Zinnia

Chapter 19

The hot red swimsuit fit perfectly.

Naturally.

One of the really annoying things about matrix-talents was that they had a knack for estimating the distance, length, height, or width of just about anything. Show them a diagram of a complex multidimensional mathematical figure and they could quickly tell you the approximate angles of every intersecting line and the volumes of each defined space. Show them a woman and they could estimate her bra size.

Zinnia figured Nick probably had the coordinates of her measurements plotted on a matrix that he had stored somewhere in his very different brain. She wondered wistfully if he studied it occasionally when he was alone at night. Matrix masturbation was no doubt an interesting phenomena.

It was too bad that matrix-talents were not as good at personal relationships as they were with the spatial kind, she thought.

She walked to the edge of the pool and sat down.

For a few minutes she watched Nick do laps. She marveled that he did not cause the water to boil as he sliced through it. The energy he was radiating was palpable.

The sleek muscles of his shoulders glistened wetly. His powerful strokes propelled him forward with the lethal grace of a marauding shark-cuda. He had been raised in the Western Islands, Zinnia reminded herself. He had learned to swim in treacherous seas, not in a safe backyard swimming pool.

Midway through a lap Nick changed course and swam to meet her. When he reached the side, he braced himself in the deep water with one hand on the tile very close to her leg. He used his other hand to shove gleaming wet hair back from his high forehead.

"I see the suit fits." He surveyed her with undisguised satisfaction and something that could have been possessiveness.

"Perfectly."

He smiled. "And just your color."

She gazed down into his face and saw that his eyes still burned with the remnants of the fires of the focus link. "Do you have any other hobbies besides swimming?"

He looked surprised and then slightly baffled by the question. "Swimming isn't a hobby. I do it because it's an efficient way to exercise. I don't have any hobbies."

"I see." Typical obsessive matrix. There was no middle ground for them. Things were either compelling enough to warrant full attention and energy or they weren't worth doing at all.

He watched her closely. "Do you?"

"Have hobbies?" She shook her head ruefully. "Not really. I've been too busy with other things for the past few years. Someday I'd like to have a garden."

"You'll have to move out of that loft apartment if you want to have one."

"I know."

"You'd need a house and some land."

"Yes."

He was silent for a moment. Then, very deliberately, he put his hand on her bare thigh. He stroked slowly downward, briefly cupping her knee. She flinched at the touch of the cool water. Then the heat of his palm warmed her.

When he looked up again she saw that his eyes still burned. This time it wasn't just the smoldering embers of the focus link that blazed in the depths of his gaze.

"Have you made a decision?" he asked.

She knew what he meant. "Yes."

"Is that yes you've made up your mind, or yes you'll have an affair with me?"

"Yes to both."

"Zinnia, my talent may not drive me crazy, but you surely will."

He seemed to explode out of the water. Laughter and exultation flared in his eyes. His hands closed around her waist.

"Wait," she yelped. But it was too late.

He pulled her off the edge and toppled back into the pool with her in his arms.

"Take a breath," he warned.

The shock of hitting the cold water made her gasp.

Nick's teeth flashed in a wide grin. He plunged below the surface, drawing her down into the depths with him. The sudden sense of weightlessness made her feel giddy and disoriented.

He swam with her through the silent blue water world, his hold on her sure and confident. Down they went, into the deepest portion of the pool.

When they reached the bottom he tightened his grasp and soared back toward the light. Just when she thought she could not hold her breath a second longer, they broke the surface together.

"Beast." She laughed as she clutched his shoulders. "I'll get even for that. And you'll never know when it's coming."

"I can't wait."

The amusement in his eyes metamorphosed into sexual hunger with a speed that shook her to the core. His mouth closed over hers, searching, demanding, exciting.

When he raised his head a long time later she could feel her fingers trembling. If it had not been for his hands anchoring her against him, she would have floated away.

"I want this to be a real affair," he said.

"I don't see how much more real it can get."

His mouth tightened with impatience. "I mean I don't want to play any more games."

"Games?"

"We're not going to pretend that I've hired you as my interior designer."

She made a face. "Just as well. I don't think anyone was buying the interior-designer story. Not after those photos in Synsation. But, Nick, I have to warn you, dating me is probably not a good way to pursue your big plan to gain respectability."

"Don't worry about my respectability. I can buy that the same way I can buy everything else." His eyes darkened. "Except you. No one could buy you, Zinnia."

She touched his throat. "Or you."

"Neither of us is for sale." He smiled with an almost savage satisfaction. "We'll make it official tomorrow night."

"What happens tomorrow night?"

