Behind the Curtain Read online

  And he’d worried this supposed carefree, idyllic vacation was going to be tough, considering his guilt factor. Now he had Eric to deal with on top of it all. He saw movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to see Jimmy coming out of the house along with the source of his mounting annoyance. Eric grinned broadly, coming toward him with his hand outstretched. Jimmy followed, looking worried. He knew what Asher thought of Eric.

  “All hail the graduate,” Eric boomed, pumping Asher’s unwilling hand. He waved his glass of Scotch, the gesture every bit that of the prince of the castle. “Hope you don’t mind us getting started without you. The beach and the pool beckoned.”

  His mom was always commenting how much Eric and Asher looked alike—both of them well over six foot, dark hair, blue eyes, skin that tanned easily. Every time she said it, Asher ground his teeth together and disagreed furiously in the privacy of his mind. His father was an avid Eric fan in general, but Asher had heard him disagree with his mom on this topic. “Asher doesn’t look like he spends hours in front of the mirror every day like that boy does.” Or, once: “Good-looking? Sure? Eric’s as good-looking as the prettiest girl in the country.”

  Asher had always appreciated his father’s infrequent disagreement with his mother on that topic.

  “We were just discussing which local beach we should hit first this afternoon,” Eric continued, seemingly blind to Asher’s furious frown. “If I remember correctly from when we were teenagers, Crescent Bay South had the hottest tail.” His cousin flashed his million-dollar smile and waved back at the house. “We’ve got the whole place to ourselves this time, Ash. No sneaking girls into the guesthouse this summer, eh? I have to admit, though. The sneaking was part of the fun, wasn’t it?”

  Jimmy’s sympathetic, concerned gaze helped Asher restrain himself from spewing a stream of vicious curses.

  • • •

  Two hours, a dip in the pool, the hot sun and a generous amount of premium Scotch later, Asher was feeling a little less rough around the edges.

  “He’s not that bad,” Jimmy said quietly when he noticed Asher’s dark glance at Eric’s back as he went to take a call inside the house.

  “He’s not that good,” Asher said, turning his face up to the intense sun and closing his eyes behind his sunglasses.

  “How bad can he be? He’s even better-looking than you, Ash,” Rudy said brightly from Asher’s other side.

  “You thinking of asking him out?” Jimmy wondered sarcastically.

  “I know you saw him first,” Rudy countered quickly. “Seriously, I just meant that Ash usually draws the chicks in our direction like a magnet. With douchebag along, it’ll be like some kind of Gaites-Granville super magnet.” He made a sucking sound and zoomed his hand in the direction of his chest.

  “Shut up, Rudy,” Asher mumbled without any heat.

  He suddenly had an urge to run. From what, he didn’t know. His life, maybe. It was like he could sense more than see two giant steel doors starting to close in on him.

  He stood from the lounge chair and reached for his tennis shoes.

  “Where’re you going?” Rudy asked.

  “For a run.”

  “I’ll go with you. It’ll clear the Scotch fumes,” Rudy said, standing.

  Asher didn’t really want a companion, but Rudy was harmless enough.

  They’d made their way a half mile down a stretch of empty, white sand beach when someone called out behind them. Asher glanced back.

  “Wait up. You didn’t tell me you were going for a run,” Eric said, his nearly naked, muscular body gleaming in the hot summer sun.

  “I know it,” Asher muttered.

  Eric caught up. Asher gazed straight ahead and picked up his pace, pulling slightly ahead of the other two men. Eric started describing to Rudy in detail his rigorous daily workout routine at his super-exclusive Manhattan club. Asher ran faster, until distance and the sound of the waves faded his cousin’s smug diatribe from his hearing.

  He knew what he was running away from, of course. But until he reached a rocky embankment and the end of the beach, he hadn’t known what he’d been headed toward.

  The secret lake.

  He hadn’t visited it in four years.

  He came to a halt next to the rapidly flowing stream. Kids always thought of a place they’d discovered as their own. That was how Asher had thought of the inland lake ever since he’d accidentally come upon it while hiking in the woods when he was eight years old.

