Читать книгу Beautiful Beast - Dani Sinclair - Страница 9

Gabe watched as Cassiopia’s shocked gaze traveled the length of his scar before absorbing the rest of him. Well, his features hadn’t been all that great even before the explosion. The bright red puckering of the scar had faded to white over time, but he knew its impact was still strong on unsuspecting people.

“Wha-what are you doing here?” she managed to gasp.

He arched his eyebrows pointedly and remained silent.

Cassiopia closed her eyes and groaned. “I knew I was going to get caught.” She opened her eyes and grimaced. “I guess I should be glad you aren’t a mad rapist.”

He waited, keeping his expression blank, still reluctantly amused by her forced attempt at humor.

“You aren’t, are you?”

“Which? Mad, or a rapist?”

“I know you aren’t a rapist.”

He raised his eyebrows. Color singed her cheeks but she pressed forward boldly.

“How mad are you?”

He came away from the door in a motion that brought him across the room in three long strides. Cassiopia took an inadvertent step back, stopping when her heel bumped the base of the nearest crouching lion.

“What makes you so sure I’m not a rapist?”

The silky tone of his words charged the air. Her lips parted without sound while her gaze fastened on his scar once more. She inhaled raggedly.

“Don’t be absurd.”

Her voice cracked, denying the false calm she was trying to project.

“Are you going to call the police?”

He let his expression darken, then crowded her deliberately, coming to a stop when he was inches from her face.

“Now why would I want to do that? The last thing a mad rapist wants is the police,” he told her with silken menace.

Cassy refused to look away. “That isn’t funny.”

“Neither is breaking and entering.”

She dropped her gaze. Gabe sensed it lingering on the scarred backs of his hands and made no effort to conceal the puckered skin. Let her look her fill. There were more scars than these, covered by his clothing.

A piece of burning siding had landed on him in the explosion nearly four years ago. He’d been unconscious, and only the fast action of a neighbor had kept him from burning to death. Any number of times he’d thought the man hadn’t done him any favors.

Gabe was close enough to smell a bewitchingly light scent that wasn’t some cloying perfume, but was utterly female. He tried to ignore that and focused on the play of color in her hair. Cassiopia Richards was…distracting.

Amazingly, there was neither pity nor horror in her expression when she lifted her eyes. “You left me no choice,” she told him with surprising fierceness. “You could have talked to me when I called you yesterday.”

“I did.”

Her lips thinned. “You told me to take a hike.”

“I’m certain I was more polite than that.”

“Stop playing games.”

That stirred his anger once more. “I’ve said all I have to say on the subject of what happened four years ago. I’m not interested in repeating myself.”

“Beacher claims you were an innocent victim, too.”

Beacher was a fool. His friend was convinced Cassiopia knew something that would help them discover what Powell Richards had done with the missing toxin so he refused to give up his pursuit of her.

As Beacher had pointed out, “That toxin’s somewhere and we’re going to find it and prove we had nothing to do with what happened.”

Gabe believed talking with Cassiopia was a waste of time. She’d been away at school when her father had taken the toxin from under Gabe’s nose and gotten himself killed. And she’d scored an indelible impression on him that day in the hospital. She was too young, too passionate and obviously too impulsive to be of any help to them.

She summoned up a glare as if he’d spoken his thoughts aloud. “I’m leaving.”

“You just got here.”

Not many people could hold his gaze when he was in a temper. Given his overall size and his scars, he’d perfected the art of intimidation, but only the quickening leap of the pulse in her neck told him she wasn’t as immune as she’d like him to believe.

Gabe stepped back. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Upstairs.”

The widening of those soft gray eyes brought a sudden vision of his bedroom and the two of them intertwined on twisted sheets. It had been a long time since he’d thought about sex and he banished the image instantly. But she seemed to be tuning in to his thoughts.

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

This time anxiety threaded her voice.

“You’d rather remain here?”

“Yes. Go ahead and call the police. I’d welcome them.”

The bluster was gone. He’d finally succeeded in frightening her. It made him feel oddly ashamed.

“To the kitchen, Cassiopia,” he told her more gently. “To talk. I may be mad—God knows I’ve been called worse—but I’m no rapist.”

He stepped back even farther, giving her space. “Come or stay.”

Her chin lifted in defiance. “I’ll stay.”

