Thirty Nights Read online

  “Oh, it wasn’t a complaint. Just the truth.” She sighed. “Sticking to the truth when a lie would be easier is one of my social flaws.”

  He arched a brow, inviting elaboration.

  Gillian complied with the silent request, as she had so many others. “For instance, just suppose that you’d bought a new dress—”

  “If I took to wearing dresses, we’d have an entirely different problem.”

  She giggled a little at that, which surprised her. Her childhood had not encouraged humor, and although Deke had always been able to make her laugh, Gillian wasn’t certain she’d ever giggled before.

  “Don’t be so literal. You know what I mean.”

  “Why don’t you give me an example?”

  “All right.” She thought a moment. “A few months ago a cellist who occasionally tours with me asked if a new skirt made her thighs look too heavy. Now, I should have just said the skirt was lovely and she looked great.”

  “But you didn’t do that.”

  “No. I couldn’t do that. Not in good conscience.”

  Once again Hunter looked for any signs that she was her parents’ daughter and found none. Since lies had come to Irene and George Cassidy as easily as breathing, he could only surmise that Gillian was a changeling.

  “Sometimes white lies are easier,” he suggested. “For everyone concerned.”

  He certainly didn’t intend to tell her about his encounter with the knife-wielding terrorist. Thus far, he’d only shared the news with the general and Dylan, so his best—and only friend—could take his own protective measures. Just in case.

  Hunter couldn’t deny that he was glad the storm had knocked out the telephone; he wasn’t prepared to have the island overrun with additional military personnel. As for his attacker, he figured it could be days before his body washed up on shore. With any luck, it would be torn apart and eaten by sharks first.

  “Lies get so complicated,” she murmured. “First you tell one, then that leads to another, and of course you have to keep track of them all and pretty soon you’re tangled up in a mess of your own making.”

  “What a pretty web we weave,” he murmured. “So what did you tell the cellist with the chubby thighs?”

  “That I thought the color didn’t flatter her skin tones and that I’d seen a stunning black silk number with crystal trim in the hotel boutique that had her name on it.”

  Gillian grinned at the memory. “She looked stunning. That night an undersecretary of state asked her out to dinner after the show. They’re getting married in June.”

  “All because of a dress?”

  “Oh, no. The dress was just packaging. He fell in love with my friend.” Humor danced in her remarkable eyes. “But the dress did help get his attention in the first place.”

  “Hooked the guy so she could reel him in.”

  The sparkle, like sunshine on snow, faded from her eyes. “Is that how you think about love? About being hooked and reeled in?”

  “Actually, I don’t think about love.”

  “That’s sad.”

  “I suppose you do?” It was a rhetorical question. Hunter already knew the answer.

  “Occasionally.” When he lifted another brow, she laughed. “All right, the fantasy of finding and spending the rest of my life with my one true love is one of my favorite things. Right up there with Christmas, chocolate—” she glanced fondly at the box of sleeping cats “—fluffy kittens and writing the music for a hit play on Broadway.”

  “Why Broadway? You’ve already played at the pyramids and Stonehenge.”

  “And had a glorious time at both. Especially Stonehenge. That was the most amazingly incredible experience. I could feel the magic…”

  She paused, tilted her head and studied him gravely. “I suppose that as a scientist, you don’t believe in magic, either.”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “That’s too bad.” She drew in a breath, then let it out again, as if having come to a decision. “We’re going to have to work on that,” she said. “Even a mad brilliant scientist needs a little magic in his life….

  “And getting back to Broadway, despite what impression you have of me, I possess a fair amount of drive and ego. I’ve always loved musical theater, and having my name up in bright lights on the Great White Way just seems like the pinnacle of success.”

  “Well, if that’s what you want, I’ve not a single doubt you’ll make that pinnacle.” No white lies needed there, Hunter thought.

  “Thank you, Hunter.” Her smile was quick and warm. “That’s very sweet of you to say.”

