JAKrentz - Uneasy Alliance (16 page)

"Oh, for pity's sake! Not more of your crazy detective work! I know a dozen people who are into photography. And who says it has to be someone who knows anything about photography? The blackmailer could have hired someone to do this…this sandwiching!"

"Maybe. Maybe not"

"How do you know it's a sandwich job?" Abby demanded rashly. "Maybe it really is me in the throes of passion with that…that person!"

He shook his head. "Not the throes of passion. I've seen what you look like in the throes of passion, remember? You don't gaze up at a man with a polite, serene little smile on your face as if you'd just been asked to tea."

Abby shot a suspicious glance at her tranquil, somewhat distant expression in the awful photograph. Hurriedly she glanced away. It made her almost physically ill to look at that picture and at the savage grip with which Torr held it. How did she look in the throes of passion, she wondered hysterically.

"Totally alive, vividly sensual, exciting, a little primitive. It's indescribable but it's definitely not serenely polite," Torr answered as if he'd just read her mind.

"Oh." She couldn't think of anything else to say. This man should know, she thought, exactly how she looked in bed. Anxiously she gnawed her lip. "Torr, I'm frightened."

"I know. It's working, isn't it?" He tossed down the picture and then collected the whole bunch of clippings and stuffed them back into the envelope.

"What is?"

"The blackmailer's plan to send you running out into the open like a startled rabbit. Out where you'll be easy to grab."

"I'm not running anywhere," she grumbled, irrationally glad now that the photo and the clippings were out of sight. She reached for a sandwich even though she wasn't in the least hungry. She decided to up her zinc intake too, and reached for the bottle of tablets.

"But you're thinking about it, aren't you?"

"I can hardly think straight at the moment!" Abby got up and stalked to the sink for a glass of water. But he was right, she silently admitted. She was thinking of running. Fear was a tangible sensation coiling around her, impeding her steps and clouding her mind.

The thick inhibiting stuff wasn't even focused on one particular aspect of the situation. By rights she should have been able to concentrate totally on the threat to herself from the blackmailer. Instead, other fears were hammering at her. There was a fear of having involved Torr in the mess. A fear of what he was thinking about her now that he'd seen those awful photos. A fear that he didn't believe her. A fear of what she would do if he decided the photos were real. It was all getting very complicated. She gulped the zinc tablets and stood staring at the faucet for a long moment.

From across the room Torr watched her narrowly. She looked ready to explode. High-strung, tense, nervous. About to run like a frightened creature.

He sat silent, trying to think of a way to stop her. She wasn't going to trust him completely—not now that she'd seen the newspaper clippings. Torr's hand curled into a large fist as he considered the prospect of getting hold of the blackmailer. Of all the times to have Abby find out about his past. She was beginning to accept and trust him, Torr thought. Just beginning to relax with him as a man. Now this. On the surface she might try very hard to believe his side of the story, but deep down could she fully relax around him again?

If she ran he might have trouble finding her. She could disappear for a matter of days or longer. By the time he caught up with her the blackmailer might already have found her. God only knew what would happen if that son of a bitch caught her first.

But how did you keep a woman from fleeing? Especially one who was clearly on the ragged edge of uncertainty and fear? If she trusted him completely, Torr decided, or at least knew for certain that she belonged to him, she might settle down and let him get on with the business of finding out who was behind the blackmail attempt. As it was he found himself fighting two battles—one for Abby's trust and one to track down her tormentor.

The unstable situation festered between them for the rest of the afternoon. Torr was careful to lock the photos and clippings out of sight but they obviously were not out of mind, not for Abby. She made a pretense of reading several magazines that she had bought at the village store. Then she silently tried to work on a crossword puzzle, not asking Torr for any help. He watched her drink a half dozen cups of coffee and wondered if all the vitamins she took every couple of hours could counter the caffeine.

How much longer before she tried to leave? he asked himself. Would she simply announce she wanted to be taken home to Portland? Or would she grab the keys tonight and sneak off on her own?

Talk about having one's nerves on edge, Torr decided grimly. His own were rapidly approaching a flash point. He couldn't think of anything brilliantly reassuring or humorous or thought-provoking to say. The silence between himself and Abby grew. With every passing hour it seemed heavier and more impossible to breach.

Should he tell her more about his doomed marriage? he wondered. No, it seemed best to let that topic lapse. There was nothing much to say, when you got right down to it. It had been a disaster from start to finish. If he went into further gruesome detail, Abby might begin to wonder if there was more to the story than he had admitted.

If he told her about the frustration and the anger and the embarrassment he had endured during the short term of his marriage, Abby might believe that he was building a justification that was not really necessary if he were truly innocent of murder.

No, scratch that topic. Maybe he should try involving her once again in some detective work. After all, they ought to be studying the list of people she knew in light of all the information they now had. But Abby didn't look as if she were interested in going over that list again.

Somehow they were missing something, though. Torr was sure of it. Blackmail was a rather intimate crime. It required the perpetrator not only have highly confidential information, but know just how damaging that information could be. It required a kind of intimacy that could not be ignored. Whoever was threatening Abby was not merely some creep on the street who'd happened to snap a few photos by accident.

All during the silent dinner that he had prepared, Torr's thoughts kept ricocheting back and forth between the possible identity of the blackmailer and the very urgent problem of how to deal with Abby's increasing withdrawal.

It wasn't until they were silently sipping cognac in front of the fire that Torr decided there were priorities that had to be set. He was going to go out of his mind if he didn't establish the bonds between himself and Abby once and for all.

