Stranger in the Moonlight

by Jude Deveraux

  Travis stood still as he thought about that, and it made sense. He bent back to the box but then straightened up again. “Just so you know, a threesome is with three people, not half a dozen.” He went back into the carton.

  “Make her need you,” Joe said after a while. “Not want you, but deep down need you. Whether it’s to give her a foot rub at the end of the day, or to fix the kitchen sink, find an empty place in her life and fill it.”

  “Does my mother need you?” Travis asked in curiosity.

  “She can hardly thread those sewing machines of hers without me.”

  Travis smiled at that. Since they’d first visited Edilean his mother had sewn, and she’d never had trouble threading anything.

  Joe seemed to understand his smile. “Okay, so Lucy pretends she can’t thread the serger or change the needles. But she gave me pointers on filling out the form for the mortgage application. She even told me what to wear and what to say when I went to the bank. She helped me order everything in here, and she and Jecca picked out all the colors of paint and tile. Lucy made the curtains.”

  “Sounds like you need her more than she needs you.”

  “That’s just it!” Joe said. “She needs me and I need her. We’re twisted.”

  “Intertwined,” Travis said.

  Joe narrowed his eyes. “You may have been to school more than me, but I got the woman I’m in love with.”

  “You have a point. What am I supposed to do with these pieces of metal?”

  “I’m going to show you how to use a screwdriver.”

  “My life is at last complete,” Travis muttered and picked up a socket wrench.

  Eight

  “Hello,” Travis said softly as he opened the door that led to Kim’s garage. She was bent over a sturdy workbench, looking through a lighted magnifying glass at something that appeared to be made of gold. “I don’t mean to intrude, but I wanted to apologize for yesterday evening.”

  “It’s okay,” Kim said without looking up.

  “No, it wasn’t. I was rude and . . . I guess I just feel protective of you, that’s all.”

  “You and Reede both,” Kim said under her breath. Just what she needed, two brothers.

  Travis was looking about the large room at all the equipment. There were deep shelves full of boxes, a couple of what looked to be microwaves, a large safe in the corner, a desk with a computer beside a foot-tall stack of fat folders, and three workbenches filled with more tools than Joe had. “This is some workshop,” he said. “You need all this to make jewelry?”

  “Everything in here. In fact, I need a drafting table, but I don’t have the room, and it would get dirty.”

  Travis thought that what she needed was some natural light. There were three little glass panels in the big garage door and one small window on the far wall. It was night out, but he’d like to see the stars.

  Kim glanced up at him and did a double take. “What have you been doing all day?”

  “I went to Joe Layton’s place and ended up unpacking boxes for him.”

  “You have . . .” She touched the side of her head.

  Reaching up, Travis removed three foam beans from his hair. “Damned things are all over me. Joe made me sweep the floor and flatten boxes before I left.” He went to the chair by the desk and dropped down on it. “I wasn’t this tired after I climbed Mount Everest.”

  “What an exciting life you lead.” She was using a tiny file on what looked to be a ring held in a padded vise. She had put a black cloth around it to catch the gold shavings.

  “So far, the excitement here in Edilean beats everything I’ve done. Between your brother, who’s going to come after me with a shotgun when he remembers where he saw me, your sheriff wanting me to rescue injured tourists, and Joe belittling me because I don’t know what an orbital router is, my dad is looking pretty good.”

  Kim laughed. “Orbital sander. A router is something else.”

  “Et tu, Brute?” Travis said as he put his hand to his heart.

  “Just keeping you straight,” she said, smiling.

  He was looking at the papers and folders on the desk. “Speaking of straight, what is all this?”

  Kim groaned. “Money. Accounts. The bane of my life. I used to have a part-time secretary who put it all in the computer for me, but she got married and quit.”

  “Pregnant yet?” Travis asked. “That seems to be the main occupation of this town. You guys should invest in cable TV.”

