Unauthorized Passion: Unauthorized Passion / Intimate Knowledge. Amanda Stevens

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СКАЧАТЬ enough she’d have to come back to earth and start the old job search, but for now, this had to be one of her cousin’s better ideas, she decided lazily.

      According to Celeste, Ethan Gold, her old drama professor at the University of Houston, had insisted that she have the use of his beach house while she was in town. “There’s a boat and everything,” Celeste had told her. “I know how much you love to be out on the water.”

      Cassie had forgotten just how much she did love the fresh air and open sea. When she and Celeste were kids, their fathers had owned a fishing boat together, and on weekends and summers, the cousins had practically lived on the Gulf. They’d become expert swimmers early on—their fathers had seen to that—and had even learned to handle a boat by the ripe old age of eleven.

      They’d become so proficient, in fact, that by the time they hit adolescence, they were taking the boat out alone, sometimes with permission and sometimes without.

      The two had been as close as sisters back then, and those days were some of the happiest and most carefree of Cassie’s life.

      Then everything had changed. Celeste’s family moved away, and Cassie’s parents divorced. Her father relocated to Florida, and Cassie seldom heard from him. A few years later, her mother was diagnosed with emphysema and later, lung cancer. For almost a decade, it had been one trauma after another, and somewhere along the way, the carefree, adventurous Cassie had gotten lost in the harsh realities of life.

      In her most vulnerable moments, she sometimes wondered how differently things might have turned out if her parents had stayed together. Would her mother still have gotten sick? Would Cassie, free of responsibilities, have had the nerve to pursue her dreams the way her cousin had?

      She liked to think so, but she’d learned a long time ago that there was no profit in looking back. Besides, she had the rest of her life to work on those dreams, to try and recapture that old carefree Cassie, and now she had nothing to hold her back. No job. No fiancé. No responsibilities except to herself.

      That was why she’d been so eager to accept Celeste’s proposal. It wasn’t just the money or the new clothes or the luxurious accommodations that had attracted her to the scheme. It was the scheme itself. The promise of adventure for which Cassie had been yearning a long, long time.

      And so here she was. Footloose and fancy-free.

      Well, almost.

      There was the little matter of that threatening voice on the phone the other night.

       “Did I scare you?”

      Yes, as a matter of fact.

      Every time Cassie thought about that anonymous call, shivers stole up and down her spine. The person on the other end hadn’t actually threatened her, but if the call had been nothing more than a prank, why had the caller gone to the trouble of electronically disguising his voice?

      And afterward, Lyle Lester had shown up at Cassie’s door.

      True enough, he’d left a flashlight and candles outside her room, but his arrival had been extremely fortuitous. Could he have called her from the hallway on a cell phone? Cassie wondered. She’d received a couple of hang up calls since then, too. Was Lyle responsible for those as well?

      He’d said the other night that he was an admirer, but just how big a fan was he? Had his appreciation crossed the line into psychotic obsession?

      And speaking of psychotic…

      Cassie frowned as an image of the stranger she’d seen at Metro materialized in her head. The more she thought about him—and she’d thought about him a lot—the more bizarre his behavior seemed. Everyone on the patio had reacted as though they’d heard a gunshot when the truck backfired. But rather than taking cover, the stranger had lunged straight for Cassie. Why? Why had he been so willing to put himself between her and a bullet? And, even more disturbing, why had he assumed she was the target?

      In retrospect, Cassie had to admit that her own behavior that night had been a little on the bizarre side as well. Coming on to a complete stranger was so totally unlike her.

      But…was it really?

      How did she know what she might be capable of? It had been a long time since she’d had the opportunity to explore the real Cassie. For the past ten years, she’d been a caregiver, a fiancée, and a schoolteacher, but none of those things had satisfied her deepest yearnings, her darkest fantasies.

      Somehow, the blue-eyed stranger had tapped into her hidden desires, and for a fleeting moment, he’d unleashed something wild inside of her. Something at once familiar and strange.

      He could give her adventure. She knew that instinctively.

      He wasn’t like any man she’d ever known. Certainly not like Danny. Her ex-fiancé could be an enthusiastic and ardent lover when the mood struck him, but hardly an imaginative one.

      Oh, he knew how to turn a woman on. He could do that just by walking into a room. His bronzed, perfectly proportioned body had reduced stronger women than Cassie to quivering masses of hormones. But how quickly the charm faded once he opened his mouth.

      The stranger at Metro…he was hardly in Danny’s league looks-wise. He wasn’t as tall or nearly as good-looking, and his body had appeared leaner and more sinewy rather than muscle-bound. But there had been something about him…something sensuous and mysterious…

      He had an air of having seen and done things that Cassie could only imagine. But she wanted to do more than imagine. She wanted to experience those things for herself.

      After all, there had to be more to life than the missionary position, didn’t there?

      Resting her chin on her arms, she gazed around. It was a hot, still day. The water was unusually calm, which was why she’d decided to drop anchor and relax for a bit in the sun.

      “You’ll pay for that when you’re forty,” she could hear her mother scold her. Her mother hadn’t so much as set foot outside without slathering on sunscreen, and even at the beach, she’d always worn a hat and long sleeves. But with all her precautions, Felicity Boudreaux had still died young, without ever having seen much of the world. Cassie didn’t want that to be her fate.

      She sighed, feeling melancholy, as she always did when she thought of her mother.

      Glancing at her watch, she was surprised to find how long she’d already been out. She would need to head in soon, but for now it felt so good to be on the water after being cooped up in that hotel for over a week. Poor Mr. Bogart. She’d left him all alone at the beach house. To make up for it, she would take him for a nice, long walk on the beach after dinner. Maybe then he’d stop pining for Chablis.

      Cassie had tried to break it to him gently that the immaculately groomed Maltese was about as far out of his league as the guy at Metro was hers. But Mr. Bogart wouldn’t listen. Evidently, Hollywood had gone to his little doggie head. Cassie could understand that. The good life suited her just fine, too.

      As she watched the activity on the water, she noticed that another boat had anchored several hundred yards to the starboard side while she’d been daydreaming. Far enough away not to intrude on her privacy, but near enough that she felt a vague sense of unease. When she lifted her hand to shield her eyes, she saw someone fishing off the СКАЧАТЬ