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“Laugh all you want, but Fayrene was one smart cookie. She realized that since so many women were more than willing to give sex away, she had to think of herself as bein’ in the entertainment business.”
“Now you’re comparing me to a prostitute?” Amused, Gillian sipped her mineral water and felt her exhaustion begin to slip away.
“Hell, no. But what Aunt Fayrene always said about the hooker who realized she was sitting on the gold mine fits your situation.” He flashed her the grin that she suspected had charmed a great many Southern belles.
“You’ve got a lot of pretty glittery gold to sell, Gilly. The trick is not to let anyone go prospectin’ without first paying for the mineral rights.”
Gillian laughed as she was meant to. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Castle Mountain, Maine
HUNTER ST. JOHN LAY in bed, enjoying the aftermath of passion. The woman snuggled up against him was a biochemist working at the nearby think tank colloquially referred to by the locals as the “brain factory.” Toni Maggione was intelligent, driven, seductive, and what was most appealing to Hunter, she possessed an unrelentingly hedonistic attitude toward sex.
They’d first met three years ago, when, following his release from a Bosnian hospital, he’d arrived on the remote island off the rocky coast of Maine to work on his latest project. After a brief verbal exchange of personal résumés, and even briefer explanations of their works in progress, she’d leaned against a stainless steel table in her laboratory and chewed on a short scarlet fingernail while studying him, as if he were one of the lab animals she was considering using for her cancer research. He’d watched her gaze flick over his scarred and disfigured face, waiting for the expected response of horror, but all he’d read in those coffee-dark eyes had been vague curiosity.
“Three of my rats died this morning,” she’d told him.
“Should I say I’m sorry?”
“That’s not necessary. Since it wouldn’t change the fact that they died. And I was so hoping for a remission.” Her full lips had pouted. “It’s been a horrid morning.”
“Perhaps it’ll get better.”
Her smile had been slow and openly provocative. “You must be a mind reader. Because that’s precisely what I was thinking.” Her hips had swayed enticingly as she’d crossed the white tile laboratory floor in a way that had reminded him of a lioness on the hunt and locked the door. Then, still smiling, she’d turned back toward him and had begun taking off her clothes. Not waiting for a verbal invitation, Hunter had quickly shed his, as well.
They’d continued to get together three or four times a month. Constantly underfunded, suffering frustrating setbacks that were part and parcel of medical research, Dr. Antoinette Maggione used sex to relieve the unrelenting pressure of her work. Possessing a strong sex drive himself, Hunter was more than willing to help her out.
“I almost forgot. I brought you a present,” she said, slipping from his arms.
“A present?”
She laughed at the unmistakable alarm in his voice. “Don’t panic, darling.” Reaching up, she patted his scarred cheek. “You’ve already insisted that I’m not allowed to get you a Christmas present again this year,” she reminded him. “This is just a little something I saw in the video store the other day.” She left the bed, went into the living room and returned with the boxed tape. “I thought at the time that it might add to the mood.”
Hunter pushed himself up into a sitting position. “If you need a porno tape to get in the mood, I must not being doing my job.”
She laughed again. “Darling, if you weren’t a magnificent lover, I wouldn’t have forgotten about the tape two minutes after you opened the door. It isn’t pornography. It’s a music video.”
She turned on the bedroom television and stuck the tape into the VCR, then slipped back into bed.
Piano music filled the room. Hunter had never considered himself even a remotely fanciful man, yet the way it flowed, clean and clear, vaguely reminded him of a sunlit river tumbling over mossy rocks on the way to the sea.
On the screen, a slender woman was seated in a circle of towering stones. Her back was to the camera, her long hair—a blend of red, copper and gold that brought to mind a dazzling sunset—fell in rippling waves to her waist.
“I wonder how the producer got permission to film at Stonehenge,” he wondered out loud.
Toni shrugged her bare shoulders. “Gillian Cassidy’s sales figures probably speak pretty loudly. Factor in her incredible looks and I doubt if there’s a male government bureaucrat anywhere in the world who’d be able to say no to the woman. There are also some incredible scenes set on the Irish coast.”
