When Lightning Strikes Twice (17 page)

He’d ignored Tim’s sincere admonitions down through the years and look where his capricious and irresponsible behavior had finally led. He had tried to seduce Tim’s own sister right in the Sheely home!

No doubt about it, he was even lower than a disease-causing retrovirus.

Dana stood in front of the mirror mounted over the long chest of drawers and methodically eliminated all traces of their passionate kisses. She brushed her hair, patted on powder, and put on lip gloss.

When she met her eyes in the mirror, they looked blank and lifeless, reflecting her inner shutdown too well. Dana quickly looked away, darting a glance at Wade, who remained seated on the bed.

Berating himself. “Sheely, I know what I did here tonight was all wrong and I hate myself for—for—”

“Saxon, indulging in an orgy of self-loathing after kissing someone is not very flattering to the person you just kissed. I know male angst is supposed to be a turn-on for some women but for future reference, I doubt that even the most soulful woman is going to want to listen to this stuff.”

“Sheely, can’t you be serious for one minute?” Wade stood up, angst turning to exasperation. “How am supposed to apologize when you keep trying to make jokes? Bad jokes, at that!”

“No apology required, Saxon.”

She turned to face him, satisfied that her mask was coolly in place. Her appearance gave away nothing, she looked untouched and unruffled, and if her heart was sinking inside, not a trace of her pain was externally visible. Dana wondered if perhaps she ought to look into joining the community theater group. Her acting skills were unexpectedly superb.

“I had a little too much to drink tonight,” she said blithely, continuing her performance, “and all the noise and lights at Club Koncrete caused your brain temporarily to short-circuit. So we were both kind of out of it and we were both a little curious. So we kissed. So what?”

Wade gaped at her. She sounded so blasé. And hardened! As if their kisses and caresses hadn’t meant a thing to her, as if she hadn’t set his blood afire, tantalizing him with the anticipation of something promising and profound, something he had never experienced before.

“
So
what?
” he spit out the words. He stood there, feeling shaken and febrile and wildly infuriated but doing his best to play it cool. “You’re saying you got hammered in a Bangladeshi restaurant and that’s why you kissed me?”

“Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”

“Oh, yeah, sure, everybody knows how Bangladeshi vodka—or was it their world-famous bourbon—really packs a punch and—”

“It wasn’t vodka or bourbon,” she interrupted coolly. “It was some brew I’d never heard of before. Some native specialty, uh, like that Greek stuff, ouzo.”

“Ouzo from Bangladesh?”

“Their version is called something else, of course.”

She was lying through her teeth, so blatantly she expected him to call her on it. The restaurant didn’t even serve liquor. It was one of those bring-your-own-bottle places and the patrons she’d seen dining there hadn’t, probably because no one was sure of which wine to drink with what dishes.

But Wade kept staring at her in the most peculiar way and didn’t challenge her assertion.

He
was feeling most peculiar. Like he wanted to throttle her—after he’d thrown her down on the bed and made love to her for a few hours—and then of course, the throttling would be moot.

However, he didn’t move to touch her. She had made it plain that he meant nothing to her. He was simply a fellow participant in an experiment she found easy to dismiss.

So we kissed. So what?
Her words rang in his head. It sounded like something he would say to a woman who had completely misinterpreted his advances, confusing sexual drive with something else. He gazed broodingly at Dana, who had retreated to the window again and stood obscured in the shadows. A palpable sadness washed over him in waves, and he couldn’t shake it off.

“I—hope this won’t interfere with our friendship, Da—Sheely.”

“Of course not,” she assured him breezily, then tacked on the killer appendage, “Why would it?”

Wade scowled. Why, indeed.

“Dana, the phone’s for you!” An irritated Emily pounded on the bedroom door and then jiggled the knob impatiently. “The door’s locked!” she announced crossly.

Dana’s eyes met Wade’s in a moment of mutual discomfort, and he moved quickly to unlock the door.

Emily flung it open and marched inside, followed by a coterie of five or six girls her age whose hairstyles and clothes were all startlingly similar to each other.

