by Gayle Wilson
“The first time I saw Elliot,” she said, “I thought he looked like something out of those thirties comedies, Carole Lombard’s butler maybe.”
There was a small silence, strained, and belatedly she realized she had reminded him of the day she had met Elliot. The day she’d come to accuse Thorne Barrington of sending her the confetti package. The day she’d decided to let a little light into his darkness. “That day,” she said, remembering. “Did throwing up the shades cause—”
She cut off the question. The migraines were something he didn’t talk about. He had never publicly discussed his injuries. He was a very private man, and just because he had relaxed that vigilance with her tonight didn’t give her the right to probe.
Embarrassed, she looked down into the cobbler. She pushed her spoon through a piece of the crust, breaking it into two pieces, the thick, pink-tinged juice seeping up between them.
“Obviously…” he began, and she looked up when he hesitated. “Obviously, you now know some things about me that you didn’t know when you came here that day. I find myself curious as to how you know them.”
A good reporter protects her sources, she had told him before, but that excuse wouldn’t suffice any longer. He had invited her into his home out of kindness, because she had admitted that going into her apartment gave her the willies. He deserved an explanation rather than a brush-off.
“Detective Kahler told me some of them,” she said.
“Kahler?” He sounded surprised by the revelation, and given the detective’s normal reticence, she understood why.
“And my editor knows some people who…know you.” That certainly was vague enough.
“Lew Garrison?” he questioned.
She nodded, pushing her spoon into the cobbler again.
“I see,” he said.
When she glanced up, his face had tightened, the line of his mouth again straight and uncompromising. Probably the way he’d looked at the about-to-be-condemned standing before his bench.
“It’s not really the way it sounds,” she offered. “I just thought I needed to understand what had happened to you.”
“I’m always surprised when people I know are willing to talk about me. It’s disappointing that friends would share that kind of personal information.”
“At first, I believed you’d sent me the package, and I thought that…it was weird that you live the way you do. Lew and Kahler both defended you, gave me some background, some reasons for…”
“The fact that I hide in the darkness,” he finished for her. His eyes were steady on her face.
“Yes,” she said. It was only what she had already said to him. Why bother to deny it? There was another silence. She realized that he had stopped eating a long time ago, his cobbler almost untouched.
“As a matter of fact, a friend of mine called today,” he said. “He wanted to warn me that someone had been asking questions about the bombing, specifically about my injuries. He seemed to think it involved an upcoming news story. He suggested I might want to take some kind of legal action to stop it. To stop the invasion of privacy. I’m not a public figure, Kate. I haven’t surrendered my right to privacy.”
That must have been Lew, she thought, following through on the request she’d made. An entirely personal request for information, now that she was sure Thorne Barrington hadn’t been involved with the package she’d received.
“That’s why you invited me to come in tonight,” she said, realizing the truth. “To issue a warning Not because I told you I was afraid to go home.” She had wanted him to be some kind of knight in shining armor, so she had made him into one. She had made a fool of herself. Surely she was smarter than this, she thought in disgust.
“Did you have anything to do with that inquiry?” he asked.
She considered lying to him. Denying that she had been the one who had set it in motion. If she didn’t deny it, she knew she’d never see him again. But, she reminded herself, what did it matter? Tonight hadn’t been what she had thought. Just because she was obsessed with him didn’t mean…
“Kate?” he said.
“Yes, I did.”
He said nothing in response, although she met his eyes, had made hers make contact until his fell. He was still holding the spoon with his right hand. He put it back into the bowl and pushed it away from him. She could see the depth of the breath he took before he spoke.
“I see,” he said. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. You did try to warn me.”
She shook her head, wondering what he meant. She couldn’t remembering trying to do anything of the kind.
“If you’ll forgive me, Ms. August. I think that it might be wise if we call it a night,” he said. Despite what he believed, he wouldn’t be rude to her. It wasn’t in his nature or in his training.
“It’s not what you think,” she said and watched the subtle realignment of his mouth. Cynicism this time and not humor.
“I believe that’s what you told me the first time,” he said.
She remembered then the conversation he was referring to. The parking lot outside the police station. Her confession.
“I could have lied to you. Both times.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because you’d have found out sooner or later.”
“And that mattered to you?”
“Yes.”
“Because you thought I’d eventually give in and give you a story? Something about my life after Jack? About the bombing itself? How I felt?”
Now she should lie, she thought, hide her real motivation behind what he believed, the easy out his contempt of her profession provided. “No,” she said instead.
He didn’t probe, but she knew he was still looking at her. She could feel his gaze. She couldn’t confess the real reason she had always told him the truth, the real hope behind the things she’d done. Not if he hadn’t figured it out on his own, if he didn’t feel whatever this was between them.
Between them, hell, she ridiculed. What was between them was all in her head. Since she’d collected his pictures. Since she’d done the profile. It had all been just in her head.
