One Summer’s Knight

by Kathleen Creighton

  “Home-with you? No.” Instinctive reaction forced the word from Summer’s lips. She repeated it in a whisper, her breath gone. “No. Absolutely not. I can’t-won’t let you do this.”

  Pride. Riley’s temper flickered and flared like heat lightning, and he had to turn his back on his client for a moment to let the breezes of reason cool it down. He understood the woman, but that didn’t make dealing with her any easier. In some ways, it may even have made it harder.

  He turned to her again, his eyes sliding downward past her face, the dangerous shoals of terrified eyes and a too vulnerable mouth, as he reached for her hands. No-nonsense hands. A doctor’s hands. A mother’s hands. He held them for a moment, feeling their strength, their gentleness, their competence. Then he let them go and slipped his hands to her wrists. A woman’s wrists. He felt their fragility.

  “Tell me something,” he said softly. “If you were to break these, what would you do?” She made a small, surprised sound. “No, really-if you were to break both of your arms, say, in a fall, what would you do? Would you hire someone to feed you, dress you, brush your teeth for you? Would you ask a friend?” She shook her head in silent denial and tried to pull her hands away. He held them tighter. “No-better yet, what if you had an illness, a life-threatening illness? Would you consult a doctor?” He knew she was staring at him now, angry but unresisting. Bracing himself, he met the pride and fury and challenge in her eyes with all the strength of his own will. Knowing they were two of a kind. But I’m the stronger, Summer Robey. You may not want to accept it, but it’s true. I’m stronger because I’ve already been through my crucible. And yours is just beginning.

  “Say you consulted a doctor. What if he told you you needed rest, treatment, tests-would you take his advice? Would you do what your doctor said? Or would you say, ‘Oh, no, thank you, but I can’t let you do that’?” He’d quoted the last in a feminine falsetto, and almost…almost thought he caught the glimmer of a smile.

  If so, she banished it with an in-drawn breath and said flatly, “It’s not the same thing.”

  Riley shook his head and lifted her captured wrists so that their eyes waged silent war between them. “Oh, no, Mrs. Robey, it is the same thing. You have a life-threatening situation here, and I’m the doctor who’s going to get you through it. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to relinquish control and put yourself in the doctor’s hands.”

  “But…should I do that?” Her wrists jerked in his grasp. “What if he’s wrong? Doctors don’t have all the answers.”

  “No, they don’t.” Without realizing it, he’d pulled her hands close to his chest. Now he found himself stroking the quivering tendons in her wrists with the tips of his fingers. His voice emerged unexpectedly thickened. “No, they don’t. But there comes a time when you have to decide whether you trust your doctor or not If you don’t, and you want to live, then you’d better find one you can trust. You follow me? So this is the time. Make up your mind now, Summer Robey. Do you trust me?”

  Chapter 5

  Do you trust me?

  Such a simple question. One she could not possibly answer. Because the only answer she could have given him at that moment was “No! No, I don’t trust you.”

  She didn’t trust anyone, and probably never would again.

  That realization came to her like a knife thrust straight to her heart. She gasped at the pain of it, then murmured, “It’s not that simple.”

  She stared at her hands, doubled now into fists, and right below them Riley Grogan’s fingers wrapped like manacles around her wrists. He had strong fingers, she noticed, big hands to match his frame, hands that were rather more rugged than she’d have expected, but which fit the image she’d carried of him in her mind. The other image. The street fighter. They did seem out of place, though, emerging from those pearly white cuffs with their gold-and-onyx cuff links, and the soft black fabric of the jacket sleeve. And they were immaculately clean, so scrubbed the skin had a buffed look, like fine leather, with perfectly manicured nails and the gleam of gold and onyx on the right ring finger. Her own hands looked grubby as a child’s by comparison.

