Books by Maggie Shayne (15 page)

"I guess we're out of luck."

"Sweetheart," he said, and there was a gleam in his eyes. "You're forgetting how I got my nickname."

Alex felt her eyes widen as she leapt to her feet.

"You can't" -- "I won't hurt anything but the safe, and we'll reimburse them for.

that. "

She shook her head, "Come on; Alex. What's more important? An international time bomb, or the chance we might mess up some lawyer's office?"

"It's just not..." She'd been turning in a circle out of sheer frustration as she spoke,. and then she stopped.

"Look! The light on the answering machine is blinking." "So?"

"Well, if we listen to the messages, we-might find out they're on their way home right now. We might find out they'll be here later tonight or early tomorrow. And if that's the case, we don't really need to do this." She turned to face him, lifting her hands.

"Do we?"

He aced. His chin fell to his chest. But he came forward, reached past her, and pressed the playback button.

mep.

"James, this is Scotty Mitchell. Five-fiv~fivesixeightnine-oh Call me when you get in., mep.

"Wendy, here. Don't forget the bake sale at church, a week from Sunday.

You'll be back in time, right? Talk to you soon."

Beep, Torch glanced at Alex and shook his head to indicate his opinion of what this effort would produce. But he froze, and the color drained from his face as the next message began to play.

~ /u "Hi, Grandma! Hi, Grandpa!" said the child's voice, bubbling with excitement.

"Mommy says we're coming to visit you for Thanksgivin'!"

"Ah, God..." Torch gripped the edge of the desk as if he'd sink to the floor without it.

The LITTLE voice went on, but Alex hit the button to stop it. Then she turned to him, her hands on his shoulders, her eyes searching his tormented face.

"I'm sorry. Are you all right?"

His face was misted in a grimace of agony, eyes closed tightly, lips thin and pale.

"I will be," he whispered.

"Just as soon as I kill that murdering bastard:' She tool a step closer, heating pain beyond the anger in his voice, wanting to hold him, to comfort him. But Torch spun away from her, snatching up the bag he'd brought along and taking it with him to the spot in front of the safe.

He yanked a chair over there, dumping the bag's contents onto it, and then he was playing with something that looked like clay.

His entire countenance was meant to warn her away. She couldn't reach him in that place where his pain sent him. So she didn't even try.

Minutes ticked by, and he was pressing his clay stuff to the safe, sticking little probes into it. He unrolled wire from a spool as he stepped backward through the room. He backed right out the door, motioned for her to come with him. Then he closed the door, with the wire running underneath it, and finally cut the wire from his spool.

Taking a small, electronic-looking device from his pack, Torch attached the wires to it, then held it in one hand. He used his other hand to push her behind him. Then he moved a knob or a button on the device, and there was a firecracker-size pop in the office. It made her jump, but that was all. For a bomb, it hadn't seemed too terrible.

"Stay here."

She did. When he opened the door, she smelled the heat, saw the faint tendrils of smoke. Torch went back inside the office, and a few minutes later, the light went off, and he emerged with a thick man ilia envelope and the flashlight. He shone the beam on the handwriting across the front of the envelope.

"Holt."

"This is it," she said, and her mouth went dry.

"Maybe." Torch. tucked the envelope inside his coat, reached to grip her hand and started up the stairs.

He was silent all the way back. Silent and angry. And she didn't have a clue what she could do to help him.

He didn't just want, anymore. He needed. Damnfit, when she touched him, she reached past the pain. Through it. Her very presence soothed the ache. Just looking at her eased the torture he'. d lived with day and night for the past year. And he was getting used to that; He'd almost grabbed her when he'd heard that little boy's voice On the machine. He'd almost wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her hair. Like she was some kind of refuge. Like she could make it all right. I Jke if he only held on to her tightly enough, he'd find salvation. Redemption. . Hope It was so damned ridiculous it was almost laughable. Only Torch wasn't laughing. There was no room in his life for anything like this. No room for her. Only vengeance.

Alexandra Holt would take up too much space. She'd shove vengeance right out of his soul and fill it with her own brand of goodness instead, if he let her. He knew she would.

He couldn't let that happen. He had to resist with everything in him, and he had to get away from her.

One more night, he vowed.

"Because tonight he'd find the truth and tonight he'd make arrangements to get Alexandra to safety. Far away from him, Then he'd deal with Scorpion.

That voice, the precious voice on the tape had reminded him why he was here, what his job was. Thank God for that voice.

The house was warm when they returned. He found he was beginning to like the place. Somehow, she'd taken a cold, Gothic monstrosity of a house and made it cozy. Cheerful. Even comforting. The marble fireplace was trimmed in darkly stained woodwork. But the wallpaper was classic Alex. Soft green swirls of vines and leaves on an ivory background. A forest within a forest.

