Dark Desires

by JoAnn Ross

  She smiled. "Nothing that paranormal. I simply thought about how it felt to be betrayed by the person you thought you knew. And loved."

  They exchanged a long look. "I think," Blake said finally, "that this is going to be a very interesting collaboration."

  Her heart skipped a beat. "Are you saying I've got the job?"

  "If you want it."

  Savannah resisted the urge to fling her arms around his neck. Instead she gave him a dazzling smile. "You've got yourself a musician."

  It was what he'd wanted from the beginning. But now that he had Savannah Starr, Blake found himself wondering what the hell he was going to do with her.

  Dinner was a robust fisherman's stew, a Western Caesar salad that exchanged crumbly blue cheese for the anchovies, and crunchy sourdough bread. Savannah was relieved when Blake admitted that he'd bought the bread from a San Francisco bakery. His skill in the kitchen, compared to her own scant culinary talents, was vaguely intimidating. It would have been too much to discover that he'd kneaded the bread dough with those strong, capable hands.

  After dinner, they went upstairs to the tower room. Going over to the stone fireplace, Blake lit the fire he'd set that morning. The kindling caught and a warm, crackling glow began to dispel the night chill in the air. It was raining again; a shimmering curtain of water washed down the windowpanes. Thick fog gradually obscured the sliver of silver moon.

  A not-uncomfortable silence settled over them as they sat on the leather sofa, both seeming content to stare into the flickering orange-and-blue flames as they listened to the steady tap, tap, tap of rain against the glass. Cujo, who'd been brought upstairs from the sun-room, remained silent as he sat on his perch and groomed his gleaming black feathers. The cat, not waiting for an invitation, climbed into Savannah's lap. It was Blake who finally broke the silence.

  "I suppose, if we're going to work together, we need to talk about it," he said. "About Pamela's accident. And all those rumors that her brush with death wasn't accidental, that I'd arranged for the brakes to fail on her car after I'd found her with a lover."

  It wasn't his first choice. Blake was surprised to realize that what he really wanted was to simply sit here with her and enjoy the fire and talk about anything that wasn't important. But although he'd told himself that he didn't give a damn whether people believed the stories about him trying to kill his ex-wife, it was suddenly very important that Savannah knew the truth.

  Savannah had her own reasons for fearing an obsessively jealous man. But she couldn't believe Blake would be capable of such a heinous crime, and she told him so.

  "There was a time when I wished her dead," Blake revealed quietly. He wasn't looking at Savannah. Instead he was staring at the flames. From the grim line of his jaw, Savannah guessed that he was recalling a particularly unpleasant moment in his ill-fated marriage. "But I never would have done anything about it."

  "I know."

  He turned toward her. "You sound very sure of that."

  It was Savannah's turn to gaze into the fire. As she absently stroked the ebony fur beneath her fingertips, the cat's purr sounded like a small motor in the stillness of the room.

  "I've had firsthand experience with a murderous man," she reminded him in a voice that was little more than a whisper. "And I know that you're nothing like Jerry Larsen."

  Although he was admittedly curious about what kind of man could possibly bring himself to harm any woman, let alone this one, Blake didn't want to pry. After demanding privacy himself, it would be the height of hypocrisy to try to delve into Savannah's painful past.

  "You don't have to talk about it," he said.

  "It's all right." She didn't take her eyes from the hypnotic flames. "After what you told me about your wife, it seems only fair that I share something equally personal."

  She took a deep breath, trying to decide where to start. How could she explain that even having grown up in Hollywood, where children of stars were often exposed at an early age to the harsh realities of life, she'd been naive in ways Blake Winters could never understand.

  "Jerry was a struggling impressionist and would-be actor when I met him at a comedy club," she said slowly. Her voice was distant, as if she were lost in her own private reverie. Or nightmare.

  "Mutual friends introduced him, and after his show we went out for coffee. He was funny and he made me laugh. Which probably wouldn't have been enough to base a relationship on if my mother hadn't recently committed suicide." She took another deeper, more painfully ragged breath. "I felt so alone."

