He lay on his back beside her while she lay in the circle of his right arm, and on his flat, hard stomach his left hand and her right were clasped, their fingers twining together. Laura wondered which of them was so determined to hold on to the other that the grasp hadn’t loosened even in sleep, and had the uneasy idea that it was her. Proof of that was when she was able to slip her hand gently from his.
I’m clinging to him. Gotta stop that.
She wasn’t yet ready to leave him and go back to her own room, and she didn’t want to wake him, since he seemed to be sleeping deeply, but she was wide awake and felt too restless to just lie there quietly. There was too much to think about lying in his bed, she decided. Too much to worry about. She’d be better off all around if she found something to occupy her mind until he woke or it got so late she’d have to go back to her own room.
She managed to slip from his loosened embrace without waking him, and knelt beside the bed among the jumble of their clothing on the floor. It amused her slightly that their clothing had once more ended in a tangle. She pushed his shoes and her slippers to one side, and laid his pants and shorts over a chair near the bed. She fingered her gown and robe for a moment before tossing them over the arm of the chair, then shrugged into his white shirt.
Laura’s art training had included studies of the nude, and between that and an innate lack of undue modesty or self-consciousness, she would have been perfectly comfortable roaming about Daniel’s dim room naked. So she was amused at herself for putting on his shirt.
Women always do this in books and movies. I wonder why. Never having had a lover in the true sense of the word, Laura had no experience with such things. But putting on a lover’s shirt instead of their own things seemed to be the rule in books and movies, and created mild curiosity in Laura’s mind. Then she turned her head to rub her chin absently against the collar of his shirt, and his scent caught her instant attention. Ah. Now I understand. She knelt there for several minutes just breathing in the slightly musky scent of Daniel, her eyes half closed, and might have remained there in a mindless heap for some time if a crash of thunder and the discomfort of the hardwood floor beneath her knees hadn’t driven her to her feet.
She studied his bedroom as she hadn’t before, noting the mostly heavy mahogany furniture and muted rugs scattered on the floor. There was an overstuffed burgundy armchair and ottoman near the fireplace, and a padded bench at the foot of the big bed. The draperies and bedspread were a dark green, the wallpaper in here a subdued stripe, and there wasn’t a great deal to reveal Daniel’s personality except for bookshelves on either side of the fireplace. She went to them and studied titles in the dim light, finding a number of old friends in fiction, numerous non-fiction volumes on finance and related subjects, and a couple of figurines that looked to her uncertain eye to have come from Hong Kong or some part of the Orient.
She wandered on, looking at quietly tasteful oils on his walls, none of which aroused more than mild interest until she saw the portrait hanging near the window. John Kilbourne, Daniel’s father. It had to be, she thought, because this man was a slightly older edition of Daniel, with only a touch of gray at his temples and a more heavily lined face to indicate more years than his son had yet achieved.
Odd. Daniel’s the living image of his father, and yet Madeline said that Peter was all she had left of John. Or did Daniel inherit the physical appearance while Peter got the personality of their father?
Laura made a mental note to ask someone about that and wandered on, ending up at the window that faced the rear of the house. Since Daniel’s room was at the end of the wing, his bedroom and bathroom between them boasted windows on three sides of the house, but the best view would be this window looking out over the gardens just as Laura’s window did.
She leaned against the casing and looked down on the gardens, interested to see that the maze was visible from this vantage point. The lights were still on out there, as they no doubt were all night, and from here there were fewer trees blocking her line of sight to the maze. It was a weird, almost ghostly scene on this stormy night, the shrubbery lights delineating the paths of the maze even as the rain blurred and softened the lines and lightning flashed sporadic harsh emphasis on the display.
It was the strobelike lightning that caught her attention, though she couldn’t have said why. Because it was so powerful, she thought, or because in the momentary brilliance of that light she glimpsed something that tugged at her awareness.…
“Laura?”
She turned her head to look back toward the bed, and caught her breath. Clearly, Daniel didn’t have a problem with nudity any more than she did. He was moving across the room toward her, his grace catlike and his strength stunningly explicit in rippling muscles and powerful limbs. Big, rugged, starkly masculine, he was a blunt invitation for any woman to learn just what her body was capable of feeling.
That, Laura thought dazedly, was how a man should always approach a woman—naked in the firelight. There was something heart-catchingly primitive in the sight, and long before he reached her, Laura felt the effect in her thudding heart and sudden inability to breathe evenly. It was like recognizing a primal force that would never, could never, be contained or controlled except by its own will.
Yes, you’re that. You’ve always been that. And I’ve always been—
“I thought you’d gone,” he said when he reached her, his low voice displacing the strange sensation his approach had created. He put his hands at her waist and drew her against him.
“I should go. It’s almost four.” She had the odd notion that she had been on the verge of … something. That some knowledge she needed had been right at the door of her awareness, almost within reach. But it was gone now.
He bent his head and kissed her, the initial gentleness deepening as always, and against her lips, he said huskily, “I should let you go. But I don’t want to. Stay a little longer, sweetheart. Please.”
