Beastly Beautiful (7 page)

“Prop—proposition?” Teagan couldn’t think what he was talking about. The only concern on her mind right now was how quickly she could get out of here before he took on another of his unpredictable, sadistic moods.

“Yes. The one about my paying you a sum of money to keep my secrets secret.” A faint smile hovered around the corner of his lips. “Although you were being overly dramatic when you formed your ridiculous threats about exposing certain of my personal actions to the public, it’s true I’m a man who values my privacy in all things. I would as soon my ‘rituals,’ as you call them, didn’t become the talk of the town. People wouldn’t understand.”

Teagan didn’t understand. However all she said was, “I won’t tell. I won’t speak a word of anything I heard or saw here. I promise if you’ll just…”

“Just let you go?” he finished. “But I’ve already told you you’re free to come or go as you please whenever the notion strikes you. It’s wild ideas like this talk being locked up that make you seem immature beneath your years.”

He could call her immature. He could call her anything he liked for all she cared, so long as he meant the part about allowing her to leave. She was still half convinced he had some ominous plan of silencing her permanently. While she had to fear that, her chief thoughts were on beating a hasty escape as soon as possible. To that end, she headed for the door.

Anticipating her action, he moved to block her exit.

“You said I was free. You said I could go.” Teagan didn’t care if she babbled or if there was a panicky note to her protests. “I’ve told you I won’t speak to a soul about—”

“Ah, but you see that’s where we both know you’re lying,” he interrupted. “With an imagination and a curiosity like yours, you’re not capable of keeping a secret for the space of an hour out of my sight. Not for anything as paltry as a mere promise anyway.” His tone sharpened. “That’s why I’ve devised a much better way of keeping you quiet.”

Teagan’s eyes widened as he stepped nearer.

“Money,” he said softly. “That’s the one thing that will keep your greedy little heart satisfied. It’s the one thing that could buy your silence. I don’t mean to take you up on your exact offer, of course. That would be more than you deserve, and besides, such an easy flow of cash would only make you greedier. You’d be returning to me again and again as long as I kept opening my wallet for you and the day I stopped doing that, you’d betray me.” His expression grew dark. “If there’s one thing I despise it’s a blackmailer.”

Teagan shivered at his tone. “Then what are you suggesting?” Some inner part of her was shocked at the question—shocked she could care about money at a frightening time like this. But another deeper part of her was pricking up its ears with interest. He had been right in his assessment of her. The hint of money was probably the only thing that could have stirred her from her fearful state just now.

His expression said he had noted this. “My plan is to give you a chance to earn your money,” he said. “I think you already know how.”

Teagan bit her lip. “The rituals?” she asked uneasily.

He smiled humorlessly. “If you want to call them that, yes. It’s a chore I’ll need performed again from time to time and you’ve proven you’re capable of carrying it off well enough. Learn to obey my instructions more thoroughly the next time around and I don’t think we’ll have any more unpleasant incidents like the last. What do you say?”

Teagan swallowed. “Will you be here on those occasions?”

He asked, “Would you come if I were?”

“No.”

“Then I won’t be.”

She was astonished at herself for even considering the idea. Twice before need had forced her to voluntarily step into this man’s lair and both times she had regretted it. Only a few minutes ago she had been thinking she’d do anything just to escape this place. Apparently experience hadn’t made her any wiser. The suggestion of money was about to draw her again into the very trap she dreaded.

She voiced none of these thoughts aloud however. When she opened her mouth it was to say, “I’ll take the job—but only on the condition I am never to see you in person. I’ll come here at the times you designate. You can leave me my money and any instructions in a note. But I don’t ever want to bump into you while I’m here. You—you kind of creep me out a little.”

She didn’t care whether he found that last admission amusing or not. The whole deal would hinge on his response. She’d had enough of his weird moods and the scenes he created with them. No price was worth putting herself through any more of these unnerving experiences.

Luckily, he seemed undisturbed by her insistence. “I think we have ourselves an understanding,” he said.

