Cautious Lover

by Stephanie James

  By ten o’clock the good-natured crowd began to break up. Sarah left with Damon, her eyes still too excited as far as Elly was concerned. She worried for her friend, but she didn’t know what to do. Sarah had been so unhappy for so many months it seemed cruel to step in and try to blight the one spark that had come into her life. You couldn’t make other people’s decisions for them, Elly told herself as she helped Ann Palmer clean up the old farmhouse parlor.

  “Drive carefully, Elly. The fog is starting to get heavy out there. Take it easy going home.” Ann smiled as Elly collected the empty casserole dish.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. It was a lovely evening, Ann.”

  “That Carrington man certainly livened things up, didn’t he? He’s almost too good looking somehow. Like something out of a magazine ad.”

  Elly nodded, glad that at least one other woman in the room had realized that fact. “I agree with you. It’s as if he’s not quite real. Or quite human.”

  “I’ll stick with my Jim, I think,” Ann confided lightly. “One thing you can say for Jim; he’s human!” She grinned at her bearded husband, who was scooping up paper plates. Jim growled a laughing response as Ann turned back to Elly. “You’ll do fine with your Jess. By the way, that casserole was fantastic. What’s the se­cret?”

  “Wine, molasses and ground chili peppers. Took a while to get the proportions down right.”

  “How many times have you experimented with it on Jess?”

  Elly winced, remembering how frequently Jess had found himself eating a different version of lentil casser­ole during the past two months. “I hate to think about it. He never complained, though.”

  “He wouldn’t. He values homecooking too much. The last time I saw him at the store he told me he couldn’t wait to get it full-time.”

  “Then he should hire a cook!”

  Ann Palmer’s expression softened. “Elly, believe me, there’s nothing wrong in having a man like your cook­ing. That old cliché about the way to a man’s heart being through his stomach didn’t get to be a cliché by being untrue, you know. Clichés get to be clichés just because they do contain an element of truth. He’s a good man, your Jess.”

  Elly smiled politely and hastened out to her car. If only he really were my Jess, she thought. Completely, une­quivocally, wholeheartedly mine. Damned if she was going to let herself be married for her cooking and other convenient skills!

  The interior of the car was cold, and the engine re­sisted starting. When she finally got it going, Elly sat in the darkness for a few minutes, letting the heater warm up. Then, with the headlights dim to minimize the glare off the fog, she started down the narrow country road.

  It was slow going, and Elly told herself to relax and take her time. The fog ebbed and swirled around the car, but she could still make out the edges of the road as well as several yards of pavement in front of her. She would be safe enough if she didn’t rush.

  The lights of the Palmer’s farmhouse disappeared after a short distance, and then there was only the reflected glare of the car’s headlights. Elly turned on the radio for company. The road had no other traffic.

  She was singing along to one of her favorite country and western songs when the car’s engine sputtered and died. Elly let the vehicle drift to the side of the road. Sti­fling a small anxiety attack, she shut off both the heater and the radio and tried to restart the engine. It became clear very quickly that the task was hopeless. She seemed to be out of gas.

  The next thing that became clear was that the only way to get home was to walk. Elly took a long time reaching that decision. The prospect was not a pleasant one. Briefly she considered hiking back toward the Palmers’ and then decided that, she was about equidistant from her home and that of her friends. She might as well head home.

  One of these days, Elly promised herself as she climbed reluctantly out of the car and buttoned her parka, she was going to remember to carry a flashlight in the glove compartment. Things like this probably never happened to Jess. But if they did he’d have been better prepared to handle them.

  “One of the advantages of not being married,” Elly lectured herself bracingly as she started down the forbid­ding road. “You won’t have to listen to any men yell at you when you get home a little late tonight.” You had to look on the bright side.