"I'm going to take you to the Founders' Club Ball."

She raised her brows. "Nick Chastain and the Scarlet Lady at the annual charity event of the year? Oh, my. That will certainly liven up the conversation in certain circles."

"Be sure to wear red." He bent his head and took her mouth once more.

She realized what he intended and managed to tear her mouth free long enough to protest. "Nick, for heaven's sake, not here. The waiter may come back at any moment."

"He won't come back until I call him." He held her with one hand and peeled the top of her swimsuit down to her waist in a single motion. He stared at her as if he had never seen another woman in his life. "You are so beautiful."

She knew full well that no objective observer would label her beautiful. But that only made his words all the sweeter. He was a matrix. Beauty was far more complex and multileveled for him than it was for most people. She framed his face with her hands. "So are you."

He lifted her partway out of the water and bent his head to take one taut nipple between his teeth.

She shivered. Water streamed from her hair down her arched back. She sank her nails into Nick and took fierce pleasure in the shudder that went through him. A glorious sensation of wild heady freedom flowed in her veins. She abandoned herself to her own womanly power.

Nick worked the red swimsuit down over her hips. A moment later it floated out of sight. His eyes gleamed as she slipped her fingers beneath the waistband of his suit.

She flattened her palms against his thighs and savored the feel of hard muscle beneath firm skin. Then she pushed the suit downward until it disappeared into the depths. She cradled his rigid erection in her hand.

He drew in his breath. "I told you, you're an inspiration to me."

She stroked gently, fascinated by the size and feel of him. "I take back what I said earlier. Maybe being an inspiration for you is enough for an overachiever like me."

"Come closer." He braced himself and pulled her legs around his waist. An erotic thrill shot through her when she realized that she was completely open to his touch.

He reached between her thighs and found her erect clitoris. He pressed it slowly, deliberately.

Ripples of anticipation gripped her. "I want you."

"You don't know what real wanting is," he said.

"Do you?"

"Yes." He eased a finger inside her. "God, yes, I know all about it. It's what I feel whenever I see you." He pushed upward against the top of her vagina. "Or think about you." He maintained the pressure inside her while he used his thumb on the small stiff nubbin that was a focus of so much sensation. "Or link with you."

Zinnia's eyes flew open. "So you do feel it."

He smiled faintly. "You mean this?"

Power crashed across the metaphysical plane, questing for a prism. Zinnia responded as she had the very first time, as she always did to him, instinctively, eagerly, with a sense of Tightness. The feeling of intimacy that was somehow sexual and yet far more than that, shimmered through the focus link.

"Yes," she whispered. "This."

"The first time it hit me I felt as if I'd stepped off the edge of a cliff." Nick pushed slowly, heavily into her. "I wondered if I'd finally snapped, the way they say high-class matrix-talents do sometimes."

"I thought I'd just met a real psychic vampire." She held her breath as her body stretched to accommodate him.

"I would never hurt you."

But you will, she thought. When Hobart Batt finds you the perfect wife, the woman who will fit into your grand plan for the future, you will marry her. And when you do, you will hurt me far more than you ever could with your psychic talent,

Nick thrust fully into her. In that moment she knew that he was not thinking about the nameless, faceless woman he would someday marry. In typical matrix fashion he was completely absorbed in the task at hand.

And that task was making love to her.

She would worry about the future when it crashed down around her, she promised herself.

On the metaphysical plane, vibrant energy pulsed through the crystal-clear prism. Zinnia gloried in the knowledge that, for a little while, whether or not he knew it, Nick was as much in love with her as it was possible for him to be.

Nick absently analyzed the pattern of the rain as it beat down on the glass roof. He felt as if he was still drifting, but it was an illusion. He was no longer in the pool. He and Zinnia were both wrapped in thick towels and stretched out on loungers that had been placed side by side.

Everything was supposed to be under control now. He had achieved his goal. She had agreed to the affair. So why couldn't he get rid of the cold uneasy chill of wrongness that had settled in his gut.

It was as if some element or coordinate was still missing from the design. But he could not figure out what he lacked to complete the matrix. He only knew that it was not yet right.

"Nick?" Zinnia turned her head and smiled at him. Feminine satisfaction gleamed in the depths of her warm languorous eyes. "Something wrong?"

"I was just thinking."

"Always a bad sign with a matrix."

He ignored that. "Why did you agree to the affair?"

"Complaints already?"

"I'm serious."

"You're always serious." She paused. "Or, almost always."

"I just want to know why you decided to go ahead with it."

"Nick, I know you're a matrix and therefore inclined to obsess on details that don't seem to fit into the pattern, but some things you just have to accept."