“Fine. But you should know that the way you entered is the only way out.”

He crossed to the door and waited. She wasn’t beautiful in the strictest sense of the word, but he’d definitely call her attractive. That rich brown hair with its hints of gold framed an oval face with high, prominent cheekbones and a long, graceful neck. Under other circumstances…

Who was he kidding? Under other circumstances she’d either take one look at his face and run the other way or cringe in pity. She faced him because she had no choice.

CASSY SOUGHT ANOTHER OPTION and realized there wasn’t one. She was not going to cringe like a mouse even if this beast did have her well and truly trapped. She hated feeling afraid. She was in the wrong, but if he’d intended to kill her he’d have done it down here, not upstairs.

With a brief, accepting nod she squared her shoulders and marched over to him.

“Do not call me Cassiopia,” she told him, pointing a plastic encased finger at his chest.

“Do you prefer Ms. Richards, or Dr. Richards?”

If he knew she was a Ph.D., he also knew she was a chemical engineer. She brushed aside Gabriel’s question with a wave of her covered hand. “I go by Cassy.”

He scowled, staring at her hand. “What are those things?”

Heat suffused her cheeks. Hastily, she pulled off the silly plastic shapes, feeling foolish.

“They come with packages of inexpensive hair dye.”

“Brown isn’t your natural color?”

“Of course it is! The hair dye belonged to my roommate.”

“So you steal from others besides me.”

“Betsy must have forgotten about it. And I didn’t steal anything!”

He stilled so completely he could have been cast in bronze like the figurines around them. Shaken but refusing to give in to the alarm that charged every molecule of her body, Cassy forced herself to meet whatever retribution he demanded with her head high.

His stillness was so profound it was painful. Abruptly, he turned away.

“What are you going to do?” she demanded as another ripple of fear skated down her spine.

“Probably continue calling you Cassiopia. Cassy doesn’t suit you at all.”

He flicked off the light, plunging them into darkness.

“Hey!” Before panic could overwhelm her, light winked on at the end of the hall. There was nothing to do except follow, unless she wanted to stay in his basement all night.

The third step from the bottom made no sound for him, yet it squawked like a spitting cat the moment she set her foot on it. Was he even human?

Cassy shuddered. That horrible scar said he was all too human. He must have been an attractive man once. Actually, despite the scar, he wouldn’t be bad-looking now if he’d stop scowling all the time. If nothing else, his aura of self-assured power commanded attention.

Cassy wanted to be glad he’d suffered for what he’d done, but Beacher had half convinced her otherwise. What if he were innocent? Could a man who could create such incredible beauty also destroy with such utter ruthlessness?

She’d been so enraged that day at the hospital she’d barely noticed Gabriel as a person. She’d needed a focus for her grief and rage and she’d taken it out on him, ignoring the fact that he’d been swaddled in bandages and attached to wires, tubes and monitors. Wrapped in her own emotions, she’d snuck inside his hospital room without a thought for anything except confronting the man responsible for her father’s horrible death.

The memory of being pulled away while she ranted still shamed her. Even then his gaze had been dark and troubling. She’d had plenty of time to think about things since then. Letting go of her anger had been hard, but Beacher had pressed her to listen to him until he finally persuaded her to see that they might have been victims, too.

Gabriel hadn’t hurt her just now, and he hadn’t called the police. Of course he might be planning to call when they got upstairs, but either he and Beacher were guilty of murder and treason, or they’d been framed, as she was sure her father had been framed.

Had Beacher been playing both of them? Was he even now on his way out of the country with the deadly toxin?

Gabriel flipped on the kitchen light and shrugged out of his black cloth jacket, draping it neatly over the back of one of the two chairs at the tiny kitchen table. The black turtleneck hugged his shoulders and well-defined torso. He was lean and fit and scary in every way.

She’d made it a point to learn as much as she could about both men after Beacher began pestering her. Gabriel seldom left the small house he’d purchased after leaving the military on disability. He never socialized. Beacher was his only real friend as far as she could determine. The two had worked together at the army base, though their friendship dated back several years to when they were neighbors growing up. Gabriel had gone to a military academy. Beacher had gone to college and then joined a private security company. They both ended up working at the same military base and immediately resumed their friendship.

“Sit,” Gabriel ordered without turning around. He crossed to the sink and began washing his hands.

