Confessions of the Heart Page 16

Anna shot bolt upright in bed, certain that the dream had awakened her. Then she realized that the ringing of her cell phone on the nightstand was what had actually dragged her from sleep. Thinking it might be Laurel, she pushed the talk button and lifted it to her ear.

  “Laurel?”

  “Who’s Laurel?”

  Anna shivered at the sound of Ben’s voice. “My stepmother.” She paused. “How did you get my cell phone number?”

  “You gave it to me earlier so that I could call if I heard anything about Emily.”

  Anna shifted back against the pillows. “Have you heard something about her?”

  “No. The reason I’m calling is because…I’ve been worried about you, Anna. I had to make sure you were okay.”

  “I’m fine.” She seemed to be saying that a lot lately. Maybe if she said it enough it would be true. “There’s really no need for you to worry. Mendoza has an officer in the lobby, and another patrolling the grounds. I saw him out there earlier.”

  “Yeah, so did I. I saw him when I slipped past him.”

  Anna frowned into the darkness. “Slipped past him? Where are you?”

  “Standing on your balcony.”

  Anna shot back up in bed and glanced at the window, but she saw nothing. Then suddenly a shadow appeared on the balcony, and she gasped even though she knew it was Ben.

  “What are you doing out there?”

  “I don’t trust Mendoza’s men to keep you safe. And with good reason, as it turns out.”

  “So you came to guard me yourself?” she asked incredulously. “How long have you been out there?”

  “Awhile.”

  “And you’re just now letting me know?”

  He paused. “I didn’t want to wake you, but just now, I thought I heard you cry out.”

  Anna’s cheeks flamed in the darkness. She must have cried out in her sleep while she’d been dreaming about him. “Are you going to stay out there all night?” she murmured.

  “Unless you decide to invite me in.” His voice deepened, became more intimate. “What do you say, Anna?”

  Her stomach tightened with awareness, with anticipation. “Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

  “It’s been coming to this all along. Ever since the moment we first met. You know it as well as I do.”

  She could see his silhouette through the gauzy curtains at the French doors, and a part of her—a very big part—wanted desperately to let him. To let it happen. He was right. It had been coming to this.

  But was it fair to share the most profound intimacy that could exist between a man and a woman when she hadn’t yet shared the truth?

  “Open the door, Anna,” he urged softly.

  And God help her, she couldn’t resist. She put away the phone and rose on legs that were already trembling in anticipation.

  When she opened the door, it was as if all the air suddenly rushed out of it, and she couldn’t breathe. Her skin tingled all over. For the longest moment, they stood with their gazes locked, and then it finally dawned on her that he wouldn’t come inside unless he could be very certain she wanted him to.

  Reaching for his hand, she silently drew him into her room. She closed and locked the door, then turning, found him standing so close, she almost gasped.

  He lifted a hand to touch her hair, and then a second later, she was in his arms and he was kissing her. Kissing her as if he would never stop kissing her. Long, deep, desperate kisses that left them both breathless.

  Anna fumbled with the buttons on his shirt, somehow managed to undo them, and then slid the fabric over his shoulders and down his arms. He slung the shirt aside, then helped her with the rest of his clothing. His shoes, socks, jeans, underwear—all discarded in a matter of moments. He strode naked to the bed and lay down, waiting for her.

  His body was magnificent. Lean, tanned, muscular. Anna couldn’t stop looking at him.

  Propping himself on his elbow, he watched her watching him. She knew that his eyes were dark and seductive, the way they had been in her dream.

  “Undress for me, Anna.” His voice was from her dream, too. Deep and husky. Sexy beyond belief. “Let me watch you.”

  She did as he asked, unfastening the buttons on her pajama top, then slowly, deliberately sliding the silky fabric down her arms. Her bottoms came next and when she stepped out of them, she heard the sharp intake of his breath.

  Had he seen her scar?

  No, no, she wouldn’t think about that now. She wouldn’t let that come between them.

  She wouldn’t risk letting him slip away from her when she had him so close. When she was about to experience the most profound and thrilling moment of her life.

  And it would be. Somehow she knew their lovemaking would change her forever.

  She walked slowly to the bed, anticipating his next move. He knew it well. It was as if he’d had the same dream.

  He reached up to weave his fingers through her hair, and then he pulled her toward him for a kiss that drew a gasping shiver from Anna. His hands moved over her, touching her intimately, stroking her, making her burn for him.

  Anna was still kneeling on the bed beside him, leaning over him, her hair falling over her shoulders. He drew her on top of him, breaking the kiss to skim his lips across her neck and down her throat. He slid down in bed, finding her breasts and flicking his tongue across them, then he moved lower, his warm breath fanning her stomach. Then lower still…

  Anna’s fingers curled around the headboard. Her body felt as if it were a wire that had suddenly been pulled too taut. Ben’s intimate kisses would surely snap her. But somehow she managed to hold on, even when he put his hands on her hips and pulled her down on him.

  It was as if someone else took over her body then. Anna stared down at him as she began to move. Long, slow, deep strokes that drew a low groan from his throat.

