One Secret Too Many

by Vanessa Grant

  VANESSA GRANT

  ______________________

  one secret too many

  For Angela Marie

  Copyright © 1990 by Vanessa Grant. Ali rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system. is forbidden without the permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada MB 3K9.

  Ali the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure Invention.

  ® are Trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries.

  Chapter One

  SHE was alone, looking out over glassy black water, streaks of coloured light stretching from tall buildings on the shore of English Bay.

  In the darkness, her brown shoulder-length hair could have been black; but as she moved there was no mistaking the soft fineness of it caressing her shoulders. She was a little taller than average, walking the sandy beach slowly, feeling a seductive fullness in the silence. It was strange to her, this solitude. No one in the world knew where she was. No one would miss her if she stayed on the beach all night.

  When the man appeared at the top of the hill, she felt on sense of intrusion. He walked the other way, claiming his own section of the waterfront, away from hers. She remained the only occupant of her world. At home she had her work cut out to steal a few solitary moments from each day, to slip up into her bedroom and write her stories in secret. Yet here in the city, this weekend, she had two whole days all to herself.

  With the exception of today’s frighteningly brief meeting with the agent, she might as well have journeyed the five hundred miles to spend her time alone. She pushed away memories of the meeting and her crazy, disastrous decision, and concentrated on the lights of the city.

  What about the man? What made him pause at the water’s edge and stare out? Somewhere near by an ambulance screamed. The man jerked as if the sound had penetrated to his core. He seemed to belong here in the eerie darkness, standing between the ocean and the buildings that held a million people. What did he think as he looked over her way? Did he see her at all?

  Her mother would have apoplexy if she could see Mary out alone in the dark, standing on a lonely beach in the midst of the wicked city. But her mother would never know, would always believe that Mary had spent the weekend with a girlfriend. Mary was practised at keeping secrets. She had done it all her life, in self-defence. The secrets were getting bigger now, harder to keep.

  The lights beckoned, whispering that the city was filled with people who took chances every day, who lived lives of adventure and change. ‘Not me,’ she whispered, ‘but I bet he does.’ There wasn’t much you could tell from the distant form of the man against the sky, so it had to be her fancy, the overactive imagination that had made life difficult from her youngest days.

  A sailboat at anchor rose up against the night sky, tall masts reaching into the unknown. It might have been a. pirate ship ready to raise sail and slip away.

  There he was, standing with legs astride, a silhouette against the sky. For a long, still moment they stared at each other. Then he moved, and she felt a sick, hysterical conviction that he was all the things she had been warned about. A madman. A pervert. Danger in the night, swooping down on innocent girls. Heaven knew she was innocent.

  She should run, get to the lights and the people, A strange man. A lonely beach. He walked like a strong man. He would have hard, bulging muscles. He was a man who might walk out of the bush, or a wild man who would be at home living in the sparse, cold tundra.

  Coward! She, was afraid of bears, afraid of strange men. Afraid of life. Was there a magnet bringing him closer, holding him silent? What held her so still? Why this crazy, excited feeling that she was on the edge of a delicious adventure? Tomorrow she might be a cold statistic, a corpse discovered by early morning strollers.

  He moved steadily until he was only a hand’s reach away. She could see the deep, hard lines of his face in the moonlight. Unruly dark hair with a will of its own. He hooked his thumbs into his belt and seemed to relax. to wait for her to talk first.

  ‘Where did you get the scar?’ Was that her voice?

  He touched the jagged mark high up on his left cheekbone. ‘An accident in the bush.’ His voice was deep and low, reassuring. ‘I got in the way of a falling tree.’

  ‘I thought maybe it was a street fight.’ Her dark hair swung against her throat as she watched him touch the scar again, fleetingly. What would those fingers feel like against the soft, heated flush of her cheek?

  He said, ‘I hate to disillusion you, but I looked a bit like a gangster before the tree fell on me.’

  A dangerous man. Even the street gangs would walk warily around him. She must be moonstruck, talking to him on a Vancouver beach. Alone. Anyone from the parish would be more than happy to tell her that she was on the sure path to ruin. She pushed her hair back with one hand, saw his eyes following her motion, giving it a sensuous significance.

  He smiled and his face changed, the deep serious lines shifting to warmth and humour. ‘Who are you? A spirit of the sands?’ His hand reached towards her hair, but did not touch it. She drew back, yet, oddly, she was not afraid. His voice was easy, not threatening. ‘It’s not every night that I find a woman on the beach—and never one like you, with big brown eyes a man could drown in.’

  It was too dark to see the colour of his eyes, but she couldn’t seem to stop staring at him, watching him, wondering...

  He said softly, ‘I know. You’re a beautiful wench escaped from the wicked captain of a pirate ship—’ His voice faded abruptly and she had the strangest feeling that a faint flush was beginning to flow over his face.

  ‘That’s. it,’ she agreed quickly, bathed in the playful fantasy he had created, ‘See? Out there? That’s the ship of the villainous pirate. He stole me from the village where I was a young virgin, carrying me off into the night, away from my family.’ Virgin. The word seemed to echo over the sands. She stepped back again, farther, her hands spread nervously as a barrier.