  “You should try not watching TV,” Kim retorted. “It’s a lot of fun.”

  “You’ll have to show me sometime,” he said softly.

  Startled, Kim looked at him, but he had pulled the folders onto his lap and was reading the labels.

  “Mind if I look inside these? I know some about financial organization.”

  “If you don’t mind seeing how much I make, and how much I spend on everything from groceries to diamonds, go ahead.” Kim tried to sound light, but she was actually holding her breath. Never before had she allowed a man other than her father to see her finances. Her success was what had ended her romantic relationships.

  But Travis was different. They were friends. She nearly choked on the thought.

  “Did you say something?” he asked.

  “No, nothing.”

  “Have these receipts been entered into some system?”

  “Not for weeks. My accountant is going to scalp me.”

  “Do you mind?” Travis asked as he nodded at her computer.

  Kim shrugged. He could look if he wanted to. She listened as he settled into the chair and started going through the folders. She heard the click of the keys, and now and then looked up, seeing him bent over the papers. She was sure that if anyone knew what she was doing she’d be told she was a fool for letting a man she hadn’t seen since she was a child look at her accounting charts, but whatever else she had to say about Travis, she trusted him.

  It was nearly two hours since Travis had returned and they were in the kitchen together. He’d gone into her accounting software—but had insisted that she type in her password—and looked at the way her secretary had set it up. He asked if he could consolidate the accounts, and she’d said yes. After that he’d asked some questions about companies and about a few receipts, but for the most part they were quiet.

  All in all, it had been very pleasant working with him in the room. As they had when they were children, they just seemed to naturally meld together.

  “I can’t believe you drove all the way into Williamsburg and got barbeque,” Kim said as she pulled the package out of the fridge. As often happened, she hadn’t thought aloud about dinner. She’d been surprised, and pleased, when Travis said he’d brought food home.

  She’d smiled at his use of the word home. It sounded almost as though he lived there too.

  “Joe told me about a back road, so it didn’t take long,” he said, and they looked at each other and laughed. “I went the speed limit and used asphalt.” He glanced at the clock. It was late.

  “You and Mr. Layton seem to have hit it off well.”

  Travis took his time answering as he put coleslaw on plates and took them to the table. “He knows who my mother is.”

  “You’re kidding!” Kim said.

  “No, he saw the resemblance right away. But he made me swear not to let her know that he’d figured it out.”

  “And I guess she doesn’t want you to tell either.”

  “Precisely. I have been placed in the middle of my mother and him,” Travis said as he looked at her across the table. He’d liked being in her workroom—but he’d always enjoyed the outdoors and he wanted to see it day or night. The converted garage was too closed-in for him. “Joe has no use for that big room at the end of his store. It has windows that look out into the forest. He says Jecca will never use it and I understand why. He greatly admires her ability to reassemble electrical tools and he’d put her to work.”

  Reaching over, Kim removed a foam pellet cl
inging to the back of his shirt.

  “I feel like I have those things crawling all over me. Could you—?” He held out the back of the neck of his shirt.

  Standing, she put her hand on his collar but she didn’t touch him. She glanced down his shirt but saw only sun-bronzed skin. And muscles. “Nothing,” she said.

  “Sure? I itch in places. I should have taken a shower first, but I saw your light on and I wanted to see you.” He took her hand in his and kissed her fingertips. “Oops, sorry,” he said and released her. “You’re soon to be married so you’re a ‘no touch.’”

  Frowning, Kim sat back down. “Hardly that. I haven’t been asked, much less said yes.”

  “So you really like this guy?”

  “He’s nice,” Kim said, but she didn’t want to talk about Dave. “What are your plans for tomorrow?”

  “According to Joe, I’m to be his slave. Kim, if you want that shop that’s supposed to be Jecca’s I can get it for you. I’ll get Joe to give it to you as a wedding gift. Free rent for at least three months, and very reasonable the rest of the time.”

