Reckless

by Amanda Carpenter

  “I have never made demands on you,” he said, from between clenched teeth. His hands were in fists.

  “Yes, and for some reason that’s worse than anything!” she burst out, oddly near to tears. “You kidnap me, bring me here, and you watch and wait. Always waiting, and for what? You refuse to tell me about your past. You take care of me and refuse to let me lift a finger. You—you’re—this is driving me crazy!”

  He stood slowly and she watched him rise up. His face was rock-granite hard, the bones compressed, as if he were exercising an immense control over extreme emotion. “All right,” he said flatly. “You want answers, you’ll get answers. You just couldn’t leave it, could you? You just couldn’t accept what I was trying to offer you for a time. I have never been married, nor in the past have I wanted to be married. I have been what I wished, and where I wished, and I’ve travelled whenever I liked. I have done a great many things, some of which I am proud of, others that I am not so proud of. One night I met you. It was a sultry evening, hot and humid, and you were like a bright, flickering flame, vivid and flashing. I wanted you and I had you.”

  A week earlier she might have flinched at the bald words. Now she only stared back at him shaken, but meeting his eyes. There was something molten there, at the back of his hard front. She began to wonder what she had stirred up by her questions and suddenly wasn’t sure if she wanted to know.

  Scott leaned forward on the table and his lips cocked mockingly as he interpreted the expressions flitting across her face. He looked down unblinkingly, his eyes compelling, forcing her to face him. “You’re a coward, Les,” he said softly. She felt slapped. “Underneath that mask of worldly experience, you just can’t face it. Tell me. Let me hear the words, that’s all it takes. Tell me to shut up and I’ll shut up.”

  She stood so fast her chair crashed to the floor, and neither even noticed. She was now trembling so much she could barely support herself on her legs. “I am no coward!” she screamed out, in a rage, and hurt. “I am not a coward! How can you say that to me?”

  “It’s about time somebody said it to you!” he shouted back. “Because that’s what you are and have been ever since your husband died!”

  The resounding echo of her slap bounded around the kitchen, confined between the walls, and she stared at the reddening mark on his cheek, utterly appalled at herself. His expression never changed. He hadn’t even flinched. “Do it again, if it makes you feel good,” he told her pleasantly. His eyes glittered, and the molten rage was to the fore. “But next time, Les, I slap back.”

  Now she was frightened, and she whispered, “Oh, I’m sorry.” But again his expression never changed, and she turned to hurry out of the kitchen, hands over her mouth. She was jerked around to face a very angry man. “Let me go!” she cried out, trying to twist out of his hands.

  He threw her into the armchair and she cried out again as she slammed into the cushions. He pinned her in the seat by putting his two hands on either arm rest, and he leaned over her, too close and overwhelmingly large. She shrank away, eyes twin huge pools in a white face.

  “I’ve changed my mind now. You’re going to have to listen to me one way or another, you aren’t going to stop me now,” he whispered, and she fully believed him. He was looking as inevitable as death. “You left after that night without a word, and I was furious when I woke up. I came after you, determined to get an explanation, some kind of reason for your behaviour, and I met a totally different woman from the one I’d known before. I was baffled. I wanted to get to know you better, to understand. You refused. Then we left on assignment and everything fell apart. And suddenly I was meeting another Leslie, a courageous woman, and I didn’t know who was the real you. Were you the whore you pretended to me, or were you the hard bitten career woman? And where did the Leslie on the island fit in? Everything about you threw me off, and I couldn’t see the truth, no matter how I tried.

  “Then you took that desperate chance, and I was convinced you were the whore after all, and I was sick. But Wayne reacted totally differently and it was only then that I found out you’d been married, had once, in fact, had a family. It was only then that I started to understand a little more about you, as the jigsaw pieces started to fall into place.

