If I Can't Have You

by Patti Berg

  Trevor grabbed the paper from the table and held it out so he and Adriana could see the photo. They were embracing in front of the massive marble memorial, and Carole’s name blazed in the background.

  “Trevor Montgomery and Carole Sinclair—together again,’” Trevor read. “Well, at least they’ve got my name correct.”

  “This isn’t funny,” Stewart bellowed. “Adriana’s in that photo, too. Maybe you should read a little further.”

  “‘He’s the spitting image of Trevor Montgomery. Is he a ghost? Has he risen from the grave? Will Adriana Howard, the beautiful blond in his arms, be the next on his list of murder victims?’”

  Adriana slumped down on the sofa, pain written clearly on her face as she stared at the article. “I knew this would happen,” she whispered. “It’s going to start all over again. The gossip. The nosy reporters.”

  “It’s already started,” Stewart stated. “I came by the house yesterday and got rid of a few. They were standing at the gate, waiting for you or your friend to show your faces. They’re not going to let up.”

  “They will,” Trevor stated firmly, remembering how he’d dealt with the press on those few occasions when they’d annoyed him. “Laugh it off. Don’t make a big deal out of it. You can’t change people’s minds, anyway. Trust me; if they want to believe trash, they’re going to believe it no matter what rebuttals you fire back.”

  Stewart glared at him. “I would have thought you’d come up with some scheme to get even more press.”

  “I don’t want any press, especially if Adriana’s involved. She’s been through enough of that in her lifetime.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Stewart said. “You want to protect her?”

  “Obviously you haven’t been listening to me. All week long I’ve told you who I am and why I’m here.”

  Stewart laughed. “What you are is a fraud.”

  “Oh, Stewart, you’re overreacting,” Maggie said from her solitary spot on the love seat.

  “We’ll let Adriana decide if I’m overreacting when I’m through giving her all the details.”

  “Please don’t tell me there’s more,” Adriana pleaded, and Trevor wished he could take away the pain he knew she was feeling.

  “Let me paint you a pretty picture.” Stewart sat across from Adriana and Trevor, steepling his hands before his face. “A man shows up unexpectedly claiming he’s Trevor Montgomery. He’s mixed up. He doesn’t know where he is or what’s happened to him. Maybe he was frozen for sixty years, maybe he was caught in a time warp. Maybe he’s been reincarnated—same body, same voice, same everything.”

  “We already told you, Stewart,” Adriana interrupted. “He’s Trevor Montgomery’s son.”

  Stewart opened his briefcase and pulled out a stack of files, dropping one after the other on the table in front of him. ‘Trevor Montgomery showed up in this woman’s life five years ago,” he said, opening the manila folder. “He spent six months with her. She was sixty-two years old, quite wealthy, and had a fixation on the long-ago movie star.”

  Trevor frowned, lifting the paper to stare at the type-filled sheet. “I don’t know where you got this information, but I never spent six months with any woman.”

  Stewart ignored his comment. “A year later you were with this lady,” he said, flipping open the next folder and tapping the paper underneath. “That affair lasted nearly a year. She was a little younger, had just a little less money, but she was more than willing to buy you anything and everything you wanted.”

  From the corner of his eye Trevor saw the worry on Adriana’s face as she pulled the file from under Stewart’s hand and fingered through the papers. “There aren’t any pictures here. What makes you think it was Trevor?”

  Stewart dropped another file on the table. “My investigator found this photo in an old newspaper.” Stewart thumped his middle finger on the picture. “It’s not a good photo, but you can definitely see the resemblance. This, Adriana, is your Mr. Montgomery earlier this year with the woman he lived with for three months before he moved on to you.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  Stewart raised an eyebrow. “Believe it, Adriana.”

  “You’re crazy,” Trevor said. “I don’t know any of those women. That man doesn’t look a bit like me.”

  Adriana studied the photo, her eyes flickering back and forth from the paper to Trevor.

  “Let me tell you about this guy,” Stewart said. “His name’s Paul Dorn. Ring any bells?”

  “No,” Trevor said flatly.