She pushed her chair away from the table suddenly and stood up. She had been guilty of doing all the things he hated. She had pried into his private life, had even asked Lew to question his friends. It didn’t make any difference that she was really trying to help Kahler catch a madman. If she couldn’t convince herself that was the reason for her interest in Thorne Barrington, how could she think she might convince him?
“Thanks for the cobbler,” she said. “And for the company,” she added, almost bitter that this had all turned out to be something very different from what she had been imagining when he’d invited her in.
She crossed the room and entered the small, dark hallway. Barrington moved fast for a big man. And silently. He caught her before she had emerged into the part of the foyer under the grand staircase. This time he didn’t release the grip he had taken on her arm, not even after he had pulled her around to face him and her eyes had fastened again on the damaged hand holding her wrist with such strength.
“Was that all it was?” he demanded. “Just for some damn story? Is that what all this is about?”
She struggled, but he refused to let her go.
“Answer me, damn it,” he ordered. Although his features were hidden by the shadowed darkness, the black eyes glittered, hard and demanding.
“No,” she whispered.
He was close enough that she could smell him. Closer than in the big car the first night. The scent of his body more intimate here in the shadows. Still pleasant. Warm. Male.
“Then what?” he said. “If not for a story, then why the hell do you keep coming here?”
“Please let me go,” she said. “You’re hurting my arm.”
It was a lie, but the hot moisture had begun to burn behind her eyes. She didn’t want him to see her cry, and she couldn’t tell him the truth. I’m here because I’ve fantasized
about being with you like this, held close against your body in the darkness. That was the truth, but not one she could confess. Too humiliating. Too bizarre.
He released her. She had known he would. He was too much a prisoner of his upbringing to do anything else. She didn’t move, held motionless by her obsession as she had been from the first. She could see nothing of his expression. There was no clue in his darkness to tell her what she should do.
Leave, her brain ordered suddenly. Get out. The instinct to flee was primitive, but very strong.
Obeying it blindly, she began to turn. His left hand, the one that had survived the attempt on his life virtually unscathed, was suddenly pressed, palm flattened, against the wall beside her, his outstretched arm a barrier to prevent her escape.
She hesitated, unsure again. His hand left the wall and moved to the back of her neck, slipping under the fall of her hair. She didn’t react, couldn’t have moved away from him had her life depended on it. His fingers slowly threaded upward through the long strands and then spread out against her scalp, cupping the back of her head. The lobe of her ear rested in the V formed between the spreading fingers and the caress of his thumb, which had begun to move back and forth over her cheekbone.
Her eyes closed, her breath sighing out in a small unintended whisper of sound. At her response, his hand shifted, drifting forward so that his fingers trailed over her jawline and the sensitive skin beneath it. His thumb teased along her lips, which opened, without her volition, to allow her tongue to touch him. He used his thumb to force her mouth open more widely, pulling downward against her bottom lip, the moisture on his skin cool against her own as his thumb skimmed down her chin to lift her face for his kiss.
His mouth tasted of peaches. Sweet. So sweet. Just as she had imagined. Through the long months. Imagining this so long. His tongue found hers, demanding response. Touch and retreat. Savoring the warmth of his mouth, finally where it belonged. Over hers.
He was exactly the right height, tall enough that she found her body straining upward, made small and somehow more fragile, more feminine by his size. She liked how that made her feel, but she had always known it would feel this way. This rightness.
The kiss wasn’t long. He broke the connection, leaning back slightly as if to read her expression, and she wondered suddenly if his vision were more acute than hers in the darkness. Because this was the way he lived. Surrounded by darkness.
“Not just for a story,” he said softly. His voice was deep and intimate, not colored with amusement and not cynical. An acknowledgment of all that had been in her response.
“I told you the truth,” she said “It wasn’t for the series. That wasn’t why I was asking questions.”
He stepped back, half a step farther away, but she felt exposed by the distance between them, by what she had confessed. There was always vulnerability in admitting how you felt. It was inherent in caring for someone and probably necessary, but so risky. The possibility always existed that the other person wasn’t interested or wasn’t affected in the same way.
“Now what?” she whispered. Get it over with. Find out if she had been as foolish as she felt nght now.
The pause was too long. He didn’t touch her, and he didn’t answer her question. She felt the elation of the kiss begin to fade, and humiliation grow to replace it, rising hotly into her chest and then upward to fill her throat.
She had thrown herself at him. Her mother used to warn her about doing that when she was a teenager, madly in love with her latest crush. Just don’t throw yourself at him, honey. The words taunted from her memory.
“I don’t know,” he said, but finally his left hand came up to find her upper arm, thumb smoothing over her bare skin, exposed by the sleeveless silk blouse she was wearing. “I don’t know,” he said again.
She thought she heard pain in the whisper. “Okay,” she said. “It’s okay. You don’t have to know. As long as you understand that…it isn’t the series. I’m not working on a story about you.”
“It’s been a long time,” he said.
