Lightning Storm

by Anne McAllister

  So she had gone, shaking with trepidation at the thought of actually being J.B.’s date. And well she might have, for if the concert went all right, the party afterwards was a disaster. The four of them went back to somebody’s apartment—Torey never even knew whose, and she wasn’t sure that J.B. knew either—where the lights were dim, the atmosphere smoky with things besides tobacco, and the music loud enough to raise the dead. J.B. had looked at her sourly when she asked only for a Coke, but he got it for her, taking something far stronger himself. Torey watched him drink it, wishing she could think of something scintillating to say, something that Seventeen magazine guaranteed would make him ask her out again—but nothing came to mind. The Coke was warm and flat, the music deafening, and the crush of people soon had J.B.’s hot, perspiration-soaked body pressed against hers. ‘Let’s get outa here,’ he muttered in her ear, slipping an arm around her waist and ushering her towards the door, jostling other straining, gyrating bodies as they went.

  ‘But what about Mick...’ she began, but J.B. just shook his head.

  ‘Who needs Mick?’ and he had opened the door and they were alone. At first Torey had been relieved. The music receded, the hot bodies vanished, she was alone with J.B.—just like in one of her millions of summertime fantasies. And then the panic began to set in.

  They walked the few yards across The Strand down to the beach, Torey’s hand engulfed in J.B.’s warm one, and then, without warning, he pulled her down on the sand, his arms going around her tightly, caressing up and down her spine, his breath hot and rum-scented on her face. ‘Oh God, love, let me...’ he muttered, his lips pressed against her throat.

  Torey stiffened, struggled, revelling in his passion at the same moment that it frightened her out of her wits! J.B.’s hands were busy unfastening her blouse, moving against the smooth flesh of her stomach, sliding under her bra to mould her breasts, and Torey reached up wildly trying to drag his hands away. This wasn’t what she had fantasised at all.

  ‘Please,’ she muttered. ‘Oh, please...’ Polite to the last, she thought now, with a wry humour that had definitely escaped her at the time. But J.B. hadn’t responded to politeness, or if he had, it was because he thought she’d meant ‘please continue’, not ‘please stop’. Finally, desperate, she had kicked him in the shin, wrenching away from him, and rolled sobbing on the sand.

  ‘Christ,’ he muttered, rubbing his leg. ‘You’re a damned wildcat, you know that?’ He was looking at her like he’d never seen such behaviour before. Even in the dimness of the streetlight she could see his puzzlement. ‘Mick said you liked me,’ he went on. ‘You got a damn funny way of showing it.’

  ‘Liking you and doing ... doing ... that...’ Torey gulped, rubbing a sandy hand across her face, ‘are two different things.’

  J.B. snorted. ‘Not in my book, babe. You been coming on to me all night.’

  ‘I have not!’

  He rubbed a weary hand against the back of his neck. ‘Oh Jesus, you probably don’t even know what you’re doing. How the hell old are you anyway?’

  ‘Eighteen,’ she admitted, not looking at him, burning enough as it was under the glare of his gaze.

  J.B. groaned and said a rude word, reaching out and hauling her unceremoniously to her feet. ‘Figures,’ he said. ‘Damn Mick anyway. He said you were nice.’

  ‘I am nice,’ Torey retorted, resenting the way he was dragging her across the sand, stumbling as her shoes came off.

  ‘Not the way he means,’ J.B. said flatly. ‘Or the way I thought he meant,’ he amended.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ she demanded as he tugged her along The Strand completely oblivious to the stares of passersby.

  ‘Home. Where else?’

  ‘But...’ She couldn’t go home now. Not looking like this, dishevelled, tear-streaked, covered with sand. ‘My grandmother ...’

  J.B. groaned again. ‘Geez, a grandmother no less.’ He sounded thoroughly disgusted. His eyes flew heavenward, and Torey wished she’d kept her mouth shut. But then he sighed and said, ‘All right. Come to my place and clean up. But then it’s home for you, understand?’