She could scamper into that wallpaper and be right at home.

The sofa was an overstuffed teddy bear of brown velour that hugged you when you sat on it. Eggshell-colored drapes, to match the settee, pale green carpeting, light-colored hardwood end tables and rocking chairs with quilted cushions.

He stood there, looking through the parted drapes at the picturesque view of the moonlit night. And he thought that it was too bad, it was really too bad he had to keep his priorities in line. He might enjoy s~ding more time here.

And who the hell was he kidding? It had nothing to do with the house or the setting or that damned decor. It had everything to do with Alex.

The envelope was clasped in his hands. He tore. it open and pulled a leather-bound book from within. And when he looked closer, he saw that it was a diary. There was nothing else.

Well, maybe the formula was in the diary. He wouldn't give up hope just yet. He opened the cover, then paused, feeling her gaze on him as surely as he would feel her touch. He turned away from the window to face her.

Alex stood across the room, near the fire. Her wide brown eyes filled with more fear than he'd ever seen in them.

He licked his lips and closed the cover.

"A diary is pretty personal.

Maybe you ought to read it first. " He held it out to her.

She came forward, slowly, her legs none too steady. She extended a hand that trembled as it closed on the supple leather. The way she looked at that diary in her hands, he thought she half expected it to grow teeth and bite her arm off.

 
She dragged her eyes upward, away from the dreaded book, to his face.

"I will. Not... just yet though."

"Alexre" "Please. I need some time. I need to ... to have..." "We don't have time," he told her. Her brown eyes pleaded with him, and he felt his granite heart rapidly turning to mush.

"I've been through more in the past few days than I've had to deal with in a lifetime, Torch. I need a little normalcy to bolster me. I can't just wade into that diary without something." He shook his head, but she went right on. "A hot bath," she whispered.

"A decent meal. A glass of wine. That's all I'm asking for. Surely we have time for that."

Knowing full well they' didn't, knowing full well Scorpion could come bursting through the front door with a machine gun and blow him in half any second now, Torch fell into those velvety brown eyes and said, "Sure we do. Go ahead, Alex. Get your normalcy 'fix. The book will wait."

But that wasn't good enough for her, was it? Oh, no. Not for Alexandra Holt, the nurturer. The woman who steadfastly defended a father who'd treated her like dirt, and was now soothing the damned soul of a man beyond redemption.

It wasn't enough for her to have her-precious normalcy. She had to inflict it on him, as. well And dammit, it was hard enough being near her when people were shooting at them. This bull was almost impossible.

He was afraid she had a repeat of last night on-her mind. But when she came down from her hour-long soak in the tub wearing sweats and a ponytail, he derided that theory might be off the mark. She'd suggested he take a bath, as well, but he'd settled for a quick shower. And when he'd rejoined her there was a fire snapping in the living room hearth.

He knew it before he got to the foot of the stairs. He smelled the burning logs, heard the snapping and hissing of the resin.

And he smelled something else, too. Something spicy and Italian that made him himt his pace. But he slowed it again when he saw the dancing candlelight in the living room. Half a dozen blue tapers chased lively shadows up and down the walls.

He lifted his chin, swallowed hard. He didn't want to go to bed with her again. Much as he'd denied it all day lonl~, that first time had damn near shattered his sanity, It had been too intense. Too hot. Too frantic. And just too damned good.

He hadn't stopped thinking about the way it had felt to hold her in his arms since. At least, not until he'd heard that voice on the McManuses' answering machine. That voice jerking him back to reality the way a pail of ice water would have done.

How could he have forgotten so easily in Alexandra's arnls?

It was wrong. And he wouldn't let it happen again. He had to keep his focus, keep his anger, his hatred, alive and burning: He had to.

- She came in from the kitchen with a wineglass full of pale pink liquid in each hand: "Thought you could use a little relaxation, too." She handed him one.

He took it, sipped it.

"Dinner's almost ready. Pasta marinara."

"You waxing' domestic on me, Alex?" His words came out sounding sarcastic and cold. She flinched and her lips thinned. But that wasn't enough for the bastard inside him, "Look, I don't know what you're expecting this to lead to,. but it's not gonna happen, I told you, last night didn't mean a damned thing."

The stricken look in her eyes faded fast. It was replaced by a look of fury. She snatched the wineglass out of his hand and, with a flick of her wrist, applied its contents to his face.

"It's my house, If I feel like cooking I'll cook. If you don't like it, you can always leave." ' Even as the last words left her mouth, she was spinning on her heel, leaving him there with wine dripping from his chin and burning his eyes. Maybe he was being just a little bit vain to think that seduction was what she had on her mind. But what the hell was he supposed to think?

