Then, too, there was the question of her own reactions. She was confused and less than confident about the validity of her judgment. Could you truly trust the discernment of a woman who ran out and bought new lingerie after one encounter with an aggressively sexual man, and then was ready to climb back into her serviceable old cottons after viewing the barrenness of his living conditions? Maybe she had better rein in all this rampant horniness that suddenly had her crawling the walls, and try to think things through. She was asking for nothing but pain and heartache if she leapt blindly into a situation she wasn’t one hundred percent certain she was ready for.
Not that he had asked, necessarily. Wouldn’t it be the height of conceit if she was agonizing over nothing? It wasn’t as if he’d been knocking himself out to seduce her.
Oh, dear. She really was getting a fat head. The man was flat on his back with the remnants of a painful migraine, and she was worried that he might try to trick her into bed with him before she was prepared for the consequences. She swung her gaze back down to his face with a sudden brilliant smile, feeling both a bit foolish and relieved. One session up against a wall with MacLaughlin had obviously given her an inflated opinion of her own desirability.
She looked straight into a molten silver blaze of raw, determined hunger.
The shock of seeing his undisguised desire on the heels of her own mental wanderings sent her heart slamming up against her rib cage. She snatched her hands away from his temples and surged to her feet. Tristan’s hand shot out and grasped her wrist. He began to exert pressure that tugged her back to the edge of the bed, giving her no choice but to lean over him. Amanda braced her free hand on the mattress next to his shoulder and locked her elbow, stiff-arming herself as far away as possible. Desperately, she said, “You’re ill.”
“Not that ill, lass.” His eyes were all over her and his free hand raised to grasp the zipper tab of her sweatshirt, which was fastened to her throat. Slowly, he tugged it downward until the sides fell free.
“Stop that!” The morning air felt cool against her exposed skin. Then, as suddenly as he had grasped her, he set her loose, and Amanda straightened shakily. Oh, thank God, he had changed his mind.
Tristan had changed nothing. He skimmed his sweatshirt over his head and flung it aside. Then he rose up and grabbed both sides of Amanda’s open velour jacket and whipped it off her shoulders and down her arms, dropping it to the floor at her feet. He picked her up by her rib cage, swung her around, and lowered her to the mattress. As he leaned over her, his grin was lusty, his expression younger and more approachable than any Amanda had yet seen on his normally stern face.
It had been her own stunning smile that had overloaded the scales in Tristan’s battle with his conscience, but it was no longer in evidence. Slender dark eyebrows gathered delicately above her nose and the obvious trepidation in her wide violet-blue eyes gave him momentary pause. But the honey-toned warmth of the upper slopes of her breasts, rising from the low neckline of her teal-blue chemise, drew him like a magnet, and he lowered his head. One taste, he told himself. One taste, and if she told him to stop, he would. He nuzzled his mouth into the valley between her breasts.
“Oh, please,” Amanda whispered, and even in the confines of her own mind she wasn’t entirely certain whether she was begging him to stop or to continue. His mouth was soft and hot, his jaw was hard and abrasive with stubble, and the total effect devastated her senses. “This isn’t why I came down here…”
“I know, lass.” Tristan slid her shoulder strap down her arm and one large hand slipped into the chemise to free her breast. He looked at the weathered darkness of his hand against her pale flesh. Ah, God, it was a beautiful sight. He stroked the resilient fullness, then cupped her weight in his hand and pushed it up, moving his mouth and licking at the tiny beige bead that was her nipple. Amanda arched beneath his mouth.
“I was waiting for you to get home, you see…” He tugged her nipple fully into his mouth and Amanda found herself digging her fingers into the bare, warm skin of his wide shoulders and tossing her head back, arching into his touch. Her thighs sprawled apart and he immediately rocked himself into the space she opened up. There was no doubt about the state of his arousal. “Ahh, Tristan, please…”
“Aye, darlin’, I’d like to please you.”
