He hadn't expected her to leave, but now that she had, he couldn't help feeling a little more immersed in her world. And as he worked, he slowly developed a certain shift in awareness: Knowing she wasn't inside and couldn't possibly peer out the windows freed him up to look around, study the place.
There were even more trees than he'd realized, and the Spanish moss draping the oaks created some shade from the blistering Florida sun. Like the roses, her other flowers were well kept and the yard trim and tidy. making him wonder again if she had a gardener or if she did it herself,
He felt the invisible essence of Lauren Ash all around him; the house seemed to breathe her. And he certainly hadn't seen as much of her world as he wanted to, but the rest lay hidden inside, out of reach.
Lowering his roller, he pulled a bottle of water from the small cooler he kept with him in the sun. He took a long, cold drink, then dropped it back in the half-melted ice. He was just about to head out to lunch when curiosity beckoned enough to lead him in the other direction, toward the rear of the home.
He'd only glimpsed the back yesterday, but now took the time to stare. The large, rectangular swimming pool lay perpendicular to the house, creating sharp angles that contrasted with the softness of the landscaping and trees. The aqua water sparkled beneath the sun like a thousand shimmering diamonds, and he thought of the countless times he and Davy and Elaine had dreamed of having a swimming pool in their backyard, Potted palms and other plants sprinkled the pool area and the enormous back patio, made of the same flat stone that circled the pool. Teak furniture completed the scene which could have come from Better Homes Gardens.
Two sets of French doors led into the house from the back, and he noticed the small square panes weren't covered by curtains. He felt a little guilty as he approached, peering inside like some wannabe burglar. Only he didn't want to steal anything; he just wanted a closer look at her world.
The sun's glare kept him from making out much through the doors-an immaculate white-on-white kitchen with the same Italian tile from the foyer, a breakfast table of glass and thick, curling wrought iron.
Turning to go, he caught the toe of his work boot on something and glanced down to find a small turtle-shaped planter, which he'd accidentally kicked a few inches away from the larger terracotta pot of bright pink petunias next to it. He stooped to move it back in to place and when he lifted it up, he found a key.
He hesitated, looking from the key to the door, then back again. Keep moving, Armstrong, he lectured himself.
Then he shook his head, feeling unbalanced, skewed, as if some other person had just taken over his body. He couldn't quite believe he was considering going inside.
He couldn't do it, no way.
Yet a wild curiosity ached inside him. And even as he closed his fingers around the key, he cursed her for being so irresponsible, making this so easy.
Are you really going to do this? Jesus, looked like he was.
His chest burned as he inserted the key, but then he reminded himself he wasn't planning to do anything heinous; he just wanted a glimpse inside the house.
It wasn't until he'd stepped in and closed the door that he feared a security system. He scanned the walls for an alarm box and saw none; waited for something to happen, but nothing did. Good thing, too. He might've managed to explain his way out of it to the police, but he'd surely have lost his contracts with Ash Builders.
The realization should've made him leave, but didn't.
And it was then that he understood-he was obsessed with Lauren Ash's life. He'd spent years wondering about it, feeling it should rightfully be his life, and now that he was faced with the opportunity to explore it, the temptation was simply too great to resist. He wasn't proud of it, but there it was.
The large living room extending from the kitchen and breakfast area boasted an enormous gray stone fireplace, beautiful but almost useless in the tropical climate. The rest of the room shone nearly as white as the kitchen white carpet, a white sofa, and a matching leather recliner, The only color came from a few velvet throw pillows, turquoise and soft pink, and silk flowers and candles in the same sbades,
Then he noticed the cat, nearly invisible on the white couch, its head propped on the largest pink pillow. As plush as its surroundings, the feline sported long white fur, its neck adorned with a sparkly rhinestone collar. Only Lauren Ash, he thought, would possess such a gaudy cat.
As he got nearer, the cat shifted, rolling onto its back and gazing up at him from huge marble blue eyes, clearly seeking attention.
"Sorry, cat, but I don't have a lot of time."
