Obsession

by Lisa Jackson

  “What is this?” she demanded, skimming the article that insinuated that she and Alan, still planning marriage, had been involved in an argument that sent her running away, seeking solace for her wounded heart. “This is absurd. I did no such thing!” she said, glaring first at Alan, then at Zane. “You’re the reason I left. You kidnapped me!”

  “Kidnapped?” Alan repeated, his mouth falling open, his gaze moving from Kaylie to Zane and back again. “Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. He kidnapped you?”

  Zane shot her a look that cut to the bone.

  Alan lounged one shoulder against the wall. “Is that what you call persuading you to go to the mountains?”

  Zane pushed himself to his feet and said quietly, “Kaylie and I need to talk. Alone.” He grabbed her jacket from a hook near the door. “Let’s go.”

  Alan was amused and couldn’t help the grin that toyed with his lips. “Well, Kaylie, what happened to all that independence you were so hell-bent to earn, hmm?”

  “Oh, give it a rest, Alan,” she snapped as she and Zane walked out of the building. Still stung by Alan’s remark, she said, “I’ll drive.”

  To her surprise, Zane didn’t argue, just slid his long body into the small interior of the Mustang. As she cocked her wrist to twist the key in the ignition, he slanted a sexy, knowing smile in her direction. “I suppose it would be too much to expect you to kidnap me to a private lodge in the mountains.”

  “Way too much,” she said as the engine started. But she laughed. “Okay,” she said, and eased out of the parking lot and into the late-afternoon traffic. “Talk.”

  Sighing, he stared out the window. Evening shadows stretched across the town as traffic moved sluggishly along the hilly streets. “Well, I’ve spent the last—” he checked his watch “—thirty-six hours staying away from you, giving you some space, and it’s been hell. I just wanted to be alone with you again.”

  Kaylie’s heart turned over.

  “I’m trying to give you space—breathing room—all those things you figure are so important, but, if you want to know the truth, I don’t like it much.”

  “Neither do I,” she admitted, trying to concentrate on traffic as she switched lanes and stopped for a red light. As the light changed, she tromped on the accelerator and the car sped forward again.

  “Then let’s change things,” he said quietly.

  “How?”

  “Pull over—”

  “What?”

  “Over there.” He pointed to a side street near a park. Kaylie found a parking spot and turned off the car. Zane climbed out of the Mustang, and she followed, not sure what he was going to say.

  The sun, partially obscured by a few flimsy clouds, was low in the sky and shadows lengthened over the ground. Leaves danced across the grass, pushed by a cool breeze. In the distance, children played football while dogs bounded in the thickets of trees nearby. Women pushed strollers, and squirrels chattered in the high branches of the oaks and maple trees.

  Kaylie’s heels scraped against the path. Zane took her hand, his warm fingers linking through hers. “I think we should try again,” he said quietly, his voice rough with emotion as he looked down at her.

  “Try?” she repeated, but she knew what he meant, and happiness and fear surged through her.

  He brushed a strand of hair from her forehead, his fingers warm and gentle. “Marriage. I want you to be my wife again. Marry me, Kaylie.”

  She wanted to say yes, to throw her arms around his neck and kiss him and tell him that they could live together happily ever after. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she bit her lip. “I—I don’t know,” she whispered, blinking rapidly.

  “Why not?”

  “We tried marriage once before—”

  “And we were young and immature. Both of us. This time it would be different. Come on, Kaylie.” He drew her into the protective circle of his arms, and his lips brushed gently over her forehead.

  God, how she loved him! Her arms wrapped around his back, and she laid her head against his chest, hearing the steady beat of his heart. She closed her eyes for a second. Living with Zane would either be ecstasy or torture—heaven or hell.

  When her eyes opened, she focused on the street, where the cars whipped by, wheels spinning, horns blaring.

  “Well?” he asked, holding her at arm’s length.

  Say yes! Don’t be a fool! This is your one chance at happiness! “I just don’t know,” she admitted, and the pain that surfaced in his eyes cut through her heart. “I love you, Zane,” she confessed. “I always have.” His arms tightened around her.

