The Wall: A Vintage Contemporary Romance

by Thea Harrison

  Sara moaned and rolled over in bed. Her eyes flew open as she felt how extraordinarily sore she was in certain areas, and her misty gaze travelled wonderingly over strange walls and furniture. A puzzled smile touched her lips as she vaguely wondered if she was still dreaming, and then the events of last night came tumbling back into her consciousness and she bolted up in bed like a rabbit breaking from cover. Beowulf raised his black head and thumped his stump at her. Funny, she thought, frowning, I don’t remember undressing. She put up a hand and scratched at her ribcage at a slight discomfort and found that she was still wearing her bra. She never wore a bra to bed and rarely wore one when she took a nap, it was so uncomfortable. But then, she acknowledged wryly, she never ran down a beach in a nightgown and got a man out of bed at three in the morning before, either. She dismissed the whole train of thought as being unimportant, since she didn’t remember entering this strange bedroom last night anyway. Actually, it was early this morning, but who was counting?

  She gingerly edged her feet off the bed and stood, wincing at the pain from her feet. A quick inspection showed them to be lacerated and bruised. A black mark was on her left ankle. A quick exploration of the room revealed a small bath off to the left, and she went into it with an anticipatory gleam in her eye. She was prevented from shutting the door behind her, however, by a quick powerful shove from a waist-high canine head. Beowulf watched her with velvet eyes.

  “Oh, all right!” she told him laughingly, and let him in to plop on the tiled floor. “I’ll have you know, young man, that you’re the first male that I’ve ever let into my bathroom!” He looked duly appreciative of that fact, then rolled over on to his side with a snort. He was still there when she emerged from the shower stall some time later. She had found several more bruises all over her body and whenever she moved unwarily she felt painful twinges that warned her to be careful. It had hurt, standing in the shower and having the warm soapy water lap at her feet, but she knew that at least it had cleaned out the cuts.

  She dressed for comfort in the pair of jeans that she had donned around four in the morning, and a red long-sleeved blouse. It helped hide her bruises. Then she brushed her long black hair with the hand dryer that she’d packed until her hair was moderately dry. Makeup? It was out of the question; she felt strangely exhausted at the effort that she had expended already. All she managed to do to her feet was pull a thick pair of cushiony socks on. She had tried shoes and found they hurt too much.

  Beowulf accompanied her every move, even to sitting with his great head on her knee as she blow-dried her hair. He was comic and adorable, and by the time she had finished with her laborious toilet, she had fallen into the habit of talking aloud to him. It was uncanny how he managed to respond appropriately to various spoken statements.

  Sara was soon heading out of her bedroom door and attempting to limp down the stairs when Greg appeared with a coffee mug in hand and several papers in the other. He immediately put them on a side table and jumped up the stairs when he took in her involuntary winces of pain. He reached out, and she felt his hands take hold of her in a firm grip, then the world swung around as he hauled her up in his arms to carry her down the rest of the stairs.

  She felt shy and awkward. All of the reactions from last night that she normally would have felt but had been too upset to bother with came rushing up. She remembered Greg’s bare muscular body as he had angrily shrugged into his jeans and sweater from last night, and her face burned. She felt the natural embarrassment for putting someone out, someone that she hardly knew. It coloured her voice.

  “Good morning,” she began, but was cut short.

  “Honey child, it’s hardly morning,” he told her, amusement threading his voice. “In fact it’s well into the afternoon.”

  Her face, already flushed, turned even more red. “I’m sorry—”

  Greg stopped in the middle of the hall, with Beowulf behind him, half on and half off the bottom of the stairs. His dark gaze caressed her. “Don’t start that again, Sara. I’ve had enough humility and contrite embarrassment to last me a long time!”

  Her eyes twinkled tentatively. “All right.” Greg resumed walking down the hall and Beowulf was able to finish coming down the stairs. Neither had noticed him.

  She was asked, “Are you feeling hungry?” to which she responded with a nod. “Good! How about keeping me company in the kitchen while I fix us something to gobble?”

