by Patti Berg
“Take a bath. Clean up. I’ll make my judgment then.” She skirted past him, through the living room, the dining room, and into the kitchen. She dumped her bag and purse on the table, dropped her sunglasses there, too, and unwrapped the scarf from her head.
Without looking back to see if he’d followed or gone to the guest room to clean up, she busied herself by looking into the refrigerator, anything to take her mind off the man who agitated her. But he didn’t leave her thoughts, or her side.
He leaned against the counter next to the icebox, folding his arms over his chest. “I’ve already looked,” he said, staring down at her as she studied the spare glass shelves. “There’s nothing much to eat in there. I was hoping for bacon and eggs. A steak maybe.” He glanced at her body again, then back at her eyes. “It’s easy to see why you stay so thin.”
She slammed the refrigerator and backed across the room. “I don’t need to be interrogated on my comings and goings, and my eating habits are no one’s business but my own.”
He didn’t flinch at her words, just continued to smile, casually studying her as she opened and slammed more cabinets.
“Don’t you have something better to do than stare at me?” she asked.
“Better? No, I can’t think of anything.”
She slammed another cabinet. “Just take a shower, okay?”
He grinned, obviously delighted by her discomfort and rapidly building anger. “Since I’m going to be staying a while—”
“You’re not,” she tossed back quickly.
“On the off chance you decide to change your mind, perhaps you would consent to purchasing some real food.”
Adriana turned away from his insufferable grin, and stared out the kitchen window. “I’ll think about it.”
“Some cigarettes maybe?”
“Anything else?” Exasperation rang out in her words, and she wished with all her heart that he’d leave the room so her nerves would calm.
“No. Not right this moment.”
“Good. Then take a shower.”
Laughter filled his voice as he spoke. “Your wish is my command, fair lady.”
In the window she could see his reflection, his courtly bow, and his back as he walked out the door. She took a deep breath, willing some sense of normalcy to return. Instead, the room felt empty, and loneliness overwhelmed her.
oOo
Adriana stared out the kitchen window for the longest time, thinking about the intruder’s winks, his grins, his smiles. Why did he have to be so charming?
She pushed those thoughts aside and remembered the lecture she’d given herself on the drive home from Encino. Don’t let him pull the wool over your eyes. Don’t fall for his smile. Don’t fall for his game. Get him help and get him out of your house. It seemed the only way she could do any of those things was to be rude and disagreeable. Unfortunately, he’d seen through her little charade. Why had he made her smile? Her smile, her laughter, slight though it was, had spoiled everything she’d tried to accomplish.
She heard the bedroom door open at the end of the hall and the intruder whistling some old tune as he walked toward the kitchen. She prepared herself not to smile, not to fall into his seductive trap, but her breath caught in her throat when he stepped through the door wearing nothing but the black Levi’s she’d bought him, guessing at his size, and a fluffy white towel draped over one shoulder.
His chest and arms were bronzed from hours in the sun, his shoulders broad, his arms lean and muscular as though they’d been made to carry women in distress. She had to fight her raging desire to reach out and touch the flat, smooth planes of his stomach and the contours of his chest to see if they were as hard and strong as they appeared.
Instead, she put her hands behind her and braced herself by gripping the edge of the counter and forcing herself to look from his beautiful body to his beautiful eyes. Doing so didn’t give her much reprieve from the uncommon longing she felt.
“You look... clean,” she said. It was the most noncommittal and unwitty thing she could think of, and she hoped it would wipe the silly grin from his face, the one he’d been wearing the entire time she’d stared at his body.
“I also look and feel extremely uncomfortable,” he said, tugging on the waistband of the jeans. “Is this your idea of a joke? I can’t breathe.”
“That’s the idea,” she said, forcing back a grin of her own as she turned again to the counter and the salad she’d been making.
“What am I supposed to do, walk around with the top two buttons unfastened?”
She hoped not. Then, again... She pushed her indecent thought away. “They’ll stretch.”
“And I’ll have to eat nothing but rabbit food until they do.”
He leaned over her shoulder and plucked a cherry tomato from the cutting board, popped it into his mouth, then leaned on the cabinet and watched her work.
“Anyone ever tell you you’re pretty?” he asked after he licked his fingers.
Adriana’s gaze darted to his smile for just a moment, then she hacked at a cucumber and concentrated on her resolve to ignore him. But she couldn’t ignore the fresh scent of the shaving cream or the muskiness of the cologne she’d bought him. Nor could she disregard the warmth emanating from the close proximity of his body.
Get away from him, she told herself. Far away.
She threw the cucumbers into a bowl, right on top of the lettuce, the tomatoes, and celery, tossed it a time or two with wooden tongs, and carried it to the table.
Sitting down, she unceremoniously spooned salad onto his plate and some onto hers, then dug in. She was bound and determined to keep her eyes off his half-naked body.
“Do I bother you?” he asked, when he sat down across from her.
Adriana’s gaze flickered up to his face, and once more she nearly lost her breath. He was cleanly shaved, except for the trace of a pencil-thin mustache. Ebony hair that had gone every which way earlier had been slicked back and parted neatly on the left. Of course, that one unruly strand still hung over his brow.
