Demon Rumm (10 page)

Rylan’s heart plummeted and with it his hopes that he might be wooing her away from disturbing memories of her husband. He swore, softly, tersely, blasphemously. “How long have you had these nightmares? Since the crash?”

“No, before.”

“Before?” His surprise showed. “You mean before it actually happened?”

“Long before.” She slid off the stool and carried their glasses to the sink and rinsed them out. Neither of them had drunk any of the drink. “Sometimes I lived through them. He had a few close calls before the accident that . . . killed him.” She moved to stand in front of the wall of glass that overlooked the valley below.

“Every time he went up,” she said in a faraway voice, “even to practice, I wondered if he would come back. I would stand here for hours, staring at the horizon in the direction of the airfield, waiting to see the column of black smoke that would signal a crash.” Her voice was weightless, drifting from her mouth as though she wasn’t even conscious of speaking. “I was always vaguely surprised when it didn’t happen and he actually came home in time for dinner.”

“It must have been hell for you.”

She nodded absently. “Remember asking me why I always stayed in the background? The reasons I gave you were valid, but the truth is that I didn’t want anyone to see my fear. Every time Charlie performed, I was surrounded by expectant faces. People having a grand time, families on a weekend outing, the press corps excited about catching the stunt on film. No one seemed to realize or care that by entertaining them, my husband was risking his life. I resented his audiences for their disregard.”

She roused herself and turned abruptly to face him. “You must think I’m a real nut case.”

Rylan shook his head gravely. “No. But I think he was. Did he know how afraid you were?”

She returned to the stool and sat down beside him. “I suppose so. He should have. After we first got married, I would often cry and tell him that I was scared I’d lose him. I’d cling to him every time he left the house, begging him not to go up.”

“But then you stopped crying and clinging.”

“Not altogether, just not so frequently. And not in front of him. It didn’t do any good. He was going to fly no matter how I felt about it.”

At that moment Rylan hated the man he knew so well, but had never met. Had Demon Rumm materialized, he could have beat the hell out of him for all the years of anguish Kirsten had suffered. Rumm had been a selfish bastard.

“Why do you think he took so many chances with his life?” Rylan asked.

“It was his nature,” she said carefully. “What makes a man want to climb Mount Everest or drive a race car? Not money. Charlie was a lot like you in that respect. He didn’t really care about financial success or having material possessions. That wasn’t what motivated him.”

“The roar of approval from the crowds?”

“Maybe. He basked in celebrity. But that wasn’t it entirely either. Taking risks was essential to him.”

“To fill a deficiency?”

He knew instantly that he’d struck a nerve. “No,” she said defensively. “He had everything a man could want. I didn’t mean to imply that there was a deficiency. What kind of deficiency are you talking about?”

“That’s what I want you to tell me.”

“There wasn’t one.”

“So he just went out every day and flirted with death for the hell of it?” Rylan shook his head. “Uh-uh. I don’t think so. I’ve studied motivation for years, Kirsten, and that doesn’t jive.”

“Some men are driven that way,” she argued. “Danger is its own reward. Look at test pilots and animal trainers and . . . window washers, for heaven’s sake. Taking risks is the nature of their business.”

“Sure, but why do some men gravitate toward that kind of work? If you dug down into the psyche of each one, I think you’d find a common denominator.”

“Probably a liking for their work. Just as Charlie liked, no,
loved,
his.”

“More than he loved you?”

Her lips quavered, but she said staunchly, “He loved me.”

“As much as he loved flying? Did you ever lay it on the line? Did you ever ask him to choose?”

“No, never! I never would have.”

“Why not? Marriage is supposed to be a partnership, isn’t it? Why couldn’t you ask Rumm to give it up?”

“I
could
have. I didn’t because I loved him too much to ask such a sacrifice from him.”

“That’s unrealistic bull.”

“Have you ever been asked to choose between a woman you loved and acting?”

“I’ve never loved a woman that much.”

“Which only makes my point.”

Frustrated with her verbal adroitness, Rylan plowed both hands through his hair. She was holding something back. He could
feel
it. But he strongly sensed that it was prudent to back off once again.