  “The man at the Regal Biltmore,” Adriana recalled, looking at Trevor with concern in her eyes. “He called you Mr. Dorn. He said something about you pulling a fast one again.”

  Trevor laughed. “I’d never seen that man before.”

  “Well, he’d seen you,” Stewart snapped, “and he was more than willing to talk. The lady in that first photo is his mother. She fell head over heels for you. Took you into her home when you said you had no family, no friends. She thought you had amnesia. But you looked just like Trevor Montgomery, and she wanted to believe it was true.”

  “I’m sorry she got mixed up with some kind of gigolo,” Trevor said, “but I can assure you, it wasn’t me.”

  Adriana looked up from the papers, as if she’d just heard part of the conversation. “Did you say she thought he had amnesia?”

  “That’s what she thought. What else could she believe? He said he couldn’t remember anything, and then he asked her to take him in.”

  Adriana’s gaze bolted to Trevor, a mixture of fear, doubt, and anger radiating in her eyes.

  He’d told Adriana the same thing, just before he’d asked her to take him in. How could she possibly believe his remarkable story was true after hearing this damning evidence against him?

  “Her son had you investigated,” Stewart continued. “Paul Dorn was the name he came up with. He even tried having you arrested, but, unfortunately, you hadn’t done anything against the law.”

  “I imagine he hasn’t done anything against the law now, either, sweetie,” Maggie said. She was the only one rising to his defense. “The only thing he’s done, quite obviously, is steal Adriana’s heart. You can’t have him arrested for that.”

  “How about blackmail?” Stewart asked.

  “Stop it, Stewart,” Adriana implored. “I don’t want to hear any of this.”

  “You might not want to listen, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Mr. Dorn has a good friend named Jim Paxton.”

  “The photographer?” Adriana questioned.

  “That’s the one,” Stewart threw in. “He’s got a prison record for blackmail. Seems he takes pictures of wealthy women in compromising positions. When he says he’s going to turn them in to the tabloids, the women always come through with money.”

  “He did the same thing with us,” Trevor said. “I told him Adriana wouldn’t give him a penny.”

  “He’s used that ploy before, too. One photo shows up, like that one in the cemetery, then he comes back for more money.”

  Stewart turned to Adriana. “It’s all a scam.”

  Trevor saw the tears running down Adriana’s cheeks. God, she believed it. How could he possibly make her see it wasn’t true?

  He touched her shoulder, but he could feel her muscles tense.

  “Your Mr. Dorn, Adriana, is a part-time model and a wanna-be actor. Just last week he tried to capitalize on his looks by telling some producer at Warner Bros. that he’s Trevor Montgomery’s long-lost son. They’re making a film about Montgomery’s life, and Mr. Dorn auditioned for the role.”

  Trevor paced the floor, trying to think of a way to make Stewart stop his incriminations and his investigations. He couldn’t tell the truth. Stewart would never believe it. He wouldn’t believe another lie, either.

  Making matters even worse was the fact that Adriana was looking at him like he’d risen from the bowels of hell.

  Stewart leaned forward in his seat and stared at Trevor
. “You picked a real good candidate for your scheme this time, Mr. Dorn. You even suckered her into getting you all that false identification to make your plan a little easier to pull off.”

  Turning to Adriana, putting a hand on her knee, Stewart said, “I can call the police if you want.”

  She shook her head. “What I want is for you to leave. I didn’t ask you to investigate him. In fact, I specifically asked you not to interfere.”

  “It’s what he does,” Maggie interjected. She turned to Trevor. “He even investigated me and almost called it quits when he found out I’d been a stripper. I had to convince him to listen to his heart instead of his head. He was pretty stubborn, but finally he came around.”

  Adriana got up from the sofa and went to the window. Trevor could sense her despair, the agonizing torment in her heart and soul.

  She wouldn’t want him to touch her, to offer any comfort, not now, but he went to her anyway.

  “I love you,” he whispered into her ear, hoping she’d believe him. “That’s the only real proof I have that I’m telling the truth.”

