Secret Desire

by Gwynne Forster

  Luke paced from one end of his room to the other and back. The passion between Marcus and Amanda could get hot enough to make a dead person fan. Kate had wanted from him what Marcus was giving Amanda, but he didn’t walk in his brother’s shoes. He hoped the time would come when he and Kate could explore the depth of their feelings for each other. And it had better be soon, too, he mused, because he wasn’t Superman, and she showed signs of wanting to push him. A low, soft whistle expressed his exasperation. If she knew him as well as he knew himself, she wouldn’t worry. That woman had his number. He got ready for bed. Whoever was out to get her was becoming impatient, and that was precisely what he wanted. If he caught them, he’d start getting his life in order.

  Chapter 7

  “You got a couple of guys, out of towners, hanging around here, Luke, who don’t seem to live anywhere. Looks like they just drive in, or maybe ride in, since I haven’t seen them in a car. What do you think?” Cowan asked Luke.

  He was still trying to get the past weekend with Kate down at Caution Point out of his system. As he’d expected, he’d been spending more time thinking about her and wanting her than was good for her safety.

  “What do they look like?”

  Cowan fingered his chin and appeared puzzled. “Well, that’s just it. They wore suits and ties, but didn’t look right in them, like they weren’t used to wearing them. And one was a lot older than the other one.”

  “Father and son, maybe?”

  “I don’t think so, because it didn’t occur to me. The tall one slouched noticeably. They wore hats, would you believe that? So I didn’t get a good look at their faces. Neither time.”

  Luke stopped taking notes and tapped his pen on his desk. “Were they black or white?”

  “Not sure, Luke. If they were black, they were light skinned.”

  Could be anybody. “Thanks. Keep an eye out. I want them tailed.”

  “Right.”

  Luke phoned Rude Hopper. “Rude, this is Luke. Seen two strangers strolling around your way?” He gave Rude Cowan’s description of the men.

  “I haven’t seen ’em around here, but I’ll get the word out. Somebody comes around here wearing a business suit’s not suspect, but if he sticks a Sunday-go-to-meeting hat on his head to boot, he’ll stand out like a splash of red paint on a white house.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be in touch. See you.” A look at his watch told him he’d better get over to PAL and give the boys their fencing lesson.

  As he walked in, Randy ran up to him. “Can I have your cell-phone number, Captain Luke? My mom said if I get in to any trouble, I have to call you.”

  A dizzying sensation attacked him as though his blood had curdled. There it was again—that blind trust, as though he were omnipotent.

  “Listen to me, Randy. If you get…If anything happens to you and your mother’s not home, call 9-1-1. It’s their job to rescue people. I’m—”

  “But, Captain Luke, my mom said—”

  “I don’t care what she said. I’m telling you, if you get into trouble, call 9-1-1. I may be thirty or forty miles from here, and you could die waiting for me to get to you. Do as I say.”

  Randy hadn’t heard that last part, and Luke hadn’t seen the boy leave, because the picture before him had been of his wife, when he’d gotten to her too late. He slumped on the bar of an exercycle, praying he could make the child understand.

  Kate walked back into the office, where Randy sat with his elbows on her desk and his hands supporting his chin.

  “Why aren’t you studying, Randy?”

  After she’d asked him the third time, he got up as if to leave, but she stopped him. “Didn’t you hear me?”

  “I’m not studying ’cause I don’t want to.”

  “Randy!”

  “I hate social stuff, and I’m not studying it.”

  Something had happened to turn him into the old, disrespectful Randy. “What happened at PAL today?”

  “Nothing, and I’m not going there anymore. Captain Luke said I’m not to call him for anything. I have to call 9-1-1. I don’t like him anymore.”

  So that was it. He didn’t want responsibility for Randy. “You’re going back to PAL tomorrow, and that’s that.” She walked back into the store. She didn’t need Luke Hickson to look after her child. She could do that just fine without help from him or anybody else.

  The door buzzer rang, and she looked that way. Axel Strange. She wouldn’t have believed she’d rather see him than Luke, but at the moment she wanted no part of Luke Hickson.

  “When are we getting the reading group started?” he asked after greeting her with such effusiveness that she felt she needed a shower.

