Thirty Nights Page 17

  That thought sent fingers of icy fear skimming up his spine. He reminded himself that he’d always taken precautions, never allowed himself to get so aroused that he’d forget protection.

  Until tonight.

  “If anything happens…” He could explain genetic profiling to an international gathering of the planet’s greatest minds, but he couldn’t find the words to say what he needed to say to this woman. “After tonight…”

  “Something did happen. I just told you that I loved you.”

  “You’re confusing sex with love. Which isn’t that surprising. After all, you were a virgin before I forced you to come here—”

  “I was a virgin by choice. I’m also an adult, Hunter. You didn’t force me to do anything. Perhaps your little blackmail scheme was the impetus for me coming to the island in the first place, but once I arrived at your house, I was a willing participant in everything. Including tonight.”

  “If you get pregnant, I’ll want to know.” He still wasn’t looking at her.

  “Really?” He heard her shift in her seat and knew that she’d turned toward him. “Why? Would you offer to make an honest woman of me?”

  “You’re already an honest woman.” Too damn honest for her own good.

  “I told you I was,” she reminded him. “What would you do, Hunter? If you found out I was carrying your child?”

  “I’d want to be involved.”

  “Involved. That’s an interesting, albeit remote way of putting it. Are you saying you’d change diapers, walk the floor, drive our son to Little League games?”

  “I don’t know, dammit!” He shot a short, frustrated glance at her. “I’ve never given it any thought before tonight.”

  “Really?” The irritated edge to her voice was gone, replaced by genuine curiosity. “You’ve never fantasized about having children?”

  “Never.”

  “Why not?”

  “How the hell should I know?” He raked a frustrated hand through his hair and considered pulling off the road and making love again to her just to get her off this topic.

  He could feel her long, steady look. “I think that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Then you’ve been too sheltered. Because believe me, baby, there are a helluva lot sadder things in the world than not having to put up with a miniature of me.”

  The silence spun out in the dark confines of the Suburban as she considered that declaration. “You know,” she said finally, slowly, “for a supposedly brilliant man, you can really be an idiot.”

  There was no way he could disagree with that.

  “Will you tell me?” he pressed. “If you get pregnant?”

  He heard her shimmering sigh and wondered how such a soft, resigned sound could tug so many unwanted emotional chords. “I’ll tell you.”

  Hunter wondered why her answer, which he’d insisted on, failed to give him any satisfaction. He tried to think of something to say, something that would make things right, to put them back the way they’d been when he’d been holding her during the sleigh ride. When he’d kissed her beneath a canopy of brilliant stars and wished he possessed the power to stop the world from spinning.

  He might be an idiot when it came to relationships, but even Hunter knew that none of the words that came to mind—pat, easy, safe phrases he was used to saying to women—fit this occasion.

  So, miserable coward that he was, he took the easy way out and said nothing.

  14

  GILLIAN WAS NOT ALL that surprised when Hunter didn’t speak to her the rest of the way back to the house. She even understood why he might choose to spend the night locked away in his office rather than joining her in the huge, too lonely bed. It was more than a little obvious that no one had ever loved him before. It would just take some time for him to get used to the idea. Gillian was a patient woman. Since she knew, deep down inside, that she wasn’t alone in her feelings, she was prepared to wait.

  After a restless, mostly sleepless night, she was still giving herself that little pep talk the next morning when she walked into the kitchen and saw the stunningly voluptuous woman seated at the table across from Hunter, sipping a cup of coffee and looking as if she belonged there.

  Her tousled hair and the fact that all she seemed to be wearing was one of Hunter’s flannel shirts—which came nearly to the knees of her very shapely legs—suggested she’d not just arrived.

  The pain was sharp and instantaneous, going directly to Gillian’s heart.

  “Good morning,” she said in as calm a voice as she could muster.

