Thirty Nights Read online

  Until now.

  Hunter obviously possessed a strong, earthy nature. He was also completely amoral, making her wonder what had happened to that high-principled young man she’d once adored from afar. It was obvious that he’d undergone some physical tragedy.

  Even worse than his visible scars was the apparent loss of his heart. And even, she feared, his soul.

  In another time, he would have been considered a sexual libertine—a man without conscience who seduced women for his own amusement, abandoning them without a backward glance once he grew bored with the game.

  Of course, the women would know they were being seduced, Gillian allowed. And even those who tried to resist the sensual lure of his mocking bedroom eyes, his dark voice with its menacing shadow of sensuality, would understand that this was a game they couldn’t win.

  Nevertheless, perhaps because he represented the forbidden, the dark side of human nature, since arriving on Castle Mountain Island, Gillian was discovering how the lure of capitulation to such a man could prove irresistible.

  6

  HUNTER WAS IN A FILTHY MOOD. He’d spent the night chasing sleep, his mutinous mind filled with images of Gillian: of all the things he wanted to do to her, all the things he wanted her to do to him, all the things they’d do to each other. Finally giving up on the idea of getting any rest, he’d tried to work on his genetic mapping model.

  In the past, whenever aspects of his life became unpleasant—even during those seemingly unending days when his body had screamed with pain and he’d distracted himself by running equations in his mind—he’d been able to lose himself in his research. And if crunching numbers didn’t prove to be the answer, he’d then take off to some new war zone and spend weeks or months compiling complex personality profiles and DNA samples from the population that he could plug into his behavioral prediction equations.

  The distraction of work had never failed him. Until now. Until he’d made the major mistake of bringing Gillian Cassidy into his life. Further irritating were two more phone calls—one from Van Horn, another from the Pentagon, checking on his progress.

  While he found them both irksome, Hunter was becoming most annoyed with the military brass. Accustomed to looking at things in black and white, and action-oriented, they couldn’t seem to understand that some things took time. He also understood that, given the opportunity, they’d be as eager as the Russians to use his research for less-than-altruistic ends.

  “Calls like this are a distraction,” he told the general who headed up the military committee for his project. “I can’t get any work done if I’m always talking on the damn phone.”

  The conversation was short, brief and, as always when dealing with this particular branch of government, unsatisfying. Still, just before he hung up, Hunter assured the general, who was also in charge of writing out the checks, that he expected a breakthrough soon.

  Even knowing that he should rerun the numbers, Hunter found himself riveted in his chair, his eyes glued to the monitor, watching Gillian sleep alone in his wide bed.

  From the way she’d tossed and turned, from the soft little sounds she’d made and the way her hands had unconsciously stroked her body like a lover’s caress, it was clear that he was not the only one burning up from the inside out. Unfortunately, that thought didn’t offer a great deal of comfort.

  She was supposed to burn, dammit. While his mind was supposed to remain cool and analytical.

  She’d disappeared into the bathroom. Hunter waited impatiently, rewarded a few minutes later when she returned engulfed in his oversize robe. It surrounded her, embraced her in a way that stimulated a new carnal image of slowly unwrapping her from those thick folds of terry cloth. Although the idea of watching her in the shower had proved more than a little appealing, in the end, he’d reluctantly left the camera out of the bathroom.

  Now, looking at the triangle of pale skin framed by the vee of the robe’s lapels, contrasting so vividly with the black material, Hunter found himself wishing that he hadn’t allowed himself that chivalrous impulse.

  A drop of moisture sparkled like a diamond displayed on white satin; Hunter groaned, struck with a harsh, visceral need to lick it off.

  He reached for the remote control, determined to turn the damn thing off, to darken the screen and return to work. But he couldn’t do it.

  Obsession. The word, which heretofore he’d only allowed to be applied to his work, tolled in his head like the deep, lonely sound of the foghorns that echoed in the mists outside his house.

