JAKrentz - Uneasy Alliance (14 page)

"Abby," Torr asked gently, "do you really think I could take the thought of you having breakfast like this with some other man now that we've been together?"

She lowered her lashes uncertainly, aware of the ripple of excitement in her veins. "It's not as if we're having an…an affair," she pointed out weakly.

"We've slept together once," he said quietly. "It will happen again. In fact, it's going to happen on a very permanent basis one of these days. I'm only giving you a little breathing space at the moment."

"Gosh, thanks!" Her abrupt annoyance at his masculine arrogance blazed in her eyes. "As it happens, I'm very fond of both breathing and breathing space!"

He grinned unexpectedly. "Then enjoy yourself for the time being. One of these days you're going to run out of breathing room. And when you do, I'll be right behind you."

"You said you weren't the pouncing kind!"

"I'm not going to pounce. I'll just be there when you run out of breath."

"Sometimes you annoy me a great deal, Torr Latimer!"

"But I don't frighten you," he pointed out with serene satisfaction. "Not any longer."

He was right, she was forced to admit. He didn't frighten her. At least, not in the ways she had once been frightened of a man. Which was not to say she shouldn't remain wary of him, Abby told herself. Torr presented an entirely different sort of threat from the kind she had previously feared. Sometimes subtle, often teasingly blatant but always
there
was the inescapable knowledge that he wanted her, that he was waiting for her. The relationship between herself and Torr was complex in many ways and astoundingly simple in others. The attraction between them remained a carefully banked fire, but it was stronger than ever.

But while he kept the physical side of the relationship under control, Torr allowed companionship to grow stronger. She and Torr had become friends this past week, Abby realized at one point. It was a unique friendship, however. Not the easy casual association she normally allowed herself and a nonthreatening male, but a pulsing vital relationship that blended at the borders into an emotion she was still reluctant to name.

It had dawned on her slowly during their morning walks, which had become a daily ritual, that there was a growing sense of inevitability buried in her feelings toward Torr. In the back of her mind was the knowledge that it could be only a matter of time before good friends became lovers, especially when the physical attraction simmered so constantly beneath the surface.

It was during the after-breakfast walk on this particular morning that Abby found herself finally accepting that sense of inevitability. For the first time she stopped trying to repress the knowledge that if she stayed near him she was bound to run out of the breathing room Torr had promised. And for the first time she didn't allow that knowledge to feed her habitual caution.

Perhaps it was the serenity of their environment that allowed her to accept the dangerous situation between herself and Torr. The dark-haired man beside her seemed a part of that cool serenity. His fingers were laced with hers, strong and sure, as he guided her along one of the forested paths behind the cabin. It wasn't that he had the look of a backwoodsman or a lumberjack, she thought with a small secret smile. Rather Torr seemed in harmony with his surroundings, a counterpoint to the towering pines and the crunch of needles underfoot. There was a fundamental strength in him that reached out to envelop her just as the fresh, clean morning surrounded her. The temptation to surrender to both the vivid mountain day and the man who shared it with her was intoxicating.

"Tell me about him," Torr ordered gently as he led her to a clearing at the top of a crest overlooking the river. He wasn't watching her face, because his attention was on the dark swath of water below, but she knew he sensed her startled reaction.

"About whom?" The wariness that had faded to the back of her mind abruptly moved forward again.

"The man who made you so cautious. The one you say taught you to fear a man's possessiveness."

Abby sighed. "Why do you want to know about Flynn Randolph? Believe me, I do my best not to think about him."

Torr shook his head, sinking down onto the dry pine needles and tugging her down beside him. He smiled bleakly as she drew her jeaned knees up under her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs. "He's there in your head all the time. Whenever I get too close I can sense him. The only time I manage to drive him away is when I…" He stopped abruptly, his hand curling around a stray wildflower that had poked its bright yellow head up amid a patch of greenery.

But Abby knew what he had been about to say. "When you make love to me."

"Yes."

"I should think that would be enough to satisfy your ego." Instantly she regretted the words. She hadn't meant to snap at him, not on this soft fresh morning. The breeze lifted the tendrils of her honey-colored hair as Torr regarded her silently for a tense moment.

Then he leaned forward and brushed the small wildflower he had plucked against her lips. His mouth followed, taking hers in a short blatantly possessive kiss.

"It's not my ego that needs gratification at the moment," he told her calmly.

"What, then?" She could still feel the imprint of his hard mouth and the trace of the flower's softness. It left her warm and restless and a little hungry for something she didn't want to put into words.

"My curiosity. My sense of something being hidden.

My need to know you completely." He let his hand fall from the nape of her neck. "I told you that you remind me of one of your own flower arrangements. A man has to keep examining you from all angles in order to figure out exactly what's involved. On one level everything seems relatively open and straightforward. But it doesn't take long before it becomes obvious there are a lot of hidden complexities. You fascinate me, honey. I want to keep peeling away the petals until I find the real you. So tell me about him."

"And if you don't like what you find?" she challenged huskily, her gaze on the traffic winding its way along the interstate that followed the river. The cars appeared very small from up here, just another species of animal migrating through the forest. The river and the gorge it had cut had been here eons before the cars had arrived and would undoubtedly remain long after the metallic creatures had disappeared from the earth. Some things were enduring and inevitable. In her world, Abby realized, Torr had become as much a force as the ancient river.

"I'm not worried about whether I'll like what I find beneath the petals," Torr said softly. "I've already satisfied myself about that. I just want to be sure that I drive out the shadows that other man left. I want to know every last petal is mine with no reservations."

