If I Can't Have You

by Patti Berg

  Slowly his face turned heavenward.

  Was he praying for help?

  She had to go to him. She had to.

  She took a step into the water, then another and another, but the surf fought every one of her movements. Her tennis shoes were being sucked up by the murky sand. Cold water bit at her skin, slapped at her shorts.

  She stroked the water away with her hands and arms and pushed herself deeper into the ocean. She was waist-deep. She was chilled to the bone. But she had to get to him.

  Water splashed about her as she neared him. She heard nothing but the sound of the waves and her heart beating hard and fast.

  She gripped his arm and his head jerked around. Dark brown eyes pierced hers. Swollen, bloodshot eyes—just like Trevor Montgomery’s in One More Tomorrow.

  She pushed her thoughts away, telling herself she’d help the man simply because he needed her; she wasn’t doing it because he bore such a strong resemblance to the man she’d idolized most of her life. No, she wasn’t that superficial. Or was she?

  Wind and water slapped at her face, and an unexpected wave knocked her off-balance. She slid below the surface as the undertow pulled at her feet and legs. She struggled against the current, but it was too strong. She choked on a mouthful of salt water; her sweater weighted her down.

  She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t get back to the surface. Oh, God. Was she going to die in her attempt to help a stranger?

  Fear pulsed through her veins until she felt strong hands around her waist. The same strong hands she’d felt hurting her wrists. Was he going to help her? Or hold her down?

  Suddenly she felt air against her cheeks. She was able to breathe, and she spit out water and gasped for oxygen as he pulled her against him. Once more their chests met, their eyes. Once more she struggled to free herself, but he held on tight.

  Salt water streaked his face; it slicked back his hair. His dark eyes bore into hers with more intensity than she’d ever seen in a man. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t.

  She knew those eyes. They’d stared at her from a movie screen, from her television, from books. They were Trevor Montgomery’s eyes.

  And those lips. She’d seen close-ups of them just before Trevor had kissed his leading lady.

  Trevor Montgomery’s lips and eyes had made millions of women swoon, and right now they were making it difficult for her to breathe.

  She wanted to look into those eyes forever. She wanted to be kissed by those lips.

  No! She wanted to be kissed by Trevor—not this stranger.

  She struggled again, but he wrapped one arm about her waist and pulled her even closer. His free hand smoothed wet strands of hair from her cheeks, and he kissed her. Softly, oh so softly.

  She didn’t want to like it—but she did, even though he tasted of salt water and whiskey. She liked the way his body pressed against hers, the hardness of his chest, the strength of his arms, the touch of his fingers on her neck. She liked....

  My God! What was she doing? This kiss was wrong. Her thoughts were wrong. The man was unbalanced, mad.

  Suddenly the softness of his kiss turned to passion. His lips were hard against hers, his whiskers scratched at her face. He was holding her tight, tighter.

  She wanted to get away.

  This was wrong. So very wrong.

  She pressed her hands against his chest, trying to push him away, but the kiss intensified. This had to stop. It had to.

  Without another thought, she slapped the side of his head.

  He jerked back. His breathing was short and raspy. His eyes were redder than before, full of fear, sadness.

  He didn’t look at all like Trevor Montgomery.

  She had to get away. She’d made a big mistake coming out here, thinking, she could help. How could she forget that he was mad, that he’d tried to hurt her?

  Her father had been right about men. Why did she continually forget?

  Pushing away, she struggled for shore, her heavy, water-laden sweater dragging against her as the waves battered her back and forth.

  It seemed an eternity before she reached the beach. She’d lost one shoe in the surf, the other slogged as she ran toward the stairs. Had she escaped? Was she free of the man she never should have gone to?

  She screamed when a hand clutched her arm and spun her around. Dark brown eyes pierced hers.

  He was gasping for breath, his brow was furrowed with pain and too many other emotions she didn’t want to see.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his chest rising and falling heavily as he spoke. “I don’t know what came over me.