  “When enough people have signed up, Jessye will take care of it.”

  He looked around. “Where is the lady?”

  Hmm. So that accounted for his restlessness. She looked into his eyes. “She’s hunting for an apartment.”

  “Really?”

  His casual response didn’t fool her—Axel wanted Jessye. But in that case, why was he still tomcatting after her? Like a blaring light, the answer flashed before her: Axel Strange didn’t want her, and never had. He made a play for her because he didn’t want Luke to have her. But why? Well, he’d boxed himself in, because Jessye had set her cap for Luke. She shrugged.

  “She’s decided to stay for the summer and help me in the store. Did you encourage her not to go home? To stay here?”

  “You do me a disservice, Kate. It’s you who won’t let me sleep at night.”

  Sure, and the Mississippi River empties into the Pacific Ocean. “Fortunately, I don’t take that kind of talk seriously, Lieutenant. Better spend your efforts on Jessye. I’ve had my fill of that sort of thing.”

  He narrowed his eyes, and she waited for the snarl, but instead he ground his teeth. “I suppose the captain understands this and accepts it? In that case, why’d you go away with him last weekend?”

  “What? Don’t you think you ought to be minding your own business? How dare you ask me such a question?”

  “What do you expect? I don’t like seeing the woman I want going off with another guy. And the local stud, at that.”

  Stud! She threw back her head and laughed. “You’re kidding.”

  “I don’t see a thing funny.”

  “Well, I do,” she said. “Excuse me. I have to take care of a customer.”

  Jessye burst in, bringing her usual air of irreverence. “Lieutenant, honey, where’ve you been? I thought you’d given up on us.”

  He rushed to her. “Here, let me help you with those packages.” Surprised at their weight, he raised an eyebrow. “How’d you manage to carry this stuff? What’s in here, bricks?”

  Kate didn’t know when she’d gotten so much pleasure from another person’s embarrassment. Axel found those packages heavy, and they probably were, but Jessye had breezed in with them as though they didn’t weigh a pound.

  “Didn’t anybody tell you about us Southern girls?” Kate asked him. “We’re as fragile as a butterfly, as tough as nails, and as strong as…as most anything you can name.”

  Jessye repaired her makeup, occasionally fanning herself. “Speak for yourself, honey.”

  Kate smothered a laugh. “I am, and you were always tougher and stronger than I. If a man can’t accept that, it’s his problem, not mine.”

  “Oh my, does anybody have an aspirin?” Jessye said. “All this philosophy gives me a terrible headache.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Axel said.

  “Shame on you, girl. You could teach philosophy, and you know it.”

  Jessye’s headache quickly abated as she fanned vigorously. “Where’d he go? I declare, these men—”

  “To get an aspirin,” Kate said dryly. “Where do you think he went?”

  Jessye stopped fanning and stared at Kate. “You’re kidding. He must be from up north some place. It takes a Southern man to understand a woman. I declare—”

  The door opened, a
nd Axel rushed in with a large bottle of Bayer aspirin, his eagerness to get it back to Jessye so great that he hadn’t waited to have it wrapped.

  “Where’s some water?” he asked Kate.

  She nodded toward the unisex bathroom. “Back there, and don’t forget the paper cups on top of the cooler.” He stopped and glared at her for her audacity, remembered the urgency of his mission and rushed to the bathroom.

  Jessye let out a sigh of resignation. “Just my luck. If I told that handsome captain I had a headache, he’d merely suggest I take something.”

  “Since you know that, you ought to save yourself some trouble and like the one who likes you.”

  “Honey, that’s not something you can mix up like biscuits. A guy has to turn you on, and just thinking about the captain ignites my engine.”

  “What about your ‘unbearable grief for the pig’ who cheated on you with Wanda what’s-her-name?”

  Jessye sat on the edge of the desk and positioned her crossed knees to her legs’ best advantage as she awaited Axel’s return. “Girl, that was almost a month ago. The best way to forget a man is to concentrate on another one.”

  Axel rushed to Jessye and handed her an aspirin and a paper cup of water. “That ought to make you feel better.”

  Jessye swallowed the pill, grimacing as she did so. “Thanks. You’d think they’d have sense enough to put some sugar in these things.” She smiled at Axel. “You’re a prince.”

