Beautiful Beast

“Of course it is! The hair dye belonged to my roommate.”

“So you steal from others besides me.”

“Betsy must have forgotten about it. And I didn’t steal anything!”

He stilled so completely he could have been cast in bronze like the figurines around them. Shaken but refusing to give in to the alarm that charged every molecule of her body, Cassy forced herself to meet whatever retribution he demanded with her head high.

His stillness was so profound it was painful. Abruptly, he turned away.

“What are you going to do?” she demanded as another ripple of fear skated down her spine.

“Probably continue calling you Cassiopia. Cassy doesn’t suit you at all.”

He flicked off the light, plunging them into darkness.

“Hey!” Before panic could overwhelm her, light winked on at the end of the hall. There was nothing to do except follow, unless she wanted to stay in his basement all night.

The third step from the bottom made no sound for him, yet it squawked like a spitting cat the moment she set her foot on it. Was he even human?

Cassy shuddered. That horrible scar said he was all too human. He must have been an attractive man once. Actually, despite the scar, he wouldn’t be bad-looking now if he’d stop scowling all the time. If nothing else, his aura of self-assured power commanded attention.

Cassy wanted to be glad he’d suffered for what he’d done, but Beacher had half convinced her otherwise. What if he were innocent? Could a man who could create such incredible beauty also destroy with such utter ruthlessness?

She’d been so enraged that day at the hospital she’d barely noticed Gabriel as a person. She’d needed a focus for her grief and rage and she’d taken it out on him, ignoring the fact that he’d been swaddled in bandages and attached to wires, tubes and monitors. Wrapped in her own emotions, she’d snuck inside his hospital room without a thought for anything except confronting the man responsible for her father’s horrible death.

The memory of being pulled away while she ranted still shamed her. Even then his gaze had been dark and troubling. She’d had plenty of time to think about things since then. Letting go of her anger had been hard, but Beacher had pressed her to listen to him until he finally persuaded her to see that they might have been victims, too.

Gabriel hadn’t hurt her just now, and he hadn’t called the police. Of course he might be planning to call when they got upstairs, but either he and Beacher were guilty of murder and treason, or they’d been framed, as she was sure her father had been framed.

Had Beacher been playing both of them? Was he even now on his way out of the country with the deadly toxin?

Gabriel flipped on the kitchen light and shrugged out of his black cloth jacket, draping it neatly over the back of one of the two chairs at the tiny kitchen table. The black turtleneck hugged his shoulders and well-defined torso. He was lean and fit and scary in every way.

She’d made it a point to learn as much as she could about both men after Beacher began pestering her. Gabriel seldom left the small house he’d purchased after leaving the military on disability. He never socialized. Beacher was his only real friend as far as she could determine. The two had worked together at the army base, though their friendship dated back several years to when they were neighbors growing up. Gabriel had gone to a military academy. Beacher had gone to college and then joined a private security company. They both ended up working at the same military base and immediately resumed their friendship.

“Sit,” Gabriel ordered without turning around. He crossed to the sink and began washing his hands.

“Am I supposed to bark now and wag my tail?”

He slanted her a startled glance. Unexpected humor lightened his dark-eyed stare.

“Skip the bark.” And he turned back to the sink.

Outraged, Cassy wished she dared to toss something at him, but the room was immaculately clean. Even if she’d really wanted to, there wasn’t a single loose object on the white countertop or the tiny kitchen table. Pale yellow walls and white cabinets did what they could to lighten the space, but it was so small there was barely room to turn around. Cassy would have guessed the kitchen was never used until he dried his hands and began opening cupboards.

Like the rest of the house, the cupboards were neat and orderly and filled with the sort of stuff she saw in her married friends’ kitchens. The man even had a rack of spices. She thought of her own empty cupboards and shook her head. She never cooked if she could avoid it.

Gabriel set an electric kettle to boil. With fluid, economical motions that would have suited a laboratory, he removed two large brown mugs and a pair of small, matching plates. An odd-looking teapot in the shape of a dragon joined the rest on the pristine counter.

“What are you doing?”

He didn’t spare her a glance. “Brewing tea.”

“Tea?”

She’d broken into his house and he was making her tea? What was going on here? Was he stalling for some reason?

“You don’t like tea?”

“Mostly I drink it iced.”

He made a face and pulled a small cheesecake from a well-stocked refrigerator. Slicing two perfect wedges, he transferred them to the plates without a wasted motion.

“Sit down, Cassiopia.”

She gritted her teeth. “I’d rather stand.”

His granite face bore no expression as he turned. Hooded eyes focused on her with an unblinking stare that was totally unnerving. Set against the harsh planes of his face, she decided they weren’t the tawny eyes of a lion but dark ebony wells of silent turbulence. Gabriel had seen too much of the unpleasant side of life. The impression of barely leashed power lent him a quiet menace that made her tremble. No one looked less like a sculptor.

Cassy knew sculpting had been part of his physical therapy after he was injured, but did he realize what a talent he had? She was pretty sure most people studied for years before they could create the sort of breathtaking beauty he’d captured in the pieces downstairs.

“Do you want to talk or not?” he asked in that deceptively soft voice.

Not. When he gazed at her like that she wanted to run far and fast. Too bad that wasn’t an option.

“Yes.”

He looked from her to the table without another word.

Cassy conceded defeat. She pulled out the chair that didn’t hold his jacket and sat down, glad for the warmth of her own lightweight jacket even though the house itself wasn’t cold.

Immediately, he turned back to the counter and measured tea leaves as if scientific precision was called for. Steam drifted from the spout of the dragon, shaped to be its mouth.

Great. Even his teapot breathed smoke. She might be better off if he simply called the police.

Opening a drawer, he withdrew two plain blue place mats and set them on the table. He added forks, spoons and cloth napkins without a word.

His black turtleneck and dark jeans were spotted by stains of what appeared to be mud. However, his hands, including his fingernails, were scrupulously clean. Cassy noticed that his fingers and palms weren’t burnt like the backs of his hands.

“LEMON?”

Cassiopia jumped. “What?”

“Would you like lemon with your tea?”

Gabe pronounced each word with deliberate care. She raised her chin.

“No, thank you. Just sugar.”