Passion in Secret
Catherine Spencer
Years ago, Jake Harrington had loved Sally with a passion. But he had been tricked into marrying someone else. Now free of that marriage, Jake wants a second chance with Sally. Though the timing is wrong and reputations are at stake, after so much wasted time they finally confess their feelings–secretly!Keeping their passion private brings its own tensions, but the revelations of the lies and secrets that caused their past breakup only push them farther into each other's arms. Until Sally reveals one final secret–and it's the one thing Jake just can't forgive….
“You must hate me,” Sally insisted.
“I could never hate you,” he muttered. “You were my first love…my best love.”
“Don’t!” she cried. “You’re in denial over Penelope. You don’t want to accept that she betrayed you. You just need someone to hold on to, and I happen to be here.”
He wished it were so. It would make everything so much easier. But he was tired of pretending. Tired of trying to preserve a charade that had played itself out years ago.
“Not just anyone, Sally. Only you. You make me feel again. You make me want to live.”
She melted against him, her protests dying on a sigh. Who knew what might have happened next, if a too-bright light hadn’t splashed against the window from outside?
“What the devil…” Jake swung her behind him. But whoever had come sneaking up to the house had found what they’d been seeking, and he doubted they’d keep it to themselves. “I’m sorry, Sally. I’m afraid whatever problems you thought you had before I showed up here tonight have just multiplied a thousand times over.”
CATHERINE SPENCER, once an English teacher, fell into writing through eavesdropping on a conversation about Harlequin
romances. Within two months she changed careers, and she sold her first book to Harlequin
in 1984. She moved to Canada from England thirty years ago and now lives in Vancouver. She is married to a Canadian and has four grown children—two daughters and two sons—plus a dog and a cat. In her spare time she plays the piano, collects antiques and grows tropical shrubs.
Passion in Secret
Catherine Spencer
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
EVEN without the bitter wind howling in from the Atlantic, the hostile glances directed at her as she joined the other mourners at the graveside were enough to chill Sally to the bone. Not that anyone said anything. The well-bred residents of Bayview Heights, Eastridge Bay’s most prestigious neighborhood, would have considered it sacrilege to voice their disapproval openly, before the body of one the town’s most socially prominent daughters had been properly laid to rest.
No, they’d save their recriminations for later, over tea, sherry and sympathy at the Burton mansion. Except that Sally wouldn’t be there to hear them. The blatant omission of her name from the list of guests invited to celebrate a life cut tragically short, was an indictment in itself, and never mind that her name had been officially cleared of blame.
“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust….” The minister, his robes flapping around him, intoned the final burial prayers.
Penelope’s mother, Colette, gave a stifled sob and reached out to the flower-draped casket. Watching from beneath lowered lashes, Sally saw Fletcher Burton clasp his wife’s arm in mute comfort. Flanking her other side and leaning heavily on his cane, Jake stood with his head bowed. His hair, though prematurely flecked with a hint of silver, was as thick as when Sally had last touched it, eight years before.
Seeming to sense he was being observed, he suddenly glanced up and caught her covert scrutiny. For all that she knew she was encouraging further censure from those busy watching her, she couldn’t tear her gaze away. Even worse, she found herself telegraphing a message.
It wasn’t my fault, Jake!
But even if he understood what she was trying to convey, he clearly didn’t believe her. Like everyone else, he held her responsible. He was a widower at twenty-eight, and all because of her. She could see the condemnation in his summer-blue eyes, coated now with the same frost which touched his hair; in the unyielding line of his mouth which, once, had kissed her with all the heat and raging urgency perhaps only a nineteen-year-old could know.
A gust of wind tossed the bare, black boughs of the elm trees and caused the ribbon attached to the Burtons’ elaborate wreath to flutter up from the casket, as if Penelope were trying to push open the lid from within. Which, if she could have, she’d have done. And laughed in the face of so much funereal solemnity.
Life’s a merry-go-round, she’d always claimed, and I intend to ride it to the end, and be a good-looking corpse!
Remembering the words and the careless laugh which had accompanied them, Sally wondered if the stinging cold caused her eyes to glaze with tears or if, at last, the curious flattening of emotion which had held her captive ever since the accident, was finally releasing its unholy grip and allowing her to feel again.
A blurred ripple of movement caught her attention. Wiping a gloved hand across her eyes, she saw that the service was over. Colette Burton pressed her fingertips first to her lips and then to the edge of the casket in a last farewell. Other mourners followed suit—all except the widower and his immediate family. He remained immobile, his face unreadable, his shoulders squared beneath his navy pilot’s uniform. His relatives closed ranks around him, as if by doing so, they could shield him from the enormity of his loss.
Averting her gaze, Sally stepped aside as, openly shunning her, Penelope’s parents trekked over the frozen ground to the fleet of limousines waiting at the curb. She had attended the funeral out of respect for a former friend and because she knew her absence would fuel the gossip mills even more than her presence had. But the Burtons’ message set the tone for the rest of the mourners following close behind: Sally Winslow was trouble, just as she’d always been, and undeserving of compassion or courtesy.
That being so obviously the case, she was shocked to hear footsteps crunching unevenly over the snow to where she stood, and Jake’s voice at her ear saying, “I was hoping you’d be here. How are you holding up, Sally?”
“About as well as can be expected,” she said, her breath catching in her throat. “And you?”
He shrugged. “The same. Are you coming back to the Burtons’ for the reception?”
“No. I’m not invited.”
He regarded her soberly a moment. “You are now. As Penelope’s husband, I’m inviting you. Your friendship with her goes back a long way. She’d want you there.”
She couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t bear the cool neutrality in his voice. “I’m not sure that’s so,” she said, turning away. “Our lives had gone in separate directions. We didn’t always see eye to eye anymore.” Especially not about you or the sanctity of your marriage.
Unmindful of the buzz of speculation such a gesture would surely give rise to, he gripped her arm to prevent her leaving. “It would mean a lot to me if you’d change your mind.”
“Why, Jake?” she felt bound to ask. “You and I haven’t been close in years, either, and under the circumstances, I can’t imagine why you’d want to seek me out now.”
“You were the last person to see my wife alive. The last one to speak to her. I’d like to talk to you about it.”
“Why?” she said again, stifling a moment of panic. “The police report spells out the events of that night pretty clearly.”
“I’ve read the police report and also heard my in-laws’ account of what took place. It’s what you have to say that interests me. They know that an accident occurred, but you’re the only one who knows how or why.”
The panic stole over her again. “I’ve already told everything there is to tell, at least a dozen times.”
“Humor me, Sally, and tell it once more.” He indicated the cane in his left hand. “They released me from the military hospital in Germany less than twenty-four hours ago. I got home early this morning, just in time for the funeral. Everything I’ve learned so far has come to me secondhand. Surely you can understand why I’d like to hear it from the only person who was actually there when Penelope died.”
“What do you expect to accomplish by doing that?”
“It’s possible you might remember something that didn’t seem important at the time that you gave your statement. Something which would fill in what strike me as gaping holes in the accounts I’ve so far received.”
In other words, he suspected there was more to the story than the nicely laundered official version. She’d been afraid of that. Afraid not of what he might ask, but that he’d discern the painful truth behind the lies she’d told to spare his and the Burtons’ feelings.
“Sally?” Margaret, her older sister, bore down on them, her slight frown the only indication that she found Sally’s fraternizing with the widower, in full sight of the bereaved family, to be totally inappropriate. “We need to leave. Now.”
“Yes.” For once glad of her older sister’s interference, Sally put a respectable distance between herself and Jake. “I was just explaining that I can’t make it to the reception.”