  Jess almost pounced on the phone when it rang that evening in his Portland apartment. He’d been trying to get hold of Elly since six o’clock and had been increas­ingly frustrated over her failure to answer the phone. She was almost always home when he called. He realized he’d begun to take the fact for granted. In what he knew Elly would refer to as typical male fashion, frustration had turned into irritation, which was rapidly metamorphos­ing into outright anger.

  What Elly wouldn’t have guessed, and Jess knew he didn’t want to admit, was that the anger was being fed by a fear he dared not put into words. By the time he picked up the receiver, however, his voice was dark and rough with the combination of emotions.

  “Mr. Winter, this is Mary at your service.”

  His answering service. Elly never used that number unless she couldn’t reach him at home. He’d been home all evening. Jess closed his eyes briefly as the strange an­ger in him threatened to increase.

  “Go ahead, Mary,” he said to the faceless woman he’d never met but who faithfully answered his work number and relayed messages.

  “You just had a call from a man who refused to leave his name. He said you’d know who it was.” Mary’s tone said she strongly disapproved of callers who wouldn’t leave proper information.

  Jess’s fingers locked on the receiver. “Read it to me.”

  “He said to tell you it was going to be an interesting night on the coast and that he’ll have her home by morn­ing.”

  Jess stared blankly at the white vase full of some sort of tall, artificial grass fronds that stood against the far wall of his living room. He’d never liked the vase or the dull-colored grass, but it had been too much trouble to get rid of it. After all, he’d told himself on countless oc­casions, he’d be moving soon. He’d be living with Elly, who always kept plenty of fresh flowers and live plants in her home.

  “Mr. Winter? Did you get that, sir?”

  “Yes, Mary. I got it. Thank you.” Very carefully Jess replaced the phone. He had to move carefully or he knew he might fracture the tough plastic between his fingers.

  Carrington. The secret fear he hadn’t wanted to ac­knowledge had become real with a vengeance.

  The hell of it was, he thought as the fury and fear bat­tled within him, he didn’t even know where to start looking. Carrington could have taken Elly anywhere. Women went with him so easily, like moths to a flame.

  Jess stood in the middle of his sophisticated off-white living room and thought of his sweet, gentle Elly under Carrington’s spell. Quite suddenly, Jess realized he would go out of his mind if he spent the night here in Portland.

  He had to go to the coast. He had to be waiting at El­ly’s home in the morning when Carrington brought her back. He had to see it with his own eyes; had to see Elly mussed and rumpled from a night in Carrington’s arms. Then he would tear Damon Carrington apart.

  Elly heard the faint sound of a car’s engine before she had gone more than a couple hundred feet along the road. She glanced over her shoulder and caught the glare of headlights moving slowly through the swirling fog. Relief swept through her as she turned and started back. Chances were she would know the other driver and he or she would be happy to give her a lift home. It was a wonderful thing living in a small community where you knew your neighbors, Elly thought happily.

  She was never quite certain what vague instinct made her decide to identify the vehicle before she darted out into the road to hail it. Perhaps it was the knowledge that not everyone on this road might be familiar or perhaps it was the general eeriness of the swirling fog. A woman had to take a few precautions, she reminded herself, even out here in the boondocks.
Jess was always lecturing her along those lines. But, then, he tended to harp on things like that a lot.

  Still, she would just make sure that her potential res­cuer was someone she knew.

  The fog concealed her easily enough as Elly scram­bled down into the ditch beside the road and up the other side. There she stood behind the cover of roadside brush and a small clump of trees and watched as the oncoming headlights slowed and then stopped beside her car. She squinted, trying to make out the color of the other vehi­cle. It wasn’t Jim Palmer’s beat up red pickup, that was for certain. From what she could see of the car beyond the glaring lights, it looked sieek and sporty. A Porsche, perhaps.

  No one she knew drove a Porsche.

  Then the sportscar’s door opened and a man climbed out of the front seat. Elly identified him even before the headlights illuminated Damon Carrington’s blond head as he walked around the front of his car. She froze in the shelter of the brush the way a small animal freezes in the presence of its natural enemy.