  He murmured, ‘Hard to blame him,’ but his voice told her there was no threat here.

  ‘I’ve escaped only this night. I swam through the cold waters.’ Magic. Fantasy magic. She had never shared a fantasy before. ‘I fought the treacherous current to reach this shore.’ She waved away the houses on streets behind them, caused to vanish all the lights, concrete and asphalt. ‘I seek sanctuary!’ she declared dramatically.

  She warmed to the smile that had started to play around his firm lips. ‘Do you have a name?’ She was amazed at the unwilling fascination in his voice.

  ‘My name?’ No one would believe that this was Mary Houseman. Tonight she must be another woman—something like The Three Faces of Eve. ‘Call me Alex.’ A girl named Alex wouldn’t be bothered by talking to a strange man on a lonely beach.

  Lights from a car on a nearby road crawled across the sand towards them. He shifted slightly to shelter her. ‘I’m Sam—’

  ‘No! I— Just Alex and Sam. That way we’ll both be free to be...’ The sailing ship was moving, slipping away through the darkness. Just a few minutes of crazy fun, a half-hour of harmless madness. She whispered, ‘Shadows passing in the night.’

  His whisper joined hers. ‘All night would be nice.’

  For a moment she almost wished sh
e were the kind of woman who could take him up on that invitation. Until now she had never understood how a woman could meet a strange man and, in the space of a few moments or hours, be willing to walk with him into a dark room with a bed. She said desperately, ‘I don’t really belong here, and I’m just—I think I’m kind of crazy this weekend. Not really myself.’ He didn’t say anything. She said, ‘I’ve never talked to a strange man in my life before.’

  ‘Am I that strange?’

  What was it about him? ‘What colour are your eyes?’ It must be Alex asking the question. For a moment she thought he was going to touch her lips with gentle callused fingers. Alex was a creature of fiction. For a non-existent lady, she was certainly getting out of hand. She gulped. ‘I—I should go back.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  That was all. Just one word. She bit her lip. ‘I—I think you’re a bit out of my league.’

  A smile covered her glimpse of something dark in his face and he offered his hand to her. ‘Then we’ll play in your league, shall we?’ She could feel the hard callus of his hand-rough against her soft flesh. He was walking and somehow she was keeping pace, but stumbling in the sand, her bare feet reminding her that she had slipped her tights into her bag earlier. She gasped, ‘Too fast! I’m in bare feet! Let me put my shoes on.’

  He stopped and she got her hand back, bent over her shoes as he asked, ‘What do you want to do? Something magic? Fantastic?’ Somewhere there must be a wind blowing. The air was still around them, but the water had begun to surge in along the sand in slow whispers.

  ‘Come on,’ he urged gently. ‘Tell me.’

  She had never realised that there was such a collection of wild young desires boiling up inside her, never known she could be uninhibited enough to say to a stranger, ‘I want all the things that are crazy and—I want to go to the zoo in the middle of the night and—I’m hungry. I’d like to eat something delicious and exotic in some insane place-the beach or the park. And go dancing somewhere my family wouldn’t approve of. Laugh out loud even if people are staring, and dance fast and wild. Go for a walk across the bridge at three in the morning.’

  ‘You really are running away.’ She was breathless, her heart pumping blood wildly through her veins. ‘I’m supposed to be here for a weekend, visiting a college friend, having long lunches and going to the theatre.’

  ‘Maybe even a trip to the museum?’ he suggested. ‘I have a feeling that your college friend might be the museum type.’

  ‘Don’t you think museums are interesting?’ She wondered what he thought about anything. What did he think about her?

  ‘They have their place, but not for a sea waif who’s running away. We’ll see what we can do about your list.’ He made her desires seem reasonable. ‘First the food, I think. Don’t you?’ She followed his lead, let his fingers hold hers, her shoes slipping in the sand.

  She found herself asking, ‘Sam, what are you running away from?’

  ‘What makes you think I’m running?’

  Instinct. She thought she was right. She could see him quite well in the lights from the street now. She didn’t know where they were going, but men didn’t come any tougher or harder than this one. She had no right to be walking with him, hands tangled together as if she was willing to let the night take its course.

  He said, ‘I don’t do a lot of running. And you’re breaking our rules. Sam and Alex. Anonymous strangers.’ He stopped at a car, low and white and powerful. She wouldn’t have been surprised right then if he had broken into it and hot-wired it, but he had keys and he held the door for her. ‘Up to you,’ he said wryly, leaving her by the open door, walking around and letting himself into the driver’s seat.

  Mary would have run.

  Alex sank down on the cool leather upholstery and closed the door. He started the engine. It was muted and powerful. She looked out of the window. On the pavement a couple passed by arm in arm, laughing. Beside her, Sam seemed suddenly a hard man, dangerous. He said, ‘You’re quite right. I’m not the kind of man your mother would approve of.’

  ‘What do you know about my mother?’

  ‘Just a feeling.’ She touched the leather upholstery and he grinned. ‘The place I live in matches the jeans, not the car.’ Then his voice was deep and sombre. ‘I won’t cause you any harm, Alex.’

