Passion (11 page)

“I’d like to take that bed.” Her thoughts so easily readable in her brown eyes, she offered what was meant to be a logical
excuse for her request. “That way the air conditioner won’t be blowing directly on me because I’ll be more or less under it.”

“You get cold easily?”

“Y-yes, I do.”

He glanced at her over his shoulder as he began stripping the covers off. “Right. I was in your room last night, sweetheart,”
he reminded her. “It was cold enough to make ice… only you weren’t cold at all. You were hot.” He remembered just how hot—hot
enough to brand, hot enough, it seemed when he had entered her, to steam—and felt his body respond. He felt the tension pooling
deep in his belly, felt the hunger licking through him with a fiery rush.

She remembered, too, with a flush that heated her face, that spread down her throat to the soft, fair skin above her breasts.
She had flushed like that last night, he recalled, the first time she had come, and the second and the third. Passion had
tinted her face, her throat, and her breasts, had given her swollen nipples a rosy hue, had made her so damned hot that they
had sizzled where they’d touched.

She remembered.

And he would never forget.

Neglecting his task for the moment, he turned toward her.
“Teryl…” His voice was husky, his tone too damned obviously an appeal.

She stiffened and avoided looking at him. “Please… I just want…”

She didn’t finish, but he could think of several possibilities.
I want to be left alone. I want to sleep unharmed. I want to be safe. I want to come out of this with my life and my sanity
intact. I want to forget I ever met you. I want to forget last night ever happened
.

There were any number of possibilities, except the one he would most like to hear.
I want you
. His actions this morning had guaranteed that he would never hear that from her.

“You just want the bed closest to the door,” he said grimly, trying to ignore the need inside him. “The closer you can get
to the door, the less distance you’ll have to cover on your way out and the better your chances of escaping once I fall asleep.”
Leaning over, he grasped the edge of the mattress and half lifted, half shoved it to the floor in front of the door, blocking
it completely. Then he faced her again.

“Damn you,” she whispered, her voice curiously empty of emotion. But although her curse had been mild and unimpassioned, the
look in her eyes was deadly. He recognized disappointment, along with frustration, a little bit of fear, and, overshadowing
it all, anger. There was no hint of the desire he had seen last night. No hunger. No passion. Everything soft and sweet was
gone—and not just gone, he warned himself. It was dead. It wasn’t coming back.

Like everything else good in his life, he had destroyed it.

But he would sacrifice whatever he had to to save his career.

He would do anything short of murder—would use anyone, would hurt anyone—to reclaim the only thing in his entire life that
he’d ever done well.

And somehow, just as he had with Tom and with Janie, somehow he would find a way to live with the guilt.

“I’ve been damned most of my life,” he said softly, bleakly, “and I know I’ll be damned for this. But when it’s over, I’ll
make it right, Teryl. I swear I will.”

Her expression didn’t change. It didn’t turn hopeful. It didn’t soften at all. “You’ll let me go without hurting me?”

“I’ll let you go as soon as I have what I need.”

His words didn’t reassure her. Of course,
she
thought he was crazy. She thought he would never have what he needed because it didn’t exist, because he wasn’t who he claimed
to be. She thought he was delusional, and when she was unable to help him prove his delusions, she probably thought he would
kill her. That was what
he
would think if he was in her place.

She let her suitcase slide to the floor with a thump. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she announced in a numb voice, silently
awaiting his permission before she moved from the place where she stood.

He glanced across the room. Straight across from the door was a sink with a narrow U-shaped counter around it, and next to
that was an open door that led into the bathroom. He gestured toward it, then turned away and sat down on the bare springs
of his bed to wait.

How could he convince her that he was telling the truth? He had tried all day to think of something that might make his story
seem more credible, but he’d had so little contact with her in the past. She had, on occasion, sent him little notes—
Your manuscript was received this week
or
Here are copies of your new contract; please initial, sign, and return to Rebecca
—but that was pretty much the extent of their contact, except for the note asking about Liane Thibodeaux’s story. She had
obviously not been impressed with his knowledge of that little tidbit.