  “Hello.” The woman smiled up at her, her eyes as dark as Bambi’s but a great deal sexier. They were also filled with the same sympathy Gillian had witnessed in Dylan’s gaze. “You must be Gillian. I’m Toni Maggione…. A—” she paused just a heartbeat, but long enough for Gillian to understand that she was choosing her words carefully “—colleague of Hunter’s at the brain factory.”

  “How nice for you.”

  Knowing that Hunter had set this scene up, and understanding why, Gillian decided the situation didn’t require her best manners. She turned toward him.

  “You really are an idiot.”

  He’d donned that damn inscrutable mask she’d come to detest. When he arched a dark brow in that silent, mocking way she recalled all too well from her first days at his house, Gillian resisted, just barely, picking up the coffee carafe and throwing it at his head.

  “If you wanted me to leave, you didn’t have to stage this ridiculous soap opera scene. You could have just asked. After all,” she reminded him, “the deal was I’d do whatever you wanted.”

  Unlike last night, when he’d obviously been too uncomfortable to look at her, Hunter met her hurt, angry gaze straight on. His eyes were like two dark stones. “And I trust you to live up to it. Which is why you’ll let Ben take you back to the mainland this morning.”

  Gillian glanced out the window and saw Ben Adams’s truck parked outside the kitchen door. He was sitting in the driver’s seat, motor running, exhaust turning the air blue.

  She decided to give him one last chance to come to his senses. “That’s truly what you want?”

  His granite jaw was set, his expression unyielding. “Yes.”

  “An idiot,” she repeated. Then left the kitchen.

  “She’s right, you know,” Toni said as she lifted her cup to her full red lips. “I’m always willing to help out a friend, even if it does mean dragging my poor jet-lagged body out of a nice warm bed at dawn to drive over here. But this staged soap opera scenario, which I warned you wouldn’t fool any intelligent woman for a moment, has to be the most idiotic idea you’ve ever come up with, darling.”

  “I know.” Hunter dragged his good hand down his face. But he did not, could not, go after Gillian.

  HUNTER WAS QUIETLY GOING insane. Despite Toni’s assertion that Gillian hadn’t believed they’d slept together, the ploy had worked, just as he’d hoped it would.

  Gillian was gone. Just as he’d wanted.

  She was safe. Just as he’d planned.

  Two weeks to the day after he’d let Gillian walk out of his house, he got a telephone call from the general, informing him that the FBI, working with the CIA, had identified his attacker as a member of a radical splinter group working out of New York with ties to the Balkans.

  They’d picked up the other members, all were in federal custody, so Hunter was free to continue his work without concern about any further attacks.

  And by the way, how close was he to being finished?

  “It’ll be done when it’s done,” Hunter said. He hung up on the general, hit redial, and called Ben Adams.

  Hunter hadn’t been surprised when he’d discovered that Gillian had immediately gone looking for work. A little investigation had discovered that she’d signed to replace a performer who’d eaten some bad shrimp and come down with food poisoning during a New England holiday concert tour.

  He’d employed a similar antidote to life for years. It was, after all, difficult to think about your personal problems, your desires, or even those secret wishes of the heart, dreams you wouldn’t—or couldn’t—even admit to yourself, when you were buried in work.

  The problem this time was, he also hadn’t been able to get any work done when all he could think about was the woman he’d stupidly let slip out of his fingers. Still uneasy with the idea of love, of being loved, he tried to tell himself that what he missed was the sex.

  “You’re not only an idiot,” he muttered as he gave up and threw a change of clothing into a duffel bag. “You’re a damn liar. It’s Gillian you really miss.”

  Despite suspecting that she would have resisted leaving the island, even if he had told her the truth—that he was only trying to protect her—Hunter knew that he’d handled things badly.

  This time it would be different, he vowed. He didn’t exactly have a plan. But he was an intelligent man. He’d think of something.

