You Don't Know Me (7 page)

Realization dawned. John Callahan in the flesh.

He slowly lifted his hand from her mouth, but Dinah couldn’t find the breath to speak.

“Don’t look so petrified. The last thing on my mind right now is
you,
” he snarled in an ugly tone.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, clearing her throat when she heard the shaky timbre of her voice.

“Your choice, Denise,” he responded in a deep drawl. “Make it.”

Dinah stared at him. “What?”

“The audition.” His teeth were set. “That goddamn Sandberg called me today and I told him to shut up about you. You’ve really got your nerve. I wouldn’t put you in the role of Isabella if I was guaranteed an Academy Award!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bullshit.”

That did it. Why was she arguing with him? She was supposed to be Denise, and since he didn’t seem to realize she wasn’t, well . . . “Get the hell out of my house!”

The look on his face changed suddenly from cool tolerance to hard-eyed fury. Dinah automatically shrank back, but he pinned her shoulders against the bed.

“Don’t,” she murmured, suddenly frightened.

He swore something unintelligible, then with a deft muscular twist, tossed her over his shoulder. Her stomach slammed into hard bone and muscle, knocking the breath from her lungs. She shrieked in surprise, legs flailing. Rocklike arms clamped against her legs as he strode toward the door. Her nose bumped into a cotton, blue work shirt as she bounced against him.

It happened so fast they were in the hallway before she started to struggle in earnest. No use. His arms were too strong, his determination too deep.

“Good-bye, my love,” he mocked.

“You can’t throw me out!”

For an answer he strode along the gallery toward the stairs.

“Wait!” she cried. By God, he meant to actually do it. He was going to literally toss her out of the house.

“I’ll ship your things later,” he said with a first note of humor. “Leave an address.”

In impotent fury she pummeled his muscled back with her fists. She kicked wildly and he tightened his grip around her legs and grabbed one wrist behind her back. “This is my house!” she yelled. “Put me down or you’ll be the sorriest man that ever lived!”

“I already am. And for the record,” he added through clenched teeth as Dinah attempted to bite his wrist, “this is my house. You’re a guest.”

Dinah struggled to knee him in the crotch. “You—god—damn—bastard!”

One knee connected square and his groan of pain intensified her struggle. But his strength was phenomenal. He squeezed her wrist and ankle so tightly, she was certain she’d have bruises.

He carried her outside, to the deck where she’d been peaceably drinking her wine scant hours before. Waves crashed somewhere beyond. Dinah twisted violently.

White-ruffled breakers leaped against a deep, black sky. She kicked, but John Callahan’s strong hands were iron manacles.

“Let go of me!” Dinah screamed in fury.

“You incredible bitch,” he said in wonder. “You don’t know when to give up.” He swung her upward.

“Don’t! Wait! My God!”

“Good-bye, my love,” he said again, this time with a twinge of irony.

Then she was bodily thrown over the deck rail to the cold beach sand, three feet below.

 

She screamed with all her might!

A half second later she hit the cold, dank beach. Sand went up her nose and grated against her teeth. She couldn’t believe it. Could—not—believe it! He’d thrown her over the side of the deck as if she were so much garbage.

Clenching her hands, Dinah gathered up two fistfuls of the grainy, gray stuff, so infuriated, she was almost afraid to move, certain she would combust into a pile of supercharged atoms if she so much as twitched.

How dare he? How
dare
he?

Sputtering, she leaped to her feet, ready to climb over the deck rail and hurl herself at him.

But he was gone. She heard the deck door slide closed and the lock click with cold finality behind him. He’d dumped her unceremoniously and turned on his heel. She would have him arrested for assault! She would sue the bastard for bodily harm!

Quick as a cat, she dashed past the birds of paradise and draping bougainvillea that lined the flagstone pathway to the front door. She knew where the spare key was; she’d hidden it herself. With a speed that defied belief, she snatched the key from a tiny hidden hook beneath the cantilevered siding, twisted it in the lock, and half stumbled, half fell inside.

She was in the foyer before John Callahan’s small brain and long legs had connected that she might be wily enough to find a way back inside. But he must have heard her because determined footsteps approached from the kitchen almost immediately. Frozen, Dinah hovered in the center of the tile foyer, undecided and alarmed but with her anger spiraling into the stratosphere.

Who the
hell
did he think he was? No wonder Denise had asked for her help. Dinah was tougher, generally cooler in the midst of a fight (though her limbs were shaking with such fury right now, it was hard to tell), and incredibly sharp-tongued and incisive when she was certain she was in the right.

And she
was
in the right. No question about that. This was Denise’s house and her husband had bodily thrown her out, dumping her with such cool disdain onto the beach below that Dinah could scarcely believe it even now. She could have been hurt. Seriously hurt.

For the briefest of moments a glimmer of junior high revenge brightened her thoughts. She would feign injury. Cry crocodile tears. Or better yet, stoically fight back the pain that his thoughtlessly cruel actions had wrought, proving how brave she was and how sadistically wrong he was.