“Am I supposed to bark now and wag my tail?”

He slanted her a startled glance. Unexpected humor lightened his dark-eyed stare.

“Skip the bark.” And he turned back to the sink.

Outraged, Cassy wished she dared to toss something at him, but the room was immaculately clean. Even if she’d really wanted to, there wasn’t a single loose object on the white countertop or the tiny kitchen table. Pale yellow walls and white cabinets did what they could to lighten the space, but it was so small there was barely room to turn around. Cassy would have guessed the kitchen was never used until he dried his hands and began opening cupboards.

Like the rest of the house, the cupboards were neat and orderly and filled with the sort of stuff she saw in her married friends’ kitchens. The man even had a rack of spices. She thought of her own empty cupboards and shook her head. She never cooked if she could avoid it.

Gabriel set an electric kettle to boil. With fluid, economical motions that would have suited a laboratory, he removed two large brown mugs and a pair of small, matching plates. An odd-looking teapot in the shape of a dragon joined the rest on the pristine counter.

“What are you doing?”

He didn’t spare her a glance. “Brewing tea.”

“Tea?”

She’d broken into his house and he was making her tea? What was going on here? Was he stalling for some reason?

“You don’t like tea?”

“Mostly I drink it iced.”

He made a face and pulled a small cheesecake from a well-stocked refrigerator. Slicing two perfect wedges, he transferred them to the plates without a wasted motion.

“Sit down, Cassiopia.”

She gritted her teeth. “I’d rather stand.”

His granite face bore no expression as he turned. Hooded eyes focused on her with an unblinking stare that was totally unnerving. Set against the harsh planes of his face, she decided they weren’t the tawny eyes of a lion but dark ebony wells of silent turbulence. Gabriel had seen too much of the unpleasant side of life. The impression of barely leashed power lent him a quiet menace that made her tremble. No one looked less like a sculptor.

Cassy knew sculpting had been part of his physical therapy after he was injured, but did he realize what a talent he had? She was pretty sure most people studied for years before they could create the sort of breathtaking beauty he’d captured in the pieces downstairs.

“Do you want to talk or not?” he asked in that deceptively soft voice.

Not. When he gazed at her like that she wanted to run far and fast. Too bad that wasn’t an option.

“Yes.”

He looked from her to the table without another word.

Cassy conceded defeat. She pulled out the chair that didn’t hold his jacket and sat down, glad for the warmth of her own lightweight jacket even though the house itself wasn’t cold.

Immediately, he turned back to the counter and measured tea leaves as if scientific precision was called for. Steam drifted from the spout of the dragon, shaped to be its mouth.

Great. Even his teapot breathed smoke. She might be better off if he simply called the police.

Opening a drawer, he withdrew two plain blue place mats and set them on the table. He added forks, spoons and cloth napkins without a word.

His black turtleneck and dark jeans were spotted by stains of what appeared to be mud. However, his hands, including his fingernails, were scrupulously clean. Cassy noticed that his fingers and palms weren’t burnt like the backs of his hands.

“LEMON?”

Cassiopia jumped. “What?”

“Would you like lemon with your tea?”

Gabe pronounced each word with deliberate care. She raised her chin.

“No, thank you. Just sugar.”

He withdrew a glass sugar bowl from another cupboard and set it on the table.

“Have you had time to come up with a plausible explanation yet?”

She inhaled sharply. Obviously, she hadn’t.

“You weren’t supposed to be home.”

“Oh?”

“You usually go to your gym at this hour.”

“Should I feel flattered that you’ve been spying on me?”

Gabe set a slice of cheesecake and a cup in front of her and settled in the opposite chair. Instantly, the small room seemed to shrink even further. This had been a bad idea. He did not want to find her attractive.

“Your bad luck,” he continued. “I took a walk tonight, instead.”

“Isn’t it just?”

Her blush told him she hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

“What did you expect to find in my basement?”

“Not those incredible sculptures.”

She was stalling.

“I didn’t realize you were so gifted.” The color in her cheeks deepened. She ducked her head and picked up her fork without looking at him.

“Gifted?”

That jerked her face up. “You’re extremely talented and you know it.”

He inclined his head in acceptance.

CASSY WATCHED HIM fork up a bite of cheesecake. He slid the morsel from his fork to his mouth and chewed with pleasure. She had never realized how sexy eating could be.