Moving on through the princess's palace, he found a second living room, this one decked out in antique Victorian furniture in bold shades of goldenrod and deep green, a definite contrast to the other rooms he'd seen so far.
And then he spotted the foyer, and the lavish staircase curving up behind the chandelier he'd spied yesterday morning. Almost without thought, he grabbed the banister and climbed the wide steps.
What the hell are you doing? The recrimination echoed through his brain, yet his feet kept moving. He barely knew how he'd gotten here-in her house, for God's sake, climbing the freaking stairs-but it was like moving in a dream now, somehow out of his control.
When he stumbled upon her office at the top, he stopped, realizing this likely held what had drawn him up the stairs more than anything he might find in Lauren Ash's bedroom. Company business. The company that should've been half his, his family's. What if he could find something here, some way to prove Henry had cheated them? He knew he had a snowball's chance in hell of locating anything like that, but he moved through the darkish room anyway, approaching her sophisticated looking desk.
Stacks of invoices lay in neat piles near a keyboard, although the computer was dark. Knowing little about computers, he didn't even consider turning it on.
He opened the small filing cabinet standing against one wall and ran his fingers over the tops of the folders, looking for ... something. His name. Armstrong. Maybe he could find the papers Henry had tricked his father into signing all those years ago. He didn't know how that would help, and it was unlikely they'd be here in his daughter's office anyway, but the same desperation he'd felt for years when he thought of what Henry had done bit at him now. He didn't know what he was looking for, but he just wanted to find it. Something. Anything.
When the files yielded nothing of interest, he shut the drawer and proceeded to the bookcase. Perusing the shelves, he found books on accounting, books on business management, a bunch of annual and quarterly reports for Ash Builders ... and a small red volume with no words on its spine. Out of place, it caught his attention.
He slowly ran his fingertip down its edge; he didn't know why. Yet it felt as smooth as silk and had somehow invited his touch. He pulled the book from the shelf and opened it at random.
He saw dark ink, handwriting with a precise, feminine flair. Lauren Ash's handwriting; he knew it as surely as he knew his father would take a drink today. Reluctantly drawn in, he lowered himself into an easy chair against the wall and began to read.
Chapter Four
I ride a horse, traversing a long ridge, empty but for an occasional tree jutting above the tall grasses waving in the breeze. The sun is sinking, the air pink and dusky around me, and the valleys that fall away on either side are wooded and dark.
A man rides behind me; his warmth presses into my back. When his strong hands come to rest on my hips through my thin skirt, I don't respond, I don't speak or glance over my shoulder. I simply keep riding and let his touch spread through me like tiny pins delicately pricking my skin.
Soon, I realize he is bunching my skirt in his fists, slowly, methodically gathering the fabric. It glides smoothly up over my knees, thighs, exposing my skin to the warm twilight breeze.
"Lift up, " he whispers, his voice like a thick blanket, covering me. I pull myself up in the stirrups just long enough for him to free the skirt from beneath me, and when I sit back down, my naked flesh meets the saddles warm leather. His hands drift over my bare hips and thighs beneath the skirt until I am burning for him to touch between my legs, parted across the saddle. Instead, he continues caressing me, teasing me, venturing tortuously near the crux of my desire with smooth fingertips.
Just when I fear I'll go mad, he whispers once more.
"Lean forward. "
As I angle my body toward the horse s broad neck, his palms mold to my rear, pushing me even farther. The juncture of my thighs presses firm against the saddle horn at the precise moment he enters me from behind. I cry out, aware its the first
sound I've made, but the combined sensations are too stunning for me to hold it in. His strokes take on the same rhythm of the horse's slow, steady gait, each echoing through my body like the beat of a drum as the saddle horn vibrates against me. The sun is sinking quickly now, seeming to move faster as his thrusts increase in speed, as well. I watch it falling,falling, before my eyes, a hot orb of glowing orange that I am chasing with each powerful stroke.
