“Don’t use the word lightly. You don’t know what crazy is.”
“And you do?”
“Some people,” he said very deliberately, “have implied that I may have a nodding acquaintance with the condition.”
“But I thought we settled that issue. You’re not crazy.” She studied him with sudden comprehension. “Ah. You’re referring to Olivia, aren’t you?”
“She is a professional,” he said through set teeth.
“Maybe. But I wouldn’t worry about her diagnosis, if I were you.”
“Easy for you to say,” Harry muttered. “I can certainly testify to the fact that I went a little nuts this afternoon when I realized you weren’t home on time and that I had no idea where you were.”
Her eyes widened. “Now that is interesting, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s crazy-making, not interesting. I don’t want to go through that again. Ever. And that is why you are not to go anywhere by yourself until Kendall is caught.”
She pursed her lips, her eyes thoughtful. “When did you first realize that I was in trouble?”
He was suddenly wary. “I realized you were late around five-thirty.”
“That would have been about the time that I wished you were with me. I remember thinking your name very, very clearly.”
“Molly, for God’s sake, don’t try to tell me that you believe there was some extrasensory perception involved here.”
“Maybe it was your intuition at work again,” she suggested ingenuously.
He released the arms of her chair and straightened abruptly. “Are you serious?”
“Let’s look at this rationally.”
“Now, that would certainly be a novel approach.”
She paid no attention to his sarcasm. “Tell me, how did you know that I’d gone home to pick up some clothes?”
“Hell.” Harry resumed his pacing. “Not from any paranormal powers, I can promise you that. It was a perfectly logical deduction under the circumstances.”
“Hmm.”
“Don’t say that.”
She gave him a quizzical look. “Don’t say what?”
“Don’t say hmm in that tone of voice.”
“Okay. But, Harry, in all seriousness, I’m starting to wonder if there is something to this paranormal stuff.”
“For the last time, I do not have any psychic powers. Even those in the family who believe in the Trevelyan Second Sight don’t believe it takes the form of the kind of mental telepathy that allows two people to communicate without words. Not even the original Harry Trevelyan believed he could do that.”
“Hmm.”
Harry glared at her.
“Sorry,” Molly said. “I was just thinking. We’re back to intuition, I suppose.”
“Insight,” he said grimly. “Reasoned, logical insight occasionally gives the illusion of being something more than what it actually is.”
“So it was reason and logic that enabled you to deduce that I was in trouble at the mansion?”
“For all the good it did.” Harry shut his eyes and let the stark truth roll through him. “I was too late to make a difference. Too damn late. If you hadn’t had that inspiration to hide in your father’s workshop and use those old toys to defend yourself, I would have found you—” He broke off, unable to put the rest into words.
“Yes. It was a useful inspiration, wasn’t it?” Molly took another sip of wine. A faraway expression lit her eyes.
“What the hell gave you the idea to use the mechanical toys the way you did?” Harry asked. “Or was it just a case of necessity being the mother of invention?”
“What would you say if I told you that I got the idea to use the toys from a couple of children?”
He scowled briefly. “What children? Are you telling me there were some children involved in this? You didn’t say anything about them to the police.”
“There was no point,” Molly said, oddly wistful. “The children haven’t been born yet.”
Harry stared at her. She’d been through a lot today, he reminded himself. She was probably suffering from some sort of delayed shock. “Molly, we’d better get you into bed. You need rest.”
She smiled. “Harry, have you ever thought about having kids?”
He came to a halt in front of the window. His imagination projected a clear, unmistakable picture of her rounded and ripe with child. His child. An intense longing welled up within him. He took a deep breath. “I think that wine is getting to you. It’s probably because of the stress. Come on. I’ll help you undress. You need a good night’s sleep.”
“Hmm.”
15
“Too late.”
The hoarse, desperate words were barely audible, but they woke Molly from a dream of huge, marauding mechanical toys. Adrenaline surged through her. She opened her eyes and looked at Harry, who was asleep on the bed beside her.
A broad shaft of moonlight slanted into the room through the wall of windows. The icy light bathed him in silver. There was a damp sheen of sweat on his bare shoulders.
“Too late,” he muttered into the pillow. He shifted restlessly. “Can’t breathe. Can’t breathe.”
“Harry, wake up.”
“Can’t breathe. Too late.”
Molly touched him gently. It was as though she had plugged him into a light socket. Harry came awake with shocking suddenness, rolled to the edge of the bed, and got to his feet in one smooth motion. He whirled to look down at her.
In the cold moonlight she could not make out the curious amber color of his eyes, but she had no problem seeing the haunted expression in them. She sat up slowly against the pillows and pulled the sheet to her throat.
“You were dreaming,” she whispered.
“Yes.” He blinked a few times as though to clear away the ghosts. A shudder went through him. He took a deep breath and seemed to steady himself. “Sorry.”