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “I just don’t want to fail again.”

  “We won’t,” he promised, kissing her crown.

  “Then…I…I need a few days to think it over.”

  Zane sighed, his breath ruffling her hair. “Why? So you can analyze our chances?”

  “Last time we rushed things—ran on pure emotion. This time—if there is a this time—I want to make the right decision.”

  For a second she thought he’d be angry. His face clouded, and he dropped his hands. “Okay,” he finally said, shoving a hand through his hair in frustration. “You have time to think it over, but don’t take too long, okay?” He strode back to the car and climbed inside. She followed and slid behind the wheel.

  “Why don’t you take me to dinner?” he remarked as she checked her side-view mirror and tried to pull into traffic.

  “I have a better idea—you take me.”

  “Only if I can persuade you to marry me.”

  She grinned inwardly. At least he wasn’t furious with her. Signaling, she eased the car into the right-hand lane and noticed that a silver car about a block behind her followed suit. She frowned as she realized the car was a Taurus, but so what? The city was crawling with them.

  Zane placed a hand on her knee. “How about someplace elegant—French dining overlooking the bay.”

  “How about pizza?” she countered, and he laughed.

  “You’re the driver, Kaylie. You can take me anywhere you want.”

  * * *

  “You did what?” Margot nearly dropped her glass of Chablis as Kaylie finished her story about her relationship with Zane.

  Margot had driven Kaylie to the house in Carmel so that she could turn in the rental and pick up her car. “I told Zane that I’d consider it. Then we went out for pizza and I took him back to his car.”

  “Oh, boy, are you crazy.” Margot took a long sip of wine and shook her head. Seated at a round umbrella table on the back deck of Kaylie’s house in Carmel, she eyed her sister as if she had truly lost her mind. “Some women spend their entire lifetimes looking for a man like Zane Flannery. And you know what?”

  “What?” Kaylie asked, not really interested in Margot’s big-sister wisdom, but knowing she was going to hear it one way or another.

  “They never find him, that’s what! Men like Zane Flannery don’t exactly grow on trees, you know!”

  “Thanks for the advice.”

  Margot smiled. She was on a roll. “And you got lucky and found him twice! If I were you, I’d march right into the house and call him right now.”

  “And say what?” Kaylie teased.

  “That you’ve already found the preacher, for crying out loud!”

  Kaylie twisted the stem of her wineglass. She’d thought the very same thing and had even made it as far as the telephone a couple of times, but in the end she’d backed down. “I don’t want to make the same mistake we did before.”

  “You won’t. You’re older now. And, most importantly, the man loves you, with a capital L. So why are you fighting it?”

  Kaylie let her gaze wander out to sea. Margot had a point, she admitted to herself.

  “And you miss him, don’t you?”

  Kaylie sighed and shrugged. “Yeah,” she admitted, trying to sound indifferent when deep inside she missed him every minute of every day. She hadn’t stopped thin
king about him, couldn’t sleep, plotted ways of bumping into him.

  “Look, if it’s a matter of pride—”

  “It’s more than that,” Kaylie admitted, remembering the way Zane kidnapped her—just hauled her into the woods without even asking her first. “I can’t accept a man who insists on dominating and pampering me.”

  “You did once.”

  “That was before.”

  “Right,” Margot said, as if she’d just made her point. “Before that damned premiere of Obsession! Until then, you and Zane were comfortably ensconced in marital bliss. To tell you the truth, I was envious.”

  “You?” Kaylie’s eyes rounded on her sister. “But you and Trevor—”

  Margot waved impatiently, and sadness stole over her features. “I know, I know. But the truth of the matter was, my marriage wasn’t perfect.”

  This was news to Kaylie. For as long as she could remember, Margot had been in love with Trevor Holloway.

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong. I loved Trevor more than I should have and I know that he loved me. But—” she lifted a shoulder “—we had our problems, just like anyone else.”

