Intimate Stranger

by Jan Springer

  “We’ve already moved our things into the little lighthouse Emily’s uncle left her. I’m heading back there tonight. Going to surprise her. She is expecting to be alone tonight.”

  “You’ve quit as of today?” Skip asked. Disbelief etched his words and he truly looked stunned.

  “Resignation’s right here.”

  Steve snaked his arm around Skip and tossed the sealed envelope onto Helena’s desk.

  “When she comes back I hope she doesn’t blow her stack.”

  “She will. You’re moving too fast.”

  “I know, but we’re going to get started on the family right away.”

  “Hence your rush to get out of here today,” Skip laughed.

  “Oh! I almost forgot. Here, I got this disc anonymously. Thought you might like to take a look at it. It’s going to be one hell of a story. Since I’ve resigned I’ll have to leave it in your capable hands.” He tried to contain the wild thrill flooding through him. Tried to appear as if the stuff he’d read on the disc weren’t that important. If Skip got wind of his excitement he’d be shooting questions at Steve left right and center and he’d never get out of here. But it sure was hard to ignore this kind of damaging evidence and hard to not hang around and watch Skip’s face when he read the contents.

  “I’ll give you twenty-four hours to verify whatever you can before I hand it over to the cops,” Steve said.

  Skip accepted the disc without even glancing at it and focused his attention to Steve. Another round of guilt slammed through him for leaving Skip in this way.

  “Are you going to come back and visit?” he asked.

  “You can count on it. You know you’re welcome out to Shipwreck Island any time. Emily enjoys your jokes.”

  Skip frowned.

  “Just my jokes?”

  “Your company…I think.”

  Skip smirked. “Ha! Ha! You know what? You’ve picked an exceptional woman in Emily. I’m proud of you.”

  His friend eased off Helena’s desk and held out his hand to Steve. Emotions, thick and raw welled inside him as he took Skip’s hand and they shook.

  “Prouder even when Uncle Skip can bounce babies on his knees.”

  “You’ll be the first to know when we succeed,” he replied, fighting the intense emotion sweeping over him whenever he thought of his wife.

  “Emily’s a gem, Skip. So sweet and innocent. I don’t want her involved in this kind of investigative work.”

  “I can understand, bud. But she’s a writer too. She knows the risks. In this line of work you never know whose toes you’re stepping on until it’s too late.”

  “No more close calls. I think it’ll be a big relief for Emily. I’d better get going. I still have to clean out my desk.”

  “I’ll come out to your island soon and see how it’s going,” Skip said as Steve headed for the door that would take him out to the main area where the journalists had their desks.

  “Sounds like a plan. We’ll leave it at that then. Come on over anytime. Go on and get back to looking for your pens before Helena gets back. You know how huffy she gets when someone’s in her office alone.”

  Steve smiled as he heard Skip grumble and open yet another drawer. He left the office, cleaned out his desk and it was the last time he saw Skip…until the fair.

  That evening, Steve made it back to Prince Edward Island. He stepped onto Sweet Lies where he’d had the tug anchored at the town near North Cape. He hadn’t even started the engine when he’d been swarmed by the Coast Guard and other authorities arrested and taken into custody. Life had never been the same.

  The raw anger raced through him like an abscess and Chance slid the disc into his laptop. He may as well check if the information was still here and on the hard drive.

  Besides, someone had to pay for ruining his and Emily’s chance at a normal life, so he may as well read all of it. With that thought squarely in his mind, he flipped on the computer.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Emily awoke to coolness where Chance had lain beside her. Immediately she noted the gray light of dawn splashing into the bedroom window. It was still raining and the wind sounded like a battering ram on the panes. The alarm clock read a little after six a.m.

  She wondered how long he’d been up and where he’d gotten off to. She smiled when she spied the splash of light shining in from the hallway to the bedroom. He was probably hungry and in the kitchen making himself some breakfast.

