by Patti Berg
She smiled sweetly, trying her hardest to make the officer believe. She’d seen so many movies, surely she could draw on the acting talents of hundreds of stars to make her story sound believable.
For one brief moment she wondered if she was doing the right thing, but she glanced at the stranger again, at his hauntingly familiar brown eyes, and knew she couldn’t turn him in.
“I know I shouldn’t indulge him,” she continued, “but when he’s in this condition he’s afraid to go home to face his wife. It’s not the first time this has happened. The last time I wasn’t home, so I gave him a key, just in case it happened again.”
She was talking too fast. Slow down, she told herself, or the officer will sense your lie.
“He says he knocked, but all I heard was someone wandering around out here. When I thought there might be an intruder, I called 9-1-1.”
“You don’t mind having a drunk in the house?” the officer asked, frowning as he looked at the stranger.
“I mind, but he’s a friend.”
The officer raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You’re sure?”
She nodded, hoping she’d put on a good enough show.
He looked at her arms again, his gaze trailing all the way down to her hands. “What about your wrists? Did he do that?”
He had, and he might do it again. No, she told herself. He won’t do it again. She’d seen the horror in his eyes when he’d pushed her against the wall. He’d been frightened, just as she was frightened.
“I was wrestling with a friend,” she answered, trying to laugh it off. “We got a little carried away.”
The officer grunted out a laugh and shook his head in frustration. He poised his pen over his clipboard. “I need a few details for the record.”
“This information isn’t given to the newspapers, is it?”
“They’ve got access to it.”
“Names, too?”
“It’s just a log of incidents. No names at all, but I suggest you and your friend here play a little less rough in the future. Then you don’t need to worry about calling for help or having people you don’t want to know find out.”
Trevor quietly watched the scene playing out across the room. Warner Bros. would pay a mint to have someone with that woman’s acting skills on contract. She was doing a damn fine job deceiving the officer but, hell, couldn’t he see the fear deep in her eyes?
Trevor saw it plain and clear, and couldn’t help but wonder why she was making up stories about what had happened when she seemed so frightened. Why didn’t she have him arrested? He deserved it, considering the way he’d pushed her against the wall.
He looked across the room, watching her gently massage the redness around her wrists. They’d be black-and-blue tomorrow. God, she didn’t deserve what he’d done to her any more than he deserved her help.
He finished his whiskey, keeping his head tilted toward his glass, hoping no questions would be directed at him, but his concentration and gaze remained fixed on the woman and the policeman.
Too many minutes dragged by as she answered questions. He suffered the brutal looks from the officer, and, finally, the woman closed the door when the policeman departed.
Silence stood between them for long moments until the headlights backed away and disappeared.
“I’ve helped you all I can,” the woman said, her hand still wrapped around the door knob. “Leave. Please.”
“And where do you propose I go?” Trevor walked to the bar and leaned against the polished wood to steady himself. “This is the only home I have.”
“It’s my home,’ she corrected.
“Of course. I’d almost forgotten,” he said sarcastically. Hell, why didn’t he just apologize to her and leave?
He filled his glass again and raised it to his lips. This time his fingers trembled on their own. He tried to steady his hand. He’d never shaken before; not like this.
The tremors were bad, but even worse was the way the woman stared at him. He wasn’t a drunk. This wasn’t delirium. Some hellish thing was happening.
He slammed the glass on, the bar, and it shattered, spraying shards of glass and amber liquid over his hand, the shrunken length of his sleeve, his unbuttoned jacket, and wrinkled shirt.
He felt the sting and stared at the trickle of blood on his fingers, grabbed the towel from the bar, and gripped it tightly to stop the flow.
Looking up, he saw the woman’s frightened eyes. He wanted to grab her, hold her, tell her he wasn’t a madman. He wanted her to believe him because maybe, if she believed, he might believe he was sane, too.
He plowed his fingers through his hair, then turned around and looked at his own bloodshot eyes in the mirror over the bar. His cheeks were hollow, his chin and jaw coated in heavy black whiskers. The circle of skin below each eye was dark and swollen, his face red and blotchy.
Dear, God! What had happened to the Trevor Montgomery he normally saw in the mirror?
Turning slowly, he looked at the woman at the door and took a deep breath. “I have no memories of your time, your present,” he said in a low, hesitant voice. “Apparently I have no home any longer, and if the things I read in that book are true, I doubt I have any friends.”
She opened the door wider. “I think you’d better go.”
He had no energy to argue. It wouldn’t do any good, anyway. She’d already formed an opinion about him, and she wasn’t about to change her mind.
He grabbed a full decanter of whiskey and walked toward the woman, hoping she would offer some sympathy, a helping hand, or at least ask him to stay. He needed someone to talk to, someone to help make sense of this lunacy happening around him. He needed to stay in his own home, the only place that still seemed sane.
But she did nothing but step back and give him plenty of room to walk through the door.
Trevor stopped at the threshold. “I wanted to die,” he said, looking into her eyes that held many emotions, especially contempt. “I would have, too, but something went wrong. I don’t know how. I don’t know why.” He looked past her to the inside of his house one last time. “Thank you for not telling the officer about me.”
