by Lisa Jackson
“Oh, the hell with it!” His arms surrounded her suddenly, crushing her against him as he kissed her angrily, passionately, desperately. When he lifted his head, some of the fury had faded from his gaze. “What kind of a game are you playing with me, Kaylie?
“Me? Play a game with you?” she whispered as he searched her face.
“I thought last night meant something.”
“It did.”
“What?”
“That—that—there’s still something between us,” she admitted.
“And what’s that?”
“I don’t know, Zane!” she said in exasperation, her nerves stretched tighter than piano wires as he held her so close that she was all wrapped up in the warm feel and smell of him again.
“You deliberately tricked me!”
“And you deliberately seduced me!”
His lips twisted at that. “If I remember correctly, you seemed to enjoy yourself. And there might be some argument about who seduced whom?”
That much was true, she thought, wrenching herself free so that she could think clearly. Her heart was knocking painfully in her chest, her ears rang with the rush of her own blood. When she reached upward to push a strand of hair from her eyes, her fingers trembled so, that she balled her fist and crammed it into her pocket. “How did you get back here?”
His eyes narrowed. “A helicopter. Less than a mile from the cabin,” he said, clipping his words. “I was back in the city hours ago!”
“I told you I’d escape—”
“Ahh! But you didn’t warn me that you’d sleep with me to lull me into trusting you, did you?”
“You must have expected—Ohh!”
Snagging her wrist in his strong fingers, he pulled her roughly against him. “I didn’t expect to be used, Kaylie. I didn’t think you’d stoop so low as to go to bed with me just to get what you wanted.”
“I didn’t!” she declared furiously.
“You couldn’t prove it by me.”
She stared into his eyes and saw a flicker of pain, a shadow of just how deeply she had wounded him. Her heart wrenched painfully, and she wondered if all love were this agonizing.
“I trusted you,” he whispered, his breath caressing her face.
“But I gave you ample warning, Zane,” she said quietly. “I told you over and over again that I wouldn’t be coerced, threatened, kidnapped or held hostage. But you didn’t believe me, did you? You know, maybe if you’d just have asked me—invited me to spend a few days with you—things would have been different.”
“You would have come with me?” he asked, one dark disbelieving brow arching skeptically. “Do you really expect me to believe that you’d give up your precious job, even for a week or two, to spend time with me?”
“Yes!” she cried. “If I would have thought there was any chance that we could have recaptured the good parts of our marriage. If I’d believed for an instant that we could create something wonderful again, I’d have come with you!”
“But you don’t believe we can recreate that happiness, do you?”
She shook her head, her heart twisting. “You showed your true colors by kidnapping me, Zane. You’ll never change. You’ll always smother and overprotect and try to force me into doing everything you want.”
“Like I forced you last night?” he whispered, and her gaze was drawn to his Adam’s apple as he swallowed.
Mesmerized, Kaylie was vaguely aware that he smelled of soap and a cologne that brought back far too many memories of lying naked with him. She noticed the rise and fall of his chest. Only a few hours ago, she’d touched that chest, a chest that had been bare and taut, with strong, strident muscles and covered by a mat of dark, swirling hair.
When she glanced up, his features had softened. “Oh, Kaylie…” He sighed. “What am I going to do with you?”
“Nothing, Zane. You can’t do anything with me. That’s the whole point. It’s not your choice. You don’t own me!”
“I’ve never wanted to own you.”
“That’s not the way I remember it,” she said, though she felt a flicker of doubt. For seven years she’d thought of her short marriage as a prison, but now she wondered if she had only been stronger during the time that she was Zane’s wife, if she had stood up for her rights, would those prison walls have crumbled?
“You didn’t stick around long enough to know, did you?” he flung back.
Stung, Kaylie said, “I think I’d better leave before we say things we’ll regret.”
“Leave. And what about Johnston?”
“I talked with Dr. Henshaw. Whoever this Ted character is, he’s all wet. Henshaw assured me that Lee Johnston will be locked up for a long, long time.”
