The surprise of those words carried a sting. Or maybe the words themselves held the sting.
“Professional hazard,” she said shortly. “Can’t let your emotions get involved with the story.”
“How about letting your emotions get involved with your life? I do worry that you’re overly cautious in emotional matters.”
“You’re basing this belief that I’m too emotionally cautious on the fact that I didn’t jump at the chance to marry him as soon as he popped back into my life? That’s –”
“I’m basing it on the way you’ve lived your life. It took such extraordinary circumstances – my God, you thought you were going to die! – to open yourself up to a man. Maybe it took an extraordinary man, too,” she added thoughtfully.
“I never knew you felt this way about me, Marti.” Her words sounded strange, as if her lips had gone stiff.
Marti laid her palm over Kendra’s wrist. “Honey, I’ve wanted to talk to you for a long time, but... Well, you were so busy showing how strong you were that nobody dared even mention that you walked around like a porcupine at constant alert.”
Kendra glanced at Ellyn. Sympathy showed in her eyes but she nodded.
In a stiff voice she barely recognized as her own, Kendra started, “I’m sorry I’ve been so difficult –”
Marti waved that off. “Difficult is what you’ve made it for yourself. All your life I’ve watched you do it. So busy being strong and independent that you wouldn’t let anybody in. Kendra, I know watching your Mom bothered you a lot, but you must let that go.”
“The way she let my father go? Apparently not letting things go is one trait I inherited from her.”
Bitterness flowed from the words, a bitterness she couldn’t remember expressing before... except during a hurricane to a man she’d thought didn’t understand.
Is this about you not wanting to turn into your mother, the way you said on Santa Estella? You were hard enough on her.
“There could be worse things to inherit. Tenacity didn’t hurt you any in that network job.”
“Tenacity.” Kendra tested the word. She’d never thought of her mother in that light. Foolish, silly, weak, but tenacious? “I’ve always thought of you as tenacious, Marti. Not Mother.”
“Oh, yes, Wendy was tenacious. Tenacious in a lot of ways, and especially in loving Ken. Your mother and father truly loved each other, you know. You might have been too young to see that, to remember it. They glowed with it. When your father went missing...” Clouded memories dimmed Marti’s eyes. “That was the absolutely worst thing to happen for Wendy.”
Kendra fought a tug of sympathy for her mother with sharp words. “If loving my father hurt her so much, she would have been better off never letting herself love him at all.”
“That’s the coward’s way out. And Wendy never was a coward. Because she was tenacious in her hope, too. Even after she had to accept that he wouldn’t come back. Wendy had experienced such wonderful love that she couldn’t believe those few years with Ken were all she’d have. She became desperate to find another love like Ken.” She shook her head. “Instead, her heart was wounded again and again.”
“And she never learned her lesson.”
“No, she never did. When she lost your father, Wendy traded in the problem of her desperate loneliness for all the problems you saw growing up – the problems you vowed never to have. And you haven’t. Only I worry you’ve traded in the problems your mother had for the very loneliness she was running from.”
A silence stretched out as Kendra absorbed Marti’s words.
Had she completed the circle her mother started? Run away from the troubles she’d seen in her mother’s life, and in the process run right back to where her mother had started?
“Your blood will be alone.”
The words were so soft, Kendra might have imagined them.
“You turn away from your children, so your blood will be alone,” Ellyn repeated. Then she spoke more forcefully. “That’s what the curse said: You turn away from your children, so your blood will be alone. That’s what Marti is saying happened to your mother, and I’ve seen it happening to you, Kendra.”
A soft gasp opened Marti’s lips.
“That’s absolute nonsense,” Kendra snapped. “It’s a stupid legend. It has nothing to do with me. Or Daniel. Or real life.”
“It has to do with real love. I’ve wondered...” Marti said in a strange voice. “Only when someone loves enough to undo your wrongs will the laughter of children live beyond its echo in Far Hills. Charles Susland’s first wrong was turning his back on his children. Daniel sure isn’t doing that. You said so yourself, Kendra – he wants to be a good father, he wants to make the three of you a family. That sounds like real love to me. Maybe love enough to undo that wrong. If you let him.”
“That’s ridiculous. All of it. Listen to the two of you, carrying on about this legend. No more. We have work to do. It’s –”
“But –”
“No!” The syllable might have crossed the line from emphatic to strident, but it silenced Marti. Kendra continued more calmly. “We’re going to work on this supplement, and no one’s going to say another word about legends or curses or any other nonsense.”
And not another word was spoken about the Susland legend, or undoing wrongs with love, or Daniel.
But Kendra could not regulate thoughts – not even her own.
* * *
The back door of Kendra’s house was open when Daniel walked up to it at four o’clock Saturday afternoon.
He saw no one in the kitchen, but he heard Ellyn saying, “Great dress.”
Kendra answered, “Thanks. It’s my post-pregnancy goal dress. I could get into it before, but it’s only now that I feel right in it.”
“Is that because you’re not eating now that Daniel’s around?”
“I’m eating. That’s –”
What’s the old saying about hearing things you didn’t want to hear? He sure didn’t want to hear that having him in her life had made Kendra lose her appetite. Daniel knocked loudly.
