Whisper of Revenge (A Cape Trouble Novel Book 4)

by Janice Kay Johnson

Surprised by what seemed a non sequitur, she finally nodded.

  “He sees the same thing I do. His skill isn’t developed enough for him to depict a smile that makes me feel as if I’ve warmed my hands over a beach fire. His interpretation was to draw a sun. What could be more beautiful than that?”

  Silenced, she was afraid she was gaping.

  He spoke with a quiet force that had her quivering like a tuning fork. “I just wish Ian and I were alone in seeing that you’re something better than model pretty.”

  “That’s…the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,” she said, voice ragged. And it was hard to top his telling her she didn’t need to diet.

  “Then your husband was even stupider than I already figured him to be.”

  A moment later, he was again the man she’d first met, his reserve so deep she’d believed it impenetrable.

  Respecting his need to retreat, she took a bite even though she didn’t really taste the herb-crusted halibut.

  “Ron Campbell has asked me out a couple times, starting…” She paused to think. “Last summer? Or maybe that spring.” The hardware store owner had stayed a regular at Sweet Ideas despite her refusal.

  After a telling moment, Elias said, “You really don’t need to tell me.”

  “Daniel hasn’t been in town any longer than I have. You might know things about some of these men he doesn’t.”

  The creases bracketing his mouth deepened in a way they didn’t when he smiled. “He’s police chief. He’ll know things I don’t.”

  “That’s true.”

  Finally he nodded. “I’ll go with you to meet with Colburn if you want.”

  Her hand hidden beneath the table curled until fingernails bit into her palm. “Please,” she said, barely above a whisper.

  “Then I will. For now, why don’t we talk about something else?”

  Eyes burning – but please not damp – she said again, “Please.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  He’d told her it was her smile that made her beautiful, but Elias knew that was a small part of what drew him. He’d hesitated as long as he had because he knew anything that happened between them would be more than sex and some good times.

  One thing he’d discovered was that seeing her hurting made a fist close around his own heart, constricting his blood flow and even breathing. He didn’t like it, couldn’t understand feeling as much as he did for a woman he didn’t know that well. But damned if he wanted to think of her alone when she was in pain or scared or just needing a shoulder to lean on, either.

  He’d meant to take this slowly. Carefully, testing the waters as he inched his way in. He had dumped that plan the minute he’d understood that she was being threatened. This powerful need to keep her safe, appearing out of nowhere, demolished any caution.

  He shouldn’t have taken her out to dinner tonight. Doing so was selfish. Watching, he hadn’t seen anyone he knew – but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been recognized. He’d gotten to be too well known, not just his art but his face. If he’d used his head, he should have held off on starting anything with Hannah. Offering his support wouldn’t have enraged her stalker the same way.

  When it came to his art, he had unlimited patience. He could wait for hours for exactly the right light. Go back to an oil painting again and again and again until he saw what was missing.

  When it came to Hannah, forget patience. When it came to Hannah…he didn’t recognize himself.

  Here was another example. After her plea for them to talk about anything besides the secret admirer, he had asked about her family, learning that she had only one sibling, a brother ten years older than her. The topic seemed safe enough.

  “Samuel and I are friendly,” she said, “but not close. My parents moved to a retirement community in Arizona. I don’t love it down there, they don’t like to travel, and of course I can’t leave the business for long. So…” She lifted one shoulder.

  “Have you told them about what’s going on?”

  “The secret admirer stuff?” She looked horrified. “Not a chance. They’d be upset, and what could they do?”

  As expected, she asked about his family. “I know your mother. She helped with the auction, you know. You look so much like her.”

  Keeping explanations on the surface came easily. “Her genes predominated,” he admitted. “Mom claims Dad didn’t mind.”

  “He died?”

  The zing of pain took him by surprise. “An embolism after minor surgery,” he said. “Just a freak thing. I was eight.”