  “Paul Dorn told a lot of women he loved them,” Stewart stated. “Don’t listen to him, Adriana.”

  She turned from the window and with tears streaming down her cheeks she looked from Trevor to Stewart. “I don’t know what to believe.”

  “I’ve been your friend for a long time,” Stewart said. “You’ve trusted me before, you’ve got to trust me again. He’s an impostor, but you’re too blind to see. I’ve known for years about your fascination with Trevor Montgomery. You’ve idolized him. You live in his house, drive his cars, and you’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars collecting everything he ever touched. It’s easy to see how some Trevor Montgomery look-alike could walk in here and make you believe he’s Trevor Montgomery’s son. He could have told you he was the reincarnation of your hero, that he’d been frozen for sixty years, or that he’d traveled through time and you would have believed him.”

  Adriana spun around, her eyes flashing from Stewart to Trevor, suspicion clearly written on her face. “Please leave, Stewart. I’m a big girl, and I can take care of myself.”

  “I’m not leaving you alone with him,” Stewart stated.

  “Please,” she implored, not bothering to wipe the tears from her eyes. “I need to talk to Trevor. Alone.”

  Maggie went to Adriana and wrapped her in an embrace that wasn’t returned. “Give your heart a chance to think, Adriana. Don’t just use your brain.”

  “I think my heart’s overridden my brain too much lately.”

  “For what it’s worth,” Maggie said so everyone could hear, “I like your Mr. Montgomery. I don’t care if he’s a fraud or not.”

  “That’s enough, Maggie,” Stewart said, taking his wife by the arm and drawing her toward the door.

  “Don’t do anything crazy, Adriana,” Stewart said. “Don’t let him sweet-talk you. Don’t—”

  “Please leave, Stewart,” Adriana repeated. “You’re my business advisor, my attorney, and you’re my friend, but this is my personal life, not yours.”

  Trevor heard Stewart’s sigh, heard his shoes and Maggie’s walking across the terra-cotta outside, heard the start of the engine and the car pulling out of the drive, but he could not have cared less if they were still in the house or a million miles away. All that mattered now was Adriana, hoping the trust he’d built in her hadn’t died.

  “You have to believe in me,” he said, going to her side. He didn’t try to touch her, didn’t attempt to make her look him directly in the eyes. He prayed his words and his tone of voice would let her know the truth. “I haven’t lied to you. I am Trevor Montgomery. I was born in 1904. I was with Carole Sinclair the night she was murdered. Everything I’ve told you is true. The stories about my parents, about my childhood.”

  Adriana looked at him through tear-filled lashes. “Time travel makes no sense,” she said. “It’s impossible.”

  “I have a difficult time believing it, too, but you wished for me to come to you. You threw the rose into the pool and somehow I showed up. It doesn’t make sense, but it happened.”

  “Stewart’s story makes more sense,” she said, fidgeting with the belt on her robe. “There was a model at Sparta the day you came into my life. Jim Paxton told me he could be Trevor Montgomery’s double. I didn’t believe him, of course. I thought for sure I knew what Trevor Montgomery looked like. I kept comparing the model with what I remembered of Trevor from movies and photos. I thought the model was too pretty.”

  Adriana walked across the room and sat down on the sofa, staring at the cover photo on one of the books. She looked from the book, to Trevor, then back to the book again. “You’re too pretty, too.”

  “Those pictures were taken in the thirties. They’re old. Maybe they don’t do me justice.”

  “Maybe you’re not Trevor Montgomery after all. Maybe you’re a fraud. Maybe you’re the model who was with Mr. Paxton and maybe the two of you didn’t leave Sparta when I told him to. Maybe you came back, maybe you watched me toss the rose into the pool and say those words. Maybe you saw a lonely woman who needed to be loved.”

  “I did see a woman who needed love—and I loved her. I’ll always love her.”

  “I wish I could believe you.”

  “I’m not Paul Dorn,” Trevor said, sitting on the coffee table next to the books. “Think about it, Adriana. My feet and hands matched the prints at Grauman’s.”

  “Coincidence.”