  She laughed then, joy surging up and overcoming her. ‘Oh, I wish Emily Derringer could see this! She’d be so shocked! Seeing me getting picked up by a—’ A wild man, dangerous, sexy. She blinked away Emily, found her fingers curling into Sam’s when he reached across to take her hand.

  He took her to an Italian restaurant where it didn’t matter that his jeans were patched while her suit was silky and elegant. The air around them seemed to ring with soft, happy laughter. She knew she couldn’t stop smiling. Maybe she looked silly, sitting there with a big grin on her face, but he wasn’t laughing at her, and this had to be the most wonderful evening of pure escapist fun she had ever had.

  ‘What now?’ he asked when the dinner was done.

  ‘Everything,’ she said simply. She held out her empty glass and he poured another measure of the light, bubbly wine into it. Her heart thundered at the look in his eyes and she said quickly, ‘Dancing. Music. Walking along the beach... Magic. I don’t know, Sam. You choose.’ Her heart wouldn’t stop crashing against her ribcage. He might take any sort of invitation from those words.

  He had a glass of beer in one hand. He liked beer more than wine, a curious detail of information about a man with no last name. His free hand reached across to touch the softness of her cheek lightly. Then he had her hand, was leading her to a small half-lit dance floor where the quiet music flowed over them. As his arms settled around her, his hands on her back, she wondered what it would feel like to have his hands touch the parts of her body that no one touched. To have his eyes see, his hard maleness possess. . .

  Oh, lord! He could see every detail of what she was thinking. His arms tightened as she moved back from him. Her hands were pressed against his upper chest, feeling the hardness all through him as he drew her closer. This was crazy, insane! Dangerous!

  She should get out of here. Get a taxi and get back to her hotel. Go into that room and lock the door and shiver and hug her body and try to remember that it was a mercy she had escaped—

  ‘What’s wrong?’ His voice broke harshly through her wild thoughts. She was stiff in his arms, jerking instead of moving to the music.

  Nothing could happen here. There were other couples—not many, but enough. There was the waiter leaning against a doorway, watching them dance, looking a little bored with a slow evening. Her arms slipped up around his shoulders, his neck, and he didn’t ask her again what was the matter. He just brought her closer with hard, warm hands.

  She should remember this feeling. She could use this in her next book, the lazy warmth that was surging through her. The way her breasts were swelling. The way every part of her seemed to be crying out to be closer, to touch, to feel. In a book, her heroine could be rash and reckless, could let the desires take control and—

  He was watching, seeing the images flood wildly across her mind, the hot flush of abandon coursing through her body. She licked dry lips, a nervous gesture that transformed itself into a sensuous invitation as his eyes watched.

  She turned her head, let her face bury in the hard security of his shoulder. His voice was very low, husky with desire. ‘I don’t think I’m ever likely to forget tonight.’ Then his arms tightened, his fingers digging into the flesh of her back, telling her without words what it was that he wanted. He was strong, a tough man who would win any battles he chose to fight. In his eyes were the scars of battles he didn’t talk about.

  Her fingers reached up to touch his cheek. ‘Tell me about the tree that fell.’ She frowned, said, ‘Do you mind my asking?’

  She liked the way his grin was a little lopsided. ‘I don’t mind telling you.’ He turned to avoid another couple, drew her back against his br
oad chest. ‘I was working as a faller on the Queen Charlotte Islands. Logging. About ten years ago. Ancient history for you.’

  ‘I’m not that young.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’ How old was he? Thirty-five? Forty? He said wryly, ‘I don’t suppose I was as good a logger as I might have been. Not careful enough, anyway.’

  He described the ancient forests of the southern Queen Charlottes, the scattering of Haida Indians who had been demonstrating against logging on the island. ‘One of the Haidas—Jake was an artist from Vancouver on holidays, visiting his mother’s family and embroiled in the local politics. He and I had been enjoying arguing off and on for about three days, each of us on opposite sides of the native picket-lines.’ She felt him shrug, found herself relaxing closer against his chest. ‘It was a pretty informal protest. The chief and the head of the logging operation were on first-name terms, and quite a few of the fallers were Haidas, too. Jake spent a lot of time sketching.’

  She couldn’t see his face, but his voice sounded very casual, as if he were describing something he had read in the newspaper. ‘I must have made the cut wrong. When the tree started to go, I realised that I wasn’t clear at all. I couldn’t see where Jake and the other fellow were. I remember shouting to them, then I ran, but— not fast enough or far enough.’

  She could feel the tension in his muscles, then he shrugged it away and his hands gentled against her back. ‘I don’t remember the rest. Jake apparently got a tourniquet on my leg. I guess it was bleeding pretty bad. When I woke up, I was in hospital in Vancouver.’ His hands moved restlessly over the silk of her dress.

  ‘That’s the story,’ he said, and she had the feeling that it was only the beginning, but knew he was not going to tell the rest.

  Then there were no more words, only the music and the dancing, the man and the wild stirrings that were Alex and not Mary. Time flowed into the night, and she had lost the moments, the hours, when he whispered against her hair, ‘Let’s get out of here. ‘Let’s go somewhere we can be alone.’