Shadow of Love

by Sondra Stanford

  Suddenly Rod's eyes blazed and his white face darkened with rage. His light grip on her arms tightened and he shook her again—roughly this time so that her head bobbed helplessly back and forth. When he spoke again, his lips were pressed tightly back, baring his teeth as he grated, "You are a crazy woman! I did not send you to Cincinnati to be rid of you! I sent you because I knew you would handle the job well and I was busy with other things. Besides, I thought you wanted to be included in running the business! But I never wanted us to be apart, Leslie. I missed you dreadfully while you were gone!"

  Leslie's eyes widened and she stared at him. Then, in a softly quivering voice, she asked, "Is…is that true?"

  A strange light flared in Rod's eyes, but before he had an opportunity to answer they were interrupted.

  "I thought I heard voices in here," Dave said.

  "Leslie, you were supposed to be going for the wine."

  He smiled, wiped his right hand on a towel he had poked into the waistband of his slacks, and then held his hand out toward Rod. "Hello, old buddy."

  Rod ignored Dave's outstretched hand and stared at him as though he were an apparition. "You… here?" he demanded in an incredulous tone.

  Dave laughed. "I'm the official chef here tonight. I delegated Leslie to go for a bottle of wine but," he added with a frown, "she seems to have fallen down on the job. Rod, I've got some beautiful steaks out in the kitchen. Care to stay and join us?"

  Rod's body was rigid and his jaw hardened. "No, thanks," he said curtly. He turned to face Leslie again and his eyes were almost black with a dark hatred. "Have a nice evening," he said frigidly. Then, without another word, he turned and walked out of the apartment.

  Leslie stared after his retreating back, too stunned to either speak or move. As abruptly as he had come, Rod had gone.

  "How about that wine, Leslie?"

  Leslie did not even hear Dave's question or, a moment later, his muttering about going for it himself. She was not even aware of the fact that he did actually leave. Weakly, she sank down in an armchair.

  Why had Rod come? she wondered as she stared blankly at the floor. He had insisted that that kiss yesterday had been Estelle's doing, not his. He swore, too, that he had not sent her away on that trip so that he could be free to spend time with Estelle. Leslie was not sure that she believed him, and yet why did he even bother to attempt to make any sort of explanation at all if it wasn't true? That was what puzzled her. And why had he become so angry and left so abruptly when he saw Dave? It was as though he actually hated Dave, who was supposed to be his good friend.

  The answer came, as swift and brilliant as a streak of lightning, and the realization of it left Leslie breathless. Rod had actually been jealous! There was absolutely no other explanation for it. All along Rod had accused her of seeking Dave out, never once taking into consideration the significance of Patsy's presence, and tonight he couldn't possibly have known about Patsy's and Dave's engagement, and he had believed Dave was here to be with her! She was trembling all over. If Rod was jealous, could she dare to hope that he might love her?

  From somewhere the conversation she had had with Lucy resurfaced. Lucy had spoken of how vulnerable Rod was to personal rejection because of his mother and Estelle. Now he must be thinking that she, too, was rejecting him—in favor of his best friend—even as his mother had done to his father. And all along she had believed he was rejecting her so that he could return to Estelle! What a mess! Leslie sucked in a deep, ragged breath and then slowly expelled it. What now? she wondered rather helplessly. Were they so bogged down in misunderstandings and recriminations that they could never be free to trust one another again? And what if, even now, she was wrong and Rod did not really love her after all?

  There was only one way to find out once and for all, she decided resolutely—even if it must be at the expense of her already battered pride. She stood up, crossed the room, and went into the bedroom, where her still-packed suitcases stood beside the dresser, and picked them up. Patsy would probably want to murder her after all the trouble she had gone to only that morning in getting the clothes to her, but surely she could understand that Leslie had to try. And if things didn't work out, she might yet be back again before the night was out.

  She struggled to get the suitcases down the stairs and out to her car in the early evening twilight. And then, with a small, nervous flutter of her heart, she slid beneath the wheel, started the motor, and headed toward home.

  When she pulled into the driveway fifteen minutes later, the house was in darkness. Leslie's heart sank as she switched off the ignition. Obviously, when Rod had left the apartment he had not returned home.

  With a deep sigh, she opened the car door and got out, then pulled out her bags and carried them to the porch. It might be hours yet before Rod decided to come home, but she had no choice but to wait. This thing had to be hashed out between them. She could not bear to live in uncertainty another day.

  Using her key, she quietly opened the door and went inside. She flipped on the hall light, brought her bags in, left them beside the bottom of the stairs and went up.

  She walked silently down the carpeted upstairs hallway and through the opened doorway into the bedroom she had shared with Rod. Her hand lifted automatically to the light switch beside the door, but suddenly the hand stilled.

  The draperies at the window were opened and the faintest trace of moonlight fell across the room. Leslie could see the clear outline of a form, a dearly familiar form. Rod was sitting on the edge of the bed in the darkened room, bent over, with his face buried in his hands. It was an attitude of utter despair and Leslie's heart twisted at the sight.