  She was hungry too. They’d had only pizza last night and no lunch yesterday with all the horrible action regarding the planted drugs, so he was probably making something to eat. Gathering strength so they could pick up where they’d left off.

  Excitement swirled at that thought and she hugged herself tight beneath the warm blankets. She really didn’t understand why this wonderful attraction existed between them. Or why she already cared so deeply about him. Sexy Chance Donovan made such good love to her she wouldn’t be able to sleep with another man after this guy. No way.

  It had all happened so unbelievably fast. In a matter of days. This connection seemed too good to be true and before she started getting all freaked out like she used to get in the past when things were too good to be true, she decided to get out of bed and find that hunk of a man and get back to where they’d left off.

  Pushing the blankets aside she got out of bed, reached for her robe hanging on the bedpost and wrapped herself in its snugness. But before she went to find Chance she needed to go to the bathroom. Slipping her feet into her snug slippers, she plodded to the door that adjoined her bedroom with the bathroom. Flicking on the lights, she smiled at the mess they’d left in here. Clothing was strewn all over the floor. It looked as if they’d been in one heck of a hurry. Or like a hurricane had blasted through in here as well as outside.

  She started picking up her clothing and then noticed Chance’s clothes were soaked.

  Huh. In their haste to get undressed, she hadn’t noticed that.

  Bending, she picked up his wet jeans and blinked in surprise when a gold glittery item fell out of his pocket and onto the ceramic tiled floor. A Saint Christopher medallion sparkled up at her.

  Wow. He carried one of these around too? Talk about more similarities between Steve and Chance. Unreal. And the medallion looked just as scratched up as the one she’d given Steve a long time ago.

  Scooping it up into her hand, she was about to place it onto the counter when she inadvertently turned it over.

  Her heart skidded to a halt.

  Feeling shocked and confused and truly out of it to the point she couldn’t even form a thought, Emily clutched Steve’s Saint Christopher necklace in the palm of her hand and headed from the bathroom into the hallway.

  What was Chance doing with her husband’s necklace? She knew Steve had been wearing it the day he left here. Knew she hadn’t gotten the necklace back when the jail he’d been killed in had sent her his personal effects. Had assumed someone had stolen it.

  In the kitchen doorway she spotted Chance. He wore nothing put a green towel slung over his hips as he sat at the intimate table for two. Cool, gray early morning light seeped into the room, giving it a surreal appearance. She could scarcely breathe as she watched him. His broad naked back was turned to her and she noted the tenseness bunching his shoulders. Shoulders that looked strangely familiar.

  There was that oddly familiar slight tilt to his head. The one Steve used to do too when he was studying something. She noted those golden highlights so much like Steve’s sprinkled with a dash of white in his sandy hair.

  Those spooky déjà vu feelings grabbed a hold of her again and she didn’t like it. She didn’t like it one bit. Suddenly she didn’t appreciate this man and his secrets and suddenly she didn’t like the similarities between the only two men in her life who made her feel so alive and full of love.

  Dammit! Who was this guy?

  With heart hammering insanely in her ears she eased behind him and peeked over his shoulder. Sh
ock rammed through her as she spotted Steve’s laptop computer lying wide open in front of Chance. The screen was lit up and full of data. Obviously Chance had cracked the password.

  How had he done it so quickly?

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  At the sound of her voice, he whirled around. There was an instant of panic in his blue eyes as their gazes met. Then her stomach clenched in a terrible sickening way as she watched the color drain from his face when he spied the gold medallion in her outstretched hand. He looked as if he might collapse right there in front of her.

  Quickly he stood and blocked her view of the contents on the computer screen.

  “Go back to bed, Emily,” he commanded.

  His momentary shock of discovering she was in the room had clearly vanished and she saw the anger rage through him. Could see it in the way his knuckles were white as he held his hands into fists and in the way the muscles twitched in his clenched jaw. She noticed he was trembling too.

