Identity Crisis (26 page)

That the first thing she had done when she woke up was reach for Garrett meant nothing, she assured herself. After what had happened tonight, after the discovery of what had happened when she was in the shower, of course she would reach for him, for comfort. That was all. For comfort. Nothing more. Her stomach felt like it turned to stone every time she thought about what could have happened in the shower, and her all the time thinking it was Garrett come to join her, and her feeling hurt and angry when he didn’t. She shivered again and looked around. It didn’t matter if it was just for comfort. She still didn’t want to be alone. Not just that, but she knew how Garrett blamed himself for what had happened. It wasn’t his fault. She wished she could convince him of that, but knowing how well Garrett did guilt, she didn’t much want him to be alone either.

She found his shirt still lying at the foot of the bed where he’d shed it when he had tucked her in and crawled in next to her. She had pulled him as close to her as she could get him, then she had climbed on top of him, to find him ready for her, needing the comfort of her as badly as she needed the comfort of him. His touch was tender as he explored her, caressed her, and yet it was possessive in a way it hadn’t been before. That should have disturbed her, but they both needed comfort, she told herself. Tonight they both needed to possess each other.

And when they had both come, and as their breathing slowed and their bodies dozed, she’d fallen asleep there on top of him, with him still nestled inside her body, with her feeling the rise and fall of his chest against hers, feeling the press of his belly making her certain that when she woke up again she’d want more of him. So much more.

She slipped into his shirt and followed the anemic trail of light to the spacious study that was more like a small library just off the sitting room. He sat at the big oak desk, hunched over his laptop, tapping away on the keyboard. For a second, she stood at the door just watching. This was Garrett Thorne in Tess Delaney mode. He sat with no shirt. He wore only his boxers. His always mussed hair was more mussed than usual, like he’d just left the bed. She smiled when she thought of what had happened in the bed he’d just left.

His fingers flew over the keys. His face was a study in concentration. She wondered what he was writing, what Tess was writing. She pulled his shirt tight across her breasts, taking in the scent of him, wrapped around her so tightly. A lump rose in her throat, and she saw him through a soft mist. He was Tess Delaney. There was no jinx in that at all. Without Tess, he wouldn’t be the man she couldn’t stop thinking about, the man who had barged his way into her life and left his mark on her, the man, the only man other than Harris, who had seen her at her worst and stayed by her anyway.

A wave of panic washed over her. This was too much. This was way more than she’d bargained for. She should have never said yes to him. He frightened her like she’d never been frightened before. She was just ready to run back to the bedroom, maybe even move to the bedroom next door, to try to re-establish a little professional space when Garrett turned and saw her. And the smile he offered made her completely forget to run.

‘You all right?’ he said, pushing back the office chair and reaching out a hand to her.

‘Fine. I’m fine.’ She came into his arms and curled up on his lap. ‘I woke up and you were gone.’

‘Tess is a hard taskmaster,’ he said. ‘When she wants to write, there’s no arguing with her.’

She ran a light finger over the fresh cut along his cheek made from the tree branch just a few hours ago. ‘Does it hurt?’

‘Stings a little. Not bad, though. It’s nothing.’

‘You all right?’ She returned the question.

‘I woke up with
Texas Fire
running through my mind.’ He settled a kiss on her ear and pulled her close. ‘Believe it or not, I’ve been inspired lately. I think it’s going to be a pretty good read after all. Who’d have ever thought that Kendra Davis would be my muse?’

‘Glad I could help.’ She ran a hand over his chest and shifted on his lap, feeling the beginnings of a hard-on in his boxers. ‘Garrett, what happens when you become Tess Delaney? What changes inside you, what shifts over enough so that you can access the Tess side of you?’

He stroked her arm and she could see color climb up his throat. He was beautiful when he was wrong-footed, when he was embarrassed by how amazing he was. She wished it didn’t embarrass him, though. She wished he could own the beauty and the talent of who he was, because it was in that talent, in that beauty that he was more himself than she suspected he even knew he could be.

He nodded to the laptop humming quietly on the desk. ‘It’s not anything so simple as a shift; I mean, there’s no split personality or anything like that. Tess Delaney started out as a pen name, just a way to get my romance into print and get the nice check that it promised. But still, the person who writes Tess Delaney novels is different than the person who wrote Brad Dennis novels.’ His face was suddenly sad. ‘The person who writes Tess Delaney novels knows more, has more life experience. The person who writes Tess Delaney novels broke his brother’s heart by stealing his fiancée and then had his own heart broken when he realized that his wife still loved his brother, and then he’d lost his wife, his best friend, and his brother.’ He brushed his fingers over the keys. ‘Who knows, maybe Tess was my penance, maybe Tess was my healing.’ He smiled up at her and the blush returned. ‘Then again, maybe it was just the inspiration of a really good steady income.’