  For a long moment she stood in awed silence, watching him, her heart aching unbearably with love for him. And then she straightened her shoulders, pasted a smile to her lips, and flipped the light switch.

  "I know the President has asked us all to save energy," she said lightly, "but aren't you carrying things to extremes?"

  Rod's head jerked up, his eyes blinking rapidly from the unaccustomed light, and then he glared at her. "What are you doing here?" he demanded belligerently. "You've already taken your clothes and moved out, so why did you come back? Shouldn't you rush back to Dave?" His mouth twisted into an ugly sneer and his eyes were filled with contempt.

  Inside Leslie was quaking, and it was a struggle to present a calm exterior beneath his icy hatred. Her heart almost failed her and she had a strange urge to turn and run while she could still get away. But she had come here for a purpose, she reminded herself sternly, and she would see it out.

  She laughed and was quite proud of how natural it sounded, even to her own ears. "Somehow," she said in a voice that was not quite steady, "I don't think Patsy would appreciate that."

  Rod's eyes narrowed and his dark brows lowered. "What are you talking about?" he asked harshly.

  Now, in spite of her nervousness, there was an impish curve to Leslie's lips and a dancing sparkle to her eyes. "Dave and Patsy are engaged," she said baldly.

  The thick eyebrows rose, crinkling the forehead above them. "To be married?" he asked in a shocked voice.

  "Well, I think so," she said consideringly. "At least I hope I wasn't asked to be matron of honor at just a moving-in-together ceremony, but I…"

  She got no further as two strong hands gripped her arms tightly for the second time that evening. Rod's face was dark and somber as he towered above her.

  "Is this true?" he asked gruffly.

  Leslie's teasing manner faded like a wisp of fog dispersing with the coming of the sun. There was an urgency in Rod's bearing that took her breath away. Silently, she nodded.

  He removed one of his hands from her arm and brushed it across his eyes in a wearied gesture. "Leslie, how can I apologize?" he asked. His voice was hoarse. "I misjudged you. I thought…"

  Leslie nodded again. "I know," she said gently, "but you were wrong. Rod, was I wrong as well… about Estelle? I… I have to know."

 
Now his arms slid around her, clasping her close to his strong chest. "You were wrong," he whispered against her hair. "Very wrong." He drew back slightly so that he could peer down into her face and lifted a hand and with gentle fingers brushed a strand of her hair away toward her neck. "Yesterday," he began with a sigh, "yesterday when Estelle showed up at my office, I told her in very clear, very precise terms that I didn't want her to continue coming around me. She… well, I guess she just didn't want to believe I meant it. I was just about to go to the door and escort her out when she flung herself against me and kissed me, and that's when you walked in, of course. But, Leslie, if you had looked at us closely you would have seen that while she may have had her arms around me, I did not have mine around her." Now his arms tightened around her once more and his eyes caught and held hers with such intensity that she could not have looked away even if she had wanted to do so. "Leslie, I love you and I simply can't bear it if you go out of my life."

  Leslie's eyes glazed with tears of happiness at hearing those beautiful words at last and for a long moment she was too choked to speak. She tried to smile and failed and Rod watched her in growing alarm.

  "I've made you cry!" he exclaimed incredulously. "Darling, what's wrong? Is it because you know you can't return my love?" A bleak look crept into his eyes.

  Leslie shook her head and found her voice at last. "No, oh, no," she cried out in a voice that rang with joy. "I… I'm crying because I'm so h-happy. Rod, I've loved you for so long and…"

  He didn't allow her to finish the sentence. Apparently he had heard all he needed to know. As though he were starving for the taste of her, his lips came down to claim hers.

  It was a kiss that sent all of Leslie's senses spiraling. Rod's lips were warm and almost violently demanding as they moved from her mouth to her cheeks, to touch her closed eyelids, then to trail down to burn her lips again. Dizzily, she clung to him, her own lips open and inviting beneath the fierce possession of his.

  They were both shaken and breathless when they drew slightly apart at last. Leslie's heart thudded in her breast and beneath her hand, which had somehow worked its way inside Rod's shirt, she could feel his heart pounding as well. Rod smiled down at her and there was so much warm tenderness in his eyes that she almost felt herself melting beneath it.

  "Tell me," he said huskily. "Was it because Estelle was along that you refused to go to lunch that day you returned from Cincinnati?"

  Leslie nodded, and now she stared at the part of his chest that was revealed to her eyes, where she had opened a couple of the buttons on his shirt. Her fingers traced a caressing circle over his hair-roughened chest as she answered. "Yes. I thought you had brought her along so that both of you could tell me that you wanted your freedom."

  Rod's hand shot up to grip her wrist, halting the circular pattern her fingers had been making. "You thought what?" he exclaimed. "And you thought I'd planned that scene at the office yesterday." A darkness swept over his face; black thunder was in his eyes. "What sort of swine do you think you married?" he asked in tone of disgust.

  Leslie's lashes had swept up at the angry tirade and now she winced with uneasiness at the cold fury she had unknowingly brought forth. "You have to understand how it was," she explained earnestly. "You seemed to want her around all the time. You told me to invite her to our dinner party and afterward you drove her home and didn't return for hours. When you did, you told me very precisely that you were not accountable to me about where you went or what you did. And then"— her voice faltered with remembered misery—"the very next day you decided you wanted me to go on that trip to Cincinnati."