“Here.” Emily handed Dana the portable phone. “We were talking to Josh and the operator cut in and said it was an emergency.” Emily was not pleased and her clones made their own exclamations of disapproval. “This is, like, so embarrassing because if Josh asks what the emergency is, what am I supposed to say?”

“Maybe it really is an emergency,” suggested Wade, “and none of Josh’s business.”

Emily acknowledged his presence with a long-suffering
sigh. “Just don’t talk long, Dana. We have to call Josh back.”

“Josh’s friends are all over at his house,” one of the other girls said, as if to underscore the importance of getting the phone back immediately. “We have to talk.”

“You’re into phone sex at your age?” Wade feigned shock.

“You are so gross!” Emily accused and flounced out, her tribe at her heels.

“Hello?” Dana was not surprised to hear her brother Shawn’s voice over the line. Nor was she expecting a genuine emergency.

“Dana, you lent me your car tonight,” Shawn reminded her, not that she’d forgotten. “Well, could I keep it till morning? And if I don’t make it home by breakfast and Mom and Dad ask where I am—” “Just a minute,” Dana cut in, still painfully aware of Wade’s presence. She saw the ideal opportunity to get him out of her room without further humiliation. He was watching her and she returned his gaze impassively.

“This is a personal call, Wade. I’d like some privacy, please.”

Wade felt as if he’d been dealt another body blow. The cool dismissal in her voice, the indifference in her beautiful blue eyes affected him viscerally. She wanted to be rid of him to talk
privately
to her caller! And he was certain who that personal call was from.

Quinton Cormack, of course. She would never send him away to talk privately to Rich Vicker or one of her girlfriends or another Sheely. Only a call from Cormack—her secret lover?—would get him the boot.

Dana turned her back and lowered her voice as Wade left her room.

“I’m back,” she said to Shawn. “What am I supposed to tell Mom and Dad since you don’t have any intention of being back by breakfast?”

“Say I’m at Greg’s. Don’t worry, it’s cool with him.”

“I’ll need my car by ten o’clock tomorrow morning, Shawn. I have to drive to—”

“You’ll have it, Dana, I promise. Thanks, you’re the best.”

“Shawn, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing.” Dana gulped. “Please remember to be careful!”

“Oh, hey, always!” he promised exuberantly. “You know we Sheelys play by the rules.”

Did they? Dana wondered achingly. And what were the rules anyway? She thought about the debacle with Wade tonight, and if there was a rule to be followed in that situation, it would be never to mix sex and friendship.

A rule she and Wade had conveniently discarded on foolish impulse. She relived that pivotal moment when they’d gazed hungrily into each other’s eyes. And crossed the line.

“One kiss?”
he’d asked in a tone so warm and smooth and sensual she would’ve had to be dead not to respond to it.
“Just one, to see what it might be like?”

And then he’d kissed her and she’d completely lost her head. Dana quivered.

“Maybe we play by the rules, Shawn. Or at least try to. But not everybody else does. That’s why I want you to promise that you’ll—” She paused when she heard her brother murmur something to another person with him.

She guessed that, at this point, Shawn would promise her anything just to get off the phone so he could resume whatever he was doing. With whomever he was doing it with.

“Be careful, Shawn,” she repeated softly.

B
rady Cormack wasn’t tired, and he had no intention of going to bed.

Sitting beside him on the sofa in the small family room, Quint watched his small son, who had been bathed and dressed in his dinosaur pajamas and was now sitting on Rachel’s lap enjoying the adventures of Bananas in Pajamas on video for the fourth—or was it the fifth?—time.

Brady didn’t passively stare at the screen; he expected interaction with whoever was watching with him. Rachel was good at it, answering the two-year-old’s incessant questions and asking her own while the pair of walking, talking bananas tooled around in their striped pajamas.

Quint admired her fortitude. When he watched TV with Brady, sitting through repeated showings of whatever video the little boy was fixated on at the time, he often tried to escape by reading or making notes on a case, or even flipping through catalogs. Anything to ease the brain-numbing boredom of repetition. Brady invariably caught him drifting and would demand full attention, capturing his father’s face between his small hands and turning it directly to him.