“Well, of course you can’t!” Margaret’s expression softened as she turned to Jake. “I’m very sorry about your loss, Jake, as are we all. What a dreadful homecoming for you. But I’m afraid we really do have to go. I need to get home to the children.”
“You and Sally came here together?”
“Yes. She hasn’t been too keen on driving since the accident. It shook her up more than most people seem to realize.”
“Did it?” His glance swung from Margaret and zeroed in again on Sally with altogether too much perception for her peace of mind. “At least, you escaped serious injury.”
“I was lucky.”
“Indeed you were. A great deal more than my wife.”
A trembling cold took hold as memories washed over her: of the protesting scream of the brakes, the smell of burning rubber as the tires left tracks on the road. And most of all, of Penelope, flung out of the car and lying all broken in the ditch, mumbling with a spectral smile on her face, Silly me. I fell off the merry-go-round before it stopped, Sal.
With an effort, Sally shook off the painful recollection and, aware that Jake continued to scrutinize her, said, “Yes, I was lucky. But not all injuries appear on the outside. Watching a friend die isn’t something a person easily gets over.”
“Not as a rule.”
Although polite enough on the surface, his words rang with such searing contempt that, ignoring her better judgment, she burst out, “Do you think I’m lying?”
“Are you?”
“Good grief, Jake, even allowing for your understandable heartache, that question is uncalled-for!” Margaret seldom approved of anything Sally did, but when it came to outside criticism, she was all mother hen protecting her young. “My sister was—is!—devastated by Penelope’s death.”
Something shifted in his expression. Not a softening, exactly, but a sort of resignation. “Yes,” he said. “Of course she is. I apologize, Sally, for implying otherwise.”
Sally nodded, but her sigh of relief was cut short when he continued, “And I’ll be glad to arrange a ride home for you after the reception.”
“Thank you, Jake, but no. I’ve already inconvenienced Margaret. I wouldn’t dream of imposing on you as well, especially not today.”
“You’d be doing me a favor. And if you’re afraid—”
“Why should she be?” Margaret interjected sharply. “Penelope’s death was ruled an accident.”
“I’m aware of that, just as I’m equally aware that not everyone accepts the verdict at face value.”
“Then perhaps you’re right. Perhaps taking her to the reception isn’t such a bad idea.” Margaret pursed her lips in thought, then gave Sally an encouraging poke in the ribs. “Yes. Go with him after all, Sally. Face the lot of them and prove you’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.”
Rendered speechless by Margaret’s sudden about-face, Sally groped for an answer which would put a definitive end to the whole subject. She had enough to cope with; she wasn’t up to dealing with the unwarranted antagonism she’d face by agreeing to Jake’s request.
“No!” she finally spluttered. “I don’t have to prove anything to anyone!”
But the only person paying the slightest attention was Jake. Having issued her decree, Margaret had cut a brisk path among the graves to that section of the road where she’d parked her car a discreet distance away from any other vehicles, and was already climbing behind the wheel.
“It would seem,” Jake murmured, clamping his free hand around Sally’s elbow before she bolted also, and steering her toward the sole remaining limousine, “that you have no choice but to prove it. Let’s not keep the driver waiting. I can’t speak for you, but I’m in no shape to hike the four miles back to my in-laws’, especially not under these conditions.” He glanced up at the leaden sky pressing coldly down on the treetops. “We’re lucky the snow held off this long.”
Thankfully the last car was empty except for a couple from out of town who didn’t seem to know that the passenger accompanying Jake was the woman whom popular opinion held responsible for rendering him a widower. Grateful that they showed no inclination to talk beyond a subdued greeting, Sally huddled in the corner of the soft leather seat and welcomed the blast of heat fanning around her ankles.
She’d be facing another round of chilly displeasure soon enough. In the meantime, she might as well take comfort wherever she could find it.
Lovely Sally Winslow was lying through her teeth. It might have been years since he’d last seen her, but Jake remembered enough about her to know when she was covering up. The question buzzing through his sleep-deprived mind was, for what purpose?
She’d been formally cleared of blame in the accident. So why couldn’t she look him straight in the eye? Why was she instead staring fixedly out of the window beside her so that all he could see of her was the back of her head and the dark, shining cap of her hair. What was with her sitting as far away from him as she could get, as if she feared grief might prompt him to grab her by the throat and try to choke the truth out of her?
The chauffeur drove sedately along the broad, tree-lined avenues of Bayview Heights, turned onto The Crescent and past various stately homes sitting on five acre lots, then hung a left through the iron gates guarding the Burton property. Except for the gleam of lamplight shining from the main floor windows and casting a soft yellow glow over the snow piled up outside, the massive house, built nearly a hundred years before from blocks of granite hewn from the quarry just outside town, rose black and brooding in the early dusk.
The limo barely whispered to a stop under the porte-cochère before Morton, the butler, flung open the double front doors. At the sight of Sally climbing the steps, a flicker of surprise crossed his face. “Ahem,” he said, extending one arm as if to bar her entry.
“Miss Winslow is here as my guest,” Jake informed him, taken aback at the surge of protectiveness he felt toward her. Whatever else she might not be, Sally had always been able to fend for herself. She hardly needed him playing knight errant.
With fastidious distaste, Morton relieved her of her coat. “The family is receiving in the drawing room, Captain Harrington,” he said. “Shall I announce you?”
“No need. I know the way.” Jake handed the manservant his cap, brushed a few snowflakes from his shoulders and cocked his head at Sally. “Ready to face the fray?”
“As much as I’ll ever be.”
He thought of offering her his arm, and decided she’d have to make do with his moral support. No point in rubbing salt into his in-laws’ wounds. They were suffering enough.
The drawing room, a masterpiece of late nineteenth-century craftsmanship with its intricate moldings and ornately coffered ceiling, hummed with the low buzz of conversation. Every spare inch of surface on the highly polished furniture was filled with photographs of Penelope framed by huge, heavily scented flower arrangements.
Under the tall Arcadian windows overlooking the rear gardens, a table held an assortment of fancy sandwiches, hot canapés and French pastries. A fat woman whom he didn’t recognize presided over the heirloom sterling tea service and priceless translucent china. At the other end of the room, a Chippendale desk served as a temporary bar with his father-in-law in charge. Colette, an empty brandy snifter at her elbow, perched on the edge of a silk-upholstered chair, accepting condolences.
Fletcher Burton saw him and Sally first. At six foot one—only an inch shorter than Jake himself—he stood taller than most of the rest grouped about the room. About to pour sherry for the weepy-eyed woman at his side, he thumped the heavy cut-glass decanter back on its silver tray and cut a swath through the crowd. “I don’t know how this young woman managed to get past Morton—!”
“I brought her here, Fletcher.”
“What the devil for?”
“She and Penelope had known each other from childhood. They were friends. Sally was the last person to see your daughter alive. I’d say that gives her as much right to be here as anyone.”
“For God’s sake, Jake! You know Colette’s feelings on this. We’re trying to put the past behind us.”
“With altogether more speed than decency, if you ask me.”
“Nevertheless, under the circumstances, I hardly think—”
“I agreed to your taking charge of all the funeral arrangements because I couldn’t be here in time to handle them myself,” Jake cut in. “But may I remind you, Fletcher, that although you were Penelope’s parents, I was her husband. I believe that entitles me to invite whom I please to this reception honoring her memory.”
“No, it doesn’t. Not if it adds to anyone’s grief.” Sally, who’d been edging back toward the foyer, spoke up. “I came to pay my respects, Mr. Burton, and now that I have, I’ll leave.”
