Falling Awake(43)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

“But you lived,” she said quietly. “And everything went wrong for Scargill.” She reached up and removed her own dark glasses. Her dreamer’s eyes were as bright and magnetic as the light on the bay. “Under the circumstances, I’d say you’ve got a right to be obsessed until proven otherwise.”

He started to breathe again. “Thanks, I needed that.”

“Hey, we extreme dreamers have to stick together.”

She said the words easily, as if it was only natural that the two of them should be bound together somehow, just because they were Level Fives. Probably would have been happy to form an alliance with any other extreme dreamer. He reminded himself once again that maybe that was all that was going on here.

She had said it herself, yesterday, he thought. She’d been working in the dark for her entire life, never had a chance to meet or talk to another Level Five, let alone go to bed with one. She was curious. Try to keep some perspective here.

Nevertheless, in spite of all the caveats and warnings he gave himself, he couldn’t resist the surge of need and desire that swept through him. Nothing wrong with satisfying a lady’s curiosity.

“What do we do next?” she asked with the boundless enthusiasm of the amateur sleuth. “I can’t wait to get started.”

He stifled a groan. Amateurs were always problematic. They made mistakes. They got carried away. They did things that could get them killed. Priority One here was to keep his daring little Tango Dancer safe.

“I’m thinking that there are a couple of places to start looking for answers,” he said cautiously. “It might be useful if you called a few people back at the Center for Sleep Research and find out if there’s any in-house gossip going around about Gavin Hardy. No one will think it strange if you ask some questions. After all, Gavin was on his way to see you when he was run down. Naturally you’re concerned and curious.”

“Okay, I can do that.” She looked pensive. “I’ll start with Ken Payne. I’ve been meaning to get in touch with him, anyway.”

He wondered if Ken Payne was an old boyfriend. Sometimes it was better not to ask. “Fine.”

“What else?”

He reflected for a moment, trying to come up with safe jobs for her. “Might be worth taking a look at those papers and notes that Belvedere’s lawyer sent to you.”

She made a face. “I think there’s about three decades’ worth of research in those boxes.”

“We’ll start with the most recent files and work back.”

“Makes sense,” she agreed. “We can start this evening.”

Her eager excitement was almost infectious. He had to remind himself that he was a jaded old pro with a dangerous obsession about a dead guy.

“Okay,” he said.

She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got to run off to a class. Why don’t you come to my place for dinner? I’ll make my phone calls and we can start work on Belvedere’s research together.”

Nothing personal, he chanted silently. Nothing personal. Just dinner and some research files.

“Sounds like a plan,” he said.

20

sphinx, the world as we know it has just shifted yet again beneath our feet,” Isabel announced at five o’clock that afternoon. “I can tell for sure that, whatever else was going through Ellis’s mind last night when he kissed me, he is definitely all business now.”

Unfazed by this news, Sphinx heaved his bulk up onto the faded cushion of the chair in front of the window. He folded himself into a large, furry bundle and went into Zen mode.

“For the moment, at least, he is one hundred percent focused on finding Vincent Scargill.” She set the heavy grocery bags down on the granite counter that divided the kitchen and living area. “Sadly, I’m afraid that having hot sex with me is no longer at the top of his to-do list.”

Sphinx moved his tail restlessly. Maybe he was bored with the conversation. More likely the topic of human sex embarrassed him, she thought.

“The thing is, if I want to impress him, I’ve got to be just as cool and professional as he is.” She removed the plum tomatoes from the grocery sack and set them on the counter. “I want him to take me seriously. No more batting my eyelashes and showing a lot of thigh. When a man is concentrating on catching a bad guy, he’s not going to be interested in romance. That comes later. Maybe. I hope.”

The throaty rumble of the Maserati’s high-powered engine sounded outside in the street. Sphinx pricked his ears.

Isabel’s pulse kicked into high gear. “Oh, my gosh, he’s here already.”

Hastily she yanked the remaining items—a log of goat cheese, two large bunches of fresh spinach and a package of frozen, uncooked puff pastry—out of the sack.

Sphinx bestirred himself to get down from the chair and amble toward the front hall. Obviously he had already learned to recognize the sound of Ellis’s car.

“I’m not trying to impress him with my cooking,” she assured the cat, pulling the bottle of hideously expensive California cabernet out of the sack. “A man on a mission isn’t going to pay much attention to food. This is just simple fare. I would have made a tomato-and-goat-cheese tart and fixed a lovely spinach salad tonight regardless of whether or not I was expecting a man for dinner.” She froze, assailed by a sudden wave of horrified doubt. “Oh, jeez, that’s not real macho food, is it? What was I thinking? I should have bought some salmon and grilled it with asparagus and maybe some sourdough bread. I should have done potatoes. Men like potatoes. Oh, jeez. I’m making a goat cheese tart. This is a disaster, Sphinx.”

The knock on the front door interrupted her in mid–panic attack. Pull yourself together. You’re a professional. You have got to be cool, woman.

She made herself walk to the front door and fling it open. Sphinx padded outside to greet Ellis, who was coming up the steps with a briefcase that looked as Italian and as expensive as the Maserati.

He halted in front of her, politely quizzical. “Something wrong?”

Wrong? What could be wrong? The man of her dreams was standing right in front of her and she was in a state of sheer, unadulterated anxiety because she was going to fix a tomato-and-goat-cheese tart with puff pastry, for Pete’s sake, instead of something manly like grilled salmon and potatoes.

“No, of course not,” she said, pleased with the blithe, breezy way it came out. “Come on in. I’ll open the wine. We can talk about our plans while I fix dinner.”