“Be careful,” she squeaked.
“Sure lady.” The teenager finally found the gear and fishtailed out, driving over one of Alisse’s prize rosebushes as he went.
She’d stopped by Cochran’s that afternoon and picked up a new dress. Actually, Heather had dropped everything and helped Cynthia choose what Heather insisted was her ‘perfect look.’ Despite Heather’s confidence, Cynthia worried what people might think. She was a reporter, after all, not a fashion model. If her aunt had still been alive, she would have sent her to bed without dinner if Cynthia had ever tried to sneak something like this out of the house. Not that the dress wasn’t long enough. But the slit went all the way up to her upper thigh, and the low-cut top made her feel like she was going to pop out.
She stepped past Russell’s Jaguar and the massive two-story doors to the Lyons home opened.
“I’m so glad you could make it.” Alisse Lyons took Cynthia’s hand and shook it briskly even as she struggled to recognize her. “I’m afraid—“
“This is Cynthia Meadows." Heather’s sexy-throaty voice cut through Alisse’s confusion. "She’s the reporter for the Advertiser-Dispatch and a friend of Russell’s.”
Heather kissed Cynthia on the cheek, instructed her to stand up straight and be proud of the figure God and a ton of exercise had given her, and mingle with the guys. “Charlie Daemon just got here,” she whispered. "In that dress, you’ll knock his pants off.”
That wasn’t the mental picture Cynthia wanted. Still, she needed to circulate, take pictures of the social elite of Shermann, and find out if anything special was planned for the party. The previous year, shortly before Russ had been shipped overseas with his National Guard unit, they’d held a patriotic fireworks display more or less synchronized with the Shermann High Band. With all of the photos and complete listing of the band member’s names, that issue had been a sellout even though Andrew had decided to double the print run.
“Well, hello, darling. I see something I want to see more of.”
Charlie Daemon might just have arrived, but he’d definitely made up for lost time. He was preceded by a cloud of alcohol fumes and followed by the band of ex-Shermann High football stars that formed his usual coterie.
“Hi Charlie.”
He looked befuddled. “Give me a minute. I never forget a face.”
“You never forget a body.” One of the syncopates fed him the straight line.
Charlie grinned. “Yeah, that’s right.”
“Hey, it’s Cynthia.” Billy Petes, one of Charlie and Russ’s sidekicks, made hourglass figure motions with his beer mug.
“Cynthia. Cynthia Meadows? Wow! What happened to you? Whatever it is, I like it. I like it a lot!”
Cynthia had already decided she wasn’t interested in Charlie. She remembered that he used to call her "Dumpy Four-Eyes" and "Needs-A-Mow-Meadows." He wasn’t tempting her to reconsider.
“I’m covering the party for the Advertiser. How’s the car business, Charlie?”
“I just got in an Escadrille that will knock your socks off. Seats recline into a king-sized bed, with heat and auto-massage. DVD, widescreen television, and a refrigerator to hold the basic necessities like beer. How about you and me go for a spin and check it out?”
“Maybe the four of us could do dinner sometime,” Heather had followed her from the front door back to where the ‘boys’ where hanging. “But you’re pushing your luck with the hump-mobile. It’s gross.”
Cynthia said something noncommittal, took a couple shots of Shermann’s business leaders congregated around the bar (and around Heather, who quickly became the center of attention), and then wandered through the party.
The Lyons’ had spared no expense on the food and drink. Still, Cynthia just sipped on a Pepsi. She forced herself to talk to the guests, making sure she had their names in her Palm, took pictures, and admired the antiques Alisse used to decorate her home.
Russ had caught her eye more than once, and he’d nodded at her across the room and once sent her a wink that seemed to hint at a shared secret, but she never seemed to be able to shove through the crowds that surrounded him.
Finally, the bands fell silent in the Lyons' huge ballroom and Raymond clinked a couple of glasses together to call for silence.
“Tonight marks forty years of wedded bliss for Alisse and myself. This year, in honor of the round number, we’ve hired the Shermann High drama department to perform vignettes from our lives. Everyone have a seat. Lights out. Music on. Go.”
Stage lights bathed the Shermann players as they displayed Raymond meeting Alisse in high school, the first time they’d danced, their first kiss the night Raymond went away to medical school. After the wedding, though, Raymond and Alisse’s vignettes quickly transformed into a ‘life of Russ.’ His sports accomplishments, his popularity, his overall wonderfulness became the entire story as the parents became observers rather than actors.
Cynthia stood all she could, filled her digital camera with photos of the young actors and the politely applauding guests, then silently wandered away from the ballroom.
Since the evening was still miraculously warm for March in Missouri, she stepped outside, into the near-darkness created by the reflections of light coming from inside the Lyons mansion.
A black-clad figure, barely a shadow against the darkness, caught her eye as it moved like a wraith across the football-field of a back yard.
She reached into her bag and fished out her Palm, dialed 9-1-1, but then hesitated before pushing the send button. He could be an intruder, but he might merely be another guest, bored over the excessive homage to Shermann’s returning hero. If she called the cops on a guest, she’d never be invited to another of these Shermann society gatherings, which would mean she would be worthless in her job and would forever lose her chance to fit in, to be accepted by the people of her adopted home.
