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That’s all the boss had ordered him to get this time.
A single drop of blood. The rest was his to amuse himself with. Another reason Zeno knew he was smart—he’d come up with a lot of ways to amuse himself over the years….
Abby gently hung her brother’s latest masterpiece on the wall and scrambled off the couch to admire the results of her handiwork. Not bad. The painting—a depiction of her new apartment building at sunset—was absolutely gorgeous.
She wasn’t surprised.
For all her brother’s difficulties with numbers and directions, Brian was an amazing impressionist. Tristan Court’s stately turn-of-the-century facade was awash in soft reds, warm golds and a soothing burnt orange. Brian had even sketched in the impression of the doorman with a few strategic strokes of dark gray, highlighted with white. The phone rang as Abby reached out to adjust the bottom of the frame. Sighing, she turned to thread through the empty cardboard boxes still cluttering her living room, wondering if her uptight upstairs neighbor would revise his opinion of her brother if she showed him the painting.
She knew the answer before she reached the kitchen counter. She’d spent years dealing with the prejudices of strangers regarding Down’s. Heck, getting to know Brian one-on-one for six months the year before hadn’t even put a dent in her ex’s carefully concealed, holier-than-thou bigotry.
And speak of the devil.
Abby glared at the name and number in her phone’s caller ID window. It was Stuart Van Heusen, in the flesh—or rather, in her ear. If she picked up. Abby spun around and waded back through the boxes to retrieve her hammer. By the fourth ring she was tempted to send the tool sailing across the room and onto the phone. Her own prerecorded voice kicked in on the fifth shrill, only to cut out in mid-hello as Stuart decided against leaving a message and hung up.
Smart move.
She’d yet to return his first three calls.
Frankly, she still couldn’t believe he’d had the nerve to show up at the concert hall that afternoon. Fortunately, she’d been onstage, halfway through rehearsal along with the other 105 members of the Philharmonic. By the time they’d finished, Stuart had given up and left. She’d been tempted to dial his cell number then, if only to tell him that the next time he stepped foot in her dressing room—assistant district attorney or not—she was going to have security escort him out. But then Marlena had arrived and her thoughts of Stuart had vanished as her friend practically bounded toward the stage.
At first Abby hadn’t been able to tell if Marlena was heading for the violin or cello section—much less why. A cellist with the Philharmonic, Marlena’s husband, Stephen, had taken Abby under his wing a decade ago when he learned the gangly new violinist had a twin with the same genetic condition as his infant son. But it was Marlena Abby had really bonded with. When Marlena and Stephen had decided to turn the upper floors of their apartment house into a group home for adults with Down’s, Abby had been thrilled. So much so that when her brother had confessed two years ago that he wanted to follow her to New York to study art at a special school, she’d persuaded their dad to let Brian move into the house.
But Brian hadn’t been doing well this past year. He’d taken their father’s heart attack and subsequent death especially hard. It was the main reason Abby had bowed out of a second year with the string quartet tour and come home instead. When Marlena waved to her, she’d assumed something had happed to her brother. Fortunately, other than a cracked tooth, Brian was fine. Marlena had already taken him to the dentist that morning. The reason Marlena had been so animated was the item she’d stumbled across while in the waiting room.
Abby laid the hammer on the coffee table, her gaze drawn to the dog-eared magazine in the center. Like her, Marlena rarely purchased Saucy. Still, she hadn’t been able to resist flipping through a free—though year-old—issue of the Cosmo-wanna-be rag. Marlena had stopped to chuckle over the feature “Snagging a Billionaire Bachelor,” only to learn that, according to Saucy, there were ten such men in the U.S. alone. Number two was none other than Darian Sabura, the very man who’d climbed through Abby’s window three days before!
Of all ten men, Dare was the only one who’d refused to be interviewed. Undaunted, the magazine had made up for the loss with a series of unauthorized photos, rumors and outright conjecture about Dare and his bachelor life. The raciest gossip concerned his parents. According to Saucy, the blood running through Dare’s veins was bluer than Tristan Court’s original residents combined, at least on his mother’s side. As to his father’s—evidently there’d been some speculation as to which man actually held that title. Especially when Dare’s mother, Miranda, retired to her country home at the start of her pregnancy and saw no one until Dare was nearly a year old. As Dare matured, the rumors faded…until a falling-out between Dare and his father added an entirely new set to the mill—and the hint of a deeper, darker scandal, as well.
