Heart of the Night

by Barbara Delinsky

  “Does he live around here?”

  “In Newport.”

  Jared acknowledged the significance of that with a quirk of his brow. “Close enough to make his presence felt.”

  “Actually, I don’t see him often.”

  “But he calls.”

  She sighed. “Oh, yes.” She wondered if Jared had a similar situation with one of his parents. He looked sympathetic.

  “How old is he?”

  “Sixty-eight.”

  “Does he live alone?”

  “He has a housekeeper and frequent houseguests, so he’s not lonely.”

  “Is he ill?”

  “Thank goodness, no. Health has never been a problem. He leads as active a life as ever.” She paused.

  “But?”

  Still, she paused. Then, with an added look of encouragement from Jared which destroyed any reticence she might have had, she said, “But he’s extremely demanding in his way. He expects that we should do just what he does, which is not much of anything—by my standards, at least.”

  She stopped for an instant, feeling as disloyal as her father had accused her of being. But she desperately needed to talk. “He takes pride in being one of the idle rich. I had to be something else. I don’t think he’ll ever forgive me for that. Susan has tried to be Newport, but it’s not working for her. On the one hand, I want to stand up and cheer, but she doesn’t have an alternative like I do, so she’s floundering.”

  “Is she married?”

  “Divorced, with no kids.”

  “So she lacks direction.”

  “In a nutshell,” Savannah conceded, then considered what she had said. She was usually tight-lipped about her personal life, and family certainly fell into that category. But Jared Snow wasn’t like the people who usually passed through her life. He was different and somehow separate. If she let her fancy run free, she could imagine him an angel sent to ease the weight from her shoulders. In his presence she certainly did feel lighter, both of head and of heart.

  It was all she could do not to sigh with pleasure. She could look at him forever, she decided, particularly when he did things like tilt his head just as he was doing now.

  “You two must be very close,” he said. “I’ve often wondered what it would be like to have a twin.”

  It was easy to smile, less easy to concentrate on what he was saying. But she did it. “I have, too,” she confessed in a quiet voice. At his bemused look, she explained. “Susan and I are fraternal twins. We’re sisters who just happened to have been born on the same day. I’ve often wondered what it would have been like if we’d been identical, if we’d been able to do things like switch places at school or on dates. Susan and I can’t even switch clothes. We are different sizes.”

  “She must be bigger than you.”

  “How did you guess,” Savannah said dryly. Though she had never thought of herself as petite, others often did. She supposed it had something to do with her slimness. While her sister was slim, too, she was more curvaceous. “Susan is about five-eight. She has a fantastic figure. And great eyes. And super hair. She has dad’s height and mom’s looks. She should have been a model.”

  “Why wasn’t she one?”

  “Because someone told her that modeling was hard work, and where we grew up, hard work wasn’t highly prized.”

  “You do it.”

  “I’m the odd one. The black sheep.”

  “And your dad isn’t proud of what you’ve become?”

  “Not quite.”

  He gnawed on the inside of his cheek for a minute, then asked, “How about Susan? Is she proud of what you do?”

  Savannah didn’t answer as quickly. For one thing, the answer wasn’t cut-and-dried. For another, she was distracted by Jared’s mouth. His lips were as lean as the rest of him, as uncompromisingly male, and when they slanted into a grin, or gentled, they were all the more enticing.

  With an effort, she answered. “I suppose she’s proud. One part of her, at least. Another part, I think, is a little resentful.”

  “Resentful?”

  “Of my success. By contrast, it makes her feel more lost, and dad,” she threw a glance skyward, “bless his soul, compares us constantly. I don’t measure up to Susan, Susan doesn’t measure up to me, neither of us measures up to him, or to what our mother was—it goes on and on.” Abruptly she stopped talking, then bit her lower lip, then said in chagrin, “I think I’m the one who’s going on and on.”

  “I don’t mind,” Jared said.

  But Savannah was embarrassed. He had come on business and she didn’t normally waste time. But he distracted her. Something about the way he looked at her invited confession. He looked at her as though he was intrigued, as though there was nothing on earth that could have interested him more than what she was saying, as though he truly needed to hear her words. There was an intensity to him despite his relaxed attitude.

  In recent years she had dated plenty of men, but not many more than once or twice, and for good reason. Strong, interesting men, men who were leaders in their fields appealed to her. Unfortunately, most had also turned out to be eminently interested in themselves, which was fine for a date or two, but boring for longer than that.

  Jared Snow seemed every bit as strong and interesting, every bit as skilled in his field. Yet he was more interested in hearing about her than talking about himself. The risk, she realized, was in eventually boring him as she had always eventually been bored. So, sitting straighter in her chair, she put both hands on her desk and eyed him with an expectant, down-to-business kind of look.

  But the effort was lost on him. He was glancing around her office. “This is cozy.”

  She hesitated, then yielded. A minute’s more distraction wouldn’t hurt. “Yes. It’s cozy.” She usually called it small. “It serves the purpose, though.”

  “It must be convenient being in the courthouse.”

  “Very.”