  “You were right about me being unable to leave you. You were more accurate than you could know. Something had snapped that night when I saw you on the ground, fighting for not only your own life, but also ours.” He suddenly shifted his hands and gripped her head, palms on either side, fingers gripping into her hair. Caught, she held herself perfectly still, unable to get away, turn her head, stop her ears. “I found I loved you, that night. I told you the other day, when I told of my joy in murdering the beast that was hurting you so badly, only you were either too dense to hear, or you didn’t want to know.” The words were whispered bitterly; they sounded to her to be shouted directly into her shrinking heart, reverberating in a shock wave.

  He let go of her suddenly and walked away, and that too shocked her so that she couldn’t move. He went to the screen door and looked out into the night, his back to her. “I brought you here,” he said unemotionally, “because I cared. I hated to see you bruised, and I wanted to give you time here to enjoy the quiet and the serenity of the place. I kidnapped you because I thought it important enough to ride over your inevitable prevarications and protestations. I waited on you because I wanted you to heal from your wound. I kept quiet because I didn’t want to make you feel like you had to talk about your past, which was so obviously painful to you.”

  Dear heaven, she thought faintly. When the shocks come, they keep coming and coming. Her whole life had been thrown into chaos and, like the inside of a clothes drier, everything kept tumbling over and over, and she didn’t know if she would ever find her way out of it again. Huddled in the chair, horribly exposed, she held her arms around her chest in a defensive gesture, wholly unconscious of it. She watched as Scott turned and looked at her, his face all at once very tired.

  “Look at you,” he said, on a half laugh. “You’re backed in a corner, with your arms around yourself for protection. You didn’t want anyone to make a fool of himself over you. You want to be footloose, completely carefree in a way you were never allowed to be. God, Leslie—you’re such a strange woman—you make me feel at once infuriated with your obtuseness and protective because you’re so damned vulnerable! You don’t have to tell me. I know you don’t want it, you didn’t ask for it! You’ve got to go out and find the next adventure, run away to look at a new horizon. You have to play like a child. Well, I’m through with playing. I had to stop. We’re at two different points in our lives, but I have never, ever wanted to tie you down or stifle any part of you. I’d never planned on saying any of this. It all just had to come out.”

  He walked slowly over to her and bent to crouch before her. She sat like stone, afraid to move for fear the action might shift everything in her world yet again. He picked up her hands and kissed her fingers so tenderly that she could barely stand it, for he’d been giving her the truth, and giving her so much of himself, and he kept on giving and just couldn’t see how that shook her up so.

  “I have to tell you,” he murmured softly, eyes huge and dark with the burden of his unflinching honesty, “that I did have one wild, unquenchable hope. You mustn’t feel that I’m saying it to push you to anything you don’t wish. I’ve cherished what you were able to give to me while you stayed here these last several days.” He spoke as if she were leaving, she thought. How did he know she was going to leave him? But she knew the answer to that. He’d always seen more of her than she’d been able to see of him. “But, Leslie, I had hoped against hope that maybe—just maybe—you might grow to know me and love me back in some way.” He stood abruptly. “The keys are still on the counter. I’ll give you directions to get back. You wouldn’t remember the way since you slept most of the drive up. Drive carefully, and if you want to come back later on, you’ll be welcome. You’ll always be welcome. If
you would, ask Wayne to come up at the end of the month. He said he’d pick me up if I needed it. Goodnight, darling. I’ll see you off in the morning.”

  And that was it. She was left looking after him, searching frantically for something well adjusted and meaningful to say. Nothing came, and he closed his door on her, leaving her all alone.

  She eventually dragged herself off to her own room, instinctively knowing that his was quite off limits now. She didn’t even notice Jenny and Dennis as they looked out into the room, laughing frozenly.

  It stormed in the night, wind and rain lashing at the window, bright lightning flashing spasmodically, burning into her retina as she tossed and turned sleeplessly. What was wrong with her? He had asked nothing, absolutely nothing of her. She was totally free of commitment. She was leaving in the morning. She told herself that over and over.