“Cassidy?”
His nemesis’s surname rang an instant and unpleasant bell. It was, Hunter reminded himself, a not uncommon name. Especially along the eastern seaboard where so many immigrants of Irish extraction had settled.
But didn’t George Cassidy have a daughter? He vaguely remembered a skinny little thing with wild carrot-hued hair that was always escaping her braids, and a mouthful of metal braces.
“If you’d ever get your head out of the laboratory, you’d know that Gillian Cassidy just happens to be the hottest New Age performer in the country,” Toni informed him. “Last year her Machu Picchu CD outsold John Tesh’s and Yanni’s albums combined. This one went platinum in the first week.”
As the slender hands flowed over the keyboard, the music grew richer, more complicated, soothing his mind even as it stirred his blood. It couldn’t be the same girl, Hunter assured himself. George Cassidy had always seemed more android than man; from what Hunter had witnessed, the scientist hadn’t possessed a single iota of human emotion.
The idea that such an unfeeling bastard could have fathered a child capable of tapping into such deep-seated primal passions merely by skimming her fingertips over eighty-eight ebony and ivory keys was inconceivable.
The view shifted as the camera lens went in for a close-up of the pianist’s face. Unaware of doing so, Hunter leaned closer toward the screen.
She was looking down at the keys, but as he watched, seemingly in response to his unspoken command, she slowly lifted her gaze.
Pow! Hunter experienced what felt like a body blow as he found himself staring straight into a pair of thickly lashed green eyes that were simultaneously both foreign and familiar. Unbelievably, it was her. Damned if Cassidy’s little girl hadn’t grown up. Which, Hunter allowed, only made sense, since the planet certainly hadn’t stopped spinning since that long-ago day when his mentor had betrayed him.
Her velvety soft eyes, which he recalled having been once hidden by thick, tortoise-shell-framed glasses that had seemed oversize on her small face, tilted up, catlike, at the corners. Her complexion was the pale alabaster of a true redhead, and either she’d neglected to paint her lips or the makeup person for the video shoot had selected a pale pink the color of the inside of a seashell.
When a faint breeze picked up a few strands of hair and blew them across those slightly parted pink lips, hunger stirred, deep and unbidden.
She looked as fragile as blown glass. But the music flowing from those unlacquered fingertips was as potent as Irish whiskey. And every bit as intoxicating.
She appeared to have inherited her mother’s passion. Hunter recalled George Cassidy’s third wife, Irene, being a great deal younger than her husband and a great deal less restrained.
Yet the one trait both Cassidys had shared had been their unrelenting, unapologetic aggressiveness in going after what they wanted. At the time, Irene Cassidy had certainly wanted him.
“Well, I’d thought the tape might set a sexy mood.” Toni’s husky voice was a blend of amusement and feminine pique. “But I didn’t expect competition.”
Music from the stereo speakers swelled around him, in him, like a fever in the blood.
“Don’t talk nonsense. You’re in a league of your own, sweetheart.” He pulled her close and kissed her with more affection than lust.
It was times like this, when his body was sated and his mind pleasantly fogged, free from the burden of romantic entanglements, when Hunter understood that George Cassidy had been right about one thing. Emotions were unnecessary complications. They weakened a man, made him vulnerable.
During the thirteen years since he’d left MIT, Hunter had survived—indeed prospered—by burying his feelings so deeply inside him he could no longer remember the idealistic young man he’d once been. Hunter supposed he should be grateful to Cassidy for that.
As Toni snuggled against him again, his mind continued to drift to thoughts of Cassidy and his daughter, whose appearance reminded him of one of those ethereal angels painted on the domed ceilings of Renaissance cathedrals.
He wondered idly if she were actually as virginal as she seemed, then remembering the depths of passion that had flowed from those fingertips, decided she couldn’t possibly be.
But the contrast of passion and innocence was undeniably appealing. What would it take, he mused, to make that serene, delicate woman scream with wild, wanton pleasure?