  He took control then, grasping her hips, increasing the rhythm until Anna knew she couldn’t hold on much longer. She’d been so near the edge from their very first kiss, but she didn’t want it to end yet. She wanted it to go on forever. The sensations storming through her were so powerful, so dangerously delicious.

  But it was too late. She was suddenly in a freefall. She threw her head back in abandon as shudder after shudder racked both their bodies.

  After a moment, she fell against Ben, spent, sated and yet somehow still deeply aroused. Maybe it was the exquisite sensuality of the afterglow. Their bodies were still joined, and Ben’s arms were around her, holding her so tightly it seemed as if he would never let her go.

  Anna buried her face in his neck, and for a while, neither of them said a word. Then finally she lifted her head to stare down at him. He smiled slightly as she cupped his face with her hands and kissed him.

  They kissed for the longest time. Slow, languid, completely satisfying kisses until she felt Ben’s body begin to respond. Her nerve endings tingled in anticipation as he rolled them over so that now it was he staring down at her.

  He took his time with her. Kissing her deeply. Caressing her so intimately, Anna thought she would die from the thrill of it. And all the while, he continued a slow, exquisite rhythm inside her.

  The buildup was slower this time, but the explosion, when it finally happened, was no less devastating. No less shattering. They clung to each other for long moments afterward, and then later, they showered together, taking turns underneath the water, lathering each other, and Ben washed her hair with the jasmine-scented shampoo.

  Anna forgot about her scar. Or rather, she wouldn’t let herself think about it. And Ben pretended not to notice, although he had to. It was no small mark. It was long and thick and deep, a constant reminder of how close she’d come to death.

  But for now, she could pretend that she didn’t notice it, either. She could pretend that she was still a beautiful, desirable woman whom Ben found utterly irresistible. The look in his eyes made her almost believe it.

  They met back in bed. Ben lay on his back, propped ag
ainst the headboard, and Anna curled against his side, nestled safely in the crook of his arm. She put her hand on his chest, feeling the steady rhythm of his heart.

  “Are you going to tell me what happened to you?” he murmured.

  Anna closed her eyes. “The scar, you mean.”

  “Yes. But if you’d rather not talk about it—”

  “No, it’s okay. I’ve been meaning to tell you about it.” She paused, steadying her resolve. “I had an operation.”

  “A serious one, I gather.”

  “Yes, very serious.”

  “But you’re okay now?” His voice was deep with concern.

  “Yes, I’m okay. I had a heart problem.”

  But suddenly Anna sensed that he was no longer listening to her, that something had drawn his attention away from her. She lifted her head to see what had distracted him.

  He was holding the copy of his book that she’d left on the nightstand. Even in the dark, she could see his brooding frown, could feel the way his body had gone suddenly still against her.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I should have put it away, but I forgot it was there. Does it bother you to think about…what happened?”

  “I think about it all the time.” His gaze was still on the book, on the scorpion.

  Anna propped herself on her elbow. “Gwen told me that first day that you were still obsessed with the case. She said you’d never gotten over that summer. You’re still afraid that Scorpio may come back to finish you off.”

  He tore his gaze from the book and turned to Anna. There was something in his eyes…in the way he looked at her….

  “Gwen was wrong,” he said in a strange voice. “Scorpio is dead.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Dead?” Anna stared at him in shock. “How do you know that?”

  He shrugged. “Call it a hunch. A gut feeling.”

  “But you don’t have proof?”

  “No.”

  Anna glanced at the book. She had a sudden, bizarre notion that the scorpion on the cover was slowly crawling toward her. The skin on the back of her neck prickled at the hallucination. She made herself look away. “Why are you so sure Scorpio is dead then? Because the killings stopped after that summer?”

  A muscle throbbed in Ben’s jaw. “That’s part of it.”

  “And the other part?”

  He turned to her. “Like I said, it’s just a hunch.”

  “In the book, you said you thought Scorpio was female,” Anna said softly. “Do you still believe that?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that there were two of them?”

  “Yes.”

  She lay back against the pillows, gooseflesh rippling across her bare skin. She had the sudden need to cover herself, and she reached over the side of the bed for her pajamas. “I keep thinking about all the victims you described in the book. The way they died. The way she tortured and mutilated them. How could someone do that to another human being?”

  “There’s no good answer to that question, Anna.”

  “I know. It’s just…” She trailed off as she drew on her clothes. “She almost killed you.”

  His gaze met hers in the darkness. “No. Killing me was never an option for Scorpio. That wasn’t part of the game.”

  “The game?”

  “The one we played that summer. The one that would prove who was the more clever and cunning, the more resourceful. I thought I could beat her at her own game, but I was never a match for her. She proved how easily she could get to me, how effortlessly she could take everything from me, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.”

  While he talked, Ben rose and gathered up his clothing. He dressed swiftly and then lay back down on the bed. “…she destroyed my face, my career, my self-confidence. That was the worst,” he said grimly. “She made me lose faith in myself.”

  “And then you met Katherine,” Anna murmured.

  He closed his eyes briefly. “I was at my lowest point when we met. I thought it was just a coincidence that she showed up at that book signing.”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  He shook his head in disgust. “She arranged it. She arranged everything.”

  Anna frowned. “How?”