He played with that idea for a while. Twenty minutes later she was back, a steaming plate of food in her hand, her wineglass brimming and the bottle tucked under her arm. There was more wine in her glass than there had been fore. So she must be on her second. Or third.

She put the plate on the coffee table and sank onto the sofa, curling her legs under her body, sipping deeply from the glass.

"Don't hit the wine too hard, A~ex. We have to stay sharp."

"You stay sharp," she snapped.

"And if you want to eat, do it in the kitchen. I know it's a shock, Torch, but I don't want your company right now."

He rose to the bait, though he should have known better. With a meaningful glance at the firelight and candles, he said, "You could have fooled me."

"Contrary to your conceited assumptions, Palamaro, the fire and the candles are for my benefit, not yours. They relax me when it feels like things are falling ap" -- She licked her lips, cleared her throat.

"If that brain of yours knew how to function, you might recall I had a fire and candles burning that first night you showed up to rain chaos down on my entire life."

She-had a point. There had been candles glowing that. night. And she hadn't been seducing anyone then. He drew a breath, thinking maybe he had been wrong.

"I'm sorry if I jumped to the wrong" -- "I don't think there's anything wrong with me. I really don't." She drained the wine, reached for the bottle, refilled her glass.

"Who said there was anything wrong with you?" He frowned, worried.

She was going to get plastered if she kept it up. Her gaze seemed fixated on the dancing firelight, so he took the bottle and set it on the floor beside the sofa, out of her sight.

 
"Is there?"

He swallowed hard. She hadn't touched her food.

"No, Alex, there's nothing wrong with you."

She met his eyes. She wasn't drunk. If she was, he wouldn't be able to see the hurt in them.

"You lie," she said.

"There are lots of things wrong with me. The asthma, for starters. And then there's~he fact that I can never have children. I don't suppose your background checks on me turned up that little tidbit, did they?"

Torch flinched when she said it.

"You can't believe that would matter to me."

"Matters to me," she told him and he could tell by the painin her eyes that it did. It mattered very much.

She shook her head, heaved a long sigh.

"This isn't working. I can't relax and pretend things are fine. My brain just isn't buying it."

She closed her eyes.

"Hand me 'that stupid book, and then please leave me alone while I read it."

He pursed his lips and. finally nodded. He was only just beginning to realize how much she' dreaded reading her father's diary. Maybe she sensed something. Maybe. -. somewhere decp inside her, it was something she'd known for a long time but hadn't acknowledged. Now she'd he forced to see the truth, ready or not.

He should have been a little more understanding about this.

"Okay." He took the book from the mantel, carried it to the sofa, set it down he side her. She didn't even look at it. "Are you sure you'll be okay alone?"

"I've always been okay alone, Torch."

It wasn't what she wanted to say. What she wanted to say was that he was the biggest fool she'd ever seen in her life. That if he'd just let go of his anger, he'd realize there was more to live for than revenge.

She'd thought she might be able to get him to do that tonight. She'd foolishly thought with a few comfort items like candlelight and food and wine, he might relax enough to open up his eyes and see her, and maybe :.

maybe let her into his heart. She only wanted to help him, couldn't the idiot see that?

No. He could only see that she wanted him, which, okay, she did. But he wanted her, too. Physically at least. He was too damn bent on vengeance to let her get close to him emotionally. Or maybe it wasn't the vengeance keep' rag him at a distance. Maybe he just didn't think she was good enough for that kind of closeness. Maybe he saw her as lacking in some way, just as Father always had.

Father.

She glanced down at -the book beside her, swallowed the cold fear in her throat and opened it to the first page. She reached over the arm of the sofa, unerringly closing her han don the bottle Torch thought he had hidden. Ref'ding her glass once more,- she began reading. "

"She'd said to leave her alone. He didn't.-Not really. He' left for a few minutes, long enough to eat a plateful of food and pour a glass of milk, though he was dying to sample that wine internally. And when he-finished, he went very quietly into the big foyer, where the stairs landed He sat down on the bottom step, his milk in his hands, and he watched her.

She read. Her hands trembled a little, then a little more. Blinking as if dazed, she laid the book down, staring straight ahead. What she was seeing, though, wasn't in the living room with her. It was in her mind.

And whaler it was, it wasn't pleasant. Not with those tears springing into her eyes. Not with her lower lip quivering that way.

Grating her teeth, squeezing her eyes tight, drawing three deep breaths, she seemed to gird herself. Then she looked at the pages again, and she read some more. It was killing him not to go in there. At first, his eagerness had been based on his hope there would be references to the formula in the diary. But that concern had faded. now to the dimness of a pinprick of light from a distant galaxy.

Now all he wanted to know was what that book could hold that would hurt Alexandra like this. Because it was hurting her. Pain etched itself 'more deeply into her face with every page she turned. Torch knew pain.

