Elly didn’t know which was stronger, the dizzy sensation of relief and exultation or the flaring physical excitement. In the end it didn’t matter. She was aware she had fallen in love with Jess Winter, but she’d had no real notion of the depths of the physical side of the matter. It was glorious, the most incredible sensation she’d ever known.
She felt the hard readiness of Jess’s body through the fabric of her jeans. He had his shirt off now and the strong, sleek slopes of his shoulders were golden in the firelight. He crushed her deeply into the sofa cushions, his fingers lancing through her hair. The last of the pins came free, and Jess muttered something dark and sensuous. He nipped passionately at the line of her throat.
“Your hair has fire in it,” he told her wonderingly. Catching a long tendril of the chestnut-colored stuff he curled the end around one nipple. The teasing caress elicited another soft sound from Elly. Jess seemed enthralled with her reaction.
“Jess, I’ve been so worried,” Elly confided huskily as she tightened her arms around his neck. “I was afraid you didn’t want me.”
“That’s the last thing you have to worry about now.” He found her mouth with his own, kissing her with drugging desire.
Elly sighed and gave herself up to the passionate excitement that swirled around her. Loving Jess was going to be all she could have hoped. She was certain of that now.
And then, without any warning, Elly’s fiery world of love and passion froze into a solid sheet of ice. Lost in the shimmering moment, it took several timeless seconds before she realized that Jess had gone utterly still above her.
“Marina!” The name was a thick, muffled sound seemingly wrenched from his throat. “Damn it to hell. Marina! “
“What is it? Jess? What’s wrong?” Dazed by the sudden turn of events, Elly opened her eyes to see the savagely drawn features of the man who had only a moment before been making love to her. Jess was staring past her toward the living-room window. She swallowed and started to ask another question, but before she could get the confused words out of her mouth, he was pulling himself free of her.
“Jess!” Panicked by the change in him, Elly struggled to a sitting position. She felt suddenly cold and vulnerable without her sweater. Instinctively she crossed her arms over her breasts.
But Jess wasn’t paying any attention to her. He was already halfway across the room, racing toward the un-draped window. Reaching it, he unlatched the frame and shoved open the glass. The muscles of his back tightened with the swift movement. The chill fog that had been hovering outside seemed to slide eagerly into the cozy room.
“Jess, where are you going?” Horrified, Elly sprang to her feet as Jess swung first one leg and then the other over the windowsill. A moment later he disappeared into the night. She stood staring after him, the back of her hand held to her mouth in a timeless gesture of fear and incomprehension.
Time ticked past. Through the open window the cold night air continued to pour hungrily into the room, devouring the warmth it found there. The fire in front of the hearth tried to beat back at the attacking chill, but it was already beginning to flicker beneath the onslaught.
Elly shook off the mesmerizing effects of her anxiety and started toward the window. Vaguely she realized it ought to be closed before any more cold air came into the room. As she took a step forward, her toe snagged on her sweater. Hastily she bent down and retrieved it, shrugging into it quickly.
The window got stuck, as it nearly always did, and Elly was obliged to exert her full strength to get it closed and latched. With the deed accomplished she sagged against the sill and stared out into the darkness. Nothing was visible through the fog.
Unable to think of anything more productive to do, Elly continued to stare out the window. Her chaotic thoughts gradually settled back into place, and at last she began to think clearly again.
What had Jess seen that had sent him into the night? Prowlers? But you rarely called a prowler by name.
Marina. It was a name, Elly realized. A woman’s name. She shivered, but this time the involuntary reaction wasn’t caused by sensual tension.
Elly was still standing at the window when the door behind her opened. Eyes widening with fear, she whirled to find Jess on the threshold. His naked chest was damp, whether from exertion or the fog, she couldn’t tell. Across the room his wintry eyes met hers, and Elly knew she was looking at a man who had metamorphosed from lover to stranger. Her hand curled into a small, tense fist at her side. She tried to speak, failed and began again.
