Jaimie: Fire And Ice Part 17

Maybe it wouldn't have been a one-night stand if she had stayed in his bed. Or maybe it would have been; he hadn't made any attempt to get in touch with her since that night, but there could be a trillion reasons he hadn't, starting with the fact that men's egos were about as fragile as cobwebs-she had three brothers, after all-and the fact that she'd walked out on him after what she could only describe as a stellar performance might just have damaged his.

"G.o.ddammit, James, what does it matter?"

"They say it's a bad sign when you talk to yourself, sweet sister."

Jaimie swung around. Lissa had come out on the porch, all but hidden inside what looked like a hundred layers of sweaters and sweatshirts.

"It's a worse sign when you try to look like the Michelin Man," Jaimie said.

Lissa shrugged. "I forgot how cold it gets here in the winter."

Jaimie turned back to the railing, leaned her arms on it and stared out into the night.

"It isn't winter yet. And how could it get cold here? This is Texas."

The sisters laughed softly. The idea that it didn't get cold in Texas was something they'd both had to deal with. Southern Californians and Easterners were besotted with the notion that it was always hot in Texas, never mind that the northern part of the state had winters that were cold, hard and snowy.

"So," Lissa said after a couple of minutes, "you want to talk about it?"

"Talk about what?"

"Puh-leeze, James. Do not give me that 'Talk about what?' c.r.a.p."

"Puh-leeze, Melissa. Do not give me that 'James' c.r.a.p.'"

Lissa sighed. "You even refer to yourself as James."

"I do not."

"You do. When you're ticked at yourself about something, or when you're struggling to be logical-"

"I never struggle to be logical. I am always logical."

"Bull."

"Listen, Melissa-"

"And I never, ever, ever, ever, call myself Melissa. Neither does anyone else. You, on the other hand-"

"OK, OK, enough. I don't even know what we're arguing about."

Lissa looked at her sister. Then she sighed.

"We aren't arguing. I asked you if you wanted to talk about it, and you figured you could get away with ignoring me."

"I wasn't... Talk about Em, you mean? Well, I'm happy for-"

"Something's going on with you, Jaimie. What is it?"

"Nothing's going on with me. Well, my job. Did I tell you I snagged a bunch of new-"

"Is it a man?"

"Is what a man?"

"If it is, that's good. Because it's never a man, not with you. It's always school. Or studying for your CPA exam. Or getting a job with the biggest, bestest accounting firm, or the biggest, bestest real estate firm, or..."

"There's no such word as bestest. Jake would take off your head if he heard you say something like that."

"I don't need our brother, the grammar maven, to tell me there's no such word as bestest, and you're just trying to avoid the topic. Something's doing with you. Even Emily noticed, and we both know she was pretty much out of it until a little while ago. So, you gonna tell me? Or am I gonna have to nag you about it until our eyes roll up into our heads and we both pa.s.s out?"

Jaimie laughed, just as Lissa had intended.

She gave two seconds' consideration to telling her sister about The Big Mistake. The night with Zacharias Castelianos. The night she could not forget.

No. Lissa would tell her what an idiot she'd been, and she already knew that.

"Ve hef vays of making you talk," Lisa said, doing a bad imitation of a n.a.z.i interrogator. "Something is happening in your life, and I want to know what it is."

Well, something was happening. Something she wouldn't feel dumb talking about and maybe Lissa had advice she could use.

"OK. Something is." Jaimie looked at her sister. "There's this guy who's, I guess you'd say, very interested in me."

"Ah." Lissa grinned. "I knew it. Come on. Tell Mother Melissa everything."

"See? You just called yourself..." Jaimie sighed. "The thing is, it's not what you think."

Lissa raised her eyebrows. "I'll bet it is."

But it wasn't.

Jaimie told her about Steven. About how pleasant he'd been at the start. About how he'd pursued her. About how, gradually, he'd made her feel less and less comfortable.

And, finally, about what had happened a couple of nights ago.

That Steven had been waiting for her when she arrived home. That he'd accused her of having s.e.x with the man who'd been kind enough to give her a lift and with a client-that was how she described Zacharias-she'd gone to see in New York. The language he'd used. His threatening tone. His threatening posture.

Lissa listened. She didn't interrupt, but her eyes grew cold, her mouth hard.

