by JoAnn Ross
"A monk?"
"Any Gypsy worth her salt knows that a monk is the symbol of deception and subterfuge."
"I see," Alex said, not really seeing anything at all.
"The monk is a warning of some unpleasant incident connected with a man of power and influence. And that's not all."
It never was with Clara. "Oh?"
Clara placed a pudgy pink hand on Alex's arm. "The warning wasn't for me, Alexandra." Her fingers tightened. "It was for you. You must leave Santa Barbara. Now."
Alex gently shrugged off the older woman's touch. "It's not that I don't appreciate the warning, Clara," she said politely, "because I do. But I think I'll take my chances."
Clara bristled. "Well," she huffed, with an angry shake of her turbaned head, "don't say I didn't warn you." With that, she turned and stomped away, her silk caftan billowing around her ample frame like a bright sail against a gale-force wind.
* * *
The nightmare came before dawn, slinking into Alex's subconscious mind like a black cat on All Hallows' Eve. She was walking through the fog; cold gray mists curled around her bare legs, brushed over her arms, settled damply in her hair. In the distance she could barely make out a huge, forbidding house.
The dark, damp earth beneath her bare feet had a pungent, yeasty smell. She had no idea whether it was day or night; the world had become a skyless realm where the only colors were black and green. The immense quiet of the shadowy forest closed in on her; the black, gesticulating trees curtaining the narrow path seemed to be reaching for her.
A gust of wind from the nearby storm-tossed sea ruffled her hair; a sudden flash of sulfurous lightning illuminated the land in a stuttering white light.
And then she saw it. The blood. It was everywhere—flowing wetly over the ground like a dark red river, splattering over the rocks, staining her flowing white dress, soaking into her wild, unkempt hair.
Locked in the escalating terror, Alex tossed and turned on her sweat-drenched sheets.
She was no longer alone. A cowled monk was coming toward her, the evil glint of a dagger in his hand. Although she couldn't make out his features in the overwhelming darkness, his eyes gleamed like red-hot coals.
He slowly raised the dagger high above his head and brought it down viciously, directly at her heart.
Alex woke with a jolt just in time, rescuing herself from the monk's murderous intent.
As she paced the floor in the predawn darkness, waiting anxiously for morning, Alex tried to tell herself that the nightmare was nothing more than a figment of her imagination, brought on by the strain of preparing for her upcoming design debut, Miranda's ongoing antipathy, the lingering effects of her illness and her strange conversation in the garden with Clara.
But even as she assured herself that her nightmare was nothing more than the product of her creative mind, Alex couldn't quite make herself believe it.
Not when her skin was still chilled from the icy gray mists. Not when the image of that cowled monk lurked threateningly in her mind's eye. And certainly not when the acrid, suffocating odor of blood lingered in her nostrils.
Despite the good deal of common sense Alex possessed, she couldn't quite shake the feeling that the nightmare that had disturbed her sleep for the past ten nights had been all too real.
The nightmare continued, night after restless night. Disjointed, frightening fragments, scenes hidden in a misty fog. Scenes that asked more questions than they revealed.
Each night before retiring, Eleanor brought Alex a cup of lemon verbena tea, touted by Clara as a near-miraculous sedative. When the tea proved ineffectual, Clara followed up with valerian, an unpleasant brew that smelled like dirty sweat socks and did nothing to help Alex sleep.
Hearing of Alex's insomnia, Averill offered to prescribe something to help her sleep. But wary of prescription drugs, Alex declined.
Seeking other means of relaxing, which had been the point of this trip all along, Alex began taking long walks on the cliff behind the estate, where she'd stare out at the vast Pacific Ocean and try to sort through her unsettled emotions.
Part of her discomfort, she knew, was due to Miranda. Although Zach had returned to L.A., Miranda had remained in Santa Barbara, living in the family wing. Jealousy surrounded the woman like a particularly noxious cloud; she seemed determined to make Alex's life miserable with her sly innuendos. The unrelenting hostile behavior made Alex face the unpalatable truth of Miranda's very real existence in Zach's life.
