“Look, I wasn’t trying to rehash the past. I was merely pointing out that if there was a competition going on between Brandon and me, he won it.”
Olivia flushed. “This isn’t about me, it’s about stupid masculine pride. Machismo. Balls. Whatever you men call it. It’s a potentially destructive urge on Brandon’s part. He wants to prove to himself that he’s got the same kind of guts you have. He’s always secretly admired you for the way you turned your back on the Stratton money. Now he’s determined to see if he can make it outside the family, too.”
“So? Let him give it a whirl. Where’s the harm?”
Olivia’s eyes narrowed in outraged fury. “The harm is that his grandfather will punish him for following in your footsteps. We both know it. Parker will cut Brandon out of the will. Danielle is on the edge of a nervous breakdown because of this. She sacrificed a great deal for Brandon’s sake, and now it’s about to go up in smoke.”
“I didn’t know people still had nervous breakdowns,” Harry mused. “I thought you psychologists had more modern terms for that condition.”
Olivia’s face was tight and bleak. “This is not a joke, Harry.”
“And this is not my problem.”
“It most certainly is. You caused it by being a role model for Brandon.”
“I didn’t set out to be anyone’s role model,” he said very softly.
Olivia flinched. “Please, Harry, don’t speak to me in that tone of voice. You know it upsets me.”
Harry drew a deep breath. “I thought I was being remarkably civil under the circumstances.”
“When you’re in one of your moods, every word you utter sounds as though it had been dug out of a glacier.”
Harry clasped his hands behind his back. “Just what do you expect me to do, Olivia?”
“Talk to Brandon. Make him see that leaving Stratton Properties is not a wise move.”
“He’s not likely to listen to me if he’s in the middle of trying to prove something.”
“The least you can do is try to talk him out of this. Harry, you’ve got to do something before he goes too far with his plans. Parker will never forgive him if he walks away from Stratton Properties the way you did. Danielle will be crushed. And Brandon will ultimately be sorry he made a mistake of this magnitude.”
So that was the ex-fiancée.
Molly sat down at the kitchen table with a plate of spinach ravioli laced with Parmesan, fresh basil leaves, and olive oil. She forked up two of the ravioli and considered the stack of new grant proposals in front of her.
Surely she could find one out of this lot that would pass muster with Harry.
Olivia was certainly pretty. No, that was putting it mildly. She was lovely. Molly munched ravioli and wondered what had gone wrong between Harry and Olivia.
Hours of boredom broken by moments of stark terror.
Olivia had not appeared terrified of Harry this evening. She had looked like a woman who had a claim on his time and attention. Molly wondered what had drawn the two together in the first place. Olivia certainly didn’t look to be Harry’s type. Of course, Molly reflected, her own opinion on that subject was definitely biased.
She took another bite of ravioli and turned a page. It was pointless to speculate. The bottom line was that in the end Olivia had married Harry’s cousin, Brandon Stratton Hughes.
It was certainly interesting that Olivia had come to Harry for help with whatever family problem had caused her so much concern, though.
Molly pushed the haunting thoughts aside. She forced herself to concentrate on the summary page of the grant proposal that lay open on the table in front of her.
The old house hunkered down for the night with a sigh and a few creaks and groans. A distant hum from the floor above indicated that a cleaning robot was going about its duties.
After a while Molly took a break to put her dishes onto the conveyer belt that would whisk them through the patented Abberwick Dishwasher. When the machine was finished, the dishes would all be automatically stacked and stored.
Molly was concentrating on a proposal for an emission-free engine design when the cleaned dishes emerged from the machine. She did not look up as the rubber-coated mechanical arms stacked the plate neatly in the adjacent cupboard.
“Are you seriously involved with Molly Abberwick?” Olivia asked as she picked up her purse.
Harry turned away from the window. “Yes.”
“You’re sleeping with her?”
“That’s none of your business,” Harry said.
Olivia had the grace to look embarrassed. “No, I suppose it isn’t. I just wondered if there were any, uh, complications.”
“Complications?”
“The sort you and I had,” Olivia said brusquely.
“Ah, yes. That sort. As I recall, you said I made you nervous.”
“There’s no need to be sarcastic. I’m only trying to help.”
Harry eyed her with some surprise. “How?”
“I’ve told you that I think you’re suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder because of the manner in which your parents died,” Olivia said quietly. “It’s not an unusual reaction to serious trauma. I wish you would call Dr. Shropton. He’s had a lot of experience treating the disorder. And there’s medication that can help.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You’re not going to do a damn thing about it, are you?” Olivia asked in a burst of fresh anger. “You won’t seek professional help. You won’t discuss your dysfunctional behavior. You won’t even admit you have a problem.”
“Look, Olivia—”
“Let me tell you something, Harry. As a professional, I can guarantee you that your problems won’t get any better if you persist in denying their very existence. They’ll ruin your relationship with Molly Abberwick, just as they ruined our relationship.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Harry said. “But I don’t think we can blame my personality defects entirely on the fact that our relationship fizzled.”