One that again concerned Dare’s mother.
According to a police report Saucy had obtained from an unnamed homicide detective within the NYPD, Dare’s mother had either fallen or been pushed off a subway platform when Dare was fifteen…or had she simply lost her balance due to the effects of the contents of the silver flask found in her purse?
Neither the detective nor Saucy would say, no doubt for fear of a lawsuit.
Either way, Abby didn’t blame Dare for refusing to comment. Nor could she begrudge him the lifestyle he’d pursued since his mother’s death.
But his father apparently did.
Victor Sabura’s blood might run more toward an earthy red, but his legal brilliance and relentless work ethic had made up for it among most of New York’s wealthy upper crust. To Victor’s disappointment, his son didn’t appear to have inherited that same work ethic. Instead, Darian Sabura—aka Triple Dare, as he’d been dubbed by the extreme sports media—had spent his teens and early twenties honing skills more suited to recreational pursuits. Skiing, scuba, snowboarding, surfing, skydiving, auto racing, motocross, mountain climbing, Dare had mastered them all—in lieu of settling into a job. Any job.
Rumor had it Victor Sabura had washed his hands of his adrenaline-addicted son years before and never looked back. If Abby was smart, she’d follow suit.
Except…she couldn’t.
Saucy’s cameras might have been too far away to catch the shadows she’d seen in Dare’s eyes, but Abby hadn’t been. She could still see those dark emerald pools when she closed her eyes at night. She’d seen similar shadows darken her father’s stare after her mother died when she and Brian were nine. She’d seen them dim her own gaze the year before, the night she’d gone to meet her future mother-in-law, only to have her heart and her pride bruised beyond humiliation. The shadows were still there the day she’d run away to Europe. They still darkened her brother’s stare whenever they talked about their dad, letting her know Brian was still running from the man’s death.
What was Dare running from—his bloodline? His mother’s death?
Or something more?
And why did she care?
Abby told herself it was because Dare was her neighbor. One day he might be Brian’s neighbor. For that reason alone, she should at least make an attempt to—Abby flinched as the phone pierced her reverie for the fourth time that night. She didn’t bother checking the caller ID—she knew it was Stuart.
She snapped her gaze back to the magazine. To the envelope she’d used to mark the article on her new neighbor and his fellow billionaire bachelors. The envelope she’d been too chicken to deliver along with the man’s shoes. That settled it. Anything was preferable to sitting here and listening to that phone ring. Even heading upstairs.
Dare stared at the glass door to his shower, desperate for the promised surcease a mere pace and a half away. And yet, as utterly drained as he was, he also knew he wouldn’t be stepping inside. He couldn’t.
Abby.
Dare closed his eyes as her essence swirled up into the penthouse, mingling with his as it had so often this past month whenever she’d stopped by to check on the progress of the remodeling of her apartment below. Only this time, Abby was headed up along with it. He could feel her stepping into the stairwell at the eighteenth level and slowly ascending to his, her hesitance growing stronger with every step. Usually he needed to touch someone to read their emotions this deeply. That he could feel hers so strongly without physical contact still amazed him. It also had him wondering what it would be like to press his fingers to her flesh.
To truly touch her, inside and out.
Yes, Abby had tended to his latest wound in her kitchen three night ago. But his sense had been deliberately dulled at the time from the blessed numbing that came as a result of the adrenaline and the exertion of scaling a cliff or a mountain…or even a twenty-story turn-of-the-century apartment building without the aid and security of a rope. Had he known Abby would be moving into her place early, he still would have made the climb, though he’d have taken more care with his route. Specifically, he’d have chosen one that took him well around her bedroom window instead of straight through it.
Either way, the respite from the climb had lasted only so long. Which was why he’d left her apartment so abruptly.
By the time she’d finished her ministrations, his empathic sense had returned. He’d begun to feel the simmering emotions of those around him again, especially hers. Unfortunately, the endless procession of hands he’d been forced to shake at the party he’d recently left—and the utter onslaught of feeling that came with them—had left him drained. Vulnerable. So he’d retreated up here and into his shower, shielding himself behind the one and only material he’d discovered could completely block out the crushing emotions of the city, so long as he remained entirely encased within it.