  The morning was fresh washed and dewy clean. The sun sparkled over the greens and browns and a piercing sky blue as she looked outside, and for some reason the beauty of it hurt her eyes. She turned away and went back to her packing. Movement was automatic. She certainly knew how to pack. She carried her suitcases out to the car and put them in the back seat. She was going back to her life, the one she had worked so hard to build and was working so desperately now to preserve. She couldn’t wait to know where she would be going next. All of those exotic countries, different, explosive, challenging, stimulating. The words were a dull litany in her mind as she stared around at the by now hauntingly familiar clearing. That oak over there, good for leaning against in the shade. The wooden porch that she’d dreamed on in the summer night’s heat. That window that was Scott’s. She had been up very early because of her sleepless night, and hadn’t seen him. She wondered if he was expecting her to say goodbye.

  She couldn’t seem to get into the car. Oh, the adventures she would have! She told herself she couldn’t wait. She slowly managed to get behind the wheel, her limbs oddly working as though under water. She leaned her head on the steering wheel and put her hands behind her head.

  Why was she feeling so lost? Surely this was not love, this ache and this confusion. Surely she had been smart enough to avoid that trap, having fallen in once. Once bitten, twice shy. Surely she was in just a phase! As soon as she was on the road, with the wind in her hair and the open country before her, everything would, indeed, be different. But when she thought of it, the worse she felt until she thought she would be swallowed up in the misery.

  She lifted her head and stared at her reflection in the windshield. Ah, what an idiot she was! She was going to get out of the car, she knew it. She was going to walk back into that house and make an utter fool of herself for the second time in her life. She was going to tie herself to a man, and she was going to strengthen those ties every chance she got. She was going to love him like he’d never been loved before, and she was going to laugh with him and share her sorrows and her joys. She was going to lean on him when she was weak, and let him lean on her when he needed her to be strong. She was going to have to share her drawer space and the toothpaste, and sometimes forego watching her favourite television programme so that he could see the baseball game. She would come home and have someone waiting for her, welcoming her. She would be this miserable every time she left, yearning to be with the man, thinking of him as she did her job, feeling that half joy, half sorrow as she was by herself and fulfilling her intellectual needs. She was going to share her sometimes painful growth with him, and watch him mature also. They were going to quarrel, and cry, and then make up with a mutual relief and joy that would overwhelm them both. They were going to make love in all its various moods: violently, tenderly, leisurely, urgently. She was going to wash his socks, and he would cook the special meals.

  Her sudden rich laughter welled up from the surprisingly deep welling of joy that flooded her. Yes, indeed, what marvellous fools they would be, together. Always together.

  She got out of the car and bounded up the porch steps, ignoring the twinges in her leg in her eagerness. She crossed the porch in two long strides and threw open the front door. She lightly crossed to his door, and it was open. He was sitting on his made bed, his head in his hands, the fingers pushed into the silken silver blond hair, his powerful shoulders hunched, an attitude of utter dejection. He was dressed. At the sound of her footfall on the threshold, his head reared up and as he looked at her, his eyes widened.

  She was lithe and laughing, her blue eyes brilliant, her face vivid and wonderfully alive with the glow of joy within. Her mouth was pulled into a wide and sunny smile, the smile she’d given once to a daughter, if she had but known it. The message was written plainly across her face and in her eager approach, and he looked as if he couldn’t believe it. “Hello,” she greeted him, and he had to stand abruptly as she threw herself into his arms and wound her own around his neck firmly. “Did you miss me? I’m home.”

  She’d told him everything in that simple greeting, and in her expressive, loving smile. She watched as exultation leapt into living flames in his glowing dark eyes. He bent his head.

  About the Author

  Thea Harrison started writing when she was nineteen. In the 1980s and 1990s, she wrote for Harlequin Mills & Boon under the name Amanda Carpenter. The Amanda Carpenter romances have been published in over ten languages, and sold over a million and a half copies worldwide, and are now being reprinted digitally by Samhain Publishing for their Retro Romance line.