‘So.’ She shifted in his lap and tightened her arms around his neck. ‘If there is no shift, then it’s as much Garrett Thorne at the keyboard as it is Tess Delaney, more so, really.’

‘It doesn’t feel that way, at least not any more. It feels like when I’m writing a Tess Delaney novel that I’m in a place that’s somehow a little more grounded and a little more real.’

She leaned in and kissed his ear. ‘Do you ever fantasize about her?’

‘No!’ he said. ‘It’s never like that. It never has been. It’s more like she’s my muse. It’s more like she watches and guides me. I don’t even know what she looks like. I’ve never had the inclination to visualize her face or her body. That seems like cheating somehow.’

‘Did she have red hair?’

He smiled up at her and shook his head. ‘If you’re asking if she looks like you, no. And no, you’ve never been Tess Delaney to me. You’ve always been Kendra Davis, the one who slapped the hell out of me in Wade’s office and the one who tried to drown me in Harris’s lake.’

She giggled. ‘Both of which you deserved.’

He slid the shirt off her shoulders and cupped her breasts in turn, raking his thumb over her nipples, and she arched into his touch. ‘I’d endure it all again to have you here on my lap like this, to constantly be thinking about the next time I see your face.’ He placed a kiss on one nipple, then the other. ‘About the next time I can hear you laugh, the next time I feel your touch.’ He slid his hand down the slope of her belly to stroke and fondle her pubic curls, and her whole body tensed with anticipation, as it always did when Garrett touched her, as it always did when she knew he wanted her the way she wanted him.

With the other hand, he shoved his laptop to one side, then hoisted her, in a wave of giggles, onto the desk, opening her legs so that he sat in the office chair, between them.

For a moment, he just looked at her, his gaze moving down her body from her face, over her breasts, and down between her legs. His studying of her made her feel more than just sexy. The way he sat between her legs, the way she opened to him, made her feel worshipped, adored. She’d never felt that way before.

At last he moved to run the tips of his fingers over and around each nipple, to knead and caress the weight of her excited breasts in the cup of his palm. With the other hand, he lifted her feet onto the arms of his chair. It was a position into which she had to move forward, shifting and rearranging her bottom until the tilt of her hips, the position of her open thighs, the flat press of her feet gave him a perfect view of the splayed swell of her, and he didn’t deny himself the pleasure of that view. He started with the cup of his hand against her perineum, then he shivered his fingers upward to open her, pausing to slide first one, then two inside her, where she was slick and anxious and tetchy.

She sucked a tight breath and shifted again, rubbing and gripping at his welcome invasion. But he didn’t linger. He moved his fingers, now slippery with her lust, up to splay her further as he hunched forward to get a better view, his hand shifting and opening, his fingers opening and spreading and shoving until all of her, every bit of her was fully exposed. She could feel his breath against her clit, she could feel his gaze against all of her; hot, hungry, curious.

He glanced up at her face, his pupils dilated, lips parted. ‘I’ve never seen anything so exquisite,’ he whispered. Then, still holding her gaze, he lowered a hot, wet kiss onto her clit. She gasped and squirmed, but he held her there, exposed, displayed against the desktop, as the kiss became a suckle, and the suckle gave way to long, circular lavings with his tongue.

It took her a minute to realize that the keening sound, the breathy, soft hum was coming from her own throat, that it was somehow a replacement for speech which she could no longer remember how to use. His hands moved up the inside of her thighs, opening her still wider before they moved to cup her buttocks, to knead and stroke, to pull her onto his mouth until his whole face was nestled deep and tight and wet against her, and his thumbs raked at her and then circled and stroked the gripping bud of her bottom. And the soft, breathy keening became deep, throaty groans and grunts that rocked her to her core as he grazed his teeth up over her clit and nibbled and nipped. The harder she squirmed and wriggled beneath him the tighter he held her, captive to the will of his mouth, until, held immobile in his powerful grip, she practically cried with relief when the first wave of orgasm broke, and there was nothing to do but feel it, feel it flood her, ripple through her, wash over her like ocean waves in rhythmic ebb and flow. And once again she found her voice. ‘Garrett, Garrett, Garrett.’ She whispered his name to the tidal flux of her own body.

