Never Sleep With Strangers, Page 2

  “Well, well,” she said happily. “Darling! So here you are, in the darkness. How delightful. How wickedly delightful. Do give me a kiss, darling. We’ve all missed you so much.”

  Sabrina Holloway stared at the disturbing display, marveling at its realism. The woman on the rack looked as if she were about to open her mouth and cry out. Her eyes were glazed, as if she were trying to deny the terror that was threatening her. Sabrina could almost hear the man demanding that his victim confess her terrible crimes and spare herself the agony of the rack.

  A strange tremor snaked up Sabrina’s spine.

  Whoa. Excellently done. Totally unnerving. There were others ambling around the dungeon displays at Lochlyre Castle, many of them friends, but at the moment she felt thoroughly uneasy in the gloom. Just imagine. If the lights were suddenly to go out…

  She would be alone. In the darkness. With him—the dark-haired torturer with the slim mustache and sadistic eyes who looked upon his victim with such pure evil in his heart. The figures were so realistically done that she could easily believe they might come to life in the dark. They would move, walk, stalk, wield their weapons of death and destruction….

  Hands landed on her shoulders, and she almost screamed aloud. She jumped, but somehow she choked back the sound that had risen in her throat.

  “Well, my love?”

  Another little shiver snaked along her spine—she was again unnerved, but not so frightened this time. Brett McGraff moved beside her then, settling an arm easily around her shoulders. She was ashamed to realize that his presence made her feel more secure in the shadowy dungeon, though still far from comfortable.

  She was torn between clinging to him and shaking off his arm. As usual, she felt an amazing combination of emotions toward him. Sometimes he made her want to gag. Then again, she wasn’t always immune to the purely sensual charm that had attracted her to him from the very beginning. Most of the time, however, she was only slightly impatient with him and fairly tolerant.

  “It’s very real,” she murmured. “It actually scares me a little.”

  “Good.”

  “Why?”

  “I think I want you scared.”

  “Oh?”

  “Might make you a little clingy.” He tightened his arm around her and lowered his mouth to whisper huskily against her ear. “We’ve each been assigned our own room in the castle—our host doesn’t seem to remember that we were married—but I’d be happy to keep you company during the long, spooky nights.”

  “Were,” she reminded him, “is the operative word here. We were married, once upon a time, more than three years ago—for all of two weeks.”

  “Oh, it took longer than two weeks to get a divorce,” he said smoothly. “And don’t forget how much we were together on our wonderful honeymoon.”

  “Brett, the marriage ended while we were still on that honeymoon,” she reminded him.

  He wasn’t to be deterred. “And now we’re getting to be such good friends again,” he added with assurance.

  Despite herself, Sabrina felt a rueful smile curving her lips. Brett was tall and good-looking, with unruly brown hair, dark bedroom eyes to match and a laconic charm that had made him a media idol. He wrote medical thrillers, with both commercial and critical success. He’d made a small fortune at his craft and still managed to be annoyingly arrogant only on occasion. Sabrina had met him soon after the sale of her second book before it had even been on the market—which had been soon after his divorce from his third wife. To say that she’d been naive was a terrible understatement. She’d also been healing from a far unhappier situation.

  A whirlwind courtship had sent them on a honeymoon to Paris—at a time that happened to correspond with the French publication of Brett’s latest thriller. She’d been amused, at first, by the number of women who gave him less-than-subtle hints regarding their carnal interest, then less amused when she realized how many of them he already knew. Carnally. Still, being an optimist who longed for a future, she’d decided she could live with Brett’s past. It hadn’t even been so bad that the women he’d known hadn’t seemed to care that he had a new wife; she hadn’t held other people’s behavior against them. Ultimately, it had been Brett’s indifference to the discomfort of her position that had disturbed her. He was a good lover; he could be amusing, charming. He’d made her laugh and love when she’d felt adrift and unsure.

  But Brett could also be self-centered, selfish and downright mean. He’d disappeared with the voluptuous owner of a major bookstore for several hours and been totally impatient with his young bride when she’d demanded to know what was going on. Then he’d informed her that he was Brett McGraff, and opportunities were going to come his way. He’d told her she shouldn’t mind; she should just be grateful he had actually married her, had made her his wife.

