Tasting Fear (20 page)

“Uh, yes,” Nell said. “Why do you ask?”

“You wouldn’t believe some of the weirdos who have been coming in. You look relatively normal, but you never can tell. I’ll tell Duncan you’re here.” He pushed a button. “Duncan, I’ve got another poet for you.” He listened, hung up. “I’ll take you to his office. Follow me.”

Nell followed, waited as he knocked. “Come in,” a deep voice said.

The receptionist gestured for her to walk in first. The smile on her face froze as she saw the man who stood up to greet her.

It was the black-haired man.

N
ell’s mouth went dry. He stared at her, eyes narrowed. She lowered her outstretched hand. Her stomach was cartwheeling. She pressed her hand against it, and forced herself to drop the hand. It twitched.

“I know you,” he said slowly.

Nell whipped up some instant bravado.

“Strip steak sandwich, soup of the day, apple crumb pie with vanilla ice cream, and lots of coffee,” she responded.

“You’re the waitress.” His tone was accusing. He seemed so much taller. Of course. In the restaurant he’d always been sitting down. “You look different.”

“I’m not wearing an apron.” She resisted the urge to button up her jacket. No need to advertise her self-consciousness. And she’d buttoned her blouse to the top. Hadn’t she?
Do not check. Don’t.

“You guys know each other?” the receptionist said, eyes goggling.

“Derek, that’ll be all,” the guy said.

Derek blinked innocently. “Can I make you guys some coffee?”

“Out, Derek.” Derek sidled out the door. Nell and the black-haired man looked at each other for a long, nervous moment.

“You told me you were an expert in poetry and a doctoral candidate at NYU,” he said.

“And so I am,” Nell replied.

“Excuse me for being personal, but you look far too young.”

She had to change her look. “I’ll be thirty in October,” she said. “Would you like to see my driver’s license?”

“Look, Ms…. uh…”

“D’Onofrio,” she supplied.

“Ms. D’Onofrio, I sympathize if you want to break out of waitressing, but I don’t hire young women just for scenery. If you’re not qualified, don’t waste my time. It would be unpleasant for us both.”

Nell was speechless. The nerve. And he’d just implied that she was, well…pretty enough to be scenery. A compliment hidden inside an insult, or maybe an insult hidden inside a compliment—she wasn’t quite sure which. “I gave you my credentials,” she reminded him. “And I didn’t misrepresent myself in the least. If you’d like to verify my references, feel free. I am more than qualified for the work you’ve described. I’m interested in the flexible hours. It’s difficult to find jobs that fit into a graduate seminar and teaching schedule.”

“If you’re a teacher, why are you waiting tables?” he demanded.

“Because it’s impossible to pay rent on a grad student’s stipend,” she retorted. “I’m a busy person, but I’m the best you’ll find for this project. If you want to interview me, let’s proceed. If you intend to keep insulting me, I’ll go.” She looked him in the eye.

He examined her for another long, harrowing moment, and tapped his pen against his keyboard. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s proceed.”

Nell rummaged in her bag and handed him a résumé. He stared down at it and nodded. “Fine. Pull up a chair.”

Nell looked around. The chairs were piled chest high with computer printouts. The black-haired man got up. His sleeves were rolled up, and the muscles in his forearms bulged appealingly as he grabbed armfuls of paper and dumped them on the floor. “Derek was supposed to recycle this stuff last week,” he growled. “Sit down.”

Nell seated herself gingerly on the edge of the chair.

“We’re creating a cutting-edge computer game. More puzzle solving, less blood and guts. At various points in the game, to move to the next level, the player must decipher a map, break a spell, or defeat some magical creature. Instructions for the tasks will be encoded in texts that are stylistically in keeping with the game. I also hope to use stuff that has actual artistic merit. Good stuff. Do I make myself clear?”

“Quite,” Nell said.

“We’ve been interviewing for weeks, but I’ve been unsatisfied with the pool of applicants. It was my idea to fax colleges and universities. I figured, if I want fancy writing, I should go to the source.”

“Sensible,” Nell commented. “You said last night that you’d never done anything like this before.”

“Right. I’m not a game designer. I design programs with practical applications. The game is my brother Bruce’s baby. My mission is to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid. I’ve invested a fortune in graphic designers and programmers. I can’t afford for this thing to fail.”

“I see,” she murmured.

“Let’s get back to what I want from you,” he said.