  “What kinds of problems?” Kaylie asked.

  “It doesn’t matter—they seem stupid now and petty. I’d gladly take all our problems back if Trevor were still alive.” Margot sighed and squinted out to sea, watching the sun lower in a blaze of brilliant gold that scorched the sky and reflected on the water. She seemed to focus on a solitary sailboat that skimmed across the horizon—a sailboat not unlike the one on which Trevor had lost his life.

  Kaylie thought she was finished, but Margot settled deeper into her deck chair and continued, “No marriage is perfect, but some are better than others and some are the best. I have a feeling that you and Zane had one of the best—at least until that creep Lee Johnston decided to mess things up.” Margot shuddered.

  “Even before the premiere, Zane was…autocratic.”

  “He was scared. You’d been getting those letters and he was terrified that something might happen to you—which it did.” Margot leaned across the table, her gaze touching her sister’s. “Give the guy a break, Kaylie. All he’s ever done is love you too much. Is that such a crime?”

  “I guess not.”

  “I know not!” Margot finished her glass of wine. “The point is that Zane’s crazy about you. Also, he’s handsome, successful, caring, dependable, honest, intelligent and has a great sense of humor. What more do you want?”

  “Someone who’ll let me make my own decisions,” Kaylie replied before smiling and adding, “but of course he’ll have to be handsome, successful, caring, dependable—and all the rest of those qualities you reeled off.”

  “Then if I were you, I wouldn’t look any farther than your ex-husband,” Margot said as she climbed out of her chair and stretched. “Mark my words, Kaylie, you’ll never find a man who loves you more than Zane does. And, if you’ll stop long enough to be honest with yourself, you’ll realize that you’ll never love a man the way you love him.” She reached for her purse and concluded, “You just have to ask yourself what you really want in life—to be lonely and independent or to take a chance on love—real love. I’ll see you later. Think about what I said.”

  Kaylie figured she didn’t have much choice. She watched Margot leave and knew her older sister was right. She’d never love a man as she loved Zane.

  * * *

  Zane paced around his office. He’d spent the better part of the afternoon listening to his accountant argue that another office, located in Denver or Phoenix, was just what the company needed. Zane wasn’t interested. Expanding the business suddenly seemed trivial.

  For the past week he’d tried to stay away from Kaylie. He hadn’t called her, he hadn’t visited her, he hadn’t even shown up on the set of West Coast Morning, though he had tuned in every day and had sworn under his breath whenever Kaylie and Alan shared a smile or a joke.

  “It’s just her job,” he told himself, but he couldn’t stem the stream of jealousy that swept through his blood. More than once, he had snapped off the TV in disgust, only to click it on again.

  But he was giving her time to come to a decision—the most important decision of his life!

  He slumped back into his chair, picked up the accountant’s proposal, then tossed it into his wastebasket. He didn’t need another office to stretch the corporate tentacles of Flannery Security. He didn’t really care if he never made another dollar. He just wanted Kaylie.

  “You’re obsessed,” he told himself, not for the first time, as he strode to the bar, found a bottle of Scotch and poured three fingers into his glass. Then he checked his watch. Barely one-thirty in the afternoon. Disgusted with himself, he tossed the drink into the sink, strode back to his desk and fished the figures for the new office from his wastebasket.

  “Concentrate, Flannery,” he ordered himself as he picked up a pencil to jot notes. But the letters and numbers on the pages jumbled before his eyes, and Kaylie’s face, fresh and smiling, framed in a cloud of golden hair, swam in his mind.

  His pencil snapped.

  Muttering an oath aimed at himself, he grabbed his jacket and marched out of the office. “Cancel all my appointments this afternoon,” he told Peggy as he headed toward the elevator.

  “And where can I reach you?”

  “I wish I knew,” he replied. The elevator doors whispered open, and he climbed inside. He thought of a dozen schemes to contact Kaylie again, but dismissed them all. He’d just have to wait.