  The compassion that was so much a part of her had her reaching for him even though she couldn’t know that the memory still had the power to throw him back to the boy he’d been. He let himself take her hand.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “That must have been really hard.”

  “I had trouble believing he’d died,” Elias heard himself say. “I never saw him dead. There was a funeral, but closed casket. I convinced myself that really he’d left because he didn’t want us anymore.”

  “You felt abandoned, and that way you could justify being mad at him.” Of course she understood; that’s who she was. He’d seen her listening to customers, touching them, always saying the right thing. Maybe he knew her better than he’d thought.

  “Yeah.” He’d never told anyone about this, not even his mother. Then, he’d kept his mouth shut and smoldered. Now – damn it, now something he didn’t understand drove him to keep talking. “It let me be mad at my mother, too. If she was lying to me, I had to be, right?”

  There was nothing but understanding and warmth in Hannah’s eyes. “You said he’d left ‘us’. Do you have siblings?”

  Here’s where he should have deflected, and yet Elias hesitated only momentarily. What did it matter if he told her one more dark piece of his past?

  “I meant Mom and me. But I did have an older sister.” He sounded hoarse. “Marika. She died of leukemia when I was four. Sometimes I think I remember her, but probably all I’m seeing is a picture. Mom has this pile of albums.” Plus handsomely framed photos of all of them – Elias, Dad, Marika – arranged on a white wall in her new condominium.

  “Your parents didn’t try to have another child?”

  “I asked once. My mother said it would have felt too much as if they were trying to replace Marika. As if they thought she could be replaced. So they chose not to.”

  “I understand. If I lost Ian…” Hannah shuddered.

  Elias squeezed her hand. “I shouldn’t have started this.”

  She focused on his face again, expression apologetic. “No, I’m the one who keeps feeling…” She frowned. “As if a ghost walked by or something.”

  He scanned the dining room again. Nobody seemed to be paying any attention to them. Probably she was just on edge, which was understandable, but humans had the same instincts of an animal in the wild that knew when something or someone dangerous was watching. Talking about a child’s death was probably what had set her off – but there was a lesser chance they’d been followed from her house, where he picked her up.

  “My fault,” Elias said. “Given what’s been going on with you, we should have kept this lighter.” Too bad he didn’t know how. There was a reason critics pointed to the darkness of his vision, the way his paintings had of making the viewer feel alone. Fun and games, he wasn’t.

  Which threw him back to thinking he was selfish when it came to Hannah, and not just because he should have waited to start something up with her. He needed her warmth, but what did he have to offer her? All he’d succeeded in doing so far was ramping up the danger stalking her.

  As an all-too familiar icy chill crept over him, he gently disengaged his hand from Hannah’s. “Do you want some dessert?”

  “Oh. No.” Her smile looked false. She’d read his change of mood. “I eat entirely too many desserts. Occupational hazard. And Ian isn’t used to me going out evenings, so I’d rather not be out late.”

  Elias only nodded, even th
ough it wasn’t yet eight o’clock. The sun was only just setting in an iridescent blaze across the horizon. Under other circumstances he might have suggested they go down to the beach to watch the spectacle. As it was, he signaled the waiter, paid, and ushered Hannah out, his hand on her lower back.

  They didn’t talk much on the drive back. He concentrated on his driving except when the view would suddenly open to the ocean far below and the orange glow skimming the curve of the earth. As always, he found himself trying to store that exact tint and reaching mentally for the paints in his pallet.

  As they crossed Mist River and reached Cape Trouble, he glanced at Hannah’s averted face and said abruptly, “I’m sorry. I don’t usually talk about my father or my sister.” Especially his sister, whose death, he had always known, had stolen the happiness from their home, made it a silent place where hugs and laughter were rare. Where he had become accustomed to feeling alone, even when he still had family.

  The man he was had been formed a long time ago.

  “There’s nothing to be sorry for.” Twilight hid her expression. “You let me understand you a little better. It felt…sort of unbalanced before. You’re not easy to get to know.”

