of the laboratory, you’d know that Gillian Cassidy just happens to be the hottest New Age performer in the country,” Toni informed him. “Last year her Machu Picchu CD outsold John Tesh’s and Yanni’s albums combined. This one went platinum in the first week.”
As the slender hands flowed over the keyboard, the music grew richer, more complicated, soothing his mind even as it stirred his blood. It couldn’t be the same girl, Hunter assured himself. George Cassidy had always seemed more android than man; from what Hunter had witnessed, the scientist hadn’t possessed a single iota of human emotion.
The idea that such an unfeeling bastard could have fathered a child capable of tapping into such deep-seated primal passions merely by skimming her fingertips over eighty-eight ebony and ivory keys was inconceivable.
The view shifted as the camera lens went in for a close-up of the pianist’s face. Unaware of doing so, Hunter leaned closer toward the screen.
She was looking down at the keys, but as he watched, seemingly in response to his unspoken command, she slowly lifted her gaze.
Pow! Hunter experienced what felt like a body blow as he found himself staring straight into a pair of thickly lashed green eyes that were simultaneously both foreign and familiar. Unbelievably, it was her. Damned if Cassidy’s little girl hadn’t grown up. Which, Hunter allowed, only made sense, since the planet certainly hadn’t stopped spinning since that long-ago day when his mentor had betrayed him.
Her velvety soft eyes, which he recalled having been once hidden by thick, tortoise-shell-framed glasses that had seemed oversize on her small face, tilted up, catlike, at the corners. Her complexion was the pale alabaster of a true redhead, and either she’d neglected to paint her lips or the makeup person for the video shoot had selected a pale pink the color of the inside of a seashell.
When a faint breeze picked up a few strands of hair and blew them across those slightly parted pink lips, hunger stirred, deep and unbidden.
She looked as fragile as blown glass. But the music flowing from those unlacquered fingertips was as potent as Irish whiskey. And every bit as intoxicating.
She appeared to have inherited her mother’s passion. Hunter recalled George Cassidy’s third wife, Irene, being a great deal younger than her husband and a great deal less restrained.
Yet the one trait both Cassidys had shared had been their unrelenting, unapologetic aggressiveness in going after what they wanted. At the time, Irene Cassidy had certainly wanted him.
“Well, I’d thought the tape might set a sexy mood.” Toni’s husky voice was a blend of amusement and feminine pique. “But I didn’t expect competition.”
Music from the stereo speakers swelled around him, in him, like a fever in the blood.
“Don’t talk nonsense. You’re in a league of your own, sweetheart.” He pulled her close and kissed her with more affection than lust.
It was times like this, when his body was sated and his mind pleasantly fogged, free from the burden of romantic entanglements, when Hunter understood that George Cassidy had been right about one thing. Emotions were unnecessary complications. They weakened a man, made him vulnerable.
During the thirteen years since he’d left MIT, Hunter had survived—indeed prospered—by burying his feelings so deeply inside him he could no longer remember the idealistic young man he’d once been. Hunter supposed he should be grateful to Cassidy for that.
As Toni snuggled against him again, his mind continued to drift to thoughts of Cassidy and his daughter, whose appearance reminded him of one of those ethereal angels painted on the domed ceilings of Renaissance cathedrals.
He wondered idly if she were actually as virginal as she seemed, then remembering the depths of passion that had flowed from those fingertips, decided she couldn’t possibly be.
But the contrast of passion and innocence was undeniably appealing. What would it take, he mused, to make that serene, delicate woman scream with wild, wanton pleasure?
Suddenly, Hunter, who had not celebrated any holiday since that fateful afternoon he’d packed his bags and left MIT, knew exactly what he wanted for Christmas.
He wanted Gillian Cassidy. And thanks to what he knew about her formerly celebrated father, he intended to have her.
2
“GOOD GOD, MAN!” The scientist stared at his former protégé. “You can’t be serious.”
“On the contrary, I’ve never been more serious in my life,” Hunter responded mildly.
The fact that George Cassidy had not been able to resist accepting the summons to Castle Mountain from his former student was proof that the power between them had shifted. It was an acknowledgment, of sorts, Hunter thought with satisfaction, that the student had now become the master.
Oh, Cassidy was still a respected researcher and teacher.
His articles still routinely appeared in scientific journals and he was a frequent speaker at conferences. But it had escaped no one’s notice that he hadn’t come up with a truly important breakthrough in a decade.
His star was on the decline. While Hunter’s, which had taken off like a comet after he’d been forced from MIT, was now fixed as the brightest in the scientific firmament. Hunter couldn’t count the number of requests for speeches he turned down in any given month.
And unlike Cassidy, whose lectures were usually scheduled for the Sunday morning on the last day of a conference, when attendees were more likely to be worried about packing and making planes than listening to a rehash of old data, Hunter was routinely invited to be the keynote speaker at the most prestigious gatherings in the world.
Not that he appeared in person any longer, of course, but his recorded speeches—audio only, never video—were enough to draw standing-room-only crowds.
Hunter had been an intensely private man even before the assassination attempt that had disfigured him, and his reclusive behavior fueled various rumors. Two of the more recurring ones were that he’d become scarred beyond recognition and/or that he’d become the quintessential mad scientist creating Lord knows what sort of genetic mutations in his island laboratory. Hunter didn’t really give a damn what people said about him, as long as they left him alone.
The older man shook his head. Although at first glance George Cassidy had the look of a lion in winter, his thick mane of snowy hair had thinned, Hunter noticed irrelevantly. His once patrician nose was red and bulbous, indicating that his fondness for alcohol had intensified.
“This has to be some sort of sick joke.”
“I never joke.” Hunter leaned back in his leather chair, braced his elbows on the arms and eyed Cassidy over the tent of his fingers. “As you once so succinctly told me, emotions get in the way of logic. Which means, I suppose,” he allowed, “I owe a great deal of my success to your advice.”
“You would have succeeded on your own.”
“True. But if you hadn’t gotten me taken off the project, you would have continued to take credit for my work.” Work that had taken off in an entirely new direction, partly due to this man’s treachery. If Cassidy hadn’t stolen his research, he might never have developed such an interest in the age-old