  Elly was suddenly very grateful she hadn’t brought along a flashlight. Carrington might have seen the small beam moving along the road as he’d approached her car.

  He walked to the front door of her little compact and peered into the window. A moment later he reached for the handle and yanked it open.

  “Elly?”

  Her name was chillingly audible in the still night. Elly crouched lower behind the brush, huddling and praying he wouldn’t decide to search the nearby terrain.

  “Elly? It’s me, Damon Carrington. Looks like you had car trouble. I can give you a lift home. Where are you?”

  He was just calling to her on the hunch she might still be in the vicinity, Elly thought as she reassured herself. He couldn’t know for certain. In another moment he would have to assume that she had abandoned her car much earlier and was already quite a way down the road.

  “Elly?” Some of the pleasant, helpfulness of his tone was fading, to be replaced by impatience. Damon walked a few paces down the road in front of the cars, peering into the fog. He didn’t glance toward the side or up into the brush beyond the ditch. He was assuming she had continued walking straight down the road.

  A logical assumption, Elly admitted to herself. It was exactly what she had done.

  “Elly!”

  After that last call, Damon apparently decided he was wasting his time. He swung around and headed back to­ward his car.

  Elly watched in relief as he slid inside the Porsche and switched on the engine. The car moved slowly, partly because of the fog, of course, but also because he was probably watching for her, Elly decided. A moment later the sleek car slipped into the fog and disappeared.

  She was getting paranoid and it was all Jess Winter’s fault.

  Shaking her head, Elly straightened from behind the brush and leaped nimbly down into the roadside ditch. Then she darted up the other side and resumed her cold, lonely walk.

  It was idiotic to have hidden herself from Carrington like that. She should have been glad of the ride he was offering. Even now she could have been luxuriating in the warmth of the Porsche’s front seat. Instead she was stuck with a long walk home. Ridiculous.

  But Elly knew in her heart that if she had to make the choice again, she would do the same thing. Jess had warned her to stay away from Damon Carrington be­cause he was wary of the younger man’s effect on women. Elly had no fear of Carrington in that sense. She felt absolutely no attraction to the man. But she did fear Carrington’s effect on the man she loved. She’d rather walk home in the fog than take a free ride from the man Jess hated.

  Not that Jess was ever likely to find out about to­night’s odd events, Elly thought as she finally came in sight of the welcoming light from her front porch. It was best he never did. He would put his own construction on things. Then he might go out and do something quite vi­olent. Elly shuddered.

  Wearily she tramped the last couple of hundred yards. The fog had lifted a little, but the air had grown colder. A chilled wind was starting up from the sea. The jeans she was wearing provided little protection for her legs,, and they were beginning to feel quite numb as she ap­proached her house.

  Elly bent her head against the biting breeze, and thus failed to see the other car in her driveway until she al­most bumped into it.

  For an instant, panic gripped her as she raised her head to see the sleek lines of a pale-white vehicle. In the next instant she realized it wasn’t a Porsche. It was Jess’s Jaguar sedan.

  Cold, damp and weary, Elly paused beside the car, staring down at it. She couldn’t figure out what it was doing in her driveway in the middle of the week. Jess had said nothing about driving over to the coast before Fri­day. With a sigh she continued toward the porch, climb­ing the old wooden steps as if they were small mountains.

  The door opened before she could dig her key out of her leather shoulder bag, and Elly found herself staring up into Jess Winter’s taut, savage face. In the harsh light of the porch fixture, his eyes were the color of the fog that had shrouded the road behind her. The tension in him was lethal.

  “Elly.”