  To Sabrina, his words had been devastating. She’d been stunned. Then furious—with herself. She’d been looking so desperately for someone to make her forget her past, to fill her life. And she’d been so wrong. She’d cared for Brett, believed things could work. But she’d been mistaken. So she was at fault, as well, for not seeing or believing that their visions of love and marriage were so wildly different.

  Brett had seen the change, the new awareness, in her eyes, and he’d tried to placate her, to seduce her….

  The rest had been hell.

  She didn’t want to remember. She’d learned some good lessons from that time, and maybe even taught him a few. To this day, he still couldn’t believe that she’d left him and filed divorce papers, not asking for one red cent. In the months to come, when they’d met at various publishing events, he’d sought her out. He still referred to her as his wife, and she could actually smile sometimes now at the various lines he deployed to try to get her into bed. She should sleep with him because they had been married; because she’d already slept with him, and it wasn’t good to sleep with strangers. Because she already knew him—and as a result there would be no ugly little surprises. Because he was good in bed; and she had to admit that he was good—naturally, because he was so practiced. Because surely everybody needed sex now and then, and since she was capable of being such a sweet, puritanical prude, coming from an apple-pie farm family and all, she was slow to form intimate relationships and therefore should simply indulge in a basic, necessary activity with him.

  So far, she’d managed to resist.

  She was certain that she wasn’t alluring above all others; she was simply the one who had left him, and therefore she remained a challenge.

  “Seriously, while we’re here, wouldn’t you like to share a room with me?” he asked now.

  “No,” she said simply.

  “Admit it, I’m fun to sleep with.”

  “We have different ideas of fun.”

  “Look around you. This is a scary place,” he urged.

  “No, thanks, Brett.”

  “I can behave.”

  “That’s doubtful. Besides, you remind me of a warning my mother used to give me. Don’t play with toys when you don’t know where they’ve been.”

  He grinned. “Ouch! But if you’d stayed with me, you would know exactly where I’d been.”

  “Brett, I never knew where you were when we were married, and I really didn’t have all that much time in which to misplace you. I realize that it never occurred to you that marriage meant monogamy—”

  “Do you think it means that to everyone?” he demanded.

  “Brett, I can’t tell other people how to be married. I only know what I wanted myself.”

  He sniffed. “If only you knew how many people slept around—people you would never imagine.”

  “Brett, I don’t want to imagine.”

  “Your own friends!” he persisted.

  “Brett—”

  “All right, fine. Later you’ll be begging me for gossip, and I won’t tell you a thing. When you need to know, you’ll be in the dark. Unless, of course, you want to forget the marriage thing for a whi
le and just have fun? My intentions are honorable, though. I will remarry you.”

  She groaned. “As I said, we have different ideas on fun—and marriage.”

  “Fine. Play hard to get. But if things start getting spooky around here, you’re going to want to crawl into bed with me, and it may be too crowded by then.”

  “That I don’t doubt.”

  “Hey, I’m asking you first. And surely you wouldn’t want to sleep with a stranger.”

  “Brett, I’ve slept with you, and I really can’t think of anyone much stranger.”

  “Very funny. You’ll be sorry, my pet. You’ll see.” He shook his head sorrowfully, returning his gaze to the display before them. “Amazing, isn’t it?” he murmured, staring at the characters, his arm still around her.

  “Yes, very real,” she agreed.

  He shook his head. “So real that in this lighting, she could fool even me. And I was married to you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What do you mean, what am I talking about? You’ve been staring at this tableau.” He sighed with impatience. “Sabrina! Take a good look. That’s you.”

  “What?”

  “Sweetheart, have you gone blind since you’ve been away from me? Take a look. That woman—she’s you. To a T. The blue eyes, the blond hair, the gorgeous features. Nice body.” He lowered his voice even further. “Great butt, too.”

  “You can’t even see her butt, Brett.”

  “All right, all right, I’ll concede that. But she’s you. The spitting image.”

  “Don’t be silly….” Sabrina protested, but her voice trailed away as she frowned.

