“He’s so jealous he’s insane.” Thinking of Roger made her feel sick, and she pressed her hand to her stomach. “He’s truly insane. He probably went wild when I moved in with you. The first couple of phone calls, he didn’t say anything at all. Maybe he had just been calling to see if I answered the phone at your house. He couldn’t stand for me to even talk to any other man, and when he found out that you and I—” She broke off, a fine sheen of perspiration on her face.
Gently John pulled her to him, pressing her head against his shoulder while he soothingly stroked her hair. “I wonder how he found out.”
“Bitsy Sumner,” Michelle said shakily.
“The airhead we met in the restaurant?”
“That airhead is the biggest gossip I know.”
“If he’s that far off his rocker, he probably thinks he’s finally found the ‘other man’ after all these years.”
She jumped, then gave a tight little laugh. “He has.”
“What?” His voice was startled.
She eased away from him and pushed her hair back from her face with a nervous gesture. “It’s always been you,” she said in a low voice, looking anywhere except at him. “I couldn’t love him the way I should have, and somehow he…seemed to know it.”
He put his hand on her chin and forced her head around. “You acted like you hated me, damn it.”
“I had to have some protection from you.” Her green eyes regarded him with a little bitterness. “You had women falling all over you, women with a lot more experience, and who were a lot prettier. I was only eighteen, and you scared me to death. People called you ‘Stud!’ I knew I couldn’t handle a man like you, even if you’d ever looked at me twice.”
“I looked,” he said harshly. “More than twice. But you turned your nose up at me as if you didn’t like my smell, so I left you alone, even though I wanted you so much my guts were tied in knots. I built that house for you, because you were used to a lot better than the old house I was living in. I built the swimming pool because you liked to swim. Then you married some fancy-pants rich guy, damn you, and I felt like tearing the place down stone by stone.”
Her lips trembled. “If I couldn’t have you, it didn’t matter who I married.”
“You could have had me.”
“As a temporary bed partner? I was so young I thought I had to have it all or nothing. I wanted forever after, for better or worse, and your track record isn’t that of a marrying man. Now…” She shrugged, then managed a faint smile. “Now all that doesn’t matter.”
Hard anger crossed his face, then he said, “That’s what you think,” and covered her mouth with his. She opened her lips to him, letting him take all he wanted. The time was long past when she could deny him anything, any part of herself. Even their kisses had been restrained for the past four days, and the hunger was so strong in him that it overwhelmed his anger; he kissed her as if he wanted to devour her, his strong hands kneading her flesh with barely controlled ferocity, and she reveled in it. She didn’t fear his strength or his roughness, because they sprang from passion and aroused an answering need inside her.
Her nails dug into his bare shoulders as her head fell back, baring her throat for his mouth. His hips moved rhythmically, rubbing the hard ridge of his manhood against her as his self-control slipped. Only the knowledge that a nurse could interrupt them at any moment gave him the strength to finally ease away from her, his breath coming hard and fast. The way he felt now was too private, too intense, for him to allow even the chance of anyone walking in on them.
“Nev had better hurry,” he said roughly, unable to resist one more kiss. Her lips were pouty and swollen from his kisses, her eyes half-closed and drugged with desire; that look aroused him even more, because he had put it there.
MICHELLE SLIPPED OUT of the bedroom, her clothes in her hand. She didn’t want to take a chance on waking John by dressing in the bedroom; he had been sleeping heavily since the accident, but she didn’t want to push her luck. She had to find Roger. He had missed killing John once; he might not miss the second time. And she knew John; if he made even a pretense of following the doctor’s order to take it easy, she’d be surprised. No, he would be working as normal, out in the open and vulnerable.
He had talked to Deputy Phelps the night before, but all Andy had come up with was that a blue Chevrolet had been rented to a man generally matching Roger’s physical description, and calling himself Edward Walsh. The familiar cold chill had gone down Michelle’s spine. “Edward is Roger’s middle name,” she had whispered. “Walsh was his mother’s maiden name.” John had stared at her for a long moment before relaying the information to Andy.
She wouldn’t allow Roger another opportunity to hurt John. Oddly, she wasn’t afraid for herself. She had already been through so much at Roger’s hands that she simply couldn’t be afraid any longer, but she was deathly afraid for John, and for this new life she carried. She couldn’t let this go on.
Lying awake in the darkness, she had suddenly known how to find him. She didn’t know exactly where he was, but she knew the general vicinity; all she had to do was bait the trap, and he would walk into it. The only problem was that she was the bait, and she would be in the trap with him.
She left a note for John on the kitchen table and ate a cracker to settle her stomach. To be on the safe side, she carried a pack of crackers with her as she slipped silently out the back door. If her hunch was right, she should be fairly safe until someone could get there. Her hand strayed to her stomach. She had to be right.
The Mercedes started with one turn of the ignition key, its engine smooth and quiet. She put it in gear and eased it down the driveway without putting on the lights, hoping she wouldn’t wake Edie or any of the men.