“I was waiting for you to get home,” she panted, her body twisting with a life of its own beneath his ministrations. She was tempted to let explanations wait, but she had originally come down here for a very important reason. “Um…because I need your advice…”
“I advise you to touch me, lass. Ah, Mandy, please.” His lips closed around one nipple and drew it to its full extension. He tugged at the other with his fingers.
Shuddering, her hands slid down his back, exploring the texture of his skin with tactile appreciation. The muscles beneath her flattened palms were hard, warm, and his spine was long and supple. Her fingertips kept returning to the shallow groove to test the incredible softness there. “Advice about these phone calls I’ve been receiving…”
Suddenly she was sprawled flat on her back on the bed, all alone, with one breast exposed and a throbbing ache in her loins. Tristan towered over her, and his face was as closed and set as the first time they had met. It didn’t matter that his upper torso was bare and his hair was tousled, or that his glasses were lightly misted with leftover passion. The forceful lover of a moment ago had disappeared. In his place was the cold-eyed cop.
“What bloody phone calls are you talking about?”
Chapter
14
The emotion tightening his stomach was so unfamiliar that at first Tristan couldn’t even identify it. But as Amanda slid the drooping satin strap up her arm and covered her breast with the silk chemise, he acknowledged it for what it was: fear, pure and simple, gnawing at his gut with red-hot ferocity and lending a painful throb to his heartbeat.
“Tell me about these phone calls,” he demanded roughly once again. Jesus, let it be something unrelated.
Amanda’s expression defied description. Staring at her, Tristan experienced a brief sensation of disorientation. It was like watching two images coalesce into one. He saw her on two levels at once. One level was as a possible witness, or worse yet, a potential victim, having just uttered the words that might link her to his case, and the cop in him reacted instinctively. But at the same time, he related to her as the woman who charged him with sexual energy, no matter where he was or what he was doing, whenever she was near.
Amanda quivered visibly with confusion. Her eyes were hot with a montage of emotions: resentment, embarrassment, bafflement, and a lingering remnant of passion. Her color was high, and her pale hair appeared to have taken on the energy of her emotions: it was a wild blond cloud around her head. Yet even as he waited impatiently for her reply, he observed the shutters slamming down. She drew her innate poise around her like a sable cloak. Her chin tilted to a stubborn angle, and quite pointedly, he thought, she fumbled with her velour jacket, zipping it up to her neck once again.
Damn her, did she think he had arbitrarily discontinued his lovemaking? His passion had been killed more swiftly than a kick in the balls by her husky whisper of phone calls, and he wasn’t exactly thrilled about it himself. His head hurt and his body ached. And if she didn’t start talking pretty damn quick, he was going to grab her and shake until her orthodontia-perfect, gleaming white teeth rattled. “Lass…”
“I received the first call four nights ago.” Her cool voice overrode Tristan’s. “Aman with a whispery voice, who will only identify himself as ‘a friend,’ has called me a total of three times.”
“All in the same night?” Tristan kept his voice carefully impersonal.
“No. He called the first time the day I had the rehearsal at my apartment. The day you came up…” Amanda’s eyes faltered for a moment, remembering that then, too, MacLaughlin had managed to strip away all her inhibitions with a minimum of effort. “Technically, I suppose it
would be the next day, since it was after midnight—around two-thirty or three.”
“And the next two calls?”
“The following night…about the same time, and the night after that.”
“None last night?”
“None that I’m aware of. I hadn’t been home long when I heard you down here, and I came down to ask your advice. Then…” Amanda shrugged, feeling it unnecessary to elaborate. He knew the rest.
“What does he say?”
“He…admires me. He seems to have this notion that I’m the last virtuous woman, or at least the last virtuous dancer.” Amanda blushed. She bet MacLaughlin thought that was a hoot. She was never especially virtuous around him.
