Promises in the Night: A Classic Romance - Book 2 (18 page)

He turned off onto the unlighted access road. The beach was officially closed for the winter; the guardhouse windows stared blankly toward the road. He parked his car at the western edge of the lot on a rise that overlooked the water, then turned off the engine. The silence was all-encompassing, and he wondered if she could hear the pounding of his heart.

O
n another night
, in another mood, the beach would have been magical.

Stars twinkled off the ocean, and it was difficult to tell where the midnight water ended and the night sky began. A nearly full moon, silvery pale, hung low in the sky. Larkin wished she could snap her fingers and force herself out of her melancholy mood, but at the moment magic was beyond her reach.

It had disappeared the second Vladimir showed up at her house.

Her home was her source of strength, and she shared it only with the people she cared most about. He had no business showing up there with his obscene fur coat and silver-screen smile, making her feel as awkward and clumsy as she had during her time with him.

Now when she saw him again at the reception on Saturday, he would know that beneath the sophisticated surface of Larkin Walker, entrepreneur, beat the same soft heart of the Larkin Walker who had once loved him a long time ago.

In the hands of someone like Vladimir that was dangerous information indeed. Maybe turning the whole thing over to Patti and the staff wasn’t a bad idea at that. There was something to be said for a dignified retreat.

Alex turned off the engine. “Are you up to a stroll on the beach?”

“I’m too lazy to move,” she said, curling up on the plush front seat. “Post-turkey fatigue.”

He reached over and stroked her hair. “Want to just sit here and enjoy the view?”

She nodded. “If you don’t mind. I’ve never been much of an outdoors type. Besides, it’s deserted out there. This feels a lot safer:”

He looked at her for a moment, but let her last comment slide, much to her relief. She was feeling emotionally vulnerable, and any professional probing—no matter how well-intentioned—would expose raw nerve.

She changed the subject. “I hope you know my dad will never let you rest until you take him up in your Cessna. That promise will haunt you, Alex.”

“I’ll take both of them up as soon as they get back from London. The four of us could fly up to New Hampshire for a little skiing.”

“I don’t ski,” Larkin said. “Bad knees, remember?” He glanced down, at her legs. “They don’t look that bad to me.”

“Don’t let appearances deceive you, Dr. Jakobs. Inside, they’re a mess.”

He pushed the armrest up and moved closer to her. She caught the faint scent of peppermint from a chocolate mint Jayne had given him back at the airport.

“There are other things we could do on a snowy weekend,” he said. “We could send your parents out on the slopes and we could stay behind.”

“I’m afraid skiing is a prerequisite for après ski, Alex. Otherwise, it’s just called loafing around.”

He put his arm around her and kissed the side of her throat. “There’s one other thing we could do.”

There was something about the tone of his voice that made her breath catch. “Sightsee?”

He turned her face toward his. His eyes seemed silver in the moonlight, and she knew before he even said the words. “We could get married, Larkin.”

“I don’t think that’s a prerequisite for a ski weekend, Alex,” she said, a clumsy attempt at a joke.

“We could fly up to Newport. There’s a little inn there that—”

“Oh, Alex. I don’t know what to say.”

“You could say, ‘I love you,’ for starters.”

She touched his cheek. “I
do
love you. Surely you must know that by now.”

“But?”

How well he knew her. “But I need more time. This is happening so quickly. We’ve known each other only seven weeks.”

“Seven days or seven lifetimes—it doesn’t matter if it’s right.”

She waited too long to respond. For the rest of her life she’d remember the look of pain on his handsome face. “But it’s not right, is it, Larkin? Not tonight.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” She prayed his logic would fail him just this once.

“Karpov,” he said. “You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?”

“I love you, Alex. Vladimir is in my past.”

“You don’t sound certain.”

There was no way she could explain to Alex the battle she’d fought to regain her self-esteem. She was not proud of the woman she used to be and not willing to expose her weaknesses before the man she loved. She owed him no explanations. None at all. “I have nothing to prove to you, Alex. If you don’t believe me, that’s your problem.”

“The problem is yours, Larkin.” His voice was rough, raw with emotion. It was a fiery, almost out-of-control Alex Jakobs she’d never before seen. “You can’t let go of your past, but you’re too damned scared to grab hold of your future.”

“I wouldn’t pursue that topic any further, Alex.”

“What does that mean?”

“Are you certain you’re over Rikki?”

“Rikki’s dead,” he snapped.

“And if she weren’t?”
Insane question.
She was about to get the answer she deserved.

“We’d still be married.”

“Thanks for the honest answer. It goes well with a proposal of marriage.”

“How about I withdraw the proposal of marriage?” The look in his eyes was as dark and dangerous as the ocean a few hundred feet away.