“Hi. C’mon in.” Ellyn smiled as she came around the corner. “I dropped by to lend Kendra a purse. She’s about ready for you.”
“No, Ellyn,” came Kendra’s voice from deeper in the house. “Daniel’s not here for –”
“You must have misunderstood, Ellyn,” he said, breaking into Kendra’s explanations. “I’m here for Matthew, not Kendra. She –” He broke off as Kendra came around the corner into the kitchen area. The dress was a muted, rich red of some material that had no fancy touches at all, and didn’t need them because it seemed to cling to her body. It had a plain V-neck that allowed a glimpse of the creamy curves that lay below. He knew the taste and texture and scent of those curves, and his body immediately ached with the longing to know them again. “– must have another date.”
“It’s not a...” Her words trailed off as she met his eyes. For a moment they just looked at each other. A flare of some sort of recognition crossed her eyes, recognition of the assumption he’d made, but also a recognition of something deeper. Maybe of the emotions that had pushed him to that assumption. Recognition of how he felt about her. At least of the part of how he felt about her that he understood.
She picked up her purse and keys from the end of the counter only to put them down again.
“I’m working. I’m covering the country club honors – the cocktail reception, then the awards banquet.”
Working.
She was going to this dinner as an assignment. Not on the arm of some sleek country club member who had a hell of a lot more to offer than a guy with a complicated past and uncertain future.
Trying hard to stifle a grin, Daniel informed Ellyn, “And I’m being trusted for the first time with Matthew on my own.”
“Sorry. Guess I jumped to a conclusion,” Ellyn said lightly. Then she added with a look from her friend to him and back that might have been sly in someone less open, “I’m als
o sorry you’re working, Kendra. That’s a definite waste of that dress. Guess I better get going. Hope the banquet’s not too boring, Kendra. And I hope you and Matthew fare okay, Daniel.”
“I’m sure we will. Thought I’d try taking him to his first movie. The library’s showing ‘The Wizard of Oz’ as a fund-raiser.”
“Hey, maybe we’ll see you there – in fact, it’ll be hard to miss you in the library’s little auditorium. Meg won free tickets and we’re going, too. That’s why I have to get home and feed them.”
“Don’t let Matthew eat too much junk at the movie, Daniel, and he needs to be home in bed by eight-thirty. And don’t let him get too excited or he’ll never sleep.”
“I already signed in blood agreeing to all that, Kendra.” He pulled out the typed instructions she’d handed him yesterday at the co-op. Two pages, single-spaced with enough phone numbers to start a book. “Why don’t you go on, and quit worrying.
Chapter Ten
Kendra toed off her shoes as soon as she’d walked in the back door, and yawned as she hung her coat on the peg.
The banquet hadn’t held a single surprise. Except for maybe how friendly people were to her – she still got caught off guard sometimes that people here wanted coverage, unlike the subjects of most of her TV reports. But then, these stories were a far cry from investigative journalism.
Driving up to the house, she’d realized Daniel hadn’t brought Matthew home yet, even though it was nearly nine-thirty. The only lights on were the living room lamp operated by a timer and the outside light by the back door. Besides, Daniel’s car wasn’t here.
Darn him. Matthew would be overtired – so tired he’d be difficult to get to sleep, and miserable tomorrow.
She should have expected Daniel to be this foolhardy, this unreliable.
She slipped her key ring in her dress pocket. That’s when she noticed the light blinking on her answering machine. She punched it – fast – before her imagination could conjure more than the bare outlines of accidents, diseases or other traumas.
It was Marti. Excited. No trauma, but lots and lots of excitement about materials she’d found in an old trunk on the Susland ancestors. Expelling a pent up breath, Kendra barely listened once she took in the fact that it wasn’t about any of the phantom traumas she had feared for Matthew and Daniel.
As she started unbuttoning the back of her dress, working her way from the collar down to below the waist, she punched the button to repeat the message – this time listening closely enough that she wouldn’t be lost when Marti mentioned it at their next session for the supplement.
She’d found a diary by Charles Susland’s white wife. It told about his last meeting with Leaping Star. And it gave the details about the origins of the Susland legend – the Susland curse. She shivered slightly, hearing Ellyn’s whisper once more.
You turn away from your children, so your blood will be alone.
Kendra shook her head at herself.
What had gotten into her lately? First imagining horrors had overtaken Matthew and Daniel all because of a blinking light on her answering machine. And then getting lost in the campfire-ghost-story atmosphere of that silly legend.
But where were Matthew and Daniel? If he’d lived up to his promise to have their son home and in bed by now, she wouldn’t be worried about the two of them, no matter what was on the answering machine.
As she slipped the last button free, allowing the dress to fall forward, caught only by her arms still in the sleeves, her mind snagged on one phrase.
She’d feared for Matthew and Daniel.
Could she tell herself she felt simply the concern of one human being for another? Or for the father of her son?
Leaving the dim kitchen, she blinked against the light from the floor lamp by the sofa, unbuttoning the dress cuffs by feel, her movements dropping the already low neckline well past decent.
“You’ve been living alone too long, Kendra.”