“I didn’t do it for you. I did it for me,” she said. “What was I supposed to do, tell him you’re Trevor Montgomery?” She laughed lightly. “He would have thought I was crazy.”
Trevor smiled, shaking his head. “I’m the one who’s crazy. Not you.”
“Please leave,” she repeated.
He owed her his freedom. The least he could do was grant her request, although he had no idea where he’d go.
“I’m sorry for what happened,” he said as he stood in the doorway.
She didn’t acknowledge him, though, she just looked over his shoulder and out at the night sky.
He smiled softly and stepped through the door. She closed it tightly, and he could hear the sounds of bolts and chains locking him out of the only place where he had thought he might be safe.
oOo
Leaning against the door, Adriana stared across the room to the bar where the intruder had stood, drinking her whiskey, gazing at her with bloodshot eyes that looked vaguely familiar.
He’d implied that he was Trevor Montgomery. She didn’t believe it. It wasn’t possible, but the stranger had sounded like someone she knew.
Was it the fear of photographers and having her picture in the papers that had kept her from turning him in, or was it the familiar voice and eyes?
Any other man—or a man who’d had a so-so smile and dull, boring eyes—who had broken into her house, shoved her against a wall, bruised her wrists, or made her think she was going to die would have been on the way to jail by now.
She supposed her intruder should have been on his way there, too.
How could she have let her fear of gossip and those piercing brown eyes that begged for help keep her from telling the truth?
She pressed her fingers to her temples, confusion making her head ache.
It wasn’t just the
fear of photographers, or his eyes or voice that had made her lie. It was the disheveled hair and that one single lock that hung over his forehead in spite of the many times he’d brushed it back with his fingers. She’d seen Trevor Montgomery practice that gesture again and again in the movies.
What was she thinking? The intruder didn’t look like Trevor—not at all like the man she’d idolized, the man whose flawless features had graced the movie screen.
Trevor Montgomery would never have worn a rumpled white dinner jacket, or been attired in clothing at least a size too small.
Trevor Montgomery would never have hurt her, either.
She should have turned him in. If he came back, if he touched her again, she’d call Stewart and let him deal with the intruder. There had to be some way to keep him away from her and keep her safe from the press, too.
She crossed the room, sweeping the bloodstained towel and broken pieces of glass from the bar into a wicker trash basket, taking the decanter he’d emptied into the kitchen.
Flipping on the light over the sink, she turned on the hot water and shoved her icy hands under the stream. But not even the heat could take away the trembling in her fingers.
She meticulously scrubbed the crystal with dish soap, took a linen towel from a drawer and dried it till it sparkled. She wiped away all traces of the man, wanting to forget he’d ever been in her house.
She turned off the light, and through the window she saw him standing near the garage. He held the decanter he’d taken with him in one hand. His other hand was tucked into his pants pocket. He was gazing toward the window. Had he been watching while the light was on? He couldn’t see her now, not in the dark, but she could see him clearly. His familiar stance. A well-known profile when he turned from the window and looked toward the ocean.
She watched as he tilted the decanter to his lips and took a drink. How could he continue to drink that way? How could he possibly stand? That container had been full when he’d left the house, and he’d downed part of another while he’d been inside.
Rumor had it that Trevor Montgomery drank hard liquor every night—all night. Rumor had it, too, that no one had ever seen him pass out, and that he’d always been the first to show up on the movie set in the morning. He may have had a drinking problem, but it hadn’t interfered with his work.
He was a consummate professional. Every book, every old friend had said the same thing.
The man standing outside couldn’t possibly be Trevor Montgomery. Yet, beneath the whiskers, behind the bloodshot eyes, was a familiar face. He’d spoken few words, but his tone had the same resonant qualities as Trevor’s—part British, part upper-crust Chicago with a touch of bad-boy charm thrown in when he laughed.
And that smile. How could she possibly turn him in after she’d seen that smile? She’d seen it so many times in the movies. It was Trevor’s smile.
But there was no way Trevor Montgomery could disappear on July 4,1938, and turn up in her living room on July 5,1998—without aging a day.
She set the decanter on the counter instead of returning it to its rightful place at the bar, and watched the man for just a few more moments.
The Trevor Montgomery she’d imagined, heard about, and studied in pictures had been more self-assured. He’d stood a little straighter, laughed and smiled more.
Adriana touched her reddened wrists. They’d be bruised tomorrow. She’d seen dozens of movies starring Trevor Montgomery, and never, not even once, had he ever hurt a woman.
But that was in the movies, where life went according to script. Maybe she didn’t know as much about his real life as she’d always imagined.
The man outside might bear some resemblance to Trevor Montgomery—like the model she’d seen at Sparta—but they definitely weren’t one and the same. Besides, if Trevor Montgomery were still alive, he’d be over ninety years old. The man standing outside couldn’t be much more than forty.
The man outside was a stranger, an intruder, and Adriana planned to put him out of her mind.
But she couldn’t, not with him staring at the window where she stood.