“A nightmare?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I haven’t had one like that in a long time. Years. I’d almost forgotten how bad they were.”
Molly pushed aside the covers and stood. She padded quickly around the end of the wide bed and went to him. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she leaned against him, offering the only comfort she had to give.
“It’s all right, Harry. It’s over.”
He stood rigidly in her embrace for a long moment, and then, with a husky, wordless groan, he put his arms around her and held her as though she were the only woman on earth. For a few minutes they stood there quietly in the moonlight.
“It was because of me, wasn’t it?” Molly finally dared to suggest. “The incident this afternoon triggered your dream. You feel guilty because you got to me after Kendall had already gone.”
“I got to you too late.” Harry’s voice was uncompromisingly harsh. “You could have been killed.”
“The way your parents were?”
Harry went absolutely still. “Yes.”
“What happened to me today brought back all the old memories, didn’t it?”
“Probably.”
“And some old dreams.”
“I guess so.” He sounded weary all the way to his soul.
“You can’t save everyone, Harry. Not even all the people you care about. Life doesn’t give us that option. I learned that the hard way, myself. Let it go.”
“I don’t think I can. Not completely. Not ever.”
“Then share it with me.” Molly braced herself. “Tell me what it was really like that day your parents were murdered.”
“You don’t want to hear about it.”
Molly was not certain she had the right to pry further, but something within her drove her to push on, even though it was obvious her questions would not be welcome. “You said that you were too late to save your folks that day
.”
“Too goddamned late.” Without warning, rage and pain poured from him in a torrent. It was as if somewhere inside him a dam had burst. “Just as I was too late today. Too late. Always too damned late.”
Molly hugged him fiercely. “You went down with a spear gun that day your parents died.”
“Christ. Did Josh tell you that part, too?”
“Yes.” Molly lifted her head to search his face. His eyes glittered. “You were almost killed, yourself, weren’t you?”
“They saw me as they emerged from the cave.” The words sounded as if they emanated from somewhere near the outer rings of Hades, the region of unbearable cold. “I knew then what had happened. They came straight toward me. I killed the first man with the spear gun. The other one was on me before I could reload. His shot missed. But he had a knife. Took it from a sheath he wore on his ankle. Sliced through my air hose.”
“Oh, God, Harry.” She tightened her hold on him.
“I had a knife, too. Dad had given it to me. I killed the bastard with it. But I was out of air. Took a tank off one of the dead men. Used it to swim on down to the cave. But I was too late. They were both dead.”
Stark silence fell.
Molly cradled Harry’s face between her palms. She sensed that the tale was unfinished, although she did not know what remained to be told. She only knew that he had to tell her everything.
Molly probed cautiously, feeling her way as carefully as though she walked through a minefield. “You said you knew as soon as you arrived on the scene that there was danger. That something terrible had happened?”
Harry gazed past her into the night outside the window. “I saw the second boat anchored next to theirs. I reached out to touch the hull. Everything was wrong. So goddamned wrong.”
“I understand.”
“I found them. Brought them back to the surface. I couldn’t seem to breathe, even though I had a half-full tank of air.” Harry rubbed his eyes with one hand. “And the water was a strange shade of red. A trick of the late afternoon light, I think. But it looked like blood.”
“It must have been unbearable.”
“Yes.”
“No wonder you still dream about it. Harry, you couldn’t save your parents’ lives that day. But you must never forget that your father saved yours.”
He pulled his attention away from the night and looked down at her with a scowl of confusion. “What?”
“Your father taught you how to use a knife, didn’t he? He gave you the one you wear. The one you used that day.”
“He taught me everything he knew. It’s the only reason that I survived that fight.”
“The skills your father gave you saved your life that day, just as the mechanical toys my father made for me saved my life this afternoon.”
Harry was silent for a moment. “Yes.”
“Sometimes it’s good to remember things like that, Harry. We’re all connected to each other. Sometimes we save others. Sometimes they save us. That’s the way life is. None of us can do all of the saving, all of the time.”
Harry said nothing. But he did not pull away from her embrace.
“Your father fulfilled his responsibility to you by teaching you the things you needed to know in order to survive in that terrible moment.”
“Molly, I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, but if this is your idea of a little amateur psychology, forget it.” His mouth twisted bitterly. “Olivia already gave it her best shot, and she’s an expert.”
“What did Olivia say?”
Harry shrugged. “She talked a lot about the destructiveness of guilt. Said there was medication for posttraumatic stress disorder. I told her that I wasn’t interested in rewriting history with a feel-good pill.”
Molly gave him a small shake. “What I’m telling you isn’t therapy, it’s truth. You’re the one who’s supposed to be the expert when it comes to sorting out reality from illusion. Well, look at this piece of truth I’m giving you, and tell me honestly if you think it’s a lie.”
“And just what is this truth you want me to see?”