She would sue him, by God. Toss his arrogant ass into court.

As
Denise?
her mind questioned. That would never work. There
had
to be something she could do.

The footsteps grew louder, closer. Dinah held her breath, fighting an absurd impulse to run. Then Callahan appeared in the archway between the lower hall and the foyer.

But he didn’t stop there. He strode purposely forward, his strides devouring the space between them in less than two seconds. It was a move meant to intimidate, and Dinah, had she been any less strong, would have shrunk into herself as a means of protection. Perversely, her own hardships were what saved her now. Years of dealing with a sociopathic stepfather followed by Flick’s acid test in the business world had honed Dinah’s strength to a pure, fine point. If he took one step nearer, she’d gouge him with all her fiery willpower. Her eyes narrowed in anticipation.

Five feet away he stopped short to stare at her. It was then she realized she wasn’t acting anything like her sister.

John Callahan was facing a woman he didn’t know.

Dinah’s throat closed in fear.

“Denise?” His voice was slightly rough, just short of gravelly. The hair on her arms stood on end.

“I could have you arrested,” she accused, her tone so steely it brought his eyebrows crashing together.

Once more she smelled the subtle fragrance of hard alcohol, a musky, dangerous scent that nevertheless Dinah found perversely attractive. It had been nice when Thomas Daniels drank. He was less vicious, more inclined to fall into a dumb stupor than predatorily follow after her and her sisters with his mean little eyes. It was ass backward, she knew; most people shuddered at the destruction that living with an alcoholic caused. But Thomas hadn’t been an alcoholic. Alert and at the top of his senses was when he’d been the most unpredictable. Stone-cold sober he was a predator who made Dinah feel insecure and who sent Hayley and Denise scuttling to the corners of the house in order to escape his notice.

Dinah had forced herself to face off with him. Afraid, but unwilling to show it, she’d refused to back down when she’d sensed one of his “moods.” It had served her and her sisters well. Thomas’s cowardice had prevented him from doing all those things she read in his eyes that he wanted to do.

Now she sized up Callahan. A bully. Like her good old stepdaddy, Thomas Daniels.

Her eyes narrowed to aquamarine slits. Callahan’s jaw locked, hard as stone and just as unyielding. Dinah’s pulse fluttered but her expression remained challenging and full of icy indignation.

“How long have you been here?” he demanded into the dueling silence.

“Been here? This is my house. I’ve always been here.”

Did he hear the faint, telltale shake in her voice? Lord, she hoped not. You couldn’t give a man like Callahan the least little hint that your emotions weren’t as secure as they looked.

“Really,” he stated flatly.

“Yes, really.”

She didn’t like his tone. And the way he stared at her. Did he know?
Could
he know? She wasn’t the actress Denise was, but by God, she was going to give an Oscar-winning performance now if it killed her.
What was he doing here?

“So my promiscuous wife has developed a backbone,” he murmured. “Congratulations.”

She didn’t answer. She would have liked to defend Denise’s honor, but it would have been wasted effort.

“That doesn’t mean you own this house,” he pointed out coldly.

“I
own
this house,” she disagreed.

He raked a hand through his hair, a thought-gathering gesture that was curiously seductive.
Probably practices in front of a mirror,
she thought with an inward snort.

“That won’t get you in
Blackbird.
I’ll cut off my right arm before I ever put you in a film again.”

He was obsessed with this film idea. “My claim is to this house. That’s all I want. Except that I want you out of it,” she added as an afterthought.

His expression changed to weariness mixed with annoyance. Dinah had the feeling she’d stumbled onto worn ground. “You’re so damn free with lies,” he bit out. “It’s nearly your least attractive trait.” At her stony look of incomprehension, he added, “Ah, come on. We both know what the other one is.”

“I think you’d better spell it out,” she said stonily.

“Well, let’s see. The last spelling I cared about was D-E-R-E-K. But then I’m sure to be behind the times.”

The rumors surrounding Denise swirled inside Dinah’s head. Callahan wanted her to believe them. He acted as if he believed them totally, but then, maybe that was merely a matter of blame shifting.

“Leo called me, y’know,” Callahan said accusingly. “Begged me. Tried to threaten me. And you know what that did? Forced me into an untenable position.”

Leo?
Dinah thought, the precariousness of her masquerade sending thrills of anxiety through her veins. Who was Leo?

“I had to air a little dirty laundry to get him to back off.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dinah declared truthfully.

“Yeah?” He wasn’t buying it. “I told him about good ol’ Derek and what I found you two doing on the last film set.” At Dinah’s stony look, he said, “Do I have to spell this, too?” Instead of words he gave a pretty accurate depiction with his index finger and loosely curled fingers of his other hand. “Leo got the picture a little quicker than you, but he didn’t care.” Callahan stopped, swayed on his feet. “Maybe I should have used four-letter words in describing your affair with Derek, but instead I went clinical on him. When you use words like
penis
and
vagina
and
tongue
all in the same sentence, people get squirmy. Good old Sandberg’s got the message now. Hopefully, he’ll be able to explain it to you.”