"Has he touched you? Tried to hurt you?"

"No. Not really."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Jaimie shrugged. "This will sound stupid, Liss."

"I live in La La Land, remember? Nothing sounds stupid to me."

"Well...sometimes I think he's following me. But he isn't."

"You know this because...?"

"I've turned around and checked. And he's not there."

Lissa's expression was unreadable. "There's more, isn't there? I can tell, James. There's definitely more."

Jaimie hesitated. If she told her sister the rest, she'd sound crazy.

"Jaimie? What else?"

"The other day, I came home from work." She paused, cleared her throat. "It felt as if someone had been in my apartment."

"Did you call the cops?"

"No. I mean, what would I have told them? Nothing was missing. Nothing had been moved. I just-I thought maybe my underpants weren't stacked the way I always stack them."

Lissa thought of teasing her sister about stacking her underpants, but there was a tone in Jaimie's voice that was upsetting. The whole thing was upsetting, especially since Jaimie wasn't given to flights of fancy.

"Maybe you should rethink calling the police," she said quietly. "Let them talk to this guy, put a little legal scare into him-"

"Really, it doesn't work that way. I have no grounds for any kind of accusation, and the police would have no grounds for confronting him." Jaimie took a long, deep breath. "Tell the truth," she said briskly. "You've been out in Hollywood so long, you're not interested in being a chef anymore, you want to be a screenwriter. And the story you just got from me is perfect for-what do they call it? A treatment."

The sisters laughed. Then Lissa slung an arm around Jaimie's shoulders.

"I love you, Jaimie Celeste Wilde."

"Don't!"

"Don't what?"

"Don't call me that. He calls me that. Celeste. He says it suits me better than my real name."

"And what's his name," Lissa said, trying to sound casual. "A real winner, I bet."

"Steven. Steven Young."

"Uh huh. Well, what does Mr. Steven Young know?" she said, still aiming for casual even though the fact that her sister's admirer called her by a name that really wasn't hers was what convinced her that he wasn't an admirer at all.

He was a stalker.

That was how she described Steven Young to Caleb, much later that night.

Lissa had paced her room, trying to come up with a way to help her sister. No cops. Valid enough. There was nothing for cops to use as grounds for an arrest.

For one crazy second, she considered flying east and confronting the man herself, but all that might do was make him even angrier and an angry stalker would surely not be a good thing.

She considered going to her brothers and asking them to help.

It took less than a second to discard that as a very bad idea.

Her brothers would get that lockjawed look she'd seen on their handsome faces before.

"We'll take care of it," they'd say, and they would.

Steven s.h.i.ta.s.s Young would find himself in an alley missing a few teeth and, in this instance, possibly with a couple of other body parts in plaster casts.

Uh uh. Getting her brothers involved was not a good plan. Jake and Travis and Caleb were intelligent and successful, but they were not men to rely on words when fists were called for.

Well, Caleb might. Not rely on words, necessarily, but he'd done all kinds of secret stuff at that Agency, whatever its real name.

Surely, he'd know ways to work behind the scenes.

A little after midnight, Lissa crept quietly along the upstairs hall. Caleb, Sage and their baby were staying in his old room. She figured Sage and the baby were asleep by now, but Caleb had always been a night owl.

She stood outside the door, listening. Then, she took a breath and tapped lightly on it.

"Caleb?" she whispered.

The door opened almost immediately. Her big brother, shirtless and barefoot, wearing only gray sweatpants, peered at her.

"Liss? What's wrong?"

Lissa put her finger to her lips. "I have to talk to you."

Caleb rolled his eyes. Lissa had spent a year at Le Cordon Bleu. Then, she'd headed for Hollywood to become a chef. He'd always thought it was a mistake. She should have gone there to become an actress. Drama had always been her thing.

"Lissa. Listen, it's been a long day. Surely this can wait until morning."

"Surely, it can't," she said.

Caleb frowned, grabbed a sweater from a chair, pulled it over his head and stepped into the hall.

She led him down the stairs, then outside. Jesus, he wasn't wearing shoes. His feet would be chunks of ice in a couple of minutes.

"Liss? What's going on?"

She made that same finger-to-the-lips gesture again, took him across the gra.s.s-the frosted-over gra.s.s-to a paddock. At the railing, she stopped and turned toward him.