“Don’t you dare try to tell me that you ever loved me, Harry. Whatever you felt for me, it wasn’t love.”
He stilled. “Did you love me?”
“I tried,” Olivia whispered valiantly. “I really did try, Harry.”
“Noble of you.” He knew of no way to tell her that he had tried to love her, too. She would never comprehend that it was his very attempt to do so that made her flee the engagement. Moments of stark terror.
“It was hopeless,” Olivia said. “You’re not free to love anyone, Harry. For a while I thought perhaps we could work things out. I thought if you would only learn to communicate. If you could develop some empathy. Share your feelings. Get out of denial. But it was impossible.”
“Yes, I suppose it was.”
“And then the sex got…well, it got weird, Harry. You know it did.”
Harry felt his insides grow cold. “I’m sorry.” There was nothing else to say.
“I know you didn’t intend to scare me, but you did. At first you were so distant, so cold in bed. I felt as if a robot were making love to me, not a man.”
Harry closed his eyes.
“And then, that last time that we were together, you seemed to lose control or something. It was overwhelming.” Olivia groped for words. “Terrifying, if you want the truth. I realized afterward that we had to end the engagement.”
Harry vowed he would not make the same mistake with Molly.
He was well aware that women who became involved with him labeled him difficult. Over the years he had heard all the tearful accusations. He was too distant, too remote, too uncommunicative, too cold.
Until Olivia, Harry’s infrequent relationships had all floundered on the rocky shoals of boredom or exasperation. But with Olivia, he had given in to a growing sense of desperation. He was in his
mid-thirties. The longing for a true bond with a woman had grown so strong within him that he had succumbed to temptation. He had carefully, cautiously, opened himself ever so slightly to Olivia.
The result had been disaster. She was right. The sex got weird.
Harry knew it was his own fault. So long as he maintained a certain emotional distance in the relationship—so long as things were limited to the physical and the intellectual—he could keep matters under control.
But there were those bleak moments when he craved something else, something he could not name. And those moments came with increasing frequency of late. More than any vampire hungering for blood, he longed for a dark consummation that he could not even comprehend.
Not only were the moments of need coming over him more often, plunging him into darker moods than any he had known in the past, they were more intense. A fear that had once been remote and easily repressed, the fear of going insane, was beginning to surface with alarming regularity. Each time it appeared it took more strength of will to crush it.
The kitchen phone rang just as Molly finished the last page of the final grant proposal. She reached across the table and picked up the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Did you get dinner?” Harry asked without preamble.
Molly smiled. “Yes, thanks. I’m perfectly capable of feeding myself. “
“I know.”
Molly frowned. “Are you all right? You sound weird?”
“Do me a favor and don’t call me weird. Call me arrogant, pedantic, stubborn, or any of the other things you like to call me, but not weird, okay?”
“Okay. You don’t sound weird. You sound weary. That’s what I meant to say. Weary. What’s wrong?”
“Olivia left a few minutes ago.”
“Hmm.”
“My cousin Brandon has decided to quit his job with the family firm. She wants me to talk him out of it.”
“I see.” Molly hesitated. “Can you do that?”
“I doubt it. I’m not sure I should even try. Can we reschedule dinner for tomorrow night?”
Molly hesitated.
“Please,” Harry said quietly.
“Fine. I’ll look forward to it. Oh, by the way, Harry, I just finished going through the newest stack of grant proposals, and I think I’ve found some really exciting prospects. I can’t wait for you to take a look at them.”
“Neither can I.”
“You don’t sound genuinely enthusiastic.”
“I will be by tomorrow night.”
“Right. It’s been a very long day.”
“Yes. Good night, Molly.” Harry paused. “Thanks for making the trip to Hidden Springs with me.”
“I had a great time. I think Kelsey is right. I should get away more often. Good night, Harry.”
Molly hung up the phone very slowly. She sat quietly for a while, listening to the sounds of the house. They were comfortable, familiar, soothing sounds. They were the sounds of home.
She thought about Kelsey’s advice to sell the mansion. It was probably the logical thing to do. But for some reason Molly could not envision such a move.
After a time she put the last grant proposal on the pile and rose from the table. The lights in the kitchen winked off as she walked out of the room.
She climbed the curved staircase and went down the hall to her bedroom.
A short time later, she slipped into bed. She folded her arms behind her head and gazed up into the shadows for a long time. Eventually she turned on her side and fell asleep.
Her dreams were an eerie collage of red kings, knives, and unseen menace. A muted whirring sound broke into them, exacerbating the sense of threat.
It took Molly’s sleep-drugged brain a few seconds to register the fact that the noise was not part of her dream. When she finally realized that something was wrong, fear sliced into her consciousness, bringing her fully awake.
Molly opened her eyes in an instant of explosive terror. A dark figure cloaked in layers of black fabric was rising from the floor beside her bed. She had a glimpse of a skeletal face, yawning holes where eyes should have been, and a clawed hand.