  “I told you, I’m—”

  “Never sweet. I know. But it’s not true, so I’m going to ignore any attempts you might make to try to convince me otherwise. I can, however, understand how you might resist the idea of falling in love. It makes sense that you’d try to avoid any situation that might cause your mind to wander.”

  “It’s been known to drift from time to time.” Such as when he’d thought of her while fighting off his attacker, Hunter thought but did not say.

  “Not for long, I’ll bet.” She paused again and seemed to be choosing her words carefully. “I suppose you were too wrapped up in your work these past couple days to think of me.”

  He sighed inwardly as he heard the naked need. Then he swore softly. “I missed you, too,” he admitted. He could give her that much, at least. “More than I should have. A helluva lot more than I wanted.”

  Because he looked so honestly distressed, Gillian leaned forward and placed her palm against his cheek. A muscle jerked against her fingertips. “I know the feeling.”

  A storm of emotions more overwhelming than physical need rushed through her. Because they were too new, too raw to share with Hunter, she closed her eyes briefly to keep them to herself.

  What she’d managed to convince herself over the years had been a teenage crush, had, during her time on Castle Mountain, been blossoming into something much deeper. More lasting. She loved him. Truly, madly, deeply.

  She also knew that he wasn’t ready for such a revelation. If she were to admit to her feelings, he’d undoubtedly close back up again and hustle her out of the house and off the island as soon as the storm cleared.

  Convinced she wasn’t alone in her feelings, Gillian vowed to breach the self-protective barricades he’d erected over the years and rescue him from his self-imposed emotional and physical isolation.

  She opened her eyes, her slow smile brimming with feminine invitation. “Do you remember when I compared this situation to Beauty and the Beast?”

  “I vaguely recall something about that.”

  “I had the wrong fairy tale.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s more along the lines of Frankenstein.”

  “So you consider me a monster?”

  A shadow moved across his eyes, so quickly that if she hadn’t been watching him carefully, Gillian would have missed it. No wonder he’d built those walls, she thought sadly, with a little hitch in her heart. She’d already discovered that he was far more sensitive, more vulnerable, than he was willing to admit, even to himself.

  “No.” She shook her head. “You’re the doctor. Who created the monster who went amok. Ever since you made love to me—”

  “Had sex,” he corrected her swiftly. Firmly.

  She should have known he’d balk at the L word. Even as she wanted more, Gillian reminded herself that patience was reputed to be a virtue.

  “Ever since we had sex,” she amended, “it’s been almost all I’ve thought about.”

  She skimmed her fingers down the unscarred side of his face, around his harshly carved lips. Lips she could still taste. Lips she was dying to feel all over her body again.

  “You’re not alone there.”

  Gillian decided that the growled admission was a start. “Well, then. Perhaps we should begin making up for lost time.”

  With a brazenness she couldn’t have imagined doing only a week ago, Gillian rose to her feet, slowly untied the sash of the robe, pushed it off her shoulders and allowed it to drop to the floor.

  As she stood in front of him, gloriously, achingly naked, Gillian watched the stark male hunger flame in his eyes and had never felt more like a woman. Powerful. Sexy. Seductive.

  He wasn’t touching her—not yet—but the heat of his gaze was enough to cause her breasts to ache.

  “I imagined you touching me like this.” She splayed her fingers over her breasts. Her voice, low and throaty, sounded like a stranger’s. An alluring, provocative stranger who could keep the interest of a man like Hunter.

  “And this.” As he watched with undisguised lust, her hands roamed down her torso with an erotic slowness designed to make him ache as badly as she’d been aching since she awakened after a night of lovemaking to an empty bed.

  “I dreamed of cold steel against hot flesh.” Her fingernail raised a pink trail at the inside of her thigh where a pearl of moisture beaded. “And how you’d soothe the sting with your mouth.”

  “Gillian…” His rough, ragged complaint was half moan, half warning. Sensing the wild animal raging inside him, Gillian grew even bolder, determined to cause it to break its chains.