  Oh, Lord. Brett was right. The wax figure did bear an alarming resemblance to her. So much so that she felt chills begin to sweep up and down her spine again.

  “Good!” Brett whispered huskily. “I can feel you trembling. You’re getting uneasy, unnerved, good and scared. You’re not going to want to be alone all night in this spooky old castle. You’re going to want to come to me. Night will fall, you’ll hear wolves howling, you’ll run screaming from your bedroom and into mine, so you won’t have to be afraid.”

  It was just a caricature in wax, nothing more, Sabrina told herself. Yet she still felt tremors racing through her limbs. It was her. The artist had executed the figure so well that the muscles and veins in the victim’s arms fairly leaped into animation as she struggled to free herself from the ropes that tied her mercilessly to the rack.

  The fear in the eyes was real.

  The silent scream on the lips was far too eloquent. It could almost be heard in the air.

  Brett whispered warningly in her ear, “You won’t want to be alone.”

  From the darkness behind them, a deep, rich, masculine voice intervened. “Well, now, she’ll hardly be alone, will she?”

  Sabrina knew that husky voice.

  She spun around to meet their host.

  2

  His eyes were on her, studying her. He smiled pleasantly as he continued, “Seriously, Brett, she’ll hardly be alone, considering the fact that there are ten writers here—including ourselves, of course—along with an artist, my assistant and the castle staff, all in residence.”

  He sounded amused. Slipping from beneath Brett’s arm, Sabrina stared at Jon Stuart. It had been a long time.

  “Jon,” Brett murmured, an unmistakable edge in his voice. The two were supposedly friends; still, it seemed that Brett was less than pleased with Stuart’s timing.

  “Brett, good to see you. Thank you for coming.”

  “It’s always a pleasure. We were all damn glad you decided to do it again. Jon, you’ve met my wife, Sabrina Holloway, haven’t you?”

  Sabrina gazed at the mesmerizing owner of Lochlyre Castle, but Jon Stuart had already arched a dark brow Brett’s way as he took Sabrina’s hand. She resisted the odd temptation to wrench it away.

  “Sabrina, good to see you again. I hadn’t realized the two of you had remarried.”

  “We haven’t,” Sabrina said.

  “Ah.”

  “Sorry. My ex-wife,” Brett murmured innocently, smiling intimately at Sabrina as if there were still a great deal going on between them. “It’s so easy to forget we ever divorced.”

  “Anyway, I’m glad you’re both here. Thank you for coming,” Stuart said politely.

  “I wouldn’t have missed it. You know that,” Brett said.

  “It was nice to be invited,” Sabrina murmured.

  “You’ve been invited before,” Jon said pointedly.

  “I…I was on a deadline last time.” It was a lie, of course. An author’s stock excuse for not being somewhere he or she didn’t want to be.

  “Well, it must have been worth it, then. Your last book was very good.”

  “You read it?” she inquired—too quickly. Instantly she wanted to kick herself. She was blushing, unaccountably pleased that he had been interested enough to read her work. Then she felt her flush darken, wondering what he must have thought of the book’s graphic romantic encounters. And wondering how much her blush was giving away.

  “I’ve loved all your recent work,” she said quickly, trying to cover herself.

  He smiled a slow, skeptical smile that clearly indicated he had heard the words before but somehow doubted them in this case.

  “It’s the truth,” she murmured, wishing she could gracefully end her awkward monologue. Brett was staring at her now with real interest, having picked up on the tension between her and Jon Stuart.

  “Really?” Jon murmured, either unaware of her discomfort or amused by it. It was disturbing to realize that he maintained such an edge over her both in maturity and in simple confidence. He had been a success since his first novel, a thriller based in World War II Italy, had been published soon after he’d graduated from college.

  She forced a cool smile to her lips. She was not going to be intimidated. “Okay, so I hated it when you killed the priest in your last book—he didn’t deserve it.”

  Her words didn’t offend him; he laughed, apparently pleased with her honesty. “Good for you, telling me the truth.”

  “The truth is always different through different eyes,” Brett interjected somewhat irritably.