As the last burning bit of sun drops below the horizon, I fall with it, in a shattering release that pulses through me with maddening intensity and leaves me weak.
But then his arms close around me, and as the night shadows deepen and the darkness around us grows more complete, I know nothing can hurt me and I am safe.
Nick stared at the page in numb disbelief. Long, empty seconds passed as he tried to absorb what he'd just read. Was it a dream? No, he thought it seemed more like a desire. And it excited the hell out of him to know the princess had written out her sexual fantasy ... perhaps a whole diary of fantasies?
Yes, there was definitely more to Lauren Ash than met the eye. If this was any indication, Lucky's take on her must be right. Nick barely knew her, had barely seen her, but God, he wanted her.
Then a bigger truth struck him.
Without quite meaning to, he'd just taken something from her, something huge, something he couldn't give back if he wanted to. No matter what he thought of her, and even regardless of coming into her house, he'd never meant to invade her privacy and could scarcely imagine a more private thing to have found. The realization was like a spear through his chest, guilt surging inside him.
Close the book, damn it. Close it. You shouldn't be here.
This was SO wrong.
Yet still, his heart raced like a teenager in possession of his first smuggled Playboy, and he found it painfully hard to resist finding out what else the princess saw in her mind when she lay down to sleep at night.
Close it. Now.
A noise jarred him and he jerked upright in the chair, yanking his gaze from the book.
The garage door. Shit.
Snapping the volume shut, he shoved it back in the precise spot he'd taken it from, then headed for the stairs, his heart threatening to pound through his chest. As he reached the foyer, he heard the door that led inside and knew it was too late. He stood statue-still beneath the chandelier, just waiting to be found. His mind spun, trying to devise a plausible reason to be in her house. There was none.
But then his brain finally started working, racing, forming a mental layout of the downstairs. If she headed to the kitchen, maybe he could get out through the front door. If she came through the dining room toward the stairs, though, he might be able to circle back the way he'd come in, if he was quiet enough.
He remained perfectly motionless, every reflex poised, hoping against hope he'd somehow be able to anticipate her moves. He could scarcely believe he'd ended up in such an unbelievable situation~espite a somewhat reckless youth, he'd never done anything that had felt this insanely criminal.
"Hi, Izzy, I'm home. Did you miss me?"
Izzy. Must be the cat. He thought the princess's voice had come from the kitchen. And even in his state of panic, he hadn't missed the affection, the genuine sweetness in her tone, a totally different timbre than he'd heard from her before-and it was reserved for the cat?
"Oh, fine," she said, sounding pouty. "Go running off to your precious pillow. See if I care. I have plenty of work to do anyway."
Work. In her office upstairs? He had no other choice than to assume that and act accordingly. He shuffled across the tile with slow, careful movements, pausing in the hallway that led to the back of the house where he'd come in, and waited, waited. until he heard her heels click toward the winding stairs.
Only when he felt reasonably sure she'd reached the second floor did he make a beeline for the back door. Creeping across more tile, gently turning the knob, he inched the French door open-and it squeaked.
Rather than wait around to see if she came running down the stairs, though, he stepped back out into the raging summer heat, reached in his pocket for the key, and quickly locked the door behind him.
Dropping the key back beneath the ceramic turtle that sprouted begonias from its shell, he took heavy strides around the house toward his van. Seemed like a smart time to go have lunch.
People never gave Davy funny looks until he started talking. He'd never figured out exactly why it made them realize he was different, but that's always when the change came.
A pretty woman could smile at him in a restaurant, but if he gathered the courage to say hi, her eyes would freeze up, and he'd see the smile sort of stick on her face like it was cut out and glued there, hiding something behind it. It might come with a tilt of her head, an uncertain expression, but always came that awareness, something everyone else seemed to know but him.
And it wasn't just young women, either. Kids, old men, checkout clerks, the guys who worked at the oil change place. That's why he liked the routines in his life. He and Elaine shopped at certain places, saw certain people-people who got to know him and treated him almost normal.