“Not so fast. We haven’t discussed some details yet. Just how often am I supposed to come here?”

“As often as I ask it,” he said simply. His tone made it clear she wasn’t going to get any further answer on that.

“All right. Fair enough,” she said. “But if I’m going to be kept at your constant beck and call I expect to be well paid for it. The pocket change you gave me last time didn’t see me through a week. I know you’re worth plenty more.”

“What I’m worth,” he said, “is none of your concern. If I’m going to employ you, I want it clear it’s you who work for me. I’ll be setting the amount, and you can take it or not.”

He didn’t make her ask again but named a monthly sum so large Teagan at first thought she was mishearing. “Is that—is that dollars or cents?” she asked incredulously.

He smirked. “Dollars. I’ll eventually arrange a regular payment system, but for now I’ll give you a portion of next month’s payment in advance. Obviously you need it.” His gaze swept up and down her skinny figure and grungy clothing.

Teagan wouldn’t let herself be rattled. He could insult her all he liked at this point. The kind of money he was talking could float her for weeks if she was careful. She could get herself an apartment, get off the streets… Suddenly she saw possibilities she hadn’t imagined could be open to someone like her. Just to have a dry roof over her head would be a relief. There was just one glitch in the whole system.

“How permanent is this job going to be?” she asked.

She had the sense somehow that he was disturbed by the question. “The length of time is indefinite.”

Indefinite. Then she’d better be squirreling something away every month to live from when this job fell through. “I just have one more question,” she said.

He smiled. “Somehow I think with you it will always be one more question.”

She ignored that. “Why is it you’re willing to pay someone like me so much to do this simple work for you? I mean, you put on some music, lock a door, and set the table for dinner. Why can’t you do those things for yourself?”

His expression was closed. “You can consider the generous payment a tip for not asking too many questions.”

“I see,” she said. “Then I guess the only thing left to ask is, when do I start?”

Chapter 10

Teagan’s project for the next day was to find a suitable apartment to lay her head at night—one cheap enough she could make Sir’s cash stretch from one month to the next with still a little left over for other needs. The place she finally settled on was a tiny room on the first floor of a crumbling apartment house. It was crammed directly beneath a stairwell so she would have to listen to the echoing clank of people’s feet stomping up and down the stairs all day.

Rather than a set of rooms, it was a single living-sleeping area with peeling olive wallpaper and a stained toilet set out openly in one corner of the room. But there was at least a thin curtain partitioning the toilet and shower off from the rest of the space, and some fairly sturdy pieces of furniture that came with the room. Teagan doubted someone spoiled to luxury like Sir would have thought this dingy little hole worth living in, with its crumbling ceiling plaster and broken light fixture. But to Teagan it was a sanctuary—a place where she was afforded a level of safety and privacy she hadn’t known in a long time. What was more important was that her rent here would be low enough to allow her to put some money back.

As she sat on the edge of the creaky bed and surveyed her new home, Teagan felt a faint stirring of hope within her. It didn’t look like much, but this little room was going to be the start of a new life for her. She was going to keep a job, live under a roof, and eat regular meals like everybody else. No more sleeping along curbs and huddling under cardboard boxes to keep off the rain and the drifting snow.

She decided a good way to kick off her new, civilized existence was to take a bath. Stripping off her mud-encrusted coat and grubby jeans and shirt, she wrinkled her nose at the strong odor emanating from her unwashed body. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d bathed, unless she counted soaking up rainwater as washing. The room’s last inhabitant—an elderly lady in her seventies, Teagan had been told—had left the shriveled remnants of a bar of rock hard soap in a dish atop the battered sink. Lacking anything better, she snatched this up as she stepped into the plastic shower.

She tried to persuade herself the weird, orange stains underfoot were just rust marks from the metal pipes overhead. When she turned the single handle in the wall the showerhead sputtered a moment before blasting out a stream of icy water over her. It took a moment for the water to warm up, but when it did Teagan worked what lather she could out of the dried bar of soap and concentrated her efforts on her hair. Shampoo and washcloths were something she would have to pick up at a later time. The noisy pipes over the shower leaked a little, spraying sprinkles of rust-colored water over the floor, but that too was a problem for another day.