  “I often go days at a time without talking to anyone,” he admitted.

  Her head turned his way. “Except that you’ve been stopping by to at least say, ‘My usual coffee’ and ‘Thank you’ four or five days a week.” Humor and something more poignant in her voice kept him from being bothered that he had been so obvious.

  Without thinking, he reached for her hand.

  Far too quickly, he was pulling into her driveway, where he had to let go of her hand to set the brake and turn off the engine. In the resulting complete silence, Elias didn’t move. Neither did Hannah.

  Finally he said, “Can I give your babysitter a lift home?”

  “No, Ian is next door with Edna. Um, Mrs. Stanavitch. Do you know her? She saves my life on a regular basis. Right now, she’s my puppy sitter.”

  “Name’s not familiar.” Her first name suggested an older woman. “I’ll walk you over.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “I do.” There were streetlights on this block and the neighbor’s porchlight cast a glow, but Hannah hadn’t thought to leave her own lights on. No way in hell he was letting her and Ian walk into a dark house alone. Something could even be waiting for her on the front porch.

  “Then…thank you,” she said quietly.

  Still he didn’t reach for his seatbelt release or his door handle. “Hannah?”

  She turned to him, her face shadowed. He shouldn’t do this, wouldn’t have in daylight, but the fall of night gave them some privacy. Now he did push the release for his seatbelt and then the one for hers. When he reached for her, she came to him with a small sound his brain chose to interpret as need.

  He did have the restraint to start with a gentle kiss instead of the deep, devouring one he craved. He tasted her, tugged on her lower lip, played with her mouth, while he cupped her jaw and stroked her cheek. Her skin was incredibly soft, the fine texture almost childlike.

  And then she invited him in. Her tongue touched his shyly before he broke, groaning. He slid his hand under her cascade of hair to grip the back of her head, adjusting the angle until their mouths found a perfect fit. His other hand landed somewhere around her waist, supple and more giving than he was used to with the kind of woman he’d chosen before. He couldn’t help flexing his fingers, reveling in Hannah’s very womanly body. He desperately wanted to slide that hand upward, feel the weight of her breast—

  Instead, he grabbed for his tattered self-control, barely catching hold. He took his time ending the kiss, finally groaning as he rested his forehead against Hannah’s.

  “That…wasn’t as patient as I intended,” he murmured.

  Somehow he felt her lips curve. “Good.”

  Surprised into a brief laugh, he was able to take his hand from her waist. The other hand defied him, his fingers sifting through her hair – thick, yes, but not coarse, rather like heavy satin. Even in the dark he thought of the colors he’d use to paint that hair. Cadmium orange as a base, of course, but also gold ochre, raw sienna, a hint of burnt sienna. The way the light caught it – that was the most challenging part. Reluctantly, he stroked her nape and finally withdrew his hand.

  That was when he realized she was gripping his shirt in two fists. He liked being held that way. He’d like her hands spread on his bare chest even better, but all else aside, this was too soon. He couldn’t ask.

  Her “Oh!” was more of a squeak. She let him go. “I’ve probably wadded your shirt like a dishrag. I’m so sorry!”

  “I’m not.”

  He heard her breathing, fast and shallow. “That was…really nice.”

  Nice was not his favorite word in this context, but he’d let it go this time. “I’d have used a stronger word,” he said, opening his door and aware she was doing the same.

  “Wait here,” he said.

  “What—?” She didn’t finish the question when he jogged up to her porch. There was enough light to see that no surprises had been left for her, not here.

  When he returned, he said, “Clear.”

  “Thank you. I hadn’t thought…”

  The hitch in her voice had him reaching for her hand again. She twined her fingers with his as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do. They walked that way across the lawn to the neighbor’s house, Elias conscious of their surroundings. He could hear traffic, but none near. The roar of the surf was a constant to people who lived here, but he was more aware of it because he couldn’t hear the ocean at his home, a couple miles up into the wooded coastal range.