She continued to watch as he took another swig of liquor, ran his fingers through his hair, and walked across the lawn toward the sea. He could walk for miles once he got to the beach. Maybe an early-morning fisherman would find him and take him in. Maybe the police would find him, think he was a vagrant, and arrest him for being drunk in public.
It didn’t really matter anymore what happened to him. He was gone. Let him be someone else’s problem. Adriana didn’t want to be tortured by her nagging thoughts about him any longer.
She went to her bedroom and climbed back into bed, but the stranger didn’t leave her thoughts. She leaned into the pillows, and looked at the videotapes on the shelf next to her TV. The Scarlet Coast and Treasure By Night, two of the pirate movies that had made Trevor Montgomery a star, the dashing, daring hero who stole the hearts of millions. The man outside couldn’t possibly be the man she’d watched so many times.
Scanning other titles, she stopped at One More Tomorrow, the movie Trevor had won an Oscar for, the film glorified by the critics, and shunned by moviegoers because they didn’t like the image portrayed by their favorite star.
Adriana climbed from bed, removed Captain Caribe from the VCR and replaced it with One More Tomorrow. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she fast-forwarded to the scene where an alcoholic Trevor begged forgiveness from the woman he loved. His eyes were bloodshot following a week-long binge, his hair disheveled, his clothing rumpled. His face was darkened with a stubble of beard and swollen circles surrounded his reddened eyes.
She froze the frame on her screen and studied the man who’d been glamorous in every other film.
There was nothing glamorous at all about a drunken Trevor. He looked totally different. He looked like a man in pain, in distress. He looked like a man who needed help.
He looked like the intruder.
She didn’t want to believe it. She couldn’t. But in spite of her fears, something about the man made her feel compassion.
Stopping the tape, Adriana stepped into a pair of shorts and tennis shoes, and pulled a baggy sweater over her head. She didn’t believe the man outside was Trevor Montgomery. She didn’t know what she believed, but she knew if she ignored him, she’d always wonder about the truth.
The man could be a liar. He could be a fake, a look-alike wanting to capitalize on the mystery surrounding Trevor Montgomery.
At the moment, she’d rather believe either of those things than to believe that Trevor Montgomery might have traveled through time.
Chapter 4
Adriana stood at the top of the twisting wooden stairs, searching the beach below for the man who’d invaded her home and her thoughts. She tried to push aside the fact that he’d hurt her; instead, she remembered how incredibly lonesome he’d looked when he’d walked out the door. He’d looked lost. He’d looked like a man who had no reason to live. He’d even told her he wanted to die. She’d never felt compelled to take in strays or interfere in other people’s lives, but if his body washed up on the shore the next morning, she’d feel guilty for not attempting to help.
When the moon peeked out from behind a cloud, she saw him standing where the waves gently lapped on the shore. His arms were hanging limp at his sides, one hand still gripping the decanter. He frightened her, but she couldn’t let him stay down there alone. Maybe she could get him to a hospital, to a psychiatrist, to someone who could help.
She also wanted another opportunity to look at his face, to see his smile. As much as she didn’t want to believe it, there were some startling similarities between this man and Trevor Montgomery. The ebony color of his hair; the lock that fell over his brow. There was that distinctive cleft in his chin. And that smile. Trevor Montgomery’s smile had warmed many of her lonely nights; the intruder’s smile—she hated to think it—could easily do the same.
If he hadn’t smiled at her, if she hadn’t seen his eyes or h
eard his voice, he might be locked up now, and she’d be safe in bed.
Instead, she was thinking of doing the craziest thing she’d ever done in her life—helping a madman.
A cool breeze teased her hair as she climbed down the steps leading from the edge of her lawn to the beach below. With each step she asked herself why she was letting herself get involved. She liked her solitude; she didn’t like getting mixed up in other people’s business; she despised drunks.
The man walking into the water was different, though—she didn’t know how or why, but he seemed to need her. He obviously didn’t have anyone else.
She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked at the man who now stood knee-deep in water. She looked at the whiskey decanter in his hand, at his disheveled clothes. He was a drunk; possibly a vagrant or someone poor and down on his luck.
He was everything her father had told her to hate.
But this man needed her, and she wanted to be needed.
Stars twinkled overhead and the bright moon cast a glow across the sea. Adriana walked to where the tide left a trail of foam on the beach and rubbed her arms for warmth while she watched the stranger.
He tilted the bottle to his mouth and drank. When he was done, his arm dropped lifelessly to his side, and the crystal container slipped from his fingers into the water. It bobbed up and down a time or two, then drifted off with an outgoing wave.
He was a picture of desolation with his shoulders sagging, his head bent. She knew he was suffering; knew he was confused.
He stepped farther into the sea, and the water lapped at his thighs. Adriana froze in place. She should go to him; stop him from trying to end his life—if that’s what he planned.
A wave splashed over her feet, trying to pull her with it as it rolled back out to the sea, urging her toward the stranger.
He walked farther into the ocean. Water splashed against his hips and his coat floated on the surface, twisting about him as each wave rolled in and out.