Instead of calling, she followed the shadowy figure as he moved silently across the manicured lawn. One of her shoes sunk into the turf and she slipped it off, then dropped the other one as well. Soft winter grass felt welcoming against her stocking feet.
A loud thump froze her in place. Her finger stabbed toward the send button when the man in black stopped and stripped off his jacket.
Underneath, he wore a shirt that dazzled white against the night.
She cancelled the 9-1-1 call. He was just a guest after all. Someone, who, like her, had wandered away from the program.
He bent down, picked something up, and threw.
Another loud thump.
What sort of guest would sneak out the back of the Lyons’ home and throw rocks at something?
Cynthia felt a frisson of danger, but her accelerated heartbeat wasn’t only fear, it contained an element of anticipation. The Advertiser-Dispatch crime page tended to be a rehash of the police log. A city councilman had been taken by a roaming con-artist who had persuaded him to resurface his driveway. A local resident had been arrested for driving under the influence and sent to counseling. An elderly woman reported that someone had been peeping into her window (that someone had turned out to be a curious raccoon). Catching an invited guest in the act of vandalism at the Lyons mansion would be real news, a scoop.
Could there be a story of revenge, here? Who could hate the Lyons enough to destroy their property? Could this be the remnant of an ancient feud going back to the old days in Shermann, when the town was home to dueling railroads, home to both Underground Railroad and slave-catchers?
She knew her imagination was running overtime, but she couldn’t help getting ideas from the antebellum home that Russ had grown up in.
She crept closer.
The figure bent again, winding up like a baseball pitcher before unloading.
Thunk.
What was he throwing at? Did the Lyons have some secret dungeon back here?
Okay, that was enough. She firmly reined in her imagination. Of course the Lyons didn’t have a dungeon and they didn’t participate in Civi
l War feuds. The Lyons were respectable members of the Shermann community. Their family had moved here generations before, long before the Katy and Santa Fe Railroads had jointly created the town. If anything, the vandal was destroying some archeological memory of the antebellum past.
He bent again, picking up something else.
She palmed her PDA and pointed it at him. “Freeze, buster. Hands up.”
Bad idea.
As he whirled around, she remembered why the Advertiser-Dispatch didn’t send its reporters out looking for crime—they just might find it. She should have dialed 9-1-1 while she’d had the chance. But it was way too late now.
He moved faster than her dark-adjusted eyes could track, powerful arms grasping her legs as his shoulder shoved against her abdomen.
She fell on her back, her rear smacking against the soft grass, then the vandal was on top of her, his weight pressing her to the ground, one of his hands gripping her arm that held the cell phone while the other pressed against her neck.
She gasped for a breath—and inhaled the scent that had haunted her since she’d walked into Russ’s office.
“Russ?”
He froze, the pressure on her arm and neck letting up slightly but definitely not releasing her completely.
A moment before, the weight of his body on hers had been threatening, terrifying. Knowing it was Russ changed everything. His grip was still powerful, strong enough to hold her captive no matter how she struggled, but instead of fear, desire swept over her like a Missouri River spring flood.
Instinctively, her legs, which she’d pressed together when he’d pulled her down, parted slightly. Her breasts burned as the starched fabric of his shirt pressed against her dress’s thin silk. Desire hardened her nipples, desire that rushed up her spine, then sent shivers through her body as it hurried down, to her increasingly moist and liquid core.
“Cyn?”
“I told you not to call me—“
He cut off her protests by pressing her mouth to hers.
* * *
He’d never kissed a woman before.
Intellectually, he knew that was a lie. Heather had informed him that they’d been sexually active and that she had every intention of starting up again. From what the guys at the poker game had told him, he’d cut a broad swath through Shermann High, Yale University, and much of the rest of the country before finally coming back to his high-school sweetheart.
But he couldn’t remember any of those kisses, those nights of passion. He’d been cheated out of his memories. Now, with Cynthia’s lips against his own, his eyes were opened, again, to the magnitude of his loss.
This kiss would have to stand for all of those he’d lost, replace them, rewrite them in his memory.
Cynthia’s lips parted under his assault and he took full advantage of the opportunity, letting his tongue savor her taste.
Her tongue parried, then riposted, entering his mouth, brushing against his teeth, then retreating as he again pushed forward.
His body, already over-sensitized by the adrenaline rush he’d experienced when he’d thought he had come under insurgent attack, responded to her nearness, hardening as her legs crept around his, pressing against her lower belly. His hand had applied a chokehold during that moment when his instincts had taken over, when buried memories of military training and deadly nights in insurgent-controlled territory seized control of his body without allowing him to reclaim those very memories as his own. Now, he ran his fingers against the softness of her cheek, her neck, then down the deep ‘v’ of her dress to brush against the warm softness that was her breast.
He broke off the kiss, but only to trail nibbles down the side of her neck.
Only the pointed diamonds of stud earrings protected her ears. His tongue brushed past that obstacle, then he nipped her earlobe gently between his teeth.
