Dancing with Deception by Kadi Dillon Page A

by the field’s open ?”
    “Oh, that?” Colin put his long legs on the chair in front of him and crossed them. “You said you don’t want her. I might. That’s all.”
    “Rebecca?” Jess frowned. “Gideon likes her. You shouldn’t poach.”
    “Jess!”
    “I’m not going to poach,” Colin explained patiently. “He said he didn’t want to go there. So it’s not poaching. Now, if he were to tell me he was interested-” Colin shrugged.
    Gideon pinched the bridge of his nose.
    “What are you interested in?”
    Gideon spun around. “Mom!”
    “What?”
    Gideon took Colin’s tea and drank it down. Not as potent as coffee, or even a good whiskey but it went a long way to cool his mood. “I’m not interested. But you’re not going there. Got it?”
    Colin smiled.
    “All right boys. She has a name- and it’s Rebecca,” Jess said for her mother’s benefit. “And I thought we talked about this earlier this morning.”
    “You talked to Jess about your sex life?”
    He growled at Colin. “All right, listen-” Gideon took a deep breath and thought about what he was going to say. He never got to finish. The quiet kitchen was punctuated by a very high pitched, terrified scream.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Six
     
    Horrified and unmoving, Rebecca let out another blood-curling scream.
    She’d come up and showered the sweat and dirt away, all the while cursing her reaction to Gideon. She couldn’t help how she felt about him and that confused her. She’d been drawn to men before, but men she had known more than a day. She liked sex, but never really wondered how it would be with any particular man. It just happened after a while of dating and friendship. There’d been no dating with Gideon, no quiet talks or romancing. She’d just look at him and want him.
    It scared her a little that he could entice such strong emotions from her in so short of time. The intensity of his personality clashed with her more reserved nature. She was outgoing when she wasn’t being chased by goons. She had friends and liked to be social. From everything she’d learned about Gideon so far told her he was more solitary.
    They were polar opposites. Completely different in everything but the situation they were in. Maybe the danger added the intensity. Maybe once her father returned and took the painting, Gideon would lose his appeal to her. She hoped so, anyway.
    She’d wondered while conditioning her hair why she couldn’t have been attracted to Colin instead. He had the same sense of intensity in him, yet he seemed so mellow. He was dangerously handsome, much like Gideon. So why couldn’t she suffer these feelings for him? It would definitely be safer for her.
    But it wasn’t to be, she had decided as she dried and changed into a new pair of clothes. She was stuck with these unwelcome urges that she didn’t dare do anything about for the next little while. She was brushing her hair when she saw it. Her worst fear had materialized out from behind the cabinet on the wall.
    Rebecca was stunned into screaming. She thought maybe it could smell her fear, for it changed directions and crawled on its eight nasty legs. Right. For. Her.
    “Oh, my god.” Rebecca screamed again and threw the hair brush at it. Of course it missed. She screamed again, couldn’t seem to help but scream. Icy fingers of panic brushed against the back of her neck. She backed into the wall and before she could suck in the breath to scream again, the door seemed to explode off the hinges.
    Rebecca threw her hands up to block whatever barreled through the door at her. Gideon caught her upper arms. He was screaming at her, she realized, but she couldn’t hear the words. His lips formed the word stop over and over again and Rebecca realized she was still screaming.
    She sucked in a breath and would have fallen if Gideon wasn’t holding onto her.
    “What happened?” he asked again, his voice hard as granite.
    Rebecca looked past