  Hunter had never been a man given to deep introspection, he’d always saved complex analysis for his research. But he didn’t have to be a genius to realize that somehow, when he hadn’t been looking, he’d developed an unhealthy preoccupation with his old nemesis’ lovely daughter.

  He’d have to send her away. Soon.

  That decided, and knowing that the decent, honorable thing to do would be to allow her some small privacy while she dressed, Hunter reluctantly darkened the screen.

  But instead of returning to work, he remained in the leather chair as his rebellious mind created wildly erotic mental pictures that made the Kama Sutra seem tame by comparison.

  GILLIAN FOLLOWED the enticing scent of coffee to the kitchen, where she found Mildred Adams at the counter, chopping vegetables for tonight’s dinner. Unlike the cold sterility of Hunter’s hedonistic bedroom, the kitchen was warmly domestic, with copper kettles and gleaming marble countertops.

  It also offered what she suspected would be a breathtaking view of the ocean. Unfortunately today the sea was draped in a misty veil of fog.

  “Good morning.” Gillian greeted the housekeeper with a faint, embarrassed smile. “I can’t believe I slept so late.” She hated the idea of Mrs. Adams believing she was typically so slothful. It was bad enough to have the housekeeper think she was sleeping with Hunter.

  The older woman shrugged. “Dr. St. John said you’d be tired.” She began attacking a carrot, slicing it into neat little circles with amazing speed. “You had a busy day yesterday.”

  “Yes,” Gillian murmured. “It was that.”

  “He also said you’ve been traveling around the world, playing piano concerts.” She stopped her work and poured a cup of coffee into a thick blue spatterware mug.

  “I returned to the States last week.”

  The cup was warm in her hands. Lured by the enticing steam rising from the dark depths, Gillian took a tentative sip.

  “Oh, this is delicious.” She sighed her pleasure and took another, longer drink.

  “Hope it’s not too strong for you. I made it the way Dr. St. John likes it.”

  “It’s perfect.”

  “Dr. St. John says coffee should be as hot as hellfire, thick as marsh mud, and as black as a witch’s heart.” Mildred swept the carrots aside and wiped her hands on her apron. “You’ll be wanting breakfast.”

  “Oh, it’s already so late. I don’t want to bother you.”

  “It’s my job,” Mildred reminded her briskly as she opened the oversize refrigerator.

  Thirty minutes later, after an enormous meal of corned beef hash topped with a poached egg and potato-flour muffins spread with homemade blueberry conserve, Gillian didn’t think she’d ever be able to move again.

  She’d never been much of a breakfast eater, but uncomfortable about what Mildred Adams knew—or suspected—about her reason for being here, she hadn’t wanted to make waves.

  “I believe I’ll take a walk,” she decided.

  “That’s a good idea. Dr. St. John bought you some winter outdoor wear. It’ll be hanging by the back door in the mudroom.”

  “Dr. St. John seems to have thought of everything.”

  Gillian’s dry tone seemed to fly over the woman’s head. “He figured, bein’ a Californian, you wouldn’t have the proper clothing for our Maine winter. You’d best bundle up real good, since it’s blowing like old Gabe’s horn out there.

  “Oh, and the piano got delivered this morning,”

  Mildred said on an apparent afterthought as Gillian started to leave the kitchen.

  That stopped her in her tracks. “The piano?”

  “The one Dr. St. John ordered. It was scheduled to be here two days ago, but the driver blew a tire in Augusta and got held up. Dr. St. John t’weren’t at all pleased about that,” she tacked on with a dark frown.

  “I’ll just bet he wasn’t.”

  Having witnessed firsthand Hunter’s seeming need to control every aspect of his environment, Gillian could just picture his irritation at his instructions not being carried out to the letter.

  “Does he play?” Too late, Gillian remembered the hook that had replaced Hunter’s left hand.

  “Not that I know of.” Mildred finished putting Gillian’s dishes in the dishwasher and added detergent. “He said you might enjoy having it here.”