Molly was paralyzed. A scream got trapped in her throat.
The figure leaned over the bed. The mechanical whirring grew louder. The clawed hand lifted in a jerky fashion.
The instinct for survival unlocked Molly’s frozen limbs. She shoved aside the quilt and managed to roll off the far side of the bed.
She hit the floor with a jarring thud, scrambled to her feet, and ran for the door.
The hall lights came on automatically in response to her frantic movements. Molly glanced back over her shoulder to see how close her pursuer was.
That was when she realized that the thing from under the bed had not moved to follow her. It still hovered over the rumpled sheets, clawed hand frozen in midair. The whirring sound ceased abruptly, as though a switch had been turned off.
“Oh, no,” Molly whispered. “Not again.”
8
The shrill ringing of the phone cut into a dream in which Harry was dealing from a deck of cards that contained nothing but red kings. He knew he had to find the queen or all was lost. But the damn phone kept interrupting his concentration.
He stirred and reached for the receiver with a mixture of irritation and foreboding. He glanced at the clock. It was nearly one in the morning. Calls at this hour invariably meant trouble.
“Trevelyan here.” He hauled himself up against the pillows. At least he was out of the dream. For a while.
“Harry, it’s me. Molly.”
The breathless tremor in her voice had the impact of cold water on all his senses. Harry was suddenly wide awake. Every muscle in his body hardened with battle-ready tension. “What’s wrong?”
“Something very strange has just happened. Remember the fake gun that someone left outside my door the other evening?”
“Hell, yes.”
“Well, I think that whoever set up that prank has just played another one on me.”
“Bastard,” Harry whispered. He tightened his grip on the phone. “As bad as the first?”
“It was similar to the first one, but I have to admit this one was a lot more effective. I don’t think I’ve ever been so frightened in my entire life.”
“Are you all right?” Harry was already out of bed, heading across the room toward the closet.
“Yes, I’m fine. It was harmless. Just very scary.” Molly hesitated. Her voice dropped to a low, apologetic mumble. “Sorry for bothering you. I don’t know why I called you. I dialed your number without really thinking about it.”
“It’s all right.” Harry cradled the phone between his shoulder and ear while he yanked open the closet door.
“I shouldn’t have called at this hour.”
“I said forget it. I’m on my way.” Harry pulled on the first pants he found, a pair of olive-green chinos. “I’ll be there as soon as I get the car out of the garage.”
“Thanks.” Relief was audible in Molly’s voice.
“This time we notify the cops.”
“Now, Harry, I don’t want to do anything rash. I’m sure this is just another practical—”
“I’ll see you in a few minutes.” He tossed the phone into the cradle, grabbed a shirt, slid his feet into worn running shoes, and headed for the door.
He refused to think about the red king.
The streets were empty. Within ten minutes of leaving his garage, Harry drove through the massive wrought-iron gates that guarded the aging monstrosity Molly called home. The gates had been unlocked from inside the house.
He surveyed the old house as he shut off the engine. Light glowed in every window, including the peaked attic. Molly must have gone through each room and switched on every single lamp.
Whoever had
pulled this stunt had definitely succeeded in scaring Molly. The perpetrator had probably not counted on the secondary effect he’d achieved, Harry thought as he loped up the front steps. The bastard had not yet realized that he’d also gotten her consultant’s full attention.
He would not leave Molly here alone tonight, Harry promised himself. He didn’t care how much she argued. She was coming back to his condominium until he could decide how to deal with the situation.
The front door opened just as he raised his hand to pound on it. Molly stood there, silhouetted by the hall light. She clutched the lapels of an oversized white terry-cloth bathrobe in one hand. Her hair looked as though it had been through an explosion. Her eyes were huge and shadowed.
“Harry.” She stared at him for an instant as though not quite certain what to do next.
Before Harry realized her intent, she hurled herself straight into his arms and buried her face against his shoulder.
He caught her close.
She had called him. She needed him. She was right here in his arms. Where she was supposed to be.
The dark longing gathered within him, seeking that which it could not have, that which it would inevitably destroy.
Harry sucked in air. With a savage act of will he got a grip on himself and the wild emotions that threatened to sweep through him. He would not allow the hunger to gain control. There was too much at stake. He could not risk terrifying Molly. He must not lose her.
“It’s all right. I’m here.” Gently he set Molly way from him. It was not easy. Her arms seemed to be locked around his neck.
Reluctantly Molly raised her face to look at him. “Thank you for coming. I really appreciate it. I shouldn’t have bothered you.”
“Forget it.” Harry searched her eyes and relaxed slightly. She was flushed, but not with fear of him.
He saw that her robe had parted, revealing an incredibly innocent-looking white nightgown trimmed with a delicately scalloped neckline. Her breasts rose gently above the scallops. Her nipples, visibly erect, were pressed against the gossamer fabric. Harry flexed his hands and listened to the blood as it roared through his veins.