His vision blurred, and for a moment he closed his eyes, rubbing the spot between and above them where a headache had settled.
He was tired, Jesus, so tired. His fingers were sore from clenching the steering wheel the better part of the day, and his
jaw ached, too—from clenching it all day, he knew. From keeping his mouth clamped shut on arguments that could only hurt him,
on insistences that could only convince Teryl that she was dealing with a lunatic. Under the circumstances, small talk had
seemed inappropriate, and so he had forced himself to remain silent mile after mile, hour
after hour, until he could think of something relevant to say. Something persuasive. Something rational and sane.

He needed her to believe he was rational and sane.

Even though sometimes he had his own doubts.

No
. He
wasn’t
crazy. He might have been for a time after Tom died, when his parents had banished him from the funeral, when they had refused
to let him visit Janie all those months in the hospital. That was when he’d left California, sick with grief and guilt, seeking
peace that he didn’t deserve, looking for a way out and finding plenty, but lacking the courage to take any of them.

But he wasn’t crazy now. He
was
John Smith, and he had created Simon Tremont.
He
had written those books.
He
had filled all those thousands of pages with pieces of himself.
He
had used his grief, his sorrow, his guilt, and his failures—all his incredible failures—to write those stories.

He wasn’t crazy
.

But Teryl thought he was. It was in her eyes. In the trembling she couldn’t control. In the way she cringed whenever he got
close. It was in the fear that was as real, as raw, as powerful as her desire had been last night.

He had to give her credit. Under the circumstances, her behavior had been pretty remarkably controlled. She hadn’t done any
of the things that any normal, rational, sane person would be perfectly justified in doing when she thought her lift was at
stake. She hadn’t laughed out loud at his story. She hadn’t screamed for help. She hadn’t tried to escape after that one attempt
when he had dragged her back into the seat and forcibly held her there. When he had left those ugly bruises on her arm.

Except for Janie, he had never hurt a woman before, not ever, and with Janie, while he had been solely responsible, he hadn’t
actually caused the pain. The car had done that, the old convertible that he had rescued from the salvage yard and, with Tom’s
help, had rebuilt from the ground up. Even that most typical teenage boy’s activity hadn’t been worthy of their father’s approval.
No kid of George Smith’s was going to be a damned grease monkey, he had announced the day they’d towed the car home. Besides,
he had continued,
Tom didn’t have the time to waste on such a chore, and John wasn’t smart enough to do it on his own.

He would find the time, Tom had replied evenly, and he had. He had given John time, help, even money when his own funds ran
low.

And six months after they finished, almost six months to the day after that first celebratory drive down the coast, both Tom
and the car—and Janie—had ended up at the bottom of a ravine.

John had been thrown clear.

As usual, their father had been right. John hadn’t been smart enough or capable enough or talented enough to do anything on
his own… except write. Writing was the only thing he’d ever been good at. Those books, those twelve Simon Tremont books, were
the only thing he’d ever done right in his entire life, and he couldn’t let that bastard claim them as his own.

Not even if stopping him meant hurting Teryl.

Thought of the books—of
Resurrection
—made his head throb worse.
He wrote
Resurrection, she’d said of the man in New Orleans.
If he’s not Simon Tremont… how did he write the best book that Simon Tremont has ever written? You can’t explain that away,
can you?

His mouth thinned into a scowl. No, damn it, he couldn’t explain it. How could that man—how could
anyone
—have written
his
book? His very private, very personal book. He had lived with the story—hell, had actually
lived
it—for seventeen years. After years of trying to forget it, he had finally faced the fact that his best chance of forgetting
was to write it. To sit down at the computer hour after excruciating hour, to write things he didn’t want to write, to remember
things he’d never managed to forget.

