Intimate Betrayal (21 page)

He carried her directly to his bedroom, elbowed the door
shut behind them, crossed the huge room, and laid her down gently in the middle of his unmade, king-size bed.

She lay still for an instant, her eyes shut, apparently trying to absorb what had happened and where she was. Her entire body
was tense and stiff, but beautiful. The rain had pasted her clothes to her. He could see the rise of her breasts, the flat
of her belly, the beguiling curve of her hips. Her legs were long and well shaped. Her wrists were delicate. Her blond hair,
drenched, looked darker than usual, and strands of it clung to her cheeks and neck and shoulders. She looked helpless and
vulnerable, and he wanted to comfort and soothe her. But not as much as he wanted to take her, conquer her, make her his own.

He knelt beside her on the bed and put his face close to hers. She turned away, but he gripped her chin and turned it back
to him.

With his lips brushing hers he told her, “Annie, I’m going to take off your wet things. Then mine. Then I’m going to make
love to you. Right here, right now, while the storm rages outside.”

She opened her eyes. The expression in them was half dazed, half wild, like that of a forest animal trapped in a hunter’s
beam.

But he held her gaze, and slowly her expression calmed. Her limbs unstiffened and her body relaxed.

“Why?” she whispered.

“Because I can’t stand it anymore.”

She nodded. The look in her eyes now was dreamy and mysterious—eternal womanhood, the creature he could never in a million
years understand. He hadn’t understood Francesea,
and at the moment, Annie seemed even more subtle a mystery.

“Okay,” she said.

That was it.
Okay.
Consent. It wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, but
okay
was good enough.

Annie was beyond surprises now and far beyond fear.
It wasn’t his car,
she was thinking.
It was dark. All those cars look alike. It couldn’t have been his car.

Another part of her was thinking,
I don’t even
care
if it was his car. It doesn’t matter what almost happened, because this is more powerful than that.

He was stripping off her clothes, a little roughly, but efficiently. Her leaden hands tried to help him but he pushed them
away. His were faster, and quickness mattered, quickness
mattered.

A
button on her blouse popped and flew across the room, and then it was open, pushed away to the sides, and his hands were
on her breasts. She sighed as he caressed her, squeezed her, brushed his fingers over the tips of her nipples. Fire arced
between her breasts and sped down to the pit of her belly. He bent his head. His mouth took the nub of one breast and his
tongue darted over it and then he sucked. Annie arched her back and moaned. She felt the slickness between her legs as her
body responded to his.

He felt so familiar. The years washed away. Her body
remembered
him. Remembered and accepted him in a manner that her rational mind never could.

But her rational mind had shut down. She couldn’t hear its
warnings. There are things known in the heart, known in the bone, that the mind has no conception of.

His hands left her for a few moments and she heard him pulling off his shirt, shoes, jeans. While he frantically worked, she
unzipped her skirt and pushed it down over her hips. Her panties, too. His hands came back and tore them away.

He fumbled for something in the drawer beside his bed, and she realized that his mind was operating better than hers, for
despite this onslaught of passion he was protecting her with a condom. Would a man who had just tried to kill her care about
using a condom?

It wasn ’t his car, couldn ’t have been his car.

When he came to her she closed her eyes and simply felt the sensations—skin against skin, muscle against muscle, flesh against
flesh. His arms enveloped her and he rolled them both on their sides. His legs meshed with hers, his knee against her mound,
one hand caressing her back, the other her breasts.

Her hands, in turn, explored his strong arms and shoulders, delighting in the springy feel of sinew smoothed over bone. He
squeezed her nipple hard enough to elicit a gasp, and she could feel his smile against her mouth as he kissed her deeply,
the smile fading as his tongue penetrated and teased and probed.

“Annie,” he murmured as his fingers slipped between her thighs to touch the soft slick petals, so damp, so sensitive. She
moaned and pressed herself against his hand. As he strummed her there she quivered and cried out with the sweet simple pleasure
of it, and the yearning, and the need.