“Do whatever you like,” she said, surprised a heart could stand so much pain and not stop beating. “I really don’t give a damn anymore.”

“Karpov will be happy to hear that. Maybe when he’s done with Patti, he can work you into his schedule.”

She raised her hand. “I’ve never slapped a man in my life,” she said quietly, “but I wish to God I had the guts to make an exception.”

He tried neither to stop her nor move out of her reach. As much as she wanted to strike out at him physically, she was unable to follow through. Alex, at least, had been honest—something she was unable to manage at the moment. Her hand fell down to her lap. She clenched her fist to hide the tremor.

“Smart move,” he said. “I can’t vouch for my self-control at the moment.”

The air between them crackled.

“I’d like to go home,” she said, staring straight ahead into the darkness.

“A perfect ending to a romantic night,” he said, starting the engine. “You and Karpov can tell your grandchildren about this one.”

“I had no idea you were prone to melodrama, Alex. It doesn’t become you.”

“Neither does being made a fool of, Larkin. If you’d leveled with me weeks ago, I could still have enjoyed the pleasure and avoided the pain.”

She looked at him blankly.

“You’re not that naive,” he said, backing out of the parking space. “Sex and love don’t always march hand in hand. Certainly Karpov taught you that much, didn’t he?”

This time the pain was more than she could bear, and before she could think, her hand connected with the taut skin of his left cheek. Instead of satisfaction, she felt shame. The sound of the slap echoed in her ears. Her palm tingled from the contact. She wished he would strike back, tell her to go to hell, do something.

Instead, he watched the road. The only evidence of her action was the way a small vein throbbed at the base of his throat and the terrible, vibrating sensation of finality that filled the car as they headed back toward the parkway.

T
he sound
of a car snapped him abruptly out of his reverie. Careful to stay out of the light, he crouched by the window, a silky peach slip clutched in his hand, and listened.

A car door opened and shut. He waited, expecting.to hear the sound of footsteps rounding the car and another door opening and closing.

Her high heels tapped against the flagstone path, and he held his breath as he heard the sound of her key in the lock. The house was silent and dark, and they were all alone. The time had finally come.

A
lex waited at the curb
, car engine racing, until she had her front door open; before she could turn around, he threw the car in gear and was gone.

The house, which had been filled with laughter just a few hours earlier, seemed cavernous and silent. All of the words Larkin had longed to say to Alex to repair the damage between them still echoed in her brain, trapped behind pride and anger.

A bone-weary fatigue swept over her as she switched on the kitchen light and turned the gas on under the kettle. Her plans to settle down with a pot of tea and try to make some sense out of the day vanished before her exhaustion. The tea still sounded fine, but now all she wanted to do was crawl beneath the covers and not think at all.

The first order of business was to get out of her festive holiday dress and into her robe. She was padding through the hallway toward her room when she heard a scratching sound from the den.

“Amanda?” Larkin hadn’t noticed the elderly cat in the living room. “No nocturnal rambles tonight, please, Amanda. Have mercy.”

She doubled back toward the den, mumbling about feline eccentricities. Her dress was unzipped and she had already shed her shoes and panty hose. The thought of getting dressed again was more than she could bear. She turned on the light to the den.

“Amanda! How many times have I—”

She stopped cold. There, by the fireplace, stood Gordon Franklin.

I
T WASN’T
UNTIL a cop pulled Alex over on Jericho Turnpike pike and gave him a warning for reckless driving that he realized what he was doing. It was one thing to have a death wish yourself, but it was quite another thing entirely to take anyone else along with you.

He pulled into a diner and went inside for a cup of coffee. He hadn’t been drinking, but obviously he needed a chance to get on top of things again.

“Tough night?” the waitress asked as she plunked down a menu and clean silverware.

“The toughest.”

“Family fight?”

He nodded. Close enough.

“It’s the holidays,” the waitress said, yanking her order pad from her uniform pocket. “Makes everybody crazy. If people just stayed home and worked things out, we’d be a lot better off.” She smiled at him. “Of course, then I’d be outta business. What can I get you?”

He ordered coffee and a ham on rye, and she hurried off. The diner was surprisingly crowded, but it did little to ease the loneliness that had been building since he left Larkin at her house. He had watched her slender figure hurry along the flagstone path, praying that she would turn around and come back into his arms. Instead, she took her keys out of her pocket, opened the door and disappeared inside without glancing back at him once.

The waitress brought the coffee. It was dark, hot and lousy. It suited him perfectly.

“You damned fool,” he muttered.

The waitress glared at him. “Hold your horses, mister. Your ham on rye’s on the way.”

He stood up and fished a five dollar bill out of his pocket. “Keep the change,” he said handing it to her as he headed for the door. “And thanks for the advice.”