  “It’s about time you went after the girl,” Ben Adams declared as he piloted the mail boat through the choppy winter waves to the mainland. “You gonna bring her back with you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Hunter wasn’t sure what he’d do if Gillian refused to see him. To talk with him. Despite having been away from civilization for a number of years, he suspected that the law would frown on him kidnapping her, tying her up and dragging her back to Castle Mountain with him, where she belonged.

  “Not that I’d be one to be tellin’ you what to do,” Ben drawled. “But if you could manage to get her back here by tomorrow, I’d be grateful.”

  Hunter dragged his gaze from the steely waves. “What’s happening tomorrow?”

  “It’s Christmas,” Ben reminded him. “It’s also th
e day I’ve got in the poll.”

  “Poll?” Hunter stared at him. “Are you saying there’s actually a poll going about my personal life?”

  “Ayuh,” the older man agreed. “The missus wanted today, but Dr. Prescott already had that one blocked out, so she ended up with December twenty-sixth.” He frowned. “She t’weren’t too happy about that.”

  Hunter tried to recall a time when he’d seen Mildred Adams happy about anything and drew a blank. “Dylan’s in it, too?”

  “’Bout everyone on the island joined in. Costs five bucks to enter. I’ve got my eye on a new motor for my fishing boat,” he volunteered. “In case you’d be thinking about Christmas,” he repeated.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Hunter said dryly.

  “YOU KNOW,” DEKE SAID as he sprawled his lanky body in a chair in Gillian’s postage-stamp-size dressing room and watched the makeup artist transform her into the larger-than-life star the audience was expecting, “this is supposed to be the season of good will.”

  “So they tell me.” The eyeliner, which wouldn’t look nearly so heavy beneath the bright stage lights, made her eyes look even larger than usual. But haunted. She frowned, thinking that she reminded herself of those paintings of wide-eyed waifs that had once been all the rage. Which wasn’t at all the image she wanted to portray on the concert stage.

  “Then perhaps you’d better perk up a bit before you go out there. You look like you’re in the mood to play funeral dirges.”

  Echoing his observation, the makeup woman grumbled about Gillian’s red-rimmed eyes, and did her best to cover the pink puffiness with a white crayon.

  “I’ll be fine,” Gillian lied. In truth, she’d been far from fine since leaving Castle Mountain. She hadn’t wanted to miss Hunter. But she did. Horribly. Constantly.

  “I wouldn’t expect your performance to be anything but spectacular. But it’s not your public persona I’m concerned about. We’re friends, Gilly. If you’ve got a problem—and it’s obvious that you do—I want to help.”

  “It’s undoubtedly a man,” the makeup woman, who’d been with Gillian nearly as long as Deke, offered as she handed Gillian a tissue to blot her lips, which instead of the usual virginal pastel pink were tonight a glossy crimson.

  “What makes you so sure of that?” Deke asked her.

  The sixty-something woman shrugged as she added some much-needed blusher to Gillian’s too pale cheeks. “Isn’t it always?”

  Not wanting to even attempt to explain her complex relationship with Hunter, even to her best friend, Gillian was relieved when the five-minute knock sounded on the closed door, causing the others to leave the room so she could slip out of the robe and into tonight’s performance gown.

  ONCE HE REACHED the mainland, Hunter rented a car and drove to Boston, where Gillian was performing, and managed to talk a tuxedo-clad man standing in line to get into the theater into selling him one of the sold-out tickets for an outrageously inflated price.

  His seat was in a balcony draped with fir boughs for the season, not as near to the stage as he would have liked, but close enough that he could feel the emotions pouring from her fingertips as she played the music of her heart. The music she’d written while living with him. The music that echoed the passion of their time together. The heights of pleasure along with the depths of despair. For the first time, listening to the melancholy he knew that he was responsible for, Hunter was forced to wonder if, even as openhearted as she was, Gillian would be able to find it in her heart to forgive him.

  Strangely, when the mood of the piece changed, and she began pounding out her pent-up anger in base chords that vibrated through him, he felt a bit more reassured. After all, he tried to tell himself, an angry woman was not an indifferent one.