  “Did you think about it, Hunter?” Her eyes did not leave his. “Did you dream about me?”

  “Yes.” His growled answer sent a thrill skimming through her.

  “Hot, sexy dreams?”

  “Day and night.”

  “I’m glad.” She smiled at the idea that she’d managed to slip her way into his rigidly controlled mind.

  Even as she wondered what had come over her, how she’d become so blatantly wanton, so daringly licentious, she couldn’t help testing Hunter’s self-control just a lit
tle bit more.

  “Did you wake up hard and hot and wish you were here?”

  When she cupped herself between her legs, Hunter abruptly stood up, knocking his chair over. Neither of them noticed.

  “What the hell do you think?” He grasped her wrist with his good hand, yanking it away from her body to press it against his. His erection, hard and ready, jerked beneath her stroking touch.

  “I think you just might be as obsessed as I am.”

  Hunter’s response to her accusation was half laugh, half groan. “I think you just may be right.”

  He pulled her to him, heat to heat. His mouth captured hers in a rough, demanding kiss that answered her seductiveness with primal power and made her head swim. Gillian kissed him back, her avid mouth as hungry as his.

  Somehow, they made it to the bedroom, where Gillian reveled in the carnal demands of Hunter’s mouth, the roughness of his hands, the force of his powerful body as he drove her deeper and deeper into the mattress, bringing her to the very edge of release, again and again, but never letting her tumble over that final razor-sharp precipice.

  “Dammit, Hunter…” No longer playing the role of submissive, Gillian raked her nails over the taut muscles of his damp back. “I can’t take any more.”

  “You can.” He was feasting on her, as a man might devour a ripe, juicy summer plum. “You will.”

  His mouth scorched its way up her body again. Gillian thought she heard the hiss of her skin sizzle when he dipped a kiss into her navel. He caressed her breasts to a pleasure just this side of pain, as he captured her ravished lips beneath his mouth.

  “Taste yourself.” The kiss was slow and deep and drugging. “You taste like sex.” An opulent haze settled over her mind. “And sin.” He was punctuating his words with nips of his teeth. “A man could get addicted to your taste.”

  She wanted to ask if he could get addicted to her, but the words clogged in her throat. Hunter’s tongue stabbed between her parted lips at the same time he surged into her body. She climaxed the instant he entered her, mind and body shattering so violently that she was only distantly aware of his explosive release.

  GILLIAN LAY ON HER BACK, gazing up into the mirror overhead, and decided that while she still thought it tacky, the sight of Hunter’s body spread over her was undeniably pleasurable. She skimmed her fingers down his back, over the raised welts left by her short fingernails, and enjoyed the contrast of her pale hand against his dark flesh.

  Her other hand traced a line from the strong column of his neck, outward, over his shoulder, down his arm…

  “Oh, my God!” The mirror forgotten, she rose to her knees in a flash. “You’re bleeding.”

  Hunter glanced down at the slash on his upper arm. The one he’d completely forgotten about but which, now that she’d drawn his attention to it, had begun to throb.

  “It’s just a little scratch.”

  “You’ve already impressed me with your manliness, Hunter,” she countered with a briskness that reminded him she was not all sugar and spice and honeyed sex. Success such as hers did not come to the soft and weak-willed. “So there’s no need for the macho-man routine.”

  Before he could protest her leaving, she was out of the bed. As she marched into the bathroom, Hunter couldn’t help noticing that Gillian had the sweetest ass of any woman he’d ever known.

  He heard the water running. Then she returned with a damp white washcloth.

  She pressed the cloth against the wound, her remarkable eyes narrowing when he involuntarily flinched. “How on earth did this happen?”

  “I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I said I banged into a shelf of beakers and one broke.”

  “You don’t work with beakers.” She frowned as a poppy-red stain spread across the snowy Egyptian cotton.

  “Would you buy the story that I was slicing an onion for a roast beef sandwich and the knife slipped?”