“I’m not trying to badger you, Kirsten. I’m only trying to understand what motivated Rumm to risk losing his life, to risk losing
you,
day after day, and to understand what motivated you to keep silent about it. His stunt flying obviously terrified you. Did you know from the beginning what he planned to do when he got out of the Navy?”

“I knew he wanted to fly, but I thought it would be with an airline.”

“And you didn’t voice an opinion when he revealed his career plans?”

“Naturally I did.”

“But he ignored your objections.”

She sighed. “Don’t put words in my mouth. I didn’t object. It wasn’t up to me to object.”

“The hell it wasn’t. You were his wife.”

“But not his warden!”

“So when he said, ‘By the way, Kirsten, I want to do hammerhead turns and barrel rolls at three hundred miles an hour,’ you said, ‘That’s nice, dear. Is meat loaf all right for supper?’ While shivering in your shoes and having nightmares, you just went along?”

Her eyes were stormy. “It wasn’t like that. Charlie didn’t start out breaking world records and trying stunts that had never been done before. It wasn’t until later that it got so dangerous.”

He came off his stool and loomed over her. “Later? Why later? What happened that precipitated him into taking greater risks?”

“Nothing.” He stared down at her with patent disbelief.
“Nothing,”
she repeated tetchily. “Just like any man who needs a challenge, he—”

“Kirsten, setting a new sales record and doing backward loops in high-speed aircraft aren’t exactly comparable challenges. Dear Lord, no wonder you have nightmares.” In a sudden move, he embraced her, drawing her off her stool and up against him. “And when you did have nightmares, did Rumm comfort you?”

“Yes.”

To the marrow of his bones, Rylan knew she was lying. Her fingers were mindlessly flexing against the front of his shirt, as though grasping for something that had always eluded her. There was a giveaway unsteadiness in her voice, a trace of desperation that told him she herself wanted badly to believe what she was telling him.

“I think you wanted him to, but I don’t think he did,” Rylan said softly.

She started to protest, but no words came out of her mouth. For a long moment her eyes remained locked with his. Eventually her glance fell away. “You’re right. Charlie dismissed my nightmares because he couldn’t relate to my fear. He sympathized, but he treated the bad dreams like some childhood quirk that I would eventually outgrow.”

Rylan drew her shivering body against his and rubbed his hands up and down her back. “So last night, when you reached for me, you thought it was Rumm. You
wanted
it to be him, finally giving you the comfort and understanding he’d previously withheld.”

“I suppose so.”

“Kirsten?”

“Hmm?”

“At what point did you realize it was me you were making love to and not Rumm?”

She looked up at him with a mix of pain and bewilderment. Then she flung off his embracing arms and fled the room.

“Don’t let him drop you, Dylan, don’t let him drop you.”

Rylan, looking up into his victim’s face, laughed. The child’s brown-speckled, hazel eyes were much like his, and were rimmed with spiky black lashes. The child’s hair, too, was dark, straight on the crown, but slightly wavy in the back and around his forehead, almost identical in color and texture to Rylan’s.

Rylan was lying flat on his back on a chaise by the pool, his knees raised. With his arms held straight up, he was supporting a squirming, kicking little boy. Every few seconds, Rylan would make like he was going to drop the child and let the tension in his arms go slack. The boy would squeal, then convulse into wet, sputtering, slobbery giggles.

And every time Rylan’s elbows would unlock a fraction, the child’s mother, standing nearby, would gasp and say, “Oh, no! Oh, no, he’s going to drop you!”

She was leggy and blonde. Dressed in a long peasant skirt and ankle-strap sandals, with her long hair swinging free each time she clapped her hands and playfully skipped around Rylan and her son, she looked extremely pretty in a free-spirited, sensual way.

“Pardner, you’re gettin’ too heavy and rambunctious to play this game,” Rylan said, expelling a big gust of air and swinging the child down to the deck. He rolled to a sitting position and swatted the boy on the bottom.

That’s when he saw Kirsten hovering just inside the terrace door. She had left the house hours ago, ostensibly to run errands. It had been three days since he’d confronted her about her nightmares and Rumm’s indifference to them. She had avoided him ever since. During the day she stayed sequestered in her office while Rylan pored over journals and photo albums in Rumm’s study. After virtually silent dinners, she retreated into her bedroom, leaving Rylan to entertain himself.

