“You never do what I expect, I guess.” She shrugged. “I wouldn’t have expected sex in exchange for your anger earlier.”
He scowled, a darkened lowering of his brows as his gaze narrowed on her. “Reminding me of that accusation you made isn’t a good idea, sweetheart. We don’t want to revisit that place just after we made each other feel so good.”
Pushing away from the counter and dropping the towel, Casey reached for his clothing and began dressing.
Sheila watched for a moment before forcing herself to draw her gaze back from the definite eye candy he represented.
Damn, this was her problem when it came to Casey. He was simply luscious. Even the scars along his lower back and left leg didn’t detract from the bronzed flesh that covered iron-hard muscles.
That always got her in trouble. Whenever she allowed herself to be distracted by that incredible body, she seemed to lose her mind, her control, and her common sense. And now, she’d gone and lost her heart.
Not a good thing.
“Of course, not a good place to revisit,” she agreed softly as she turned away and headed back to the bedroom.
“Tell me, Sheila.” He followed her, of course. “Why the hell do you keep fighting this relationship every step of the way? Aren’t you afraid I’m going to get tired of chasing you?”
She turned to see him behind her, his hands on his hips, just above the waistband of his low-riding jeans.
Honesty. It had gotten her in trouble earlier. It wasn’t going to help her now either.
“Because,” she finally answered. “I haven’t figured out why you want a relationship with me, Casey. Perhaps when you tell me why, I’ll stop fighting it.”
Hope began to fill her. She could feel it, no matter how hard she tried to fight it back. Could there be more to the sex than he was letting on? Was there more there than just a game he could be playing?
She’d heard multiple times how Casey liked to play with his lovers. He’d laugh, push them, tease them, insist on drawing them out when they wanted to remain secretive or hidden.
It was one of his gifts to his lovers. But it was a curse once he left.
“The obvious answer isn’t reason enough?”
Sheila stared back at Casey silently for long moments as she tried to figure that one out.
There was an obvious answer?
She bit her lower lip, trying to figure it out. Because she knew Casey—if she asked, just out-and-out asked what that answer was, then there wasn’t a chance in hell he was going to tell her.
He would turn it into a puzzle and into a game and he would make her completely insane with it. She didn’t need that. Her heart had enough weight on it already.
She cared for her father.
She helped him.
She covered for him.
She scheduled for him.
She carried information for him.
And she had given up her own dreams of love the day she had learned that she was no more than a conduit to her father.
It wasn’t Captain Rutledge’s fault. It was her own.
But now, it was backfiring on her.
“There’s an obvious answer, Casey?” She finally asked the one question she knew he wouldn’t answer.
She wondered what game he would turn it into now.
“Why yes, there is, and if you haven’t figured it out yet, then perhaps there’s nothing left for us to talk about.”
There was no anger in his tone, there was no anger in his expression or in his eyes. There was something that went beyond anger and sent her stomach clenching with dread.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked cautiously.
“When you figure out the obvious answer, Sheila, let me know,” he told her with that icy calm that had come over him. “Until then, I’m tired of trying to move the mountain and I’m sure as hell tired of chasing after a woman who doesn’t want me.” He headed for the door. “I’m sure you can see your way out.”
“I knew you would turn this into a game,” she cried out as his fingers curled around the doorknob. “I know a trick question when I hear one, Casey. Is this how you break it off with all your women once you’re tired of the pity fucks and the lessons in life?”
He stopped.
For a moment, Sheila wondered if perhaps she had gone too far. She had definitely exaggerated slightly, but it was
just
slightly.
Casey had a tendency to take lovers who needed to awaken, whether they wanted to or not.
“No, Sheila, I just thought this time, I’d found a woman who didn’t need to be dragged kicking and screaming into life.” He turned back and glanced at her for just a second. A very short, very disappointed second. “I guess I was wrong.”
He opened the door and walked straight out of the room. The door closed behind him, an almost silent click that for some odd reason had Sheila flinching involuntarily.
She felt her stomach drop, then clench. Tears sprang to her eyes and she didn’t understand why. She couldn’t explain the dampness or the sense of agony that tore through her.
Her father had told her once, well, really, he’d told her several times that her habit of honesty was going to end up hurting her more than she was going to be able to heal.
That might have just happened, and she couldn’t explain to herself why it had. All she wanted was the truth. She just wanted to know if there was a chance that he loved her. That he could love her.
Pulling her boots, on, she pushed her toes forward as she jerked the expensive leather over first one foot, then the other.
She felt the heel that contained the flash drive she had collected earlier that night. Before she had danced with Casey. Before she had asked him what he wanted for her and before she had experienced the most incredible sex of her life.
What had she done?
Shaking her head at the frustration caused by that question, Sheila moved slowly to the door and left the room as well. Rather than leaving by the public exit, Sheila moved through the dimly lit hallway to the door in the back.
Pressing the code to the back door, Sheila slipped from the building and made her way to her car. She hit the remote to unlock it and managed to get inside before the first tear fell.
How had this happened?
Call him when she figured out the obvious answer as to why he wanted a relationship with her?
What was the obvious answer?
Laying her head against the steering wheel, she let the tears fall, though she tried to hold back the sobs.
There was no obvious answer. Casey wasn’t a man who held a whole lot back in that way. He threw himself into whatever endeavor he took on. Whether he was laughing, drinking, fighting, or fucking, he gave it everything he had. If the obvious answer was “love,” he would have never allowed her to push him away. He would have never left the words unsaid between them.
He would have told her he loved her. Wouldn’t he?
A sob shook her shoulders, surprising her. The sound had her jerking her head up, wiping the tears away, and fighting back fresh ones.