His tongue deep in her mouth, he flipped her onto her back and with his knees pushed her thighs apart. She opened to him gladly,
eagerly. He continued to caress her wickedly
between her thighs, and Annie moved against him, frantic now, desperate. She was climbing toward the peak when he stopped.
She moaned in protest, and he reared up over her and thrust inside her, penetrating her fully with one masterful lunge.

Together, frantic, on fire, they rode out the storm.

No sooner was it over than Annie pushed him away and rolled to the far side of the bed. She sat up, pulling the sheet around
her like a toga. She could feel herself trembling.

“Annie,” he said, moving toward her.

“Don’t touch me!” She leaped from the bed, dragging the sheet with her. Keeping her eyes on him, she backed away until she
came up against the wall.

His face darkened. “You don’t know how it makes me feel to look into my lover’s eyes and see that deep inside her, there’s
a shadow of doubt whether I’m a killer.”

The bitterness in his tone stabbed her in the gut, but she ordered herself to be strong. Even though all it took from him
was a single look, a random touch, to reduce her body to liquid, she had to resist. She had to clear this up. She had to.
Oh, please God, she had to!

“It’s more than a shadow,” she whispered. “Someone tried to kill me. He lured me to this neighborhood, then tried to
run me down with a car. I eluded him—or so I thought. Then I came to you for help. But when you pulled into your driveway,
your car looked identical to the one that had tried to hit me. So I fled.”

His green eyes were burning. “I see. Once a murderer, always a murderer?”

She pulled the sheet more firmly around her. “What about Giuseppe?”

Matt sat up in bed, leaning back against the headboard, unabashedly naked. “What do you mean, ’What about Giuseppe’? I didn’t
even know the man.”

“Francesca did. In fact, she was the one who originally recommended Giuseppe and his fellow craftsmen to me.”

He shrugged. “Francesca knew a lot of people. Very few of them were folks whom I bothered to get to know.”

“Giuseppe and your wife were great friends. He was a sweet man who loved to play paternal admirer to any beautiful woman.
He used to treat my friend Darcy with the same affectionate indulgence that I remember seeing him express with Francesca.”

Matt stared at her as if to say,
So

“He left the country on the same day she died. He was abroad during most of your trial, then he came back, and now he’s dead.
In fact, you might just have been one of the last people to see him alive.”

The hostility level in his eyes intensified. “What the hell are you implying?”

“You say you didn’t know him. But you surely haven’t forgotten that I introduced you to him that afternoon when you came for
your first tour of the cathedral. He died that same night.”

He stood up suddenly, startling her. He strode around his bed and came up close to her—too close. She remembered these intimidating
tactics from long ago—the first business meeting she’d had with him, when Fabrications still existed… before he had refused
to hire her. As always when she remembered, she felt her spine stiffen. She stood her ground. This man would
not
intimidate her again.

“Are you suggesting that I killed him?” he asked in a quiet yet dangerous tone.

“I was just wondering if the police had drawn any conclusions—erroneous ones, of course. I know you have no respect for the
police in this city. They hounded you before, you say, and I wondered if they were hounding you again.”

“Hounded me? Is that what you’d call it? They did an incompetent and lazy investigation of a brutal murder, pinned it on me,
and tried me for my life—and all it sounds like to you is
hounding?”

“If you think about what hounding originally meant, it’s pretty accurate, I guess.”

He touched her arm, and she found that she could not pull away, either from him or from the powerful gleam in his eyes. “And
now? Who’s hounding whom now?” he asked her.

She swallowed. “Look, I just—”

“You’re getting scared, aren’t you? I’m getting too close to you and you’re shying away.”

“That’s not it!”

“What,then? Five minutes ago you were howling out your passion in my arms. Now, suddenly, you’re throwing my wife’s murder
in my face.”

“Actually, I was throwing Giuseppe’s murder in your face,” she said softly.

His hands were on her shoulders now. “And what I don’t understand, dammit, is why?”

Annie remembered Darcy’s theory. “Well, what if Giuseppe knew something that could incriminate Francesca’s killer? He may
even have been your wife’s lover.”