  For some reason that made Summer think again of Cinderella, whose hands must have been rough and chapped from the soap and water, with nails broken and black from the ashes and soot of the hearth. What must that poor girl have felt as she watched the Prince take her hand in his royally pampered one and gracefully raise it to his royal lips? Why, Summer thought, didn’t any of the books, movies or plays ever tell you what was going through her mind? At the very least she had to have been dying of embarrassment

  Summer fixed her eyes on Prince Ch…uh, Riley Grogan’s pristine shirtfront, unstuck her tongue from the roof of her mouth and said firmly, “It’s impossible. I have my job. The children have-”

  “Your kids aren’t going anywhere, I’m afraid. And neither are you.” His voice was as implacable as when he’d put the FBI man in his place. “Think about it As long as you three are targets-”

  Summer stared at the tiny mirrors that were Riley’s black onyx studs, feeling dazed, as if she’d been hypnotized by them. Suddenly the whole thing seemed like a nightmare to her. “This is crazy,” she muttered. “I’m a veterinarian, for God’s sake. A mom with two kids. This sort of thing just doesn’t happen to people like me.”

  “Hard as it is for you to believe and accept,” Riley drawled in that calm, patient and suddenly very Southern voice, relaxing his hold on her wrists so that it became at the same time gentler and more compelling, “somebody is out to do you harm. All you need do to remind you of that fact is to think about what happened to your house trailer.”

  Summer closed her eyes. Oh, God, she thought, swaying a little. It isn’t a nightmare. It’s true. It really has happened. They had nothing-except, thank God, they still had one another, and the animals. The clothes on their backs. Whatever had been in the children’s backpacks. And, of course, that wretched car…

  “This is no time for misplaced pride, Mrs. Robey.” Riley’s quiet voice had taken on a slightly harder edge.

  Summer thought, Pride? What pride? How could she possibly have any pride left? She couldn’t even work. She couldn’t go to her family, not even to leave the children. Oh, God, she thought, what if they came after us there? How would she ever live with herself if she brought this mess to Bella’s family? To Mom and Pop? To Evie?

  “Our first priority,” said Riley, “is gonna have to be your safety-yours and the kids’. That’s what you need to be thinking about right now.”

  “Yes.” My children. The thought was strangely calming. Conscious, suddenly, of warmth and pulse beats, Summer opened her eyes to find that her wrists-in fact, her forearms-were cuddled up against the stiff white shirtfront she’d been staring at so intently only moments ago, and that the pulse beats were her own, tapping joyfully against the smooth pads of Riley’s fingertips. Letting her gaze travel upward, she found what seemed to be the same pulse-no, not a pulse, but a muscle, a tiny knot of tension-beating in the side of Riley’s jaw.

  A strange hollowness filled her, a dizzy, light-headed feeling she hoped was only exhaustion. Carefully removing her hands from their gentle restraints, she said, “Yes, of course you’re right,” and took a breath. “Right now, I have to think of the children.”

  Was it like this for you, Cinderella? she wondered as she turned her back on the totally incongruous vision of the Prince standing there in the flesh before her. She went to the sink, turned on the water and plunged her wrists into the stream in a determined effort to drown those tap-dancing pulses. Was this what prompted you to throw caution and good sense to the winds and go riding off with a man you hardly knew? Was it just that you knew you couldn’t possibly stay where you were a moment longer? Did you feel you had no choice? Maybe, she thought, it wasn’t true love after all, just simple expediency.

  It occurred to her then, that trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea, if a person were scared enough of water, the dev
il might not look all that bad.

  Not that she suspected Riley Grogan of being the devil in disguise, or anything even close to it In fact…

  “It’s you I’m concerned about, Mr. Grogan,” she informed him quietly as she reached for a paper towel and then turned to the rest room door, an ironic little smile on her lips. “I don’t think you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into.”

  “Oh, Lord, what have I gotten myself into?” Riley muttered the words aloud sometime later that evening-or more accurately, early the next morning-as he sat in his study nursing a large brandy and a bandaged finger. If anybody had asked him, he would readily have admitted it was no accident that the words were arranged in the form of a prayer.

  Except for the fitful and distant grumble of thunder, his house was quiet. Blessedly quiet. He relaxed in it, slouched down on his spine in his favorite chair with his feet stretched out on the matching ottoman, the snifter cradled on his chest. His eyes were closed as he savored, along with the old-woodsy aftertaste of the brandy, both the quiet and the thunder-the latter because it echoed his mood at the moment, the former because he had an idea it might prove to be the last of such moments for a while.