  Torey understood. He took her back to his apartment, looking to the right and left as though he were expecting either an irate grandmother or the entire local police force to spring out at him as he unlocked the door. Once they were inside he pointed her in the direction of the bathroom, saying, ‘Ten minutes. Snap to it.’ It wasn’t the way her fantasies had envisioned her arrival in J.B.’s apartment at all. In them he had carried her over the threshold, looking down at her with passion-filled, adoring eyes, and had taken her into his bedroom where slowly and leisurely, with infinite gentleness, he had made her a woman.

  Instead she was staring into his cracked bathroom mirror, trying to wash the streaky tears off her face and blot the puffiness away from her eyes, all the while wondering if those were his blue trunks hanging over the showerhead, and if it was he or Mick who had left the cap off the toothpaste beside the sink. Moments later the banging on the door caused her to jump.

  ‘Finished?’ J.B. demanded.

  ‘Almost.’ Her voice was still shaky. She ran her fingers through her short, fluffy hair-do, trying to make it look windblown not attacked.

  ‘Hurry up.’

  She didn’t hear him move away, and she took a moment longer to rearrange her gauzy peasant blouse and tuck it back into her skirt with trembling fingers before she opened the door to face him. He was leaning against the wall opposite, staring at her from beneath hooded eyelids. His face was tight, grim, about as unloving as one could imagine. So much for fantasies.

  He took her by the arm and escorted her to the door as though he could hardly wait to get her out of his apartment. ‘You’re not from around here, are you?’ he asked as they began to walk the two blocks to her grandparents’ home.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Take my advice,’ he said, his voice rough and hard. ‘Go home and grow up before you try a trick like this again.’

  ‘What trick?’

  ‘Playing grown-up. You don’t belong here.’

  ‘And you do?’ she demanded, close to tears again.

  ‘I know what I’m doing,’ he said gruffly. ‘You don’t.’

  They had reached her grandparents’ house now, and she could see in through the bay window. Her grandfather was reading the evening paper and her grandmother was watching television. Homey. Comfortable. J.B. looked through the window too, considering the scene inside.

  ‘It figures,’ he muttered. ‘Go on in.’

  Torey looked at him hesitantly, her eyes flickering over his rigid shoulders and the angry features shadowed beneath the dark hair. ‘Good night,’ she murmured and went up the front steps, pausing as she turned the doorknob. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Thank you?’ J.B. sounded incredulous. ‘Jesus.’ And he turned and was striding down the walk towards The Strand before she even got inside.

  ‘The pizza’s cold,’ Scott complained as he slipped into the chair beside her. ‘Why didn’t you call me?’

  Jake shrugged, apparently as incapable as Torey of saying anything at the moment. His pizza lay equally cold and uneaten on his plate. He tipped the last of his beer down his throat and motioned for the waitress to bring a box. ‘Come on,’ he said brusquely. ‘As long as it’s cold anyway, we might as well eat it at home.’ Torey got to her feet without a word. She was as unwilling as Jake to go on pretending that they were just another happy family out for a meal. Scott started to whine until Jake fixed him with a glare. That was enough, and Scott, too, lapsed into silence until they reached home.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘We need to talk,’ Jake said, grabbing Torey’s arm to stop her crossing the garden to Addie’s house.

  ‘Why?’

  Jake looked taken aback. ‘Because we ... you...’

  ‘Just because I was once a fool doesn’t mean I’m fool enough to want to rehash the past now,’ Torey said, tugging her arm out of his.

>   ‘No one said you were a fool. Now or then.’

  ‘Perhaps foolishness is in the mind of the beholder then,’ Torey said. ‘But if you’re charitable enough to forget that, be charitable enough to drop the subject, please.’

  ‘C’mon, Dad, let’s have the pizza,’ Scott implored, grabbing Jake’s shirt-tail and tugging him up the stairs.

  ‘Don’t you want some?’ Jake said to Torey’s back, apparently aware that he wouldn’t get her up the stairs any other way.

  ‘No thanks, I’m not hungry,’ she said without turning around. ‘It’s been a long day. Good night.’

  ‘We’ll talk later then,’ he said in the same imperious tone that he had used earlier when he wanted her to know that whatever the subject, it wasn’t going to be dropped.