Possible revelations slipped from her mind even as her arms slipped up around his neck, and all she could say in response was, “I want to.”
After that, Laura wasn’t at all surprised to find herself back in his bed, and when she next worked herself up on an elbow and looked at the clock, she also wasn’t surprised to find that it was nearly five A.M. The storms had finally faded away, and it was very quiet in the bedroom.
“I know,” Daniel said, one hand toying with her hair and a slight smile curving his lips.
“It’s awfully late,” she said anyway. “Or early. You have to go into the city in just a few hours, don’t you?”
“Around ten.”
Laura nodded, and hesitated before speaking again. She didn’t want to disturb the peaceful contentment between them, but she also had no idea when—or even if—there would be another moment such as this, when the intimacy of the past hours might be expected to encourage truth, or at the very least diminish guardedness.
“What is it, Laura? What’s wrong?”
“Wrong? Nothing. That is …” She shook her head a little, then blurted, “Did you lie about having been in Scotland?”
“No,” he replied calmly. “Who told you I hadn’t been there?”
“I asked Josie,” she confessed, uncomfortable now. “She said you hadn’t.”
“In the last five years, I haven’t,” Daniel said. “It was before Josie came to live here.” His free hand moved to cup her cheek. “Why do you have to doubt me, Laura? I wish you could learn to trust me.”
“I want to. But—but you haven’t been completely truthful with me, have you?”
“About what?” His question seemed honestly puzzled, but his eyes were dark and abruptly shuttered.
It unnerved her. And it made her feel guarded herself, unwilling to show her own vulnerability when he had retreated from her this way. He was warding her off, protecting himself somehow, and she had to do the same thing. Frustrated and troubled, Laura fell back on the thing that had brought her to this family in the fir
st place. “About the mirror, for instance.”
He sighed. “Laura, listen to me. There is nothing I can tell you about that mirror. I don’t believe it’s connected in any way to Peter’s murder, and as far as I know, it was just another piece of forgotten junk up in the attic. It brought you here, and for that I’m grateful, but beyond that I’m not interested in your mirror. And that is the truth.”
She wanted to believe him, desperately wanted to. But she felt certain that among his seemingly honest and straightforward words lurked, somehow, somewhere, a deception. He knew more about the mirror than he claimed to. So why did he continue to lie about it?
Unwilling to call him a liar to his face, Laura said, “All right.”
His hand slipped under her thick hair to the nape of her neck, and he pulled gently until she was closer. “No, it isn’t all right.” His voice roughened. “You’ve gone away from me.”
Only after you went away from me. But she didn’t say it out loud, unwilling to admit to him that his withdrawal had hurt. Instead, in a voice she tried hard to keep steady, she said, “I don’t know what you want from me. What do you want, Daniel? If it’s just this, sex now and then with no strings and no questions on either side, then tell me. I can’t play your game until I know the rules.”
His fingers tightened on her neck, and his face hardened. It was a brief reaction, lasting only an instant, but in that instant Laura felt an odd little shock that wasn’t exactly fear but a tangle of respect and apprehension and a strange understanding. She couldn’t explain how she knew, but she was certain that this man was capable of great violence, that it was an innate thing buried deeply in his nature and checked only by the rules and laws he chose to obey. And that it would never be directed against her.
“It’s no game,” he said very quietly, the momentary hint of intensity gone now. “Not this, not what’s between us. You know that, Laura. You have to know it.”
She did know that, or felt it at least. But she couldn’t help saying, “I guess you have another name for it, then. Daniel … I don’t expect or ask for bedroom promises. But I expect honesty. So if there’s a question you don’t want to answer, say so. Something you don’t want to talk to me about, say so. Just don’t lie to me.”
He looked at her for a long moment, expression unreadable, his fingers moving gently against her neck. Then he sighed. “And if there are things I don’t want to talk about to you at present? Areas of my life I’d rather not get into right now? Will knowing that make you hold yourself at a distance from me? Will it cause you to believe you can’t trust me? Answer that with the truth, Laura.”
She hesitated, then said, “I don’t know. But I know I’d rather hear the truth than a lie—even if that truth is only that there are things you don’t want me to know.”
It was his turn to hesitate, a moment longer than she had, and when he spoke, it was with deliberation. “Would it make any difference to you if that truth is that there are things I don’t want you to know at present? When the tensions of today are past, when Peter’s killer is found and my … current battle with Amelia is concluded, there’ll be no more questions between us, no lies or evasions. Nothing left unanswered. I promise you that.”
Laura found that response as tantalizing as anything yet said between them, and couldn’t help thinking it might have been better for her to have gone on wondering if he was being truthful rather than to be bluntly told there were things he didn’t want her to know. Because that knowledge was virtually guaranteed to madden her.
“Laura, I realize that isn’t the answer you wanted. But it is the truth you wanted. And it’s all I can offer you right now.”
After a moment she pulled gently away from him and sat up, linking her arms around her upraised knees and gazing somewhat blindly across the room at the fire. “I wish I knew what that meant,” she murmured. The bed moved under her as he sat up as well, and she felt his hand lightly stroking her bare back, his lips press briefly to her shoulder.