  He had a headache, and his finger throbbed to the dirgelike pace of his heartbeat. And it was becoming increasingly clear to him that he had lost his mind.

  There were few things in life Riley Grogan valued more than his privacy. He considered his home his personal refuge, a haven that in the past he’d guarded as jealously as a wolf would guard his lair. Yet, inconceivable as it seemed, there were at this very moment asleep in one of the several extra bedrooms he called “guest rooms”-though he seldom if ever had any-not one stranger, but three: an exhausted woman, who happened to be his newest client, and her two minor children. Oh, and had he mentioned her cat and her dog? And-he stared balefully at his bandaged finger-one apparently demented parrot.

  What had he been thinking of?

  As if his mind had been waiting for that question, had already rewound his memory tapes to the proper place and had just been waiting for the order to push Play, he found himself watching a replay of that scene in the rest room at FBI headquarters in Augusta, those last few moments before she-Summer Robey-had pulled her hands from his and turned to wash them and her face in the sink. He’d never forget the way she’d looked at him then. Doomed but not defeated, like a magnificent wild creature caught in a trap. He’d never forget the way he’d felt, either, as if something had struck him hard in the chest and momentarily interrupted the normal rhythm of his heart.

  He hadn’t known whether to be relieved or sorry when she’d left him immediately after that, focusing instead on her kids. While she’d been doing whatever one did to get children ready for a trip, Riley had gone to get his car. Following Agent Jake Redfield’s instructions, he’d driven around to the back of the building and up to what had appeared to him to be a blank wall, which had opened, James Bond-like, to admit him to an underground garage. In that stuffy, dimly lit cavern, he and Redfield had transferred various pet accessories from an anonymous FBI sedan to the trunk of Riley’s Mercedes-food and water dishes, assorted bags of dog, cat and parrot chow, cat litter and the appropriate container for same, something covered with carpeting that Jake had told him was called a cat cave, and what appeared to be a miniature-size jungle gym. Enough equipment, it had seemed to him, to outfit a small invasion force. At least, he’d thought, it didn’t look as if he was going to have to stop at an all-night pet shop on the way home.

  The children, however, did require a stop at some vending machines for crackers and chocolate milk, which Riley made damn sure were eaten and all traces disposed of before they were allowed anywhere near the Mercedes. He and Redfield had then escorted everyone downstairs to the garage via a special express elevator.

  It was while he was helping to find places for three pet carriers and two kids in the back seat-his suggestion that the carriers might ride better in the trunk had been loudly overruled-that Riley had managed, though he still couldn’t figure out how, to get his finger within range of that damn parrot’s beak. That had brought about a short but chaotic delay in their departure while Jake went in search of a first aid kit and Summer tried her best to calm hysterical children and livestock while simultaneously assessing the damage to Riley’s person.

  “It’s not broken-hardly even bleeding. You’re lucky,” she had pronounced when order had been restored, more or less. Riley, experiencing sensations similar to those caused by slamming a finger in a car door, had seen no reason to answer that “A parrot’s beak can easily snap small branches-and bones,” Summer had explained in a tone half instructive, half scolding, as if Riley were a not-very-bright child. “You should never, ever put your fingers in a parrot’s cage-especially one who doesn’t know and trust you.”

  But to tell the truth, he’d hardly been aware of his injury just then. He’d been watching Summer, watching her capable hands as they gently examined his finger, watching a frown of concentration etch a deep crease between her brows, watching a stray strand of her hair float in the breeze of her breath.