  “Oh, it was nothing.”

  Kate looked at Axel, a peacock with his plumage on full display, and shook her head. If she were mean enough, she’d expose him. The gnat-head thought he could court both women and neither would notice. Well, if he wanted a chance with Jessye, she’d give it to him.

  “Jessye, I’ll be away this weekend. Would you take care of the store Friday and Saturday? You can be off Monday and Tuesday.”

  “Sure. I love having a four-day workweek. We can fix that permanently.”

  Instinctively, Kate knew that Axel had fixed his gaze on her, but with Jessye as his real goal, he had to keep his thoughts about her and Luke to himself.

  Kate drove home that night with a sullen uncooperative Randy. She knew Luke’s refusal to give Randy his cell-phone number had hurt the boy. Maybe she’d been wrong in telling him to call Luke if he got into trouble, but she hadn’t remembered Luke’s terrible trauma over his wife’s death. She fixed a simple meal of beef burgers, baked potatoes and green salad, and they ate in silence, because Randy wouldn’t talk. When she thought he’d gone to bed, she heard him talking on the phone and prayed that he’d called Luke. She stood by his room door long enough to discover that he’d actually called Amy Hickson in Caution Point, and her heart ached for him. He’d needed an ego boost, and had known he’d get it from Amy. She tiptoed to her room and prepared for bed.

  Later, she answered the telephone reluctantly, for she didn’t relish speaking with either Axel or Luke. “Hello.”

  “Hello, Kate. This is Luke.” As if she wouldn’t know that voice anywhere, and at anytime. “Randy left PAL and didn’t come back. I’m sorry I upset him. I shouldn’t have been so blunt. But—”

  “I understand, Luke. Or at least I think I do. And I know it all harks back to your experience with your wife. I should have remembered that, but I didn’t, and I’ve practically ruptured Randy’s relationship with you.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about. Kids can be unforgiving, and he and I had begun to develop a good relationship.”

  What an understatement. Randy had idolized Luke. “He’ll get over it, but it’ll take time. He doesn’t want to go back to PAL, but it’s the best thing for him, and I’m going to make him attend every day. Let me know if you don’t see him there.”

  “All right.” Silence interrupted their awkward conversation, and the pain of it tore into her. She wanted to hang up.

  “I see I have some mending to do with you, as well,” he said, “but I’ll let that wait till we’re together. For now, believe that I’d no more hurt you than I’d sever my right arm from my body. I mean that, Kate.”

  They said good-night. She’d give a lot to know how their song would play out. Ten years of living death in a vapid, unfulfilling marriage had left her unduly cautious and overly sensitive. And, for this strong man of principle, the legacy of marriage was agonizing self-doubt. For Randy’s sake, she hoped they could bridge the chasms that kept them apart.

  “It’s time I opened up my place in Biddle,” Luke said to Marcus, referring to his summer house on the Albermarle Sound. “So I won’t get to see you this weekend. Last fall, I boarded up the windows and doors, tied down the lawn furniture. There’s plenty to do.”

  “I’d help you, but I promised Amanda I’d get these lawns and this garden into shape. Maybe next weekend.”

  Luke pulled up to his house in Biddle shortly after dark, un-boarded the front door and walked in to find everything as he’d left it. He turned on the refrigerator and went back to his car for his luggage and supplies. After working late into the night, he heated two slices of pepperoni pizza, got a bottle of Heineken and sat out on his back porch to enjoy his supper. Waves roared in the Atlantic and sloshed ominously against each other. Still, the sound carried with it a peaceful quality, a guarantee of life; it had roared in that spot from the beginning of time, and it always would. He propped his feet against the banister and took a swig of beer from the icy bottle. This was his place, where he could be himself, free of the problems and personalities that he had to deal with every day at the Second Precinct. Not that he minded. He loved his job, and had no problem controlling his men. Even Axel would cave in if he showed him the hatchet. He got up to go inside, glanced at the house next door and stopped. The place had been empty for the two years he’d lived there, but a light shone in every room. He’d go over the next morning and introduce himself.

  Around ten the next morning, he knocked on his new neighbor’s back door. The door wouldn’t open, so he went around to the front and waited.

  “Luke!”

  “Kate!”