He had known he could never do it justice as his first book, his second, or his third. He had known it was too powerful, too
obsessive, a story for his fifth book or his seventh or tenth. But for number thirteen, he’d thought he could do it. The irony
had mocked him—writing as his thirteenth book a story he’d feared so much. Unlucky thirteen. It had seemed fitting.

The outline had been no problem. He had worked twenty hours a day, had replaced his need for sleep with his obsession to put
it all down on paper. He had gritted his teeth through backaches so relentless that the pain had never gone away, not until
the outline was in the mail and he’d slept for three days straight. He had endured headaches, sore muscles, and eyestrain,
had waded through nightmares, guilt, and sorrow. When he was finished, he’d had the cathartic feeling that maybe there was
hope for him after all, and so he had titled the book
Resurrection
. It would be his own personal rising from the death that the last seventeen years of his life had become.

Then reality had hit in the form of a hellacious case of writer’s block. Intending to write about fictionalized versions of
himself, Tom, and Janie and actually doing it, he had discovered too late, were two totally different and totally impossible
things. The memories had been too powerful, the pain still too real. The characters he’d created for Tom and Janie had been
inadequate; they had both deserved so much more than the best he could give. Colin Summers, the thinly disguised version of
John himself, had also been inadequate—too flawed, too overwhelmingly a failure, to carry the story. There was nothing heroic
about him, nothing admirable, nothing sympathetic.

But Colin, at least, had been true to life. Anyone who had ever known John could have recognized him in Colin.

Instead of healing old wounds and laying guilt to rest, the book had turned into an exercise in masochism. The way things
had gone,
Damnation
would have been a far better title. It certainly described his life, past and present.

He was scared like hell that it also described his future.

Hearing the bathroom door open, he opened his eyes again and glanced at his watch. It was a few minutes before nine o’clock.
If she hadn’t had the bad luck to meet him yesterday, she would be at the New Orleans airport right now, probably already
on board the plane that would take her home to Richmond. She would be regretting leaving New Orleans while at the same time
she planned a return trip. She would be tired, satisfied, and innocently happy.

Instead she was exhausted and frightened, and her regrets had nothing to do with leaving New Orleans and everything to do
with him.

For a moment she stood at the foot of the bed that would be hers, reluctant to sit down with him so close. When he told her
to sit, though, she did so obediently, like a nervous schoolgirl: sitting on the edge of the mattress, back uncomfortably
straight, feet together, hands pressed between her knees. He wished she would relax but knew that was hoping for too much.

He had a knack for that—for wanting the impossible. For needing things from people that they couldn’t give. He had wanted
so much: affection from his mother. Acceptance from his father. He had wanted Tom to not be dead, had wanted Janie to make
her injuries go away.

He had wanted to be a normal man with normal feelings and a normal life. But since he couldn’t be that, couldn’t have that,
now he would settle for the life that had been stolen from him. It wasn’t much. But it was all he had.

“Your flight was supposed to leave at nine, wasn’t it?” He had looked at her ticket last night, had noted the time and the
route—New Orleans to Charlotte to Richmond.

She didn’t respond.

“Was someone going to meet you at the airport?”

She so obviously didn’t want to answer that he knew the answer was yes. Not giving her an opportunity to lie, he went on.
“With the hour’s time difference between Louisiana and Virginia, your plane would be arriving well after midnight. You wouldn’t
want to find your car that late at night, not alone. You wouldn’t want to drive home so late all alone, either, not if you
could avoid it. Who’s supposed to meet you?”

Dismay that told him he was right and embarrassment—because she was sensible and predictable? he wondered—warmed her face
and made her voice thick when she mumbled an answer. “D.J.”

“Who is he?”

“She. She’s my best friend.”

He pushed the phone toward her. “Call her. Tell her
you’ve decided to stay over a few days. Ask her to call your boss first thing in the morning and let her know.”