“It isn’t a question of trust,” he said.
“That’s what it sounds like.”
“No. I trust you. But I need … to be in control right now. And I can only do that in my own way. Something you have to trust in. I’m asking you to do that, Laura. To trust me. To be patient awhile longer.”
“You ask a lot.”
“I know. But do I ask too much?”
“That depends.” She turned her head to look at him. “There’s something I—I have to know. Something that’s been bothering me since the first day I walked into this house. Are you … have you been using me somehow in this fight with Amelia?”
“No,” he said instantly.
She searched his features uncertainly. “I felt—that day and since—that you were. That both of you were somehow using me like a pawn.”
“Amelia was. Is. Maybe only trying to distract me—I’m not sure. But I never did, I swear. All I tried to do was … keep you here. I allowed Amelia to maneuver you when I might have been able to stop her, but it was only for that reason. Because I wanted you to be here.”
“And when you followed me up to the attic? It wasn’t part of a—a cold-blooded plan?”
Daniel released an odd little sound halfway between a laugh and a groan. “A plan? I wanted you so badly I couldn’t think straight, much less plan anything. As for being cold-blooded, no. Never about you. Where you’re concerned, my blood is a long way from cold, and any detachment far out of my reach. About you I can only feel.”
Laura returned her gaze to the fire, trying not to let the seduction of his words sway her against her own reason, trying to think it through. He was asking her to trust him even while saying there were secrets he was keeping from her, and she just didn’t know if she could do that. She felt that she could trust him, but her mind was filled with so many questions.…
“Laura?”
She felt herself nodding even before she was consciously aware of what her answer would be. “All right. Like you said, it’s the truth I wanted. What I asked for. So I guess you aren’t asking too much in return. I—have to get back to my room.” Before he could move or say anything, she slipped quickly from the bed. She had to go around it to reach the chair where her things lay, but the steady gaze she could feel didn’t make her self-conscious or disturb her at all. She got her nightgown and slipped into it and the sheer robe, then put one hand on the side of the bed as she bent to locate and put on her slippers.
As she straightened, Daniel leaned across the bed suddenly and caught her wrist. “Look at me,” he ordered softly.
Laura knew that he would see she was still disturbed by all this, but there was nothing she could do about it. She looked at him.
His mouth looked a little hard and more than a little grim, but when he pulled her down far enough for him to kiss her, he didn’t feel hard at all. His lips were soft and warm as they moved on hers, and seduced her so quickly that she felt her knees go weak and had to sit on the edge of the bed or she would have fallen. By the time he finally allowed her to draw away a bit, it required an effort for her to do so.
There was heat now in his gaze and his mouth had a softened, sensual curve. “Whatever else you doubt,” he said in a rough voice, “never doubt that what we have is real and honest. And nothing’s going to change that, Laura. Nothing.”
Laura nodded slowly. “I know.” But just what is it we have, Daniel? What would you call it?
He seemed about to say something else, but finally released her wrist and fell back on the bed, looking up at her with restless eyes. “Go on. If I don’t let you go now, we’ll still be here at noon.”
She would have liked nothing better than to crawl back into bed with him, but Laura forced herself to get off the bed and go to the door. She hesitated there for an instant, looking back at him, then silently left his bedroom.
With no storm outside now, the house was deathly quiet, and she found herself tiptoeing as she went swiftly down the long hallway. She had an eer
ie sense of being pursued, and so strong was it that when she finally reached her room and closed the door behind her, she could feel her heart thudding in a fast, frightened rhythm.
Do I have a guilty conscience, or what? It was a rueful question, and Laura didn’t bother answering it. She knew the answer.
It seemed hardly worth the effort to go to bed now when she needed to be up in just a few short hours, but she was tired and knew those few hours of sleep would be better than none. She was halfway across the sitting room when something tugged abruptly at her attention, and she turned back to frowningly survey the room.
Lamplit, as she’d left it. Undisturbed. But as she started to turn away once more, she caught the flash of light, and this time she moved slowly to the coffee table. Her sketchpad was lying there, just as she’d left it. And the mirror.
Faceup.
Someone had been in this room.
Chapter 12
The law offices of Kennard, Montgomery, and Kilbourne occupied two floors of a downtown office building in Atlanta and were virtually silent on this Saturday morning. Daniel encountered no one as he made his way along thickly carpeted corridors to Alex’s tenth-floor corner office, something that hardly surprised him. Though the firm was certainly busy enough during the week, the demands of their one client did not generally require working overtime, weekends, or holidays.
When he strolled into Alex’s office, Daniel also wasn’t surprised to find him dressed casually in jeans and a sport shirt; though he bowed cheerfully enough to custom and wore reasonably sober suits during the week, his tendency toward comical and sometimes downright garish ties spoke volumes for his less than staid personality. Even his office, certainly elegant enough at first glance, boasted a few odd items in ludicrous contrast, such as a full-color and possibly full-sized figurine of a Tasmanian devil wedged between law books on a shelf, and a gaudy silver trophy on his desk which proclaimed him the Best Kisser of the high school class of 1987.