  Adriana pulled out of his grasp and stepped back a few feet. “Don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me.”

  He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Why did you come out here?”

  Adriana looked away. She couldn’t bear looking into his tortured eyes. She took a few steadying breaths, trying to remember why she’d wanted to help when it was such an insane idea. “Maybe I’m just as crazy as you are,” she muttered, more to herself than in answer to his question.

  “I’m not crazy,” he whispered, “but everything around me is.” He stepped into her line of vision and looked at her once more with eyes that yearned for understanding. “My life, even the world as I knew it, is gone.”

  Maybe he’d been hurt. Maybe he had amnesia. There had to be some logical explanation for his actions. She tried to stay calm, tried to think and talk rationally. “Were you in an accident? You could have a concussion,” she stated, looking for any signs of injury.

  Slowly he shook his head. “When I woke up yesterday it was 1938. Suddenly it’s 1998 and I haven’t aged a day. Ask me any questions you want about the twenties and thirties and I can answer them. Ask me something about the forties, even this decade, and I can’t tell you a thing.” He turned away from Adriana and looked toward the ocean. “I’m not mixed up. I’ve just somehow skipped the last sixty years of my life.”

  Adriana moved to his side. She started to put a comforting hand on his arm, then drew away. “I know a good psychiatrist...”

  “No doctor in his right mind would believe what I have to say. How could they, when you don’t even believe me.”

  “Why should I believe your story? You broke into my house—”

  “You drove me here from Sparta,” he interrupted. “I was in the backseat of the Duesenberg.”

  “That’s not possible. I would have seen you.”

  “I hid under a yellow-and-green blanket in the backseat. Before leaving Sparta, you kissed a man good-bye. When you went to bed, you watched Captain Caribe.”

  How could he possibly know about that, unless he’d been in her room? She backed away slowly, wondering if he’d been watching her all evening.

  “Don’t be frightened of me, please,” he begged. “I’m not going to hurt you. I told you that before.”

  Adriana rubbed her wrists lightly. “You’ve already hurt me.”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “You could do it again.”

  “I won’t. Please. Believe me.”

  Adriana did believe him, but she didn’t understand why. Still, she wanted him safely away from her. “Isn’t there somewhere you could go? Family? Friends?”

  “I left them all behind more than half a century ago.”

  Adriana frowned at his words. Was he going to keep up that story forever? “What do you want from me?”

  He smiled softly. “Let me stay with you.”

  “No!”

  “Just a few days. That’s all. I won’t hurt you. I won’t even touch you. Just give me a chance to make you believe.”

  “I can’t,” Adriana said, shaking her head. “You frighten me.”

  The smile disappeared from his face, and that haunted, lonely look returned. “I frighten myself, too.”

  He reached out as if he was going to caress her cheek, then shoved his fingers through his hair instead. “You came into the water to help me. Help me, again. Please.�
��

  Adriana turned away. She couldn’t stand to look at his smile. She couldn’t stand to see his fear. He claimed to be Trevor Montgomery, which was the most insane story she’d ever heard.

  He couldn’t be Trevor Montgomery. He couldn’t.

  He was a crazy man begging for aid.

  She, unfortunately, was the crazy woman who was going to help.

  oOo

  Through her partially opened bedroom door Adriana watched the stranger in the room across the hall. He sat on the edge of the bed in the guest room with his elbows balanced on his knees. His chin rested on the backs of his knuckles. Pain, uncertainty, and maybe a touch of fright radiated around him. Adriana wished she could help, but tonight her thoughts were too mixed up. All she’d been able to do was make him coffee and a sandwich, which she’d left unceremoniously on top of the dresser. They hadn’t even talked when they walked up from the beach, she at least twenty paces ahead of him.

  He hadn’t touched the sandwich. He’d ignored the coffee.

  He’d asked for more whiskey when Adriana had taken the tray to the guest room, but she’d ignored his request.