When she had calmed, when she could breathe, when the world seemed someplace where she might have lived once upon a time, he lifted her into his arms and carried her back to the big bed.

When he entered her, she felt his own need, patiently restrained until he had pleasured her, now unleashed like a wild thing to devour her and ride her and ravage her until she was too caught up in the power of it to distinguish where he ended and she began. It was something she hadn’t wanted, something she should never have allowed, something that terrified her, and yet, folded in his arms with him on top of her, all around her, inside her, it was hard to think that there could ever be any other place. Ever.

Even with his own need driving him, threatening to break bones and pull muscles with each thrust, he sent her again, tumbling over, grasping and clawing and clinging, then he followed her. He followed her deep. So very deep.

Chapter Twenty-
Four

‘I’ve just got off the phone with Don,’ Garrett said. Dee and Ellis both looked up from their coffee. He checked over his shoulder to make sure Kendra was still upstairs asleep. Then he blew out a sharp breath. ‘I’m … I’m outing Tess to the press today. I’ve made up my mind.’

Ellis sat down his cup, and he and Dee shot each other a quick glance. Then he addressed Garrett in the way he did when he chose his words very carefully because he knew his brother wouldn’t like them. ‘Look, Garrett, I’ve thought you should do this for ages now, you know that. But it’s not what you want, and that’s way more important than what I think. And do you really believe it’ll protect Kendra?’

‘If I didn’t I wouldn’t be doing it,’ he said. ‘Honestly, I can’t stand what this is doing to her, the stress she’s under because of this Edge guy from her past. I don’t know how she’s held it together like she has, knowing what she’s been through.’ He struggled to keep his voice calm, even. He struggled not to betray the panic he felt whenever he thought of something happening to her. ‘I think once the stalker realizes the woman he’s obsessing over doesn’t exist, he’ll either find someone else to obsess over or –’

‘Or come after you,’ Dee said.

‘Or come after both of you for deceiving him,’ Ellis added. Before Garrett could respond, he said, ‘You didn’t see the man in the woods last night, did you?’

Galina came into the breakfast room and gave him coffee in a travel-mug. The woman had the measure of him, he thought to himself. He thanked her and returned his attention to Ellis and Dee. ‘It doesn’t matter if I didn’t. Kendra did. And I did hear something.’

‘The woods are full of deer, Garrett, and lots of other things that can rustle the undergrowth when startled.’

‘Kendra’s not a flighty person,’ Garrett said. ‘You both know that. She’s steady as a rock.’

Dee nodded. ‘If she says she saw someone, I believe her.’ She glanced out the window. ‘It’s been pouring since just before dawn, and the wind has been horrible. Any evidence security or the police might have found will have been washed away or blown away ages ago.’

For a second they all three stared out the window into the dark, rainy morning. Then Dee spoke again. ‘She won’t be happy about what you’re doing. In fact, I would want to be in the next county when she finds out if I were you.’

‘I know,’ he said, staring glumly into the pouring rain. That’s why I need you to keep her here until the news breaks, until I can gauge what’ll happen next.’ He raised a hand before either of them could speak. ‘I know she won’t like it. I don’t give a shit what she likes. I just want her safe.’

‘This is not your choice to make,’ Ellis said.

‘Yes! Yes, it is my choice to make. I hired her. I convinced her to work for me, and now I’m firing her. My choice. All my choice. Look, all I need is for you to keep her here until after I’ve made the announcement to the press, then once that’s done, I’ll come back and deal with the consequences. If I have to kidnap her and take her away someplace I will, but first I need to take care of this.’

Dee blew out a long breath. ‘Keeping her here may involve lots of rope and locking her in the wine cellar.’

‘That’s fine. Whatever it takes. I just can’t put her through any more of this. I can’t.’ Garrett looked down at his watch. ‘Look, I need to go before she wakes up. With any luck I’ll have it all over and done with before she knows what’s going on.’

Neither Dee nor Ellis looked like they believed that for a minute.

‘I won’t lie to her, Garrett.’ Dee held his gaze. ‘She’s my best friend. But I will hogtie her if I have to.’

‘Thanks. That’s all I’m asking.’ Garrett nodded his appreciation to both of them, then turned to go.

‘Garrett,’ Ellis called after him. ‘Be careful.’

Carla had managed an awkward sort of half shower in the confines of the motorhome bathroom while keeping an eye out the crack of the door to the front of Garrett Thorne’s house just in case there were any further developments. Her father had brought her clean clothes and coffee and a half a dozen maple bars from her favorite bakery, which she had polished off in short order, minus the one he had eaten.