  “My garage is fine and why would he give me a gift for his wedding?”

  “Not his wedding. Yours. To Dave. He’s a man and he’ll want a place to put his car. Or one of those catering vans. He is going to move in with you, isn’t he? I can’t imagine that he earns enough to buy a house like this one. But then what you made last year was substantial. Congratulations! You are truly a success.”

  What he was saying was wonderful. Truly great. But, somehow, it was upsetting her. She hadn’t thought of the fact that Dave came with a lot of equipment. He owned five big vans and he had enormous pieces of cookware. He lived in a small apartment and rented a commercial kitchen. But still, he did some cooking at his house. One Sunday afternoon she’d gone to pick him up and had ended up helping him make four gallons of tuna salad. Her clothes had smelled so bad she’d had to soak them before putting them in the washer.

  “Dave and I haven’t discussed anything like that,” Kim said. “The truth is that it’s only Carla who’s saying that I’m about to receive a marriage proposal, but then she looks at all men as marriage material. She even suggested that the two of you—”

  “Me?!” Travis’s eyes were wide. “Me and Carla? She is cute. Think she’d go out with me?”

  Kim looked at Travis in speculation and suddenly had the feeling that she was being manipulated, but she wasn’t sure how. “Are you up to something?”

  “Just trying to be your friend is all. I enjoy your company and I want to help out around here so you don’t throw me out. Edilean is scary.”

  Kim couldn’t help laughing. “It will be when my brother remembers where he saw you! I couldn’t understand why you were standing there with your hand over your face. Did you really come close to killing him?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I don’t know why my heart didn’t stop. There I was in Morocco, trying my best to beat Jake Jones’s time, Ernie my mechanic was with me, and he had the map out. I went around a corner and there’s this guy crossing the street with a donkey so covered in boxes the poor thing was bowlegged.”

  “That sounds like Reede,” Kim said.

  Travis got up and pantomimed being behind the wheel of his car. “Before I hit that curve, there were Moroccans on the sides shouting at us in Arabic. I don’t know about you, but my Arabic consists of la and shukran—no and thanks. How was I to know they were telling us that a crazy American doctor was meandering across the raceway?”

  “You were the only car?”

  “Hell no! I was eating Jake’s dust every two miles. He’d done something to the fuel injection system but I didn’t know what. Every time I got near him, he’d upshift and spew rocks at us. My windshield was a mass of scars.”

  Travis bent forward, his hands on the wheel. “So there I am, yelling at Ernie—no sound absorption in a race car—about what the hell the Arabs were shouting at us and he’s telling me that if I don’t slow down the transmission is going to fall out when bam! There’s this man.”

  “With a donkey,” Kim said.

  “Which froze. The donkey had sense enough to know danger when he saw it.”

  “But my brother didn’t.”

  “You’re right on that! He looked at a car coming at him doing at least a hundred and twenty and—”

  “You’d slowed down for the curve,” Kim said solemnly.

  “Yeah, I did,” Travis said and seemed pleased at her understanding. “If your brother had any fear at all, I didn’t see it. He just frowned at me like I was an annoyance, then turned back to pull on the donkey’s rope.”

  “When was this?”

  “2005.”

  “Oh heavens!” Kim said. “That wasn’t too long after Reede’s long-term girlfriend dropped him. He was probably still in that stage of not caring whether he lived or died.”

  “Like I’d feel if you told me to get out of your life and never come back,” Travis said, then quickly went on with his story. “When I yelled, Ernie looked up from his map and screamed like a girl. I turned the wheel as hard as I could, braked until my ankle felt like it was cracking, and we nearly turned over.”

  Kim was blinking at his statement about how he’d feel if she told him to go away. “I guess . . .” she began.

  “Your brother stood there and watched the whole thing. For seconds we looked into each other’s eyes; we had a clear view of one another. It was one of those moments when the world seems to stand still. The donkey collapsed from sheer terror, and that’s when the boxes it was carrying hit the ground and broke.”