  What in the world had gotten him so pissed off? She’s the one who should be mad. He broke into the safe after he’d screwed her! What an interesting diversion, she thought, and unexpectedly began to feel as if she might have been used.

  Pushing aside her concern, she met his anger with her own. He would answer her questions and he would answer them now. Whether he liked it or not, she would find out what the fuck was going on.

  “Why do you have my husband’s medallion?” she asked. To her surprise her voice sounded a hell of a lot stronger than she felt.

  “I found it. In the generator shed.”

  She didn’t know how, but she knew he was lying.

  “I want the truth.”

  His eyes widened.

  “I read the initials scratched in over top. C.D. for Chance Donovan. And TX? I’m assuming it means Texas since you mentioned during the Timber Sports competition you were from Texas. Who are you? Why didn’t you tell me your real name is Richard Call?”

  He flinched and swore softly beneath his breath. She realized he was trying to hold on to his anger but she wasn’t afraid of it or of him. It seemed as if she knew he needed to release it. He needed to tell her something very important. About the medallion? Or the contents of Steve’s laptop?

  “Please, just go back to bed,” he said, starting to turn away from her.

  For a heart-stopping moment she wanted to do exactly what he said because something in his face told her she was better off not knowing what he’d found in Steve’s computer files. Whatever it was, it had gotten her husband killed. But she fought the urge to do as he said. Fought it like a she-cat.

  Grabbing his biceps, she tried to pull him away from the table so she could look at the computer screen. He remained as solid as a tree.

  Son of a bitch!

  “Chance Donovan! Move aside!”

  “I’m warning you, Emily. You don’t want to see what’s on the screen.”

  “Like hell I don’t!”

  She made a move to go around him, but he stopped her cold by twisting away from her grasp. Grabbing her by the shoulders, he prevented her from moving around him.

  “Don’t, Emily,” he hissed as he stared her down. There was an underlying warning tone in his voice and it just made her madder. Made her want to see what he was hiding from her on that damn screen.

  “Get out of my way, Donovan. I need to avenge my husband!”

  “I don’t want your help!”

  She gasped at his words and felt as if she’d just been slapped.

  I don’t want your help. What did he mean by that?

  She tried to clutch at the meaning. Tried to figure out what he was saying. As she did finally start to understand, horrific icy fingers tapped a violent forewarning along her spine and her knees threatened to buckle.

  I have to avenge my husband, she’d said.

  I don’t want your help, he’d said.

  Déjà vu slammed through her like an explosion. She remembered the slight tilt to Chance’s head just moments ago. The familiarity of it. The golden highlights in his hair. The wide shoulders. The freckles and moles spattered lightly across his chest as she stared at him now. Freckles and moles she refused to acknowledge as looking the same as Steve’s. But they certainly did appear to be in the same areas.

  But about the fair? The way he’d held her while they’d danced to her wedding song. He’d set up the song for them? She remembered how he seemed to know where to steer the boat. As if he knew where they were going.

  There were other little things. How he liked his coffee. The same way as Steve did. The sizzling attraction between them from almost the minute they’d met. Yet he didn’t look like Steve…but there was always plastic surgery. The rest of him though…she shook her head in denial.

  No. Stuff like that only happened on the soap operas or in the movies. Didn’t they?

  Oh God. She couldn’t even think about that angle. It would be too good to be true. Something else must be going on here. Something sinister.

  “Why did you break into my husband’s laptop?”

  He said nothing. Just stood there shaking his head. His breathing was ragged. Tension smashed his handsome face. A face she should know. Shouldn’t she?

  “Who are you?” she asked, realizing she knew the answer. But it wasn’t a possible answer.

  He continued to hold her shoulders tightly. Continued that damn shaking of the head.

  “Leave it alone, Emily.”

  “What’s the password?” she breathed. She was still breathing, wasn’t she?

  He stiffened at her question and finally loosened his tight grip on her shoulders.