He was much too handsome for anyone’s good, especially hers.
Yes, he bothered her. Much, much too much.
She stabbed a slice of cucumber and tried to avoid his stare, but he was leaning over the table, watching her instead of eating his food.
‘I do bother you, don’t I?”
“Yes!”
She stood and paced the floor, sneaking glimpses of the man at her table every time she turned. The redness had dimmed in his eyes; the circles below them weren’t nearly as dark.
As much as she hated to think it, he looked exactly like Trevor Montgomery. He had that same dark, smoldering glare that had set millions of hearts aflame, the same cleft in his chin, the same dimple just to the right of his lips when he smiled.
“If you’d bought me a shirt, I wouldn’t have had to come to the table half-naked” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “Maybe then the sight of me wouldn’t be bothering you so much.”
“But I did buy you a shirt,” she stammered. How could he possibly think she wanted to see him naked? “Maybe I left it in the car?”
“Maybe you did that on purpose because, just maybe, you did want to see me half-naked?”
Adriana sighed as she shook her head. “I have no desire whatsoever to see you naked. Stay here. I’ll go look.”
He captured her hand before she could leave the room. “Eat your dinner, Adriana. You were kind enough to buy the clothes, the least I can do is find them and wear them.”
“You don’t have to wear them...” she blurted out before she realized what she was saying.
Trevor laughed softly. “We’ll never have a decent conversation if I don’t.”
He slid his chair back and pulled the towel from his shoulder as he walked out the kitchen door.
Once more Adriana’s breath caught in her throat. She couldn’t take her gaze off his strong, bronzed back, for racing over his shoulder blade were five very distinct, very red
claw marks. What had Janet Julian said? I wanted him to be tough like Cagney, so I scratched him.
Absently she moved from the table and stood at the door, watching him walk toward the car. The scratches could have been made by a cat. No! They were much too wide. They could have been made by any lover. Surely this man had women in his life. He was too handsome, too charming, too... too perfect not to have a woman—plenty of them, in fact.
Surely the scratches hadn’t been made by Janet Julian sixty years ago.
He smiled at her as he walked back to the house. The dimple to the right of his lips was there as clear as day. His brown eyes smoldered. Just like...
No, he couldn’t possibly be Trevor Montgomery.
He stood next to her in the doorway, so close she could hear him breathing, could sense the rapid beat of his heart. Or was it her own breathing? Her own heart? Both were totally out of control.
“You’re not eating,” he said.
“I lost my appetite.”
“We can’t let that happen too often. Eating’s one of the finer things in life. Maybe I can teach you how to enjoy it.”
“No one else ever has.”
“I can teach you many things, Adriana, if you’ll give me half a chance.”
“You won’t be here long enough.” she said abruptly, and saw a touch of apprehension mar his smile.
“No matter.” He tightened his fingers around the bag and headed down the hall. “Won’t take me a minute to finish dressing. Save a bite of that salad for me. It’s not much, but I’m starving.”
Crossing to the refrigerator, she absentmindedly opened the door, searching for some nonexistent thing she could add to the stranger’s meal. She didn’t want to think about salad, or food, or the thought that he might be Trevor Montgomery.
She took out a slab of nonfat cheese, unwrapped the plastic, and sliced a few hunks. She found an apple, a breadstick, placed everything on a plate and set it next to his salad.
She seemed to be moving as if she had no will of her own. All she could think of were those marks on his back and Janet Julian’s words. “I scratched him.”
The stranger walked back into the room with a white oxford shirt tucked neatly into his trousers and the cuffs rolled halfway up his forearms. He was still barefoot, he was still smiling, his eyes still smoldered. He was a picture of perfection.
Could he really be Trevor Montgomery?
“I have something for you,” he said, and pulled a hand out from behind his back.
Oh, God! Adriana’s heart raced. The man was holding a bedraggled rose, a red rose like the one she’d kissed just before she’d wished that Trevor would come back. She didn’t have roses like that in her yard.
“I found this floating in the Poseidon Pool at Sparta,” he said. “I have the feeling someone might have thrown it in.” One dark eyebrow raised in question. “I was wondering if it might have been you?”
She felt weak. A cold chill swept through her body. Her head spun.
She felt dizzy.
And suddenly everything around her faded to black.
Chapter 7
The darkness lasted for only a moment. Adriana remembered the weakness that had flashed through her body and turned her muscles and bones to mush. She remembered the shiver of shock that raced up her spine as lights twinkled before her eyes, and she remembered everything turning black. She didn’t remember falling, though, or Trevor Montgomery—the Trevor Montgomery—kneeling on the floor to cradle her head in his lap.
“Feeling any better?” he asked in that deep, warm voice she knew so well. It was a voice she’d heard so many times in the movies he’d made a long time before she was born.
Taking a deep breath, she struggled to sit up, but he held her close, smoothing warm fingers over her cool cheeks and brow.
“Did I faint?”
He nodded, and the smile she remembered from those very same films touched his lips. “I’ve had women pass out on me half a dozen times, but only in the movies. I didn’t think it happened in real life.”