  He needed to sober up. He needed to remember his name. And she needed to help him find somewhere else to stay. One night in her house was all she’d give him. Tomorrow he’d have to go.

  Slowly he tilted his head and looked at her with those swollen red eyes. “Thank you,” he whispered, and she saw the trace of a smile touch his lips.

  She should go in and talk to him. She should make him eat the sandwich and drink the coffee. Instead, she closed her door and leaned against it, listening for movement in the guest room, any sounds in the hall. For several long minutes she heard nothing. Finally she heard the slight creak of bedsprings and silence again.

  She hoped he’d go to sleep.

  She hoped he’d be gone in the morning.

  She hoped she’d be able to sleep herself, but how could she with that tormented stranger in her house?

  She must be mad to have allowed him to stay.

  Locking her bedroom door, she slipped out of her still-wet shorts and sweater and into a nightgown. The sheets were warm and inviting when she slid into bed, but sleep wouldn’t come when she turned off the light.

  She thought of the stranger. She saw his familiar profile, the cleft in his chin, the strong jaw, and the radiant black hair with a strand that continually fell over his brow.

  Trevor Montgomery’s profile. Trevor’s cleft, and jaw, and hair. How many movies had she seen where Trevor Montgomery brushed a strand of hair from his brow? Every one. It was one of his trademarks.

  But it wasn’t possible. Trevor Montgomery would be much, much older.

  Trevor Montgomery was probably dead.

  She drowsed in and out of sleep, tossing and turning. Dreams came in bits and pieces, and suddenly she was fifteen again and inside the toolshed, hidden so well behind tall rhododendrons. Robbie, the young gardener she’d had a crush on, was with her, brushing grass clippings from his jeans, pulling his T-shirt over his head. He kissed her nose, then pressed her against the wall.

  “Your father won’t find us in here, I promise.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I won’t let anyone hurt you, Adriana, especially your father.”

  “You make him sound so horrid. He’s not, Robbie. He just wants me to do what’s right.”

  Robbie smiled as he gently touched her cheeks. “I want you to do what’s right, too.”

  He kissed her. So sweet. So tender. His fingers brushed over her white cotton blouse, nimbly unfastening one button and then another. He touched the warm skin of her stomach, and slowly found his way to her bra.

  The door burst open and slammed against the wall. “What’s going on in here?”

  “Nothing, Daddy.”

  Her father’s long, skinny fingers captured her wrist, and he jerked her away from Robbie. “Didn’t I tell you to stay away from that boy?”

  Adriana jolted awake, but the dream was too vivid, her father’s words and her own still filling her mind.

  “It was only a kiss, Daddy.”

  He’d laughed, and even now her memory held the smell of gin on his breath. “Why should I believe you, girl? Why should I trust you? You’ve disobeyed and dishonored me your entire life.”

  “I won’t do it again. I promise.”

  A tear slid down her cheek and she wiped it away. She didn’t want to think about that promise that she’d failed to keep. She didn’t want to think about crazy intruders, or nosy photographers, or gossip. All she wanted to do was slide back into her make-believe world, where life was so much sweeter.

  She wanted pleasant dreams of a pirate swinging from a yardarm, or a man in a tux plucking a rose for his love.

  Turning on to her side, she nestled into her pillow and hoped those blissful thoughts would lull her back to sleep.

  oOo

  The coffee was cold, but it was strong and sobering, and with any luck it would keep him awake. He didn’t want to go back to sleep and relive the nightmare. The sight of Carole’s bludgeoned body, the pain of knowing she’d died so violently, was far worse than the horror he was living through now.

  Trevor breathed in the scent of cool ocean breeze whispering through the open kitchen window, and thought instead about the woman in his bed, about the fact that it was 1998 even though his brain screamed out to him that that couldn’t be true.

  He wished he was back in 1938. He wished that he’d done everything differently on the third of July—like spending the evening with Janet Julian instead of going home with Carole Sinclair. If only he could go back. He’d do things differently.