  “Please.” He put her down on a bar stool beside a butcher block table and she soon had a steaming cup of coffee in front of her to nurse while he moved efficiently around the kitchen. Sara swung from side to side in an effort to see the stove clock, but with Greg moving around so much she couldn’t see the time.

  He caught her movement out of the corner of one eye and turned to contemplate her sardonically. “Practising to become a pendulum some day?”

  She chuckled. “I’m trying to see what time it is. I have this very nagging desire to see how much of the day I’ve missed.” He obligingly moved out of the way, and she yelped. It was two-thirty in the afternoon.

  “Want to lay odds on whether you’ll be sleepy or not around ten this evening?” Greg asked her with a crooked smile.

  She hesitated. “N-no. It was hard enough to get out of bed just now. I think I’ll be only too ready for bed tonight.”

  He reached out for her cheek in a quick caress. It was an absentminded gesture, but it still sent a thrill through her. “You went through a lot last night.” Her eyes slid away from his and she watched tiny motes of dust dance along a yellow sunbeam that peeped through a curtained window. “Hey,” he said, “cut it out. Don’t think about it now, d’you hear?”

  “Okay.” It was an empty promise, though, and they both knew it.

  “What do you want to eat?” Greg was perusing the contents of his refrigerator, head cocked and foot tapping slowly.

  “What have you got?” Sara’s stomach was beginning to make sharp demands and she rubbed it unobtrusively.

  “Does an onion and mushroom omelette sound good to you?”

  “It sounds wonderful,” she sighed. “Can we eat it now and cook it later, to save time?” His dark eyes laughed at her as he juggled items to the table. She watched while he chopped the mushrooms and laughed when her eyes watered as he peeled the onion. The aroma of eggs nicely browning in butter made her mouth salivate. When he slid a steaming plate of food her way, she tucked in with a neat concise eagerness that made him smile to himself. He sat across from her. After they had finished their meal, he stood and fed Beowulf, who swiftly gobbled his portion of dog food with an avidness that made her ask Greg if he had been starving the poor hound.

  “It’s the second time he’s been fed today,” he replied dryly, crossing his arms and leaning against the doorway. “That ‘poor hound’ gets fed three times a day. I don’t think he’s hurting any.” Looking at Beowulf’s sleek shiny coat and firm rippling muscles, Sara had to agree. He looked trim and fit, but he certainly didn’t look thin or weak from lack of food.

  Greg poured her another cup of coffee, and they lounged in the kitchen without saying much. It was a perfect opportunity for her to study him in depth. She was genuinely puzzled.

  The barrier, so obvious yesterday evening and the first time she had met him, was missing today. He was showing himself to be a warm, compassionate man, sensitive to her needs and caring about her. His eyes were warm and sparkling, not hard and repelling. His face was still hard; nothing could soften those features after a point, but his expression was relaxed and easy, not wary and guarded.

  He was an enigma. He was tantalising and unknown. In many ways he was a contradiction in terms. She couldn’t get her mind off him. There was a power of being about him that manifested itself in certain ways: in the hard line of his jaw, in odd inflexibilities of his speech, in his quicksilver intelligence that forced her mind into a high gear of thought, in his quiet self-confidence. After a prolonged study of the lines of his face, Sara realised th
at he was like steel tempered by fire. The lines were not from maturity in years, but rather from suffering and hardship. She guessed that he had been through some kind of hell, and very probably was still dwelling in a private prison of damnation.

  By the end of the afternoon, she had come to think of him as being beautiful, and she watched for every change in his mobile face, every different expression. He soon picked her up and carried her off to the downstairs bathroom, plunking her down decisively on the stool. She was laughing breathlessly, her hair all over her face, and she asked him with a mock sternness in her voice that was betrayed by a slight quiver, “Just what do you think you’re doing? If you think I’m going to go to the bathroom with you in here, you’ve got another think coming, buster! Beowulf’s just the same. He insisted on coming into the bathroom with me when I took my shower.”