“Of course.” The intensity of his gaze made his choice of words seductive. Nell clasped her hands and forced herself to concentrate.

“For example, to move to the second level, the player finds a manuscript that gives him these clues: a silver vial, a scrying pool, and a jeweled dagger. You pour the contents of the vial into the pool to understand where to find the dagger, which leads you to the next level. The labyrinth. Got it?”

“Uh, yes,” Nell said.

“So write something that gives clues, but leaves the player to figure out the details. While alluding to the overall quest of the game.”

“Which is?” Nell inquired.

He shifted restlessly. “To rescue the enchanted princess.” Nell raised an eyebrow. “I know, it’s been done,” he muttered, uncomfortable. “Maybe we’ll come up with something more original later.”

“Stick with the princess,” Nell said. “That’s always a winner. So. A computer game for hopeless romantics. Lovely. Just my cup of tea.”

Duncan tapped his pen impatiently. “There’s nothing romantic about it. It’s for magic and fantasy freaks.”

“You don’t think rescuing a princess is romantic?”

“That isn’t the point,” he snapped. “What can you do with the clues?” He leaned back in his chair and steepled his hands, waiting.

She blinked. “You want me to write something on the spot?”

He nodded. Nell pulled off her glasses and polished them. It was easier to look him in the face when he was blurry. “What type of poetry?” she asked, in her most professorial tone. “Early, mid, or late medieval? Renaissance? Classical antiquity? Homer, or Catullus? Chaucer? Spenser? Sidney? Heroic couplets, like Pope? Or something more, say, Miltonian?” She put her glasses back on, blinking as his fierce, hawklike face came back into focus. Whew. Potent.

He scowled. “How the hell would I know? I don’t know anything about poetry. That’s why you’re here.”

“You don’t have to know anything,” Nell said. “The more clues you give me, the quicker I can structure the piece. I’ll just choose a style arbitrarily for now. A Shakespearean sonnet, for instance.”

He nodded. “Fine. Whatever. Go for it.”

He passed her a notebook and a pen. Nell scribbled down the list of elements: vial, scrying pool, dagger, labyrinth, enchanted princess.

She swiveled her chair so he was out of her line of vision, and let the magic happen. The world and Duncan Burke disappeared as she submerged herself into a state of inward concentration.

Twenty minutes later she turned back. “Take a look.”

He reached for the notebook. “Finished already? Just like that?”

“It’s a familiar exercise. I make my students do it all the time. The best way to study a poet’s style is from the inside out.”

He read the page she’d passed him, looked at her for a long moment, read it again, pen tapping ceaselessly against the keyboard.

“You want the job?” he asked.

The seductively pretty waitress had the wiles of an Arab street merchant when it came to bargaining. Duncan escorted her grimly to the door after finally agreeing to pay far more than he’d anticipated. She had a high opinion of how much her time and skill were worth. He admired that in a person, if it was backed up by content. Which it was, in her case. She was good. High-quality production, under pressure, while he watched. That was the kind of focused, high-octane energy he liked to infuse into his projects. It was expensive, but it was worth it.

Except for one little thing. Since lunch, he’d been considering asking the cute Sunset Grill waitress out, and this heated fantasy had made his afternoon brighter than it had been for a long time. Now his succulent waitress had morphed into a key employee.

That scenario was no longer feasible. And that sucked.

Derek had the poor judgment to approach him at that moment, his eyes goggling wildly. “So, Duncan, did you hire her, or what?”

“Derek,” Duncan said with deceptive calm, “remember when I told you to put the printouts in my office into the recycling bin?”

“Uh,” Derek mumbled uncomfortably.

“Put the phones on voice mail, Derek, and do it.
Now.
”

Derek scurried away. Duncan scowled out the window. What the hell was his sloe-eyed waitress doing being a poetry professor, anyhow? How fucking improbable was that? She’d ignored him while she was writing her piece, giving him the perfect opportunity to study the sensual shape of her full lips. He’d wanted to tug on one of those fuzzy dark ringlets, watch it spring back up into shape. Her pinup-girl curviness made his hands clench with the urge to handle her.

It had been a very long time. He’d gotten good at sublimating the need for sex. Dealing with women was so exhausting. The constant shrill demands, the fuckups he didn’t comprehend or even remember having committed. The constant demands for him to reveal feelings he didn’t feel. Talk of love that always gave him acid stomach. Their endless, perennial need to know “where this relationship is going.”