  For more information, please visit her at: www.theaharrison.com. You can also find her on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/TheaHarrison and on Twitter at: @TheaHarrison.

  Look for these titles by Amanda Carpenter

  Now Available:

  Reckless

  Rose-Coloured Love

  A Deeper Dimension

  The Wall

  A Damaged Trust

  The Great Escape

  Flashback

  Rage

  Waking Up

  Writing as Thea Harrison

  Novellas of the Elder Races

  True Colors

  Natural Evil

  Devil’s Gate

  Hunter’s Season

  The Wicked

  Coming Soon:

  The Gift of Happiness

  Caprice

  Passage of the Night

  Cry Wolf

  A Solitary Heart

  The Winter King

  Is her talent a gift…or a curse?

  Flashback

  © 2013 Amanda Carpenter

  Forced to live with the constant nightmares caused by her psychic abilities, Dana Haslow begins to think that death might be the only respite from her unwanted powers. Isolated and alone, she finds herself unwittingly drawn into contact with her new neighbor, David Raymond.

  Experiencing his tortured past via dreams and nightmares, Dana knows that David must confront his demons—before they drive her mad! Resistant to her efforts to help him, David wants to go his own way…until Dana draws the attention of a dangerous man and David realizes just how much he needs her healing touch.

  But when a local brute terrorizes her, he comes to the rescue and they secure their bonds.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Flashback:

  The keen blade of the knife entered her midsection with a clarity of movement and efficiency that left her coughing with incredulous surprise and pain. The heat of the day pounded into her skin and her shirt stuck to her back. Now her shirt was sticking to her front as well, and her eyes looked in mute accusation at the wiry, foreign looking man that crouched menacingly in front of her. He looked so odd, but then so did the rest of the countryside, all green and brown and strange, as her blank, uncomprehending gaze slowly passed over it all. Then, just as slowly, she started to topple forward to collapse in a crumpled heap on the ground.

  Her hand went to her stomach, groping, bunched into a tight, huge fist, which she stuffed into the wound with a grunt of pain to keep from bleeding to death right then and there. Dark red liquid oozed all over, o
n her hand, on the ground in front of her, and a trickle of salty sweat ran down the side of her face as half was pressed into the dirt. Pain, rage, despair. The incredible, strong will to survive. She would survive.

  Then rough hands were flipping her over and yanking her hand away to determine the extent of the damage done, and she started to go hazy around the edges of her consciousness, jerking rigid at a sharp sting of fire-like pain. And then the cloudiness around the periphery of her vision started to darken, and the whole world blacked out into a monstrous nothing.

  And the nothingness was part of the dream, and she couldn’t wake up, or escape from it. She drifted a while, in a fog of pain.

  Dana woke then, finally, her chest heaving in great, gasping sobs, sweat dampening herself and the sheet pulled over her slim, shivering body. A slight breeze moved a curtain at the open window, stirring her hair slightly. With the sickness of the horrible nightmare still gripping her, she took a shuddering breath, passed her hands over her eyes, and sat up.

  The middle of the night is the blackest and most terrible time of all, when nightmares are real, even though they’re insane, and despair is so hard to shake. The despair was gripping her now, and it was in its own way worse than the nightmare for it was reality, simple, inescapable. She moved like an old woman to the light switch on the wall and flipped it on with shaking fingers. Then, jerking up her nightshirt hastily, she stared down at her stomach with a half hopeful, half horrified look in her dark brown eyes.

  The creamy skin was unmarred by any mark whatsoever.

  She stood up, still with that strange, stiff movement that bespoke of an immense old age, and she started for the stairs at the end of the hall. If only she could get out of this head of hers and never have to worry about anything ever again! If only she knew for sure that she wasn’t going totally, irrevocably, bizarrely insane…