“What are you doing now?” she demanded, and he was glad that she sounded nervous—very nervous.
“I am going to get drunk, Miss Anderson. As drunk as I possibly can!” He smiled, sat on the edge of the desk, and picked up the brandy bottle, swigging deeply to prove his intent. He lifted the bottle to her and gave her a frigid, mocking smile.
“How rude of me! Won’t you join me, Miss Anderson? A toast—to your absolute and amazing victory?”
She ignored him with distaste.
“How long are you staying here? Don’t you have to go back to New York?”
“Maybe,” David replied. Then he shrugged. “I don’t know. All I know is that for the moment I’m going to finish off my dad’s brandy. Unless this bottle, too, is yours?”
Susan turned around and started walking to the door.
“Where are you going, Miss Anderson? Surely you didn’t sell yourself for a spit of property just to desert it?”
“I’m going out!” she called back without turning. If he hadn’t seen her, hadn’t come to know her fervor and outrage, he might have suspected a sob in her voice.
But he had seen her. And he’d been signing checks to her for the last year.
He was drinking brandy again as the wooden door slammed, then the screen door.
Brandy … Guzzled like this, it burned the throat and created an inferno in the chest. It made him feel afire. He prayed that it would dull his senses. All the pain, all the grief.
All the anger.
And the worst of it, all the incomprehensible desire. A fever not of the heart or the mind, but somehow of the soul.
A door slammed again. He looked up. Had she come back already? No, he realized dimly, it was the wind. A storm was brewing. He had known it when he came. A northeasterly from the force and sound of it. Even now he could hear the waves pounding on the sand and rocks with a fury to match his own. Soon the rain would come down as if the heavens had opened.
He knew the weather here. He had loved it as a child; loved it still as a man. Fierce gales; roiling, gray skies of clouds that billowed and rumbled.
About to take another long sip of the brandy, David hesitated.
She was out there.
He shrugged. She’d been living here awhile. She should have learned the weather. And if the wind should take her, the devil would be welcome to her too.
He didn’t drink the brandy. He set the bottle down, trembling with a sudden vision of that blazing mahogany hair spread against the whiteness of the sand, her features as ashen as the bleached driftwood along the beach. Long limbs, tangled and lifeless…
“Damn it all!” he swore violently.
Then he strode across the room, through the foyer, and out the doors, allowing them to slam behind him.
The sky had become patterned in surly gray and black. Trees were bending, sand was flying, and the waves were rising high, like white kites against the vicious swirl of the heavens.
David’s long gait carried him quickly along the walk to the sand, and there he hesitated, raising a hand against the wind.
He should just let her go … because the strangest feeling rippled through him. It was as if he had come face-to-face with a crossroad and she beckoned him with a force he couldn’t deny. She had some kind of power, like a Circe whispering a sweet melody that cut through wind and water and tempest….
Should he go after her now, he knew he would be inextricably involved. One more step and he would never be able to turn back.
Ridiculous, he thought, scolding himself. All he wanted to do was make sure that the fool woman didn’t drown. Even if she did kill his father.
At least Dad had gone out smiling, he reminded himself bitterly.
Smiling … He wanted to see her smiling. Laughing, filling the air with the melodious sound of joy.
He gave himself a shake. For God’s sake! The woman had been his father’s mistress!
The rain started just as he headed onto the beach.
CHAPTER TWO
SUSAN WAS CHOKING BACK tears as she stumbled out of the beach house; tears she had sworn she would never shed. After all, she had met Peter Lane because he knew he was dying, and she had known exactly what to expect from the son…
Those logical, determined thoughts helped her a bit, but she couldn’t, for the life of her, understand why. She didn’t care what people thought; she never had. So why, she wondered, was she so disturbed now? Especially since she had known for months now exactly what David Lane’s opinion had been.
Her shoe caught in the sand, twisting her ankle. She swore softly, then allowed her tears to join with mist that surrounded her to dampen her cheeks. She realized that she had come right up on the beach, where the water was spewing over boulders and sand—and her shoes.
They were ruined, of course. Leaning against one of the gray rocks that rose over her head, she pulled them from her feet and slammed them viciously against the rock.
What was it about David Lane that infuriated her to such a degree? The cold contempt and disregard she had first encountered when she had attempted to see him and tell him the truth about his father? She should have stayed that day. But she who had learned such serenity from life had tossed water in his face, stunned by his blunt, unexpected accusation. She shouldn’t have done it. She should have been as cold and contemptuous as he’d been and informed him scornfully that he was an insolent bastard, but for Peter’s sake she would tolerate his rude and unjust behavior.
Oh, no! She was right to have thrown the water in his face. She should have just stayed afterward and straightened things out then.
Except that his mind had been so set, he surely wouldn’t have believed a thing she had to say. Except, maybe, about his father.
She shouldn’t have been there to begin with, believing as she did in the rights of the aged and the dying. Peter might have been old and ill, but his mind had been as sharp as a whip. Sharper. Until the very end. And he hadn’t wanted his son to know.
