Identity Crisis (3 page)

Chapter Three

Jessie grabbed Amanda by the wrist and practically dragged her away from the party.

‘What’re you doing? What the on earth’s the matter with you?’ she half whispered, half hissed as he force-marched her through the open French doors and out onto the dock of the summerhouse. ‘Let me go.’

But he held on to her with a bruising grip. He held on to her until they both stood in the fresh air under the full moon reflected off the mirrored surface of the water. He held on to her until they were away from the scent of expensive perfume and wealth, away from the clink of champagne flutes. He held onto her until they were away from James Dennison.

‘I said let me go.’ She pushed both of her hands flat against his chest, against the crisp white shirt of his tux, but he held her.

‘Dennison –’ he forced the words out like he’d eaten hot coals ‘– James Dennison, what’s going on between the two of you?’

‘What?’

‘I saw the way he looked at you, like he wanted to eat you up, like he wanted to, to …’ He caught his breath.

‘He asked me to dance, that’s all. Not that it’s any of your damn business who I dance with. I didn’t realize that you were keeping me under lock and key. What, have you put out an edict that no one is to look at me?’

He pulled her to him hard and kissed her hard, and she struggled against him. He felt the anger tremble through her, rising up to meet his own, and God in heaven, he wanted her. His rage battled with his desire for her, and he pulled away, chest heaving. ‘Damn it, Amanda, you’re mine. I won’t share you with Dennison, or with anyone else, do you understand?’ He shook her none too gently. ‘Do you?’

Her eyes flashed like fire in the bright moonlight, and she drew a sharp breath. ‘I don’t belong to you, Jessie Pennington, nor anyone else, and I don’t appreciate being treated like your possession.’

All it took was a little shove, just a small one with the flat of her hand, to unbalance him and send him, tux, bowtie and all, off the end of the dock, but not before he grabbed her around the waist and took her with him.

Damn, he couldn’t believe he’d actually grabbed Kendra around the waist and pulled her into the lake with him. Garrett pushed away from the laptop, breathing like he’d just finished a marathon, and sonovabitch if he didn’t have a hard-on he could hang a boat anchor from. It made no sense. The woman was a total bitch. She was a banshee from hell. How could someone as nice as Dee Henning end up with someone like Kendra Davis for a best friend?

But God, the woman was hot. He’d wanted to rip her clothes off and taker her right there in the lake in front of everybody. Of course, she probably would have killed him and ripped out his still-beating heart long before he ever got any satisfaction. At least she’d been gracious enough to laugh it off in front of the onlookers and lie, something about a game the two of them were playing and they got too close to the edge of the dock. He was pretty sure Dee and Ellis and probably Harris and Stacie knew it was a lie, but at least she’d tried. When Harris showed them to separate bathrooms to dry off, Garrett was pretty sure she’d growled and bared teeth at him.

And he … Well, he’d had to take care of some very pressing business before he could be decent enough to rejoin the party. He hadn’t been that turned on since … Well, he couldn’t remember ever being that turned on. How could that be? Afterwards she’d kept her distance. And with everyone else she was completely charming, and God, he wanted her.

‘She’s a bitch,’ he reminded himself out loud, trying to ignore the bulge in his jeans. ‘Kendra Davis is a total bitch. I can’t stay far enough away from her.’

Since Don was always nagging him for never checking his email, and he planned to ride the man hard about finding him someone to play the role of Tess, he pulled up his account, all prepared to write a “well? Have you found her yet” message. Instead, there was an email from Razor Sharp. Once again the man had managed to get beyond the Tess Delaney fan pages and find his way to Tess’s private email address. Garrett knew he shouldn’t read it. He knew he should just copy it to the file with the others like Detective Brewster had told him, but he’d already opened it.

Hey Lovely Lady,

Just finished reading your latest novel. A triumph, as they all are. And oh so hot. As they all are. Most definitely a one-handed read for me. Woman, what you do to me!

Rumors are flying that you’ve been nominated for the Golden Kiss Award. How very exciting.

I’ll be watching. No doubt with one hand well occupied.

Love and heat,

R.S.