“Thank you.” Poor old Fletcher, henpecked to within an inch of his life, cast an anxious glance across the room to where Colette held court. “Look, I don’t mean to be offensive, but I’m afraid you’re no longer welcome in our home, Sally. If my wife should see you, she’d—”
But the warning came too late. Colette had seen them and her outraged gasp had everyone looking her way. Handkerchief fluttering, she fairly flew across the room. “How dare you show your face in our home, Sally Winslow? Have you no sense of decency at all?”
“She came with me.” Not only was he beginning to sound like a broken record, Jake was growing thoroughly tired of repeating the same old refrain. It was his own fault, though. He should have stood his ground and insisted on postponing the funeral until he could have taken over. A few more days wouldn’t have made any difference to Penelope, but if he’d hosted her wake in the house they’d shared as a couple, he might have been able to circumvent the present scene.
“How could you do that, Jake?” Colette wailed, her baby blues swimming in tears. “How could you hurt me by desecrating Penelope’s memory this way? I’ve suffered enough. I need some closure.”
“We all do, Colette,” he said gently, moved despite himself by her anguish. Colette Burton might be a diva of the first order, but she’d truly adored her daughter.
“And you expect to find it by bringing that woman here?” She let out a tortured sob. “What kind of son-in-law are you?”
Fletcher would have caved at that line of attack, but Jake wasn’t about to. “One trying to put back together the pieces of his life.”
“With the help of your wife’s murderer?”
The shocked reaction brought on by that remark—because there wasn’t a soul in the room who hadn’t heard it, including his parents—bounced back from the walls in a throttling silence broken only by a faint whimper of despair from Sally.
Caught again in the urge to leap to her defense, he said, “Perhaps you’d like to retract that accusation, Colette, before it lands you in more trouble than you’re able to handle right now.”
“No!” Sally overrode him, her voice thick with emotion barely held in check. “Don’t blame her.” She turned to Colette, and touched her hand contritely. “Please forgive me, Mrs. Burton. I shouldn’t have come. I just wanted to tell you again how very sorry I am that Penelope’s life ended so tragically. I truly feel your pain.”
Colette snatched her hand away as if she’d been singed by a naked flame. “Do you really, Sally Winslow! Are you trying to tell me you’ve walked the floor every night since she was killed, wondering what that strange noise is and realizing it’s the sound of your own heart breaking, over and over again?”
“No, but I’ve—”
“Of course you haven’t! You’re probably glad Penelope’s dead, if truth be known, because you always resented her for being prettier and smarter than you. But now, you don’t have to live in her shadow anymore, do you?”
“Colette, that’s enough.” Fletcher tried steering her away, to no effect.
“Leave me alone! I’m not finished with her yet.” Like a wild thing, she flung him off and rounded on Sally again. “Do you have any idea how it feels to see your child lying dead in her box? Do you know what it’s like to finally fall asleep from sheer emotional exhaustion, and do so praying that you’ll never wake up again? Do you?”
Sally, pale enough to begin with, blanched alarmingly and pressed her lips together to stop their trembling. Perspiration gleamed on her brow. Her eyes, normally dark as forest-green pools, turned almost black with distress.
“That’s what you’ve done to me, Sally Winslow.” Colette’s voice rose shrilly. “I’ll never know another moment’s peace, and I hope you never do, either! I hope what you’ve done haunts you for the rest of your miserable days!”
Again, Fletcher moved to intervene. “Hush now, Colette, my darling. You’re overwrought.”
She’d also fortified herself with more than one brandy and was three sheets to the wind, Jake belatedly realized. Her breath was enough to knock a man over. But it was Sally who suddenly fell limply against him and, before he could catch her, crumpled to the floor at his feet.
Drowning out the chorus of shocked exclamations, Colette teetered in Fletcher’s hold and shrieked, “I hope she’s dead! It’s what she deserves!”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Jake said, stooping to feel the pulse, strong and steady, below Sally’s jaw. “I’m afraid she’s only fainted.” Then, although he shouldn’t have, he couldn’t help adding, “Probably too much hot air in here. Where can we put her until she comes to?”
“The library,” Fletcher said, handing a sobbing Colette over to one of her hangers-on. “She can lie down in there.”
“I’ll take her, Jake.” His father materialized at his side. “You’ll never make it with that injured leg.”
“I’ll manage somehow,” he muttered, wishing his parents hadn’t had to witness the scene just past. There’d never been much love lost between his family and the Burtons, and he knew they’d be upset by Colette’s attack on him.
“You don’t always have to be the iron hero, you know. It’s okay to lean on someone else once in a while.”
“Can the advice for another time, Dad,” he said, a lot more abruptly than the man deserved. But cripes, his leg was giving him hell, and that alone was enough to leave him a bit short on tact. “It’s my fault Sally’s here at all. The least I can do is finish what I started. If you want to help, get Mom out of here. She looks as if she’s seen and heard enough.”
Clamping down on the pain shooting up this thigh, he scooped Sally into his arms and made his way through the crowd, which parted like the Red Sea before Moses. There might be some there who felt sorry for her, but no one except possibly his relatives dared show it. Colette had cornered the market on any spare sympathy that might be floating around.
The library was a man’s room. Paneled in oak, with big, comfortable leather chairs and a matching sofa flanking the wide fireplace, some very good paintings, a Turkish rug and enough books to keep a person reading well into the next century, it was Fletcher’s haven; the place to which he retreated when things became too histrionic with the women in his household. Jake had joined him there many a time, to escape or to enjoy an after-dinner drink, and knew he kept a private supply of cognac stashed in the bureau bookcase next to the hearth.
Just as well. Sally needed something strong to bring the color back to her face. Come to that, he could use a stiff belt himself.
Depositing her on the couch, he covered her with a mo-hair lap rug draped over one of the chairs. She looked very young in repose; very vulnerable. Much the way she’d looked when they’d started dating during her high school sophomore year. He’d been a senior at the time, and so crazy in love with her that he hadn’t been able to think straight.
Even as he watched, she stirred and, opening her eyes, regarded him with dazed suspicion. “What are you doing?”
“Looking at you,” he said, using the back of the sofa for support and wondering how she’d respond if he told her she had the longest damned eyelashes he’d ever seen, and a mouth so delectable that he knew an indecent urge to lean down and kiss it.
Get a grip, Harrington! You’ve been a widower less than a week, and should be too swamped with memories of your wife to notice the way another woman’s put together—even if the woman in question does happen to have been your first love.
Her glance shied away from him and darted around the room. “How did I wind up in here?”
“I carried you in, after you fainted.”
“I fainted?” She covered her eyes with the back of one hand and groaned in horror. “In front of all those people?”
“It was the best thing you could have done,” he said, limping to the bureau and taking out a three-quarter-full bottle of Courvoisier cognac and two snifters. “You upstaged Colette beautifully. Without you to lambaste, she was left speechless.” He poured them each a healthy shot of the liquor and offered one to her. “This should put you back on your feet.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said doubtfully. “I haven’t eaten a thing today.”
“I wondered what made you pass out.”
“I haven’t had much of an appetite at all since…the accident.”
“Feel up to talking about that night?”
She sat up and pushed her hair away from her face. “I don’t know what else I can say that you haven’t already heard.”
Cautiously lowering himself into the nearest chair, he knocked back half the contents of his glass and, as the warmth of the brandy penetrated the outer limits of his pain, said, “You could try telling me what really happened, Sally.”
The shutters rolled down her face, cloaking her expression. “What makes you so sure there’s more to tell?”