But Brady didn’t have to resort to those desperation tactics with Rachel. She remained totally engaged, her concentration never wavering, and the child was reveling in her attention.

What red-blooded male of any age wouldn’t? Quint thought drolly. Being held in Rachel’s arms with her warm
hazel eyes focused exclusively on you would make any male feel like the most important, fascinating guy in the world. At two, little Brady experienced Rachel’s attentions as maternal interest. Quint wanted to experience her arms and her eyes and everything else she had to offer in a distinctly nonmaternal way.

Quint’s gaze lasered in on her neck and the dark purple mark he’d put there last night. His lips twitched into a reminiscent smile. When he and Brady had arrived at her apartment earlier this evening, she’d been wearing loose-fitting pleated beige slacks and a long-sleeved navy turtleneck, despite the eighty-two degrees outside….

While Brady made himself at home in her apartment, running around the living room, climbing onto her couch and jumping off, Quint plucked at the jersey’s cuffs around her wrists.

“Junkies wear long sleeves in hot weather to cover the track marks,” he observed.

Rachel was nonplussed. “Are you making conversation or insinuations?”

“I like to try to throw people off guard,” he admitted. “You can get a lot of information that way.”

“And a lot of unpredictable reactions, too,” Rachel added ruefully. “I remember some of the comments you tossed out at John Pedersen when he was on the stand. And I’ll never forget how my case went straight down the drain because his responses in front of that jury were an attorney’s bad dream come true.”

“I don’t want to talk about Pedersen,” muttered Quint. An understatement, to put it mildly. “Brady, get off the table.” Brady had climbed onto the coffee table and stood there, looking around while contemplating his next move.

“No!” Brady exclaimed gleefully.

“His favorite comeback.” Quint groaned.

“All two-year-olds love to say no. It’s a sign that they’re seeking a measure of independence. A completely normal developmental stage.”

“Thank you, Dr. Ruth. Knowing that every other two-year-old
in the world is antiauthoritarian does sort of help.”

“The specialist I was quoting was Dr. Brazelton, a pediatrician.” Rachel regarded him archly. “As you well know, Dr. Ruth is a sex therapist.”

“I thought she’d branched out. She was on one of those talk shows Sarah watches, and I swear they were discussing kids. Brady, get down right now.” Quint started toward his son, who was cruising the length of the coffee table, nearly tripping over two thick books of photographic essays.

Brady held his ground as his father advanced. “No.”

Just before Quint reached him, the little boy dived onto the sofa and crawled across it, straight to Rachel. “Mommy, up!” he demanded, giggling.

A smiling Rachel scooped him up. “I think he outfoxed you, Daddy.” She settled Brady more securely on her hip as he investigated her gold hoop earrings.

“Earring,” he said, and Rachel nodded her approval. “Good job, Brady. You remembered.”

“Oh, he knows earrings,” Quint said dryly. “Sarah must have a dozen of them, total. It seems like overkill, but what does an old coot like me know about style?”

“It could be worse. Think nose ring or eyebrow ring or—”

“Stop!” Quint shuddered. “It may be trendy, but body piercing makes me queasy.”

“Stop!” mimicked Brady. His busy little fingers moved from Rachel’s earrings to the high cotton neck of her jersey. He tugged at the material and unerringly found what she’d tried to hide. “Boo-boo.” Brady was sympathetic. “Awww. No cry.”

Rachel knew she was blushing and the more she willed the blood to pool elsewhere, the hotter her cheeks grew. Quint immediately came to investigate Brady’s discovery, and he towered over her, his fingers tracing the mark.

Rachel shivered under his touch. This was getting too intimate. His nearness was stirring up last night’s memories, the ones she’d been trying all day to suppress. Not that she’d succeeded at suppression, or even come close.
Aside from intermittent anxiety attacks over the Tilden will after Aunt Eve’s tirade this morning, her thoughts had been dominated by Quint Cormack.