He knew it too well not to see it cutting her heart to ribbons right now. And he wanted to go to her.

It was an hour before she stopped reading. She looked shell-shocked when she closed the cover, laid her father's diary on the table and got to her feet. Her knees wobbled, but he was there before she could fall.

He grabbed her shoulders, and the warmth of her skin sank right into his palms. He wanted to hold her. Lord, how he wanted to hold her.

"Let go."

Two words. A harsh whisper wrapped in hurt and anger. He didn't let go. He pulled her to his chest and slid his arms around her. He stroked her hair, wishing he could snap the band that held it captive.

"What is it, Alex? What did the bastard write that hurt you this bad?"

With a strength that surprised him, she pulled free. He didn't try to hold her when she did. Her eyes were tear glazed and distant when they met his.

"You don't care. Why are you asking when you know you don't care?"

Torch gave his head a shake. She bent over the coffee table, and when she straightened, she held the diary out to him.

"Here. Take it. It's what you came for. It's why you stayed. Take it and read it. Maybe your precious answers are in there..I don't know. I couldn't... didn't finish it."

"Alex" -- She pressed the book into his hands and turned away, the ponytail snapping with the motion. Torch threw the diary onto the floor.

"I don't give a damn about the book right now, Alex. " He touched her shoulder, and she stopped walking away from him but didn't turn around.

"Come on, talk to me. Tell me what's wrong, maybe I can help."

 
"I don't need your kind of help, Torch. Just..." She drew a breath, tears shuddering on its surface like dew on. a windblown leaf.

"Just leave me alone."

She run away, out of the room and up the stairs. He heard the bedroom door slam, and that was all.

"Damn."

His gaze was drawn downward, to the diary on the floor. He could go upstairs after her, but he had a feeling she wouldn't tell him a thing.

Or, he could leave her alone as she'd asked and read the book for himself.

He squatted on his haunches and picked it up.

Alexandra lay facedown on the bed, crying, heartbroken.

He'd never lOved her. Her father had never. No. Not her father. He hadn't even been her father.

The words he'd printed in his poisonous ink, about her mother, were etched indelibly in Alexandra's mind.

"I couldn't stand the woman. Marrying her was the biggest mistake of my life. AndI should have known all along the brat she carried wasn't mine.

When she died shortly after giving b'n'th I was hoping the child would die along with her. It didn't. And its mother held on long enough to name her after me. No doubt she hoped the irony would get to me every time I spoke that name. "

"All those yea~," Alex whispered, and she slowly sat up.

She brushed the hot tears with the back of one hand and was surprised when no fresh ones fell to singe her face.

"All those years, bending over backwards to please hhn. But it didn't matter what I did, what I was or what I became. None of it mattered."

She felt her eyes dry, felt the salt on her skin.

"None of it mattered," she said again, and finally it was heginn'mg to sink in. Her eyes were opening. She was understanding. It hadn't been that she wasn't good enough: It had never been' that. She could have been crowned queen of the world and he still wouldn't have loved her.

She could have won the Nobel prize for medicine, and he still would have despised her.

She shook her head, frowning.

"It wasn't me. It wasn't me, it was him." Pushing both hands through her hair, she sat, stunned, on the edge of the bed. It wasn't a revelation, though. Not really. It was merely confirmation of something she'd been feeling for a very long time. But she~'d been unable to acknowledge it. Because if it were true, then it would mean her father was no good and selfish and cruel. Truly unworthy of her love, just as Torch had said, and not the other way around. But he was the only one she had to love So rather than face the truth, he'd seen her entire life through the warped glass of a lie. Like seeing her reflection in a fun house mirror. She'd let herself feel inadequate, unintelligent, not worthy of the great man's love, when deep down, she'd known better. None of those things were his reason for resenting her, even despising her.

Those reasons didn't exist.

Alex sniffed and yanked open the drawer-in the night' stand. Her photo album lay there, and she took it out now. Opened the cover.

There she was five years old, getting on the school bus for the first time. The mother of the little boy next door had taken the picture, certainly not her own father. Alex happened to be in the shot because they got on the bus together. And the woman had sent her son in with a copy for her a week later.

She'd been terrified to get on that big yellow bus. Her father had called her a coward.

"But I wasn't," she whispered, remembering now more vividly than she ever had before.

"That boy. Jimmy ... he was just as scared as I was.

But his mother came to the bus with him. She hugged him hard, and promised she'd be waiting right there in the same spot when he came home that afternoon. "

The pain in her heart softened then and began to change form, to alter into something else. She flipped the page.

 
There was the shy little girl in the second-grade production of The I~ftzard of Oz. Only she'd had no proud parent in the audience. Her father had said he might-he willing to take the afternoon off if she'd gotten the lead role, but he certainly wasn't missing work to see her play an extra.