“You and I were once close enough that we learned to read each other’s minds pretty well. I always knew when you were trying to hide something from me, and I haven’t forgotten the signs.”
She swirled her drink but did not, he noticed, taste it. Why was she being so cagey? Could it be that she was afraid the booze might loosen her tongue too much and she’d let something slip? “That was a long time ago, Jake. We were just kids. People grow up and change.”
“No, they don’t,” he said flatly. “They just become better at covering up. But although you might have fooled everyone else, including the police, you’ve never been able to fool me. There’s more to this whole business than anyone else but you knows, and I’m asking you, for old times’ sake, to tell me what it is.”
Just for a moment, she looked him straight in the eye and he thought she was going to come clean. But then the door opened and Fletcher appeared. “I expect you might need this, Jake,” he said, brandishing the cane. “And I wondered if Sally felt well enough for one of the chauffeurs to drive her home, before the cars fill up with other people.”
Masking his annoyance at the interruption, Jake said, “Can’t it wait another five minutes? We’re in the middle of something, Fletcher, if you don’t mind.”
“No, we’re not,” Sally said, throwing off the blanket and swinging her legs to the floor. “If you can spare a car, I’d be very grateful, Mr. Burton. I’m more than ready to leave.”
Frustrated, Jake watched as she tottered to her feet and wove her way to the door. Short of resorting to physical force, there was nothing he could do to detain her. This time.
But he’d see to it there was a next time. And when it happened, he’d make damn good and sure she didn’t escape him until he was satisfied he knew the precise circumstances which had finally freed him from the hell his marriage had become.
CHAPTER TWO
YOU’VE never been able to fool me, he’d said, but he couldn’t be more wrong. She’d fooled Jake about something a lot more momentous than the events leading up to Penelope’s untimely end. She was very good at keeping secrets, even those which had ripped her life apart, both literally and figuratively.
Guarding this latest would be easy, as long as she didn’t let him slip past her guard. And the only way to avoid that was to avoid him. Because, in her case, the old adage Out of sight, out of mind, had never applied to Jake Harrington. Just the opposite. No matter how many miles or years had separated them, he’d never faded from her memory. If anything, distance had lent him enchantment, and seeing him again had done nothing to change all that. The magic continued to hold.
He looked older, of course—didn’t they all?—but the added years sat well on him. The boy had become a man; the youthful good looks solidified into a tough masculine beauty. Broader across the shoulders, thicker through the chest, he cut an impressive figure, especially in his military uniform. A person had only to look at him to know he’d seen his share of trouble, of tragedy, and emerged stronger for it. It showed in his manner, in the authority of his bearing.
This was not a man to shy away from the truth or crumble in the face of adversity. And she supposed, thinking about it as she made her way along the crowded halls of Eastridge Academy on the following Monday morning, in that respect at least he wasn’t so very different from the-boy who’d stolen her heart, all those years ago, in this very same school. Even at eighteen, he’d possessed the kind of courage which was the true mark of a man.
Still, Sally couldn’t imagine telling him about Penelope. Male pride was a strange phenomenon. It was one thing for a man to climb behind the controls of a fighter jet and risk life and limb chasing down an anonymous enemy. And quite another to confront betrayal of the worst kind from the woman he’d married, especially if he discovered he was the last to know about it.
The senior secretary called out to her as she passed through the main office on her way to the staff lounge. “Morning, Sally. You just missed a phone call.”
“Oh? Any message.”
“No. Said he’d try to catch you later on.”
He? “Did he at least give a name?”
“No.” The secretary eyed her coyly. “But he had a voice to die for! Dark and gravelly, as though he needed a long drink of water which I’d have been happy to supply. Sound like anyone you know?”
Premonition settled unpleasantly in the pit of Sally’s stomach but she refused to give it credence. Plenty of men had dark, gravelly voices. That Jake could be numbered among them was pure coincidence. “Probably someone’s father calling to complain I give too much homework. If he happens to phone back, try to get a number where he can be reached. I’m going to be tied up with students all day.”
“Will do. Oh, and one more thing.” The secretary nodded at the closed door to her left. “Mr. Bailey wants to see you in his office before classes start.”
Oh, wonderful! A private session with the Academy principal who also happened to be her brother-in-law and definitely not one of her favorite people. The day was off to a roaring start!
“You asked to see me, Tom?”
Tom Bailey looked up from the letter he was reading, his brow furrowed with annoyance at the interruption of Very Important Administrative Business. “This isn’t a family gathering, Ms. Winslow. If you’re determined to ignore professional protocol, at least close the door before you open your mouth.”
“Good morning to you, too.” Without waiting to be invited, she took a seat across from him. “What’s on your mind, Mr. Bailey?”
“Margaret tells me you managed to get yourself invited to the reception at the Burtons’ on Saturday.”
“I prefer to say I was coerced—as much by your wife as anyone else.”
He leaned back in his fancy swivel chair and fixed her in his pale-eyed stare, the one he used to intimidate freshmen. “Regardless, let me remind you what I said when all this mess with Penelope Harrington started. Our school prides itself on its fine reputation and I won’t tolerate its being sullied by scandal. Bad enough you’ve been on staff less than a month before your name’s splashed all over the front pages of every newspaper within a fifty-mile radius, without any more shenanigans now that the fuss is finally beginning to die down. I did you a favor when I persuaded the Board of Governors to give you a position here, because—”
“Actually,” Sally cut in, “I’m the one who did you a favor, Tommy, by stepping in at very short notice when my predecessor took early maternity leave and left you short one art teacher.”
He turned a dull and dangerous shade of red. Subordinates did not interrupt the principal of the Academy and they particularly did not challenge the accuracy of his pronouncements. “You showed up in town unemployed!”
“I came home looking forward to a long-overdue vacation which I cut short because you were in a bind.” She glanced pointedly at the clock on the wall. “Is there anything else, or am I free to go and do what the Board hired me to do? I have a senior art history class starting in ten minutes.”
If it hadn’t been beneath his dignity, he’d have gnashed his perfectly flossed teeth. Instead he made do with a curt, “As long as we understand one another.”
“I’ve never had a problem understanding you, Tom,” she said, heading for the door. “My sister’s the one I can’t figure out. I’ve never been able to fathom why she married you.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. She’d been known as a wild child in her youth, but she liked to think she’d matured into a better person since—one for whom taking such cheap shots wasn’t her normal style. But “normal” had been in short supply practically from the minute she’d set foot in town again, beginning with the morning she and Penelope Burton Harrington had happened to run into one another in the Town Square.
“Sally!” Penelope had fairly screamed, rushing to embrace her as if a rift spanning nearly a decade had never crippled their friendship. “Oh, it’s wonderful to see you again! It’s been like living in a tomb around here lately, but now that you’re back, it’ll be just like old times, and we can kick some life into the place.”
The cruel irony of her words had come back to torment Sally during the long, sleepless nights since the accident. But thanks to Tom’s having hired her, at least her days were too busy to allow for much wallowing in useless guilt, which made her parting remark to him all the more unforgivable. To satisfy her own sense of fair play, the least she could do was seek him out later and apologize.
She had a full teaching load that day, though, plus a meeting at lunch with the nit-picking head of the Fine Arts department, and an after-school interview with a furious student who didn’t understand why copying an essay on Henri Matisse from the Internet was plagiarism and warranted a big fat F on his midterm report.
Somehow, the events of first thing slipped to the back of her mind and she forgot about Tom. She forgot, too, about that morning’s phone call from the man who hadn’t left a message.