Crying didn’t help, she told herself. Feeling sorry for herself sure as hell wasn’t going to improve the situation.
Pushing the key into the ignition, she started her car and pulled out of the parking space. She didn’t know if she could bear coming in night after night now, without Casey’s touch, without his determined seduction.
How was she supposed to live without it now? How was she supposed to live without him?
* * *
Nick Casey’s woman left the parking lot, but it had taken her awhile to get going. And there was the suspicion she had been crying in her car.
What had Casey done to make her cry?
If Nick Casey was truly Beauregard Fredrico, then it could be any number of things. He wasn’t likely to break a tender heart, or to throw away a precious female he had seduced so effectively.
He had been much sought after in Italy before the Fredrico empire had crumbled.
Beauregard Fredrico, so handsome, so charming, and so disapproving of the families and the rules that had sustained them for so many generations.
Making his woman cry wouldn’t change how he felt about her, though. And Nick Casey, despite the gossip that he cared for no woman, treated this woman far differently than any other he had taken to his bed.
Yes, there was love here, and that was surprising. He wasn’t known for allowing his heart to become so involved with a woman. And neither was Beauregard Fredrico. Yet, all men loved eventually, didn’t they?
And this man’s heart was well and truly involved with his woman. It was proven by the fact that he stood in the shadows watching as she left, his expression heavy—was that sadness lining it as well?
It seemed this man felt much more for this woman than even he was comfortable with. How surprising. Judging by the look on his face, perhaps he and the woman had argued. Or was there a split? Because that was grief twisting his expression, and anger. Casey was not happy with his woman, or with himself. Perhaps some help was needed to draw them back together. After all, when a man and woman loved so fiercely, such separation should not be allowed. Nothing short of, well, death, should keep them apart.
Unfortunately, despite the subtle moves that had been made to frighten his woman, Casey still appeared unconcerned, and had not made the phone call that would bring in reinforcements for only one man. Beauregard had an army at his disposal. He had only to make a single call to cash in on the vows made to him.
And yet, he had not made that call. Perhaps he needed to be convinced.
With a deft turn of the wrist, the ignition of the four-by-four pickup sprang to life.
Pulling out of the shadowed parking spot and following Miss Rutledge took only seconds. Options began to come into focus and play out. Beau wasn’t getting a clue. He hadn’t yet realized his woman was in danger. A danger Beau couldn’t resolve on his own, and there was no chance he would tell the men he worked with about his past.
That past was too rife with blood, the sins of a family, and the choices Beau himself had made, which hadn’t been exactly wise. No, his friends wouldn’t know who he was, or what he had been. And he would trust only one person to protect the woman who could be endangered because of that past.
A few changes would have to be made to force that call, unfortunately. Actually striking out at Casey’s woman would have to be the next move.
With that move, the danger of actually harming her was increased. And it was a danger that would have to be faced. Faced and accepted. It was one that preference would have dictated unnecessary; unfortunately preference wasn’t an option any longer.
Beauregard Fredrico couldn’t be allowed to escape so easily.
He had to pay.
And, just as in the past, a woman would have to pay for his crimes. Hopefully, this Nick Casey was the identity Beau had chosen. It meant no other woman would have to be endangered.
With any luck, it would end very soon.
NINE
One week later
Sheila stood at the large picture window in the center wall of her father’s office and stared out at the tall, evergreen border of trees that separated her small bungalow-style house from her father’s front flower gardens.
Her mother had planted those flowers. Hundreds upon hundreds of perennials that filled the exquisite English garden her mother had created several years before her death. A garden her father worked in daily to keep it in the same pristine condition her mother had so enjoyed. Just as he kept the maid busy creating the dozens of flower arrangements that filled the house.
Cutting through the immaculate acre of fragrant blooms was a stone path that led from the evergreen wall to the side of the house. The blossoms waved in the breeze, their soft fragrance wafting through the heated Texas air and filling the office through the AC unit positioned outside.
Her father had tinkered with that unit for years to allow the fragrance from the air outside to fill the office. The office was the bedroom her mother had been confined to in the year before she had died. That bouquet from the flower gardens she worked so hard on had been her father’s last gift to the woman he had loved.
The garden had once been a source of comfort, but now, Sheila watched them with a frown, wondering if they could hold something more sinister than the precious memories she’d always had of them.
Memories of working with her mother to plant the fragrant blooms. Memories of gathering the ones her father had used to create the arrangement atop her mother’s casket.
And with those memories was the one created last night. The one where she had slipped along that stone path, a feeling of trepidation breathing at her neck as panic had tightened her chest.
Someone had been in her house.
Crossing her arms over her breasts, Sheila closed her eyes and fought to control the fear.
Who would have dared to have broken into her home? And even if they had dared, how had they managed to break the locks her father had had installed on both the front and back doors?
She couldn’t think of anyone but Casey who could do such a thing; he was simply extraordinarily well-trained in such things.
“Sheila, dammit, I can’t find my glasses.”
Sheila nearly jumped out of her own skin.
A squeak slipped past her lips as she jerked and turned around, facing her father breathlessly, her heart nearly choking her as it pounded out of control.
Her father paused, a scowl tightening his expression. “Are you okay, dear?”
For a moment, Sheila considered telling him about her suspicion of a break-in.
He would lose his mind, though. Protective, overly so, and filled with fatherly concern, Douglas Rutledge would put one of his guards on her twenty-four/seven and she’d never have a moment’s peace.
Which wouldn’t be so bad if someone had definitely broken into the house. The problem was, she just couldn’t be sure. She hated worrying her father without some sort of proof, or at least her own certainty that it had happened.