  He took another deep breath and set the empty cup on the kitchen counter. Absently, he opened one of the cabinets and took out the spare bedroom key from the rack he’d installed a few months back.

  Suddenly he laughed. The woman in his house hadn’t moved the rack, hadn’t taken out the keys, had changed hardly a thing in sixty years. He didn’t understand her any more than he understood what was happening to him.

  But he wanted to see her again, and the only thing that kept them apart was that she’d locked him out of her room.

  Leaving the kitchen, he walked down the hallway and leaned close to her door. He listened for sound, for any movement within. When he heard nothing, he quietly turned the key in the lock and stepped just a foot inside and watched her sleep. Her blond hair feathered over her pillow, surrounding her head like a halo. She was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen, and he’d seen a hell of a lot of beautiful creatures.

  At one time tonight he’d thought she was an angel. Later he decided she was the devil in disguise, taunting him at the gates to hell. Now, sober again, he realized she was an angel. God knows only an angel would take him in and give him shelter.

  He didn’t deserve it. He was a drunk, although he’d admit it to no one but himself. He’d shoved her against a wall. He’d bruised her wrists. He’d tried to make love to her in the middle of the ocean, wanting to know how good she felt, wanting something sweet to distract him, to help him escape his pain.

  Instead, he’d agonized over what he’d done, and now he felt like hell.

  It was nothing new. He’d felt that way quite a few times in the past twenty years. He’d never admit that to anyone, either.

  He walked softly toward the bed and in the first light of morning he could see her eyes fluttering rapidly beneath tightly closed eyelids. She frowned, a deep crease furrowing her brow. Were her dreams haunted, too?

  She rolled onto her side and a lock of straight blond hair fell over her eyes. As if by instinct, Trevor slid a finger under the strands and curled it around her ear.

  So soft. So very, very soft.

  She’d made up a story and saved his worthless hide when she should have had him arrested. She’d rushed into the ocean to save him. He hadn’t planned on committing suicide that time, he only wanted to cool off. But she’d come for him all the sam
e. She’d made him coffee, a sandwich, and she’d stood just inside her bedroom and watched him as if she cared.

  She was special, not like the women he’d known before. Caring rather than self-indulgent. Vulnerable instead of tough. Fragile, where too many others had been hard and hadn’t given a damn—any more than he had. He’d never known anyone like her, and he hoped he knew how to treat her the way she deserved.

  oOo

  Daylight beamed through the curtains, slashing across Adriana’s face. She rubbed her eyes, yawned deeply, and stretched. Morning had come far too soon.

  Cracking open one eyelid, she peered at the clock. Eight o’clock. Maybe she’d just go back to sleep and try to have pleasanter dreams. Last night’s sleep had been fraught with too many nightmares, like intruders in the house, and the police coming in the middle of the night.

  She rubbed her eyes again and saw the bruises on her wrists. Suddenly she remembered, last night hadn’t been a dream at all.

  “Good morning.”

  Bolting up in the bed, she saw the stranger standing in the open doorway with a tray in his hands.

  Adriana dragged the sheet over her chest, feeling terribly naked in his presence even though she’d worn a more revealing gown last night.

  “How did you get in here?” she asked. “I locked the door.”

  He smiled. The same smile she’d seen in peaceful dreams, in books, on her TV screen.

  “I keep a spare key in the kitchen cupboard... right behind the coffee mugs. You never moved it. You haven’t changed much else since I went away, either.”

  Since he went away! He hadn’t been gone sixty years, she tried convincing herself. He’d just drunk too much and lost his mind.

  He was right, though. She hadn’t changed what had once been Trevor Montgomery’s. She’d had no reason to believe Trevor would ever return, but each thing was a part of him, and it seemed an easy way to help keep his memory fresh and alive.

  But no one else knew about that camouflaged key holder. She’d found it by accident. How could this stranger have known? Easy, she told herself. He’d stumbled across it when he took out the coffee mugs.