Her ranch was quiet, the old house sitting silent and abandoned under the canopy of big oak trees. She unlocked the door and let herself in, her ears straining to hear every noise in the darkness. It would be dawn within half an hour; she didn’t have much time to bait the trap and lure Roger in before Edie would find the note on the table and wake John.
Her hand shook as she flipped on the light in the foyer. The interior of the house jumped into focus, light and shadow rearranging themselves into things she knew as well as she knew her own face. Methodically she walked around, turning on the lights in the living room, then moving into her father’s office, then the dining room, then the kitchen. She pulled the curtains back from the windows to let the lights shine through like beacons, which she meant them to be.
She turned on the lights in the laundry room, and in the small downstairs apartment used by the housekeeper a long time ago, when there had been a housekeeper. She went upstairs and turned on the lights in her bedroom, where John had taken her for the first time and made it impossible for her to ever be anything but his. Every light went on, both upstairs and downstairs, piercing the predawn darkness. Then she sat down on the bottom step of the stairs and waited. Soon someone would come. It might be John, in which case he would be furious, but she suspected it would be Roger.
The seconds slipped past, becoming minutes. Just as the sky began to take on the first gray tinge of daylight, the door opened and he walked in.
She hadn’t heard a car, which meant she had been right in thinking he was close by. Nor had she heard his steps as he crossed the porch. She had no warning until he walked through the door, but, oddly, she wasn’t startled. She had known he would be there.
“Hello, Roger,” she said calmly. She had to remain calm.
He had put on a little weight in the two years since she had seen him, and his hair was a tad thinner, but other than that he looked the same. Even his eyes still looked the same, too sincere and slightly mad. The sincerity masked the fact that his mind had slipped, not far enough that he couldn’t still function in society, but enough that he could conceive of murder and be perfectly logical about it, as if it we
re the only thing to do.
He carried a pistol in his right hand, but he held it loosely by the side of his leg. “Michelle,” he said, a little confused by her manner, as if she were greeting a guest. “You’re looking well.” It was a comment dictated by a lifetime of having the importance of good manners drilled into him.
She nodded gravely. “Thank you. Would you like a cup of coffee?” She didn’t know if there was any coffee in the house, and even if there were, it would be horribly stale, but the longer she could keep him off balance, the better. If Edie wasn’t in the kitchen now, she would be in a few minutes, and she would wake John. Michelle hoped John would call Andy, but he might not take the time. She figured he would be here in fifteen minutes. Surely she could handle Roger for fifteen minutes. She thought the brightly lit house would alert John that something was wrong, so he wouldn’t come bursting in, startling Roger into shooting. It was a chance, but so far the chances she had taken had paid off.
Roger was staring at her with a feverish glitter in his eyes, as if he couldn’t look at her enough. Her question startled him again. “Coffee?”
“Yes. I think I’d like a cup, wouldn’t you?” The very thought of coffee made her stomach roll, but making it would take time. And Roger was very civilized; he would see nothing wrong with sharing a cup of coffee with her.
“Why, yes. That would be nice, thank you.”
She smiled at him as she got up from the stairs. “Why don’t you chat with me while the coffee’s brewing? I’m certain we have a lot of gossip to catch up on. I only hope I have coffee; I may have forgotten to buy any. It’s been so hot this summer, hasn’t it? I’ve become an iced-tea fanatic.”
“Yes, it’s been very hot,” he agreed, following her into the kitchen. “I thought I might spend some time at the chalet in Colorado. It should be pleasant this time of year.”
She found a half-empty pack of coffee in the cabinet; it was probably so stale it would be undrinkable, but she carefully filled the pot with water and poured it into the coffeemaker, then measured out the coffee into the paper filter. Her coffeemaker was slow; it took almost ten minutes to make a pot. The perking, hissing sounds it made were very soothing.
“Please sit down,” she invited, indicating the chairs at the kitchen table.
Slowly he took a chair, then placed the pistol on the table. Michelle didn’t let herself look at it as she turned to take two mugs from the cabinet. Then she sat down and took another cracker from the pack she had brought with her; she had left it on the table earlier, when she was going around the house turning on all the lights. Her stomach was rolling again, perhaps from tension as much as the effects of pregnancy.
“Would you like a cracker?” she asked politely.
He was watching her again, his eyes both sad and wild. “I love you,” he whispered. “How could you leave me when I need you so much? I wanted you to come back to me. Everything would have been all right. I promised you it would be all right. Why did you move in with that brute rancher? Why did you have to cheat on me like that?”
Michelle jumped at the sudden lash of fury in his voice. His remarkably pleasant face was twisting in the hideous way she remembered in her nightmares. Her heart began thudding against her ribs so painfully that she thought she might be sick, after all, but somehow she managed to say with creditable surprise, “But, Roger, the electricity had been disconnected. You didn’t expect me to live here without lights or water, did you?”
Again he looked confused by the unexpected change of subject, but only momentarily. He shook his head. “You can’t lie to me anymore, darling. You’re still living with him. I just don’t understand. I offered you so much more: all the luxury you could want, jewelry, shopping trips in Paris, but instead you ran away from me to live with a sweaty rancher who smells of cows.”
