Night's Pleasure. Amanda Ashley
he was still a relatively young man, his hair was tinged with gray. Lines of pain were deeply etched around his mouth and eyes. He rarely smiled. Savanah couldn’t blame him. Eighteen years ago, her mother had passed away from a mysterious illness. Savanah had been seven at the time. She remembered very little about her mother except that she’d had an infectious laugh, made the world’s best chocolate chip cookies, and loved to dance.
Seventeen months ago, Savanah’s father had been the victim of a hit-and-run accident that had cost him the use of both legs and left him confined to a wheelchair. He had spent several months in the hospital. The driver had never been found. For a time, Savanah had feared that her father would never recover, and then, one night, on the spur of the moment, she had bundled him into the car and headed for the next town to see a new magician. To her surprise, it had been the man now billing himself as Santoro the Magnificent. Miraculously, her father had regained his old zest for living. He had gone back to work, and bought a special van to get around in.
Savanah chatted with her father for another few minutes, then excused herself to go upstairs and take a bath. Her father hadn’t slept in the master bedroom since her mother died. It was a nice, big room, and while her father couldn’t bear to sleep there, it made Savanah feel closer to the mother she scarcely remembered. Her father slept in one of the bedrooms downstairs, and used the downstairs’ guestroom as his office. When Savanah had turned fifteen, her father had given her carte blanche to redecorate the master bedroom. She had spent weeks looking at paint and wallpaper and new furniture.
Savanah’s old bedroom now served as her office. It was her favorite room in the house. An antique oak desk held her computer, a state-of-the-art printer, a small gum-ball machine, and a photograph of her parents on their wedding day. Her first newspaper story published under her byline hung in a silver frame on the wall across from her desk. A large bookcase filled with paperback novels, a couple of dictionaries, a thesaurus, a world atlas, and several encyclopedias took up most of one wall.
After filling the tub and adding a generous amount of jasmine-scented bubbles, Savanah sank into the water and closed her eyes. Tomorrow night, she vowed, tomorrow night she would get that interview with Santoro the Magnificent, or know the reason why.
Chapter Two
The dark-haired woman was there again, front row center. For the first time in his life, Rane found it difficult to keep his mind on what he was doing while on stage. He was aware of the intensity of her gaze as she followed his every move. She wasn’t there to be entertained, he thought. She was there to discover how he did what he did. Rane grunted softly. If he told her his secrets, she would undoubtedly run screaming into the night. Not that he would blame her. He was a predator, a killer, and she looked good enough to eat.
Showing off a little, Rane left the stage and strolled up the wide center aisle. Stopping at one row after another, he asked men and women chosen at random to think of something that no one else could possibly know, and then he told them what it was. No doubt most of the people in the audience thought those he spoke to were shills, but he had no need of such. He had only to open his mind to hear the thoughts of those around him.
From time to time, he glanced back at the dark-haired woman sitting in the front row, annoyed by the blatant skepticism in her eyes. Backtracking, he stopped in front of her.
“Good evening, Miss Gentry.”
Her eyes widened in surprise when he called her by name.
“Your expression tells me you think that maybe the people I’ve talked to are shills, planted in the audience to make me look good.”
She blushed under his regard. “No…that is, well…” Her chin came up defiantly. “Maybe I do.”
He took a step closer, heard her heartbeat increase as he deliberately moved into her space. “Shall I tell you what you’re thinking now?”
The pink in her cheeks turned brighter, darker. She shook her head vigorously. “No!”
He laughed, amused, because she had been thinking he was the handsomest man she had ever seen, and that she would like to run her fingertips over his bare chest.
Savanah pressed her hands to her burning cheeks. There were several people in the audience that she knew, including one of the reporters she worked with. How would she ever face any of them again if Santoro the Magnificent blurted out what she had been thinking?
Sensing her mortification and unwilling to humiliate her in public, Rane asked, “Would you care to think of something else?”
She nodded, wishing she was anywhere but there. His nearness sparked an odd tingling in the pit of her stomach. Nerves, she thought, and who could blame her, when he was standing so close, when his gaze rested on her face like a physical caress?
“In high school,” he said, “you had a crush on your journalism teacher, Mr. Tabor.”
Savanah’s cheeks grew hotter. She had never told anyone about that, not her dad, not even Liz, who had been her best friend at the time. It had been a well-guarded secret, until now.
“Is that true?” Rane asked, already knowing the answer.
Savanah nodded. It didn’t really matter if her secret was out now. Mr. Tabor had married one of his students and left town years ago.
Rane bowed in her direction and then returned to the stage. In what had become his signature farewell, he walked to the front of the boards and took a bow, then crossed his arms over his chest, and vanished from sight.
As soon as the curtains were drawn, Savanah ran out the side door and headed for the alley behind the theater. Hiding in the shadows, she settled down to wait for Santoro to leave the building, determined to catch him this time.
Rane quickly changed into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, ran a hand through his hair, and then, as was his habit, he left the theater by the back door. Being close to the Gentry woman, smelling the warmth of her body, hearing the siren call of her blood, had aroused his hunger. He needed to feed, he thought, and soon. If he waited much longer, his prey would pay the ultimate price.
As soon as he stepped into the alley, he knew she was there. Lifting his head, he sniffed the air, felt his fangs lengthen as he honed in on her hiding place. There, in the shadows beside the Dumpster. Foolish woman, to wait for him in the dark where there was no one to see her, no one to save her.
From her hiding place, Savanah watched the magician lift his head, his nostrils flaring as if he was sniffing her out. Her heart raced as he headed straight toward her hiding place. Did he know she was there? But that was impossible. There was no light where she stood, no way he could see her in the dark. She could scarcely see her hand in front of her face. And yet, like a jungle cat on the scent of prey, he moved unerringly toward her, his footsteps eerily silent on the damp pavement.
She had him now, she thought triumphantly. He wouldn’t escape her this time. But as she watched him stride purposefully toward her, she forgot that she had been trying for days to see him. Her only thought was to run, to hide, before he found her. But there was nowhere to hide, and it was too late to run.
“You waiting for me?”
Savanah practically jumped out of her skin. How had he crossed the distance between them so quickly?
“Are you waiting for me?” he asked again.
She had always found honesty to be the best policy, so she said, “Yes,” dismayed by the quiver in her voice. She had never been a coward, but there was something about being alone in a dark alley with this man that frightened her almost as much as he intrigued her.
“Well, here I am. If you want an autograph, I hope you brought a pen and paper.”
Savanah cleared her throat. “I want an interview.”
“I don’t give interviews.”
“I know. You don’t pose for pictures, either.”
He arched one dark brow. “If you know