  “Fuck. The beach ends here? I don’t remember that,” Eric said in an angry tone behind him a moment later.

  “Geography can be so damn inconvenient,” Asher said.

  First Eric, then Rudy came to stand beside him. “Can we cross it?” Eric asked, nodding at the stream.

  “I’ve tried it before. It’s deeper than it looks, and fast. The rocks are tricky. I got my ankle caught between two of them once and nearly drowned,” Asher said. He glanced over at his cousin speculatively. “You’re welcome to try it, if you want.”

  Eric tensed, obviously sensing Asher’s simmering irritation at his presence. He abruptly grinned.

  “My cousin. Always the joker. No, I think I’ll just take a dip in the lake to cool off, but thanks for the offer,” he said, already untying his shoes.

  “That sounds good.” A sweaty-looking Rudy agreed, attacking his shoelaces. “You coming, Ash?”

  “You guys go ahead,” he said as Eric plowed into the surf. Rudy jogged in after him, whooping at the feeling of the cold water splashing against his overheated body.

  While Eric’s back was turned and Rudy took a dive into an oncoming wave, Asher jogged inland along the banks of the stream, seeking the coolness and cover of the shrouding trees ahead. As he entered the canopy of the woods, his perspiration-dampened skin roughened and prickled. The sounds of the distant waves and his companions’ shouts faded. The wind rustled the leaves of the trees, creating a flickering of gold and green light all around him.

  He slowed.

  It had been years since he’d been here, but he was able to make out the path, overgrown as it was by weeds and brush. For some reason, his heart raced faster now than it had when he’d been running on the beach. He strode rapidly along the trail, his muted footsteps the only thing interrupting the thick hush that had descended.

  A strange prescience overcame him. The surface of his skin tingled as if from electricity. It felt like the atmosphere before a storm, but there wasn’t a cloud in the clear blue sky. Was he really looking forward that much to seeing the place of his childhood? Or was it just his longing to escape his life and disappear for even a few seconds into a place no one else knew about that had him so tense with anticipation?

  The stream flowed from the inland lake just ahead.

  Abruptly, he paused on the path. He strained to listen, thinking his ears had fooled him for a moment.

  Then he heard it for certain: the sound of a woman’s clear, melodic singing.

  His feet moved without him telling them to. Between the branches of overhanging oak, sycamore and maple trees, he spied the still, green waters of the small but deep lake. Her singing continued in the distance, each note flickering along his sensitive skin and amplifying his sense of the otherworldly.

  He left the side of the swift stream and began to circle toward the south side of the lake. Without any conscious intent, he moved on the forest floor silently. He wasn’t trying to be stealthy. It was just that he didn’t want to take the chance of interrupting her song. The soothing sound of trickling water intermingled with the sweet notes. His gait quickened, his muscles straining tight.

  Finally, he paused in the shadow of a bowed sycamore at the edge of the familiar rocky, rough sand beach, peering through the foliage to find her.

  He stilled. His already roughened skin grew even tighter.

  She sto
od knee-deep in the shallows, water running in streams down graceful arms, high breasts and a smooth, taut belly. As she tossed her head to the side, a spray of water flew from waist-length dark hair like a shower of sparkling diamonds. She fisted the wet mane at her nape and pulled, causing a rivulet of water to cascade along a breast and down her ribs and belly. He watched, enthralled, as her full, dark pink lips moved.

  “I may be blind, but you I can see,” she sang.

  Her eyes flickered and suddenly she was staring right at him. He was sure he hadn’t moved and given himself away. One second, she’d been utterly lost in her own private world; the next, she’d sensed him. For an electric few seconds, neither of them moved. He didn’t breathe and was sure she didn’t either.

  Asher considered himself a good writer. He despised hyperbole and strived for lean, matter-of-fact prose. But how could you tell a truth like the one he experienced at that moment as he stared in wonder at this naked, glorious woman? It was something felt, not told. It was like unexpectedly sighting a mythical creature or something. His senses overflowed with the reality of her. His lungs forgot how to work. Even his blood seemed to come to a screeching halt in his veins.