Garrett sat staring at the email until the words swam out of focus before his eyes. Razor Sharp, he was calling himself now. He had been The Razor and The Deepest Cut and several other similar names. Though the emails were creepy, there was nothing seriously threatening, so why did Garrett always feel like someone had poured ice down the back of his shirt whenever he got one? And he didn’t even get them all that often. But how many people could know about the nomination for the Golden Kiss Award when Garrett’s publicist had only just told him? Granted, the man could have simply guessed. Garrett pulled a deep breath and saved the email into the file for the police. Not that it would do any good. He had more important things to think about at the moment, and Tess had her share of loopy fans. He supposed that was to be expected since no one really knew who Tess was. That certainly was a big plus. Garrett turned his attention back to composing a surly email to Don.

What’s in a name? he wondered. Do names ever fit the people who wear them? How could they, when parents choose the name they think is cute for an infant. And when people choose their own name, they can hardly be objective in their choices, can they? He pushed the chair away from the laptop, then stood to pace the floor in front of the make-shift desk. Each time he turned, his eyes caught the images flashing on the monitor. He’d turned the volume down until the sounds of sex were nothing more than background noise. He was way too excited to pay any real attention to the sex acts being performed by the two generic actors going through the motions. He was bored with them anyway. They rarely made him hard any more. But thoughts of her did. Thoughts of her always made him hard.

He ran a hand over the new growth of stubble on his head. He’d kept his head shaved all this time. But he’d let it grow now, for her. She’d like that, he was sure. He was sure she liked men with hair she could run her fingers through, and he would let her do at least that when the time came.

Everything was about to begin now. He felt it in his bones. He could be anyone he wanted to be now. She wasn’t the only one who could hide away from the world until she wanted to show herself. He tilted his head from side to side and felt the pop in his neck. Lots of tension there to be released, he thought. And she was the cause of it; she was always the cause of it, the way she kept herself hidden, the way she toyed with him and teased him. Well, she wasn’t the only one who could tease and toy, was she? He made his way to the refrigerator and pulled out the half empty carton of milk. On the bottom shelf, he found the last four hard-boiled eggs. He peeled them into the sink and ate them mechanically, ate them without tasting them. Outside he could hear the city just waking up. Had he really been up all night? Well, he didn’t need much sleep these days. Not now when he was so close, not now when he knew it would happen soon. He could feel it in his gut, the burning, the impatience that never left him now, never let go of him, like it would gnaw him in two if he didn’t have her soon. And he would have her soon. He’d spent most of the day in the cabin, their cabin, preparing it just for her. It was so perfect, so isolated. He hoped she liked nature, but then again it didn’t really matter if she didn’t

When he finished the eggs, he emptied the milk carton in long, thirsty gulps, dribbling milk down his chin and onto his T-shirt. He wiped a hand across his mouth and tossed the carton into the avalanching trash bag.

He paced the kitchen floor, back and forth, back and forth. He peeked out the window at the traffic just beginning to move on the freeway, then he pulled the curtain shut. He’d already been to the gym. He’d found a seedy 24-hour place a few blocks from his apartment. It had what he needed, without the reek of perfume on made-up doxies in designer spandex. And there were no crowds in the wee hours. Not that he minded crowds, not really. He just didn’t want them in his space when he was pumping iron. He’d worked out until he was exhausted, but he still couldn’t sleep. He spent the darkest hours on the computer, surfing, just surfing, flipping intermittently to porn sites, searching for something, anything to hold his attention. But ultimately nothing could, nothing except her and his fantasies of what it would be like when he had her here with him.

So much information. So much. There at his fingertips, all ready and waiting for him, just like always. And every day there was more, and every day he grew closer and closer to her. He wondered if she felt it in her gut the way he did. He hoped so. He really hoped so. How could she keep from it? Whether she understood it or not, they were connected, deeply, almost spiritually, connected. If she knew, if she really understood that connection, she would be searching for him too, she would never be satisfied until she found him. Never mind, once he had her, once they were together, he could make her understand. He knew he could. That’s all he’d ever wanted. To make her understand.

It seemed like he’d dreamed about their coming together for an eternity. Maybe he’d even dreamed about her in a previous life. He’d always known the time would come and he just had to wait for the right moment. It was so close now. It was so very close. And soon he could take exactly what he wanted, what he’d been waiting for so patiently.