But he didn’t forget about her. He came to her classroom just as she was stuffing her briefcase with the assignments she planned to mark that evening. By then it was after five o’clock and the building was pretty much deserted except for the cleaning staff. In fact, when she heard the door open, she was so sure it was the janitor, come to empty the waste bins and clean up the sinks, that she said, “I’ll be out of your way in just a second,” without bothering to look up from her task.
The door clicked closed which, in itself, should have alerted her to trouble. “No rush. I’ve got all the time in the world,” came the reply, and there it was: the dark, gravelly voice which had so captivated the school secretary earlier.
It didn’t captivate Sally. It sent shock waves skittering through her. The stack of papers in her hand flipped through her fingers and slithered over the floor. Flustered, she dropped to her knees and began gathering them together in an untidy bundle.
“I’d no idea teachers put in such long hours,” Jake said, his cane thudding softly over the floor as he came toward her. “Let me help you pick those up.”
“No, thank you!” Hearing the betraying edge of panic in her voice, she took a deep breath and continued more moderately, “I don’t need your help. In fact, you shouldn’t be here at all. If Tom Bailey finds out—”
“He won’t. His was the only car in the parking lot and he was leaving as I arrived. We’re quite alone, Sally. No one will disturb us.”
She was afraid of that! “Oh, really? What about the cleaning staff?”
“They’re busy in the gym and won’t get down to this end of the building for at least another hour.” His hand came down and covered hers as she scrabbled with the pages still slipping and sliding from her grasp. “You’re shaking. Are you going to faint again?”
“Certainly not!” she said, scooting away from him before he realized how easily his touch scrambled her brains and stirred up memories best left untouched. “I just don’t like people creeping up and taking me by surprise, that’s all.”
“I’m not ‘people,’ and I didn’t creep.” He tapped his bad leg. “It’s a bit beyond my capabilities, these days.”
“No, you’re the wounded hero come home to bury his wife, but if you insist on being seen with me at every turn, you’re going to lose the public outpouring of sympathy you’re currently enjoying, and become as much of a pariah as I have.”
“I’m not looking for sympathy, my lovely. I’m looking for information.”
My lovely…that’s what he’d called her in the days when they’d been in love; when they’d made love. And the sound of it, falling again from his lips after all this time, brought back such a shock of déjà vu that she trembled inside.
Late August, the summer she’d turned seventeen, just weeks before he started his junior year at university, two hundred miles away…wheeling gulls against a cloudless sky, the distant murmur of the incoming tide, the sun gilding her skin, and Jake sliding inside her, with the tall grass of the dunes whispering approval in the sea breeze. “I miss you so much when we’re apart,” he’d told her. “I’ll love you forever.”
But he hadn’t. Thirteen months later, she’d spent two months studying art in France. When she returned, she found out from Penelope that he’d been seeing a college coed while she’d been gone.
She’d been crushed, although she really shouldn’t have been. As her weeks abroad passed, there’d been signs enough that trouble was brewing. His phone calls had dwindled, become filled with long, awkward pauses. He wasn’t there to meet her as promised, when she came home again. He didn’t even make it back for Thanksgiving. And finally, when there was no avoiding her at Christmas, he’d shamelessly flaunted her replacement in her face.
“Jake Harrington’s a two-timing creep,” sweet sympathetic Penelope told her, “and you’re too smart to let such a worthless jerk break your heart. Forget him! There are better fish in the sea.”
But she hadn’t wanted anyone else. As for forgetting, it was a lot easier said than done for an eighteen-year-old who’d just discovered she was pregnant by the boy she adored and who’d passed her over for someone new.
The spilled assignments at last cradled in her arms, Sally struggled to her feet with as much grace as she could muster and crammed the papers into her briefcase. “We went over all this on Saturday. I’ve told you everything there is to know.”
“Okay.” He shrugged amiably. “Then I won’t ask you again.”
Elation flooded through her. “I’m glad you finally believe me.”
“Of course I do,” he said. “You’re not the kind of person who’d hold out on me about something this important, are you?”
Guilt and suspicion nibbled holes in her relief. “Then why did you come here to begin with?”
“Mostly to find out if you’ve forgiven me for landing you in such a mess an Saturday. If I’d known Colette was going to go after you like that—”
“You had no way of knowing she’d react so badly. Consider yourself forgiven.”
“A lot of women wouldn’t be so understanding,” he said diffidently. “But then, you never were like most women.”
Diffident? Jake Harrington?
She’d have laughed aloud at the idea, had it not been that the hair on the back of her neck vibrated with warning. He was up to something! She could almost hear the wheels spinning behind that guileless demeanor! “And?”
“Hmm?” Doing his best to look innocently virtuous, he traced a herringbone pattern over the floor with the tip of his cane.
“You said ‘mostly’—that you were here mostly to find out if I’d forgiven you. What’s the other reason?”
He tried to look sheepish. Would have blushed, if he’d had it in him to do such a thing. “Would you believe, nostalgia got the better of me? When I heard you were on staff here, I couldn’t stay away.” He leaned against one of the cabinets holding supplies and sent her a smile which plucked unmercifully at her heartstrings. “This is where we met, Sally. We fell in love here. I kissed you for the first time next to the lockers right outside this room. You had blue paint on the end of your nose.”
“I’m surprised you remember,” she said, warmth stealing through her and blasting her reservations into oblivion.
“I remember everything about that time. Nothing I’ve known since has ever compared to it.”
The warmth turned to melting heat. Against her better judgment, she found herself wanting to believe him. “You don’t have to say that. You shouldn’t say it.”
“Why not? Don’t I have as much right to tell the truth as you do?”
He sounded so sincere, she found herself wondering. Was he playing mind games with her? Trying to trip her up? Or was she seeing entrapment where none existed?
Deciding it was better to err on the side of caution and put an end to the meeting, she indicated the bulging briefcase and said, “I should get going. I’ve got a full evening’s work ahead.”
He eased himself away from the desk. “Me, too. I’m still sorting through Penelope’s stuff and deciding what to do with it, and the house. I don’t need all that space.”
Watching as he limped to the door, she knew an inexplicable regret that he accepted his dismissal so easily. So what if his smile left her insides fluttering? They weren’t teenagers anymore. First love didn’t survive an eight-year winter of neglect to bloom again at the first hint of spring.
Still, having him show up so unexpectedly had unsettled her almost as badly as seeing him at the funeral. He stirred up too many buried feelings.
His voice, the curve of his mouth, the latent passion in his direct blue gaze, made her hungry for things she shouldn’t want and certainly couldn’t have. So, rather than risk running into him again, she waited until his footsteps faded, and the clang of the outside door shutting behind him echoed down the hall, before she ventured out to retrieve her coat from the staff cloakroom.
The sky had been clear when she left for work that morning and she’d enjoyed the two-mile walk from the guest cottage at the end of her parents’ driveway and through the park to the school. Sometime since classes ended, though, the clouds had rolled in again and freezing rain begun to fall. The ramp beyond the Academy’s main entrance was treacherous with black ice.
Twice, she’d have lost her footing, had it not been for the iron railing running parallel to the path. But the real trouble started when she gained the glassy sidewalk and found it impossible to navigate in shoes not designed for such conditions.
Turning right, as she intended to do, was out of the question. Instead, with her briefcase rapping bruisingly against her leg, she lurched into the dirty snow piled next to the curb, three days earlier, by the road-clearing crews.
It was the last straw in a day which had started badly and gone steadily downhill ever since. Exasperated, she gave vent to a stream of unladylike curses which rang up and down the deserted street with satisfying gusto.