  Ben stared at the ceiling. “A few months after I found out I couldn’t go back on the force, I got a call from a literary agent. He said he’d been reading about the Scorpio case and thought my story would make a great book. He’d even put out feelers to some publishing houses in New York and had gotten several promising bites. He thought the story had bestseller potential, that it might even be optioned for a movie.”

  “And what did you say to that?” Anna propped her chin on his chest, gazing up at him.

  Absently he stroked her hair. “I told him I wasn’t a writer. There was no way I could sit down at the computer and crank out a book. I barely made it through my college English courses.” He sighed. “He didn’t seem to care. He said that was what ghost-writers were for. He knew someone he thought would be perfect for the job, a protégé of one of his other clients.”

  “So you agreed.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t see that I had anything to lose. I had my pension, but not much else. At the very least, collaborating on a book would be a distraction and it seemed easier and cheaper than therapy.”

  “So you told your story and it became a bestseller, just like the agent predicted,” Anna said.

  “It was even optioned for a movie. He delivered everything he promised. And then one day, he brought one of his clients—the one who’d recommended the ghostwriter—to one of my book-signings. It was Katherine.”

  “And your eyes met across the crowded bookstore…” Anna murmured.

  “Something like that. But it wasn’t love. It was never love. To this day, I couldn’t tell you what it was. Lust, maybe, but there was something else, too. A connection…” He ran a hand across his eyes as if trying to wipe away a painful memory.

  “I’d never met anyone even remotely like her,” he said. “She was the most overtly sexual woman I’d ever seen. She couldn’t enter a room without every head, male and female, turning in her direction. There was something so completely seductive about the way she walked, the way she carried herself, the way she smiled. I…lost my head over her.” He turned away, as if embarrassed by his confession.

  “What happened?” Anna prompted.

  “We went out to dinner after the autograph session and ended up back in her hotel room.” He turned then and cast Anna an uneasy glance. “I won’t bore you with the details of that night, or any of the other nights, but fast forward two weeks in time. We got married in Vegas.”

  He wound a strand of her hair around his finger. “I’m not proud of my behavior, Anna. I’m not proud of anything about that time. It was like…she cast a spell on me or something. I wasn’t myself when I was with her. Then the morning after the ceremony, the veil lifted and it was as if I saw her for the first time. The cunning. The subtle hints of cruelty. I’d not only married a woman I didn’t know, but one I found I didn’t even much like.

  “Deep down, I knew I’d made one hell of a mistake, but I kept trying to convince myself regrets and second thoughts were normal in situations like that. It might still work out. So I agreed to move into her house here in San Miguel, partly because I was hoping I was wrong about her, and partly because I had nothing to go back to in Houston.

  “But when I saw her with her daughter…the way she treated Gabby…” His features tightened in anger. “I knew there wasn’t any hope for us. I couldn’t live with a woman who could do that to any child, let alone to her own.”

  Anna’s stomach recoiled at his story. “What did she do to Gabby?” she whispered.

  “It was nothing obvious. Nothing physical. At least not that I ever knew about. But it was abuse, nonetheless. A constant erosion of Gabby’s self-confidence. Katherine was trying to take from her exactly what Scorpio had taken from me, and there was no way I could
let her do that to Gabby. But I didn’t have any legal claim, and if I’d left, I knew Katherine would never let me see her again. So I was trapped in that house, just as Gabby was, and, of course, that was what Katherine had wanted all along.”

  “And then she died.”

  Ben’s gaze burned into hers. “I didn’t kill her, Anna. I swear it.”

  “I never thought you did. But someone killed her. And you know who it was, don’t you?”

  “The police ruled her death a suicide,” he said, but he couldn’t quite meet her gaze.

  “But it wasn’t, was it?” And who better to make it look like a suicide than a cop? Wasn’t that what both Emily and Mendoza had warned her about?

  “Don’t jump to conclusions, Anna,” he said darkly.

  “I’m not.” She hesitated, putting her hand on his arm. “Gabby killed her mother, didn’t she?”

  Ben closed his eyes briefly. “I don’t know for sure. I wasn’t there when it happened. I came later…” He paused, wiping his hand across his mouth. “Gabby had been acting strangely for days. Strange even for her. I knew something was on her mind, but she wouldn’t talk to me about it. Then late one afternoon, I saw her head toward the river. I don’t know why, but something made me check the gun cabinet in the study. Katherine’s .38 was missing. I don’t know if I thought Gabby was going to hurt herself or what. I don’t know if I was thinking at all, I just…reacted. By the time I got to the river, she was heading upstream. I knew where she was going. She and Katherine both spent a lot of time at the mission. There was no other boat, so I had to go back for my car, drive into town, and cross the bridge. When I got to the mission, Gabby came running out. She was covered in blood and so hysterical, I could hardly make sense of what she was saying. When I finally got her calmed down, I sent her back across the river to call for help. Then I went inside the mission.”

  “You somehow made Katherine’s death look like a suicide,” Anna whispered.

  “I didn’t have to. She’d been shot in the head at pointblank range with her own .38. She had powder burns and residue on her skin that were consistent with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. And the gun was still in her hand.”