The fact of his wife existed as solidly as one of the boulders forming the cliff upon which she walked. And unfortunately, though it was more than obvious that Zach and Miranda's marriage was less than idyllic, the beautiful, spiteful Mrs. Deveraux had made it all too clear that she was every bit as immovable as those enormous granite rocks.
Deciding that perhaps she ought to return to the city, where she wouldn't be forced to endure Miranda's presence, Alex returned to the house to find Averill waiting for her on the terrace. He was dressed in chinos, a navy polo shirt and white deck shoes. A white billed cap with gold braid was perched jauntily atop his sun-streaked hair.
"I came by to kidnap you," he said to her cheerfully.
Alex went ice cold. Her hands, her mind, her heart.
"Alexandra?" Eleanor, who'd been sitting on a blue-and-white striped lounge, rose quickly to her feet. "What's wrong?"
"Wrong?" Alex answered through lips that seemed to have turned to stone. What the hell was happening to her these days? She was turning into a hysterical ninny.
"Nothing." She shook her head to clear away the mists, then turned back toward the doctor with a smile. "I must have misunderstood you."
"No." He took off his cap and combed his long, aristocratic fingers through his hair, ruffling a fifty-dollar haircut. "It was my fault. I simply dropped by to invite you sailing. But I should have chosen my words more carefully. Especially since Eleanor has told me that you know about Anna's disappearance."
They were both looking at her as if they expected her either to faint or go screaming off across the manicured lawn at any second. Feeling ridiculously foolish, Alex ignored her lingering disquiet.
"I'd love to go sailing with you, Dr. Brandford."
"Averill," he reminded her with a friendly wink.
He was a very nice, uncomplicated person. And the way he hovered over Eleanor like a dutiful son proved he had a warm and caring nature.
Though she'd vowed never again to get involved with an older man, Alex wondered idly if the good doctor was married. If so, his wife, she decided, was a very lucky woman.
"Averill," she agreed with a smile.
As she ran upstairs to change into a pair of rubber-soled shoes, for the first time since her arrival in Santa Barbara, Alex was feeling almost lighthearted.
Before they left port, Averill gave Alex a brief lesson on the fundamentals of sailing, and while she tried to keep track of the terms, he might as well have been speaking in Sanskrit.
He laughed when she'd admitted her confusion. "I'd be equally lost if you began talking about dress design," he assured her. "I figured out buttons and bra hooks when I was a teenager. Other than that, everything else to do with female clothing remains a mystery."
She knew he was attempting to make her feel less foolish. He succeeded. Alex watched him cast off, maneuvering deftly and confidently around the ropes she knew would have tripped her and sent her flying over the gleaming brass railing.
The sail snapped in the breeze, then billowed, appearing starkly white against the cloudless cerulean sky as he guided the sleek ketch through the channel, out into the sea.
The boat skimmed across the water as Averill followed the jagged shoreline. Up till now, Alexandra's sole boating experience had been a futile attempt to row a cumbersome wooden craft across a Minnesota lake at Girl Scout camp the summer she turned twelve. Back then, all she'd gotten for her laborious efforts were blisters and a lobster red sunburn.
But this was different.
This, she mused, as she leaned back and tilted her face up to the California sun, was like flying.
Averill proved to be a wonderful companion, entertaining her with tales of his sailing experiences, including more than one close call when he'd found himself caught in a sudden squall.
"You don't have to worry," he assured her when he viewed her worried frown after one such story. "Today's going to be clear sailing. All the way."
Like Zachary, he managed to appear supremely self-confident without seeming arrogant or egotistical. Reminding herself that one of the reasons she'd taken Averill up on his offer today was to forget about her problems—including those inherent with being in love with a married man—she turned her attention, instead, to the glorious scenery that could have graced the cover of a brochure put out by the Santa Barbara tourist bureau.