He gazed steadily at her. "Is it because of what we feel when we link?"

"No." She smiled. "Although I'll admit it's interesting."

"Is it because the sex is great?"

"No, but that's very interesting, too."

"Is it because you got tired of waiting for Mr. Right to show up and decided to experiment with me, instead?"

"No."

"Is it because you feel sorry for matrix-talents in general and since I'm the highest-class matrix you've ever met you feel more than the usual degree of pity?"

"You're starting to slip into paranoia, here, Nick."

He levered himself up and looked down at her. "Tell me why you agreed to have an affair with me."

"For heaven's sake, isn't it obvious?" She rolled off the lounger, tightened her grip on the towel, and started toward the cabana. "I decided to have an affair with you because I'm in love with you."

Nick stopped breathing. By the time he managed to fill his lungs with air, she had vanished into the changing room.

And the patterns in the matrix had tumbled into disarray.

He was still reeling from the shock of Zinnia's words three hours later when he walked into the richly paneled bar of the exclusive Founders' Club.

She loved him.

She didn't know it, but she had completely screwed up his entire world. He had been struggling to make her simple words fit into the matrix ever since she had flung them at him with such devastating nonchalance.

She probably hadn't intended the words to be taken literally, he told himself for what had to be the seventy-sixth time in three hours. She had probably meant that she loved the sex. After all, she didn't have much in the way of comparisons.

Which meant that she had undoubtedly confused passion with love. An understandable mistake for a woman who had never had another lover.

But even if that was true, he would never forget Zinnia's words of love. They had warmed something inside him that had been cold for a very long time. He did not know what would happen if he doused the cheerful blaze. The thought of confronting the chill again was not an inviting one.

He forced his new problems to the side of his attention when he spotted Orrin Chastain sitting alone in a booth. The older man's shoulders were hunched. A scotch-tini sat on the table in front of him.

Nick crossed the heavily carpeted room to join Orrin. The day was winding down and the club bar was beginning to fill with expensively suited members.

The Founders' Club catered to the business and political elite of New Seattle. The heavy, dark, Later Expansion Period decor provided the discreet ambience needed by those who made the kind of decisions that affected the politics and economy of the entire city-state.

As he walked through the room Nick could hear snippets of muffled conversations. They involved a wide variety of topics, but he knew that at the core of each lay the subject of money. It always came down to money, he reflected.

"Hello, Uncle Orrin."

Orrin looked up, startled, when Nick came to a halt beside the table. Belatedly he squared his shoulders. "What in five hells are you doing here?"

"I want to talk to you." Nick slid into the booth on the side opposite Orrin. "I have a question to ask you."

"How did you get into this club?" Orrin cast a disgruntled glance toward the entrance. "It's supposed to be private. Members only."

Nick smiled humorlessly. "I got in the same way everyone else in here did. I bought my way in."

Orrin's jaw clenched. "I don't believe it."

"Want to see my membership card?"

"Goddamn it, I've got a business meeting here in a few minutes."

"How are the talks with your new potential investor going?"

"I have no intention of discussing the future of Chastain, Inc. with you."

Nick shrugged. "Suit yourself." He reached into his pocket and withdrew the gold cuff link he had found in Wilkes's workshop. "Mind telling me where you lost this?"

Orrin's brows jerked in surprise. "That's mine. I've been looking for it. Where the hell did you find it?"

"It was just lying around."

"Give it to me." Orrin held out his hand in an imperious manner. "That is one of my Chastain cuff links. I thought I was going to have to commission a duplicate to replace that one."

Nick closed his fingers around the cufflink. "What happened to my father's set?"

Orrin's face turned an unpleasant shade of purple. "That is none of your concern. The tradition affects only the legitimate branch of the family. Give me that cuff link. It belongs to me. If you don't hand it over, you're no better than a thief."

"I want to know where you lost it."

"I have no idea," Orrin exploded in muffled tones. "I simply noticed that it was missing a few days ago. I'd like to know how you came across it."

"I found it in the house of a man named Alfred Wilkes." Nick watched Orrin's face carefully but there was no flicker of recognition.

"I don't know anyone named Wilkes. Hand it over at once."

Nick slowly uncurled his fingers. He rose to his feet and dropped the cufflink into Orrin's palm. "Thanks, Uncle. As usual, you've been very helpful. I'll look forward to seeing you tomorrow evening."

Orrin's eyes widened in outrage. "What do you mean?"

"Don't tell me you've forgotten the annual Founders' Club ball?"

"You're going to attend the charity ball?" Orrin looked shocked. "But it's . . . it's a club affair."

