Dani Sinclair - Beautiful Beast

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?”