  * * *

  The following few days Kaylie was nervous as a cat. Margot’s advice kept running through her mind. She half expected Zane to fall back into his old pattern—and she suspected that he might have her under surveillance.

  But he never showed up at her apartment or the beach house again. Nor did he call or leave a message on her machine.

  It was as if she’d finally gotten through to him and he was going to leave her alone.

  “That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?” she asked herself one evening. It was Friday and had been raining all day. Alan had been in a bad mood on the set, and the taping hadn’t gone well. By the time Kaylie reached the beach house, she’d acquired a thundering headache and her shoes were soaked from her walk across the television station parking lot. All she could think about was a hot shower, a cup of tea and a good book.

  And Zane of course. She let herself in with her key and smiled sadly. She never had bothered to change the locks; she hadn’t had the heart to lock Zane out. And yet he’d never so much as tried any of her doors since the night he’d spirited her away.

  And now he wanted to marry her. She was warmed by the thought. Her only hesitation was the thought of failing again, of the pain of divorce. She would never put herself, nor Zane for that matter, through all that pain again. Stripping off her clothes, she continued toward the bathroom.

  The phone rang and she grabbed the bedroom extension, half expecting the caller to be Zane. “Hello?” she answered, smiling.

  No answer.

  “Hello?” she asked again, and there was still silence on the line. “Zane—is that you?” She waited, but heard nothing, and her nerves stretched taut. “Is anyone there? Look, I can’t hear you. Why don’t you try again?” She hung up slowly and waited, staring at the rain sheeting against her bedroom window and the dark, threatening clouds rolling in from the sea.

  The only sounds were the distant rumble of thunder, the rain peppering the roof and the sound of her own heartbeat. The minutes ticked slowly by. “It was probably just a wrong number,” she thought aloud, then continued toward the bathroom. She’d hoped the caller had been Zane, and her heart tripped at the thought that he’d tried to reach her.

  Maybe Margot had been right, she finally decided, maybe it was her turn to reach out to Zane. Maybe there was a chance that they might start over again. If given the chance, surely Zane would treat her as an intelligent, mature woman.

  He had to.

&n
bsp; Because she loved him. With all her heart, she loved him and always would. There was no other man for her—no white knight lurking in the wings ready to dash up and carry her away. Zane was the only man in her life—always had been, always would be and she’d been a fool not to realize it before.

  Wrenching off the faucets, she heard the phone ring again. She barely took the time to wrap a bath sheet around her before she dashed into the bedroom, leaving a trail of water behind her.

  “Hello?” she called into the phone, her voice breathless, just as the caller hung up. “No! I’m here!” she yelled, feeling in her bones that the caller had been Zane. “Well, there’s only one way to find out,” she decided, throwing open her dresser drawers and yanking on her underwear. Tonight she was going to drive all the way back to the city, back to Zane’s apartment and tell him she loved him. They’d have a chance to start over again.

  * * *

  Rick Taylor groaned. His hand went to his head and he felt something sticky and wet on the floor where he lay. Blinking hard, he forced his eyelids open only to close them again at the glare from the single shaft of light near the floor. He slipped back out of consciousness before jerking awake. His skull pounded, the pain creating orbs of light behind his closed lids.

  “Wha-what the hell?” he muttered, licking his lips. He remembered walking into that loony patient Johnston’s room. But Johnston had not been in his bed. Turning to sound an alarm, Rick had felt the hot flash of pain in his abdomen and, doubling over, the crash of something against the back of his head.

  Now he propped himself on one elbow, feeling the wound in his side tearing open. “Help,” he tried to cry, but the sound was barely a rattling whisper. How long had he been here? Seconds? Minutes? Hours?

  But surely he’d be missed. Trying to push himself upright, he fell back and attempted to call for help again. The narrow sliver of light, coming from the hall outside the door, wavered in front of his eyes.

  “Help me! Please!”

  Using all his strength, he pulled himself toward the door and the hallway. Pain ripped through his body, pounding at his temple. The room, barely ten foot square, seemed to stretch on forever as he inched his way to the door.