  He looked past her to a tall bookcase filled with thick, official-looking tomes. “Are those all yours?”

  She glanced at the books. “Most of them. A few belong to the law library.”

  He looked at the etchings on the wall, a series of five courtroom scenes that she’d picked up in Paris two summers before. “And those?”

  “They’re mine.”

  “They look authentic.”

  She grinned. “Authentic, as in dog-eared. But that’s okay. They were a find. I ran across them in a little bookstall on the left bank of the Seine. They were done in England at the turn of the century.”

  “They must be valuable,” he remarked, but his attention had returned to her.

  “They give me pleasure,” she said with a short smile. “That’s value enough.”

  He stood silently then, simply looking at her, and surprisingly, Savannah didn’t feel awkward. For one thing, he was a delight to look back at. He wore jeans, just as he had at the studio, but the sneakers had been replaced by boots, the T-shirt and flannel shirt by a black turtleneck sweater that was a perfect foil for his tawniness, and over the sweater, a bomber jacket of butter-soft leather accentuated his broad shoulders. He had showered and shaved, and looked totally refreshed, which was remarkable for two reasons—first, because he’d managed to improve on something that was outstanding to begin with, and second, because he couldn’t have slept more than two or three hours.

  For the first time she noticed the two large manila envelopes he carried under his arm. Neither was particularly thick.

  “The records of the calls,” she breathed and might have been chagrined at not having noted them sooner if Jared had not looked as though he’d momentarily forgotten them himself.

  “Uh, I just picked them up. Thought I’d deliver them right away.”

  She eyed him cautiously. “Do you think we’ll find something?”

  “I don’t know. One batch is from the station, one from the answering service.” He held them out. “Want to take a look?”

  Rising from h
er chair, Savannah rounded the desk and took the envelopes. She opened one and fanned out the papers on the desktop.

  They contained notes made by the station’s receptionists and were dated by week with the most recent on top. Straddling the papers with stiffened arms, she leaned forward and began to read. Each entry noted the date and the time, plus either a quote, a paraphrase, or a simple description of the offensive call.

  She read silently for several minutes, then turned to the second sheet and perused that. Straightening, she raised a hand to her shoulder. It was a protective gesture; she felt chilled. “I had an answering machine once,” she said quietly. “It seemed to make sense. I was on call so much of the time, and it was nice to think that I could come home and know exactly who had tried to reach me and when. But the heavy breathers felt the machine was fair game. They got to me pretty quickly. So I gave the machine to one of the guys at the office.”

  She looked up to find Jared within arm’s reach, and again, she was struck by his height. He was tall, sturdy, and strong. He could overpower her in a minute, yet that was not what she feared. What frightened her was the force of his pull. She felt it as something magnetic, drawing on every one of her senses until she was all but leaning his way.

  She forced her eyes back down to the papers and said, “Thanks for bringing these. I shouldn’t keep you longer.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “You must have other things to do.”

  “Nothing that can’t wait.”

  He wasn’t going to leave until he was ready. And she could no more have kicked him out than she could have stripped and paraded naked on the desktop.

  She felt naked anyway. In Jared’s presence, she felt stripped of defenses that had stood her in good stead for years. She wondered if he knew. She wondered lots of things about him, and it struck her that it was time she did a little probing herself.

  “What—” She cleared her throat and started again. “What do you usually do during the day?”

  His raspy voice was accompanied by a lazy smile. “A little of this, a little of that.”

  The smile would have distracted her again, had not her phone buzzed. Moving only her upper body, she reached for it. The call was from a lawyer in the office who wanted to know which judge to request for an upcoming bribery trial. “Cramer,” she told him. “He can’t stand bribery. He’s cautious enough to avoid grounds for a mistrial, but he’ll give you every benefit of the doubt.” She answered one other minor question, then replaced the receiver and looked up at Jared.

  His eyes riveted her. The slight cast to the one was intriguing, but that was only the beginning. Strewn amid their pale blue rings were flecks of gray that darkened or lightened with his mood. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed that before, particularly in light of their power. Then she realized that the power was the key, and it came from within.

  Fighting its lure, she cleared her throat again and asked, “‘A little of this, a little of that.’ What do you mean?”

  He seemed unperturbed by her challenge. “I do a lot of reading.”

  “What do you read?”

  “Fiction, nonfiction, you name it. I also have to keep up on what’s happening in the field. Country musicians tend to be around longer than, say, pop-rock stars, but that doesn’t mean their lives are static. So I keep current with trade materials. And I listen to new stuff that comes in.”

  “Do you decide what to play on the air?”

  “No. My music director does that. It’s his job to keep tabs on what Rhode Islanders want to hear. A song that may make it big in Tulsa could bomb here. It’s like the logo says, a little country in the city. Too much country and the city tunes out.”

  She could believe it. “What else do you do, besides read?”

  He studied her for a minute, then ran a finger along the side of his nose. “I dabble in real estate.”

  “Beyond radio stations?”

  “Yes. I have interests in various properties.”

  “In Providence?”

  “No. They’re kind of scattered.”

  “Then you have to travel.”