Except the street wasn’t quite as deserted as she’d thought. A low-slung black sports car, idling in the lee of a broad-trunked maple not ten feet away, cruised to a stop beside her, with the passenger window rolled down just far enough for Jake’s voice to float out. “Faculty members didn’t know words like that when I was a student here,” he announced affably. “Come to think of it, I’m not sure I knew them, either.”
“Are you stalking me?” she snapped, miserably conscious of the fact that she cut a ridiculous figure standing there, ankle-deep in snow.
“Not at all. I stopped to offer you a ride home.”
“No, thanks. I prefer to walk.”
“Oh,” he said. “Is that what you were doing when you came sailing into the gutter just now?”
“I temporarily lost my balance.”
“Temporarily?” He let out a muffled snort of laughter. “Dear Ms. Winslow, if you insist on wearing summer footwear in the kind of winter which Eastridge Bay is famous for, it’ll be anything but temporary. Stop being stubborn and get in the car before you break your neck. I’d come round and hold the door open for you, except I’m having enough problems of my own trying to get around in these conditions.”
She debated telling him what he could do with his offer, but her frozen feet won out over her pride. “Just as well you’re not inclined to play the gentleman,” she muttered, yanking open the door and climbing in to the blessed warmth of the car. “I might be tempted to knock your cane out from under you!”
“Now that,” he remarked, stepping gently on the gas and pulling smoothly out into the road, “is why some people—people who don’t know you as well as I used to—talk about you the way they do.”
“And how is that, exactly? I’m living in the guest cottage on my parents’ estate, by the way. You turn left on—”
“I remember how to get there, Sally,” he said. “I’ve driven you home often enough, in the past. And to answer your question, unflatteringly. They say you came back to town and brought a bagful of trouble with you. Are they right?”
“Why ask me? You’ll find listening to their version of the facts far more entertaining, I’m sure.”
“As a matter of interest, where have you been for the last several years?”
“At university on the West Coast, and after that, down in the Caribbean.”
He didn’t quite snicker in her face, but he might as well have. “Doing what?” he inquired, his voice shimmering with amusement.
“Well, not weaving sun hats from coconut palm fronds or singing in a mariachi band, if that’s what you’re thinking!”
“You have no idea what I’m thinking, Sally. None at all. And you haven’t answered my question. What kept you in the sunny Caribbean all this time?”
“The same thing that’s keeping me occupied here. Teaching, except the children down there were so under-privileged that working with them was pure pleasure.”
“Very commendable of you, I’m sure. How long did you stay?”
“Two years in Mexico, and two years on the island of St. Lucia after that.”
“Why that part of the world?”
“They needed teachers as badly as I needed to get away from here.”
“What?” His voice quivered with silent laughter. “You never yearned to settle down in picturesque Eastridge Bay? To follow in your sister’s footsteps and marry a fine, upstanding man of good family?”
Once upon a time I did, but you chose to put a wedding ring on Penelope’s finger, instead! “Not all women see marriage as the be-all and end-all of happiness. Some of us find satisfaction in a career.”
“But not everyone runs away to a tropical island to find it.”
“I was trying to escape the winters up here. But this town is my home and I was happy to come back to it—until everything started going wrong.” She shivered inside her coat. The rain, she noticed, had turned to snow and was sliding down the windshield in big, sloppy flakes. She noticed, too, that they’d passed the turnoff for Bayview Heights blocks before, and were speeding instead along the main boulevard leading out of town. “You’re going the wrong way, Jake!”
“So I am,” he said cheerfully.
“Well, turn around and head back! And slow down while you’re at it. I’ve spent enough time stuck in a snow-bank, for one night.”
“No need to get all exercised, Sally. Since I’ve missed the turn anyway, we might as well enjoy a little spin in the country.”
“I don’t want to go for a spin in the country,” she told him emphatically. “I want to go home.”
“And you will, my lovely. All in good time.”
“Right now!” She reached for the door handle. “Stop this car at once, Jake Harrington. And stop calling me that.”
He didn’t bother to reply. The only sound to register above the low hum of the heater was the click of automatic door locks sliding home and the increased hiss of the tires on the slick surface of the road.
Stunned, she turned to stare at him. There were no streetlights this far beyond the town limits, but the gleam of the dashboard lights showed his profile in grim relief. “Are you kidnapping me?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Then just what are you doing?”
“Looking for a place where we can get something hot to drink. It’s the least I can do, to make up for keeping you out past your bedtime.”
The words themselves might have been innocuous enough, but there was nothing affable or benign in his tone of voice. The man who’d beguiled her with his smile and tender memories not half an hour ago, who’d offered her a ride home to spare her walking along icy streets, had turned into a stranger as cold and threatening as the night outside.
“You had this planned all along, didn’t you?” she said, struggling to suppress the fear suddenly tapping along the fringes of her mind. She’d accepted a lift from her one-time lover, the local hero come home from doing battle and with the scars to prove it, not from some faceless stranger, for heaven’s sake! To suspect he posed any sort of threat was nothing short of absurd. “This is what you intended, from the minute you showed up in my classroom.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Well, you didn’t have to go to such extremes. I’d have been happy to stop for coffee at a place in town.”
“Too risky. Think of the gossip, if we’d been seen together. The widower and the wild woman flaunting their association in public! Better to find some out-of-the-way place where the kind of people we know wouldn’t dream of setting foot. A place so seedy, no respectable woman would want to be seen by anyone she knew.”
Seedy? What on earth would prompt him to use such a word?
Numbly she stared ahead, once again in the grip of that eerie unease. By then, the snow had begun to settle, turning the windows opaque except for the half-moons cleared by the windshield wipers. She could see nothing of the landscape flying past, nothing of where they’d been or where they were headed.
Then, off to the side, some hundred yards or so down the road, a band of orange light pierced the gloom; a neon sign at first flashing dimly through the swirling snow, but growing brighter as the car drew nearer, until there was no mistaking its message. Harlan’s Roadhouse it read. Beer— Eats—Billiards.
And her premonition crystalized into outright dismay. She’d seen that sign before. And Jake was well aware of the fact!
He slowed to turn into the rutted parking area, nosed the car to a spot close to the tavern entrance and turned off the engine. Immediately the muffled, relentless throb of country and western music filled the otherwise quiet night, its only competition the equally brutal pounding of Sally’s heart.
He climbed out of the car and, despite his earlier claim that he was too lame to play the gentleman, came around and opened the passenger door. When she made no move to join him, he reached across to unclip her seat belt and grasped her elbow. “This is as far as we go, Sally,” he said blandly. “Hop out and be quick about it.”
“I’d rather not.”
“I’d rather you did. And I’m not taking you back to town until you do.”
Odd how a man’s mood could shift so abruptly from mild to menacing; how smoldering rage could make its presence felt without a voice being raised. And stranger still that a person could find herself responding hypnotically to a command she knew would result in nothing but disaster.
Like a sleepwalker, she stepped out into the snow, yet felt nothing of its stinging cold. Was barely aware of putting one foot in front of another as she walked beside Jake, past the rusted pickup trucks and jalopies, to the entrance of the building.
“After you,” he said, pushing open the scarred wooden door and ushering her unceremoniously into the smoke-filled interior.
At once, the noise blasted out to meet her. The smell of beer and cheap perfume, mingled with sweat and tobacco, assailed her senses.
Stomach heaving, she turned to Jake. “Please don’t make me do this!”
“Why ever not?” he asked, surveying her coldly. “Place not to your liking?”
“No, it’s not,” she managed to say. “I’m insulted you’d even ask.”
“But it was good enough the night you came here with Penelope, the night she died, wasn’t it?” he said. “So why not now, with me?”