“Took me thirty-six years to get the relationship right with David,” Peter told her once, “and for whatever time I have left, I want it to be what it is now. We’re friends. He calls me, he sees me, he cares for my every concern. He leads his own life, but he’s careful never to forget me. You can’t always say that for young people today, you know,” he had said proudly. Then he sighed. “Don’t you see, Susan? We’ve finally got it just right. He’s there, but he still respects my opinions, my individuality, and my privacy. If he knew, it would all change. He’d want me to come to New York. He’d start doting on me, and then I’d grow very old and decrepit, become a liability. No. I’ve got it all just right now. And that’s what I want it to be like—down to the end. There’s nothing I haven’t had, Susan. Nothing. It’s all precious to me. It’s been a hell of a life. I’ve enjoyed it, and I’ll continue to do so until the end!”
It had been Peter’s right…
“Oh, I think that’s why I hate you so much, David Lane!” she whispered to the rising wind. “He loved you; he was so proud of you. He was an incredibly great man—and you didn’t think enough of him to believe that someone could care about him and not his money!”
She lowered her head dejectedly just as the rain started. She barely noticed it in her bitterness. What was the matter with their world that no one could accept a young woman and an old man being friends? Peter had been there for her when she had been alone and stumbling and groping. And she had been there for him. Not as a lover but as a friend. Someone who really cared for him and loved to hear him talk about his past, about his days as an immigrant, about the wife he had loved so dearly that he had defied his own people to marry her and flee to a new world …
“Oh, you son of a bitch!” she cried, with no one to hear her but the whipping wind and the rain. Ruefully she realized that she was dripping wet, that not only her shoes, but also her entire outfit was probably ruined. And that she—like an idiot!—was standing in the water while lightning coursed the sky.
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But still she stood there, such a sizzle of pain and anger and outrage that her mind seemed too overcrowded to function correctly. She couldn’t shake the image of the man—not the father but the son. She had lied; he was a great deal like his father. His eyes were so much the same, such a sharp, keen blue, seeming to assess so much more than what was seen by the naked eye.
“The man is blind!” she said raggedly.
She closed her eyes against the rain, hating him savagely, remembering the way he had spoken to her, the way he had touched her. How dare he judge what he knew nothing about? And, once, she had been so eager to meet him. Peter had always talked about his son and shown her pictures. David at sixteen, soot-smeared face, helmet in his hand, grinning away on the high school football field. David in his Air Force uniform, clean-cropped, solemn, and beautiful as only a handsome young man could be. David a few years later, in what Peter jokingly called his Bohemian years, a man with overly long dark hair, his arm around a beautiful blond, scowling at the photographer.
David as a chubby, angelic baby, naked on a bearskin rug, his dark hair a riot of curls, his toothless smile a mile wide.
“Bearskin rugs were ‘in’ in those days!” Peter had told her ruefully, his eyes sparkling. “David hates this picture. He always warns me that he’ll box my ears if I show it to anyone!”
And then there was the portrait of David on the sailboat, standing tall as he held the rigging, his broad shoulders covered in a red turtleneck, muscled thighs arresting in jeans. He was looking out to sea in that picture, framed by the sail and the sky and the water beyond, and something about the photo denoted a man of pride, of vital interest in the world around him. All of the fine breeding of his father’s features were in his own high cheekbones, square and level jaw, long straight nose, dark jutting brows, and eyes as deep and as endless as the sea. There was a slight smile on his lips; it gave him the look of an adventurer of old. It spoke of humor and sensuality and even tenderness, and it had made Susan long to meet such a man. He would be Peter’s son, as fascinating as the father….
Or so she had envisioned—until she had been shown into his elegant office and informed that she should go to Peter for money since she was his father’s mistress—not his!
“I tried!” Susan muttered. “You despicable bastard! You can take your beach house and—”
She broke off as a wave rose like a blanket of gray darkness, smacking her in the face and filling her mouth and throat with seawater. Her hand slipped from the rock with the force of the water, and as the wave receded, the sand was washed out from beneath her feet. She fell, flailing, but in no panic. She knew this shore. The wave would rush out and she would find her footing again. She berated herself for not paying attention to the storm, to the force of the wind and rain that had cascaded against her. It was that horrible David Lane! She’d never known such absolute fury in her life, and it had completely stripped her of wit and good sense.
Susan staggered to her knees, teeth chattering suddenly, as if her body had just realized how cold the sea and rain and wind were. She planted a foot in the sand but it slipped, and she was thrown into the next wave that ravaged the shore. This time the water filled not only her nose and mouth but also her lungs, and as the wave receded, it carried her body with it. She was picked up as easily as a feather, buffeted, dragged, and buffeted again. The water had closed around her like an icy shroud.
Then she did panic. She could swim; she knew the treacherous currents of the shoals. But she was pitched far beneath the surface, fighting nature’s power, her lungs on fire. Think! she warned herself desperately, aware that her life hung in the balance. Calm, rational thought. Don’t flail, don’t fight, go with the current, get to the top.
The urge to open her mouth and gasp for breath was unbearable. Even knowing that all she could gasp in would be seawater, she didn’t think she could battle the urge much longer. Splotches of black seemed to be exploding inside her skull. She was blinded and freezing, almost too numb to make an attempt to live.
