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Robert S. Hillyer

 
 
 
 
 
Tác giả: Linda Howard
Thể loại: Trinh Thám
Biên tập: Bach Ly Bang
Upload bìa: Bach Ly Bang
Language: English
Số chương: 25
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Cập nhật: 2015-09-09 21:02:18 +0700
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Chapter 10
weeney couldn't tell if he believed her or not, and for a moment it didn't matter. The relief at having told someone else was enormous, and until now she hadn't realized how much strain she had been under, facing this alone. His dark gaze never wavered from her face, and his hand remained gentle in her hair.
Then she realized that it did matter what he thought. It mattered very much. Three days before she wouldn't have believed she could respond to any man the way she did to him. She was uncertain how he had become so important to her so fast, but she couldn't argue with the truth. And it was because he was important to her that she cared about his opinion. What if he thought she was a crackpot and decided she was more trouble than she was worth?
Suddenly she couldn't look at him, and she felt her face heating again. Oh, God, where had her sense of caution gone? How had she let a threat to take her to the doctor, of all things, convince her to spill her guts like that? She had even been thinking of going to a doctor herself, just to see if her constant chill was in any way caused by a physical ailment. As threats went, that one was a real wimp.
"I don't know why I told you all that," she mumbled.
He merely looked at her and continued to play with her hair. "Yes, you do," he finally said in a mild tone. "How do you know they're ghosts?"
"Because they're dead," she said irritably, and scowled at him. "When you go to someone's funeral and then see him in the supermarket parking lot a month later, you pretty well know something strange is going on." She didn't know what to make of that cryptic "Yes, you do," so she ignored it.
"Yeah, I'd say that's a given." His mouth quirked as if he was struggling to hide a grin, and she wondered just what it was about her that he thought was so funny. He frequently looked as if he was trying not to laugh.
"What's so funny?"
"You are. You're so busy trying to rebuild your fences to keep me out you haven't realized I'm already in the pasture with you."
"We agreed not to get involved—"
"That's not exactly how I recall it," he drawled. "We're already 'involved'. We agreed not to have sex. We haven't, though I have to tell you, sweetie, it was mighty tempting."
He was doing something funny to her name, she thought, fluttering the n or something like that. Maybe it was caused by that remnant of a Virginia drawl that she had never before noticed, though she didn't know how she could have missed it. And he really should put on his shirt, instead of leaning over her halfnaked like that. The guy in the Diet Coke commercial didn't have anything on Richard in the chest department. His chest was broad, and muscled, and wonderfully hairy, and she wanted to lay her hands on his pecs, feel his heart beating against her palm, somehow bank his heat against the cold hours when he wasn't there.
"Tell me more about the ghosts," he coaxed.
Well, she had already let the cat out of the bag, so she might as well tell him everything. He looked as if he had settled in for the duration, determined not to move until he heard the whole story. "The first time was in Clayton, a year ago. A little boy named Sam Beresford died of leukemia, and a month after that I saw him in the supermarket parking lot, trying to get his mom to see him, talk to him, anything."
"Sad," he commented, and she nodded.
"Then I began seeing more and more, and Clayton is such a small town I knew most of them by sight, even if I wasn't actually acquainted with them. They'd wave, and I'd catch myself waving back, or saying hello, and people were beginning to give me really strange looks, so I knew I had to leave. There are a lot of ghosts here, but they're New Yorkers; they rarely speak."
He almost grinned again, but caught that one, too. "I guess seeing ghosts would be a problem in a small town," he murmured.
"You don't believe me, do you?" She sighed, her eyes somber. "I wouldn't believe me either, if it wasn't happening to me."
"I didn't say that." He stopped playing with her hair and cupped her cheek. "I'm open on the subject of ghosts. Tell me more."
She shrugged. "They're sort of translucent, and two-dimensional. When they speak, the sound is tinny. And they always know I can see them. I don't know how, but they do."
"You saw the vendor, the one you painted? That's how you know he's dead?"
"He came up behind me on the street. He asked me to send a sketch I'd made of him to his sons. But how did he know I had made a sketch? I did it the night he died. I never had a chance to show him."
"Did you send the sketch to them?"
She nodded. "Yesterday."
"Do you still have the painting?"
She looked startled. "Sure. Why?"
"I'd like to see it. Just curiosity."
She started to sit up and remembered her state of undress. Considering he had already seen her breasts, and touched them, and considering everythin else they had done together, if she had been sophisticated, she would have nonchalantly gotten up and gotten dressed. "I guess this is proof I'm not sophisticated," she said, looking up with a rueful smile to find his dark gaze already locked on her. Her heart fluttered, or maybe it was her stomach. Something fluttered. He really shouldn't look at her that way, there was no telling what sort of damage he was doing to her internal organs.
"What is?"
She gestured to her clothes. "Turn your back."
"Ah." He nodded in understanding, but he didn't get up. That dark gaze was so intense she was afraid to try to read what was in it, though she didn't know if she was afraid he wanted too much from her, or too little.
He rubbed his thumb over her lips, then lightly over one cheekbone. They looked at each other in silence for a moment, then he said, "I'm expediting the divorce."