This morning, she’d been as chilly as the freshly squeezed orange juice Alice had foisted on them. Kirsten had drunk hers, then made a hasty escape in her Mercedes convertible.

Now, across the sunny terrace, their eyes met fleetingly before she disappeared into the shadows of the house.

“You’ve worn him out, Dylan. It’s time to go,” the blonde woman said, scooping up the child. She’d been unaware of Kirsten’s clandestine appearance and withdrawal. Rylan wasn’t sure why he hadn’t waved Kirsten out and introduced them. There really wasn’t any reason not to. But his avoidance of that had been for Kirsten’s sake, not Cheryl’s.

“Why do you have to go so soon?” he asked in a plaintive tone. “I don’t get to see him often enough, Cheryl.”

“I know. It’s just that with my busy schedule and yours, it’s almost impossible to get you two together.”

Arguing was pointless. She was right, and he couldn’t ask her to adjust her schedule around his. That wouldn’t be fair.

He lifted the boy out of her arms. “Come on,” he said, draping his free arm around her slender shoulders. “I’ll carry him to the car for you.”

A few minutes later he found Kirsten behind her desk, shuffling through the pages of her manuscript. She had changed out of the dress she had worn shopping and was now wearing all black: black slacks, black sleeveless pullover, black flats. He started to ask “Who died?” but caught the quip just in time. Under the circumstances that joke would have been in very poor taste. Besides, she looked great in black.

He passed up the opportunity to tease her about her somber attire and settled for a safe, hopefully peacemaking, “Hi.”

“Hello,” she said stiffly.

So much for peacemaking. “I wish you had come out. I wanted to introduce you to Cheryl and Dylan.”

“I didn’t want to intrude.” She stacked several sheets together and thumped them on the desk with far more emphasis than was necessary to align them.

“You seem angry,” he remarked. He was actually glad that she was keeping her head down so she wouldn’t see the amused grin he couldn’t keep from breaking across his face.

“I’m not.”

“Could have fooled me. You didn’t even comment on my clothes, and I thought you’d be pleased to find me in something besides—”

“Rags.” She gave his pleated designer slacks and sports shirt a negligent glance. “I’m sure you didn’t dress up on my account.”

“Say, you’re not upset because I had guests, are you?”

“Of course not.”

“That’s a relief.”

“That is, not as long as you . . .”

“As long as I . . . what?”

Looking as stern as a schoolmarm, she glared up at him through her glasses. “You know what I mean.”

Enjoying her agitation, he propped one lean hip against the edge of her desk and folded his arms across his chest. “No, I don’t. Tell me. As long as I what?”

“As long as you stay out of the bedrooms. This isn’t a hot sheets hotel.” She was busy moving objects on the desk from one spot to another with no apparent reason for the repositioning. “I don’t want women running through here like there’s a turnstile on the door.”

“We didn’t go into any of the bedrooms.”

“Well . . . good. Then we don’t have a problem.”

“
I
don’t. I think you might.”

“As usual I don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s more, I don’t care. Will you excuse me, please, I haven’t written a paragraph all day and—”

“What did you think of Cheryl?”

She clamped her teeth over her bottom lip as though trying to get a grip on herself. “Cheryl? Is that her name?”

“Uh-huh.”

She placed the stapler in a drawer, and slammed the drawer closed as though everything inside might try to escape. “From what I could see she’s very pretty. Tall, blonde, and pretty.” She spoke the three adjectives as though they were difficult words for her mouth to form.

“And Dylan? Cute little cuss, isn’t he?”

“He looks just like you.”

“You think so? Everybody who sees us together says that.”

“How old is he?”

“Two. He’s a dynamo. Cheryl can barely keep up with him.”

“Maybe she could use some help.”

“She’s got help.”

“I meant
yours,
” she said with asperity.

“She doesn’t need my help.”

“Have you ever offered it?”

“Yes, and Cheryl flatly refused it.”

“Don’t you think you should have some input in Dylan’s upbringing?”

“No way. That’s strictly Cheryl’s business.”

“That ’s . . . that’s idiocy,” she sputtered.