And she began to wonder a little hysterically if this was it.
She who had learned to ease others from life was about to leave it herself. No waiting period, no adjustment, no time for regrets or restitutions. It would come on her suddenly, coldness and blackness embracing her….
Still, she didn’t flail. Nor did her life flash through her mind as she had always heard. Her foot touched the bottom, scraped against one of the rocks. She felt the motion but not the pain. She kicked against the rock, and then the surface broke above her.
The rain was coming in such torrents that it was difficult to tell the difference between sea and air, but she managed to gasp and fill her lungs with more oxygen than water. Treading water with care, she blinked furiously, seeking out the shore. It was incredibly far away, and yet she had been standing there moments ago.
But the sea was strong. Anyone who knew it well knew that. To survive she was going to have to stay calm, to waste no motion, to save her strength.
Another wave crashed over her even as she cautioned herself. It swept her under, tossing her toward the shore, then pulling her back out. She let it. She touched bottom again, sprang against it, and surfaced, gasping for a deep, deep breath. Then she plunged below the surface and began to swim.
She could stand again but she didn’t. She stayed low where she could balance herself against the rush of water. Her heart began to soar with hope. She was almost back to the shore. Blinking the stinging salt from her eyes, she could see the giant gray boulders rising out of the sand.
Susan found her footing. The muscles in her legs were burning, as if a thousand bees had stung her, she realized. But it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all. The sand—gray and barely discernible against the gusting rain—was before her. She pushed back a sodden lock of hair that clung over her forehead and took another step.
A wave was coming; she ducked to brace against it. But it was more powerful than any of the others that had come before it. Go with it, go with it, she warned herself desperately. Don’t panic, don’t panic….
She went with it—and gasped out an involuntary scream of pain as the wave hurtled her like a twig against solid stone. Pain exploded in her temple. She was dimly aware that she had been tossed against one of the low-lying boulders and realized that water had poured into her open mouth, that it was filling her lungs, that she was choking … drowning.
And still nothing passed before her. None of her life. All she saw was a wall of blackness engulfing her. She couldn’t fight anymore. She couldn’t even lift a hand against the power that pulled and dragged her … a power like arms, strong arms, lifting her, carrying her, holding her. Bringing her to the sand. Giving her warmth against the terrible cold.
The rain continued to beat down. Oddly she could feel it slamming against her. She wasn’t dead yet, but she was still being poked and prodded. Her stomach was being kneaded, and she was suddenly gasping again, spouting water and choking. And then she knew that she was really and truly alive because she was certain that one had to be living to feel so horrible and wretchedly sick!
Hands were on her, twisting her. She retched out all the seawater she had swallowed, vaguely realizing that it was taken back by the rain. Sand filled her mouth. Blackness alternated with bouts of dizzying misery. Someone was touching her, issuing commands that she could barely hear. Fingers tore into her hair. The rain washed around her face like a bucket of cold water, taking with it the salt and sand. Then it was suddenly gone, and something was above her face, shielding her from the onslaught. Her throat was forced back. She opened her eyes, and for a moment she thought that either she had died or the rain had ceased, for all she saw was a glittering crystal blue.
Then there was warmth and force against her mouth. Air shot into her lungs, and she was fighting the thing above her because she was going to choke again with the goodness of it. She was breathing again and she hadn’t been!
Her eyes opened, and a sembl
ance of reason returned to her. Through the pelting rain she saw a face. A handsome face, dripping with rain, dominated by shocking blue eyes. David Lane. The man who had sent her to the shore; whose image had made her so bleak that she had noted neither the encroaching sea nor the storm. She was crushed against his chest, and he was hunched low around her to fight the wind. She couldn’t move; not against the strength of his arms and not against the chattering numbness that enveloped her.
But she did see something in his face. Irritation, anger. That ever-present scorn. He was annoyed that he’d felt obliged to save her! she thought with amazement.
She would have never needed saving if it hadn’t been for him, she thought in a moment of near hysteria.
His eyes fell on her open ones as the rain stopped beating against them when they reached the porch to the beach house.
“I hate you!” she whispered.
She saw his face tighten furiously, and that was all. A lid seemed to close over her with the slamming of the door. She pitched into a dreamless void where pain and cold were gone, as was all else.
David frowned, worried. He’d taken lifesaving along with sailing classes, and he knew CPR. Things had gone pretty smoothly. He’d managed to get the water out of her and air back into her.
But what the hell did he do now? She had opened her eyes, she was breathing, and her pulse was steady. But her body felt as cold as ice.
He muttered a soft oath and carried her with him into his father’s study, certain that the best thing to do would be to get some professional help on the phone. Cradling her against him, he dialed the emergency number and was glad to get Jerry Tyler, an old friend from way back, on the phone. Even as Jerry efficiently asked for a description of the situation, David marveled that the village was so small that everyone in the whole town really did know one another.
“Jerry, this is David Lane. I’m at the beach house. I just dragged Susan Anderson out of the water—”
“Is she alive?” Jerry asked anxiously, then remembered that he was supposed to be the calm expert. “Is she breathing on her own—?”
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