  She blinked, alarmed by the harshness of her name on his lips. She drew a deep breath and stepped forward, pushing past him into her warm, inviting hall. “Well, of course it’s Elly. I live here, remember? What in the world are you doing here on a Wednesday, Jess? You always do things on schedule and you’re not scheduled to be here until Friday. My God, it’s cold out there. My legs are absolutely numb. I need a hot shower and a cup of hot chocolate. You wouldn’t believe what happened to me tonight. I ran out of gas. And don’t give me any lectures on the subject because I could have sworn I had plenty of fuel. I just filled the tank on Monday at Pete’s service station and I’ve hardly driven twenty or thirty miles since…” “Elly!”

  She swung around. “What is it, Jess?” “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Just a little cold. Why shouldn’t I be all right? It was a long walk but other than that…”

  Jess stepped forward, his hands coming up to clamp around her shoulders. Oddly she could feel the tension in him and it frightened her. Elly realized she’d never seen Jess in quite this mood.

  “I had a message from Carrington,” he began grimly.

  “Carrington!” She stared at him in shocked disbelief. “Why on earth would he contact you?”

  “To tell me you were spending the night with him, and that he would bring you home in the morning.”

  Images of Damon Carrington prowling through the fog, searching for her, rose up in Elly’s mind and took on new, menacing significance. “I was at the Palmers’ to­night, Jess. You remember I told you about the pot­luck? I ran out of gas on the way home and had to walk.”

  “I can see that.” His eyes moved over her, taking in the fog-dampened hair and parka, the mud-splattered shoes and the breeze-whipped color of her cheeks. Suddenly he pulled her fiercely into his arms. “Hell, Elly. I can see that.”

  Elly thought he would crush the breath out of her body. The driving urgency in him was totally new to her. She wasn’t certain how to handle it.

  “I would have killed him, Elly. I would have strangled him with my bare hands if he had brought you home in the morning.”

  “Then started in on me?” Elly tried to lift her head so that she could look up into his face, but Jess continued to crush her against his hard body.

  “Elly…”

  “Jess,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his neck, “how could you think I would go with him?”

  ” You don’t know him, Elly.”

  “I know one thing for certain about him: He’s not the man I want. Furthermore, I resent your thinking that I’m some empty-headed female who’s an easy victim for any good-looking man who happens to come along. I’m an adult human being, Jess, and I’m quite capable of pick­ing and choosing my acquaintances on the basis of something besides their physical appearance!”

  “Calm down, Elly.”

 
; “I will not calm down! Why should I? I’ve had a mi­serable walk home, and I arrive to find some brute on my doorstep who thinks I’m totally unable to run my own life. Your faith in me is hardly flattering, Jess. In fact, I get the distinct impression you don’t have much trust in me at all. Hardly a good way to begin a marriage. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced we’re not going to make it together, after all. I want someone who has some respect for my integrity and my brains. Fur­thermore—”

  “Elly, hush.”

  “Why should I hush? In addition to integrity and brains, I’ve also got a mouth.”

  “You can say that again!”

  Before Elly could protest further, Jess stopped her ti­rade with the most fundamental approach of all. He covered her mouth with his own, and this time his kiss wasn’t the casual sort she had come to expect from him. His hands were already moving in her hair, even as his tongue surged possessively between her teeth.

  This time, Elly knew, Jess intended to set his seal on her. He was going to take her to bed.

  For the first time since she had begun to acknowledge her love for him, Elly was afraid of what would happen if she let him make love to her.

  Five

  The fear and uncertainty were real, but neither could prevail against the desperate need for reassurance Elly read in Jess’s eyes. It was odd, she thought fleetingly as he gathered her into his arms, for the past two months she had been the one seeking reassurance, eventually trying for it on a physical basis. Tonight Jess hungered for it.

  But there was a sharp, inescapable difference in the underlying motives. Elly had sought assurance of his love, some indication of a passion and need that matched her own. Tonight Jess was seeking only assurance of her commitment to him. She would be a fool if she forgot that fundamental distinction. But reason and caution faded next to her overwhelming desire to give Jess what he seemed to need.