Glass.
If he was smart, he would seek out that same respite now, before Abby recovered her resolve and knocked on his door. Before he felt compelled to answer it. Despite her need to right things between them, he was once again in no shape to greet the one woman who could affect him this deeply without even trying. Dare sighed as he tugged his T-shirt off and dumped the dark blue cotton at his feet.
The night he’d entered Abby’s window he’d caved in to his assistant’s pleas and spent the evening attending yet another of those excruciating torture sessions Charlotte liked to call a fund-raiser. Unfortunately, Charlotte was right; they were also necessary. The reason the two of them were so effective at their calling—that of locating and assisting the battered women of the city—was threefold. The first involved his skill at locating those who truly needed them, women who for whatever reason could or would not seek help through the police or the city’s more conventional programs and shelters. The second involved Charlotte’s determination to see to the details of creating an entirely new identity, preferably one as far removed from the old as possible. And the third consisted of his own unerring ability to greet the potential benefactors Charlotte introduced him to and immediately discern who possessed the financial means and the conscience to donate what was needed—as well as the ability and desire to keep his or her assistance quiet indefinitely.
Unfortunately, this evening’s task had fallen into the first phase of assistance—determining need. Specifically, Charlotte had needed him to vet a story. One that involved a child. An innocent slip of a girl.
The results had been unbearable.
So much so, he’d been compelled to embrace the girl.
He still wondered if he should have done it. It was always a risk. Though the mother hadn’t argued, she hadn’t understood either. Not really. He drew comfort from the fact that by the time Charlotte ensured that both mother and child were far away from the city, and safe, the mother would already have decided that what she thought she’d seen had really been her imagination. In time she would write off the results to repressed memory. If only he could repress his own memory—that unspeakable torment—as easily. Embracing anyone, much less a child, took so damned much out of him, there were days when he wondered why he chanced it. Why he didn’t leave this damned city and its roiling emotions behind. Move to some remote corner of the earth and stay there forever.
But he knew.
For better or worse, he was as committed to helping the women they assisted as Charlotte was.
Dare also knew, even before he bent low to scoop his shirt off the floor and hook it about his neck, that he could no more resist the woman standing outside his apartment than he’d been able to deny that child. Especially since she’d finally strengthened her resolve enough to step up to his door to press the bell. Dare clamped his fingers about the ends of his shirt and turned his back on the utter peace the shower promised. He crossed his bedroom, then traveled the length of the apartment, surprised by the strength of her aura. Her inner essence was far easier to read now than it had been the day he’d first felt her in the lobby, and it continued to intensify with each step he took.
Was it her—or him? Or the evening’s events?
He reached the door before he could decide, and opened it. A split second later Dare realized his mistake. Abby had changed her mind again and started to leave. Unfortunately, he’d been either too drained and distracted by the night’s events or too consumed by her proximity to read the fluctuation in her emotions correctly. And now it was too late.
She turned back. “Oh, I thought—”
He waited.
She took in his partial state of undress and shook her head. “Never mind what I thought.”
He stared at her fingers, mesmerized, as she tucked a stray dark brown curl into the loose braid that hung halfway down her back. Just as he’d wondered all too often of late what it would be like to reach out and touch her, he couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like to have those slender fingers soothing his flesh, as well. He must have stared too long, because her fingers trembled slightly as she lowered them. He didn’t need to see her teeth nip at the corner of her bottom lip to know she was nervous. Nor did he need his sense.
Tension had already begun to clog the air between them, thickening it. She lowered her gaze and he finally noticed the contents of her left hand.
His shoes.
She held them up. “You forgot them.”
Dare nodded. He hadn’t even realized they were missing until he’d reached his apartment the other night. But by then his sense—both emotional and intellectual—had returned. He’d decided to wait, hoping she’d call and tell him she’d leave the shoes in the hall along with her boxes.
She’d done neither.
He hooked his fingers into the knotted laces, deftly retrieving the shoes without touching her. Still, he was forced to drop the shoes just inside the doorway, unnerved by the strength of the echo she’d left on the laces alone. He shifted his grip on the door and eased it shut. “Thank you.”