He paced the hall a couple of times, then stripped. The T-shirt and the back of his sweat bottoms were white with the dried salt of his sweat from the gym, and his body felt sticky and damp as he stretched out on the bed on top of the tangle of blankets. Everything in him was restless, unspent, wound to the breaking point, ready to explode. Every thought, every dream, every breath was about her, about what he’d do to her when he had her. It amazed him how she could still be with him every single second, even when he couldn’t touch her, even when he couldn’t yet have her. There was no lying still with her on his mind, no calming down for the rest that he knew he needed, no distracting himself even for a minute with thoughts of anything else. She never, ever left him, she constantly tormented him, taunted him, tortured him. It was exquisite agony companioned by rage patiently endured, finely honed. But not for much longer, he promised himself. Not for much longer. She would be his. And soon. He felt it in the gnawing burn of his gut.

He twisted and writhed in the knotted bedding. Every cell of him ached with the want of her. He was painfully hard, feeling as though he would burst with the weight of his need. He seldom masturbated. He preferred to sublimate all that sexual energy, to save it up for her, to save it up until he could make her take it all back, until he could fill her and hammer her and break her with every single bit of lust and anger and desire that she had forced him to hold, every endless unsatisfied moment he’d had at her expense. He would make her take it all back. Again, and again, and again. Yes, he seldom masturbated, but this morning, he couldn’t help himself. This morning, he could almost feel her in his arms, almost feel the silk of her skin against him, almost feel the heat of her breath against his mouth begging for it, even as she tried to deny herself what he knew she really wanted, what only he could give her.

His breathing was thick and heavy in the tiny room, roaring in his ears, drowning out the freeway sounds as he tugged and cupped at himself, as he wondered what she’d look like after all this time, wondered what she’d feel like when he entered her the first time, when he claimed his prize after all his waiting, after all her teasing. It would be so good, so very good. He convulsed into the T-shirt he’d just removed, then relaxed back against the pillow, settling into dreams of all the things he’d do to her when he had her with him at last, dreaming that it would be very, very soon.

Kendra spent the better part of the next three weeks doing her homework, calling up all of her resources, researching every possibility online. It would be a total coup to work with the elusive Tess Delaney, to actually get to meet the woman behind the romance. If she hadn’t been hell-bent on offering her services before her nasty encounter with Garrett Thorne at Harris’s bar-B-Q, she certainly was now. Who did he think he was anyway to tell her that she wasn’t right to work for Tess Delaney? He didn’t know anything about her. He didn’t know that she was the best in her field. But then again, he wouldn’t, would he? How would he know who ran the Ryde Agency? There were less than a handful of people who’d ever seen her face to face. She had worked her miracles through the magic of IT and a kick-ass staff that was great at keeping secrets. No one knew that the head of the Ryde Agency, K. Ryde, was Kendra Ryde Davis. She had her own reasons for keeping secrets, reasons she tried not to think about these days, but nonetheless, she knew better than most how important a little anonymity could be, and she was sure someone like Tess Delaney would really appreciate her skills in discretion. Discretion was something she doubted that blabbermouth Garrett Thorne would ever understand.

There was no denying the tight squirm of pleasure she felt below her belly as she thought about him grabbing her around the waist and pulling her off the end of the dock into the lake with him. What an asshole, she thought. And yet he was a cheeky asshole with a great body, one the wet summer shorts and polo shirt revealed quite nicely. Didn’t make him any less of an asshole, though. How did he get to be brothers with someone as amazing as Ellison Thorne? More significantly, how had Ellis kept from murdering him when they were kids? She was pretty sure she would have if he’d been her brother.

She returned her attention to her online attempts to connect with Tess Delaney. The woman had covered her tracks better than anyone she’d ever known – even better than she had. Not one of her substantial connections seemed to know anything about the woman or how to get in touch with her people. Still, the harder it was to find out what she needed to know, the deeper she dug. K. Ryde never gave up. She just hoped some lesser being didn’t get Tess Delaney’s attention before she did. It would be a pity if the woman ended up with less than the best.