Suddenly, Hunter, who had not celebrated any holiday since that fateful afternoon he’d packed his bags and left MIT, knew exactly what he wanted for Christmas.
He wanted Gillian Cassidy. And thanks to what he knew about her formerly celebrated father, he intended to have her.
2
“GOOD GOD, MAN!” The scientist stared at his former protégé. “You can’t be serious.”
“On the contrary, I’ve never been more serious in my life,” Hunter responded mildly.
The fact that George Cassidy had not been able to resist accepting the summons to Castle Mountain from his former student was proof that the power between them had shifted. It was an acknowledgment, of sorts, Hunter thought with satisfaction, that the student had now become the master.
Oh, Cassidy was still a respected researcher and teacher.
His articles still routinely appeared in scientific journals and he was a frequent speaker at conferences. But it had escaped no one’s notice that he hadn’t come up with a truly important breakthrough in a decade.
His star was on the decline. While Hunter’s, which had taken off like a comet after he’d been forced from MIT, was now fixed as the brightest in the scientific firmament. Hunter couldn’t count the number of requests for speeches he turned down in any given month.
And unlike Cassidy, whose lectures were usually scheduled for the Sunday morning on the last day of a conference, when attendees were more likely to be worried about packing and making planes than listening to a rehash of old data, Hunter was routinely invited to be the keynote speaker at the most prestigious gatherings in the world.
Not that he appeared in person any longer, of course, but his recorded speeches—audio only, never video—were enough to draw standing-room-only crowds.
Hunter had been an intensely private man even before the assassination attempt that had disfigured him, and his reclusive behavior fueled various rumors. Two of the more recurring ones were that he’d become scarred beyond recognition and/or that he’d become the quintessential mad scientist creating Lord knows what sort of genetic mutations in his island laboratory. Hunter didn’t really give a damn what people said about him, as long as they left him alone.
The older man shook his head. Although at first glance George Cassidy had the look of a lion in winter, his thick mane of snowy hair had thinned, Hunter noticed irrelevantly. His once patrician nose was red and bulbous, indicating that his fondness for alcohol had intensified.
“This has to be some sort of sick joke.”
“I never joke.” Hunter leaned back in his leather chair, braced his elbows on the arms and eyed Cassidy over the tent of his fingers. “As you once so succinctly told me, emotions get in the way of logic. Which means, I suppose,” he allowed, “I owe a great deal of my success to your advice.”
“You would have succeeded on your own.”
“True. But if you hadn’t gotten me taken off the project, you would have continued to take credit for my work.” Work that had taken off in an entirely new direction, partly due to this man’s treachery. If Cassidy hadn’t stolen his research, he might never have developed such an interest in the age-old nature versus nurture argument.
“That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You told me someday I’d pay. And now you’re out for revenge.”
“Revenge is such an unpleasant word, don’t you think?” Hunter countered pleasantly. “And actually, you’re wrong, Cassidy. I gave up on that idea a very long time ago. After I realized that you were no longer a very formidable adversary.”
He flashed a smile Toni had once described as being as merciless as a rattler’s. “Victory against a paper tiger isn’t much of a victory.”
The words obviously struck home, causing the older man to flinch. Better watch those emotions, George, Hunter thought. Or they’ll be your downfall yet.
“Then why—”
“It’s simple. As I said, your daughter has matured into a talented, lovely woman. And I want her.”
“You make her sound like a possession, like a car. Gillian isn’t some inanimate bauble to be bought and sold. She’s a woman—”
“I’m well aware of that. It’s precisely why I want her,” Hunter interjected patiently.
“My point is, she isn’t mine to give. The girl hasn’t lived under my roof since her mother and I divorced when she was barely in her teens.”
“But you kept in touch.”
Remembering those intimate little faculty dinners where Irene Cassidy had inevitably managed to corner him in some private corner of the professor’s Cape Cod house and attempt, unsuccessfully, to seduce him, Hunter suspected the woman wasn’t the type who’d willingly go to work to support herself and a young daughter.