  He’d discovered he liked seeing her in this mode-relaxed, confident, less tense than she had been up to now. He wondered if it had even occurred to her that she was holding his arm, tuxedo sleeve and all, imprisoned between her arm and body, and that when she shifted to find a better hold, or better light, she’d turned herself neatly into the circle of his arm, with her back turned to him and her head bowed low over his wounded hand so that her nape was unself consciously bared to him. He could have counted the hairs that had escaped from her haphazard ponytail, he thought, if there’d been more light If there’d been less, he would only have had to lower his head a little, shift his arms a few degrees…and his mouth could have savored the taste and texture of the velvety skin drawn taut over the vulnerable bumps of her spine…

  Absurd notion. She was his client, a mother, and absolutely off-limits. But it had been a very long day and an unexpectedly unsettling evening, and he supposed he must have somehow been reminded of Miss Louisiana and her uncanny resemblance to Maureen O’Hara. Thinking of what might have been.

  Agent Redfield had returned about then with a first aid kit, and Summer had made short work of bandaging up Riley’s finger, all the while tweaking his masculine ego with remarks about the insignificant nature of the injury. He’d consoled himself with the thought that naturally she’d say that-it was her bird that had inflicted it, after all. Technically, she was liable for the damage. Not that he’d have said so. Just a minor legal point.

  They’d left the FBI garage in a convoy-Redfield first, with a mannequin sitting beside him in the passenger seat of the tan sedan as decoy for anyone who might have observed the departure with interest-and no one present questioned the need for such a precaution. After five tense minutes, Riley’s Mercedes rolled silently out of the garage, with its passengers crouched low and hidden from the view of any of those watchers who might have remained behind. It was then, as he’d guided the big car down an alley that seemed as dense and dark as a tropical jungle, through streets where humidity drifted in the car lights like dust and hung overhead in a gauzy yellow shroud, that he’d realized that all thought of his wounded finger, incipient headache and the sensuous Miss Louisiana had faded from his mind. The night was like a sauna, but the sweat that trickled down his spine was cold. Evil was out there, somewhere. He could feel it. Unlikely as it seemed, evil had touched this woman and her children. And because he had committed himself to keeping them safe, it had touched him, too.

  That was when it had first come to him, the question she’d suggested to him, the question he’d been asking himself ever since: What in the world was he getting himself into?

  Riley knew evil very well. He knew what it was to be stalked by it, to he hidden and chilled while evil hunted him through the long, dark night. But it had been a long time since he’d made a solemn vow to himself that he would never live in that kind of
fear, or in the proximity of evil, ever again-thirty years, as a matter of fact. Ironically, thirty years almost exactly. He’d conducted his life ever since with that vow as his guiding light, had chosen to go into civil instead of criminal law because of it. Because he had no desire to rub shoulders with the criminals and predators of this world, he’d seen enough of those. Not that civil law didn’t provide him with ample opportunity to witness more than his share of wrongdoing and shady dealings and other shabby aspects of human nature. But in his practice, those generally had more to do with avarice and greed than with pure, out-and-out evil. And as it happened, other people’s greed had provided Riley with the means to insulate himself against evil. He’d done a damn good job of it. Until now.

  What had he done? And why?

  There in his study, in the blessed silence of the wee hours of morning, Riley sipped his brandy and thought about it. But the only answer he could come up with hung in his mind like a pale oval moon. Summer Robey’s face. Summer Robey’s eyes…

  For the first time in many years, Riley awoke with his skin prickly and clammy, breath thick in his throat, heart pounding. Danger! Something was there-right there, surrounding him. He could hear it rustling…feel its warm, moist breath.

  Already charged with adrenaline, he opened his eyes. His fingers digging deep into the arms of the chair were all that kept him from exploding out of it. There before him, inches away, a face hung like a small, oval moon.

  Voices whispered hoarsely. “See? I told you he was awake.”

  “Well, he is now.” A second moon appeared beside the first, this one a little farther away. “You woke him up, that’s what you did.”

  “Did not.”

  “Did too.”

  “Uh-uh-Beatle did. See?”

  At that point Riley realized that something was prodding him-very lightly-in the groin. Then on his abdomen… belly…ribs…chest. A third face appeared, a goblin face-dark, almost black, with huge, round buggy eyes. It was much smaller than the first two but so close to his own it eclipsed them both. Something cool and wet-a tongue!-slapped across Riley’s lips…then his nose. Aagh-into his nostrils!