“And you believe him?”
“The man has no reason to lie.”
Zane’s expression grew thoughtful. His fist clenched as he attempted to control himself. He didn’t trust Henshaw. No, he put more stock in crank phone calls than medical opinion. “I should never have let you escape.”
“Let me?” she mocked.
“I was crazy to trust you. To let down my guard.” A muscle worked in his jaw. “You know,” he said slowly, “I had the ridiculous idea that if you and I spent enough time alone together, we could work things out. No matter what it was, we could handle it.”
“We didn’t before,” she reminded him.
“I know. But we’re older—wiser, I’d hoped.”
“More mature?” she pointed out sardonically. “Think about the past few days! Nothing we’ve done can qualify under the ‘mature’ category.”
He shrugged. “I guess we haven’t acted much like adults, have we?” Shoving his hands into the back pockets of his jeans, he added, “Maybe I was wrong. I thought there might still be a chance that you could love me.”
Her throat closed. If only he knew. A tide of emotion swept over her, and she realized she had to get away from him and fast, while she still could. She picked up his keys from the carpet and dropped them onto the desk. “Goodbye, Zane,” she said, and the words, as if barbed, stuck in her throat.
“Why are you always running from me?” he asked suddenly. “Do I scare you so much?”
She couldn’t lie. “Yes,” she said, her voice raw.
He closed the distance between them, and his lips crashed down on hers so swiftly, she gasped. Her breath was trapped in her lungs, and immediate traitorous heat fired her blood. He pressed her back against the door, and his thighs fit familiarly over hers, his chest crushing her breasts. Memories of the night before enveloped her, and desire swept through her bloodstream in wicked, wanton fury.
Her heart pumped gloriously, her blood rushed through her ears. She pressed her palms against his chest, intending to shove him away, but all her strength fled, and she found herself clinging to him instead.
When at last he lifted his head, his face was flushed, his eyes shining with a passion that seared right to his soul. “Dear God, why can’t I get over you?” he rasped.
For the same reasons I can’t forget you, she thought, but held her tongue. She tried to move, to slide away from him, but he trapped her.
His hands were pressed against the door, his arms blocking her escape. “Why, Kaylie?” he finally asked. “Why did you leave me?”
Feeling suffocated, she drew in a breath. “For all the old reasons.”
His jaw grew tight, and any pain she’d seen earlier was quickly hidden. “Last night you weren’t pretending,” he said slowly, and one of his fingers traced the line of her jaw. “Last night you felt what I did. And yet you can ignore how good we are together, how we feel about each other and—” he touched her lips with one finger “—don’t lie to me. I know you feel it, too. So how can you pretend that you don’t care?”
“Because I can’t care!” she said shakily, her hands scrabbling behind her for the handle of the door. Her fingers found cool metal and she shifted, tugging on the knob.
Zane didn’t stop her. Instead he backed
away. “Escaping again?” he mocked, bitterness tingeing his words. “Maybe you should seduce me first so that I’ll let down my guard.”
“You bastard,” she bit out, but shrank as if physically wounded.
“You certainly have grown up,” he jeered.
“So have you,” she replied, tugging on the door until it opened. Then she slid an icy glance in his direction. “Goodbye, Zane,” she said stiffly. Marching rigidly through the doorway, she told herself it didn’t matter what he thought of her—she had a life of her own to worry about.
A life without Zane Flannery.
Chapter Ten
Zane slammed his fist onto the desk in frustration. The lamp rattled, a coffee cup rolled onto the floor, and his picture of Kaylie, a promotion shot for her second movie, toppled with a crash. The glass cracked, destroying the image of a smiling seventeen-year-old.
Her hair had been longer then, hanging nearly to her waist in luxurious golden waves, and her face had been more rounded, her cheeks fuller with adolescence, her green eyes filled with energy and the innocent sparkle of youth.
He’d fallen for her so hard, he’d felt as if the air had been knocked from his lungs. She’d been so young, so damned young, and he’d been hired by her agent as her bodyguard.