“I don’t give advice,” she called after him. “I just make observations.”

And damned good ones,
he thought as he started his car. For all of his years of training, for all of his experience working with men and women in transition, he had been unable to recognize the fact that Larkin had been hurt as he had.

Rikki’s death had come close to devastating him, but he’d been able to return to the land of the living and take comfort in the memories of their life together. Larkin’s memories of her time with Karpov offered little in the way of comfort. Larkin might have been the one to walk out, but she’d left much of her self-esteem behind. The clues had been there all the time, and if he hadn’t been so blinded with love and jealousy, he would have realized it a long time ago.

He headed toward the highway. Loving someone meant opening your heart to pain, but loving someone was the single best reason for man’s existence that anyone had yet come up with.

In fifteen minutes he’d be at her house, and even if he had to sit on her doorstep all night, he would do his damnedest to hold on to what they had. Any man lucky enough to find love twice in his life would be a fool to let it slip away without a fight.

And, if nothing else, Alex Jakobs was a fighter.

S
he leaned
against the doorway for support. Her heart pounded violently against her ribs. “Gordon!”

“Sorry to scare you,” Gordon said, looking up. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“How did you get in here?”

He smiled at her, fiddling around with some tools scattered in front of the fireplace. “Dr. Jakobs left the side door open. Better tell him to be more careful. Someone could get in here.”

Someone obviously already did.
Her heart still thudded against her ribs and she took a deep breath to calm down. “What are you doing here, Gordon?”

“You asked, me to fix the fireplace, didn’t you?”

“Fix it, yes,” she said, “but it didn’t have to be tonight.”

“Winter’s coming. You might need it.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, it’s sixty-two degrees out there tonight, Gordon. We’re hardly in danger of a sudden frost.”

“It’s almost December,” he persisted. “Besides, I wanted to surprise you.”

He took a step closer to her. Why hadn’t she noticed how tall he was, how strong? She’d been so conscious of him as Patti Franklin’s little brother that she’d never had a strong physical awareness of him as a man before that very moment.

He smiled at her, and she backed away. Was that the look Alex had noticed weeks ago? How on earth could she have missed it?

“Well, you succeeded,” she said. “You surprised me.”
Be calm. Everything’s fine. It’s only Gordon.
“Let’s worry about the fireplace another time. I’m tired and . . .” She let her words trail off, offering him the opportunity to make a graceful, face-saving exit.

He continued toward her. “I thought you would be happy I was here,” he said, trailing his hand along her cheek. “You are happy, aren’t you? I want you to be happy.”

The shy boy she had known was turning, before her eyes, into a caricature of himself. The touch of his hand against her skin caused bile to rise into her throat.

He touched her hair, and she jerked away. Her reflexive action seemed to anger him.

“I’ve watched you for so long,” he said. “You’ve made me wait for so long.”

What in hell was he talking about? He had never been more than Patti’s brother to her, a young guy life hadn’t been very kind to. She’d known he had some emotional problems, but she hadn’t figured on anything like this.

His arm went around her body; his fingers pressed against her waist in a possessive way. A scream echoed in her brain, and she wondered if she could possibly break away from him and reach the phone. A great idea if it worked but potentially dangerous if it didn’t. This Gordon was not the malleable young man who worked at the Center.

This Gordon was a man in a state of heat.

She thought of Alex and the way he talked his way around Karen O’Rourke’s attempted suicide that long ago night at the TV studio.

“Don’t do this, Gordon,” she said, forcing her voice to stay neutral. ”Don’t do something you’ll be embarrassed over later.” He was so close that she could smell faint traces of liquor on his breath. “If you leave right now, we can forget the whole thing.”

He hesitated; his grip on her waist loosened slightly. “I can’t forget,” he said, his body pushing against hers. “I want to touch you. I’ve wanted to for so long.”

Good God. He was pressing against her, hard and demanding, and terror rocketed through her body. From the back pocket of his jeans he removed one of her pale peach slips, and the look on his face as he slid the silky fabric across her face would stay with her forever.

“Let me go, Gordon,” she said, struggling against him. “You can’t do this. I won’t let you do this.”

He cupped her breasts. “You like it when he does it,” he said in her ear. “You’ll like it when I do it even more. I love you.”

“But I don’t love you.” She brought her fist hard against his lower abdomen. “You have no right to touch me.” Her punch had no effect on him at all.

“This gives me the right.” He rubbed against her and his erection burned against her thigh.

The fabric of her dress tore easily. He was stronger than she, and all of the rational talk in the world wasn’t about to stop him from taking what he wanted.

I
nstead of pulling
into the driveway as he normally would, Alex parked his car on the street. He didn’t want to signal his arrival and give Larkin time to think about all the reasons why she might not want to talk with him.

