She swallowed again. “George. You can say his name. I won’t fall apart.”
Although she very well might, and soon, if she didn’t regain her sense of balance and reestablish boundaries.Now. She smoothed her hands over her skirt several times and then stood up.
“But you won’t be referring to him at all within my hearing, because I’ve made plain that we won’t be talking about my life. Any aspect of it. I also told you this morning that I wanted to help you, and I meant that, Mitch. I believe I can help you.” She paused before adding, “Besides,Lieutenant Bowieis paying me to try.”
That was a cheap shot, but it felt good to sling something back at him after the blow he’d dealt her. She expected him toreact to the snide remark, but he didn’t, so she continued. “It really was outrageous of you to come here tonight, but your machinations are so transparent, I’m willing to disregard them. We’ll resume on Thursday. For now, good night.” She glanced toward the door. “I hope you didn’t break my lock.”
“No, just picked it. You can still lock it behind me.”
He stood up, but, instead of making for the door, he walked slowly but purposefully toward her. He didn’t stop until he took up her entire field of vision. She could feel his body heat, his breath warm on her face. Not for the first time, she sensed in him a coiled vitality ready to spring with dangerous unpredictability.
What stunned her now that they were standing so close—and, if she were being nakedly honest with herself, since he’d barged through the door—was her powerful reaction to his physicality, a response that hovered somewhere between anxiety and desire.
Yes, that. In spite of everything, and totally against her code of ethics and self-will,that.
Speaking low, he said, “I think I would enjoy watching you fall apart, Dylan. Because you’re not nearly as cool as you let on. Know how I know?”
Before she knew what he was about to do and prevent it, he had encircled her wrist and placed his thumb on the inside of it where her blood vessel was pulsing. “You have a heartbeat, after all,” he said. “Strong and fast, too. But that’s not the giveaway.” He leaned in and whispered, “The dead giveaway is the red toenail polish.”
He gave her a second or two to think about that, then dropped her hand and grinned down into her face, which had been suffused with an ungoverned, unwanted, and unacceptable heat.
She pulled her wrist from his grasp. “Joke about something else.”
“Wasn’t joking.” He gave her another smile, but not the naughty-boy one, or the one laced with sarcasm. This one was rueful.
He left her and went over to the door. When he looked back at her, his smile was gone and so was any trace of arrogance. “This isn’t a joke, either, Dr. Reede. It’s a true story without a ‘once upon a time.’ It begins on the night I found my wife dead in our garage.”
His bluntness struck her; she caught her breath.
“Her death was ruled a suicide,” he said. “It wasn’t. She was murdered. People don’t believe that, but I know it, and I’m going to avenge it. I’m going to find the men who conspired to kill Andrew’s mother, and when I do, I’m going to kill them.”
He spoke with clarity, candor, and conviction. No comedy. In fact, his monotonal seriousness was chilling.
“After they’re dead,” he continued, “if the authorities come to you and ask to see your records on me, or ask what you know about my psyche, you have my permission to tell them that I confessed my intentions to you without qualification or remorse. Tell them that I was an ‘imminent threat’ to those men.” He motioned behind her to the sofa where her notepad lay. “Write that down so you’ll be sure to remember.”
He looked at her for several beats, then left through the door and gently pulled it closed behind him.
Chapter 9
Mitch thumped the back of his head against the elevator wall.Damn! What the hell had just happened?
Ambushing Dylan in her office had been intended to shock-and-awe, to completely disarm her so that she’d be more susceptible to his clever prying techniques. He’d wanted to come away from the encounter with more information about her and her practice.
His brilliant plan had backfired. Big time.
He’d wound up waxing poetic about his love for his son, and had recited to her the vengeful pledge he’d made after Angela’s murder. To have wormed that out of him, she must be a better therapist than he’d given her credit for.
She should bill herself as “Dr. Reede, Analyst Extraordinaire.”
Dylan, the female person, was something else entirely. A snake charmer, maybe. Hypnotist, enchantress, siren. Whatever, she had cast some kind of spell over him that had shutdown his brain but had thrown another part of his anatomy into overdrive at warp speed.
Those moments when he’d had his thumb against her wrist, he’d been conjuring up fantasies as rapidly as her heart was beating. Her hair, loose and silky, sliding over his chest, his…
Christ!He couldn’t be thinking about that now. He had to banish all thoughts of her. The eyes, the lips, those legs. Red toenails. He’d wait to indulge the erotic fantasies when he could do so leisurely and without distraction.
Now definitely was not that time.
The elevator reached the ground floor, and the door slid open. The lobby remained dark except for security lights at both ends of a long corridor that ran parallel to the building’s facade.