Gulls whirled overhead, their strident cries carried off by the ocean wind. Every so often one of them would go hurling downward, disappearing beneath the water, reappearing moments later with a flash of silver in his beak. Long-billed pelicans and wide-winged cormorants skimmed along the surface of the water; sea lions dozed atop sun-warmed rocks.
Averill steered the boat into a sheltered cove, where they sat on the polished teak deck and shared the lunch of cold chicken, pasta salad and crunchy French bread Eleanor's cook had packed into a wicker basket. The doctor's contribution to the picnic was a bottle of Napa Valley chardonnay.
The outing proved even more relaxing than Averill had promised. Alex thoroughly enjoyed the glorious day, the brisk sail, the congenial company.
"Thank you," she said after they'd returned to the yacht basin. "I had a wonderful time."
"The pleasure was all mine." His smiling eyes swept over her, taking in her face, flushed prettily from the sun, her sunset-bright hair, which had been whipped into an enticing froth by the sea breeze, her long, tanned legs, shown off by her daffodil yellow denim shorts.
"You know," he said, as he took her hand and helped her off the gently rocking ketch onto the floating dock, "if I were twenty years younger, I'd prove to you that there's a great deal more to life than work." He shook his head in disbelief. "In my day, a lovely woman like you certainly wouldn't still be running around unclaimed."
Alex had two choices: she could be irritated by his blatantly chauvinistic statement, or she could take his words as a masculine, if slightly dated, compliment and be flattered. She chose the latter.
"I do hope you're not calling me an old maid," she said with a light laugh.
"Not at all." He looked honestly horrified that she might think such a thing.
"Good. That being the case, I should tell you that I don't think you're old at all." Feeling remarkably carefree, she linked her arm through his. "In fact, next time you're in L.A., I insist you let me reciprocate by taking you out on the town."
"I'm speaking at a conference in the city next month. Why don't I come down in the ketch? We can sail to Catalina and I'll let you buy me lunch at Las Casitas."
"It's a date. I've never been to Santa Catalina Island."
"You haven't?" He stopped in his tracks and looked down at her as if she'd just sprouted a second head. "My prescription for you, Alexandra Lyons, is regular doses of sun and salt air. And I intend to schedule in regular checkups to ensure you're following orders."
Alex laughed, as she was supposed to. "Yes, Doctor."
Chapter Twenty-Five
The lightened mood instilled by the brisk sail disintegrated when the terrifying dream returned that night. To make matters worse, the next morning Zach arrived at the house to discuss the logistics of the Chicago opening with Eleanor.
Watching Zach and Miranda was like watching a Tennessee Williams play. Miranda, who seemed in no hurry to return to her work at the London Lord's, was her typical theatrical self, ensuring her place at center stage, while Zach glowered and remained silent.
As if conjured up by some special-effects department in the sky, a storm front coincided with Zach's arrival, driving away the benevolent sunshine with wind gusts, pelting rain and fog.
When Miranda cursed viciously at yet another servant for some minor imagined transgression, Alex decided that rain or no rain, she had to escape.
She went out to the six-car garage and took the Mercedes two-seater Eleanor had generously made available to her during her stay. She drove past the Montecito Country Club, continuing on through the center of town to the coast, passing by sandy East Beach, where the usual weekend arts-and-crafts show had been rained out.
She passed Stearns Wharf—which Averill had told her was the oldest operating wharf on the West Coast—and the yacht harbor, where she was tempted to stop and see if the doctor was working on his ketch, as he was every other weekend he wasn't sailing. She felt an overwhelming urge for some easy, uncomplicated companionship.
Worried that after his remarks about her lack of dating he might think she'd set her sights on him, Alex stopped, instead, at the breakwater and walked along the half-mile manmade marvel, attempting to work off her anxiety.
She stood at the end of the breakwater for a long time, watching the white-capped waves roll in and thinking of Zach. Sea mist dampened her face and went unnoticed.
For whatever reason—Alex knew it wasn't love—Zach appeared determined to make the best of his marriage. Which meant he was off-limits.