  Like hell we will, she thought and went swiftly up Addie’s back steps and shut the door firmly behind her. Locked it, too, for she didn’t think that barging in was beyond what Jake was capable of. Maynard lifted his head, eyeing her suspiciously. Then, apparently deciding that she posed no real threat to his nap, he thumped his tail a few times and dozed off again.

  ‘Oh Maynard,’ Torey groaned, sinking down to the floor to pat his sleek fur. ‘I’ve done it now.’ How could she have been so foolish as to bring up the past? He already had enough ideas about her—wanting to go to bed with her, indeed!—and now he was going to think she was just as besotted with him as she had been so many years ago.

  Dumb move, Cooper, she chastised herself. It was obvious that Addie was matchmaking—no doubt certain that St James Brosnan was the ideal man with whom to tempt her beloved granddaughter into marriage a second time—and it was equally apparent that, if Jake didn’t have marriage in mind, at least he wasn’t averse to going to bed with her! Good God, he’d even said so. Some things never change, she told herself. And apparently Jake Brosnan was one of them.

  She gave Maynard one last pat and hauled herself to her feet. A hot bath sounded marvellous, therapeutic, just what she needed to help her absorb the shocks of the day. Jake Brosnan, for God’s sake! Damn it, she couldn’t get him out of her mind. Somewhere in the back of her consciousness she had toyed with the idea of trying to seek him out when she came out to California this time—a possibility somewhat akin to finding a needle in a haystack, she had thought at the time. But it would have been interesting, she thought, to take a look at the man she had considered to be the epitome of manhood when she was a foolish innocent of eighteen. She could have had a good laugh.

  So why wasn’t she laughing?

  You can’t seriously still be interested in him, she lectured herself as she lolled neck deep in the lilac scented bubbles. Of course I’m not, she decided firmly, I’m just surprised to see him that’s all. He threw me off balance a bit. But since he’s here ... since he’s here I can prove to myself once and for all that what I felt was just a silly, schoolgirl crush on a wholly inappropriate man. Pity, she thought wryly, he was such a damned attractive inappropriate man. Still, there was more to a man than his looks. She was certainly grown up enough to realise that.

  Satisfied, she wrung out the washcloth and lay back in the tub, closing her eyes and drifting on sheer physical sensations—enjoying the languor of her limbs, the gentle lapping of the water against her breasts, the nose-tickling scent of the bubbles caught in the escaping tendrils of her hair.

  Then the pounding began. She sprang up, flipping her plait in annoyance with a bubble-covered hand. Damn him anyway! Couldn’t he ever take no for an answer? Well, if that was the way he wanted it, so be it. No time like the present for straightening out any misconceptions he might have about how much sweet little Torey was still in love with him!

  She yanked the plug out with her toes, shivering in the cool air until she could wrap the huge lavender bath towel around her. Flinging open the door she yelled. ‘Hang on a minute, you idiot!’ and slammed the door again, briskly rubbing down her slim torso, all languor gone now, replaced by a curiously combative vitality that made her want to flay Jake Brosnan alive.

  She slipped into a thin, yellow cotton nightgown and cinched a voluminous terry robe of darker lemon yellow around her and strode out to the kitchen. The pounding had stopped, but Maynard had taken up the banner and was whining at the door with more energy than Torey had seen in him yet.

  Torey glared at him. ‘The idea, you stupid hound,’ she growled, ‘is for you to protect me from what is out there, not stand here begging me to let it in.’

  Maynard waved his tail enthusiastically, nudging her towards the door. She could see Jake nonchalantly leaning against the porch railing looking for all the world like he was waiting for a bus.

  Torey flung open the door and bowed ungraciously. ‘Come in if you must,’ she said as he brushed past her into the kitchen. All her hearty resolve about putting him in his place suffered an immediate setback. Telling off Jake Brosnan in the abstract was a much easier proposition than facing the living, breathing, virile man in front of her. She took a deep breath and faced him with, she hoped, at least as much self-confidence as she could see in him.

  He had dragged out one of the kitchen chairs and was straddling it, resting his arms across the back of it and regarding her with a wary amusement that she found incredibly provoking. ‘Hospitality isn’t your best hobby, is it?’ he asked, lifting a dark eyebrow at her rigid posture, arms folded tightly across her chest.