So he could be with her. She couldn't play games and pretend she didn't understand the meaning behind that statement. He wanted her, and he was moving legal mountains to get her. It was exhilarating to be the object of such determination, but it was a little—a lot—frightening, too.
She was comfortable alone, comfortable with her life, but in that moment she accepted that things were going to change. He was going to change them. More important, she wanted them to change. For the first time in her life, she wanted to be part of a couple. She wanted to give this relationship thing a shot. Life was a lot more predictable when she had only herself to consider, but she wasn't the island she had always thought herself to be. She couldn't always be totally self-sufficient. Twice now she had needed him, and twice he had been there to help. Having someone else on whom she could depend was novel, but intensely comforting. She had never known that kind of security before, not even as a child. Especially not as a child.
"Get dressed," he said softly, standing up and turning his back.
Dressing was only a matter of pulling on her sweatshirt and stepping into her jeans, accomplished in seconds. She pushed her hair back from her face, relaxed and still a little drowsy, wonderfully warm. She didn't feel any chill at all. All she felt was a sense of well-being, of physical contentment.
"This way." She led the way to the studio, though in a four-room apartment it wouldn't have been difficult to find. The studio was actually supposed to be the main bedroom, but her bed fit into the smaller room, so there was never any doubt about where she would sleep and where she would work.
She had put the painting of the vendor in the closet. She couldn't bring herself to throw it away, but neither could she bear to have it out where she could see it. She went to the closet, but instead of following her, Richard walked around the room, pausing before each of the canvases she had already completed. Tension suddenly knotted her shoulders. Candra's opinion of her new work had been important to her career, but Richard's opinion was important to her.
"You've changed," he said abruptly, stopping before a particularly vivid landscape she had propped against the wall. He squatted down so he was at eye level with it.
"I didn't know you knew anything about my work," she said, surprised, and still uneasy. She stared at the long line of his tanned back, well-defined muscles delineating the furrow of his spine. Why hadn't he put on his shirt? He should have put it on, for her peace of mind if nothing else.
"Sure. I met a lot of artists through Candra, but I paid attention to the ones I liked."
That could be taken two ways. "Professionally or personally?" she asked, her tone wary.
He glanced over his shoulder at her, a smile in his dark eyes. "In your case, both." He turned his attention back to the landscape, reaching out to run a fingertip over a stream of water swirling around a rock in its path. Running water was difficult to execute, because you had to convey motion and energy as well as capture the play of light on the surface. Water that wasn't muddy took its color from its surroundings; it would look blue under a clear sky, green in the shadow of a mountain, dull on a gray day. She had spent years painting the St. Lawrence and never tired of it because the water was always different.
"How did you do this?" he murmured. "It looks three-dimensional. And the color…" He fell silent, moving on to the next painting, a sunset in Manhattan with the dark, faceless buildings silhouetted against a brilliant sky. She had painted the sky a glowing pinkish orange, and what could have been an ordinary skyline was turned into something exuberant. It had taken her two days of experimentation to get that exact shade.
He didn't say anything, and finally she couldn't stand the silence any longer. "Well?" she demanded, the word tart with impatience.
He turned to face her, eyeing her taut stance. "You've always been good, and you know it. Now you're better."
Her shoulders relaxed and she ran a hand through her hair. "I can't paint the way I used to," she confessed. "Like everything else, my style changed a year ago. I look at what I'm doing now and it's almost as if a stranger painted it."
"You've changed, and that's what changed your style. Maybe all of this is linked, maybe it isn't, but I'm damn glad it happened."
She gave him a curious look. "Why?"
"Because you never saw me before. Now you do."
He was serious, his gaze intent and unwavering. He could probably hypnotize a cobra with that look, she thought. It was certainly working on her, because she couldn't look away. She started to protest that of course she had seen him before, but then she realized what he meant. She hadn't seen him as a man before. In her mind men had been desexed, neutralized, of no importance to her. She hadn't wanted to deal with the messy complications of sex and emotional demands, so she had closed herself off from them. With her parents' example of what not to do always before her, and her own desire to concentrate on her painting, she had turned herself into an emotional nun.
Whether the weird changes had something to do with the shift in her attitude or the simple passage of time had healed her fears, that phase of her life was over and she didn't think it would ever be possible for her to return to it. Her eyes were open, and she would never again be oblivious to Richard's sexual nature, to the male hunger in his eyes when he looked at her.
"Did you see me?" she asked. "Before, I mean. We met… what? Three times?"
"Four. Yes, I saw you." He smiled. "I've always known you're a woman."
The way he looked at her then made her nipples tingle, and she suspected that if she glanced down, she would see they were nothing more than tight little points poking at her sweatshirt. She didn't look. She didn't want to draw his attention, in case he had missed it.
"Are you turned on, or cold?" he asked softly and she knew he hadn't missed a thing.
She cleared her throat. "I guess I'm turned on, because I'm sure not cold."
He threw back his head and laughed. She wondered if she should have feigned ignorance, or maybe played it cute and flirted with him. She had a lot to learn about this come-hither stuff, but for the first time she realized the process could be fun.