He glanced at her from beneath half-lowered lashes, noticing the flush on her cheek as she stared fixedly into the crackling flames. She was a million miles away, he surmised. Probably planning her escape. He would wake up in the morning and find her gone.

Torr realized with a sudden wrenching sensation in his gut that he couldn't allow that to happen. She was his now, whether she knew it or not. In that moment he could think of no other way to enforce the knowledge on her than by the most fundamental of methods.

The only way to make certain Abby was still with him in the morning was to take her to bed tonight and keep her there. It might not say a lot for his intelligence that he'd been driven to such an extreme conclusion, but he knew it was the truth.

Legs apart, Torr leaned forward and carefully set the cognac glass down on the coffee table in front of him. He concentrated intently on the amber liquid in the glass as he spoke.

"How are you going to do it, Abby? Will you try to steal the keys in the middle of the night or will you go upstairs, pack and then demand to be driven back to Portland?"

Her head swung around and he read the guilty amazement in her eyes. Torr felt himself tighten as he realized he'd come very close to guessing her thoughts. Didn't she understand? He couldn't allow her to leave. Not now. Not after what they had shared.

"I might as well tell you that I won't drive you back to Portland. So I think we're left with the possibility of key theft," he mused, his eyes focusing on the fire. He could feel the tension in her as she sat at the far end of the sofa, staring at his profile. He was probably scaring her but it couldn't be helped. He was extremely scared himself.

"What are you talking about?" she demanded stiffly. "I have no intention of stealing the car keys."

"No? Then how did you plan on running tonight, Abby?"

"Who said anything about running?"

"It's been written all over your face since that envelope arrived. Do you think I can't read your eyes? Don't you think I can see the fear in them?"

"It seems to me that I have a right to be afraid," she protested.

"Perhaps. But not of me."

She surged to her feet. "Doesn't it occur to you that I might be afraid
for
you rather than
of
you?" She wasn't looking at him, however, when she spoke, and Torr guessed that she didn't want him to see her expression.

"There's no reason to be afraid for me. I've told you I'm in this with you by choice. Don't use that as an excuse, Abby."

"I'm not making excuses!" She whirled, confronting him, her head high, her body rigid with tension. "This is my problem, Torr. I had no right to get you involved. It's very nice of you to want to help, but I—"

"Very nice of me!" The words came from him in a soft explosion as he leapt off the sofa in a smooth, taut movement. "Abby, the last thing I feel toward you is
nice
. I have never felt any inclination to be
nice
to you. Lady, I want to take you to bed. I want to protect you. I want you to know in the very depths of your soul that you belong to me, but none of that has anything to do with being
nice
!"

She flinched as he challenged her, automatically taking a step backward. There was no farther room for retreat, Torr saw. The fire crackled directly behind her. He suddenly realized he was scaring the daylights out of her. Smoky blue eyes flared at him with desperate determination. Her soft body was held unnaturally still, poised to flee or fight. He'd handled this all wrong. He shouldn't have pushed her like this. But what else could he have done? His own raging uncertainty was eating at him, forcing him to take some definitive action.

"Don't threaten me, Torr!"

"I'm not threatening you." But he was and they both knew it.

"I don't need anyone else trying to push me around at this particular moment in my life. I thought you were being kind and…and considerate. You were willing to wait and let our relationship evolve naturally. It appears instead that all this week you've been leading me on, making me think you understood my feelings. But maybe that's because you thought I was a different kind of woman. Maybe you have behaved nicely because you thought I was a nice woman. Now you've seen all the photos, haven't you? Now you know that my one weekend at the beach with Ward wasn't just a fluke or a set of circumstances that someone twisted to his own advantage. Oh, no. Now you've seen evidence that I do that sort of thing a lot. What was it the note said? I'll sleep with anyone for the right amount of cash. A whore. How that must grate on you, Torr. How could you be so unlucky as to get involved with another female like your first wife?"

"Abby, shut up! You don't know what you're saying."

"Of course I know what I'm saying. Don't you think I saw the way your fingers were clenched around that photograph of me and that other man? You were uttering all the nice reassuring things, but you were thinking something entirely different. You were wondering about me, weren't you, Torr? Wondering if I was going to be just like your wife. Well, you don't have to worry about it. I'm not about to get any more involved with you. For both our sakes it's best if I get out of here. Now. Tonight."

"You're not going anywhere." Torr could hear the deadly certainty in his own words, and the effect on Abby was instantaneous. She moved, circling to the right since there was no farther room to retreat. As if he were a wolf, she tried to put distance between them without making any sudden moves that might set off his primitive attack instincts.

"I have to leave, Torr. I've been thinking about it all afternoon."

"Don't you think I realize that? I've been watching you drift further and further away from me ever since that blasted envelope arrived. But I'm not going to let you leave, Abby. There's no way you can walk back to Portland and you'll have to get past me to get the keys."

"Why, Torr?" she got out starkly. "Why are you doing this? Because you can't bear the thought that you've gotten mixed up with another unreliable, untrustworthy female? Do you have to prove something to yourself?"

"Maybe. Most of all I have to prove something to you."

"Don't threaten me, Torr!"

"Stop fighting me," he countered, revolving slowly to follow her wary circling movement. "Abby, be reasonable. There's nowhere to run tonight. Stay here with me where you're safe. Trust me, honey."

"Do you trust me?" she whispered tightly.

"Yes."

"I don't believe you! I saw the way you looked at that photograph," she wailed. "You looked as though you wanted to kill someone."