A shadow fell over Tracy and she jolted awake.
How could I have fallen asleep at a time like this? she thought guiltily.
Then she looked up into Dr. Sherridan’s face and the guilt was replaced with something else. Something far, far worse.
The last thing Tracy heard before she lost consciousness was the sound of her own screams.
CHAPTER 9
OH JEFF! JEFF! OH God!”
Jeff Stevens felt Lianna climax beneath him and grinned. Jeff never tired of the thrill of giving a beautiful woman pleasure. Many women had told him over the years what a wonderful lover he was. But each new girl was a new challenge.
“What about you, darling?” Lianna rolled over on top of him, her wonderful, heavy breasts resting on Jeff’s chest like twin jellies turned out of their molds. Dean Klinnsman was a lucky man. With her blond hair and endless legs this girl was phenomenally sexy, although in the absolute opposite way to Tracy.
Jeff never slept with girls who looked like Tracy. They broke his heart.
“Don’t you want to come too?” Lianna cooed. “What can I do for you?”
She gave Jeff a knowin
g look and began to work her way down his body, snaking towards his groin.
“Actually, Angel,” Jeff said, pulling her gently back up, “all I really want right now is some food. I’m starved. D’you fancy a Byron Burger?”
“But . . . you’re not satisfied?” The girl pouted.
“On the contrary, I’m very satisfied,” Jeff assured her.
It was partly true. The simple truth was he was too tired to come. At least not without putting in some effort. Now that Lianna was satisfied, his mind was already drifting to other things. Specifically a bacon cheeseburger with all the trimmings.
Not that Jeff didn’t still enjoy sex. Jeff adored women. All women, give or take the odd humorless feminist, although even they provided an interesting challenge. But these days he kept his sexual liaisons strictly compartmentalized. He had been in love twice in his life, and had married both women. Louise Hollander, his first wife, was a twenty-five-year-old, golden-haired heiress who’d hired Jeff to work on her yacht and promptly seduced him. Jeff had loved Louise, right up until the day he learned she’d been cheating on him with a string of wealthier lovers. After their divorce, Jeff swore he’d never become vulnerable to a woman again.
Of course, that was before he met Tracy Whitney.
Tracy was not so much a woman as a force of nature, the adored love of Jeff’s life. After their last job together in Holland, brilliantly stealing the Magellan diamond from under the nose of both local and international police, Jeff and Tracy had married. Perhaps, with hindsight, that had been their mistake? The beginning of the end? Domestic bliss had certainly proved a lot more elusive once the adrenaline of their old life was gone.
But if we’d never married, we’d never have had Nick, Jeff reminded himself.
“You should go home, darling,” Jeff told Lianna, kissing her on the cheek as he pulled on his jeans. On reflection, stunning, twenty-three-year-old Russian models were rarely big cheeseburger fans. “We don’t want your future husband getting suspicious.”
“No,” she agreed. “But I will see you again? You’ll call me, won’t you?”
There was already a hint of doubt in her voice.
“Of course,” Jeff said.
“Soon?”
“Just as soon as it’s safe,” he assured her. Which of course would be never if she really did marry Dean Klinnsman. Bedding Lianna once had been dangerous. Making a habit of it would be positively suicidal.
As soon as he heard the front door to his flat close, Jeff let out a sigh of relief. These days he didn’t know what he enjoyed more—really great sex, or a really great burger afterwards, safe in the knowledge that he would never have to see the girl in question again.
He was about to head out the door when his phone rang.
Jeff sighed. Damn it. Lianna could only just have left the building. She hadn’t seemed like the clingy type earlier at the bar, nor just now in bed. He sincerely hoped he hadn’t misjudged her. Playing dodge-the-bunny-boiler while Dean Klinnsman attempted to have him beaten to death was not Jeff’s idea of a merry Christmas.
He let the call go to message.