CHAPTER ONE
She was so caught up in the lazy mood of the first evening on her summer holiday that at first she couldn’t compute the fact that Thomas Nicasio was standing on her dock. He stared fixedly at the rippling lake, the golden sunlight bringing out the burnished highlights in his uncharacteristically mussed brown hair. If it weren’t for that singular profile she would never have recognized him in these surroundings.
Thomas was an inhabitant of her work world, after all, a denizen of the city and the high-rise where they both worked. For Sophie, he only lived within the confines of 209 South LaSalle, wearing his perfectly tailored Armani suits, always moving with a brisk sense of purpose through the corridors or paging through his BlackBerry distractedly while he waited for his brother in the waiting room of the medical practice where Sophie worked.
They’d shared nothing more until that moment but heated glances, a few flirtatious conversations. On several occasions, she’d noticed Thomas sitting in the waiting room, studying her covertly while she interacted with her patients as she escorted them to the reception desk. It was clear to Sophie that Thomas was attracted to her, but he’d always seemed to make a point of keeping his distance.
The single exception to their sterile acquaintance had been the charged, brief exchange they’d shared in the waiting room of her office just last evening. Thomas certainly hadn’t seemed contained or aloof on that occasion.
Still, until that moment he’d always hovered on the periphery of her life, never fully entering it, but never totally absent from it, either. She thought of Thomas Nicasio a lot, usually in a sympathetic manner following her consultations with her psychologist friend, Andy Lancaster.
More recently, she had good reason to consider Thomas with c
ompassion while watching the ten o’clock news.
He might occasionally creep up into her thoughts whenever she saw another tall man out of the corner of her eye while she was grocery shopping or jogging by Lake Michigan. Certainly the faces of her fantasy lovers often morphed into Thomas the closer she got to climax, but surely that was no surprise. Sophie suspected the same was true of a majority of the women who caught sight of him.
Still . . . she wondered at times if his sober, watchful gaze had the same effect on most females that it did on her.
Usually Thomas existed for Sophie only within the confines of her office lobby or the eight-by-eight confines of a crowded elevator, his head easy to see over the other early-morning elevator riders, his eyes unfailingly meeting hers, his gruff, quiet, “Good morning, Doctor,” tickling her ear before the elevator doors opened and Sophie stepped off on the twenty-third floor.
The overlap of their lives was so minimal that it made her wonder if she was hallucinating—conjuring her dreams into reality—when she saw him standing on her dock wearing a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt.
Her brain just couldn’t seem to get a handle on the image.
And there was something about his stance that caused a muted alarm to start ringing in her head. She considered calling Andy Lancaster, who had been treating Thomas’s brother, Rick. Thomas had been asking to see Andy just last night.
But what could Andy do, even if she got a hold of him? He was in Chicago, after all, over one hundred fifty miles upstate.
And Thomas had never been his patient.
Sophie knew that multiple tragedies had befallen Thomas Nicasio’s family recently. His brother and nephew were dead. Thomas’s adoptive father, Joseph Carlisle, was being investigated for several federal crimes. The FBI was in the midst of building an indictment against the wealthy businessman.
Did those things relate to the fact that Thomas was standing on her dock, looking dazed and shell-shocked? And if so, what was he doing here? There was no way he could understand that she, of all people, knew details about the dark labyrinth of his family life.
She placed the paintbrush she’d been gripping into a coffee can filled with water and headed toward the side door. She glanced down at herself, hesitating. A few swipes of dried lavender tempura paint decorated her bare ribs and abdomen. She wore a bikini with a pair of jean shorts pulled over the bottoms and white canvas tennis shoes that were so ancient the cloth was separating from the soles in spots.
She should go and change—throw on a shirt at the very least.
But then she recalled the way his head hung at a queer angle as he stared at the sunset-infused lake and she descended the steps.
The closer she got to his rigid figure, the more anxious she became. Before her feet hit the dock, she saw the way that his rib cage moved in and out. It struck her as strange—eerie, even—how he stood so still and yet appeared to be panting, as though from some invisible exertion.
She gasped when he spun around as her foot hit the wooden dock, looking like a ready, lethal warrior anticipating attack. A sensation like flowing, hot liquid sank through her lower belly.
For a few seconds, they just stood frozen in each other’s sights, his stare unnerving her. His jaw was covered with whiskers that were two shades darker than the hair on his head. He typically combed his long bangs back in a conservative style that suited his polished work image. Currently, they hung loose, bracketing his dark brows and eyes that had always reminded Sophie of a deep forest wood with shards of sunlight breaking through the topmost branches.