When he’d asked if everything was all right, when he commented that she looked pale, she’d been evasive. She was overly tired, she said. She just needed a good night’s sleep. When he’d asked if there were any developments, she’d lied, something she had never done to her father before. Nothing of any consequence, she’d told him, even as she ached to tell him the truth.

She was still toweling her hair when the email arrived that made her wish like hell she’d come clean with him. It was from the stalker, who had still never given her his name.

I find it stunning just how dense the press can be at times, Carla. Even you. I would have thought you would have suspected something was afoot. Once again, you disappoint me. I don’t like being disappointed.

So here is something I think will interest you. Tess Delaney and Garrett Thorne were not on the premises last night. They sneaked out the back to spend the night in the lap of luxury over at big brother’s mansion. I know this because I saw them there. I know this because I watched them fucking like goats in the field behind Ellison Thorne’s estate. While they were supposed to be watching the stars, I was watching them from the woods. I was so close I could hear them breathing, so close I could smell their rut.

Carla, dear, I was so close to Tess, I could have slit her throat, so close I could have snapped her neck. And she knew I was there, oh, she knew it. I made sure she did. But she couldn’t see me, couldn’t touch me. She could only speculate as to what I would do while Garrett Thorne stumbled around in the thicket like a madman looking for me. Ask them about it when they return, Carla. Ask them. Of course Garrett’s powerful brother called in security, but I was back home having a midnight snack by the time they could manage more than a cursory search. Ask them, Carla. I think it won’t be much longer until they’ll have to admit Tess is being stalked, that Tess Delaney is in serious danger. Make no mistake, Carla, Tess’s life is mine for the taking. And it won’t be long. Not long at all now. Oh, and if you really want to get the jump on the rest of your Neanderthal colleagues, wait for the frightened couple in the back yard. They should be home any time now. I’m sure the limo that just left the property is our happy couple.

The back yard, Carla. Wait for them there. And don’t disappoint me again.

It took her a second to steady herself, a second to stop feeling like she might throw up the maple bars she’d just eaten. She was just beginning to get the shakes under control, when her editor called.

‘Thorne is about to make a press statement without Tess.’ He didn’t bother to say hello. ‘Strange, really. It was Tess’s publicist, Bachman, who called it in. I don’t know what the hell this is all about, Flannery, but it sounded pretty damned important. Get what you can and make it good.’

He cut the connection just as a red Ford Explorer pulled up in front of the house. It was a rental, Carla could tell, and the man who got out was Tess’s publicist, Donald Bachman. He was a tall California blond who looked as though he might have been a surfer in his younger days, but he cleaned up all nice and Wall Streety.

She grabbed her Dictaphone and a pad and pen and shoved her iPhone in her pocket. Then, as an afterthought, grabbed the big golf umbrella her father had also dropped off this morning and headed into the downpour. Reporters were already beginning to gather near the front porch of Garrett Thorne’s house.

‘Mr. Bachman.’ Mike Pittman stuck his Dictaphone in the man’s face. ‘Can you tell us what’s happening? Do you know why Thorne wants to speak to the press?’

Bachman offered only a hint of a smile. ‘Whatever Garrett Thorne has to say you’ll all hear shortly. Now, if you’ll excuse me.’ He shoved his way onto the front step and rang the bell.

As the door opened just enough for him to get inside, cameras flashed and, for a second, all eyes strained for a glimpse of the inner sanctum, the place that had gripped them all for the past three days. Carla wondered what the hell was going on.

Inside, Garrett paced the floor like a caged lion. For a long moment, Don stood dripping on the carpet and stared. ‘I don’t need your help.’ Garrett said.

‘Yes, you do,’ Don said. ‘Who the hell is going to believe that you’re Tess Delaney if I’m not there to back you up? They’ll laugh you off the porch, if they don’t crucify you first.’ He looked around. ‘Kay’s not here?’

Garrett shook his head. ‘After all that’s happened, what do you think? She’s with Ellis and Dee.’

Don slipped out of his wet jacket and hung it on the pegs by the door. ‘How did you manage that?’

‘I sneaked out before she woke up. How do you think I managed it? The woman’s exhausted even if she won’t admit it.’

Garrett ran a hand through his hair and returned to the living room without inviting Don, but Don followed.

‘Garrett, are you sure you want to do this?’ Don sat down next to him on the sofa. ‘I mean this will, no doubt, send book sales still higher than they already are, and it’ll be a media circus deluxe that we can make serious mileage off PR-wise, but I’m not stupid. I know this isn’t what you want. And I know why you’re doing it. I just don’t know that it’ll help.’