But MacLaughlin wasn’t amused. He was worried. He didn’t like the sound of this at all. “Why didn’t you call me at the number I gave you?”
“Rhonda said I should,” Amanda whispered. He hadn’t laughed at her, and the deadly seriousness with which he was treating this was scary. “But I didn’t know what to report. The calls are disturbing; I’m not denying that. But they’re not obscene or anything, and he never talks long. He’s…very polite, and each time it’s the same. I tell him it’s late and I’m tired, and he says good night and hangs up.”
“Does he call you by name?”
“Yes.”
“Does he appear to know your schedule?”
“Yes,” she replied hoarsely. She was beginning to feel frightened. “He called all three times about twenty minutes to half an hour after I arrived home from the last show.”
“Has he ever said anything…personal? Anything to indicate he knows things about you he shouldn’t know?”
“No.”
“Does he make reference to your sex life?”
Amanda shook her head.
“What makes him think you’re more virtuous than most?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because it’s become kind of a…a joke of sorts that I don’t date much. The dance community is very small—you hear everything about everyone, eventually. And for reasons I’d rather not go into, I’ve always kept my distance, uh, sexually, from the male portion of the dance world. I’ve acquired a reputation.” Amanda studied her fingernails carefully. “It’s sort of like being the fastest gun in town. There is always someone new who is challenged by it, who is sure he’s got what it takes to turn me around. Once it went so far…” She hesitated, not liking to admit this to Tristan. Then she looked up and continued in a carefully level voice, “The guys have a pool going. They place bets about who will be the first to score with me and when. Not all of them, you understand; the really nice guys, like David and Pete, didn’t want to be involved.” Her mouth curled up in a small, tight smile. “Of course, Pete is gay, so he had nothing at stake.” She shook her head impatiently. “No, that’s not fair. Pete is just a decent man. And it’s not that I don’t like most of the guys, you understand. But I don’t go to bed with them.”
She looked up at Tristan, standing at the side of the bed, gazing back down at her. She tried to gauge his reaction to the information she’d given him, but his expression was carefully blank. Neither spoke for a moment, and Amanda’s nerves stretched tighter. Finally, she couldn’t stand the silence. “Tristan?” she murmured in a very small voice. When his professionally distant eyes met hers fully, she confessed, “You’re frightening me. What are these questions leading to?”
Tristan reached down and grasped her by the shoulders. He pulled her off the bed to stand in front of him. His first inclination was to pull her into his arms—just to hold her and tell her there was nothing to fear, that he’d take care of everything. He stood stiffly, staring down at her. That he could even consider doing something so unprofessional rattled him badly. Where was his much vaunted objectivity now? His tone was crisp and distant when he replied.
“I don’t want you to be frightened, Miss Charles. But at the same time, you need to be aware that there’s a possibility of danger, so you won’t take any unnecessary chances.”
“Miss Charles”? Amanda’s eyes narrowed. Was this the same man who’d had her pinned to his bed not five minutes ago, taking all sorts of liberties with her body? And now he was calling her Miss Charles? Closely inspecting his stern face, she couldn’t find a single trace of the sexy, playful lover, and it gave her a horrid sensation of having been toyed with. Temper rising, Amanda felt every one of the social defenses she had learned in her formative years slam into place. Her chin rose as she stepped away from him, forcing him to release his grip on her shoulders.
“I don’t take unnecessary chances, Lieutenant MacLaughlin,” she replied, stressing his title. “And if I’m in danger, I feel I have a right to know what kind. So, if you could be a little more specific?”
She was as cool and distant as he was, and Tristan knew it should have pleased him to be back on a professional footing with her. But somehow, it didn’t please him at all. “What do you call wandering around your yard in the middle of the night when there’s a madman on the loose, if not taking an unnecessary chance?” he demanded hotly, stepping closer to her.