  Blake realized how difficult this was for her. After all, he reminded himself, he'd been able to exorcise his pain by making his film. Savannah, it seemed, was still carrying much of hers inside.

  His desire to make love to Savannah warred with a strong, unbidden desire to put his arm around her and offer solace. In the end, he did neither.

  "I've got the picture. You don't have to say any more." But he didn't have the entire picture. And even as he heard himself saying otherwise, Blake realized, with some discomfort, that he wanted to know all about Savannah's relationship with the man who had been sent to prison for nearly killing her.

  She dragged her eyes from the flames and met his sympathetic gaze. "I think I do," she whispered. She forced a smile that failed. "During all those reconstructive operations, my doctor tried to talk me into seeing a therapist. Apparently it's standard procedure for people who've suffered disfiguring injuries."

  "You're hardly disfigured," Blake pointed out. "But I can appreciate the concept. It must be difficult to look in the mirror and see a stranger looking back at you."

  "Unbearably difficult," she admitted. "Which is why I refused to look in the mirror for months."

  "Months?" He found it difficult to believe. Surely human curiosity would overwhelm any fear a person might be harboring.

  "Months," Savannah repeated. "But even after I was able to face my physical scars, I couldn't quite get up the courage to face my emotional ones. So I canceled my appointment with the psychologist." She returned her gaze to the fire.

  Tenderness invaded Blake, making him cautious. He felt as if he'd been handed a grenade whose pin had been pulled. Although the way she'd gotten under his skin was irritating the hell out of him, the one thing he didn't want to do was to say or do anything that would cause Savannah additional pain. Because even as he'd fought like hell against feeling anything for her, he was slowly beginning to realize that he just might be fighting a losing battle.

  Savannah was relieved when Blake remained silent, allowing her to collect her thoughts and muster up her nerve. A log collapsed, sending a brilliant flare of sparks into the air. Unable to sit still, she pushed the cat off her lap, rose to her feet, walked over to the fireplace and began jabbing restlessly at the fragrant cedar logs with the poker.

  "In the beginning, Jerry was amazingly attentive. It was as if he'd put me on top of a high pedestal and, to tell the truth, for a time I rather enjoyed the view."

  Her lips drew into a faint sad smile that failed to touch her eyes. "My parents weren't around much when I was growing up. I spent most of my time with housekeepers, or away at school. Jerry was the first person, other than Justin, who treated me as if I were someone special."

  "I've been there," Blake said grimly.

  Savannah turned and looked directly at Blake. His face was as inscrutable as ever, but she thought she could see something in his eyes. Empathy? Sympathy? Or worse yet, pity? Unwilling to consider that unpalatable thought, she continued her story.

  "After we started dating, Jerry began to distance me from my friends. It was a gradual thing. He kept telling me that he loved me so much that he couldn't bear to share me with anyone."

  Her fingers curved around the poker in a death grip; her knuckles were white. "Looking back, I realize that I should have realized what was happening, but at the time, it seemed so wonderful—being the most important thing in his life."

  What she didn't say was that after
a lifetime of careless attention from her famous parents, Jerry's possessiveness had seemed the answer to all her youthful prayers. Eventually, she realized that Jerry was not at all the man she'd thought him to be. The warm, loving, attentive Jerry was merely a fantasy, born of her lonely need.

  Blake, remembering how he'd fallen for Pamela's clever pretense, could certainly identify with that. "Did you love him?" he heard himself ask.

  "I thought I did," Savannah said on a soft sigh. "In the beginning. Now I realize I was only in love with the idea of being in love." She combed her hand through her hair in an unconscious gesture that made it settle around her face in an ebony cloud.

  "But then things changed. After I let Jerry move into my house, it was as if he'd lost interest. He started disappearing for days at a time. And when he'd return, there would be signs of another woman. His sweater would carry a scent I'd never worn, there'd be lipstick a color other than mine on his shirt collar, little slips of papers with phone numbers written on them began appearing on the bureau."