Today it happened with an old woman in the parking lot at Albertson's. As he and Elaine headed toward the grocery store, he studied the one white cloud in the sky and thought it looked something like a teapot Aunt Erma used to have-until a heavy sigh drew his eyes back down to earth. The gray-haired woman stood at the trunk of her car looking annoyed; she'd just loaded her groceries, but the cart return was nowhere near. He wasn't even thinking about being different as he stepped over to her and said, "I can take it."
Her reaction was a wide-eyed head tilt, the look people gave sleeping puppies through the window at the pet store in the mall. "Why thank you, young man." He just nodded, thinking it a simple favor to earn such gratitude. He didn't put the cart in line with the rest, though, just kept it with him and pushed it through the automatic doors into the store.
"Hello there, Elaine, Davy."
They both looked up to see Mr. Pfister, the store manager. "Hi," Elaine said, and Davy smiled.
"Hot enough for ya, Dave?" "Yeah," he said.
"Wait here," Elaine told him, so he stopped the cart in front of the floral department. As Elaine perused the sales fly-er, it gave him a chance to look at the flowers and greenery. It was his favorite place in the store because it was like an indoor garden. Leafy plants hung from low wooden beams built especially for them, and big circular stands of flowering pots left just enough room to move the cart through.
"Excuse me."
He looked down to see a dark-haired girl in a wheelchair trying to roll in front of his cart.
"Oh. Sorry." He quickly backed it up to let her get by.
She wheeled herself behind a table he hadn't noticed right in the middle of the garden, its top all scattered with snapdragons and carnations. She wore a name tag. DAISY MARIA RAM IREZ.
She drew a green block of foam from somewhere behind the table and began sticking the loose flowers into it. He watched her every move, how delicately she handled the flowers and how she knew just what to do with them, putting them together to make something new where nothing had been before. A barrette held her long, dark hair back: from her face, and her brown eyes squinted and narrowed as she concentrated. It was easy to watch her work since she didn't seem to notice he was still there. He thought about saying something.
Pretty flowers.
You have small hands. Hot enough for ya?
But nothing seemed right, and it was making his stomach hurt to think about it, so he gave up and just watched her. Her lips were the same color as a plum.
"Ready?"
He jerked to attention and met his sister's eyes. "Uh, yeah."
After taking a last glance at Daisy Maria Ramirez, wishing he could watch her stick flowers into foam all day, he pushed the cart toward the fruits and vegetables.
"Did you see that girl putting flowers together?" Elaine nodded, tearing a plastic bag off the dispenser.
"Mmm-hmm."
"Did you know she was in a wheelchair?"
"Was she? No, I didn't realize." She stuffed a few apples in the bag, twisted it, lowered it into the cart, then grabbed another. "Anything special you want?"
He scanned the stands until he found what he was looking for. "Yeah. Plums."
Lauren listened as the woman at the bank read back the amount she was transferring into the payable account for the subcontractors. From there, Phil's staff would distribute the individual checks.
"That's correct," she replied. But she got off the phone shaking her head. The numbers still seemed high, even if Phil had okay-ed them.
Phil had moved quickly through the ranks at Ash Builders, but she knew in his early twenties he'd been a drywaller, which he still often lamented as "the filthiest work on the face of the earth." So she sometimes feared he was too trusting of the subs, too sympathetic. Well, she supposed it was out of her hands; she just batched the invoices and moved the money around. Having completed her last task of the day, she flipped off the desk lamp, powered down the computer, and headed for the bedroom. Somewhere outside, Nick Armstrong still painted her house, but hopefully he would leave soon. After that, Carolyn was coming over for a swim, but Lauren had cautioned her at lunch, "Don't come before six, okay?"
She loved her pool, but had no intention of prancing around in a swimsuit while her unnerving painter lurked nearby. After returning from lunch, in fact, she'd made a point of coming inside and staying there, and she planned to see him as little as possible while he worked on her house. She knew it might be a few weeks, but equal parts humiliation and unhealthy attraction made it seem wise to run for cover as long as Nick Armstrong was nearby. She was done lusting for her painter-she'd come to the conclusion that if she stayed away from him and kept reminding herself what a smug, arrogant guy he was, it wouldn't be all that hard.