  Greg knelt at her feet with a smile tugging at the corners of his lips and started to remove her socks. “I’m going to have a look at the bottoms of your feet. I should have done this last night, but you were out like a light as soon as you hit the bed, and I didn’t have the heart to disturb you.” He turned one small foot over gently and studied her bruises and lacerations.

  It looked very small and white, held like that in his big-boned, darkly tanned hands. The delicate arch of her foot was mottled with black bruises and red cuts.

  Sara wasn’t thinking about her foot, though. She was still mulling over Greg’s words. It must mean, she thought, with a squirm and a sudden rush of red, that he put me to bed last night. No wonder I didn’t remember changing into my nightgown! His dark head came up and he sent her a slanting, mocking glance as if he knew what she was thinking. She said hurriedly, “I made sure they were clean when I took my shower.”

  “That must have hurt. I think we would be wise to put some antiseptic on those lacerations, just in case, since we left them a while before checking. Besides, I’d like to wrap them in gauze bandaging to keep them clean. That way you won’t stick to your socks by the time you get ready for bed.” He turned, opened a small cabinet, and took out a first aid kit and soon was applying antiseptic to her feet. It made her eyes water from pain in spite of his obvious attempts to be gentle, and she took in a shaky breath when he finished one foot and wrapped it several times before sliding it back into her sock. By the end of the second foot she was gripping the edge of the sink and holding her lips so tightly that there was a white line around them.

  Looking up, he caught sight of her pain, and took her unhesitatingly into his arms. The onrush of warmth from his caring and sympathy had her clinging to him with something akin to desperation. It felt so safe. He drew in a breath, looked down at her face so close to his own, and brought down his mouth. He was warm and his lips were firm and yet mobile. It shook her. He brushed her mouth over and over, then deepened the kiss with a gentle persuasion that had her responding almost before she realised it.

  Afterwards, he helped her into the den, and Sara knew without any words being spoken that he had retreated once again.

  Chapter Five

  Greg was very thoughtful. Sara was made comfortable and he brought her a paperback to read, and she had never felt so alone before in her life when he closed the door to his study after explaining that he needed to do some work.

  Some time later she knocked on his door softly and was rewarded with an immediate and rather short, “Come in.” She poked her head around the edge of the door after opening it halfway and Greg leaned back in his swivel chair, gesturing impatiently. “I said come in, not peep at me like a mouse!”

  So she limped in and leaned against the back of the chair in front of his desk to take the weight off her feet. “I’m going back to the house now,” she began, and paused, and Greg came forward out of his chair with a resounding crash. It was quite an effective silencer and it had her staring at him with wide eyes.

  “Like hell you are!” he shouted furiously. “You’ve got to be crazy to even contemplate staying there after what happened! No way, lady, you are going to stay right here!”

  She cocked an eyebrow, attempting to hide the flush of anger that suffused her mind. It had been a good eight years since anyone had dared to talk to her like that. Her mother was the last, and it had been a decade since she had heeded anything delivered to her in that tone of voice. She wasn’t about to stand for it now, not from Greg or anyone else for that matter. “Thank you for hearing me out,” she said sarcastically. The biting edge to her voice was keen. She knew her own voice intimately; she had to, to perform as well as she did. She used her voice inflections to advantage now, and she saw him wince slightly. “But I was about to finish with ‘pick up a few things.’ Now that you mention it, though, I might add another thank you for your kind hospitality last night, but I really must be going.” With that statement, she closed her mouth in what she knew to be an infuriating manner, turned her back on Greg, and limped with dignity out of the room. He caught up with her faster than she had expected.

  She was whirled around and pushed against the nearby wall, imprisoned with two strong arms one to each side. Incensed with his cavalier manner, she brought up a stiff warning forefinger to stick it in front of his nose with a hiss through bared teeth, “Watch it!”

  He ignored the finger hovering near his nose. “Where are you going?” It was a harsh tone of voice, one that she resented like she resented his attitude.

  She answered him snappily, “I’ll let you know when I decide!” He was very big, she realised suddenly. His lower body was leaning against hers to keep her in place, and she found it quite distracting.