He followed the flagstone path to her front door and was about to ring the bell when he noticed a silhouette in the den.

Curious, he stepped back for a better look. His gut wrenched as if he’d taken a punch. There, outlined against the shade, was Larkin—her slim curves unmistakable—in the arms of a tall and muscular man. He backed away, unable to tear his eyes from the intimate shape their forms made, and tripped over a loose flagstone.

You stupid son-of-a-bitch.
He slammed his hand against the trunk of an oak tree alongside the house.
You damn fool.
He’d seen the way Karpov looked at Larkin. He’d felt the pull between them, even if he’d been unable to understand it. Why should he be surprised that she fell back into the Russian’s arms?

In a flash Alex was back in his car. The engine leaped to life immediately and he was about to tear away from there when logic—the one constant in his life—reappeared.

You know her better than that, Jakobs. She wouldn’t turn to Karpov like this. Not tonight.
The Larkin he knew would rant and rave and ultimately take to bed with Amanda and a good book, not an old lover.

Sweat broke out on his forehead and slithered down his temples. There was one more possibility—one that he had almost forgotten.

The phone calls, the damaged car, the necklace Larkin received, the dead birds on his doorstep with the gold chain around their necks—the look on Gordon Franklin’s face each time he saw Alex.

Suddenly it all made sense. He flung himself from the car and tore up the driveway to the front door. Gordon was obsessed with Larkin and, if Alex’s Ph.D. was worth anything at all, he could be sure the next step was destruction of the object of the obsession.

Larkin.

The front door was double-locked. He ran around back to the flimsy kitchen door and kicked it open. The shrill scream of the teakettle sent chills up his spine as he ran for the den. He prayed he wasn’t too late.

G
ordon’s face
snake-danced before Larkin’s eyes as he drew the silk slip more tightly around her throat, pulling her closer, ever closer, to him. She knew she should be concentrating on how to break his hold on her, but remembering to breathe was taking all of her effort. The simple act of drawing air into her starving lungs required more strength than she possessed.

Somewhere in the distance she heard a high-pitched wailing sound like a siren, but she couldn’t focus her mind on it long enough to figure out where it came from.

All she could think about was hanging on, trying to keep afloat when going under was becoming more seductive by the second. How easy it would be to just let go, let it happen, give up....

“Let her go, Franklin!”

Gordon turned toward the man’s voice in the doorway. His grip tightened and she sagged against him, gasping for breath.

“Come a step closer and I’ll kill her.”

“You
are
killing her,” the man’s voice said. “Let her go.”

It was impossible to think, impossible to breathe. Her body moved on pure instinct, clawing for freedom, for air, and she bit down hard on Gordon’s hand.

That was all she needed to do. In the split second it took for her lungs to gulp in great draughts of air, Alex sprang across the room and knocked Gordon to the floor.

“Call the cops,” Alex ordered in a voice so filled with rage that it sounded foreign to her. “Tell them to move their asses before I kill him.”

T
he elation Alex
felt when his fist connected against Gordon’s jaw sent adrenaline sizzling through his body like electricity seeking ground. He was alive with rage; the primitive urge to defend a mate overpowered whatever logic he had left. He’d lost Rikki to something he couldn’t fight against; he’d go to hell and back to make sure he didn’t lose Larkin.

For one terrifying, exhilarating moment Alex Jakobs was capable of murder.

Dimly he heard Larkin’s voice on the telephone, and he realized that she was unharmed—scared, yes, but alive. Thank God, she was alive.

The young man trembled beneath his hands. The smell of sweat and fear clung to his skin and flooded Alex’s nostrils. Franklin looked pathetically young; his eyes were too big for his narrow face, and tears slid over his temples and disappeared into his hairline:

“Alex?” Larkin was at his side. The touch of her hand on his shoulder was a balm. “They’re sending a squad car right over.”

Racking sobs broke from Gordon’s body, rising up from a loneliness Alex understood intimately. His rage took a sharp, unexpected turn into pity—for both of them—and the professional in Alex rose to the surface again, summoned up by the sound of a person in torment.

“Does he have a doctor?” Alex asked Larkin, keeping his hand on Gordon’s shoulder as the young man sobbed. “Someone we can call?”

“He’s an outpatient,” she said, naming a nearby psychiatric center. “Patti gave me all the information when I hired him, but I can’t think straight.”

“Call the hospital,” Alex said, “and ask for Dr. Bosworth. Tell him the story and say we need a team here. This kid doesn’t need the cops. He needs help.”

Larkin disappeared again, and when she did, Gordon’s crying slowed down.

“I don’t need your pity,” he spat at Alex. “I don’t want your help.”