CHAPTER THREE
SHE didn’t reply, nor had he expected she would. He’d outmaneuvered her too thoroughly. Instead she hovered just inside the door, uncertain whether to flee or surrender. Since he hadn’t a hope in hell of catching her if she tried to make a run for it, he eliminated the possibility by marching her to a booth on the other side of the dance floor.
“Cosy, don’t you think?” he said, sliding next to her on the shabby vinyl banquette so that she was trapped between him and the wall. Too bad he had to put his mouth to her ear for her to hear him. He didn’t need the dizzying scent of her hair and skin making inroads on his determination to wring the truth out of her.
“What’ll it be, folks?” A giant of a man, with beefy arms covered in tattoos and a head as bald as an egg, came out from behind the bar and swiped a dirty cloth over the tabletop.
Without bothering to consult her, Jake said, “Beer. Whatever you’ve got on tap. And nachos.”
“I don’t drink beer and I don’t like nachos,” she said snootily, the minute the guy left to fill their order.
“No?” Jake dug in his hip pocket for his wallet. “What did you have the last time you were here—champagne and oysters on the half shell?”
“What makes you think I’ve been here before?”
“I read the police report, remember?”
She slumped against the wall, defeated. “Why are you doing this, Jake?” she asked, raising her voice over the din from the jukebox. “What do you hope to accomplish?”
“I want to know why my wife made a habit of frequenting places like this while I was away on combat duty, and if you won’t tell me, I’ll find someone here who will.”
“You’re wasting your time. Penelope and I were here only once, and when I realized the kind of place it was, I insisted we leave.”
He scanned the room at large. On the other side of the dance floor, a woman much the worse for wear had climbed on a table and was gyrating lewdly to the applause of the patrons lining the bar. Swinging his gaze to Sally again, Jake asked, “Was it your idea to stop here to begin with?”
“Certainly not!” she snapped. Then, realizing how much she’d revealed with her indignation, added, “We’d decided to drive out to a country inn for dinner that night, it started snowing on the way home, the roads were even worse than they are tonight, and we were looking for a place to wait out the storm. Why is that so hard for you to believe?”
“It’s not, Sally. But nor does it explain what made you change your minds and venture back on the road anyway, before the weather improved. One look out the door, and you must have known you were taking your lives in your hands by getting back behind the wheel of a car.”
“I already told you. We didn’t like the…clientele here.”
The tattooed hulk returned just then. “Where’s your gal pal tonight?” he asked, sliding a tankard of beer across the table to Sally. “The regulars miss seein’ her around the joint. She knew how to party.”
“You know what they say,” Jake cut in, before Sally could answer, even assuming she could come up with anything plausible after having just been exposed as a blatant liar. “Three’s a crowd.”
The server’s face split in a grin. He had a scar running down one side of his massive neck and was missing three front teeth. Probably got the first from a knife wound, and lost the rest in a brawl. “Little old Penny-wise wouldn’t horn in on your date for long, dude. Plenty of guys around here’d be only too willing to take her off your hands.”
“I think,” Sally said, in a small, despairing voice, as the oaf lumbered off to collect their nachos, “I’m going to be sick.”
Unmoved, Jake knocked back half his beer. “That tends to happen when a person’s attempt to hide the truth blows up in her face. I’d bet my last dollar you’d feel a whole lot better if you’d spit out the load of rubbish you’ve been feeding me.”
“It would serve you right if I did!” she cried with surprising passion. “But since truth’s so all-fired important to you, try this on for size—I don’t know what happened to turn the boy I used to know into such a hard-nosed bully, but I do know I don’t like the man you’ve become.”
He didn’t much like it himself. Browbeating a woman—any woman—wasn’t his style. Traumatizing Sally to the point that she looked as bewildered as an innocent victim caught in enemy crossfire filled him with self-loathing. He hadn’t come home to continue the inhumane practices of war. He’d come looking for a little peace.
Trouble was, he was no closer to finding it here than he had been on the other side of the world, and it was eating him alive, though not for the reasons Sally might suppose.
Hardening his heart against her obvious distress, he said, “I’m not especially enamored of you, either. I’d hoped by now that you’d outgrown the habit of taking the easy way out of whatever tight spot you happen to find yourself in.”
She picked up her tankard of beer and, for a second, he thought she might fling it in his face. But at the last minute, she shoved it away and spat, “I resent that, and I refuse to sink to the level of the company in which I find myself. I might be all kinds of things, but I’ve never lied to you in the past.”
“Never, Sally? Not once? Not even to spare my feelings?”
She opened her mouth to reply, but at the last minute appeared to think better of it. Her eyes grew huge and haunted, and filled with tears.
He wanted to wipe them away. Wanted to take her in his arms and tell her he was sorry; that raking up the distant past wasn’t his intent because it didn’t matter—not any of it. He wanted to tell her that he could forgive her anything, if only she’d free him to live in the present and be able to face the future without guilt weighing him down and souring each new day. And the depth of his wanting staggered him.
His wife was barely cold in her grave, for Pete’s sake, and all his suspicions aside, common decency demanded he at least observe a token period of mourning.
Slamming the door on thoughts he couldn’t afford to entertain, he drained his beer. “I don’t know who it is you think you’re protecting, Sally,” he said, “but to prove I’m not completely heartless, I’ll make a deal with you. Instead of badgering you to betray secrets you obviously hold sacred, I’ll spell out what I believe happened, the night Penelope died. All I ask of you is that you tell me honestly whether or not I’m on the right track. Agree to those terms and, after tonight, I’ll never bring the subject up again.”
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue and stared stubbornly at her hands, but he could see she was wavering.
“I’ll give you some time to think about it,” he offered, levering himself away from the table and grabbing his cane, “but don’t take too long. I’ll only be gone a few minutes.”
He wove his way through the couples squirming up against each other on the dance floor, knowing she was watching him the entire time. The men’s room lay at the end of a long, badly lit corridor toward the rear of the building. A boy no more than eighteen swayed in the doorway, vacant-eyed and decidedly green about the gills. The squalor in the area beyond defied description.
Cripes! Jake had known his share of dives, but this one took some beating!
“Hey, pal,” he said, catching the kid just in time to stop him doing a face plant on the filthy floor, and propelling him toward the back exit. “How about a breath of fresh air?”
The snow had tapered off, and a few stars pricked the sky. A clump of pines bordering the parking lot glowed ghostly white in the dark. Somewhere across the open fields to the west, a pack of coyotes on the hunt howled in unison. Under different circumstances, it would have been a magical night, peaceful and quiet, except for nature’s music.
Propping the boy against the wall, Jake rubbed a handful of snow in his face. The poor guy gasped and shuddered. Doubled over. Recognizing the inevitable was about to occur, Jake stood well to one side.
“Feel better?” he asked, when the kid finally stopped retching.
“I guess.”
“What’s your name?”
He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Eric.”
“You of legal age to be hanging around bars, Eric?”
“No,” he moaned miserably, sagging against the wall.
“Didn’t think so. You live far from here?”
“Down the road some.” He swallowed and grimaced. “A mile, maybe.”
Jake weighed the options. He had problems enough of his own, without taking on someone else’s. And a mile was no distance at all. The kid was young and strong; he could walk it in a quarter of an hour. Less, if he put his mind to it and didn’t get sidetracked by the next bar he passed along the way.
But the temperature had dropped well below freezing, and he wasn’t in the best shape. Jake’s playing Good Samaritan would take all of five minutes. He could be back before Sally had the chance to miss him.
More important, he’d be able to sleep that night with a clear conscience. He’d been young and stupid himself, at one time, and felt for the poor kid whose troubles had only just begun. By morning, he’d be nursing one mother of a hangover!