"And as I told you, I'm now a member." Nick smiled thinly. "Brace yourself, Orrin, my side of the Chastain clan is going legit. In another few years no one will even remember that there was a bastard in the family tree. It's amazing how easy it is to rewrite history. If you have the money, that is."

"You can't just buy your way into respectable circles," Orrin sputtered.

"Watch me."

"Why, you . . . you-"

Nick ignored him. He started toward the door without a backward glance. He had gone two strides when he saw Duncan Luttrell enter the bar. There was something about the way Luttrell briefly surveyed the crowd that enabled Nick to make several small connections in one portion of the matrix.

He paused, considering the matter briefly. Then he turned and walked back to the booth were Orrin sat.

"Thought you'd left," Orrin muttered.

"A word of advice, Uncle."

"I don't want your damned advice."

Nick indicated the scotch-tini sitting on the table. "If you're going to do a deal with Luttrell, lay off the alcohol before you start negotiating."

"Now what in blazes are you talking about?"

"Luttrell may look and sound like a nice guy who just happened to get lucky in the computer business, but he didn't build SynIce into the company it is by being a good-natured pushover. He's smart. Very, very smart. And he's nobody's fool."

"Luttrell is a good businessman, I'll grant you that." Orrin's gaze narrowed. "He is also a gentleman, unlike some people I could mention. Take your so-called advice and get out of here."

"Whatever you say, Uncle." Nick turned and started back toward the door. He did not know why he had even bothered to issue the warning. Zinnia would no doubt have some silly explanation involving his so-called family values.

Duncan smiled politely when he made to pass Nick. His eyes held cool speculation. "You're Nick Chastain, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"We've never met personally, although I've been into your casino once or twice. An interesting business you've got there."

"Thanks. It's made me rich."

Duncan looked briefly amused by the tasteless answer. "We seem to be hearing and seeing a lot of you lately in the tabloids. I thought you liked privacy."

"I do," Nick said. "But sometimes one has to make sacrifices in order to get what one wants."

"Very true. I understand you're a new member here."

"That's right." Nick wondered if Duncan would make a crack about the club's declining standards.

"You're seeing a friend of mine, I believe," Duncan said instead. "Zinnia Spring."

Nick was stunned by the rush of fierce protectiveness and possessiveness that slammed through him. He fought down an almost irresistible urge to shove Duncan up against the nearest wall and tell him how things really were between himself and Zinnia. I'm not just seeing her, I'm having an affair with her, you son of a spider-frog. Stay away from her. I don't want you touching her.

Somehow he managed to keep his expression calm and controlled. "Zinnia and I are very close."

"Look, I'll level with you here, Chastain. She's a very nice lady and she's been through a lot. I wouldn't want to see her hurt."

"Zinnia and I understand each other." Nick walked away before Duncan could give him the rest of the lecture. He had enough problems on his hands. He did not want to add a sense of guilt to the matrix.

"The financial aspect? I don't understand, Miss Spring. I thought I mentioned that the University of New Portland funded the Third Expedition."

Newton DeForest's voice was as cheerful as ever on the other end of the line. Zinnia had a vision of him manicuring the tentacles of one of his grotesque plants while he spoke with her.

"Yes, I know," she said. "But I'm wondering about the university's source of funds. A major expedition costs a lot. Was the Third underwritten by a wealthy donor or a corporation?"

"I see what you mean." DeForest sounded thoughtful. "There was very likely corporate money involved. After all, business has a lot to gain from successful exploration trips. Companies often finance expeditions. But any materials on that subject were no doubt destroyed when the records storage facility burned some thirty-four years ago. The aliens are very clever, you know. Very thorough when it comes to covering their tracks."

"Do you think you might have anything in your personal files? The ones you said you kept in the family crypt?"

"Doubt it," Newton said. "Didn't bother much with the financial side of the story. I've always found money a rather dull subject. The aliens don't use money, you know. They've evolved beyond the need for cash."

"How convenient for them," Zinnia muttered. "Professor, I hate to put you to any more trouble, but would you mind very much just taking a look through your old files? Anything that dealt with the funding of the Third Expedition would be of great interest to me."

"Very well. But don't get your hopes up, Miss Spring. Even if I did find the name of a company that contributed funds for the project, what good would the information do you?"

"I don't know," Zinnia admitted.

She hung up the phone and sat thinking for a long time.

The larger and more complicated the mystery became, the more confusing it was. Or, as Nick would say, the more the elements in the matrix threatened to shift and realign themselves in meaningless patterns.

And the most disturbing factor of all was her relationship with the master of the matrix.