“Yes,” she wailed. “He left me here, before we even hadsex.”
She thought he stifled a grin. His face softened for an instant, making him appear almost human. “But you were a willingparticipant?”
She had heard of a full-body blush, but never believed she’d experience one, until now. Even her toes felt like they were turning red enough to match the scarlet nail polish she’d applied to her toenails. “It was my idea. Do you think you could get me out of these things?” She indicated the cuffs with a jerk of herhead.
“Where’s the key?” He glanced around the bedroom, neat and tidy as always. No key marred the gleaming bedroomfurniture.
“Walter had itlast.”
“Where is henow?”
Cynthia wouldn’t have thought it was possible to experience more humiliation than she already felt, until he asked that question. “He had to leave,” shemumbled.
“Maybe we could phone him?” He looked at her doubtfully. He was clearly wondering what on earth would prompt a man to chain a naked woman to a bed and then leave her there. It was a fair question; Cynthia was wondering about thatherself.
“I really can’t wait much longer. I have to use thebathroom.”
Bending over, he fingered the handcuffs. “Are theyregulation?”
“I don’t know, they came from a sexshop!”
“Probably not regulation, then. I’ll see what I cando.”
“Would you hurry?Please?”
Some of her agony must have got through to him. He sped out of the room and returned a couple of minutes later with a pair of shears she recognized from the workshop. Her poor father would roll over in his grave if he knew how they were beingused.
The man fitted the blades to the chain of one handcuff. “Hold very still,” heordered.
Shedid.
She watched the bulge of his biceps, the set of his jaw and his reddening face. Heard the grunt of effort and then the blessed sound she’d been waiting for.Snap.He walked around the bed and started on the secondcuff.
Belatedly, Cynthia wondered what had happened to her neighbor. The last thing she needed now was the arrival on the scene of one of her mother’s oldest friends. “Where’s Mrs.Lawrence?”
“She went next door to call 9-1-1.”
With a little cry of horror, Cynthia stared at the icy blue marbles he had instead ofeyes.
Muttering a curse, he shoved the cutting tool under his arm, reached into a pocket and hauled out a cell phone. Even as he pushed a button, she heard the siren, and seconds later saw the sweeping pattern of red light play across her bedroomceiling.
The glance Agent Wheeler gave her could have contained pity, except she didn’t think he kept any in stock. He ignored the commotion outside long enough to snap the secondchain.
Too desperate even to stop and thank him, she wrapped herself in the bedcover and shuffled to the en suite bathroom, almost tripping in herhaste.
She emerged a few minutes later in her oversize white terry robe with the belt knotted tightly around her waist. She crept to the window and peeked out. The FBI man was there, talking with a local police officer in uniform. Both leaned against a squad car, as casual as could be. She heard male laughter and then, with a slap on the back, Agent Wheeler sent the uniformed officer on his way and headed back up her frontpath.
She grabbed panties out of her drawer and hauled them on under the fluffy robe. The handcuffs were still around her wrists, the severed chains hanging down a few inches. She pulled the terry-towel sleeves over them and took a deepbreath.
She hazarded a glance in the mirror above her dressing table and wondered again just what the hell she’d thought she was doing acting out a torrid sexual fantasy. She was boring and dull Cynthia Baxter—an accountant, for God’ssake.
She sighed, pulling a brush through her nondescript midlength, midcolor hair. Hours earlier, it had looked pretty good in big soft curls courtesy of her hot rollers. But all that thrashing against the pillows had turned her sexy do into a cross between Audrey Hepburn inBreakfast at Tiffany’sand David Bowie as ZiggyStardust.
“Why did you do it?” she wailed to her own reflection as she dragged the brush through another snarl. But she knew. She was staging an adolescent rebellion fifteen years toolate.
She was exactly what her parents had wanted her to be—except for her unmarried state. “You’ll be left on the shelf, dear, if you leave it much longer,” her mother used to predict. It had made her feel like stale peanut butter. As if Cynthia could magically make men find a mousy, old-fashioned girlattractive.
Surprisingly enough, Walter did. Or maybe it was a case of one stale-dated jar of peanut butter gravitating to another. He wasn’t much to look at, but he was male, and single, and a doctor. Her mother was delighted, and Cynthia hoped she might at last experience some of the physical pleasures she’d read about at night insecret.