There was no point trying to delay or lie. Torr had a right to know. Why he had that right Abby couldn't quite explain to herself, but she didn't argue further. "We worked for the same real-estate development firm in downtown Seattle," she began slowly. "Flynn was an executive. I was in sales. He was everything women generally find attractive in a man. Good-looking, successful and incredibly charming. When he took an interest in me I was thrilled. He made a perfect escort. Headwaiters all over town knew him by name. He always had tickets to the ballet or the theater. Going out with him was like going out on a date faultlessly orchestrated by a fairy godmother. I never had to make any decisions or even offer suggestions. Flynn handled everything. It took me a while to realize just how little input I had."

"And when you did realize that, he didn't want any suggestions?"

"He didn't take them well." Abby grimaced. "In fact, he got inordinately upset whenever I suggested we do something different than what he had planned. At first his masterfulness was rather intriguing. I felt pampered and special. But then it became annoying. He got angry when I tried to tell him what I wanted. He didn't make a joke out of it the way you did that night with the squid. He got genuinely furious. He had a reputation for losing his temper when he was thwarted in business, but because he was a man, people accepted that. When he started losing his temper with me, I concluded that there was something more involved than masculine temperament and I got nervous. There was something irrational about it on occasion."

"Did he become physically dangerous?" The words were almost formal in tone but that very formality told Abby just how intensely Torr was paying attention.

"There was only once," she whispered. "The last time I saw him…" She swallowed and focused very hard on the cars beside the river. "But up until then he seemed able to get control of himself before things got out of hand. I knew after a few weeks of seeing him, however, that I was going to have to get out of the relationship. I was beginning to feel trapped in a silk net. As long as I was sweet and agreeable and properly docile, Flynn played the role of Prince Charming. Whenever I strayed from my assigned role, he got increasingly unpleasant. I knew it had been a mistake to get involved with him, but I didn't think it was too late to get out of the relationship without hard feelings. After all, he and I had never…I mean, it hadn't gotten to the point where we were…"

"You weren't sleeping together?"

"No. We weren't sleeping together." Torr had a way of cutting to the heart of the matter, Abby thought wryly. "At any rate, I told him I didn't intend to give up my other male friends, that I intended to keep dating other men. I implied I'd be seeing less of him."

"How did he take that?"

"He announced the next day that he and I were engaged," Abby said bluntly.

"Engaged!"

"I think he actually believed it. He had a way of convincing himself of anything he wanted to believe. As you can imagine, I was furious. I refused to see him again and made a point of dating other people. That's when I realized Flynn was potentially dangerous. He made wild accusations, called me unfaithful. When I pointed out that he had no claim on me, he went into a rage. It became uncomfortable to go into work. No one else in the office could figure out what was happening.

If Flynn said we were engaged, they reasoned, then we must be engaged. Why would a high-ranking executive lie about a thing like that? When I denied it, everyone decided I must be playing hard to get. Flynn encouraged them to think I was just playing games. At work he was indulgent and charming toward me, as if he were humoring a recalcitrant female."

"What happened outside of work?"

"He began dropping by my apartment at odd hours, demanding to know who was in bed with me. When I told him the truth, that there was no one, he accused me of lying. He kept saying I was unfaithful, a cheat. Well, actually, he used somewhat more forceful language," Abby corrected unemotionally.

"So you finally quit your job?"

"In the end I made the mistake of going to his apartment one evening after he had made an ugly scene in front of a friend of mine, a man with whom I was having dinner. I told him to stop bothering me or I'd get some legal assistance. He lost control completely and struck me." Abby shivered, recalling that if she hadn't managed to escape through the door she'd left open, she would have found herself severely beaten, perhaps raped. She sensed the tension in Torr but her mind was turned inward, remembering the violence of that last scene. After a moment she continued. "I ran out of the apartment and into the street, found my car and drove back to a hotel. I was afraid
to
go home in case he followed me. The next morning at work he was back in his Prince Charming role, just as if nothing had happened. I realized no one would ever believe the way he had acted the night before. I quit that day and left town for a week to give myself some time to think. That was when I decided to start over in Portland."

"He didn't try to see you again?"

"No, thank heaven. He just disappeared from my life. Or I disappeared from his, depending on how you look at it," she tried to say flippantly. "And there you have it in a nutshell. That all happened two years ago and since then I've been very, very careful around men who have a tendency to become possessive."

"Not careful enough, apparently," Torr said coolly, rising to his feet and pulling her up beside him.

She frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're involved with me and I'm going to be a very possessive lover, sweetheart." Torr lowered his head to kiss away the protest that came immediately to her lips, not releasing her until she relaxed against him. Finally he lifted his head and smiled down into her blue eyes. "But I won't rush you and I would never hurt you. When you finally trust me completely and understand my kind of possessiveness, I'll know that Randolph is really out of your life."

Abby tried to think of something else to say, some further explanation or protest, but nothing came to mind and she allowed herself to be led back toward the cabin. The questions and uncertainties hovered in her head until they reached the front door. Then Torr paused in the act of inserting the key into the lock.

"Well, well," he murmured, reaching down to pick up an envelope that had been half thrust under the doormat. "Looks like we missed someone interesting."

Abby shuddered, her eyes widening anxiously as she reached out to take the manila envelope from his hand.

"Do you want me to open it?" Torr asked softly, watching her with concern.

"No. I'll do it." She ripped at the tightly sealed envelope, her anger and fear making her movements impatient and erratic. The truth was, she hadn't wanted Torr to be the first to see whatever was inside. There might be more photos. How many more of those could Torr look at before he began to wonder if she'd told him the whole truth about that weekend?