Matt stared at her. Then he threw back his head and laughed.

“It’s not funny.”

“Dear Christ, it’s hilarious!”

She stared at him, fidgeting with the sheet, while he howled with laughter. It wasn’t good laughter, however. It retained
that bitter edge.

“Francesca was a snob and a social climber. She would no more lie down with a construction worker than she would with a woman.”

“Giuseppe wasn’t a simple construction worker. He was a master craftsman, an artist.”

“Trust me, Annie, if he made less than a quarter of a million a year or dressed in anything other than Armani, she wouldn’t
even have looked at the guy.”

“He was handsome, too. An older version of Vico—and trust me, Vico is a hunk.”

“Vico is also your killer, Annie, not me.”

“I just can’t believe that. I think Vico
saw
the killer, but I don’t think he
is
the killer!”

Matt shook his head. “You don’t know what you think, Annie.”

His voice was weary now, and something in it got through to her. She sank down on the foot of the bed and bent over, putting
in head in her hands.

What’s the matter with me? she asked herself. I just made love to this man. Why can’t I trust him?

What are you afraid of?

Maybe he was right. Maybe she was afraid.

“Look,” he said. “This conversation is going nowhere. I’m going to go downstairs and make us some coffee.” He nodded toward
her clothes, which were flung all over the floor. “Why don’t you get dressed. Take a shower first if you want to. Maybe you’ll
feel better if you wash yourself clean of me. What just happened between us was obviously a mistake.”

She moaned as though he had struck her. She felt him hesitate as he moved past her, headed for the bedroom door. She lifted
her head and met his eyes… and saw his pain.

“Wait,” she whispered. “Matthew. Matt.” She reached out her hand to him. “Wait a minute. Don’t go.”

She thought for an instant that he was going to turn his back on her, and she realized that she wouldn’t blame him if he did.
But the moment passed. He sighed, came closer, and took her hand. She squeezed his fingers, and the current arced between
them again. Shaking his head, he sat down beside her on the bed.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I’m stressed out, I’m nervous, I’m feeling at the end
of my rope. And someone tried to kill me tonight. Then suddenly you were making love to me, and it was so amazing, so good ”
She slid closer, turned her face to his shoulder. “Help me, Matt. My head is swimming and I don’t know what to believe about
anyone or anything.”

His arms came around her, hard. She felt his lips against the side of her head. “Annie, I swear to you on my life, it wasn’t
me who tried to run you down. I didn’t kill Francesca and I certainly didn’t kill Giuseppe. As for you… I’m crazy about you.
I’d never hurt you, never, Annie. I need you to
believe that. If you can’t believe it, we’re dead in the water.We’ll never get off the ground.”

She nodded against him. She understood exactly what he was saying, what he was feeling. After all he had been through, he
needed her trust, just as she had once needed Charlie’s.

But how could she give him what she didn’t yet feel?

“Come back to bed,” he said.

She lay down beside him and he pulled the covers over them. She could feel his heart beating against hers.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Listen.” His voice hardened. “If someone tried to run you down, I’ll catch the bastard. If it’s the same man who murdered
Francesca, I’ll tear him apart.”

Again she nodded against him. She believed him. She
did.

She tried to turn onto her side, but he pressed her down on her back. He threw one heavy thigh over hers, holding her in position.
“Your body trusts me, Annie,” he said. “Sooner or later, your mind will follow.”

Sometime during the night, after another bout of passionate lovemaking, he said gently, “Okay, let’s think about this together.
Are you absolutely sure that the driver was trying to hit you?”

Annie forced herself to think back over the earlier events of the night. Had she overreacted? Had the car simply been speeding
and a little out of control? A drunken teenager, perhaps?

She shook her head. “I don’t know if he was actually trying to hit me. But he was trying to frighten me, I’m pretty certain
about that.”

“Tell me exactly what happened. From the beginning.”

Starting with the note on the windshield of her car, she described the rest of the evening’s events.