  Her thoughts were whirling so badly she truly didn’t think she could talk but somehow she managed.

  “I’m the only person close to Steve who could possibly crack the password. Here you walk into my life, a complete stranger and just like that,” she snapped her fingers, “you’re in my husband’s computer. Where’s my husband? Is he the one who told you the password?”

  The other alternative couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. God, help her if it was.

  She watched him closely. There was something about him. Something in his eyes. The color of his eyes were different. Contacts maybe? She didn’t think so. The rest of his face was different, but if she really looked hard… No, she couldn’t go there. Wouldn’t go there.

  But the only person the information on the laptop would be important to would be…

  “Steve…” she whispered, feeling the strangeness of his name in her ears. Feeling the disconnected dots suddenly start to connect. The pieces of the puzzle that had been floating aimlessly around her head since she’d met him suddenly seemed to fit.

  At Steve’s name on her lips, Chance let go of her shoulders and staggered backward as if he’d been shot.

  Why wasn’t he denying he wasn’t Steve? Why did she suddenly believe, no matter how hard she didn’t want to believe, that the man standing in front of her, this virtual stranger who called himself Chance Donovan or Richard Call or whoever the hell he was, could actually be her dead husband?

  Questions exploded in her head. How could it be possible? He didn’t look like Steve. No, don’t go there again.

  Except the night she’d found him in her bedroom looking for the can of mace. He’d stood beside the wedding portrait. Their smiles had been so similar. What about the intense déjà vu warnings she tried to ignore? The Halloween romance formula that night only moments before she’d found him with his head stuck in her fridge. And their sexual chemistry…

  The man so near and dear to her heart looked so different. Yet eerily familiar too. He had a stranger’s face. A stranger’s eyes. Yet she recognized the love in those eyes now. Should have recognized it right from the instant she’d looked into them.

  “How is it possible?” she asked, suddenly feeling as if she were floating, disjointed. She barely heard the Saint Christopher medal hit the wood floor with a tingle and realized it had slipped from her
suddenly numb fingers.

  “Emmie, please.” His rough voice had a desperate edge to it. But now she recognized it. It was raspy and damaged, but if she really listened hard, she could hear Steve’s voice. Couldn’t she?

  How could this be possible? It couldn’t be.

  “Where have you been?”

  She reached up and she saw him flinch as with a horribly trembling hand she brushed the tips of her fingers across the warm, seductive curves of his lips and then brought a finger down to dip into the deep cleft in his chin. A cleft that hadn’t been there years earlier.

  “You always said you loved men with clefts in their chin. You had the hots for Michael Douglas for a while there. Remember?” he asked and a strangled chuckle escaped his voice.

  She dropped her hand as if it were burned and clutched it to her heart.

  Yes, she did have the hots for that movie star.

  Shock reeled through her as he eased his unsteady fingers to his hairline by his left temple and pushed back his hair. He traced a long finger along the faint scar she’d never noticed. Traced it until it disappeared behind his ear.

  Oh my God.

  “Miracles of reconstructive surgery.” He shrugged.

  At that split second Emily thought she’d somehow gone insane, or maybe this was a nightmare.

  She closed her eyes as a wave of lightheadedness whirled around her. She barely felt his firm embrace as he led her to a kitchen chair. She practically fell into it.

  There was the oddest buzzing in her ears. The strangest sensation that for a moment she wasn’t even here. That Steve wasn’t here. That she truly had to be dreaming.

  Crouching in front of her, he took her hands into his. They were trembling and warm and so gentle.

  Oh sweet Jesus, his touch felt so good.

  “Close your mouth and breathe through your nose. Deep,” he instructed.

  She took a deep breath. The room began to swirl.

  Oh shit.

  “Dizzy,” she muttered, feeling a knot of nausea grab at her tummy. Feeling the sharp swirls of panic as the room moved.

  “Come on, Emmie. Close your mouth and breathe through your nose.”