  Jon shook his head. “No, there’s only the truth, maybe just shaded a bit differently,” he said somewhat solemnly, gazing at Sabrina. Then he seemed to collect himself and said more lightly, “And the truth is, of course, that I’m delighted you were able to tear yourself away from your busy schedule to be here, Ms. Holloway.”

  “She knew I was coming and that she’d be comfortable here,” Brett said proprietarily.

  “Great,” Jon responded.

  “I have a number of friends here,” Sabrina murmured, wondering why she cared if Jon Stuart did or didn’t think she was still sleeping with her ex-husband. But she kept talking. “You know how it goes. We authors tend to stick together. You have an impressive guest list. I’m flattered to be invited.”

  “I very much wanted you to be here,” he said politely. “As you may recall, I wanted you last time, as well.”

  Right. He had wanted her. She’d first met him just months before his last Mystery Week party. And in that time, she’d married Brett—and they’d divorced.

  And he’d married Cassandra Kelly.

  “I had only one book out on the market at the time. I could hardly be ranked among the pros you had here then.”

  He arched a brow, cocking his head. “Dianne Dorsey was even more of a babe in the woods at the time, and she was here,” Jon commented.

  “But it did turn out to be a tragic occasion, so it’s a good thing Sabrina didn’t come,” Brett said. “Glad to see you seem to be bucking up, old boy,” he added, punching Jon lightly on the shoulder with his fist. “We haven’t seen enough of you lately. By the way, wasn’t Cassie actually the one who told us all what a great book Sabrina had written?”

  “Yes,” Jon said evenly, still studying Sabrina. “Cassandra thought
you had created superb characters in a compelling setting, then concocted the perfect murder for just the right dramatic twist.”

  “That was quite nice of her,” Sabrina murmured uncomfortably. Cassandra was dead—and she felt incredibly guilty, because she hadn’t cared much for the woman when she was alive.

  All right, so she’d jealously despised her. The one time they’d met face-to-face had been a horror worse than anything in this gallery.

  It was only natural that she had hated Cassandra Stuart.

  A hot tremor snaked through her again, having nothing to do with the tableau in front of them. The way Jon was staring at her was unnerving. Despite the ridiculously possessive way Brett was behaving at the moment, Sabrina was suddenly glad of his presence.

  For Jon Stuart was imposing. Even intimidating, in a way. Perhaps by simple virtue of his height and hard-muscled build. He was very tall, about six foot three, and strikingly handsome in a rugged way. His hair wasn’t just dark, it was jet black, thick and luxurious, long past his collar though neatly combed back from his forehead. His eyes were a marbled hazel, truly unique, merging blue, green and brown into a compelling, moody mix that could appear golden at times, dark as night at others. His features were strong, arresting: firm, square chin; broad cheekbones; generous, sensual mouth; high, defined brow. At thirty-seven, he was a renowned master of adventure and suspense writing; in real life, too, he had been named by a prominent international magazine to be one of the world’s ten most intriguing men. An American of Scottish heritage, he had never used fame or fortune to shirk duty; he’d served overseas in the National Guard during Desert Storm.

  Though Stuart had recently lain very low, remaining in Scotland more often than not, he still appeared in news stories now and then, usually upon the once-a-year publication of his latest book or the reissue in paperback of the previous title. It didn’t matter that he’d been something of a recluse for the past several years—that merely enhanced his reputation.

  The mystery surrounding the death of his wife rendered him both fascinatingly dangerous and hauntingly sympathetic. Some journalists claimed he had gone into deep mourning for Cassandra, while others hinted he had retreated into guilt, that he had somehow killed her—even if he had been a hundred feet away from the balcony from which she’d fallen at the time. Some suggested she might have committed suicide, that her marriage had been failing and she had cast herself from the balcony in a moment of dramatic self-pity, putting the blame on her famous husband, creating a scandal that would torment him until the end of his days. Others thought that perhaps the cancer consuming her beautiful breasts had driven her to despair. Whatever had happened had certainly given rise to endless speculation. And Jon Stuart had endured legal hearings into the matter and been tried by the press, his peers and fans, as well. His annual Mystery Week, a famed writers’ retreat orchestrated at his secluded castle in Scotland to raise publicity and funds for children’s charities, had been halted.