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“Humor me.” She smiled faintly. “Close your eyes. That really does help sometimes—I wasn’t just spinning Vanessa a line yesterday. Start at the top and go through everything you remember.”
Dirk had reached the point in the conversation where he’d demanded proof his daughters were still alive, when he said, “That’s when I heard a sound in the background on his end of the phone. It seemed familiar but I couldn’t place it. Then he said, ‘Very well. You arrange for the money. I’ll arrange for proof of life.’ I asked him how much, and he—”
“Stop right there,” Mei-li said, her voice urgent, and Dirk’s eyes flew open to focus on her face. “What sound did you hear?”
He frowned. “I’d forgotten about it until just now. At the time I was sure I knew what the sound was, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then it slipped away because I was focusing on the next thing the kidnapper said.”
“So what was the sound?”
Dirk closed his eyes again. His brow furrowed in concentration for one minute, then two. Finally he shook his head, frustration evident. “It’s there. I can almost touch it, but not quite.”
They stared at each other for a moment. Then Mei-li said, “Have you ever been hypnotized, Dirk?” At his skeptical look, she laughed softly. “It’s not as impossible as you seem to think. It doesn’t work for everyone, but they say imaginative people are particularly susceptible.” She paused, then said, “Wouldn’t you say an actor is an imaginative person?”
Dirk made a sound of dismissal. “Yeah, I’m an actor. But I’m no more imaginative than the next guy.”
She deliberately made her smile a challenge. “Then you wouldn’t mind if I tried to hypnotize you?” She let that hang there for a second before adding, “I am a trained hypnotist, by the way. Since you’re not susceptible, and all that, what can it hurt?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it, words unsaid. She had him and she knew it, but she didn’t let her triumph show. “Just on the off chance you can be hypnotized, I promise I won’t ask you about anything except the sound you heard.” A flash of something in his eyes made her add, “Your secrets are safe, Dirk, I swear.” Softly. Reassuringly. Because he did have secrets. It was there in his face—deeper, darker secrets than the ones he’d shared with her last night.
“So, how does this work? You dangle a pocket watch and say in a spooky voice, ‘Look into my eyes’?” He finally acceded, but she knew he was still nervous from his joke and the way he held himself so tightly her muscles ached.
She gurgled with laughter. She couldn’t help it. “I don’t have a pocket watch,” she told him, holding her hand over her mouth to contain her mirth. “And I don’t do spooky.”
Her laughter forced a smile out of him, the first real smile she’d seen from him since that night two weeks ago, and she caught her breath. This was the man named “sexiest man alive” by the tabloids—and now she knew why. But there was so much more to him than just sexy. So much more than just a handsome hunk on the silver screen.
Why had she taken an immediate dislike to him that first night? It wasn’t like her at all—she was usually at least mildly tolerant of men who admired her physical appearance and showed it. She was indifferent to her own beauty—beautiful parents and good genes accounted for that. It didn’t have anything to do with her, and she was realistic to know it. She did her best to play down her looks, especially when she was working, and she wore very little makeup. But she loved beautiful clothes and had a weakness for silk, like the red dress she’d worn the night she’d met Dirk. And most men had a thing for red on a woman—everyone knew that. So it hardly seemed fair to judge Dirk because he’d been attracted to her.
Far worse than the men who pursued her because she was beautiful were the men who pursued her because of who her father was—shallow, narcissistic actors who wanted to use her to get to her powerful father to further their careers. But that hadn’t been Dirk’s motivation—he’s already a superstar, she thought. He didn’t need her father to advance his career; the shoe was actually on the other foot. Her father had mentioned after Dirk left the jazz club that it was a feather in his cap having landed Dirk to star in his current project.
And the way her father had talked about Dirk—about what a consummate professional he was on the set—had told Mei-li she’d badly misjudged him...the same way he’d misjudged her by assuming she was her father’s mistress. Was that what had given her a distaste for the admiration in his eyes, for the compliment he’d given her? Because she’d been ticked off by his assumption? Or had it been something more troubling?