When at last she had sluiced all the filth she could from her skin and rinsed her hair thoroughly, she twisted the shower handle hard to stop the last continuing dribble from the spigot and toweled herself off with a musty blanket from the bed. There was nothing else handy. With no hairbrush lying around, she combed her long hair out as best she could with her fingers, standing before a cracked mirror hanging over the back of the front door.

She had no clean clothes to change into so she wrapped herself again in the old blanket before sitting on the bed to plan her next move. Sooner or later she was going to have to wash out her dirty clothes, hang them up from the ceiling fan to dry, and then drag them back on to wear to the nearest cheap department store. She would need to buy new clothes—particularly new underwear. Also, she needed soap, towels, food, and eating utensils to stock the cabinets with. The room came with a broken oven and a minifridge but it might be good to own a microwave.

She felt exhausted just thinking of all she needed to buy. Already in her mind’s eye she saw that pile of cash from Sir shrinking as she delved into it again and again. She lay back on the bed for a brief rest and found herself instead drifting off to sleep.

* * * *

Teagan didn’t waste her time in the sort of fancy shops where she knew the clerks would look askance at her poor appearance and worn clothing. She didn’t have that kind of money to spend anyway. Sir had been generous but not that generous. So she concentrated on the kinds of places where she could afford to shop—consignment stores for the most part. But no one said just because your clothes were used they had to be ratty. She picked up some cute clothing she hoped had a trendy, vintage look to it—or possibly it just looked old. Either way, by the time she left the second store she was weighted down with bags. She also had significantly less money, but she wouldn’t think of that just yet.

Now it was time she interrupted her shopping trip to deal with one important arrangement. She was unsure whether it was the winter chill or some warning sense of premonition that caused a cold wave to wash over her as she stepped into the nearest post office. The halls branching from the front entrance were long and shadowed, and even though strangers milled all around her, Teagan had the frightening sense of being utterly alone as she proceeded to the row of clerk’s desks in the distance. The voices and footsteps of the men and women rushing past on their busy errands seemed to echo up to the ceiling. Teagan did her best to ignore the chunk of ice that had settled in her belly as she thought of what she was about to do.

Gripping the handles of her shopping bags with suddenly cold hands, she made her way to the nearest counter. Dropping the bags to the floor, she told the dour faced man behind it she wanted to rent a post office box. It wasn’t until the necessary forms had been filled that she remembered she lacked the implements she needed to finish her task.

“Um, do you have a pen and paper?” she sheepishly asked the clerk. “I need to write a letter. Like, right now.”

He had already turned away. “Ma’am, you can buy stationary products at the corner drugstore.”

“I’m sorry, I know that, but I really need this to go out today. It’s urgent, and I’m afraid if I leave and come back later…”

“All right, all right.” His disapproving frown said he didn’t consider her personal problems any concern of his, but she guessed he found it easier to comply with her request than to argue. “I have a notepad around here somewhere.”

“Thank you so much.” She put on her most grateful smile as he dug around beneath his counter and produced a pen and a yellow notepad.

She slid to the corner of the counter where she would be out of the way of the other customers and scooted her shopping bags along with her, before bending her head over the lined pad and starting to work. She bit her lip and tried to tune out the noise and motion going on around her, so that she could focus on what she needed to say.

Dr. Green,

It has come to my attention that you and I share a mutual enemy. I haven’t the time to go into the details of how I came to meet Mr. J. Rotham, or of how I happened to learn of the hatred between you. All I will say is that I share your dislike of the man. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be making you this offer
.

Her pen paused in moving across the page as she hesitated. Did she really want to go through with this? Suppose Sir found out he was being double-crossed? Besides, she had no reason to suppose Dr. Green was still revenge thirsty, and even if he was, who was to say he was willing to go to these kinds of lengths to see his desire realized?