“To some extent.” Cassidy’s next words confirmed Hunter’s thoughts. “Although my attorney fought her every step of the way, Irene managed to get the judge to award her a hefty alimony settlement. She also demanded—and won—hefty boarding school and college tuition payments. Naturally, I demanded equally generous holiday visitation rights.”
“Naturally,” Hunter said dryly.
He had the impression that neither parent had cared all that much for the teenage girl whose life must have been turned upside down by an acrimonious divorce. Gillian Cassidy had been merely a useful pawn in a war between two self-absorbed egoists.
Not so different from his own upbringing, he considered. However, in his case, neither of his illustrious, selfish parents could be bothered with the son they’d created more to ensure their immortality than out of any sense of lasting love. For each other or their child.
“But even if Gilly didn’t have a mind of her own, which believe me, despite that cotton-candy exterior, she does have,” Cassidy continued, “the days of fathers marrying off their daughters—”
“Who said anything about marriage?” Hunter cut him off again. “Marriage is for fools who believe in love and all its accompanying complications. Your own experience in the marital sweepstakes should have taught you that it doesn’t work.
“I want Gillian for one thing. And one thing only. For sex.”
“That’s obscene!”
Hunter lifted a brow. “Since when were you elected arbiter of society’s morals, Cassidy?”
Gillian’s father didn’t answer. Instead, he continued to stare at Hunter, as if he were some sort of monster. Which, Hunter allowed, he just might be.
“What the hell happened to you?” Cassidy asked quietly. Carefully.
Hunter’s ironic smile was grim and twisted and revealed not an iota of humor. “As you once warned me, it’s bunny-eat-bunny out there. And even in our business, research can get a little risky.”
The memory of the letter bomb exploding in his hand flashed like lightning in his mind. A memory of burning flesh seared his nostrils; inhuman screams, torn from his own throat, reverberated in his head. Utilizing the steely control that had kept him alive during those long and painful months of recuperation and rehabilitation, Hunter closed the door on the unbidden flashback.
“Now, since the forecast calls for an evening storm and I don’t believe either of us cares to be stuck here in close proximity while we wait for it to blow over, I’m going to cut right to the chase and save us both time so you can return to Cambridge….
“The fact is that I fancy your daughter. I’ve been thinking about her too much lately, and those thoughts are disturbing my work. So, I’ve come to the conclusion that the logical thing to do is to get the woman out of my system.
“I could take the time to go through some lengthy, ridiculous courtship routine, and, since I’ve been assured that despite certain obvious physical disadvantages, I’m a fairly good catch, I have no doubt that I could seduce her without a great deal of difficulty.
“However, since I possess neither the time nor the patience for such social game playing, I’ve decided to put the problem into your hands.”
“My hands?”
“It’s quite simple. I expect you to convince your daughter to come here to Maine, where I assure you, she will be treated with consideration and respect. I will not physically harm her. Nor will I play with her emotions the way so many lovers might.
“I’ve read that she’s just coming off a grueling tour and needs a rest. I’m offering leisurely days spent in a remote, idyllic location.
“As for her nights—” he enjoyed watching the older man flinch as he flashed a wicked, sexually suggestive grin “—I won’t bore you with the details.”
“You’re a devil, St. John.” Cassidy’s nervous eyes drifted to the twisted red-and-white flesh that ran from temple to jaw on the left side of Hunter’s face.
“Perhaps. I’m also a man, Cassidy.” Hunter’s tone remained as detached as his unblinking gaze. “A man with needs. Which is where the lovely Gillian comes in. And when those needs have been sufficiently satisfied, I’ll send her back to you. Safe and sound.”
“What makes you think I’d lift a finger to help you sleep with my daughter?”
Cassidy was shaking with rage; his face was so red Hunter wondered idly if he were on the verge of having a stroke. He also wondered if somehow he’d stumbled upon the old man’s soft spot. Perhaps he did care for his only daughter, after all.
“The stories I’ve heard about your diminishing capacity must be true.” Hunter shook his head with mock regret. “You are losing it, George, old man. The reason you’ll convince your daughter to join me here is because if you don’t, I’ll go public with what happened thirteen years ago.”