She quickly banished the inappropriate thought. There was nothing sexy about Gabriel Lowe. Okay, there was, but he was more dangerous than he was appealing and she’d do well to keep that in mind. Except, surely she didn’t have to be intimidated by a man who could create such sensitive works of art.

“Your sculptures look like something in a museum,” she told him honestly. “You shouldn’t be hiding them away in your basement.”

Too late, she clamped her lips shut. What was she doing, lecturing the man?

“I’m flattered.” He poured them both a cup of tea without expression.

Gabriel might not be crouching like the lifelike set of lions on his floor downstairs, but the resemblance was still uncanny. Like his metal counterparts, he, too, seemed to be waiting to pounce. Yet she couldn’t dismiss the idea that he was silently laughing at her.

“Why are you here, Cassiopia?”

She swallowed hastily. “I want what Beacher Coyle gave you.”

He stilled. Though the kitchen lights were on, an ominous darkness seemed to fill the room.

“Is that right?”

The mildness of his tone was a clear rattle of warning. She hoped her quaking was all on the inside.

“We’re engaged to be married.”

A mistake. She knew it the moment the blurted words were past her lips. She’d never been any good at lying. Why hadn’t she thought ahead, prepared something to tell him?

His glance went to where her left hand lay clenched at the edge of the table. “He never mentioned a fiancée.”

She wanted to look away but couldn’t. Her gaze riveted on that terrible scar. Gabriel and Beacher were close friends. Of course he knew she was lying, but she had no choice now but to keep going or admit the truth.

“We haven’t made a formal announcement yet.”

If only she’d had a few minutes to come up with something better than a phony engagement.

“He hasn’t bought you a ring yet, either.”

Her mouth went dry. “No.”

“Do you know the password?”

Cold, then heat, flooded her. Was he serious? He looked serious.

“You’re making that up!”

She was certain he’d made it up, but his expression never altered. Gabriel waited. Unnerved, she tried to think of something plausible to say and failed.

“Why would he tell you to sneak in through a window?”

“He didn’t. But I could hardly call you again and ask for an invitation, now could I?”

Dropping her fork to the plate with a clatter, she glared at him, defying him to contradict her. “You would have hung up on me again.”

Was that the faintest trace of a curve to his lips?

“Actually, I wouldn’t have answered your call at all,” he told her, unperturbed.

He reached for his tea cup and took a swallow. “Why didn’t Beacher come himself?”

Danger. This lion was waiting to pounce and tear her to shreds. She took a breath to steady her nerves.

“He couldn’t.”

“Why?”

Her heart raced. He was toying with her, she was almost certain of it. “I think he’s in some sort of trouble.”

“You think.”

She held his gaze. “Just give me what he gave you.”

“Let’s both go to see him.”

“No!”

“No?”

His misleadingly docile tone sent every nerve in her body clanging in alarm. She’d made a hash of everything.

Gabriel leaned back in his chair with an inscrutable expression, but she knew she’d lost. If Beacher had found the toxin and given it to him he wasn’t going to tell her.

He bared his teeth. It was not a humorous smile.

“Want to try again?”

“You don’t believe me!”

His mocking expression was confirmation.

Defeat lay like bitter ashes in her mouth. Everyone seemed to agree that her father had taken the toxin and all the research from the lab itself, even though he had no motive. The working theory was that he’d conspired with Gabriel, and possibly Beacher, to steal the toxin and sell it to the highest bidder.

The authorities further decided that Gabriel had double-crossed her father and set charges to kill him and destroy any evidence. They believed her father had come home unexpectedly and set off the explosions before Gabriel could get away. There was no other explanation as to why Gabriel had been at the house that day. As far as she knew, he’d never even offered one.

She wasn’t sure where Beacher fit into this scenario, but there were a lot of things no one was telling her. She only knew the consensus was that the three men had conspired to steal the missing toxin and all the research that accompanied it. She assumed the authorities believed Gabriel and Beacher were simply waiting for the furor to die down to sell what they’d stolen. But it never had. The investigation had stayed as active as if the theft had happened yesterday. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d been questioned.

“Beacher didn’t send you, did he?” Gabriel asked.

“Of course he did.” She tried to sound forceful. He might feel sure she was lying, but until he spoke to Beacher he couldn’t be positive.