She couldn’t stop the coldness that spread over her when he called her “darling.” She swallowed, trying to force back the panic welling in her. If she panicked, she wouldn’t be able to control him. How many minutes did she have left? Seven? Eight?
“I wasn’t certain you wanted me back,” she managed to say, though her mouth was so dry she could barely form the words.
Slowly he shook his head. “You had to know. You just didn’t want to come back. You like what that sweaty rancher can give you, when you could have lived like a queen. Michelle, darling, it’s so sick for you to let someone like him touch you, but you enjoy it, don’t you? It’s unnatural!”
She knew all the signs. He was working himself into a frenzy, the rage and jealousy building in him until he lashed out violently. How could even Roger miss seeing why she would prefer John’s strong, clean masculinity and earthy passions to his own twisted parody of love? How much longer would it be? Six minutes?
“I called your house,” she lied, desperately trying to defuse his temper. “Your housekeeper said you were in France. I wanted you to come get me. I wanted to come back to you.”
He looked startled, the rage draining abruptly from his face as if it had never been. He didn’t even look like the same man. “You…you wanted…”
She nodded, noting that he seemed to have forgotten about the pistol. “I missed you. We had so much fun together, didn’t we?” It was sad, but in the beginning they had had fun. Roger had been full of laughter and gentle teasing, and she had hoped he could make her forget about John.
Some of that fun was suddenly echoed in his eyes, in the smile that touched his mouth. “I thought you were the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen,” he said softly. “Your hair was so bright and soft, and when you smiled at me, I felt ten feet tall. I would have given you the world. I would have killed for you.” Still smiling, his hand moved toward the pistol.
Five minutes?
The ghost of the man he had been faded, and suddenly pity moved her. It wasn’t until that moment that she understood Roger was truly ill; something in his mind had gone very wrong, and she didn’t think all the psychiatrists or drugs in the world would be able to help him.
“We were so young,” she murmured, wishing things could have been different for the laughing young man she had known. Little of him remained now, only moments of remembered fun to lighten his eyes. “Do you remember June Bailey, the little redhead who fell out of Wes Conlan’s boat? We were all trying to help her back in, and somehow we all wound up in the water except for Toni. She didn’t know a thing about sailing, so there she was on the boat, screaming, and we were swimming like mad, trying to catch up to her.”
Four minutes.
He laughed, his mind sliding back to those sunny, goofy days.
“I think the coffee’s about finished,” she murmured, getting up. Carefully she poured two cups and carried them back to the table. “I hope you can drink it. I’m not much of a coffee-maker.” That was better than telling him the coffee was stale because she had been living with John.
He was still smiling, but his eyes were sad. As she watched, a sheen of tears began to brighten his eyes, and he picked up the pistol. “I do love you so much,” he said. “You never should have let that man touch you.” Slowly the barrel came around toward her.
A lot of things happened simultaneously. The back door exploded inward, propelled by a kick that took it off the hinges. Roger jerked toward the sound and the pistol fired, the shot deafening in the confines of the house. She screamed and ducked as two other men leaped from the inside doorway, the biggest one taking Roger down with a tackle that sent him crashing into the table. Curses and shouts filled the air, along with the sound of wood splintering; then another shot assaulted her ears and strengthened the stench of cordite. She was screaming John’s name over and over, knowing he was the one rolling across the floor with Roger as they both struggled for the gun. Then suddenly the pistol skidded across the floor and John was straddling Roger as he drove his fist into the other man’s face.
The sickening thud m
ade her scream again, and she kicked a shattered chair out of her way, scrambling for the two men. Andy Phelps and another deputy reached them at the same time, grabbing John and trying to wrestle him away, but his face was a mask of killing fury at the man who had tried to murder his woman. He slung their hands away with a roar. Sobbing, Michelle threw her arms around his neck from behind, her shaking body against his back. “John, don’t, please,” she begged, weeping so hard that the words were almost unintelligible. “He’s very sick.”
He froze, her words reaching him as no one else’s could. Slowly he let his fists drop and got to his feet, hauling her against him and holding her so tightly that she could barely breathe. But breathing wasn’t important right then; nothing was as important as holding him and having him hold her, his head bent down to hers as he whispered a choked mixture of curses and love words.
The deputies had pulled Roger to his feet and cuffed his hands behind his back, while the pistol was put in a plastic bag and sealed. Roger’s nose and mouth were bloody, and he was dazed, looking at them as if he didn’t know who they were, or where he was. Perhaps he didn’t.
John held Michelle’s head pressed to his chest as he watched the deputies take Beckman out. God, how could she have been so cool, sitting across the kitchen table from that maniac and calmly serving him coffee? The man made John’s blood run cold.
But she was safe in his arms now, the most precious part of his world. She had said a lot about his tomcatting reputation and the women in his checkered past; she had even called him a heartbreaker. But she was the true heartbreaker, with her sunlight hair and summer-green eyes, a golden woman who he never would have forgotten, even if she’d never come back into his life. Beckman had been obsessed with her, had gone mad when he lost her, and for the first time John thought he might understand. He wouldn’t have a life, either, if he lost Michelle.