“What happened, Jess? For God’s sake, tell me what happened! Did you see someone outside the window?”
He broke the eye contact, turning to shut the door and lock it with deliberate care. When he turned back, Elly could see a coldness in his gaze that matched the night. Her fear rose another notch. Something in her expression must have gotten through to him. Jess frowned and started forward. He stopped when she instinctively backed up a pace.
“It’s all right, Elly. I’m sorry I scared you.”
“What did you see?”
He ran the back of his hand across his eyes in a weary gesture. “A face. I thought I saw someone standing on the other side of the window. But when I got outside I couldn’t find a thing.” His hand dropped from his face.
“Not surprising. Godzilla could be hiding out there in that pea soup, and I wouldn’t be able to see him.”
“If you saw a prowler I should call Charlie.” Elly reached for the phone.
“Charlie? Oh, yeah. The local deputy sheriff. Forget it, Elly. You can’t see two feet in front of yourself tonight. By the time Charlie made it here through the fog, whoever was out there will be long gone. Hell, whoever it was is long gone now.” Jess paced over to an armchair and dropped into it with a deep sigh. He stared broodingly into the flames.
Behind him Elly let the phone drop back into the cradle. She stayed very still, watching the stranger who had invaded her living room. Whoever he was, he wasn’t the same man she had come to know during the past two months. The realization was frightening. A part of her urged flight. But another side of her demanded explanations.
“Jess, who did you think it was outside the window?”
He didn’t move. There was along silence before he answered. “A woman.”
Elly drew a deep, steadying breath. “You called her name.”
“Did I?”
“You called her Marina.”
He didn’t respond to that. His whole attention was fixed on the fire. Slowly Elly moved closer to his chair. Her hands were shaking.
“Jess?”
“I’m sorry, Elly.”
She shook her head bewilderedly. “Who is Marina?” It was a while before he answered her, and when he did Elly got the feeling Jess was trying to convince himself as much as her. “I didn’t see Marina outside that window. Just someone who looked like her.”
Elly licked her lower lip. She felt as if she were walking on very thin ice. Beneath the fragile surface, endless cold waited to swallow her whole. “What does Marina look like?”
Jess rested his chin on his fist, propping his elbow on the upholstered arm of the chair. “A witch,” he finally said very succinctly. “A blond-haired, green-eyed witch.”
Elly closed her eyes. “I see.”
“No, you don’t. You can’t possibly.”
Her lashes lifted, and she stared again at his hard fire-lit profile. She asked the next question because she had no alternative. The need to know the truth was greater than the fear and hopelessness it might bring. “Who was Marina, Jess?”
He hesitated a moment longer and then said very softly, “My ex-wife.”
Elly had a hard time getting her next breath. When she finally got it, her voice sounded faint, even to her own ears. “I didn’t realize you had been married.”
“I’m thirty-seven years old, Elly. Most men have experimented at least once with marriage by the time they reach my age.”
She sank down onto the couch, clasping her hands tightly in her lap. “Yes, I suppose they have. I just hadn’t thought about it, I guess. It hadn’t crossed my mind. You never mentioned—”
“It’s not something I talk about.”
“Obviously!” A profound silence followed that remark and then Elly asked tentatively, “Children?”
“Hell, no. I wouldn’t have kept quiet about children, Elly.”
“Just ex-wives?” A thread of anger was beginning to weave its way into her emotions.
“There was no need to mention Marina.”
“Why not?*’
“Because she’s dead, Elly.”
Elly closed her eyes in sudden anguish. “Oh, my God. And when you started to make love to me, really make love to me, you saw a vision of her at the window.”
The words had the unexpected effect of snapping Jess out of his brooding state. Elly was completely unprepared for the way he surged out of the chair and swept across the room in three angry strides. His face was lined with controlled fury. Halting in front of her, Jess reached down to grasp her shoulders fiercely. His gray eyes seemed to pierce her with lances of ice.