‘Goddamn it, Don, I have to do something!’ Garrett slammed his hand against the coffee table, causing the man to jump. ‘I got her into this mess. I have to get her out, so I’m coming clean, and I’m firing her. Then when the press is gone, I’m going to hogtie her and take her somewhere far away from here.’

‘You’re assuming she’ll go. And that without even talking to K. Ryde, and ultimately he is her boss.’

Garrett bit his tongue to keep from telling Don the truth, but it was Tess he was outing, not Kendra. ‘It’s still my choice to make. I let you bring the Ryde Agency into this, and I’m now terminating their services.’

For a second, Don studied him as though he might find something hidden in Garrett’s behavior, but Garrett had pretty much always been above board with his publicist. That’s why their relationship had worked. Then he spoke carefully. ‘Perhaps you should let me take Kay away from here. I’ve got lots of contacts and I’ll see that she’s kept safe.’

Garrett held his gaze. ‘Don, I’m sleeping with her.’ He rushed on before the man had a chance to respond. ‘It’s a complication neither of us needed, as she frequently reminds me, but you need to know that if anyone takes her anywhere it’ll be me.’

Don dropped his gaze to his hands folded in his lap and nodded slowly. ‘Not that I didn’t suspect.’ He looked back up at Garrett. ‘You love her, don’t you?’

The words hit Garrett like a sharp knife in the middle of his chest and suddenly he missed Kendra Davis with every fiber of his being, suddenly he wished desperately that he had told her just that last night when he made love to her, when things were raw and open and she was vulnerable like he’d never seen her before. ‘Yes,’ he replied, feeling his heart hammering its way through the word. ‘Yes, I love her, Don.’

‘Thought so,’ the man said. ‘Well, then, we should probably get this over with, because Kay Lake doesn’t seem the type to be fooled for long, and I’m betting if your brother and his fiancée aren’t willing to tie her up and lock her away, she’ll be here in a little while and she’ll be pretty damned pissed at you.’

Garrett closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he squared his shoulders and stood. ‘All right. Let’s do it.’

‘I can do it for you, if you want me to,’ Don said, his eyes still locked on Garrett as though he didn’t really trust him to do what had to be done. ‘Might make it easier.’

Garrett shook his head. ‘No. It won’t. Nothing will make it easier but the knowing that it might help keep Kendra safe.’

Don raised an eyebrow. ‘Kendra?’

‘Never mind, OK? Let’s just do it.’

Carla stood under the large umbrella, waiting in the downpour like the rest of the press. She could feel the skin along the back of her neck prickle. He could be watching her – the stalker. Jesus, he could be watching her! He certainly never seemed to miss anything. She half expected to get an enraged text from him any minute demanding to know why she hadn’t followed his advice, why she hadn’t gone around to the back yard. But she was a journalist first, and if Garrett Thorne was going to give an interview without Tess by his side, and if Tess’s PR person had shown up, then there must be something major kicking off. She needed to know what Thorne had to say.

Next to her, Mike Pittman’s iPhone buzzed with an incoming text and she nearly jumped out of her skin. Jesus, Tess’s stalker had done a number on her. Had he really been lurking in the woods behind Ellison Thorne’s mansion last night? There was no way of knowing without questioning Garrett or Tess. Not for the first time she wondered if maybe that’s exactly what she should do.

The front door of the house opened and Carla forced her attention front and center as Garrett Thorne stepped onto the porch next to Tess’s publicist, Don Bachman. As dapper as Don looked, Garrett looked pretty poorly slept with. Were he and Tess breaking up? If what the stalker said was true, Tess could be on a flight to anywhere by now. There was a muttering among the soggy press and everyone pushed forward to get closer.

Garrett Thorne stepped to the railing around the edge of the porch, and stood just out of the assault of the rain. For a second he closed his eyes, and Carla was afraid for him. He didn’t seem well. He seemed like wherever he was, it wasn’t a good place to be. Then he hauled a deep breath into his chest, cleared his throat, and suddenly everything went silent except for the pattering of rain against the roof and against the tops of the umbrellas. ‘I’m sorry to bring you all out into the weather,’ Thorne said, ‘but I promise what I have to say won’t take long.’

Don Bachman leaned forward and spoke quietly in Garrett Thorne’s ear, and no matter how everyone in the press held their breath, there was no making out what was said. Thorne shook his head and took another step forward until he was leaning out over the rail of the porch, oblivious to the rain.