  “And Reede—”

  “By the time I got the car headed back toward him, he was in a rage and shouting at us.” Travis put his hand over his heart. “I swear this is true, but I wanted to stop and see about the donkey. I didn’t know the contents of the boxes were important. It was Ernie who said, ‘Good God! He’s an American. Don’t stop or he’ll have us arrested. Go! Go! Floor it and go!’ I did.”

  “Did you win the race?”

  “Of course not. The transmission fell out about fifty miles down the road. We were so far from anywhere we had to be helicoptered out.”

  Kim looked at him as he sat back down. She couldn’t help remembering the boy who’d ridden her bicycle. “I agree,” she said.

  “About what?”

  “When my brother remembers where he saw you, he’s going to come after you with a shotgun.”

  “You’re no help at all,” Travis said, smiling. “I want you to be on my side.”

  “I am. Reede probably knew about the race and wanted to provoke a fight. At that time, he had so much anger inside him about his girlfriend dumping him, he probably wanted to get it out.”

  Travis sobered. “He came very close to getting himself killed.”

  She smiled. “Thanks for taking care of my brother. Thank you for not hitting him and thank you for replacing his supplies. If you weren’t so good at handling a car, all three of you—and the donkey—could have been killed.”

  For a moment they looked at each other and again Kim felt drawn to him. It was as if his body called to hers, as though some electrical charge ran from her to him and back again. She could feel the pull, the tingle, the desire that passed between them.

  Of its own will, her body took a step toward him. She wanted him to put his arms around her and kiss her. She saw him look at her lips and his eyes grew darker, warmer, hot even.

  But in the next second, he turned away and the moment was gone. “It’s late,” he murmured, “and Joe . . . I’ll see you tomorrow.” In an instant he had left the house.

  Kim sat down on a chair. She felt like a balloon that had its knot untied. Deflated. Worse, she felt defeated.

  When Travis got inside the guesthouse, he was shaking. He knew he’d never wanted a woman as much as he did Kim, but the problem was that he cared about her. He didn’t want to hurt her, didn’t want—

  He sat down on the side of the bed an
d punched Penny’s number. “Did I wake you?” he asked.

  She hesitated. Never before had Travis been concerned about his secretary’s sleeping habits. “No,” she said, lying.

  “Did you find out anything about the caterer?”

  “Just his name, but I sent my son to Edilean to see what he could find out.”

  “What’s your son look like?”

  “What does that matter?” Penny asked.

  “There’s a girl, Carla, who works for Kim, and she’s after any half-decent-looking man who comes in the store. She knows something about a missing sapphire ring. I think it’s connected to the caterer and I want to find out about it. Can your son handle that?”

  “Easily,” Penny said and seemed to be amused. “What else have you found out?”

  “Not much, just that Kim is doing quite well in her little shop.”

  “Enough to make this man want it?”

  “Yes,” Travis said. They knew a lot about what a person would do to own a lucrative business.

  “You don’t think it’s possible that this caterer is actually in love with pretty Kim?”

  “He may well be, but let’s just say that if he touches her, I’ll be needing a pair of dueling pistols.”

  “Well, well, well,” Penny said.

  “How’s it coming with your relatives in Janes Creek?”

  “Everyone is happy for the free weekend. But I need to warn you that even your dad might not be able to afford my uncle Bernie’s room service bill.”

  “That’s all right. I’m getting used to dealing with relatives. Mom’s new . . .”

  “Her what?” Penny asked. She was marveling that they were having a personal conversation that included her life.

  “The man she’s planning to marry. I’ve been working for him.”

  “Good dental?” Penny asked, covering her surprise.

  Travis scoffed. “No pay, just advice. Lots of advice.”

  “Good or bad?”

  “Depends on the outcome, which I don’t know yet. I have to come up with a reason why I should go with Kim to Maryland.”