  Dammit! Just when she thought she was getting a handle on the man, he did something generous. “He’s right.”

  Along with her lingering concern for her father, who hadn’t been looking all that well when she’d answered his frantic summons in Cambridge, the other thing that had bothered Gillian most about this trip was the prospect of going thirty long days without her music.

  “They put it in the library,” Mildred said as she began attacking a stewing chicken with a cleaver. “Third door on the left down the hall. The man guaranteed me that he’d tuned it properly, but Dr. St. John said that if you don’t find it satisfactory, I’m to call and make him come back and do it right.”

  With that flat, no-nonsense Yankee voice, and the vicious cleaver in her hand, Mildred Adams definitely looked like someone to be reckoned with. Gillian had not a single doubt that the piano tuner would have done his best to avoid this c
rusty woman’s displeasure.

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  Gillian still intended to take a walk to try to burn off some of the extensive calories she’d just consumed, but her curiosity had her heading toward the library.

  Hunter’s unrelenting concern for detail was evident in everything about the vast room that smelled like leather and lemon oil. The soaring cathedral ceiling glowed with the radiance of western red cedar, adding a soothing warmth that contrasted with the gray sky outside the glass wall.

  A fire crackled in a stone fireplace large enough to stand in. Bookcases lined three walls, and although there were the leather-bound classics one might expect to find in such an impressive room, the bright dust jackets and paperback editions also crowding the shelves gave proof that the library had been designed for use, not merely show.

  The furniture was ox-blood leather and oversize, inviting visitors to settle in and burrow down with a good book.

  Claiming the center of the floor was a gleaming, nine-foot black Steinway piano, a twin of the model she’d bought with the royalties when her first CD went platinum.

  At the time she’d justified the cost, and her uncharacteristically self-indulgent behavior, by reminding herself that the piano’s unsurpassed tone—with its soft treble and deep bass—could only improve her music.

  But for Hunter to have spent so much money for the short amount of time she was going to be staying here on Castle Mountain was astonishing. If he was actually expecting her to pay off such a glorious instrument with sexual services in a mere month’s time, they could both be in trouble.

  Gillian recalled the long-ago holiday when she’d put on her best ivory angora sweater and matching wool skirt and the pair of pearl earrings her father had given her for Christmas, then arranged to be sitting at the piano in the music room adjacent to the foyer when Hunter arrived at her parents’ house.

  While the maid took his coat, she’d launched into a rendition of Chopin’s Fantaisie Impromptu in C-sharp Minor, which she found wondrously romantic and had been laboring over for weeks. Just for him. This would be the night he finally noticed her. Tonight he would hear the love she felt for him in her music and finally realize that they were soul mates!

  Unfortunately, all those hours of practice had gone in vain as her mother called out his name in a voice that sounded like silver bells, causing him to walk past the open doorway without so much as a sideways glance inside.

  The memory made her sigh. Then, drawn to the gleaming ebony and ivory keys, she played an arpeggio and was pleased but not overly surprised to find the tuning perfect. She ran through a few bars of George Winston’s “Colors” and found the response of the keys to her touch sublime.

  Tempted to play longer, Gillian knew from experience that were she to sit down, she’d lose track of the time and the next thing she knew it would be evening and time for her next encounter with the man who insisted on becoming more than just her lover. She might not be experienced, but she understood, all too well, that Hunter viewed himself as her would-be sexual master.

  Whenever she considered the idea intellectually, the successful, talented woman dwelling inside Gillian found it appalling. Or ridiculous, like that silly television sitcom she watched occasionally on late-night cable, the one about the astronaut and the girl he kept in a bottle.

  Yet at the same time, Hunter had always been, to her, a siren call. It was admittedly politically incorrect, nevertheless, since she’d arrived here last evening, she was amazed to discover the idea of surrendering control to such a ruthless, demanding man, opening herself up to all the eroticism she knew he would bring to their encounter, unreasonably alluring.