He zipped up his jacket and fished the car keys out of his pocket. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll drive you.”
“That’s okay. I can walk.”
“You can barely stand, you damn fool!”
The kid started to cry. “I don’t want my mom to see me fallin’-down drunk. She’s not gonna like it.”
“If you were my son, I wouldn’t like it, either.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the building behind. “But I’ll bet money she’d rather have you passing out at home, than winding up as roadkill when that lot in there decide to hit the highway.”
If she hadn’t been so preoccupied, she might have noticed the man sooner. But by the time she realized she’d become the object of his attention, he’d lurched onto the bench beside her and slung a sweaty arm around her shoulders. “Lookin’ for company, babe?”
“No,” she said, recoiling from the foul breath wafting in her face. “I’m with someone.”
He made a big production of swinging his head to the left and right, and then, with a drunken guffaw, peering under the table. “Don’t look that way to me,” he snickered, lifting his smelly T-shirt to scratch at the hairy expanse of blubber underneath. “Looks to me like you’re all on your little ol’ lonesome, and just waitin’ for Sid to show you a good time.”
“No, really! I’m with…my boyfriend. He’s just gone….” Where, exactly, that it was taking him so long?
“To take a leak?” Sid chortled and reached for her untouched beer.
Good grief, could the clientele possibly have sunk even lower than the last time she’d set foot in this place? Revolted, she shrank into the corner of the booth, as far away from him as she could get, and made no effort to disguise her abhorrence.
Big mistake! Sid’s eyes, close-set and mean enough to begin with, narrowed menacingly. He slid nearer, pressed his thigh against hers. “Wha’samatter, honey? Think you’re too good for a stud like me?”
“Not at all,” she said, averting her face. “I’m sure you’re a very nice man.”
“Better believe it, babe.” His hand clamped around her chin, and forced her to turn and look at him again. He shoved his face closer, licked his lips. The fingers of his other hand covered her knee. Began inching her skirt up her leg. “Better be real friendly with Sid, if you know what’s good for you.”
Oh, God! Where was Jake?
Sid’s fingers slid under the hem of her skirt. Crawled over her knee. Someone plugged another selection in the juke box: Patsy Cline singing “Crazy.”
How appropriate! Unable to help herself, Sally giggled hysterically.
Sid squeezed her thigh. “Tha’s better, babe! Treat me right, and I’ll make you feel real good.”
By then, so unnerved that she could barely breathe, she seized on the first escape possibility that occurred to her. “Dance with me,” she said, praying he wouldn’t hear the terror crowding her voice. Praying that he was too clumsily drunk to realize until it was too late that the only thing she wanted was to get out of the confining booth and put some distance between him and her.
“Sure thing, babe!” He grinned evilly and, with bone-crushing strength, hauled her bodily off the seat and into his arms, and pinned her like a butterfly against him.
At least, though, his hand was no longer creeping up her thigh! At least she stood a better chance of distracting him long enough to wriggle free. And if that didn’t work, she could scream for help and stand a reasonable chance of being heard by the other bodies crammed on the dance floor.
“Start enjoyin’, babe,” Sid grated. “Ain’t no fun dancin’ with a corpse.”
If he’d left it at that, she might have survived unscathed. But as added inducement, he stuck his tongue in her ear. Repelled beyond endurance and unmindful of the consequences of her action, she responded by lifting her knee and ramming it full force in his groin at the same time that she raked her fingernails down his face.
He roared like a wounded bear, reared back and landed a vicious slap to the side of her head. The grimy silver ball rotating from the ceiling swung crazily in her line of vision. The faces of the people around her tilted; their voices merged with coarse laughter into a cacophony of unintelligible sound.
Dazed, she lifted her head and saw his fist coming at her again. Pain cracked against her cheek in a burst of fire. She crumbled to her hands and knees on the filthy floor. Tasted blood, warm and salty on her tongue. Felt him grab her by the hair. Savagely yank her to her feet again.
Then, as suddenly as he’d latched on to her, he backed away, felled by a blow from behind. Jake, his face a distorted mask of white fury, his eyes blazing, swam into view.
A woman nearby screamed, someone else swore. Needing no better excuse to start a fight, half the men in the room joined in the fray, indiscriminately landing punches on whoever happened to be handy. But they gave Jake a wide berth. Drunken hoodlums though they might be, they had no wish to tangle with a man wielding a cane like a shillelagh and clearly willing to crack the skull of anyone foolish enough to challenge him.
Weaving his way to her through the pandemonium, he reached an arm around her waist and pulled her against him. Up to that point, she’d been too focused on defending herself to give in to the terror screaming along her nerves. Surviving the moment had been the only thing of import. But at his touch, at the cold, clean scent of him and the solid reassurance of his body shielding hers, she fell apart completely.
“I thought he was going to kill me!” she sobbed, burying her face against his neck.
He stroked her hair, murmured her name, and oh, it felt so good to be held by him again. So good to hear the old tenderness creep into his voice. Despite all the chaos and din pulsing around them, he created a tiny haven of safety she never wanted to leave.
He was of a more practical turn of mind. “Let’s get out of here while we still can,” he muttered, hustling her toward the door. “Things are going to get uglier before the night’s over.”
Just as they reached it, though, the door flew open and half a dozen police burst into the room, making escape impossible. “Hold it right there. Nobody leaves until I say so,” the officer leading the pack ordered, and even in her shocked state, Sally recognized him as one of those who’d been first on the scene, the night Penelope had died.
He recognized her, too, which was hardly surprising, given the amount of publicity the accident had received in the local news. “Not you again!” he said, on an exasperated breath, as his colleagues set about restoring order. “Gee, lady, how many times does it take before you learn your lesson and stay away from places like this?”
“Never mind the clever remarks,” Jake said. “She needs to see a doctor right away.”
The officer eyed her appraisingly. “As long as she’s still on her feet and able to walk, it’ll have to wait,” he finally decided. “I’m taking you both in, along with every other yahoo in the place.”
“I’m the one who called you to begin with, you fool!” Jake snapped. “If you want to harass someone, go after the guy behind the bar who makes a habit of serving liquor to minors. Or the lout over there, with the bloody nose, who gets his kicks out of beating up women half his size. We’ll be pressing assault charges against him, in case you’re interested, but not before the morning.”
“You’ll do it now, and keep a lid on your temper while you’re at it,” the other man cautioned. “I’m ticked off enough as it is.”
“It’s all right, Jake,” Sally said, sensing the anger simmering in him. “I don’t mind going down to the station and making a statement. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
The patrolman rolled his eyes wearily. “That’s what they all say.”
“Maybe they all do, but in my case, Officer,” she told him, staring him down with as much dignity as she could drum up, considering one eye was swollen half-shut, “it happens to be the truth.”
Jake touched his finger lightly to her cheek. “All it’ll take is a phone call to my lawyer to have things postponed until morning, Sally. You’ve been through enough for one night.”
And she’d have done it all again if, at the end of it all, he looked at her as if she held his heart in her hands, and cushioned her next to him, prepared to defend her to the death, if need be. It made her wonder if she was hurt more than she realized, had even suffered minor brain damage, that she was so ready to forget the terrible price she’d paid for loving Jake in the past.
Steeling herself not to weaken, she said, “I’d rather get it over with, if you don’t mind.”
He shrugged. “Wait here, then, while I collect your coat, and we’ll be on our way.” He tipped a glance at the police officer. “Is it okay if I drive us in my own vehicle, or are you going to insist we get carted off in the paddy wagon?”
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