Lunch with Carolyn at a bistro on Clearwater Beach had improved her mood. Afterward, they'd crossed the street to the sand, wading in the tide while little kids constructed sand mounds and searched for seashells. They'd talked about maybe going skiing in Utah next winter for a total change of scenery, and they'd not talked about sex, or men, which had made it even easier to get the painter off her mind. In fact, Carolyn had seemed like her old self, the friend she'd palled around with in high school and at U of F, before Carolyn had started sleeping with random men and partying like there was no tomorrow. Sometimes she worried about Carolyn.
With two hours until Carolyn's arrival, she decided to change into something comfortable, then indulge in a book and a cup of tea. Shedding her clothes down to her bra and panties, she reached for her beige kimono, cinching it in front before settling on the divan in her bedroom with the latest best seller.
She'd just gotten involved in her book when the doorbell rang. She looked in the general direction of the front door in disbelief, then glanced at her bedside clock. It wasn't even five yet. Which meant-h God, it had to be Nick Armstrong. But what could he want? Did he plan to be rude to her some more while devouring her with those dark eyes? Her first thought was to ignore it, to stay right where she was. But he probably knew good and well she was home. Damn it Dropping her book, she tightened the sash on her kimono and was about to head toward the door ... when she caught sight of herself in a full-length mirror. Good Lord, she thought, suddenly frozen in place. If she'd seen herself yesterday morning before answering the door, she never would have done it in this. Not even thinking it was Phil, and certainly not if she'd suspected a total stranger stood on the other side. She hadn't realized how the shiny fabric clung to her. And she was just about to decide not to answer the door like this now, when the chime sounded again, impatiently. "Damn you, Nick Armstrong," she muttered, heading from the bedroom to descend the stairs. "I'm coming." A few seconds later, she yanked open the door ready to do battle, even though she didn't fully know why.
The good news? It wasn't her ocean god.
The bad-it was Carolyn. And Holly, Mike, and Jimmy.
Lauren didn't know whether to feel relieved or irritated. but leaned toward the latter. Swell, now four more people have s~en me in this clingy robe. Not that these particular people would bat an eye.
"Surprise!" Carolyn said with her ever-bright smile.
"I ran into these guys and invited them along, thought we'd make it a pool party. Hope you don't mind."
Lauren simply gaped. "What happened to coming at six?"
Her friend winced. "Six? Yikes, I'm sorry, Laur. I thought you said five." She raised her eyebrows and flashed a remorseful expression. "Forgive me?"
It was hard not to. Carolyn was always so animated, not to mention joyfully oblivious. And under normal circumstances-like if Nick Armstrong's van weren't still sitting in the driveway-Lauren wouldn't have been nearly so miffed, so she simply stepped back to let them inside. "Come on in."
"Great place," Mike said as he crossed the threshold, pushing back a lock of brown hair that had escaped his short ponytail. "Thanks," she replied. This latest set of Carolyn's friends had never been here before, and Lauren had kind of hoped to keep it that way. She loved Carolyn like a sister, but she couldn't account for Carolyn's taste in other companions the last few years.
Holly, who looked like a transplant from 1975 with her long straight hair parted down the center and her halter top and bellbottom jeans, hung on Jimmy's shoulder, looking around with awe. Jimmy, a tall, muscular blond with a goatee, possessed a certain smarminess that always kept Lauren a little on edge.
"Why don't you guys go on out," she suggested. It had never occurred to her justá how much she disliked these people until she saw them standing inside her house. "I'll put on a suit and join you in a few."
She headed up the stairs, wondering what she'd done to deserve this, when she heard Holly say, "Look at the pretty kitty," from the family room. Don't touch my cat, she thought, then took the remaining steps at a jog, suddenly feeling the need to get back downstairs.