Daniel’s low, slightly roughened voice came from the darkness beyond the lamp.
“Daniel! What on earth! I thought you weren’t here. Matthew – ?”
“Is in bed. Asleep. Like you instructed.”
“But – your car? You’re car isn’t here.”
“It wouldn’t start at the library. I got it towed. Ellyn gave us a ride.”
She squinted into the darkness. Car trouble could explain the tension in his voice.
“But how will you get home – I mean to your place? I can’t drive you. If I wake Matthew up to take him with I’ll never get him down again, and I won’t leave him here alone, so –”
He stood, coming toward her. “Maybe I won’t want to leave. Not after this striptease.”
“Striptease? Wha-?” She looked down at the dress’s V dipping nearly to her waist, clasped the loose material as best she could to her throat and turned her back. “I... I didn’t know anyone was here.”
“As I said, you’ve been living alone too long.” His warm voice, both teasing and tempting, came from right over her shoulder. “And if that’s how you come in every night, it’s a damned shame to waste it on a two-year-old who’s already asleep.”
The whisper of his touch against her back left a trail of shivers that expanded, deepened.
“Daniel... Don’t.”
But she didn’t move when she felt his lips touch the back of her bare shoulder.
“Your skin was this soft three years ago, Kendra. But I could never see...”
She glanced over her shoulder and saw him rest against the corner of the sofa arm. His hands at her hips were a gentle, persistent force that prompted one step back, then a second, so she stood between his knees. She felt his hands dip into the opening of her dress, then the heated touch against her skin as he ran his palms up to her shoulder blades, below the flare of her hips, and back again.
She should move away. She should leave. She should...
“Daniel, this isn’t a good –”
“It’s good, Kendra. It’s so good.” His lips against her skin at the point of her shoulder blade added a new heat.
She clutched the material of her dress in both fists against her collarbone, while he made love to her back.
Each cell seemed to have a separate nerve ending, each communicating pleasure and urgency for more. The inside of his thighs pressing against the outside of hers, squeezed gently, encasing her. Snugly drawn against his crotch, she could feel the insistence of his reaction... and her own.
He unhooked her bra, the skin once covered by the strap soaked in the sensation as his unimpeded stroke started at her nape and slowly traveled down her backbone, lower and lower until his hands dipped inside the waist of her panties, his fingers gliding over the swell of her buttocks.
She gasped and half sagged against him.
His hands rose again, sliding up either side of the valley of her spine, under the parted fabric of her bra. Then to each side, under her arms, his fingers light across the swell of her breasts, then farther.
“Daniel, I’m not... I’ve been pregnant, had a baby – oh!”
His hands covered her breasts, the touch possessive for all its gentleness. He cupped her, using his thumbs and forefingers to bring her nipples to aching, hardened awareness.
“I wish I could have touched you when you carried our son. To feel you rounding with our baby....” Where she pressed against his lap she felt the hot leap of his flesh, and couldn’t stop her hips from rocking back against him. “I wish I could have made love to you then.”
His mouth pressed hot and wet against the base of her neck. Her knees threatened to buckle.
If she was going to gather herself together – her wits and her body – this was the moment. Right now. This instant. Before it was too late. Much, much too late.
“I have to... Daniel, I have to ask you something. You promised... answers.”
“Ask.” His voice was muffled against her flesh.
“Why did you come after me?”
“I told you – Matthew –”
She cut him off. “I understand why after you knew about Matthew – your determination that he would have family, stability. But you didn’t know about Matthew until you looked for me.” His hands stilled. “Why did you start? Did you search out all Paulo’s one-night stands?”
The withdrawal of his hands from her skin exposed its heated surface to a rush of chilled air.
“Don’t dismiss it that way, Kendra.” His voice was harsh.
“Why? I’m sure Paulo was no monk. And Taumaturgio surely wasn’t. Even Tompkins for that matter. What was different?”
“I don’t know.”
He’d jerked out the words, with no attempt to make them believable. A lie. And not even a good lie.
She’d always heard about the power of truth. Now she knew the power of a lie. It had the strength she didn’t have. The strength to make her straighten away from him. The strength to tug her dress up. The strength to turn and face him, now covered from throat to knees.
“You should leave, Daniel.”
“It scares you, doesn’t it, Kendra?”
“I’m not scared of you.”
“Not me. At least not me alone. Us. What happens between us. Because it reminds you of Santa Estella? Because it reminds you of when you let yourself really feel? Or because you don’t want to feel that for me?”
It did scare her. At one level she understood that. But understanding didn’t stop the fear, and it didn’t stop the response.
“Which you? Which one of your characters do you think I’m feeling something for?”
He stood abruptly, jostling her.
“I’m taking your car. I’ll return it in the morning.”
The change in him, so fast, so complete, disoriented her. “My car? But –”
“Don’t worry. I have the key.” His mouth twisted as he held up the ring that she’d dropped into her pocket earlier. He kept one key and tossed the rest toward her. She caught them automatically, then had to grab at her dress again to keep it from falling. “Remember me? The pickpocket? I’m sure it doesn’t surprise you that I haven’t lost those skills.”
Heart Stealers Page 39