Rachel swallowed. All day long, her thoughts had been perilously close to what some might call sexual fantasies. And now here he was, the star of those vivid daydreams, right here beside her. Touching her, making her skin heat and her pulses throb.

In sheer self-defense, her arms tightened around Brady and she artfully stepped away from Quint, out of his reach. “Let’s eat dinner, Brady,” she said with credible enthusiasm.

“Eat it all up!” Brady crowed.

“Before we go, why don’t you change into something more comfortable, Rachel?” Quint’s tone was an intriguing mixture of tease and challenge.

When she raised her face to meet his gaze, he flashed those impudent arched brows at her. “Since I’ve already seen my—handiwork—there’s no need for camouflage any longer, is there?”

“Your hands had nothing to do with it,” she retorted, and her blush deepened.

Though she hadn’t intended to reveal his
handiwork
, now that the secret was out she decided his crime should not go unacknowledged. She’d had to suffer with winter clothes and odd stares all day, because of him.

“Maybe orally branding women is a habit of yours, but I am not enchanted, Quinton,” Rachel said sternly. “I am too old for this kind of—”

“It’s not a habit, and I don’t blame you for not being enchanted.” He was beside her again, lightly stroking her hair. “I’m sorry, Rachel. It won’t happen again.”

Her defenses were effectively breached. She felt breathless, unable to move.

“Where anyone can see,” he added in a low growl. His lips brushed her temple.

Rachel whimpered.

“I’ll take Brady while you change,” Quint said smoothly, taking the baby from her arms.

In a daze, Rachel retreated to her bedroom and returned a few minutes later wearing an apricot-colored matte jersey dress. The cut was slim yet fluid and not clingy, the length several inches above her knee, shorter than she normally wore.

Quint wondered how she managed to make such a simple dress radiate a tantalizing mix of sex and class. Merely looking at her made him feel so physically charged he wouldn’t have been surprised to find himself emitting voltage.

The T-shirt-style neck of her dress exposed the purple mark on her neck, and though she’d applied makeup, it still showed.

“I didn’t mean to do this, Rachel, I don’t blame you for being ticked off.” Quint touched the small bruise again. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but you have an uncanny effect on me. When we’re together, my mind doesn’t work the way it normally does.”

Rachel felt warm and flattered, aroused and sexy—until her rational thought processes kicked back in. He was clever, she conceded; his wry little admission had affected her the way he’d wanted it to, at least for a moment or two. She eyed him with a mixture of admiration and resentment.

Quint Cormack knew exactly what to say and how to say it, keeping her so off-balance that she could easily be manipulated by him. He’d done it professionally to her in the unfortunate Pedersen trial and was now using his technique to affect her outside the courtroom, too.

Rachel rebelled. She would not play marionette to his puppeteer, her every action controlled at his direction. She picked up Brady, grabbed her handbag, and headed for the door.

“Then I can only hope that my
uncanny power
over you will affect your mind in the Tilden case, Quint. When you lose, feel free to blame me.” Her tone and expression made
it clear that she wasn’t buying his irresistible-impulse defense.

Quint frowned. He was not handing her a line and felt vaguely insulted that she saw it that way. “The Tildens have nothing to do with us, Rachel. Or Pedersen either,” he added hopefully.

“They will if we’re adversaries in the courtroom again.” They walked to his car, Brady in her arms.

“If the Tildens insist on contesting that will, Saxon Associates is going to be trounced in court, Rachel.”

“You don’t know that,” Rachel countered, irked.

He sounded so matter-of-fact, as if reciting an established fact. George Washington was the first president of the United States, Independence Day is July Fourth, Saxon Associates will get trounced in court. By him!

“Honey, I do.” Quint strapped Brady into his car seat in the back of the tan Mercury station wagon, the one he’d bought after trading in his carefree single-guy little red Corvette when Brady came to live with him.

He seated Rachel in the front seat beside him. “Tell your aunt Eve that the Tildens ought to offer to buy Misty out. I doubt that living permanently in Lakeview is a priority of hers, so if they want the old family mansion back, they can get it—plus the stuff inside that oversize museum—by paying her for it.”