  They spoke simultaneously, and he figured that if his surprise was as obvious as hers, they made a bizarre sight. “What are you doing here?” Again, they spoke in unison.

  “I own the house next door. Bought it a couple of years ago,” Luke said. “Are you renting this for the season?”

  Clearly nonplussed, she shook her head as though in disbelief. “I bought it a few weeks after I settled in Portsmouth. I had no idea you—”

  He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “Of course not. You didn’t even know me.” He noticed that she didn’t ask him to come in. “When did you move in?”

  “Last night. We’re just trying to get the place in shape.”

  “Who’s that, Mom?” Randy asked, and Luke could hear him running toward the front of the house. “Oh! What’s he doing here?” He spun around and left them.

  The best antidote for that was to ignore it. “Maybe we could have a cookout this evening,” he said.

  “Uh, if I’m not too tired.”

  “Look, I can fix that back doorknob for you, and maybe most things you want repaired.”

  “Thanks, but I was planning to go to the village, get a handyman, and let him get the place in order.”

  “The only things in the village are a filling station and a place to buy milk, charcoal, and the newspaper. I doubt you’ll find a handyman in Jarvisburg, and that’s the only built-up place near here.” If she didn’t want his help, fine. He wasn’t going to impose on her. “I’ll be next door if you do need me.”

  Kate closed the door and tried to deal with her shock. A house next to Luke Hickson’s, and she had paid cash for it. She walked to the back porch, where Randy struggled to open the door. “Captain Luke said he’ll fix that for us. I’d rather you cleaned up the debris around this house. Seems like everything but whales washes in from the ocean.”

  She tried the doorknob, and it came off in her hand. “I know you’re upset
with Captain Luke, Randy, but we can’t sleep here tonight with the door in this shape. I can’t tell whether it’s locked or unlocked. It’s dangerous.”

  “I don’t want him here.”

  She rubbed her hands up and down her sides, took a deep breath and let it out. “You do not tell me what to do. I’m going to ask him to fix this door, and that’s that.”

  She knocked on Luke’s front door a few minutes later. Seeing him nude from the waist up, as he was when he opened the door, rocked her. She stared at his thick chest, prominent pectorals and washboard belly, and couldn’t open her mouth. Heat flushed her body, and when it settled, she didn’t dare look at him, knowing that her face would carry the telltale signs of desire.

  “Need me for something?” He said it airily, but he didn’t fool her. The man knew he’d poleaxed her.

  Get yourself together, girl. She made herself look at him, expecting a roguish grin, but she’d never seen him in a more serious mood.

  “I said, do you need me?”

  “I…Yes, I do. It’s the door. Randy tried to fix it, and it’s a total mess. Could you—”

  He held out his hand. “Kate, are you angry with me? I know I’ve disappointed Randy, but surely you understand why.”

  “I’m not…I’m not angry with you, Luke. I’m—”

  He grasped her hand. “Then come in here. Kate, come in here. I have to hold you.”

  She didn’t want to need Luke, didn’t want her world to revolve around him, because she hadn’t planned on learning a lesson a second time. But she did need him, and she hated herself right then because she wanted to be in Luke’s arms. And he wanted her there. She looked up into his impatient desire-filled eyes, the fiery gaze of a lover, an impatient lover fit to explode, and opened her arms. He lifted her to him, stepped inside and kicked the door shut.

  One of his arms wrapped around her shoulders and the other clamped her hips, straining her to him. She slid her arms to his shoulders, clung to his naked flesh and waited, waited while he gazed into her eyes—searching for she didn’t know what—and fighting himself, her and the heat exploding between them. Her lips parted, and his mouth claimed them. There was no gentleness in the way he kissed her, but she didn’t want civilized loving. She wanted him with his defenses down, without his public persona and his refined passion. She wanted the raw man without the smoothness and the charisma, and she needed him to show her his deprivation and his awful hunger. He squeezed her to him until she began to ache, and his mouth trembled against hers as his tongue plunged into her. She held him and loved him until she thought he’d snatch her soul. Frightened by the consuming power of her feelings, she tried to break the kiss. But he intensified the heat of it, squeezing her to him while his tongue savored every crevice of her mouth, promising, teasing, sapping her willpower.