Averill was right about one thing: she'd been living unnaturally. It was time she started dating again, if for no other reason than to get on with her life. She'd come a long way from the naive young acolyte who'd let Debord steal her designs, then throw her away as if she were a stale croissant left over from breakfast.
She was an Emmy-winning designer, dammit! She had a fulfilling, glamorous career, and thanks to Eleanor Lord, she was a businesswoman with her first licensing agreement. The thing to do, Alex told herself firmly, was to quit mooning over a man she could not have and get on with her life. It was time, past time, that she put the man out of her mind!
Which wouldn't be all that easy to do, considering the fact that they still had to work together on the Blue Bayou project. But she'd already accomplished so much, had come so far. Her mother had always assured her that she could do anything she put her mind to. So, from now on, she would simply put her mind to burying whatever feelings she had for Zach deep inside her.
The wind picked up and the temperature dropped, causing Alex to realize she'd been standing out in the rain for a very long time. Shivering, she headed back for the car.
Not yet ready to return to the estate, she continued her drive through the fog-draped Santa Ynez Mountains. With the heater going full blast, she warmed up quickly. She tuned the radio to a rock station; the windshield wipers added a swish-swish-swish counterpoint to Bruce Springsteen's driving beat.
For a long time, as she maneuvered the car around the curves, she continued to give herself a stern pep talk. "Zach? Zach who? Oh, Zachary Deveraux, that Zach. He's only a business associate. Nothing more."
She could tell herself that all day. And all night. But more than an hour later, after she'd made a U-turn in the middle of the road and headed back down the mountainside toward the Montecito estate, Alex realized it was folly to keep lying to herself.
The frightening truth was that despite all her good intentions and stalwart resolutions, if Zach ever wanted her, she would give herself to him.
Immersed in her tumultuous thoughts, she hadn't noticed that the little sports car had begun to pick up more speed than was prudent, given the slick conditions of the road.
Alex pumped the brake lightly. When it failed to gain purchase, she tried again. Nothing.
Again, harder.
Again, nothing.
Risking putting the car into a deadly skid, she pushed the brake pedal all the way to the floor. Instead of coming to a screeching halt or even slowing down, the car picked up speed.
Trying to remain calm, Alex downshifted, which, considering the steep grade she was descending, proved ineff
ectual. The engine whined as misty trees sped past the windows.
Now she was scared. Leaning forward, she hung on to the wheel with both hands, trying to steer around the treacherous wet curves. Time slowed. She wondered if her life would begin flashing before her eyes.
Alex sincerely hoped not; seeing through the slanting rain was hard enough without having to watch a rerun of past mistakes.
Unfamiliar with the mountains and having paid scant attention to her surroundings earlier, she had no idea how far she still had to go before reaching level ground. As she sped past a side road leading to a winery, she hoped the wild ride would be over soon.
It was. But not in the way she'd hoped. As the car raced around a snakelike series of curves, the tires hit a particularly wet patch of roadway and began to hydroplane. The rear of the car fishtailed, sending her off the pavement, over an embankment, where the front end of the Mercedes settled with a great sucking sound into the mud.
Alex was thrown forward, but her seat belt held, keeping her safe. Safe, she determined once she could breath again. But lost. And the rain was still coming down.
Cursing in a way that even Miranda might have admired, had Zach's wife been unfortunate enough to be out in such horrid weather, Alex managed to push open the door. And then, as the skies opened up still more she began to walk.
Although the winery tasting room was closed, Alex was fortunate to find an employee taking inventory. The young man let her in, retrieved a handful of paper towels from the rest room and, while she called the house to explain about the accident and to request that one of the servants come retrieve her, poured her a very large and very tasty glass of estate-bottled pinot noir.
Since she hadn't eaten anything but a grapefruit and a cup of coffee at breakfast time, which was, she realized, glancing down with surprise at her water-fogged watch, more than eight hours ago, the smooth, ruby red wine went straight to her head, creating a comfortable glow. Indeed, the feeling was so pleasurable, she didn't refuse a refill.