“I guess shock can do it to a person.”
He cocked one dark, well-defined brow. “Have I shocked you?”
Adriana laughed nervously. “You’re Trevor Montgomery.”
“I’ve told you that at least a dozen different ways.”
“You should be an old man.”
“I should be dead ... but I’m not.”
Again Adriana pushed away, and this time Trevor let her go, but his long, sensuous fingers trailed over her arm and down the length of her hands as she stood, sending a different kind of shock through her body, one she rather enjoyed, even though she knew she shouldn’t.
She went to the sink, filled a glass with water, and took a sip, staring out the window, trying to make sense of her feelings and of what was going on.
“Is it the rose that made you believe me?” he asked, standing now at her side with the scraggly flower in his hand.
It was the rose; it was the scratches, too, but those she didn’t want to think about. The thought of Trevor Montgomery and all his romantic escapades angered her. How could a man of his charm, his class, hop into bed without thinking of anything but a moment’s fun? His sexual appetite hadn’t bothered her much before—it was all part of his mystique. But now, with him standing near, that was all she could think of. It had cheapened all those charming things he’d said to her because he probably said them to all the women he met.
Her father would have despised this man. He would have chastised her for allowing him into her home.
Why, then, did she find him so appealing?
She took the rose from his fingers. The red petals were crushed, some had fallen away, but a trace of its fragrance remained and she held it to her nose. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think I could pull a man through time simply by tossing a rose into a pool and making a crazy wish.”
“So, that’s how you dragged me sixty years through time.”
His voice was filled with laughter, but Adriana could only frown.
“It doesn’t sound possible, but I can’t think of any other explanation.”
“What did you wish for?”
Adriana gazed at Trevor for a moment, then turned away, afraid of what he would think.
‘Tell me,” he implored, lightly touching her chin with an index finger and tilting her face toward him. “Please.”
“It was silly, really.”
“Tell me,” he repeated in that spellbinding voice that made her want to divulge all her secrets, things she’d never told a soul.
She walked away from his touch and sat down at the table. Lifting her fork, she picked at the now wilted salad on her plate. “I was standing at the pool,” she said, trying to remember that moment. “I’d closed my eyes and seen a vision of you lying facedown on the water. It wasn’t the first time. It seemed to happen every year on the Fourth of July, and always when I was standing beside the pool.”
Adriana looked up at him. She feared she’d see a grin on his face, but instead, he had the softest of smiles. “I remembered the movie where you threw a rose on your lover’s casket.”
“Desperate Hours,” he added, supplying the name of the film that most people rarely remembered when they thought about Trevor Montgomery’s roles. It was too obscure, but it was one of her favorites, a movie that showed the depth of his emotions, the strength of his talent.
He sat across from her, rested his elbows on the table, and leaned forward. “What happened then?”
“I kissed the rose.” Again she looked at her plate, knowing he’d laugh when she told him what she’d said. “I didn’t say much. Just...” She sighed deeply. “Come back to me. Please. Come to me.”
All she saw was a trace of a smile on Trevor’s face when she raised her eyes. He wasn’t laughing, not in the least.
“Why did you want me to come back?”
She couldn’t tell him the truth. He’d laugh for sure if she told him she’d been in love with him—w
ith Trevor Montgomery—since she was six years old.
‘It doesn’t matter...”
‘It does to me,” Trevor interrupted softly.
Adriana shook her head. “The important thing right now is to figure out what we’re going to do.”
“You mean figure out how to send me back to 1938?”
Send him away? That was something she hadn’t even considered. But he’d been pulled away from friends and family. Maybe he wanted to go home. “Do you want me to try to send you back?”
He shrugged, and his brow furrowed into a frown. “I don’t belong here,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know anything about your time. I want to live the life I was supposed to live. But I’ve read those books of yours. They don’t paint a very pretty picture of me. If I could go back and change things, then yes, I’d want to go back. Unfortunately, the only things waiting for me in my own decade are prison bars and the scorn of old friends. I don’t know if that’s what I want. Then again, what if... what if I wake up tomorrow and I’m old and wrinkled and looking like I’m ninety-four years old? What kind of life is that?”
“I don’t know.”
She left the table, but Trevor grasped her fingers before she could walk out of the room.
“Don’t leave me, Adriana,” he said, not only his words but his dark brown eyes imploring her to stay.
She tried pulling her hand away, but he held on tight.
“I need to be alone for a while,” she told him, wanting to get away to digest this craziness about a man traveling through time, about Trevor Montgomery being in her home, in her life. “I need to think.”
“About what?”
‘Things.”
“Like whether or not I’m a murderer?”
“Are you?”
His eyes flashed briefly with anger, then he looked away. He pushed up from the table and crossed the kitchen, staring out the window. His deep sigh filled the room. “I don’t know.”
Adriana gripped the edge of the door. Those weren’t the words she wanted to hear. Why hadn’t he said no?
“I’m going for a walk,” she said, expecting him to turn around, expecting him to want to go with her. But he remained silent, staring into the dark.