She lay on her side, her face turned toward her shut bedroom door, her body throbbing with heat.
She heard the muted sound of a door latch clicking open down the hallway. Her heart swelled in her chest and began beating erratically. She wasn’t really surprised. It struck her suddenly that she’d been waiting there in her bed . . . anticipating this moment.
And not just for the past several hours . . . for a long, long time.
She held her breath when her bedroom door opened quietly. He stood in the opening for several seconds, as if unsure. A dim light from the living room reflected behind him, allowing her to see he’d taken off his shirt and wore only his jeans.
The moment felt heavy, tense . . . pregnant with possibilities she couldn’t fully comprehend.
“Sophie?”
She swallowed thickly. “Do you feel better?”
He nodded, his gaze glued to her face.
“Let me feel your forehead,” she whispered.
He came toward her. Her gaze was filled with the vision of taut muscle . . . strained virility. She remained unmoving, spellbound. He knelt next to the bed, his posture striking her as a silent plea. She placed her fingertips on his cool forehead, but hers was a lover’s touch more than a clinician’s.
He needn’t plead.
She put her hands on his shoulders and felt dense muscle gloved in smooth, warm skin. He came at her urging, his big male body a welcome weight pressing her down into the mattress, his demanding, urgent kiss a dark, thrilling promise of what was to come.
The next morning, he was gone.
Sophie jogged out the back door wearing a hastily donned cotton robe over her nakedness, already knowing from the leaden sensation in her gut that the dark green sedan would be absent from her driveway.
She went back inside the house and for a few minutes, just stared blankly at her sunny kitchen, feeling every bit as dazed as Thomas had appeared last night.
A decision struck her brain like a gong of clarity.
She showered, packed, and made a quick stop at her elderly neighbors, the Dolans, in order to ask them to pick up her mail—she wasn’t sure how many days she’d be gone. While she was at the Dolans’, Daisy Dolan asked her if it’d been all right that she’d told that nice man who was asking for directions to her house last night where Sophie lived.
“He seemed so anxious to see you. I thought perhaps he was ill,” Daisy said, her forehead crinkled in concern. “I hope I did the right thing. I tried to call you afterwards, but you must have been out in the yard.”
Sophie kissed her friend on the cheek in reassurance. “I was painting. It’s okay, Daisy. I’m glad you gave Thomas directions to my place.”
She was on the interstate headed toward Chicago within an hour of discovering Thomas Nicasio had fled her life just as dramatically as he’d entered it.
CHAPTER THREE
Sophie bit at a fingernail nervously before she realized what she was doing. She hadn’t bitten her nails since she was fourteen years old.
She plopped down at her desk, her mind replaying all the while what had occurred this afternoon, when Thomas Nicasio had walked onto the elevator at 209 South LaSalle today with two soberly dressed men whom Sophie strongly suspected from their manner were federal agents.
Whoever the two men were, Sophie knew one thing from Thomas’s furious scowl and the formal manner in which the two men flanked him like they would a prisoner: These men were no friends to Thomas Nicasio.
Something had told her not to speak when she saw him; not to acknowledge their acquaintance in front of the two men. Part of her was glad to see Thomas’s ambivalence about ignoring her. Apparently, he hadn’t been left completely unaffected by what she’d considered a soul-wrenching night of lovemaking, even if he had gotten up the next morning and driven away.
She couldn’t judge him too harshly for his erratic behavior. He wasn’t well, after all.
She’d returned to the city to have a serious talk with her friend Andy Lancaster and then to find Thomas . . . to assure herself that he was all right. Andy was off on Fridays, so she’d met with him earlier that afternoon in the tiny, messy den in his Lakeview condo. Andy’s new wife, Sheila, had gone through his bachelor-pad condo in a whirlwind of redecorating soon after they’d married, but she’d agreed not to touch Andy’s den with so much as a paintbrush.
Andy had listened with intense focus while Sophie explained about Nicasio’s appearance at Haven Lake last night. He’d asked her a series of pointed diagnostic questions and then leaned back in his leather chair, his high forehead wrinkled and his kind face shadowed with worry.
“We have to do something, Andy,” Sophie stated unequivocally.