  Rod groaned and, placing his hand on the back of her head, pulled it gently forward to nestle against the hollow of his neck. "How did we manage to get into such a muddle?" he asked thickly. "Listen carefully to me, darling. I only wanted to invite Estelle to the party because she had seemed so despondent that night she called and asked to see me about her legal problems. I actually felt sorry for her that night and that was when I realized I had never really loved her in the first place. Estelle had always played on my sympathies. But when I drove her home that night, she made it clear that she wanted to pick up where we had left off years ago and I had a hard time trying to make her understand I didn't want her anymore."

  Leslie felt his shoulders shrug before he continued. "I guess I wasn't brutal enough, but then I didn't want to be. Like I said, I was feeling sorry for her, and in spite of what she had done to me in the past, I had no desire to hurt her. But after an awkward scene with her I went home and there you were, daring to question me about why I'd been so long after Dave had seemed to hang around you all evening. I'd been eaten up with jealousy and frustration over him and I guess I just lashed out to get back at you."

  "And that night after I got home from the trip and you came to find me at Patsy's?" she asked, lifting her head so that she could look into his face.

  Rod grinned impishly and ran a finger lightly down her cheek. "That night I was ready to murder both you and Dave. I don't know who I hated most. Estelle had come to my office unexpectedly that morning and suggested lunch and when I said I was going to the airport for you, she invited herself along. I spent a miserable lunch hour with her after you refused to join us, then I had that blasted meeting to delay me getting home to you that evening, and then when I did, you weren't there. When I found you at Patsy's with Dave, it seemed to me you just couldn't stay away from him, and I thought I had lost you altogether." He gave another little shrug. "It never occurred to me that he was hanging around Patsy!"

  Leslie giggled. "How silly of you, especially when she's so beautiful. The first time you two met I was so jealous I was ready to dump my lifetime friend, and I couldn't understand why at the time."

  "Were you, now?" he asked teasingly. "How interesting." He shook his head. "She may be fine for good old Dave," he said now, "but for myself, I'll take a sweet little minister's daughter who gets herself blackmailed any day."

  Leslie wrinkled her nose in distaste. "You would bring that up!"

  Rod's laugh was exultant. "Why not? It's the best thing that ever happened in my life. I think I halfway fell in love with you the night I saw you with Maddox and you were wearing that disgracefully seductive dress. It intrigued me no end… my prim Miss Foster! And then when you stood before me and showed me those pictures and said you were being blackmailed, the job was complete. Those photographs were so wanton and damning and yet you stood there looking so outraged, ashamed, innocent, and defiant all at once and showing that you needed me as one human being for another, well, that was it. I would like to have pulled you into my arms right then and there."

  "If that's true," Leslie asked curiously, "then why did you reject me when we were on our honeymoon? That night I…" Even now her face could redden at the memory of it.

  Rod grinned wryly. "Because I was a fool!" he said in a rough voice. "I thought you were merely offering yourself to me out of generosity, as a way of trying to ease my supposed pain over seeing Estelle at our wedding, and it made me furious. By then I knew that I wanted you very much, but I wanted you to want me, too. Later, that night in Miami when Aunt Lucy showed us to the same bedroom, my resolve to withstand temptation until you came to love me, too, simply flew out the window. There was no way"—his voice was coated with huskiness—"that I could sleep in the same bed with you and not touch you."

  Leslie smiled, stood on tiptoes, and briefly kissed his lips. "I was already in love with you by that time, silly," she told him fondly. "I think I fell a bit in love with you that day in the office, too. I remember thinking that, despite your anger with me, it was so wonderful to have someone capable and responsible like you to turn to in such a time. And later, when I thought it over, I realized you really didn't have to bail me out with the ransom money if they hadn't been caught."

  Rod frowned. "Why do you say that?"

  "Because those photographs could have been taken anywhere. There was nothing in them that could act
ually have proved they were taken in a room at the Castle."

  "So you figured that out, hmm?"

  "Yes, Mr. Castle, I did," she said pertly, "so stop glaring at me for discovering your soft spot and kiss me."

  He obligingly obeyed and it was some time before they drew apart again for air.

  "Oh, my goodness!" Leslie exclaimed. "I left Patsy's while Dave went out for the wine and I never even stopped to write a note. Maybe I'd better call Patsy and…"

  "Later," Rod murmured against her hair.

  "Rod?"

  "Hmm?"

  "They're being married at home. At Christmastime. By Dad. Do you suppose we could both…"

  "We'll talk about that later," he told her sternly. "And about going to the Bahamas after the wedding to spend a couple of weeks. We might even buy a bottle of champagne and go over to celebrate with Patsy and Dave tonight—but later."

  "And right now?" Leslie's eyes sparkled with a light of eager anticipation.

  For an answer, Rod scooped her up and carried her to the bed.

  There were no more shadows to cast darkness over their love, and as Rod came down beside her, Leslie opened her arms wide.