She stepped away. “That was one time! But I’ll have you know, Lieutenant, that I haven’t been out on my own after dark since that night. I’ve followed your instructions to the letter—up to and including the installation of outdoor lights—and I’ve made damn certain that I’m well aware of those around me.” Her chin jutted up further yet. “You may like to believe I’m too simpleminded to take care of myself, but I assure you I am not. Now, what sort of danger am I in?”
“Perhaps none,” Tristan replied stiffly. “But I want to place a tap and a tape recorder on your phone. Does the name ‘Duke’ mean anything to you?”
“No.”
Tristan was uncharacteristically hesitant to proceed, but there was no avoiding it. He had to inform her of the possible danger. Bluntly, he did so.
Her reaction was exactly what he feared. She paled noticeably, and although she tried to appear calm, he could see she was badly frightened. He had always felt a detached sort of compassion for victims in the past. Amanda’s fear he registered in his bones. And worst of all was the way she withdrew from him, erecting a barrier that firmly shut him out. They were on opposite sides of an invisible fence; he could read it in her eyes. She saw herself as a potential statistic and him as an uninvolved cop, interested in her only as it influenced the case. He could hardly complain; he had worked overtime to project that very impression. But he regretted it.
“So…what now?” Amanda stared up at Tristan and tried to pretend she was in control. She didn’t feel like it. “Am I to be the bait?” She hugged herself, feeling suddenly cold, although the room was warm.
“No!” Tristan pulled her into his arms. Amanda leaned on him, vaguely grateful for his warmth. She wished things were different; she wished she could cling a little and cry out all her fear. He was so big and solid, and she felt safe when he held her, but she knew it was an illusion. She had learned to be a realist over the years, and this was not the time or place to suddenly begin fooling herself. He was a professional doing his job, and he neither needed nor wanted a hysterical woman clinging to him, begging for reassurances. Tristan confirmed her assumption when he put some space between them and held her at arm’s length. He looked down at her intently.
“There is no way in bloody hell you’re going to be used as bait,” he told her firmly. “The first thing we do is determine we’re not frightening you unnecessarily. For all we know, lass, your caller might be just your garden variety crank.” He brushed back several stray tendrils that had fallen over Amanda’s forehead. “Which is why we hook your phone to a recorder. Have you ever heard of a spectrograph—a machine that takes voice prints?”
Amanda shook her head.
“I’m not all that certain of the specifics myself, lass. But basically, each person’s voice, like his fingerprints, is unique. With a spectrograph, you take a recording and it’s translated into a visual pattern of sounds—
a spectrogram. Y’see?”
“Yes. But what good will it do? You don’t keep voice prints of known criminals on file like you do fingerprints, do you?”
“No. But we can at least compare it to those we took of this Duke who’s been calling me. If they don’t match up, then your caller is not the guy who’s been killing the dancers. We can proceed from there.”
“And if it does match up?”
“We proceed from there,” Tristan stated flatly. He watched her visibly withdraw again and briefly wished he had tempered his response. But, dammit, if he had sounded like a cop to her, that was probably because he was a cop. It was his life’s work and he wouldn’t be apologizing for it. They would proceed from there, and he would make damn certain she came to no harm. He could do no better than that.
There was a knock at the door and Tristan left Amanda standing in the middle of his bedroom while he went to answer it. He opened the door to a visibly worried Rhonda.
“Lieutenant, have you seen Amanda this morning?” She stepped into his apartment and closed the door. “She didn’t answer her door, and when I let myself in with my key, I could see her bed hasn’t been slept in.” She grabbed his arm. “You don’t know her very well, but take it from me, MacLaughlin, Amanda doesn’t sleep in anyone’s bed but her own. She’s been getting these weird phone…”
“She’s here, Miss Smith,” Tristan interrupted, and he felt a trace of amusement as he watched Rhonda’s mouth drop open. She appeared speechless for once. A wry imp of humor he didn’t ordinarily indulge prompted him to add, “She’s been here all night.”
Shadow Dance Page 23