  In this neighborhood of older homes that lacked two- and three-car garages, enough vehicles were parked in driveways and on the street, he had no way of knowing if someone sat in one, watching them. His muscles tightened at the possibility. Shit, he really shouldn’t have kissed her where anyone could see. Dinner out could be friendly; that kiss had been more. The darkness veiled them, but someone using high-powered binoculars would have seen the two figures in his Land Rover merge into one.

  Hannah gave his hand a squeeze and let him go, mounting the steps ahead of him. Within seconds of her pressing the bell, the door opened, Ian already talking excitedly. A puppy burst out, yapping and spinning around their ankles.

  “We watched this show about whales. Mostly about the ones we’ve got, hunchback—”

  Hannah chuckled. “Humpback. Which sounds sort of the same, doesn’t it?” She looked down. “Jack-Jack, calm down. We’re going home.”

  Ian kept talking even as Hannah introduced Elias to the tiny, white-haired lady with a delicately crumpled face, who nodded.

  “I’ve seen you painting.”

  Surprised, he said, “I don’t remembering seeing you.”

  “You concentrate. I doubt you notice anyone walking on the beach.”

  He didn’t, not unless they created an interesting composition. Someone as old as she must be, though, he thought would have caught his eye.

  “Not that I do much beach walking anymore.” Her sadness was a whiff, that’s all. This was a woman, he thought, who had lived a good life and knew it. “I walk my daily mile on a firmer surface now.”

  Daily mile? She had to be closing in on eighty, if the milestone wasn’t already in her rearview mirror.

  “Do you still set up your easel near the ocean?”

  “Often,” he said.

  “I thought so.” She wished Ian a goodnight, and told Jack-Jack she would see him in the morning.

  Bemused when Ian grabbed his hand as readily as his mother had, Elias ushered Hannah and Ian off the porch.

  “A mile a day?” he said.

  Her rich chuckle felt like a touch. “Edna was sixty-seven when her husband died. She said by gum she wasn’t going to waste what was left of her life, so she joined the Peace Corps and spent two years in West Africa. She is not your usu
al old lady.”

  “What’s a piece…core?” Ian asked, tugging at her hand.

  As he walked the two home, Elias listened to her attempt to explain. Once at her front door, he waited until she’d turned lights on and at least glanced around inside.

  Then he wished them goodnight and returned to his Land Rover, taking a last look at the golden squares of windows and having the odd wish he’d been able to stay, even if the kid never did stop talking and the spotted puppy was as wound up as a furious ocean eddy.

  And finally, he let his gaze rove from the deeper shadows between houses to the parked vehicles with dark windows. The unease he felt was visceral, probably a product of his imagination. Even so, he knew he’d made a mistake tonight. He’d waved a red cape at an already angry bull.

  *****

  The cramped conference room in the police station didn’t offer a lot more space than Daniel’s office, but at least his desk didn’t form a psychological barricade. He saw with interest that Burton chose to sit next to Hannah rather than across the table from her. She’d told Daniel she was bringing Elias because he could provide the perspective of a life-long resident of Cape Trouble, but there was clearly another component to the artist’s presence. Daniel didn’t know whether to be pleased or not that he’d guessed right. He couldn’t forget what Abbot had said: Elias Burton…not sure that’s smart. Hannah’s too nice a lady for him.

  A clever man could scare a woman into turning to him.

  Something he had to keep in the back of his mind.

  Taking his own seat directly across from the two, he said, “It’s still possible we’re overreacting, you know.”

  “After this guy slit Elias’s tires?” Hannah fired back at him.

  He bent his head in acknowledgement. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m more than happy to start looking into the backgrounds of anyone who has occurred to you as a possibility. I can do it quietly.”

  “From what Hannah tells me, the list is going to be longer than you think,” Elias said, sounding less than happy about it.

  Daniel understood why Burton was going to hate hearing the roll call of men who were as attracted to Hannah Moss as he was.