Dinah was outraged. He really was scum. Her mind belatedly made the connection: Leo Sandberg. Denise’s agent.

“I don’t want an audition,” Dinah said. “Just the house.” Her words rang with determination but inside, in her most protected self, a seed of doubt and suspicion had germinated. Denise hadn’t played fair. There was a lot more at stake than possession of the Malibu home. A hell of a lot more.

His look was pitying. “You want an audition as much as you want to see me fail. But it’s too late, Denise. Eons too late.”

Callahan examined her through eyes that had seen it all, where his wife was concerned. She felt naked. As if Denise’s transgressions had been visited on her. She felt soiled, too. And low. It was a distinctly unpleasant sensation, and though his words had reduced her rage to a low simmer—there was no hope in knowing which perception was correct, his or Denise’s—she fervently disliked him.

From pure, selfish desire, Dinah wanted to metaphorically kick him in the balls.

Metaphorically . . . and physically.

He read her mind and quickly stepped forward, clasped her by the shoulders, and gave her one hard shake that set her teeth rattling. Memories danced like fireflies behind her eyelids. Memories of another man shaking her, slapping her.

Dinah saw red. She swung with a closed fist, connected with a hard chest. Swearing, he pushed her up against the wall, holding her tautly, negating her violently struggling form by the sheer weight of his own.

“God . . . damn . . . it,” he ground through clenched teeth.

“You sick bastard,” she panted. “Let me go! Let me GO!”

Crash!
Beside them, the funky wrought-iron snake floor-lamp smashed onto the russet tiles.

She was drowning, going under into a black, familiar, clammy numbness that caught at her heart. The fear inside her was so intense, she was a wild thing, inhuman, ready to inflict mortal damage.

John Callahan had never seen this side to his ex-wife and frankly, her wriggling and near spasmodic squirming shocked and frightened him a little. She must have finally gone over the edge. Headfirst. Right down into the black hole she’d been aiming for since they first met.

He let her go as suddenly as he’d grabbed her, his liquored senses clearing as if he’d taken an ammonia hit.

“Touch me again and I’ll kill you,” she snarled past a heaving chest.

John stared in amazement. Her eyes were wild with burning rage. Not acting, he realized with a faint jolt. This was real. His ex-wife meant to attack him.

He was literally saved by the bell.

Jarring chimes peeled loudly through the house, stilling both of them as if they’d been hit by a freeze ray. Denise pulled herself together with difficulty and John, eyeing her thoughtfully, yanked open the front doors to find a uniformed cop standing on the step.

“Good evening, sir,” he said diffidently. “A neighbor reported screaming coming from these grounds and requested we check it out. Is everything all right?”

“Minor domestic dispute,” John drawled, shooting a sideways glance at Denise. He expected her to toss out one of her dry, ironic zingers, those inappropriate and blackly humorous remarks that had made a fool of him on more than one occasion. But apparently she was in the throes of real emotion and for once in her life remained remarkably silent.

The cop turned to her. John steeled himself. In the face of the authorities, one of Denise’s most-sought-after audiences, she tended to come alive. She could be teary-eyed and weak, or sweet and kittenish, or a blisteringly cold bitch. God, how she loved a stage of any kind.

The cop’s eyes widened as he recognized her. Inwardly sighing, John waited for a spate of overdramatized histrionics. Denise was in her element.

But Denise didn’t respond to the cue. Instead, she collected herself with an effort and asked, “Which neighbor complained?”

“Ma’am?”

“The people on the left or the people on the right? I want to know who’s watching me.”

John’s head swiveled in surprise. What the hell was going on here?

The cop hesitated and Denise pressed, “Don’t I have a right to know? Or is that privileged information?
Do you
even know?” she finished, before she gave him a chance to answer, gazing at the cop with such microscopic intensity that the young man shifted uncomfortably, as if
he
were involved in some transgression, not Denise. Good God, the kid was green.

Either that or he’d succumbed to Denise’s charms in less than five minutes. John inwardly snorted. It happened.

“Looks like everything’s okay here,” he mumbled, beating a hasty retreat.

“Nothing that can’t be worked out,” John agreed, closing the door behind him.

As soon as they were alone, he turned his attention back to Denise. Premonition crept over his skin. Something wasn’t right. He’d seen a lot of sides to his ex-wife, but this was a new one. Her interests were always self-involved and generally self-destructive. Why did she give a damn about the neighbors? She adored a scene.

“Did I, or did I not, obtain this house in the divorce settlement?” she asked, confounding him again because she sounded so serious.

“You did not,” he stated.

She blinked. “The house was awarded to you?”