  She looked incredible, as she always did, whether in formal wear, jeans or the seductive lingerie he’d so enjoyed buying for her. She was wearing a floor-length velvet dress. He supposed it was a concession to Christmas that she’d chosen a deep-forest-green trimmed in gold braid at the sleeves and hem rather than her usual black. She’d also changed her hair. Instead of flowing free the way he preferred it, the way she’d worn it at Stonehenge, it had been fashioned into some sort of complicated braided twist that made her look far more sophisticated and remote than the high-spirited, uninhibited woman who, in what often felt like a distant dream time, had ridden him like a wild woman. Or laughed and loved with him at Winterfest.

  Indeed, if it wasn’t for the slight change in her music, an even deeper emotional quality and sensuality she’d acquired while on the island, he might have thought he’d imagined their entire time together.

  The audience gave her a standing ovation. Then demanded three encores. They obviously loved her. As did he.

  15

  AFTERWARD, WHEN IT BECAME apparent that she wasn’t going to come back onto the stage, Hunter walked out into the lobby and located an usher.

  “I was wondering if you could help me,” he asked.

  The woman smiled up at him. Her gaze slid momentarily to his cheek, but she didn’t flinch as the ticket taker had, which made him think that he might stand a chance.

  “With what, sir?”

  “I’d like to get backstage.”

  Her glossy rosy lips turned down in a frown. “I’m sorry, but that’s impossible.”

  If she’d been a male, Hunter would have tried a bribe. Since she was a lissome young blonde in her mid-twenties, he opted for a different tack.

  “I understand. I suppose it serves me right. After what I did.” He sighed and half turned away.

  She bit at the verbal bait, as he’d hoped she would. “What did you do?”

  “Ms. Cassidy and I were…” He paused, as if seeking an appropriate word. “Well…close.” He dragged his good hand through his hair. “Actually, the truth is that we were in love with each other.”

  “I see.” Her eyes narrowed.

  “But I waited too long to tell her. So she finally got tired of waiting to hear the words and left me.”

  He decided details of Gillian’s departure and the pitiful ruse he’d try to pull with Toni would only muddy the conversational waters.

  “That was two long weeks ago. I’ve been going crazy ever since.”

  Hunter watched her mull that little piece of information over. Watched her eyes slide over to a doorway across the lobby. When she gave a faint, almost regretful shake of her head that hinted she was not as easily swayed as he’d hoped, the little piece of holly she was wearing pinned to a clip in her long hair gave him a bit of inspiration.

  “It’s difficult to be alone anytime. But I’d guess that I’m not the only person in the world who finds it especially hard at Christmas.”

  “Yes.” A distant memory seemed to cloud her bright blue eyes for a moment. “It can be a difficult time to be alone.” She pondered that some more as she chewed thoughtfully on the tip of a French-manicured thumbnail.

  Hunter summoned up his best smile. The same one he used to drag out back in the days when he was forced to attend all those cocktail parties and stifling, boring teas, doing his best to charm much needed research dollars out of checkbooks in a way that had always reminded him uncomfortably of shaking leaves off money trees.

  “I’m honestly not some crazed stalker, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  A faint color darkened her cheekbones, but she didn’t assure him that the idea hadn’t occurred to her. “Perhaps there is something I can do,” she mused.

  He widened the smile until his jaw ached. “Any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated.”

  “I can have Bernard go backstage with you.”

  “That sounds great to me.” Hunter had no idea who Bernard was, but was willing to do whatever it took to get to Gillian. “Thank you.”

  He thought about assuring her that if he succeeded in winning Gillian over, they’d name their firstborn after her, but decided that might be overkill. He also remembered all too well about Gillian’s accusation that he could be a bit Stone Age in his approach to romance and decided that she’d undoubtedly prefer to be included in such a personal decision.

  Bernard turned out to be the usher’s boyfriend, who’d dropped by the theater to take her out for a bite to eat after work. He was also a Boston cop.