Now, running his finger along the crack in the glass, he remembered all too vividly how he’d come to love her. At first he’d resisted, of course, and she hadn’t been aware of his changing feelings. But he, too, had been young, and keeping rein on his emotional downfall and charging lust had been impossible. He’d been with her constantly, to protect her, when, in fact, he’d often felt that he was the predator. He’d wanted her as he’d wanted no other woman, burning for her at night, hungering for her by day.
And though he’d sworn never to touch her, never to let her know that she was forever burning brightly in his mind, he’d succumbed at last, body and soul, foregoing his usually clear thinking and deciding that he wouldn’t rest until he made her fall in love with him.
It hadn’t been easy. Kaylie had as many reasons for not wanting him as he had for keeping his distance from her. But in time, all the walls disintegrated and they were married. And their marriage had ironically become the beginning of the end.
He frowned darkly to himself. She was right, he realized now, as he twisted a pen in his fingers and stared out the window. Clouds were rolling in from the west, converging over the bay, turning the murky waters as gray as his mood. He had been overprotective, near paranoid in his need to protect her.
He’d lost so many before. Both parents and his older brother had died in a mountain-climbing accident when he was twelve. Only he had survived, with injuries that should have killed or crippled him for life. But his mother’s sister, Aunt Hilary, had been patient and caring and, with the reluctant help of her second husband, George, tried her best to raise him. George had referred to him as a teenaged hellion on wheels.
Four years after the mountaineering accident, a hit-and-run driver sideswiped Aunt Hilary’s car, killing her instantly. At that point Zane dropped out of school, left home and joined the navy.
So when, years later, he’d fallen so hard for Kaylie, he’d been paranoid that he might lose her. In his efforts to keep her safe, he’d smothered her, and she’d demanded a divorce.
“Idiot,” he ground out now, “damned bloody idiot.” Shaking off his nostalgia, he reached for the phone, dialed the number of Whispering Hills Hospital and waited impatiently, drumming his fingers, for the receptionist to locate Johnston’s psychiatrist.
Henshaw eventually answered, but the call was brief. Even though Zane was one of the biggest names in the security business and Kaylie’s ex-husband, the doctor, as usual, was reluctant to give out any information on his patient.
“Damn patient confidentiality!” Zane growled, hanging up. Henshaw had been vague, as if he were holding something back, and the hairs on the back of Zane’s neck bristled. Something wasn’t right. Though Henshaw had assured Zane there were no plans for Johnston’s “immediate” release, he hadn’t ruled out that someday Lee Johnston might be stalking the streets again.
“Terrific! Just bloody terrific!” Zane’s hands felt clammy, and he wished there were some way to get through to Kaylie. She was and always had been much too cavalier about her safety. Even after the horror of the opening of Obsession. Because Johnston was locked up, she had refused to worry, going about her life as if the terror hadn’t existed, as if her life hadn’t hung by a fragile thread that one man had nearly sliced.
He strode to the recessed bar and poured himself a stiff shot of Scotch. He’d bungled this and badly. Gambling that he could convince Kaylie to stay with him at the cabin, he’d thought he’d be able to protect her, if and when Johnston ever saw the outside of the hospital again. But now things were much worse. Kaylie wouldn’t even talk to him.
A cold, tight knot of dread twisted in the pit of his stomach. He wasn’t out of this yet. Come hell or high water, he intended to protect Kaylie, even if, in so doing, he might ram a wedge between them that could never be removed.
Her life was more valuable than his love. With that miserable thought, he drained his glass, pressed the intercom on his desk and told his secretary to arrange a meeting of his most trusted men.
* * *
On the darkened set of West Coast Morning, Kaylie guessed that Alan didn’t like anything she was telling him. In fact, he was being bullheaded and stubborn about an issue that she considered very cut-and-dried.
Maybe, Kaylie thought wearily, Zane had been right about Alan all along.