“No,” he bit out savagely, “I did not see a vision of her when I started to make love to you. I saw someone outside that window.”
“Someone who looked just like her?” Elly said in a tight voice.
“Someone who looked a lot like her. But I sure as hell didn’t see a vision. For crying out loud, Elly, what the hell do you think is going on?”
“You tell me. I can’t seem to think straight. All I know is that one minute you’re making love to me as if… as if you mean it finally, and the next you’re seeing your ex-wife at the window. What do you expect me to think?”
“I expect you to be rational about it,” Jess grated, hauling her to her feet in front of him. “There was someone outside that window who bore a resemblance to a woman I married and divorced a few years ago. That’s all. In the morning I’ll take a look around and see if I can find any signs of the prowler. Frankly, though, it’s not likely.”
“No,” she admitted politely, letting him put any construction on her agreement that he might wish. Lifting her chin, she made an effort to evade his hands. “Well,” she tried to say in a conversational tone, “it’s getting late, isn’t it? And it’s going to be a slow drive back to your motel in this fog. You’d probably better get started. Give me a call in the morning. I’ll be at the shop, as usual.”
“Elly—”
“Did I mention that Bill Franklin was asking about you this week?” she continued as she went over to the hall closet and began pulling out Jess’s worn leather jacket. “He said he’s got the estimates on the plumbing work ready for you. You might want to look him up tomorrow. I gather his schedule is fairly open, though. Shouldn’t be too much trouble figuring out when he can do the job….”
“Elly!” Jess came forward and yanked the jacket out of her hands, replacing it in the closet. “Stop chattering at me like that. I’m not driving anywhere in this damn fog. I couldn’t see my way out to the car, let alone see the white line on the road.”
Despairingly, Elly realized he was right. It had been her own agitation that had made her try to push him out of her home. The truth was she was trapped with him, perhaps until morning. Earlier the prospect had seemed an inviting one. Now it held only uncertainty and a nameless fear.
She had to get hold of herself. Taking a deep breath, Elly stalked across the room and picked up the brandy glass she had set down on the table beside the sofa. The fiery liquid trickling down her throat was a welcome and distinctly reviving sensation.
“I could use another drink, myself.” Jess’s voice was a low growl as he crossed the room and poured himself more brandy. He stood with his feet planted wide apart, one hand on his hips and downed a healthy swallow.
Elly eyed him covertly, thinking he looked very pagan. She wished he would put on his shirt. Belatedly she reached down and picked it up, handing it to him. “Here. You’re probably cold from running around outside without any clothes on.”
Surprisingly her grumbling comment brought a twist of humor to his mouth. “I wasn’t exactly naked.” Nevertheless, he put on the shirt, not bothering to button it. He swirled the brandy in his glass for a couple of reflective moments, and then he looked up, meeting Elly’s wary gaze. “Sit down, honey. I can see I’ve got some explaining to do.”
She looked away. “You’ve made it clear it’s none of my business.”
“Yeah, well, knowing it’s none of your business doesn’t seem to have satisfied you. So sit down, Elly. I’ll give you the whole, sordid tale.”
“I don’t know if I want to hear—”
“Sit down, damn it!”
Elly’s mouth tightened resentfully, but she surrendered to the inevitable and took a seat. Jess sighed and walked over to stand in front of the fireplace. Bracing himself against the mantle with one fist, he took another swallow of brandy and began talking in a low, curiously detached tone of voice. Elly had never heard him sound so distant.
“I met Marina Carrington a few years ago. I was thirty-two at the time and had the world in the palm of my hand. I had proven to myself that I was going to be a success in business, and I knew that I was going to be a hell of a lot more successful before I reached forty. I hadn’t figured out at that point that I didn’t really want to be on the fast track for the rest of my life. That realization came much later. At the time I looked around and thought it all looked pretty damned good. The sky seemed to be the limit. But something was missing.”