Which was usually straight to hell.

He didn’t have the stomach to lie to them. He just couldn’t pretend. He got the urge for sex as often as the next guy, but he’d learned to shove it under the rug. Exercise, hard work, cold showers, and as a last resort, his own right hand. But every now and then, it reared up, tossed the rug aside, and bit him in the ass. Hard.

That was his problem, he thought. Today in the restaurant, when she provoked him, the urge had surged. A wild beast, rattling the bars of his cage. His dick had been hard on and off all afternoon.

He grabbed his jacket. He needed air. He had more business to attend to, but the business never ended. He could keep himself busy until midnight or beyond, and usually did. But not tonight.

Maybe he’d go knock around a punching bag in the gym. He’d already spent two hours there that morning, from five to seven, but he needed to unload some excess energy before he did something extremely stupid.

He ground his teeth going down in the elevator. He had a personal code.
Don’t fuck the employees
was high on the list of key rules. He might as well just shoot himself in the head right off the bat rather than pull a stunt like that. He’d save himself a lot of time and trouble.

He’d been working out the perfect scenario in his head before she walked in with her goddamn four-page résumé. A secret affair with a woman too young to be seriously husband hunting. A nubile girl who would be content with nights of pounding sex, not a whole lot of conversation, some costly gifts from time to time. Someone who had no connection with his family, professional or social life. No one would meet her, or know about her. She would meet no one. She’d be all his.

A few nights a week, a car service would bring her to his condo, where he would rip her clothes off and make her come screaming until she’d forgotten her own name. Then, coffee and a croissant, and the car service would take her away again. He could shower and get back to work. Refreshed and restored.

He loved sex, under carefully controlled conditions, with no repercussions, no regrets. Hard conditions to create.

So much for his scenario. This poetry professor was not that girl. Twenty-nine was plenty old enough to be husband hungry, and it was clear that she was complicated, demanding, too smart for her own good.

This one would not be content to be a fuck buddy. She’d want to converse. She would insist on connecting with him, on levels that he didn’t even know existed. The idea made his head ache. He preferred to know in advance what he would eat for lunch. Much less did he want uncertainty when it came to sex.

The evening air was cool; the street was wet with rain. Traffic blared from the downtown avenues. He picked a direction at random as his internal monologue droned on. It wouldn’t be much of an issue, he lectured himself. She’d be working much more closely with his younger brother than with him. Bruce. The charming, flirtatious womanizer. They’d scheduled a meeting with Bruce the following evening to discuss the project. Bruce was going to lick his chops when he saw her.

That thought, unaccountably, irritated the living shit out of him.

He rounded the corner onto Eighth Avenue, stopped, and retreated into the shadow of a restaurant awning. Nell stood at the curb just a few yards away, arm lifted high as she tried to flag down a cab. It swept on by. The river of yellow cabs were all taken. She kept trying. After each attempt, she looked around at all the people who passed her.

He was good at reading body language in a glance. He’d served for years as an NSA field agent abroad, gathering intelligence. He recognized all the tiny indicators of stress that her body betrayed.

She was afraid of something.

Curiosity burned inside him. What could a girl like her possibly have to be afraid of? An asshole ex? That was a classic.

He could rip the fucker’s throat out for her, if she wanted him to.

The thought took him by surprise. It had sneaked up on him while he stared at the way that button strained ever so slightly over the swell of her tits. How sooty and long her lashes were. The fey upward tilt to her eyes, her brows. Hers was not a glossy magazine sort of pretty, and that was fine. He’d never gone for the hollow-cheeked, toothpick-legs look. He liked a nice round ass, that deep inward curve at her waist that cried out for the grip of his hands. That Mediterranean milkmaid look: creamy skin, rosy cheeks, bouncing tits. Dimpled knees.

He checked out her knees, but her dowdy skirt was just a shade too long to ascertain the dimple situation.

She finally noticed him lurking and shrank in on herself, clutching her blazer closed. So. She felt the animal rattling its cage, after he had tried so hard to play it cool. “Looking for a cab?” he asked.

“Not having much luck,” she murmured. Her gaze skittered around shyly. “It’s hard when it’s raining.”

He gazed at her, unable to stop himself. Fuck all, he’d been through this. He’d drawn his conclusions.
Don’t think with your prick.