  “I told you about spraining my ankle when I was filming Captain Caribe.”

  “A made-up story. I know everything about Trevor Montgomery, and I never heard that one before. You could easily concoct stories and say everything I knew was a lie.”

  “What about the scratches on my back? What about the things Janet Julian told you?”

  “Everything’s coincidence. You could have done your homework just like I’ve been doing.”

  “You’re not going to believe me, are you?”

  Slowly she shook her head and walked toward her bedroom. She grabbed a bag from the closet and went to the guest bedroom.

  Trevor leaned against the doorjamb, watching her neatly fold his suit and place it inside along with the shirts and ties, the underwear and shoes, everything they’d purchased. On top she placed the shrunken tux, closed the lid, and fastened the latches.

  “I’d like you to leave,” she said, her face devoid of expression except for the tears falling from her eyes.

  “I’m not leaving. This is my home.”

  “It could have been if you’d just told me the truth. If you’d told me you were Paul Dorn, if you’d said you were a struggling actor—”

  She closed her eyes and sighed. “What does it matter. You lied to me. I don’t want you here any longer, and if you don’t leave now, I’ll call the police and tell them you’re an intruder and part of a blackmail scheme.”

  “You couldn’t do it before. What makes you think you can do it now?”

  “If necessary, I’ll ask Stewart for help. I don’t think he’ll have any reservations about getting rid of you.”

  She walked toward the front door and held it open, just as she’d done that first night. “Please leave.”

  “What about last night? What about all our days at Sparta? What about everything we’ve shared?”

  “You’re a good actor, and I’ve been a fool.”

  “You’re not a fool, Adriana. I’ve never known anyone like you.”

  “Unfortunately,” she said, her lips beginning to tremble, “I’ve known too many men like you.”

  Chapter 20

  He felt like hell. He wanted a drink but no matter how bad things got, he wasn’t going to touch a drop again. He’d made that promise to Adriana, and he wasn’t going to break it, even though she’d kicked him out of her home and her life.

  Adriana. Trevor thought of nothing else as he strolled along State Street, lugging the suitcase she’d thrust into his hands before sh
e closed the door in his face. He thought of her smile, her laugh, and the tears cascading down her cheeks. He’d wanted to kiss them away; she wanted him gone.

  He hadn’t argued. He’d just walked out the door and hitched a ride into town.

  He’d walked for hours, remembering each moment they’d spent together. The way she’d watched him dip lobster into drawn butter at a restaurant on the wharf. The way her eyes had studied his lips as he licked his fingers. He thought about the way her hair breezed across her face as they walked on the beach. He thought of her warm blue eyes, her gentle smile. He thought of the tears of sorrow and concern she’d shed when he’d told her of his childhood, and how his heart had swelled when he realized that no one else had ever cried for him. He thought about all the hours they’d spent making love. In the beginning she’d been afraid of his touch. Last night she’d begged for it.

  She wanted him still. He was sure of it.

  And he planned to get her back.

  He loved her. God, how he loved her. He’d do just about anything to win her love, but first he had to prove his worth.

  How could he do that, though? He had no money, no car, no job. What he did have was a 24-carat gold, waterlogged watch. The movement no longer worked, but the pawnshop owner he’d shown it to seemed to recognize its value. It was worth a hell of a lot more than the fifty dollars he’d been given, but that didn’t matter. It was enough to get him to Hollywood and enough to make a phone call or two, if necessary. He could live on cheap hamburgers and coffee for a day or two. Then he’d be broke again.

  But that wasn’t going to happen. He’d survived Hollywood in the twenties when he’d had no money; he could easily do it again.

  This time, at least he had Adriana at the forefront of his mind, and Adriana meant hope. He wasn’t going to give up.

  He didn’t know how the studio system worked in the nineties, but he knew if he could get an audition with someone, anyone, he might stand a chance of getting a job. He’d begged before. Of course, he’d been only sixteen at the time and back then just about anyone could get a job at the studios. He didn’t want to start out as a janitor this time, but even a job like that was better than nothing. He’d do just about anything to make a little money.