  “Are you wanting to check into a motel, or are you going to go home?” he insisted, a thread of urgency colouring his question.

  Sara’s eyes dropped with a suffusion of doubt, and something in his face made her answer him seriously, “I don’t know, really. I hadn’t thought about it.” With a quick sideways look up at his shadowed expression, she admitted tersely, “You made me very angry.”

  “I know,” he responded absently, “Sara, don’t feel you have to go home just because of this. Don’t cut your vacation short. You can stay here if you like, for as long as you want. You’d be safe. Even if I needed to leave the house for a while, Beowulf is here and he would protect you.”

  She stared at his shirt front, longing to stay so badly that she could taste it in her mouth. Uncertainties were undermining her thinking, though, and she couldn’t seem to come to any rational decision. “What—what about your privacy? I’d be an imposition, I’d upset your routine, I’d…”

  He interrupted. “You wouldn’t be an imposition. Sara, do you want to stay?” An insistent hand was forcing her chin up, compelling her to look into his very serious eyes. She did so and found she couldn’t look away.

  “Yes.” It was a bare thread of sound, but he heard it anyway.

  He said in a low voice, “Then stay.” It was most persuasive, the intent and almost pleading way he spoke.

  Sara closed her eyes and nodded.

  Greg didn’t accompany her back to the house since he had several things that he needed to do, but he insisted that she take Beowulf with her and let him run through the cabin before she entered. It was a good suggestion, and she accepted gratefully.

  He told her not to be surprised if she found items in the house moved around a little. “I took the liberty of calling the police this morning while you were in bed,” he explained, “and they went through the house to check for fingerprints, but didn’t find any. Whoever it was had to be wearing gloves. They also determined his mode of entry. He’d picked the lock, I guess.”

  The front door swung open silently and the house loomed so quiet and empty in front of her that she was more than happy to let the huge dog bound ahead and sniff out the place. While he disappeared, she inspected the front lock like Greg had suggested, and noticed the scratch marks around the lock. It was immensely frightening, those small, telltale marks.

  Beowulf was trotting back into the living
room easily, his demeanor placid, so she went in and locked the door behind her, only afterwards realising how futile that really was. She had a competent guard dog with her, though, and she felt more or less at ease. Even so she didn’t want to waste time.

  She went straight to the phone and dialed long-distance to California, and soon she heard Barry’s voice, sounding as if he was speaking through fuzzy cotton. “Barry?” she asked.

  “Sara!” he exclaimed in understandable surprise. “Love, this is unexpected but rather sweet of you. I had an uneventful flight, nothing unusual.”

  She had to laugh. “That’s not why I’m calling, you muttonhead!”

  He grunted. “Figured as much, but you can’t blame a fellow for trying. What’s wrong? Spent all your money already?”

  “I wish it was that simple. Barry, I had a midnight intruder last night.”

  A brief silence. “Are you all right, babe? You weren’t—I mean, nothing occurred—oh hell!”

  “No, I wasn’t raped, if that was what you meant. I couldn’t sleep and when I heard someone in the living room, I crawled out my bedroom window and ran to a neighbour’s house. We came back later and things were ripped up in my bedroom, but nothing was stolen, and frankly that scares the hell out of me. Barry, I’m afraid it might have been someone who knows who I really am.”

  He asked her, “Are you coming back right away? Where are you now, at a motel?”

  “No, I’m back at the house getting a few things.”

  “You little idiot!” he exploded. She had to hold the phone receiver away from her ear slightly. “Of all the damn-fool things to do, that takes the icing right off the cake…”

  “Hold your spittle, Barry,” she protested, chuckling. “I’ve a very big and very black Doberman panting at my side at the moment, and I don’t plan on staying. What I’m calling about is to tell you that I’m staying a while longer in the area with a friend, and if you want to get in touch with me just write here. I’ll be over for mail every day. But Barry, use my real name, just in case someone decides to look at my mail. Also, I want you to do something else for me. Do you remember those crazy fan letters that I was getting around six months ago?”