  While she’d dressed this morning, forced to forego underwear, she’d almost managed to convince herself that such an exploration of the erotic side of love would be good for her art. Her music had always reflected her own innermost feelings, fantasies and dreams. That being the case, wouldn’t this sensual knowledge allow her to play with more depth? More passion?

  “Who do you think you’re kidding?”

  She attacked the keyboard, pounding out a series of hard, angry percussive bass chords that echoed off the walls and ceiling.

  “This isn’t about art.” She heaped an extra helping of sarcasm on the word. “It’s about lust. Pure and simple. You want him, dammit.”

  Her short, bitter laugh was directed at herself. “You just don’t want him to know how badly. And you’re also too used to being the one calling all the shots to surrender control to anyone.”

  While she certainly hadn’t reached Hunter’s level of success, Gillian wasn’t intimidated by either his fame or his brilliance. What did worry her was that although she was willing to surrender her body, she feared Hunter would not be satisfied until he took possession of her heart. And worse yet, her soul.

  Sighing, she turned away from the piano and left the library. A walk in the brisk Maine sea air would do her good.

  “It’ll clear your head,” she said, giving herself a little pep talk as she found the Christmas-red parka Mildred had told her about hanging on a hook in the mudroom. It would also help her decide exactly how she was going to handle Hunter when he returned with new demands tonight.

  SHE LIKED IT. He’d hoped she would. Hunter watched, foolishly, ridiculously pleased, as Gillian stroked the ebony surface of the piano, ran her long, slender fingers over the keys in soaring legato runs, smiling in response to the exquisite sound. It was such a simple thing, really.

  The Steinway, as expensive as it was, didn’t come close to the price of the Ferrari parked alongside the Suburban and the Mercedes in the three-car garage. But it obviously possessed a value beyond price to Gillian, and seeing her eyes light up as she played a brief passage from some New Age piece he recognized but could not name, he realized that she would have been no more delighted if he’d suddenly entered the library from the secret panel in the wall and dumped the glittering Hope diamond into her hand.

  As he had the first time he’d seen her on tape, playing her beloved piano at Stonehenge, he marveled over the soft, lit-from-within hue of her eyes, the delicate bone structure of her face, the lush shape of her mouth.

  He shifted in the chair, having to adjust the jeans that had suddenly become too tight as he remembered, with vivid accuracy, exactly how luscious her silky breasts had felt in his hands. He wanted her. More than ever. And, from her muttered reference to lust, he knew that although she might refuse to admit it to him just yet, she wanted him, too. Which should have made things simple.

  But as he watched her stroke the gleaming wood, Hunter was stuck by the unwelcome realization that even stronger than the physical need that had him tied up in knots, was his desire to have Gillian smile at him the way she’d smiled at that damn piano.

  THE FOG HAD NEARLY LIFTED. All that remained were little wisps of mist that twined around Gillian’s ankles as she walked along the edge of the rocky granite cliff. The anvil sky still hung low over the water, although every so often, there’d be a part in the clouds, like a slit in a heavy gray velvet theater curtain, inviting a shaft of stuttering sunshine to peek through.

  Although Hunter’s foresight in supplying her with winter clothing irked, she was decidedly grateful for the hooded parka and insulated hiking boots. What passed for a winter jacket in California—even in relatively chilly Monterey—would be a joke here in Maine. Ice crystals sparkled in an air so brisk and cold it literally took her breath away as it cleared her head. Comfortably cocooned in the thick down jacket, she stayed surprisingly and pleasantly warm.

  The site atop the jagged blue-gray cliff where Hunter had chosen to build his house was dazzling. It also reminded her a great deal of her own home, which she’d been renting for the past two years. She’d attempted to purchase the small seaside cottage, but the owner, a cardiologist in San Francisco, had proven distressingly sentimental, refusing to give up the modest little clapboard cottage with its million-dollar view that had originally belonged to his grandmother.