  ‘And gentlemanly behaviour isn’t yours,’ she countered acerbically.

  ‘Are you referring to my past transgressions or those you imagine you’re being subjected to presently?’ he asked in the same teasing tone.

  ‘I am referring to your insistence on discussing an event in our lives that would be better left forgotten.’

  ‘I wasn’t the one who brought it up.’

  Torey’s lips set in a thin line. ‘I know. My mistake. I should never have alluded to my ridiculous infatuation. I did it only to point out to you that you needn’t try to seduce me, that I have seen the error of my ways, and I have no intention of falling into bed with any shallow bedhopper who thinks the lonely widow might appreciate a lusty little romp.’

  ‘Bully for you,’ Jake said scathingly. ‘Pardon me if I remain a bit sceptical.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I think the lady protests too much.’

  Torey glared. ‘You would think that. I have met some colossal egos in my time, but yours takes the cake. Seven years ago you couldn’t understand any girl who wouldn’t immediately fall down on the sand and make love with you—there had to be something wrong with her—and now you think there’s something wrong with me because I haven’t flown out here from Illinois and promptly fallen into your bed!’

  ‘Seven years ago I understood that you were a frightened, naive little country girl who couldn’t have made first team on the softball squad and who was suddenly playing in the big leagues...’ Jake began, and the colour flared in Torey’s cheeks.

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘So I made allowances,’ he went on as though he hadn’t heard her squeak of indignation. ‘It might surprise you to know it, but even then I preferred a willing partner in bed. Now ...’ he shrugged, ‘now I don’t know what your problem is. Maybe it’s a crime in northern Illinois to want to go to bed with someone and say so—I suppose it might be—but out here it’s a way of saying I find you to be an attractive woman.’

  ‘Is that what it is?’ Torey asked with false sweetness as soon as she could find her voice again. A way of telling a woman she was attractive, indeed! What did he do if he thought they were beautiful, rip off their clothes?

  ‘That’s what it is,’ Jake said flatly.

  ‘Then, thank you for the compliment, kind sir. I’ll try not to misunderstand next time,’ she said sarcastically.

  Jake kicked aside the chair and stood up, coming across the kitchen to stand in front of her. Looming, she thought. This is what they mean when they say someone is ‘looming over you’. His eyes were like qu
icksilver. ‘Feel free to take it literally, too,’ he growled, and a split second later his arms went around her and his head dipped to brand her lips with his own.

  ‘Jake!’ It was a muffled cry, half shock, half panic. She struggled in his arms, fighting the heady promise of his kiss at the same time that she felt a prick of curiosity. A treacherous sliver of her wanted desperately to kiss him back. ‘Damn it, Jake! No! Stop it!’ She shoved against his chest, and finally he eased his grip on her, letting her break their embrace.

  ‘Well,’ he murmured, his breathing rough and slightly unsteady, ‘what do you think now?’

  ‘I think you’d better learn to take no for an answer,’ she said frostily, turning her back on him and walking to the other side of the kitchen. She needed that table between them. She wished she could find another one to put between her rational mind and the emotions he had begun to evoke in her again.

  Jake gave a short, harsh laugh. ‘So much for growing up.’ He shrugged and opened the back door, pausing only to say, ‘Let me know when you change your mind. You might’ve been smarter at eighteen than now. I think we might have something here.’

  What they had, Torey decided during the long night hours she spent staring at the dark ceiling of her bedroom, was a mess. She was supposed to be eliminating unwanted complications from her life by coming to California, not adding to them! She had been expecting a respite from the constant stream of men her family was urging in her direction, and she had expected to have no problem resisting the garden variety male transplanted to California. While she could now face the prospect of meeting a man whom she might one day come to love as she had Paul (a prospect that hadn’t seemed possible until recently), she didn’t for a moment think a fast lane Casanova would be that man. And if somewhere in the back of her mind she had wanted to run across Jake Brosnan again, it was once and for all to put him behind her. How humiliating to discover that she still found him attractive! Damn!