  She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, let alone imagined. The inland lake had long been his secret, special place.

  But somehow, she’d just made it sacred.

  She suddenly started. Fear leapt into large, almond-shaped green eyes. The spell was shattered. He staggered onto the beach, his hands up.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. Don’t be afraid,” he begged. “Please,” he added desperately when he saw her glazed expression of shock and fear. The thought of her being afraid of him made him sick.

  “Ash? Where are you?” Rudy called in the distance, his voice muffled by the trees. Asher’s eyes widened. Hers did too. She lunged toward the beach, her lithe arms covering her bare breasts and dark pubic hair. She pulled back, her desperate gaze jumping from the pile of clothing and what looked like several notebooks on the beach over to him.

  He shook his head, a horrible feeling swooping through him when he realized she was looking at him like a wild, trapped animal would at its captor. She was wondering about her chances of escape with him standing so close. He stepped backward quickly away from the shoreline, giving her space.

  He heard a sound like a branch snapping. “What the fuck, man? Where’d you go?” Eric yelled, irritation ripe in his tone. He heard the sound of Eric and Rudy tramping on the distant path, their tread much louder than his had been. More aggressive sounding too, he realized as he took in the girl’s panicked expression.

  “I’m going,” he said very quietly. “I’ll lead them away from you. Don’t worry. You’re safe.”

  She stared at him mutely, a strange, blank expression of shock on her beautiful face.

  “I won’t let them see this place either. It was my secret place too. Once.”

  He took one last look at her, absorbing her like a man inhales his last breath before he submerges underwater for a long dive.

  Then he turned and hurried into the forest, intent on intercepting his friends and preventing their intrusive gazes.

  Chapter Four

  What are you, half asleep or something?”

  Laila focused with effort on her cousin’s beautiful, artfully made-up face. Twilight was falling, and the wrought iron streetlamps had just switched on along Main Street in charming downtown Crescent Bay. Zara stared at her, half in puzzlement and half in exasperation as she held out an ice cream cone in Laila’s direction.

  “Sorry,” Laila mumbled, accepting the cone. She swiped her tongue across the chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream with determined enthusiasm.

  “You’ve been weird ever since dinner,” Tahi declared bluntly. They stood in front of the outdoor-indoor ice cream parlor. Music filtered across the street from the crowded downtown park. A jazz band currently had center stage at the music festival. “Did something happen to you this afternoon?”

  An image of the dark-haired guy standing on the beach, wearing nothing but a pair of blue swim trunks and tennis shoes, popped into her mind’s eye against her will. His body had been long and hard and intimidatingly virile. So male. His chest wasn’t super hairy, but there had been some fine, dark hair in the middle of a powerful chest, trailing off into a thin line between his ribs and down a taut abdomen. At first, her brain had been shocked into stupidity, as if she’d never seen a man before and didn’t know what he was.

  Which made sense, Laila thought as she rapidly ate her ice cream. Because even though she’d seen men wearing swimsuits at the beach and in movies and television, she’d never seen one like him before. Seeing him standing there had struck her as intensely intimate, for some reason.

  Maybe because you were naked, stupid.

  And maybe because you could see his erection through the trunks when he’d lunged onto that beach.

  Both thoughts caused her cheeks to burn. Why couldn’t she stop picturing it? His obvious arousal had panicked her in the moment. But now, she couldn’t seem to stop thinking about it. Or his eyes. Or the concerned, almost panicked expression on his handsome face as he’d backed away from her.

  Someone snapped their fingers in her face. She blinked and saw Tahi giving her a puzzled look. “Hello.”

  “Hi,” Laila mumbled, licking her ice cream more determinedly. In the periphery of her vision, she noticed Zara and Tahi sharing an incredulous glance.

  “What is up with you?” Zara demanded loudly. She grasped Laila’s upper arm and started to pull her toward the curb—in order to interrogate her away from the crowd milling around the ice cream parlor, no doubt. In midmaneuver, however, she glanced toward the street and immediately froze. A change came over her cousin in a split second. Laila recognized the temptress smile that spread over Zara’s face.