He took another bite of cheesecake and leaned back. She would not squirm under that intense stare no matter how much she wanted to. Instead, she focused on a small scar on his neck that his turtleneck didn’t completely cover.

Was he scarred all over? Was that why his fiancée had broken their engagement while he was still in the hospital? Cassy had never spoken with Andrea Fielding, but she’d seen the beautiful lab assistant with Dr. Pheng. Dr. Pheng had sent the toxin to her father in the first place, which wasn’t surprising. They were the top men in their field, friends as well as rivals since they had been graduate students together.

Cassy knew Dr. Pheng and Andrea Fielding had come under tight scrutiny as well. Everyone remotely connected to the toxin had, but only her father and Gabriel had had the opportunity to steal it.

With a sigh, she set down her fork. “Are you going to have me arrested?”

“Arrested?” He seemed to savor the word. “I don’t think there’s any need to have you arrested over some minor damage.”

She ignored the heat in her cheeks once more. “I’ll send you a check for the drapes.”

“And the screen?” he asked blandly.

“Yes, blast it. The screen, too.”

“I think we can come up with a more suitable punishment to fit this crime, don’t you?”

Cassy moistened suddenly dry lips. She was completely alone in a house with a man everyone believed was a criminal and worse. And she’d let down her guard!

“I’d rather be arrested.”

“Do I make you nervous, Cassiopia?”

Did lambs sleep with lions? Of course he made her nervous. If her palms grew any damper she’d drip all over the table, but she’d never give him the satisfaction of admitting as much.

“I’m not afraid of you.”

His dark expression lightened. If he smiled at her now she’d toss her cheesecake at him.

“Good,” he said neutrally and took another sip of tea.

She released the breath she’d been holding. “I’m going to leave.”

“Without what you came for?”

“Are you going to give it to me?”

“No.”

So Beacher had given him something! Or was he toying with her again?

“This is a waste of time.”

“Not precisely. I rarely have visitors. Try the tea. It’s a special blend.”

He was definitely toying with her. “To think I was going to apologize. I can see it would have been a waste of breath.”

The eyebrows arched once more. “For breaking into my house?”

“No! For that day at the hospital.”

Humor vanished in an instant. His jaw hardened.

“Does that mean you no longer believe I murdered your father?”

Cassy wasn’t sure what she believed anymore. The authorities claimed Gabriel had had no opportunity to remove the toxin from the lab alone. Only her father could have done so, and that she would never accept.

Her father had been understandably devastated by the sudden death of his wife only two weeks earlier. So was she, but no amount of grief would have caused her father to compromise his job.

“Did you kill him?” He wouldn’t tell her the truth if he had, but she had to ask.

“No.”

She waited until it became obvious he wasn’t going to elaborate. “That’s all you’re going to say? Just ‘no’?”

“I said all I had to say four years ago,” he told her with deceptive mildness. “Finish your cheesecake.”

Cassy shoved her plate aside. “I am finished.”

His eyes narrowed. He set down his fork with careful deliberation. “Then it’s time for you to leave.”

“You’re going to throw me out?”

“If you won’t go under your own power.”

He’d do it, too. She’d successfully roused the beast. Every instinct told her to get up and go, but she couldn’t. She hadn’t accomplished anything.

“I want what Beacher gave you.”

“We don’t always get what we want, Cassiopia.”

For a millisecond, it was as if she had a clear window into his troubled soul. A lonely beast prowled there. Cassy couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.

He stood in a fluid motion that caught her unprepared.

“When you see him, tell your fiancé I want to talk with him.”

She could have refused to move. She wanted to refuse, but her legs were already drawing her to her feet. The menace in the room was too thick to ignore.

“You’re a real bastard.”

“Is it my turn to call you a name now?”

He didn’t smile.

“Goodbye, Cassiopia. Don’t come here again.”

Seeing no choice, she walked down the hall toward the front door, aware of him at her back close enough to touch. Desperately, she tried to think of something else she could do or say to change the situation, but nothing came to mind.

He opened the door without a word and waited.

“If even one of those vials is opened a lot of innocent people will die. I wonder if even you could live with that.”

Rage flashed across his expression. Cassy stepped onto the stoop, words of apology forming on her lips, but he closed the door in her face.

A chill breeze brushed her skin. Cassy shivered. She couldn’t help thinking Gabriel Lowe was innocent after all.