  “That’s worse than the beaker lie. Obviously you’ve been stabbed.”

  “Seen a lot of stab wounds on the concert tour, Sherlock?”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “No.” Hunter reluctantly had to agree with her there. “I suppose it’s not.”

  “We should call the police.”

  “The phones are dead,” he reminded her.

  There was also the little matter of Dylan’s sister being police chief of Castle Mountain, and though he’d heard stories about Charity’s medal-winning exploits on the LAPD before returning home to take over her late father’s job, she wasn’t Superwoman. Hunter suspected that in this case, she’d be overmatched.

  Even though he’d hated sharing any part of what little personal life he had, Hunter had felt the need to tell the general about his houseguest. Unsurprisingly, he hadn’t been assured that Gillian would be protected. Terrorism was an unpredictable thing, the general had reminded Hunter. But he’d do his best.

  The problem was, Hunter wasn’t all that confident that the man’s best would be good enough in this case. If anything happened to Gillian…

  He’d have to have another chat with the general, Hunter decided. Tomorrow, before the man left the island and disappeared into that impenetrable military fortress at the Pentagon.

  “I wouldn’t have thought there were that many muggers on Castle Mountain,” Gillian said. “There aren’t.”

  “Do you know who your attacker was?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then it wasn’t personal?”

  “Actually, stabbing someone is undoubtedly always personal.”

  Gillian frowned at his disregard for his own safety. “Does it have something to do with your work?”

  “That’d be my guess.”

  “Should we worry about your attacker showing up here?”

  “No.” That was the one thing Hunter was absolutely certain about.

  At his quick, positive answer, her gaze moved from the blood-brightened cloth to the window. “Is he dead?”

  “I suppose so. Unless he somehow managed to sprout wings just before he landed in the sea.”

  “That seems unlikely.”

  Hunter was vaguely surprised that she was taking this with such aplomb. Then again, Gillian had been one surprise after another since she’d arrived.

  The last of the lingering lust was gone from her eyes. She gave him a long, intelligent, silent look. Then touched the fingertips of the hand that wasn’t holding the cloth to his face again, this time to his scarred cheek. Though it took a herculean effort, Hunter did not turn away.

  “What happened to you, Hunter?”

  “You’ve already figured that out. Obviously, I was stabbed.”

  “Not today, but before.”

  “I was doing research for my project in Bosnia and opened a letter that turned out to be booby-trapped.”

  “A letter bomb.” He watched her slender frame shudder and admired the way she instantly recaptured control of both mind and body. “Your work is that dangerous?”

  “Let’s just say that if I manage to pull it off, the world could well be a kinder, gentler place.”

  Frown lines furrowed her smooth brow. “Why would anyone want to kill you for making the world better?”

  “Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who don’t profit from kinder or gentler and would rather keep the status quo.”

  “I suppose that makes a certain sort of sad, sick sense.” She thought some more. “Do you think this latest attack is related to the one in Bosnia?”

  “It could be.”

  “I see.” But, of course she didn’t, Hunter acknowledged. Since she had no idea what he was working on. She fell silent again and frowned as she studied his wound. “It might need stitches.”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  “You’re not a doctor.”

  “Neither are you.”

  Their gazes met in a silent challenge.

  “I hate this,” she said finally on a huge huff of breath.

  “You don’t have to worry. You’ll be safe.” Somewhere between when he’d first been caught off guard driving home and when his attacker had flown off the cliff, Hunter had made the vow to keep Gillian safe if it was the last thing he did. If it took his final breath on earth.

  “I wasn’t talking about myself,” she said in a rare flare of temper that revealed the passionate woman he’d already discovered her to be. “I hate that you were hurt.”

  He’d unfastened the metal hook from force of habit when he’d undressed after stumbling with her into the bedroom. At the time, his mind had been as inflamed as his body and he hadn’t thought that she might be turned off by the touch of deadened skin against her warm and willing flesh.