  "Why did you put up with all that?" Blake asked. "Why did you stay?"

  "I don't know." Savannah rubbed her ice-cold arms and tried to come up with the answer that had successfully evaded her for months. "If anyone had told me that I'd become so dependent on anyone—especially a man who treated me horribly—I would have laughed. No," she decided with a burst of heated emotion, "I would have been furious. But for some reason I still can't comprehend, once I found myself in that situation, I couldn't see things clearly."

  She drew in a deep, ragged breath. "I realize now that I should have been furious, but in the beginning, all I could do was wonder what I'd done wrong to cause Jerry to have those affairs."

  "I know the feeling," Blake said. "Very well."

  For a fleeting moment his mask fell, and Savannah knew that he understood.

  "Even when his behavior got worse, I didn't leave. Up here I knew I was behaving like an idiot—" she touched a shaky finger to her temple "—but I couldn't make myself leave. Even today, it makes no sense."

  Lingering feelings of self-contempt intensified the pounding behind her eyes. "Gradually, I began to suspect that he was only with me to further his own career. I'd already opened a lot of doors for him— Letterman, The Tonight Show. Although Justin never liked Jerry, he agreed to pull some strings and get him included in an HBO special on rising young comics."

  "I saw that show," Blake remembered. "The guy's not half bad."

  "He's very talented," Savannah agreed. "He was also in a hurry to reach the top. Anyway, he was up for a part in a made-for-television movie—it was a pilot for a planned series—when he leaked the news to the press that he and I were getting married. Fortunately, one of the few friends I had left had been signed to direct the film. She told me that Jerry had promised the network that if they gave him the part, I'd agree to co-star."

  "Which would guarantee ratings."

  "Exactly. He knew that I was scheduled to do a film of my own at the same time, but I suppose he figured that I'd be willing to sacrifice my own career for his. After all, I'd given him control over far more personal aspects of my life."

  She frowned and poked at the log again, causing another shower of sparks. "But what was even worse, he told the network executives that I'd also agreed to do the series. For scale. So long as he was cast in the leading role. When I asked him about it, he didn't even bother to lie."

  "When I told him to get out, he hit me. Hard, right in here, with his fist." She pressed her hand against her stomach. "No one had ever hit me before and I was amazed at how much it hurt. I tried to get away, but he kept hitting me, again and again, holding me up so I couldn't fall. All the time he kept telling me the only reason he was with me—the only reason anyone would stay with me—was because of what I could do for his career."

  "Why the hell didn't you call the police after he assaulted you?"

  "There'd already been so much publicity about my mother's suicide, I couldn't face the prospect of my personal problems being spread all over the tabloids. I hated the idea of people all over the world knowing the most painful aspects of my private life."

  "And," she admitted haltingly, "I was so ashamed. All I wanted was to be free of Jerry, to get my life back on track."

  Blake, who'd never been the slightest bit interested in Hollywood gossip, was surprised at how clearly he recalled that day. He'd been watching the evening news when, at a commercial break, a promo for Entertainment Tonight had come on. Savannah Starr's walking out on the man who'd been accused by many Hollywood insiders of manipulating her career for his own gain, was scheduled to be that night's Inside Story. Knowing firsthand how it felt to be used by someone trying to further a career, Blake had felt a certain empathy for Savannah.

  "That's when you called the affair off."

  "Yes." She shook her head at the memory of what followed. "But instead of freeing myself, all I succeeded in doing was turning Jerry's jealousy into an obsession."

  Her bottom lip trembled, her complexion was dead white, her eyes wide and dark. Her soft voice was thready with remembered horror. "He kept telephoning, screaming obscenities at me. I changed unlisted phone numbers three times, which would earn me a few days' peace. But every time, he somehow managed to learn the new number and the calls began again." She was staring off into the distance, deep in her own painful memories.

  "I assume you went to the police."

  She dug her nails into her palms. Even now, after all these months, just talking about her accident could cause fear to bubble in her veins.