She refused to be intimidated by the anger that was pulsing through him. She knew intuitively that it was good for him to release the emotion. He had kept too many things bottled up inside for too long.
“Listen to me, Harry. Your father saved your life that day, and that is exactly the way he would have wanted it. He was your father, and you were his son. He took care of you that day. It was his right as a father. Your mother would have felt the same way. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. You repaid the gift by passing it along.”
Harry’s jaw tightened. “I don’t understand.”
“What if it had been Josh instead of you who went down that day? What if he had been the one to encounter those two murderers?”
Harry stared at her with unblinking eyes and said nothing. He did not have to say anything. Molly knew exactly what he was thinking. Harry had raised Josh. He had a father’s instincts toward him.
“I agree that a man like you would never be content to rewrite history in order to make himself feel better,” Molly continued gently. “That’s not the way out. You make things right by balancing the scales. It’s not therapy, it’s a karma thing.”
“I don’t believe this. Karma? Don’t tell me that you’re into that kind of mystical nonsense.”
“All right, you’re a man of science, think of it in technical terms. Apply Newton’s Laws of Motion. For every action there is an equal reaction. Your father saved your life, and you responded by doing the same for Josh.”
“What does Josh have to do with this?” Harry asked tensely. “I’ve never saved his life.”
“Yes, you have. You saved him from the legacy of the past. It was a legacy that could easily have gotten him killed or left him washed up and embittered like his grandfather. You gave him a future filled with promise. That was a priceless gift, Harry.”
“All I did was make sure he got an education.”
“No, you gave him much more than that. You gave him a stable environment. You were a true father to him. You wrestled that old devil, Leon, for his soul, and you won.”
Harry leaned his damp forehead against hers in a gesture of unutterable exhaustion. “This is a strange conversation to be having in the middle of the night.”
“Josh isn’t the only one you’ve saved,” Molly said steadily. “From what I can see, you’ve made a habit of saving Strattons and Trevelyans during the past few years.”
He stilled. “Now what are you talking about?”
“Well, as an example, you’ve made it possible for Brandon to go out on his own without risking his inheritance.”
“Brandon won’t thank me for it.”
“Maybe not, but that’s his problem. I know you’ve also helped your cousin Raleigh and his wife. I suspect that you had something to do with making it possible for Evangeline to buy Smoke & Mirrors Amusement Company. I have a hunch the list is endless.”
“Things like that are different.”
“No, they’re not. They’re important because they help people.” She smiled up at him. “And you know what? You did save my life today, although it was indirectly.”
His face hardened. “Don’t joke about it, Molly.”
“This is no joke.” She held his eyes with her own, willing him to see the truth. “I told you that I got an inspiration for using my old toys to save myself from Kendall.”
“You said you got the idea from a couple of kids.”
“The children were yours, Harry.”
“Mine?” Harry was thunderstruck. “I thought I was the crazy one here.”
“They were your children. I saw them very clearly. A boy and a girl. They had your eyes.”
Harry gripped her shoulders, his eyes fierce in the moonlight. “Are you telling me th
at you had a vision or something?”
Molly smiled tremulously. “Well, maybe it was just wishful thinking.”
“Wishful thinking,” he repeated blankly.
“I have a very good imagination. It runs in the family. Along with the streak of curiosity.”
“Molly—”
She touched his lips with one fingertip. “I think it’s time you thought about having kids of your own. You’d make a really fantastic father. You have an aptitude for the job.”
His mouth opened. No words came out. He closed it again. Then he wrapped one arm around her neck, bent his head, and kissed her with such seething hunger that Molly went limp in the face of it. Her head fell back against his shoulder.
She was stunned by the wave of sharp, searing need that rolled over her and through her. It left her weak and breathless. And filled with anticipation.
Harry was kissing her now the way he had that first night. She felt like a flower caught in a hurricane. She trembled beneath the impact of the storm and sensed the darkness at its heart. She heard Harry groan. She felt his hands close around her waist. The moonlit room spun around her. Her senses were tumbled into chaos.
The next thing she knew, she was lying flat on her back across the bed. Her legs were splayed wide. The skirt of her nightgown was hiked up to her waist. Harry came down on top of her.
Molly was intensely aware both of her own softness and of the crushing weight of Harry’s body. He was fully, heavily aroused. She felt the unyielding hardness of him pressing against her inner thigh.
She gasped for breath when he briefly freed her mouth to kiss her throat. She fought to recover her senses, which were in complete disarray. She was swamped by sensation. Frantically she tried to sort out her impressions. There was something in this that was not coming from her.
She was aware of a deep, raging hunger. A desperate craving that was unlike anything she had ever known. She was in danger of being consumed by an explosive, demanding need that had been tethered too long. The need was fueled by sexual desire, but desire was only a part of the volatile brew.
Harry’s hands moved on her body, touching her everywhere. His teeth rasped against her nipple. The urgency in him nearly overwhelmed her.