Fear of Falling

He set the brush aside. “I’m a man who enjoys beautiful women. And they enjoy me.” His eyes met hers again. “You would enjoy me, I promise.”

Her heart fluttered, and heat rose to her face as she struggled to keep her composure. “Are you propositioning me? Your business manager?”

“Do you want me to?”

“No.” Yes. Maybe. She couldn’t deny her strong attraction to this man, and the chance he presented to explore so many things that had been forbidden to her in her old life.

But he was her boss. Not the person to do her exploring with. “That would be unprofessional,” she said. “As would my posing as your model.” She nodded toward the easel.

He shrugged and turned to cover the painting once more. “This isn’t IBM. You’re living here as well as working here. You can expect a certain informality at times.”

Did he really consider having her pose—most likely naked, judging from the paintings she’d seen—to be merely informal?

He turned to her again. “Despite what you think, I can be a professional, especially when it comes to my work.”

The question was, could she remain a professional around this man who stirred so many feelings she wasn’t sure it was wise to explore?

All her life, her mother and those who had trained her at the Cirque du Paris had berated her for her rebellious nature. When she would race across the back lot before a performance, Gigi would command her to walk to conserve her energy for the show. When she tried to incorporate a new move into her act, the choreographer would lecture her on the need to do everything exactly as scripted, for the safety of the other performers and herself.

When she had risked a love affair with a member of the crew who set up the tents for each show, her mother had raged about her throwing her life away for a man, and had had her lover fired from the show.

In time, Natalie had learned to restrain her wilder impulses. But now, she was free to indulge herself as never before. Except that the world outside show business had its rules, too: She wasn’t supposed to get involved with the man who hired her. She wasn’t supposed to feel so drawn to a man she’d only just met. She wasn’t supposed to want these things, and yet she did.

Maybe all the more so because they were forbidden.

SARTAIN WAS a man who enjoyed puzzles, and his new business manager presented him with an intriguing one: how had a woman who had been a member of one of the elite performing troops in the world ended up in his employ? Why would she want the job, and why had his agent, a meticulous businessman, hired her?

Of course, considering how she had handled his fit of anger this morning, perhaps Doug knew more than Sartain gave him credit for. Natalie’s refusal to wilt in the face of his fury had startled him out of his rage. Her courage—or foolishness, depending upon one’s point of view—captured his imagination.

She pretended to be indifferent to him as a man, but he sensed a heat between them he wanted to explore further. How much of her resistance was due to ideas about proper behavior between employer and employee and how much was because of some inhibition within herself?

With the idea of exploring the question further, he continued the tour of the castle, taking her quickly through the public rooms and down to what one writer had dubbed “evidence of Sartain’s wickedly twisted outlook.”

“This is the dungeon,” he said, swinging back an iron gate at the bottom of a narrow flight of stairs.

Natalie let out a shaky laugh. “A dungeon? You’re kidding.”

“I wanted an authentic castle. That includes a dungeon.” He flipped a switch and electric torches fastened along the walls flickered yellow light onto a macabre scene: a man clamped in stocks, another on a rack, a third chained to the wall.

Natalie gasped, and recoiled at the sight. He put his hand on her shoulder to steady her. This was why he’d set the scene this way, wasn’t it? To shock people? To distract them from probing too deeply into his private life? Reporters who visited the castle and saw the dungeon left convinced that the more scandalous rumors about him were true and didn’t bother to question anything else.

The tension in her shoulders eased and she turned to stare at him. “Mannequins?”

He nodded. “Without people in the scene, it was just another room with a lot of rusty chains.”

“That’s a very odd way of looking at it.”

“People have said I have an odd way of looking at a lot of things.”

She moved to stand in front of the rack. “Where did you find this?”

“From a place that makes props for movies and haunted houses.” He stood beside her and ran his hand along the metal wheel that, when turned, forced the opposite ends of the frame farther apart. “It’s supposed to be an authentic copy. I used it in a painting once—a commissioned piece for a collector.” Last he’d heard, the painting was hanging at a very exclusive S & M club in Los Angeles.

He felt her eyes on him and shifted to meet her gaze. “Why do you paint the scenes you do?” she asked. “What is the attraction of bondage and sadomasochism and all that?”

“Other than the fact that it’s set me apart from other artists and made me a lot of money?”

“I doubt that’s reason enough for an artist to keep working in one area for so long. Doesn’t creativity require more to feed it than the promise of a big paycheck?”

“Don’t tell Doug that. The man relates everything to money.”

“That’s because he’s not an artist. So what is it about this…this kinky stuff, that interests you?”

He lifted a loose manacle and fastened it around his wrist.

Natalie gasped. “What are you doing?”

“Don’t worry. I have a key.” He admired the fit of the metal around his wrist. “Art explores emotion. When I paint, I want to elicit some emotion from people. And some emotion from myself.” His eyes met hers, daring her to look away. “Take, for instance, bondage. People resist the idea of being tied up. Of having their freedom taken from them. But the restraints offer another kind of freedom. There’s freedom in surrendering completely to another. Freedom in not having to be in control, in allowing yourself to enjoy an experience totally without having to be in charge of what happens next.”

She swallowed, her tongue flicking out to wet her lips. “Are you speaking from personal experience?”

“Perhaps.” He took an ornate iron key from a peg at the end of the rack and fitted it into the lock. When he was free once more he took a step toward her.

“What about…the other? S & M? Pain as pleasure?” Her mouth twisted in an expression of distaste.

“I’m interested in exploring sexuality from a lot of different angles. The endorphins released as a response to pain can be related to the endorphins induced by pleasurable experiences. Different people respond to different things—fetishes, being dominant or submissive, role-playing. They’re all ways for people to get out of themselves, away from the things that limit them, to something purer.”

Her breathing grew more irregular, her eyes dilating. They were playing a dangerous game here, a kind of foreplay he enjoyed perhaps more than he should. She could stop him anytime, but he would take this as far as she let him. He wanted a glimpse at the core of the woman. Was she the innocent girl Doug had described, or a woman who felt the pull of attraction the way he did? He stepped closer still, reaching for her, even as he prepared for her to push him away.

The lights flickered, then went out, plunging them into the darkness of the blind. Natalie’s scream pierced the silence. He reached to comfort her, but she wasn’t there.

3

SARTAIN FOUND Natalie huddled against the wall, her breath coming in ragged gasps. She flinched when he touched her, but didn’t try to run away. “What is it?” he asked, taking her hand and squeezing it gently. Her fingers were icy, and he could feel her trembling.

“I—I’m afraid of the dark,” she said. “I know it’s silly, but I can’t help it, I—”

“It’s all right.” He released her hand but kept his arm around her as he felt along the wall until he came to a niche that held a candle. He located the lighter next to it, and flicked it open.

She began to relax as soon as the candle was lit. “What happened?” she asked. “Why did the lights go out?”

“Probably the storm we’re having. Lightning could have struck a transformer, or a tree could have fallen on the lines.”

“Does that happen often?”

“Enough that we keep candles in every room.”

“Why candles? Why not a flashlight?”