Beautiful Beast

He came away from the door in a motion that brought him across the room in three long strides. Cassiopia took an inadvertent step back, stopping when her heel bumped the base of the nearest crouching lion.

“What makes you so sure I’m not a rapist?”

The silky tone of his words charged the air. Her lips parted without sound while her gaze fastened on his scar once more. She inhaled raggedly.

“Don’t be absurd.”

Her voice cracked, denying the false calm she was trying to project.

“Are you going to call the police?”

He let his expression darken, then crowded her deliberately, coming to a stop when he was inches from her face.

“Now why would I want to do that? The last thing a mad rapist wants is the police,” he told her with silken menace.

Cassy refused to look away. “That isn’t funny.”

“Neither is breaking and entering.”

She dropped her gaze. Gabe sensed it lingering on the scarred backs of his hands and made no effort to conceal the puckered skin. Let her look her fill. There were more scars than these, covered by his clothing.

A piece of burning siding had landed on him in the explosion nearly four years ago. He’d been unconscious, and only the fast action of a neighbor had kept him from burning to death. Any number of times he’d thought the man hadn’t done him any favors.

Gabe was close enough to smell a bewitchingly light scent that wasn’t some cloying perfume, but was utterly female. He tried to ignore that and focused on the play of color in her hair. Cassiopia Richards was…distracting.

Amazingly, there was neither pity nor horror in her expression when she lifted her eyes. “You left me no choice,” she told him with surprising fierceness. “You could have talked to me when I called you yesterday.”

“I did.”

Her lips thinned. “You told me to take a hike.”

“I’m certain I was more polite than that.”

“Stop playing games.”

That stirred his anger once more. “I’ve said all I have to say on the subject of what happened four years ago. I’m not interested in repeating myself.”

“Beacher claims you were an innocent victim, too.”

Beacher was a fool. His friend was convinced Cassiopia knew something that would help them discover what Powell Richards had done with the missing toxin so he refused to give up his pursuit of her.

As Beacher had pointed out, “That toxin’s somewhere and we’re going to find it and prove we had nothing to do with what happened.”

Gabe believed talking with Cassiopia was a waste of time. She’d been away at school when her father had taken the toxin from under Gabe’s nose and gotten himself killed. And she’d scored an indelible impression on him that day in the hospital. She was too young, too passionate and obviously too impulsive to be of any help to them.

She summoned up a glare as if he’d spoken his thoughts aloud. “I’m leaving.”

“You just got here.”

Not many people could hold his gaze when he was in a temper. Given his overall size and his scars, he’d perfected the art of intimidation, but only the quickening leap of the pulse in her neck told him she wasn’t as immune as she’d like him to believe.

Gabe stepped back. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Upstairs.”

The widening of those soft gray eyes brought a sudden vision of his bedroom and the two of them intertwined on twisted sheets. It had been a long time since he’d thought about sex and he banished the image instantly. But she seemed to be tuning in to his thoughts.

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

This time anxiety threaded her voice.

“You’d rather remain here?”

“Yes. Go ahead and call the police. I’d welcome them.”

The bluster was gone. He’d finally succeeded in frightening her. It made him feel oddly ashamed.

“To the kitchen, Cassiopia,” he told her more gently. “To talk. I may be mad—God knows I’ve been called worse—but I’m no rapist.”

He stepped back even farther, giving her space. “Come or stay.”

Her chin lifted in defiance. “I’ll stay.”

“Fine. But you should know that the way you entered is the only way out.”

He crossed to the door and waited. She wasn’t beautiful in the strictest sense of the word, but he’d definitely call her attractive. That rich brown hair with its hints of gold framed an oval face with high, prominent cheekbones and a long, graceful neck. Under other circumstances…

Who was he kidding? Under other circumstances she’d either take one look at his face and run the other way or cringe in pity. She faced him because she had no choice.

CASSY SOUGHT ANOTHER OPTION and realized there wasn’t one. She was not going to cringe like a mouse even if this beast did have her well and truly trapped. She hated feeling afraid. She was in the wrong, but if he’d intended to kill her he’d have done it down here, not upstairs.

With a brief, accepting nod she squared her shoulders and marched over to him.

“Do not call me Cassiopia,” she told him, pointing a plastic encased finger at his chest.

“Do you prefer Ms. Richards, or Dr. Richards?”

If he knew she was a Ph.D., he also knew she was a chemical engineer. She brushed aside Gabriel’s question with a wave of her covered hand. “I go by Cassy.”

He scowled, staring at her hand. “What are those things?”

Heat suffused her cheeks. Hastily, she pulled off the silly plastic shapes, feeling foolish.

“They come with packages of inexpensive hair dye.”

“Brown isn’t your natural color?”