“I don’t get it,” Alan complained, plucking a piece of lint from his jacket. His mouth pinched together into a contrite pout. His auburn hair was brushed neatly, and his suit didn’t dare have a single wrinkle. He sat on a bar stool in the kitchen of the set, his notes spread on the tile countertop of the island bar, near the gas range where Chef Glenn cooked up his Friday-morning concoctions. “What’s the big deal about a little publicity?”
“It’s not publicity, Alan, and we both know it. Who started the rumor that we were getting married?”
“Who knows? And who cares?” He lifted his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “If you’re in the business and you’re popular enough, eventually you find your name and face on the front page of Up Front or The Insider or some other rag.”
“So you think we should be flattered?” she accused.
Alan forced a smile, and seeing his reflection in the copper pots hanging near the stove, smoothed his hair with the flat of his hand. “Well, I think the least we can do is go with the flow. Next week someone else will make the headlines and we’ll be old news.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Hey—just chill out, okay?” he said, irritated as he noticed a mistake in his notes, clicked open a pen and made a quick slash on the neatly typed pages.
“I’ll ‘chill out’ just as long as both you and I deny this whole engagement thing to the legitimate press.”
He lifted his palms. “Suits me.” Looking back to his notes for the next day’s show, he asked, “So what happened? Does Brenda take some rag that got you all riled?”
“Brenda?” she repeated, not understanding.
“Your aunt. The one who was so sick.” Alan glanced up sharply, and a tiny line appeared between his thick brows. “The one you were visiting in the hospital for the past few days?” he prodded, eyeing her suspiciously from behind the wire-rimmed glasses he never wore on camera.
“Oh—no!” So Zane had gone so far as to name her supposedly seriously ill aunt. Kaylie cleared her throat. “No, I just had a lot of time to do some thinking….” Well, at least that wasn’t a lie. She’d spent the past four days thinking, thinking, thinking. And she’d gotten nowhere. Her thoughts kept turning back to Zane.
“So?”
“So I thought we should take a professional stand against all this tabloid gossip.”
“Tell that to the station. It’s my
bet that our ratings went up while we were splashed across the headlines.”
“Still—”
“So cool it,” Alan cut in, chuckling. “No harm done. Right?”
She wasn’t so sure. “I just like to keep my private life private, that’s all.”
Alan’s eyes, behind the thick lenses, narrowed as he studied her. He shoved his notes together, straightening the pages on the shiny mauve-colored tiles. When he looked at her again, his expression had turned thoughtful. “Is something else going on with you?”
“Meaning?”
He rubbed his chin pensively. “Before you left to take care of your aunt, Flannery called here a couple of times.”
Kaylie didn’t flinch. “Right.”
“So—does all this talk about privacy have something to do with him?”
“Of course not,” she said, rubbing her palms down the sides of her skirt.
“You’re sure? Because it seems like a big coincidence, you know, that Flannery calls a couple of times after leaving you alone for years. Then you don’t show up for work the next day—and now that you’re back, you’re all worked up about your privacy.”
“You’re not making any sense,” Kaylie countered.
“If you say so.” He touched his pen to his lips. “You know what I think?”
“I’m not sure I want to.”
“If you ask me, you never really got over him.” Alan set his notes on the table and walked to the front of the cameras to the grouping of couches and chairs that created a cozy living room on the set of West Coast Morning. Hands deep in his pockets, he leaned a shoulder against the fake mantel on the brick fireplace.
“Zane has nothing to do with this.”
“You always were a poor liar. And, unless I miss my guess, Zane has everything to do with it! Remember—I know you. I’ve known you as long as he has. I saw the hell you went through during your divorce.”
“Let’s not dredge all that up again—”
He ignored her. “The way I see it, you never were divorced from him—not emotionally. Oh, I know you went through all the legal hoops and you haven’t seen him for a while. But it’s glaringly obvious to anyone who knows you that you’re still in love with him.” He tugged on his tie and flicked open his collar button. She wanted to argue with him, but before she could say another word, Alan went on, “If Zane whistled, you’d go running. You might have wanted out of your marriage a few years ago, but that’s changed.”