  “No. I have people to do the traveling. I keep in touch with them by phone.”

  “It sounds like you do a little more than dabble.”

  His answer was a negligible shrug.

  She took that in. On the one hand, he had such a rugged, woodsy look that it was hard to imagine him as a real-estate mogul. On the other hand, he exuded power, and in that sense, she believed he could rival Donald Trump.

  “When do you sleep?” she asked.

  “When I’m tired.”

  “Aren’t you now? You couldn’t have slept much after work.”

  “I don’t need more than a few hours at a time. I’ll sleep later.” He nodded toward the papers he had brought. “Want me to go through one envelope while you do the other? It would save you some time.”

  Savannah felt a rush of pleasure. With Jared wading through half the records, she would be done in half the time. More importantly, if he helped, he would stay with her a bit longer. She wasn’t sure of the long-range wisdom of that, but in the short run, it was appealing. He was a stimulating companion. Everything about him, from his sandy hair to the solid breadth of his chest, from the way his jeans fit in the vicinity of his hips to the faint scent of leather that clung to him—everything about him absorbed her. She knew it was an absurd time to be excited by a man, but the excitement was an antidote to all else she was feeling. He was her talisman, warding off headaches and chills, and in that sense, he was helping far more than he knew.

  The phone rang again. This time it was Janie saying that Susan was on the line. Savannah immediately took the call.

  “Suse?”

  “I think you should come back here, Savvy. Will is on the verge of breaking. He’s convinced, absolutely convinced, that Megan’s been mistreated. He’s talking about taking a gun when he goes to drop off the money tonight.”

  “But he won’t be seeing anyone. He’ll be dropping the money and leaving.”

  “He says he’s going to stay.”

  “He can’t do that. He’ll either get himself killed or blow the whole thing.”

  “I’ve told him that, Sam has told him that, Hank has told him that, but he doesn’t believe us. I think you should get over here, and bring Paul.”

  “Paul’s out of state. But I’ll be over. Keep Will calm until I get there.”

  Heart pounding, she hung up the phone. She was so lost in thoughts of Will and Megan that Jared’s deep voice startled her.

  “You heard from the kidnappers, I take it.”

  Her head came up fast. “This morning.” It never once occurred to her not to tell him. “The exchange is set for tonight, but Will’s having a rough time of it. He’s sure that Megan’s been hurt. Susan thinks I should go over, and I will, but I’m not sure what good I can do. I can’t assure him Megan hasn’t been hurt. All any of us can do is to pray she’s all right.” She looked down at the papers Jared had brought. “I’ll have to go through these later.”

  “I’ll go through them.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I know I don’t have to, but I’d like to. It’s my radio station that may have something to do with your kidnapping.”

  “It’s such a long shot—”

  “But it’s worth looking into. Come on, Savannah. I don’t have anything pressing to do until early evening. This’d be a change of pace for me.”

  It was a minute before she recovered from the sound of her name on his tongue. It was low and intimate. It stroked her senses and would have brought on a purr if the circumstances had been different. Instead of purring, she eyed him askance. “What’s happening early this evening?”

  “I have a conference call set for six o’clock with a group of investors from California.”

  That was not only impressive but far better than if he’d had a date. Turning away in relief, she gathered the papers together an
d slipped them into their envelope. Then she handed both envelopes back to him.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, and for a minute she drank in his features as if they were an extra dose of courage. She feared things were going to get worse before they got better at the Vandermeer house.

  Then, turning away before she positively threw herself at him, she snatched up the phone. “Janie, would you call me a cab?”

  Jared took the phone from her hand and, in a voice that was deeper and huskier than ever, said, “Cancel that cab, Janie. Thanks anyway.” Then he hung up.

  Savannah was shaking her head in a slow, chiding way. “I can’t let you drive me there.”

  “You haven’t got much choice,” he said. “I just canceled your cab.”

  “I’ll order another.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?” she asked, sounding nearly as haughty as Susan had sounded earlier that day with Sam.

  Jared’s eyes were darker, his voice a near growl. “When a woman looks at me the way you just did, she’s not running off in a cab when I have a perfectly good car sitting at the curb.”

  Savannah opened her mouth to protest that she hadn’t looked at him any special way, then shut it without uttering a word.

  “Thank you,” he drawled. Glancing over his shoulder, he spotted her coat hanging on a hook on the back of the door. Seconds later, he was holding it for her. She slipped her arms in, closing her eyes for a brief moment when she felt his hands still on her shoulders. Seconds afterward he opened the office door.

  “I’ll be at the Vandermeers,” she murmured to Janie Woo as she started past. She stopped in her tracks when she saw how Janie was staring at Jared. “He’s helping me out with something, but as far as anyone’s concerned, he wasn’t here. Right, Janie?”

  Janie, who knew that the security of her job relied heavily on discretion, nodded.

  Satisfied, Savannah started off again. She didn’t have to look around to know that Jared was close on her heels. She felt his heat, felt the vibrancy of his body. And it occurred to her while he stood, straight and tall, waiting beside her for the elevator, that on another day at another time, she would have let him drive her anywhere his heart desired.