The silence that had preceded his comment was not as strained as before because he was still touching her, but then he didn’t go on, didn’t finish whatever thought he had had. Since he’d kissed someone? she wondered. Felt this way? Made love?
“Since?” she prodded softly.
He laughed, a breath of sound.
“Since I kissed a woman. Or wanted to.”
“Then I guess I should be flattered.”
“Probably not,” he said. He had moved closer to her again. She could feel the breath of that comment against her forehead.
“Why not?”
His lips touched where his breath had, almost as lightly.
“This used to all come so easily,” he said instead of answering.
“Gettin’ women?” she teased, her own laughter soft, buried against the warmth of his throat.
“Knowing what to do. What to say.”
“You don’t know?”
“My life…” he began. When he stopped, she waited through the pause. “Everything’s a lot more complicated than it used to be,” he finished finally.
“It doesn’t have to be. Complicated.”
“Given my…situation, it probably does,” he said.
“It wasn’t tonight. We sat at the table together. We ate. We talked. It seemed pretty simple to me. Uncomplicated.”
“Normal,” he said, his tone mocking.
“You’re not some kind of…” The phrases Lew had used were suddenly in her head. Night crawler. Monster. And then her own. Vampire.
“Recluse?” he offered, and her brain relaxed, relieved he hadn’t known what she had been thinking. “Yes, I am, Kate. That’s exactly what I am.”
“By choice,” she argued.
“Not really.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said.
For the first time she took the initiative, moving against him, putting her hands on the wide shoulders. Raising her face for his kiss. Inviting it now.
There was time to wonder what she would do if he didn’t respond before his mouth closed over hers. Deeper now, more intense. They both knew now that this was what the other wanted, too, and there was freedom in knowing that. No one was going to have to pull away in embarrassment.
His arms closed around her, and he held her, pressing his body into hers. She realized, a little surprised by the discovery, that he was already strongly aroused. Her back was against the wall of the hallway, his hands possessive over her bottom, pulling her upward into the hard evidence of how much he desired her. It was all happening a little faster than she had expected. She had known how she felt, but he had given her no clue before tonight that he found her attractive. Obviously, he did. At least—sexually attractive.
For some reason she was disconcerted by that idea. Maybe it made no sense, but faced with the unexpected reality that this man was flesh and blood, and not the fantasy she had created, she was suddenly unsure. Her hands flattened against his chest, exerting their own pressure. He released her immediately, again stepping backward into the shadows.
“Maybe you better go,” he suggested.
“While the going’s good?” she asked, still breathless.
There was again the whisper of his laughter. “It might be easier.”
“Easier?”
He took a deep breath, the broad shoulders in the white shirt lifting, visible in the darkness. “Cold showers. Think about something else. All that good advice.”
“Do those work?”
“Not with you,” he said softly, and her throat closed, hard and tight “Sometimes I’ll wake up in the middle of the night wanting you. Thinking about you being there with me. Where the darkness doesn’t matter. Where it’s an ally, a friend.”
He had left her with nothing to say. She had thought she was the one taking the risk in confessing how she felt, but what she had done had been not nearly so brave as that
“Thank you for telling
me that,” she said.
“I thought it was already rather obvious,” he said, and again self-amusement underlay the words. “Pretty damn difficult to hide. Women have all the advantage when it comes to that.”
“I guess we do,” she agreed.
“When can I see you again?” he asked.
She almost said: Anytime. It was what she wanted to say, but somehow she was still a little guarded. His was a confession to be examined. When she was alone. Just to see if it was as promising as it had sounded when he’d made it.
“You could call me,” she said instead.
“I will,” he promised.
His left hand was touching her hair. She knew suddenly that if she didn’t get out of here pretty soon, she was going to end up…just where he’d said he wanted her. In his bed.
“I really need to go,” she said, forcing her voice to remain steady. His fingers were touching her earlobe now.
“I know,” he said.
“Thank you for inviting me in.”
He put his mouth over hers, enclosing the last word, caressing it with his tongue. More demanding this time. Wanting her. She knew now that he wanted her. She pushed away again, knowing how close she was to giving in to him, giving in to her own obsession. She walked toward the rise of the steps, black against the light filtering around them from the beveled glass door. When she opened it, the crystal tears moved, a small cascade of notes falling into the silence. Then she closed the door behind her, stepping out into the heat of the summer night.
HE STOOD in the shadowed darkness of the hallway, listening. There was no place in his life for the emotions that had flared between them tonight. He had told Kate August the truth—about that, at least. It had been a long time, and it all seemed too complicated now. Too hard to explain. Or too hard to justify.
He knew she was destroying the world he had created—the safe world into which he had retreated. She had accused him of hiding in the darkness and had forced him to contemplate exactly what he was hiding from.
He closed his eyes, but he could still smell her perfume, the scent caught in the shadows that surrounded him and had surrounded him so long. He was no longer sure which was more powerful-the darkness that protected him or what he felt for the woman who had touched him, who had wanted to touch him, despite what he was.