challenge, but he wasn’t. Everything about Cassidy Roarke fascinated him, even her very predictability. And perhaps she wasn’t really that predictable after all. Perhaps it was just that he knew her, in a very elemental way.

  If he’d pushed, she would have run. She was a runner, he knew that. He’d barely touched her, resisting the impulse, the need that had swept over him. He had to move carefully, in stages, invading her space, her mind, her soul. If he made a rash, thoughtless move, he could jeopardize everything. And the stakes were too high to risk failure.

  He needed to be deliberate, unhurried, stalking her so subtly she couldn’t protect herself from the threat. Until it was too late for her to escape.

  He’d schooled his impatience. For two days he sat in that green leather chair and watched her out of hooded eyes, listened as she and Sean argued about the form of the book. It amused him to realize she remained oblivious to Sean’s plan for the book. She had to suspect, she was too bright not to, but she continued to view it as a means to proving his innocence. Funny, when the only innocence in that entire apartment rested in Cassidy’s troubled green eyes.

  He’d kept out of her way, hoping to lull her into a false sense of security. He heard her at night, sneaking around on tiptoes, raiding the refrigerator, heating milk to banish her sleeplessness, but he’d stayed in his room, awake, listening to her movements, remembering the way the thin cotton had flowed against her tall, strong body, the way she’d wrapped her arms around her stomach, protecting herself from him. He wanted to go out and drink warm milk from her lips, he wanted to pull that nightgown up around her strong hips and feel her against him. He stayed where he was, listening to her move about in the kitchen. He didn’t wonder what kept her awake at night. He knew very well. He’d done his best to keep it that way.

  He was running out of time. There was a limit to how long he could wait for her. Sean was writing like mad, like a man possessed, secretly, when he knew Cass wouldn’t disturb him. At the rate he was going, the first draft would be finished long ahead of Richard’s looming court date. Sooner or later Cassidy was going to get a look at it, and then all hell would break loose.

  He needed to make certain he had her first. He needed to test her, tease her, bind her to him, before it was too late. She was the only one who could give him what he needed. It didn’t matter that it could require the ultimate sacrifice from her. He was willing to make that sacrifice. He had to ensure that she would be willing, too.

  “Bellingham called,” Sean announced out of the blue, five days after Cassidy had arrived in New York.

  Richard looked up from the book he was reading. They’d made an uneasy trio the last few days, Cassie organizing and reshuffling paperwork, Sean absorbed in his laptop computer, Richard reading voraciously, everything from astronomy textbooks to mystery novels to the true crime books by Joe McGinniss. He’d watch her when she wasn’t looking, knowing she’d feel his eyes on her, making sure she couldn’t catch him at it. This time he glanced at her openly. Her fiery hair was bundled at the base of her neck, she was wearing little or no makeup, and she had a spattering of freckles across her high cheekbones. She was wearing a cotton sweater, deliberately baggy, he suspected, and khakis. He wanted to see her legs again.

  “Who’s Bellingham?” she asked.

  “Mark Bellingham’s my lawyer,” Richard replied.

  “Not according to your court transcripts. You were represented by Harrison Matthews and his horde of assistants. Pretty impressive credentials—I didn’t realize Matthews had ever lost a case.”

  “You haven’t read far enough into the transcripts,” Richard replied coolly. “I doubt if Matthews has lost a case. My father-in-law hired him for me. Once he decided I was guilty, he withdrew his financial support, and Matthews withdrew from the case. Mark took over. He was more than competent, and he had the added advantage of being an old friend.”

  “Why didn’t you get a mistrial declared?” Cass demanded. “You must have set records for going through the court system as it was—surely you could have demanded more time . . .”

  “I didn’t want it.”

  She stared at him. “Why not?”

  “Time wasn’t about to make any difference. Either the jury believed me innocent or guilty. Spending two years fucking around with the judicial system wouldn’t change it.”

  “It might have.”

  “Maybe I didn’t care.”

  It silenced her, if only for a moment. He wanted to pursue it. He could see the reluctant sympathy in those expressive eyes of hers. She was seeing him as a man who’d lost his pregnant wife and children in the most horrible of ways, and she wanted to press his head against her breasts and comfort him. The thought amused him. She’d probably try to comfort a rattler who’d made the mistake of biting a scorpion.

  “I tried to put Bellingham off,” Sean continued in a faintly fretful voice. “I can’t have these interruptions when things are moving so well.”

  “When do you want me to read it?” Cass asked.

  Sean stared at his daughter as if she’d suddenly grown two heads. “Read it?”

  “Read it,” she repeated with exaggerated patience. “The manuscript. Isn’t that why I’m here? Apart from being a glorified secretary, getting your research in order, I thought I was supposed to be editing this as you go.”

  “You know I can’t abide having anyone peer over my shoulder while I work!” Sean shot back. “You’ll see it when I’m good and ready.”

  Cass sighed, rising from the desk. “In that case, I’ll go back to Maryland, and you can let me know when you’re ready for me. I’m not going to waste my time shuffling papers while you consort with your muse.”

  “Cassidy, come back here!” Sean thundered, but she’d already vanished into the hallway, and he turned to Richard, frustration on his ruddy face. “Never have children, Tiernan. They’re sharper than a serpent’s tooth.”

  “I don’t expect I’ll have the chance to father any others,” he said coolly, dropping the book in his lap. “Are you going to let her go?”

  There was a faintly crafty expression on Sean O’Rourke’s face, one he didn’t make much of an effort to hide. “I don’t know if I can stop her,” he said with a show of regret.r />
  Richard leaned back, watching him. That regret was only a front. He must have thought better of offering his daughter up to Richard Tiernan, and he was glad of the chance to let her escape.

  But he’d reckoned without Tiernan. “If she leaves,” he said softly, “so do I.”

  “Richard, you don’t need her,” Sean said, trying to hide the fear in his eyes. “I don’t know why you think you do. Any reasonably intelligent editorial assistant will do, and I can find any number of good-looking ones who’d be more than happy to go to bed with you. Women tend to be fascinated by notoriety, God bless ‘em.”

  “If I wanted a straightforward fuck, I can find it for myself,” he said. “Certain kinds of women are attracted to the hint of danger. That’s not what I want Cassidy for.”

  “You don’t want her?”

  “I didn’t say that. I just said things weren’t all that simple. Are you going to change your mind? Are you willing to give up my cooperation with your goddamned book in return for your daughter’s escape?”

  Sean’s flushed face turned even darker. “You make it sound as if I’m willing to whore my daughter for the sake of my career,” he protested.

  “Aren’t you?”

  “I got you out of jail, Tiernan. I offered to stand bond for you, and it was my name, my reputation that convinced the judge . . .”

  “Your name and reputation are almost as bad as mine,” he interrupted the old man ruthlessly. “Mark Bellingham might not have the clout of Matthews, but he can manage a simple appeal. And I don’t have to be here. You and I both know it. We made a bargain, and you’re going to keep your side of it.”

  “Nobody can make Cass do anything she doesn’t want to do.”

  “She’ll want to,” Richard said quietly.

  “I don’t like it.”

  “It’s a little late for you to decide that, isn’t it? You told me she needed to get out in the world, live a little. You’re providing her with the opportunity.”