But not now. Not yet. She cleared her throat again and turned to the closet behind her. "The painting's in here." She had to steel herself to open the door, reluctant to face the ugliness of death. She couldn't avoid looking at it; because the paint hadn't been dry when she put the canvas in the closet, it was turned facing out. The artist in her wouldn't let her do anything to deface even this painting, though ordinarily she would never put anything in the closet to dry.
Hurriedly she reached in and got the canvas, then propped it on the wall next to the closet. Richard walked over and stared down at the painting, his expression hard and shielded. Sweeney went over to the window and stood looking out.
"You did this before you knew he was dead." It was a statement, not a question, but then in any case, she had already said so. "Do you know what happened to him?"
"No, he looked okay to me." She bit her lip. "But they all do, you know?" All the ghosts looked in the pink of health. Talk about ridiculous.
"What was his name?"
"Stokes. I don't know his first name. But his sons are David and Jacob Stokes. They're both attorneys."
"I think I'll check into this, if you don't mind."
"Check into what?" Curiosity made her turn to look at him.
"How he died." He rubbed his thumb against the underside of his jaw. "Maybe it was an accident."
"Because of the blood? I don't know how realistic that painting is; he could have had a stroke, or a heart attack. Maybe the blood's there because—I don't know—I associate blood with death. Or maybe he fell down a flight of stairs."
"I'll check into it," Richard repeated. He turned toward the door. She followed him as he went into the living room and picked up his shirt. She watched him shrug into it, feeling a pang of regret as he covered that broad chest. Without a hint of self-consciousness, he unfastened his pants and began tucking in the shirt. A wave of warmth washed over her. She actually felt flushed.
"I have an appointment I can't put off," he said as he rebuckled his belt. "Get a pen and paper; I'm going to give you my private number."
She didn't have to search for either one; she was an orderly creature, so both were right beside the phone. "Okay, shoot."
He recited the number. "Don't wait until you're so cold you can't function. Call me immediately. If you're right about it only happening when you've had an episode of sleepwalking, then you'll know as soon as you check the studio whether or not you need to call."
"There's no way to tell how often that will be. You can't take the time to come over here every time I get cold. "
"The hell I can't. It isn't just a chill; it's more serious than that and you know it. Look, for my peace of mind, call me every morning when you get up, okay?" He took her chin in his hand and bent down to kiss her. The kiss was light, his lips soft and barely moving on hers. Sweeney kept herself from clinging to him, but it was a struggle; the man was addictive. She wanted more of him, all of him.
He paused at the door. "Does the gallery have exclusive rights to sell your work, except for your portrait commissions?"
"Except for any directly commissioned work, yes."
He nodded. "I want that one with the running water. Take it to the gallery to be framed, and I'll arrange the purchase through another person so Candra won't sell it to someone else just to keep me from getting it."
And so Candra wouldn't know there was anything between them, she thought. She had been right to be reluctant to get involved with him; even though he and Candra had split, the situation was awkward, and finalizing the divorce probably wouldn't help a lot. In that moment she made the decision to dissolve the agreement between herself and Candra and begin the search for another gallery to represent her.
"I'll call you," he said, and hesitated for a moment, looking back at her. She had the impression he wanted to kiss her again. Evidently he thought better of it, though, and he stepped out into the hall. He had probably made the right decision, she thought wistfully, as she shut the door and locked it, but the right decision wasn't always the most pleasurable. They had already become far more involved than was right, but at least he'd had the self-control to keep from taking things any further. Until his divorce was final, she thought, they couldn't risk a repeat of today's situation, because the temptation was too great to resist many times.
Richard frowned as he left the building. Edward saw him come out of the door, and within seconds the car slid to a halt in front of him.
"Just a minute, Edward, let me make a call." He dialed directory assistance, and asked for the number of David Stokes, attorney, then asked to be connected.
A young male voice answered on the second ring. "Mr. Stokes isn't in," he said in answer to Richard's request. "There was a death in the family, and he'll be out of the office for the rest of the week."
"This is about his father's death," Richard replied, taking the chance that Sweeney had been right about the vendor. Her story defied logic, but he wasn't inclined to dismiss it out of hand as nonsense. Something was going on, something that was causing her to go into shock, or something resembling shock, and everything she had said could be verified either by investigation or observation.
"Oh, are you a cop?"
"I'm investigating the death," Richard replied easily.
"Everyone is shaken up by this. Have you found out anything?"
"I can't discuss that. Give me Mr. Stokes's home number."
Richard scribbled down the number. He saw Edward watching him in the rearview mirror and their eyes met. Edward was normally the most impassive of men, but he looked interested in this new development.
Richard dialed David Stokes's number. A child answered, and when Richard asked for Mr. Stokes, the little voice said, "Just a minute," then yelled, "Daddy!
"Hello."
"Mr. Stokes, my name is Richard Worth. I'm sorry to bother you at a time like this, but if you feel up to it, I'd like to ask you some questions about your father's death."
"His murder, you mean," said David Stokes.
Now You See Her Now You See Her - Linda Howard Now You See Her