“Oh, Russ. This is crazy.” Her spoken words lacked conviction. The strength of her arms holding him tight, the needy caress of her lips against his cheeks, throat, chest, these spoke a language more ancient and powerful. And the word they spoke was yes.
He couldn’t remember another kiss, but his body knew how to react, how to touch, how to create the magic that can come from lovemaking.
He wanted her. He wanted Cynthia Meadows.
“This is so wrong.”
He’d been about to roll her over, take her on top of him to protect her from the cool of the grass as he continued to kiss her, to explore the impossible desire that surrounded him like a desert wind. As her words penetrated, he froze.
She was right. This was terribly wrong.
Cynthia Meadows was a wonderful person. She was helpful, generous, and sexy. But she was not a part of his life. And he was going to reclaim his golden life, with or without the memories that had created that life in the first place. If he followed his desires now, he would destroy his plans for the future, his chances to reclaim his real happiness.
Which meant that Cynthia might be his friend, but she could never become his lover.
“I am so sorry.”
Her arms, which had been pulling him closer to her, into her until it seemed that the demarcation between them was merely a formality, suddenly stiffened, pushed against his chest.
“It’s my fault. I’ll get up.”
He stood, rolling away from her as he rose. Sharp pain, an ever-present reminder of the roadside bomb that had stolen his past, sliced deep into his shoulders, but he fought the urge to wince.
In the shock of finding himself under attack, and then the surprise of finding the woman he’d spent the previous sleepless night trying not to think about in his arms, he hadn’t noticed, but now his body was protesting the rough treatment.
“Are you okay?” Even in the darkness, her eyes glistened with sympathy.
So much for his stoicism. He hadn’t fooled anyone.
“Just feeling like an idiot. I’m sorry I attacked you. When you came up in the darkness--” he let his voice trail off. How could he explain what he didn’t understand himself? If he had no memories of the dangers he faced, why would his body still respond to the training he’d endured? It didn’t make sense.
He tried to look away when she stretched out her legs and rose. Tried, and failed.
Her every movement fixated him, fascinated him. Something reflective in her stockings picked up the white light from his parents’ home and refracted it into multicolored gleams that compelled his attention to her slender shapely legs as she stood.
She shrugged the top of her dress back into shape, undoing the damage that his hands had wrecked when he had grasped at her breasts like a teenager in heat, and he could only watch the way her breasts shifted. The tips of her nipples created hard points against the thin silky fabric that encased but barely covered them and he was entranced.
He summoned all of his willpower and squeezed his eyes shut. Damn, this wasn’t right.
With his eyes still closed, he turned, grabbed his tuxedo jacket where he’d laid it when he’d come across the basket of baseballs, and handed it to her.
“You’ve got grass stains,” he said. “And the night is getting cold.”
He waited until he heard the scritch of fabric on fabric before he let himself look at her again.
His jacket covered her small frame, but it only made her look sexier.
Her lips were swollen, thoroughly kissed. Her dark brown eyes flashed lightening at him. Even with the jacket covering her, he could still see her breasts move as she breathed deeply, sucking in the oxygen that his choke and then his kiss, had deprived her of.
What kind of a jerk was he? Perhaps the philosophers were right and men needed the rules of society to constrain their animal instincts. Without his memories, he had reverted to the primitive actions of his caveman ancestors, simply grasping a woman because he desired her, because she was there, because he was strong enough that he could do what he wanted and ignore all of her protests.
He took a deep breath. If he hadn�
��t already been intent on recovering his earlier life, his actions tonight would have convinced him he needed to. As it was, they merely reconfirmed his certainty.
“I am terribly sorry,” he said, knowing he sounded completely stilted but still knowing he had to explain. “When you spoke to me, my body reacted automatically, defending myself against what I assumed to be a threat.
“But I have no excuse for what happened afterwards,” he continued. “I knew it was you and I kissed you anyway. I only hope that you’ll trust my assurance that it will never happen again.”
Cynthia opened her mouth to answer, her eyes flashing with obvious anger and agitation. Then she turned and fled into the night.
Chapter 4
He’d kissed her, then he’d told her it would never happen again.
As if he had a choice.
As if she’d ever give him another chance. Russ had held her heart in his hands through high school, and he’d never even noticed. Afterwards, when he’d returned from Yale and established his investment business, he’d gotten together with her about once a month to brainstorm his ideas for Shermann. He’d treated her like the sexless girl who’d been his all-but-invisible parliamentarian. But by then, she’d been smarter, tougher. She knew that guys like Russ marry women like Heather. She’d guarded her heart—at least a little.
His kiss had torn down all of the barriers, all of the walls, all of the fortifications she’d managed to construct and left her unprotected.
And then he’d pushed her away, leaving her broken once again.
Cynthia had run from the party, ignored the winks and knowing glances from the high school boys who served as parking valets. She’d shoved a five-dollar bill at the boy who brought around her car, and she'd headed for home.
Despite shaking hands and a pulse-rate that simply couldn’t be healthy, somehow, she'd made it home safely. For all the good that did. Sleep eluded her that entire night.
Hometown Hero Page 5