Sense of Evil - Kay Hooper [71]
“And it deceived you.”
She laughed, the low sound holding no amusement. “It wore a handsome face, when it first showed itself to me. A charming smile. It had a persuasive voice, and it knew all the right words to say. And the touch of it was kind and gentle. At least in the beginning.”
“A man. Someone you cared about.”
Isabel crossed her arms beneath her breasts, unconsciously adding yet another barrier between them, but she continued speaking in a toneless voice.
“I was seventeen. He was a little older, but I'd known him all my life. He was the boy in the neighborhood everybody depended on. If an elderly widow needed her yard mowed, he'd do it—and refuse payment. If anybody needed furniture moved, he'd offer to help. Stuck for a baby-sitter? He was there, always reliable and responsible, and all the kids—all the kids—adored him. The parents trusted him. Their sons considered him a buddy. And their daughters thought he walked on water.”
“Deceiving everyone.”
She nodded slowly, her gaze fixed on the table now, eyes distant. “The weird thing is, after taking all the time and trouble to deceive everybody around him for such a long, long time, when it came right down to it, it didn't take much at all to start revealing the beast inside.”
Rafe was very much afraid he knew where this was going, and it required an effort to hold his voice steady when he asked, “What did it take?”
“No. Just that. Just one little word.” She looked up, focused on him. “That was the beginning. He asked me to a school dance, and I said no.”
“What did he do, Isabel?”
“Nothing then. I told him I didn't feel like that about him, that he was more of a brother to me. He said it was a shame, but he understood. A few days later, I saw him in the bushes outside my house. Outside my bedroom. Watching me.”
“You didn't call the cops,” Rafe guessed.
“I was seventeen. I trusted him. I thought he was just . . . taking the rejection badly. Maybe I was even a little bit flattered on some level of myself, that it mattered so much to him. So I just closed the curtains. And kept them closed. But then he started . . . turning up wherever I was. Always at a distance. Always watching me. That was when I started to be . . . just a little bit afraid.”
“But you still didn't report it.”
“No. Everybody loved him, and I think I was half afraid nobody would believe me. I confided in my best friend. She was envious. Said he had a crush on me, and I should be flattered.” She laughed, again without humor. “She was seventeen too. What do you know, at seventeen?
“I tried to feel flattered, but it was getting more and more difficult to feel anything but scared. I could take care of myself, I knew self-defense, but . . . there was something in his eyes I'd never seen before. Something angry. And hungry. And I didn't understand why, but it terrified me.”
Rafe waited, unable to ask another question. He wished they were somewhere more private yet had a strong hunch that, if they had been, Isabel wouldn't have been willing—or able—to confide in him about this. He thought she needed the insulation of a semipublic place for this. There were people here, even if not close by. Food and music and an occasional quiet laugh from another part of the room.
Normality here.
He thought Isabel was afraid she wouldn't be able to hold it together enough to talk about this if they were alone. Either that or she had chosen, quite deliberately, to tell him this without even a shadow of intimacy. With a table between them in a public place, where the ugliness could be softened or blurred or even discarded at the end with a game shrug and a bland But it happened years ago, of course.
Depending on his reaction to what she was telling him.
Depending on how well he held it together.
“Of course, it wasn't talked about so much in those days, stalking.” Her voice was steady, controlled. “I mean, that was something that happened to celebrities, not ordinary people. Not seventeen-year-old girls. And certainly not involving boys they'd known their whole lives. So when I finally did