Elly slanted him a derisive glance. “The love of a good woman?”
Jess shook his head. “Nothing that simple.”
“Simple!”
He ignored the outburst. “When Marina swept into my life I knew right away what I’d been missing. Excitement. In capital letters. It’s very seductive at first, maybe even addictive.”
“Excitement?”
“That shot of adrenaline only a creature like Marina can give you. It’s sexual and it’s very exhilarating. A man never knows what’s going to happen next, but he knows it’s going to be wild. He feels as if he’s standing with one foot on the planet and one about to step off into outer space. When I was thirty-three it was pretty heady stuff. Completely outside my normal realm of experience. You’ve got to understand, Elly. I had gotten where I was by a lot of hard work, ambition and self-control. Marina came along and turned everything upside down.”
Elly looked down at her clasped hands. “I see.”
Jess glanced at her, frowning. “I’m trying to explain something, Elly. Something that’s hard to put into words. Marina was the kind of woman who, when she walked into a room, immediately had the attention of everyone there. She generated some kind of elemental excitement.”
“Lots of feminine charisma, I gather,” Elly said evenly.
Jess nodded. “Charisma is probably the word for it. Whatever it is, it seemed to run in the Carrington family.”
“It did?”
“Marina had a twin brother. Women react to him the way men react to Marina. Same blond hair and green eyes, the same sense of being bigger than life, not quite real somehow. And both Marina and Damon knew how to exploit their assets. They manipulated everyone around them, and they did it so easily that most people never even realized what had hit them until it was too late.”
“A witch and a warlock,” Elly whispered, staring into the flames.
Jess glanced at her again, rather sharply. “That’s exactly how I came to think of them,” he admitted.
“Go on,” Elly said with a sense of doom.
“Well, Marina exploded into my life one evening when I was introduced to her at a party. She was very beautiful, very chic and very successful in her own right. She held an executive position in a corporation. I found out later she hadn’t climbed up through the ranks purely on merit. Marina used her body to get what sh
e wanted. I knew the minute I looked at her that I wanted her. She knew it, too. And Damon … Damon was always there in the background, watching and laughing, dancing his own circles around women while Marina enthralled the men.” Jess broke off, gray eyes filled with dangerous memories. “At any rate, I took her home that night. I couldn’t believe my luck when she let me stay until morning. I had set out to seduce her, but looking back on it, I know it was she who seduced me. Like everyone else around her, I let myself be manipulated. In the beginning I was happy enough to participate in my own downfall. Being seen with her was an ego trip for any man. And I enjoyed the trip for a while.”
“It sounds like you were getting what you wanted out of the arrangement,” Elly said bleakly. “That’s not exactly manipulation.”
“You don’t understand. No one could understand unless they met Marina or Damon. Never mind. That night was the beginning of an affair that kept me strung out for weeks. At times I thought I was going crazy. She knew how to tease and torment and then satisfy a man. And she knew the secret of repeating the cycle over and over again. She would make me wildly jealous, and then she would laugh at me until I lost control. The battles always ended in bed. She was…very skilled in bed. I thought that if I could put a ring on her finger I could possess her completely.”
Elly wrinkled her nose and sighed. “Did you?”
“Of course not. Things only got worse. Now she was my wife, and in addition to tormenting me with jealousy, she began going through my money at an incredible rate. Such a rate, in fact, that I finally began to get suspicious.”
“Of what?”
“That she was giving the money to another man. It turned out she was. She was giving it to her brother. Damon was plunging into one crazy business scheme after another, using my money as capital. Before I knew it, I found myself bailing him out time after time. As long as he was ‘family’ I felt obliged to go to his rescue. The two of them were systematically fleecing me. I could hardly believe it, at first. Me, the guy who had been so fast on his feet in the corporate world, who could out-maneuver the best business brains around and who was a natural on the corporate battleground, was getting ripped off by a couple of slick hustlers who never even went to business school!”
Cautious Lover Page 3