  "Of course," she managed through lips that had gone unbearably dry. "And a very nice detective explained that although it was unfortunate, there wasn't much they could do until Jerry actually tried to hurt me."

  The story was eerily familiar to Blake. He'd written a similar plotline for Police Beat. The episode revolving around an insanely jealous banker who brutally murdered his estranged wife had earned Blake an Emmy.

  Savannah touched the scar bisecting her cheek distractedly. When Blake saw her hand tremble, he experienced a sudden urge to curse the man who caused her such agony. But, not wanting to interrupt, he held his tongue.

  "After he started spending the night in his car outside my house, I went to court and got a restraining order."

  "Which doesn't do a damn thing."

  "It didn't in my case," Savannah agreed grimly.

  She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and pressed the heels of her hands against them, as if to block out the still-vivid images that had haunted her nightly when she first left the hospital. Savannah considered the fact that she now only had the nightmares once or twice a week to be an improvement.

  "One of the nurses told me that I was still holding tine paper when the ambulance brought me to the hospital."

  Rage came swiftly, steamrolling over sympathy. A burst of primal passion he hadn't felt since his days in the oil patch made Blake want to kill the bastard who'd done such a job, both physically and emotionally, on Savannah.

  She sighed. A long, weary sigh fraught with regret. "It was about nine o'clock. I'd returned home after having dinner with Cody Shannon, the actor who'd costarred with me in Seduced."

  "The film had finished shooting that day and we'd gone out to celebrate after the wrap party, which was probably a mistake since the fan magazines were reporting that we'd had a hot affair during the filming. They even got their hands on a piece of film of our lovemaking scene and passed the photos off as real. But our relationship really was strictly platonic. If nothing else, Cody was happily married, and I'd never, in a million years, get involved with a married man."

  Blake lifted his hands. "Hey, you don't have to convince me of anything, Savannah. Whether or not you were romantically involved with the guy isn't any of my business. And it damn sure wasn't any of Larsen's."

  "It shouldn't have been," she agreed raggedly. "But unfortunately Jerry wasn't the kind of man to let go easily. He'd broken into my house and
was waiting for me. I asked him to leave, he refused. We exchanged words, the argument escalated. His accusations grew more and more bizarre."

  She began to tremble, despite the warmth of the fire. "Finally, when I tried to call the police, he shoved me. His strength surprised me. It was almost inhuman, like something from a horror movie…"

  Fighting for control, Savannah clutched her hands together until her fingers ached. She shuddered as Technicolor images flashed through her mind like scenes from the late, late show: Jerry chasing her down the hall, Jerry dragging her back to the living room, cursing her, shaking her, hitting her. His eyes had been filled with violence, and his cruel words chosen to hurt. She flinched as she remembered the sound of his fist connecting with her cheekbone and felt the shattering pain.

  "There's this wall along the front of my beach house. It's like these windows—floor-to-ceiling glass—to take advantage of the view. I remember heading toward it."

  Despite the warmth of the fire, Savannah's blood had turned to ice. Her trembling increased, her eyes grew wide and dark. She could see Jerry's handsome face, now ugly and twisted with fury, she could smell the acrid odor of male sweat, taste her own blood, feel his fingers—as strong as steel—digging painfully into her shoulders. She could hear the sound of her scream.

  "That's the last thing I remember until I woke up in the hospital the next morning."

  "That's probably a good thing," Blake said. The memory of diving headfirst through a wall of glass would have to be horrific. Growing up on the rough side of life, Blake had never owned a pair of rose-colored glasses. He knew firsthand how ugly life could be. How violent. And how cruel. Very little shocked him. But the thought of Savannah, lying on the sand, alone and frail and broken, made him angry. More than angry. It made him furious.

  She thought back to the panic she'd felt when she woke up in the hospital unable to feel her arms or her legs. There'd been only a dull, distant pain and the deep numbing sensation created by the painkillers and sedatives pumping through her bloodstream.