  Her secret was safe for now. More interesting prey must be approaching.

  “Hello,” a man said smoothly behind Laila. “Something tells me you’re not from around here.”

  Laila turned slightly and saw a tall, dark-haired young man. A swooping sensation went through her stomach until she focused in on his face and saw the blatant, heavy-lidded glance of appreciation he was giving every inch of Zara’s tanned, knockout figure. Laila was used to seeing similar lewd stares at her cousins. Zara and Tahi were both beautiful and dressed a lot sexier than Laila did. At least when they were out, they did. The buttoned-up, modest clothing Zara and Tahi wore when they left the house usually ended up flung all over the seats of Zara’s Ford Focus within minutes of them leaving their parents’ field of vision. Her cousins had perfected the art of the fifteen-second vehicular wardrobe change.

  “What makes you think we’re not from around here?” Zara purred, her big hazel eyes and curving smile a blatant invitation.

  “Because this little backwoods town could never have produced something so exotic. So fantastic,” the guy said huskily, stepping closer.

  Laila mentally rolled her eyes at the guy’s reference to them as exotic. It rubbed her the wrong way, as though they were outsiders in the idyllic small town. Besides, coupled with the almost indecent sexual hunger in the guy’s gaze as he checked out Zara, the word took on an additional offensive charge. She didn’t always think people meant to be racist when they called her or a family member exotic.

  But she definitely got that bad taste in her mouth when this guy said it.

  Still, Laila had to admit, he was very good-looking. Zara was an accomplished manhunter. Knowing her cousin the way she did, Laila could tell that Zara was feeling like she just hit the jackpot. Although his dark hair and tall, lean, muscular body had initially made Laila’s heart jump because she’d thought of the man on the beach, he was completely different. His face was almost too perfect, like the guys on her mom’s Telemundo soap. And if the man on the beach had been giving her that
lean, ravenous look this guy was giving Zara, Laila’s panic would have gone full-blown.

  “So where are you from?” the good-looking guy asked Zara.

  “From her accent, I’d guess Chicago or Detroit,” another guy said to Tahi, nodding in Zara’s direction. “Rudy Fattore,” he said, bold as brass. He held out his hand to Tahi.

  “You’re right. Detroit, born and bred. And from your accent, I’d guess New York,” Tahi said without hesitation. She shook Rudy’s proffered hand and matched his brash grin. Oh, what Laila would give to have her cousins’ poise around guys. Rudy was shorter and nowhere near as good-looking as Mr. Perfect Face, technically speaking, but he was cute. He seemed to exude warmth, charm and the promise of a good time.

  “East Bronx, to be exact. You’ve got a good ear on you. Among other things,” Rudy said, wagging his eyebrows suggestively. Tahi laughed and rolled her eyes. “So what are three gorgeous ladies like yourselves doing in Crescent Bay?”

  “We’re here on vacation,” Tahi said.

  “Looking for a good time. Just like everyone else,” Zara murmured, never breaking her steamy stare with Perfect Face.

  Laila shifted awkwardly on her feet. She was pretty used to this scenario: Zara and Tahi always managed to attract a horde of men, but Laila was rarely included in those first few rounds of flirtation. The bold attracted the bold, apparently. A third man lingered on the curb. He was good-looking, with nice, serious, dark brown eyes. Maybe, like Laila, he was the shy one of the group. He smiled and stepped toward her, nodding in greeting.

  “Hi. I’m Jim Rothschild,” he said politely.

  “I’m Laila,” she replied, shaking his hand. “And these are my cousins, Zara and Tahira.”

  “You can call me Tahi,” Tahi told Rudy with a smile.

  “Lucky me. Oh, and that’s Eric, but you can just call him Pretty Boy,” Rudy said with a dismissive wave at the tall guy. Eric was too involved in a quiet conversation with Zara to notice. “And this is—” Rudy turned around in a complete circle and gave Jim a dubious look. “Where’d Asher go?”