“Wait.”
He stopped. “Yes?”
Her pupils widened, causing her gaze to darken as the inner ring of brown crowded out the flecks of green. “I, ah, wondered if your offer regarding the boxes was still good.”
He nodded. “Just leave them in the hall. They’ll be gone by morning.” Fortunately, she didn’t ask how, or by whom.
But neither did she leave.
“Did you need something else?”
“No. Yes. That is, I’d like to—” Her gaze swept his features. Narrowed slightly. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? I mean, I hate to be rude, but you don’t look so good. In fact, you’re paler than you were the other night.” Her stare shifted to his temple. Fortunately, the butterfly bandages she’d applied were obscured by his hair. “Is your cut—”
“It’s healing properly.” But more quickly than she’d ever believe possible. Truth be told, at the moment that cut was the only part of him that didn’t feel as if he’d been kicked out of the side of a small plane at ten thousand feet sans parachute. “However, it has been a long day. I was about to step in the shower….” He trailed off deliberately, hoping she’d take the hint.
She didn’t.
Worse, her gaze dropped to his chest. She stared.
Studied.
From the shift in her aura and growing fascination in those soft hazel eyes, he assumed she was merely tabulating the results of his dogged pursuit of motocross, auto racing, skydiving, as well as half a dozen other so-called extreme sports before he’d figured out that free climbing provided the most bang for the adrenaline-induced buck—or rather, the most effective dulling. But then he noticed her stare had settled on his left pectoral, directly over his heart.
He shifted his T-shirt as discreetly as he could and covered the tattoo.
“Well?” He hadn’t meant to sound quite so clipped. But he had succeeded in wrenching her gaze from his chest. “Did you need something, or not?”
Her aura shifted once more. Sharpened. Darkened.
“Not.” A moment later she smoothed her features. He felt her attempt to smooth her mood as well. To lighten it along with her heart. She retrieved a slim white envelope from the back pocket of her jeans and held it out. “Consider it a thank-you for getting rid of the boxes.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Nonsense. I insist.” When he still didn’t take it, she nudged the envelope closer. “Contrary to my behavior the other night, I swear it’s not a letter bomb. It’s a pair of tickets for the symphony Saturday night. Bring a guest.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t—”
“You’re already going?”
He shook his head. Not in this lifetime.
“You already have plans?”
He should have lied but discovered he couldn’t. “No.”
“Then I don’t understand. What’s the problem? You’ll don a tux to climb a building, but can’t be bothered to suit up for an evening of Mozart?” A tiny dimple dipped in at the right of her lips as she smiled, attempting to tease him into accepting. “Trust me, contrary to certain rumors it’s not a fate worse than death.”
If she only knew.
He shook his head again. Firmly. Even as a recent addition to the orchestra, he doubted she’d had to pay for the tickets. Still, there was no sense in wasting them. He was about to shut the door on the tickets as well as further argument when she stepped forward to tuck the envelope in his hand. He sucked in his breath as her fingertips grazed his.
That was all it took.
Like that violin she’d carried to work these past two mornings, he was instantly, completely in tune—with her.
He jerked back instinctively.
A moment later he felt her suspicion as it seared into his heart. The knot of stinging tears followed again, in his own throat as well as hers. Her lips thinned as the profound disappointment and utter disgust locked in. “Don’t worry, Mr. Sabura. It’s not contagious.”
She spun around as he struggled to recover.
“Abby!”
She stopped. But she refused to turn back.
He swallowed his shame. “It has nothing to do with Brian or his Down’s syndrome. Now or regarding the board meeting. I swear.”
Her braid shifted as she nodded. But she didn’t believe him. Though common sense advised against it, something deep inside forced him to try again.
“Please…I never meant to hurt you.”
Well, you did.
She hadn’t said the words, but she might as well have. He could feel them. He still felt them, and her, as she stepped away from the door, bypassing the elevator on her right in favor of the stairs. Irony bit as Abby descended. He’d purchased all four of the apartments on the nineteenth floor years before to create a buffer from the rest of the building’s inhabitants and the roiling emotions of their daily lives.
If anything, the empty floor now served to magnify the effect she had on him.
Now more than ever.