“If that’s what you plan to tell Aunt Eve and the Tildens when you meet with them, they’ll laugh in your face, Quint.”

“Their mistake, Rachel. And a big one.” Quint shrugged and started up the engine. “I know it’s a cliché, but ‘he who laughs last, laughs best’ is right on the mark when it comes to this case.”

“You must be a fabulous poker player, I don’t think anyone could tell you’re bluffing,” marveled Rachel. “You’ve almost managed to make me nervous even though I know that will is—”

“Want out!” Brady demanded from the backseat.

Rachel glanced around to see him struggling against the
confines of his car seat. “We’ll be there in a just a minute, Brady,” she cajoled, and diverted him with a silly word game.

Quint had been grateful for the reprieve. They’d enjoyed dinner with Brady without further mention of the Tildens or the will. When Rachel agreed to Brady’s demands that she come home and give him his bath, they stopped by her apartment first, so she could pick up her car.

“You’re invited to spend the night at our house,” Quint said, knowing she wouldn’t agree. Hoping that she might. “I can drive you back to your place in the morning.”

“I’ll drive myself home after Brady is in bed, thank you very much,” she drawled.

“Sarah is gone for the weekend. You can have her room.” Quint grinned as he said it. If he convinced Rachel to spend the night with him, she would not be spending it in any other bed but his, and they both knew it.

And though sexual tension stretched and hummed between them, Rachel stuck to her plan, got her own car, and followed Quint and Brady home.

The video, mercifully, came to an end.

“Again!” Brady decreed.

“No more, Brady, time for bed,” said Quint.

He saw the little boy shoot him a curious glance. His voice definitely lacked the paternal authority such a demand required, and Brady knew it.

“Again, Mommy,” Brady pleaded, smiling from one adult to the other.

The little conniver knew that his dad wanted Rachel around and would bend the rules to keep her. Quint was both amused and surprised by the two-year-old’s insight. Because the kid was absolutely, positively right. “Well, maybe one more time.”

Rachel heaved a groan. “I’d like to peel those bananas and put them in a cream pie. Brady, let’s watch something else. Winnie the Pooh? Looney Tunes? Barney?”

“Bananas,” Brady said firmly.

The doorbell rang just as the opening credits rolled again.
Quint jumped to his feet. “Probably some neighborhood kids hawking their latest fund-raising products.”

“I’ve never seen anybody so eager to buy from a door-to-door salesman,” Rachel mocked. “We know an escape when we see one, don’t we, Brady?”

“Why bananas run?” Brady asked, already engrossed in the program.

“Yeah, Mom, why are the bananas running?” Quint teased, as Rachel patiently explained the plot point to Brady yet again.

Laughing, Quint left the room but during his trek to the door, his mirth faded fast. The doorbell was ringing incessantly. Whoever was out there had a finger jammed on the bell and wouldn’t let up.

He grimaced. The neighborhood kids never did that, but it was standard Carla behavior. Apprehension gripped him. What had his father done now, to send Carla over here in a frenzy? It could be something ridiculously trivial, it could be something horrendous and life-altering. With his father one never knew, and Carla reacted to everything in the same way. With hysteria, screams, and tears.

He cast a regretful glance back at the family room where he and Rachel and Brady had been spending a normal, pleasant evening together and knew it was all about to come to an abrupt end. His father had a near-genius knack for disrupting anything good.

But when Quint opened his front door, it wasn’t Carla but Misty Tilden who stood on the cement stoop, a vision in chartreuse from her talonlike fingernails to her high-heeled slides.

“Quint, thank God, you’re here!” Misty rushed inside, breathing hard, her enormous chest heaving.

“Misty, what—”

Misty proceeded to supply the answers before he could ask the questions. “Quint,
they
were in the house when I got back tonight.” Misty grabbed his arm in a viselike hold. “They were trying to take stuff! I caught them red-handed with some jewelry and Townie’s collection of gold coins
and that old stamp album, too. When I told them to get out, they wouldn’t. They cursed at me.” She burst into noisy sobs. “It was horrible, Quint. They wouldn’t leave. They said—”