Promises in the Night: A Classic Romance - Book 2 (4 page)

He reached into the deep pocket of his coat and fished around for his car keys, then headed out to the parking lot. In the years since Rikki’s death he’d been with more women than he cared to think about, trying to negate his anger and rage with mindless, meaningless sex. However, not one of those women—charming, accomplished and desirable though they might have been—had come close to reaching the part of him that Larkin Walker had so effortlessly reached today.

It had been a very long time since he felt as alive as he had that afternoon when Larkin looked into his eyes. He couldn’t remember when he last felt that sweet surge of possibility flooding his senses. A secret part of his heart had stopped beating when Rikki died; today the muscles began to flex themselves again, as if daring him to accept the challenge.

And despite his years of experience delving into the secrets of the human heart, for the second time in his life, Alex Jakobs was scared.

A
lex dreamed that night
, his first dream in weeks.

Rikki was sitting on the edge of their bed, the pale yellow telephone dangling from her hand. He saw again the look of horror on her face, saw the image of death, sharp and clear, surrounding them both.

He wanted to touch her, but in his dream he couldn’t move quickly enough. Those beautiful golden eyes of hers watched as he struggled. In the end, though, she was lost, as they both knew she would be.

He woke up with a start, his heart thundering in his chest like a runaway train. He touched his face and felt tears hot against his skin, and he wondered why he was crying.

He remembered no dream at all; the only thing he remembered was the feeling of impotent rage. His heart ached as if it had been torn apart by his own hands in an effort to save himself from a pain greater than he could bear.

T
he first things
Larkin did when she got to the Learning Center the next morning were to plug in the coffee maker in the reception area and kick off her wet shoes. Patti wasn’t due in until nine, and the rest of the staff would arrive at noon; she was glad to have time alone before the usual madness began.

She’d stayed awake until nearly three, sitting before her fireplace and letting her mind play with the notion of Alex Jakobs. When she finally did fall asleep, her dreams had been voluptuous—so real that her body knew the touch of Alex’s hand upon it, and she awoke feeling as if she had turned a corner into a strange neighborhood.

The coffee maker began to brew, and she shrugged out of her soggy raincoat. She started down the hallway to hang the coat in the bathroom when she heard a muffled tap-tap from the classroom near the staircase.

She pushed open the swinging door.

“Gordon! I thought today was your day off.” She smiled up at the young man who was perched atop a rickety wooden ladder, putting the finishing touches on some ceiling repairs. “What are you doing here?”

Carpenters nails were clenched between his teeth, and he dropped them into the palm of his hand. “When I heard the rain start up again this morning, I figured I’d better knock off the rest of the job.” He pushed a strand of black hair off his forehead with the side of his hand. “I’ll be done in ten minutes.” He turned back to his work as if embarrassed to have been caught in the act.

“I don’t want to rush you,” Larkin said, acutely aware of the young man’s discomfort. “Take all the time you need. This is certainly above and beyond the call of duty.” She had fully expected to hire a professional roofer to take care of the problem. Gordon’s expertise was a pleasant surprise. “Why don’t you come down off your ladder and have a cup of coffee with me?” She motioned toward the window that looked out on the dreary, rain-swept parking lot. “Certainly this weather warrants a cup.”

“Thanks, Ms. Walker,” he said, his eyes intent upon his work, “but I think I’d better get this done before it rains any harder.”

“If it rains any harder, we’ll be washed into the Atlantic Ocean.”

Gordon smiled but said nothing, and Larkin stifled a sigh. He had been working for her for two months now, and if anything, his shyness had grown more pronounced.

“Well, if you change your mind, I’ll be in the front office.” She turned to leave and bumped into Patti, who stood in the doorway, toweling off her rain-soaked red hair. “What’s the big attraction here this morning?” Larkin asked with a chuckle. “I thought I was the only one crazy enough to get here early.”

“Believe me, it’s not by choice.” Patti waved at her brother. “We’re reading auras this morning. The seer is due in at eight forty-five.”

“I was just about to hang up my raincoat and have some coffee.” Larkin motioned toward Gordon. “I asked your brother but he turned me down.”

“That’s my little brother. Always a slave to duty.” She slung the towel over her shoulder. “I’m the sensualist in the family.”

Larkin laughed. “Believe me, I know, Patti!’

“Speaking of sensuality, how did it go last night?” Patti followed Larkin across the hall to the bathroom.

“So that’s why you came in early,” Larkin said as she hung her raincoat over the shower rod. “You want to pump me for information.”

“Listen, I nearly called you again last night,” Patti said as they went back to the reception area and she poured them each a cup of coffee. “I figured if I didn’t get to you early, I’d never get any of the juicy details.”

“What makes you think there are any juicy details?”

“Quit being so evasive. What was he like?”

Larkin wrapped her fingers around the steaming cup. “Wonderful,” she, said, taking a sip. “Absolutely wonderful.”

Patti’s blue eyes widened. “He was? A blind date that wasn’t a total disaster?” She staggered across the room and slumped against the edge of the receptionist’s desk. “Call 911,” she gasped. “I think I’m going into cardiac arrest!”

“You really should consider show business, Patti. You know very well I was talking about the coffee.’

“You’ve destroyed my last vestige of hope,” Patti said sadly. “I figured if anyone on earth would have a great blind date, it would be you.”

“I hate to destroy your illusions,” Larkin said, “but I was home by ten o’clock?’

“That bad?”

“Let’s just say it wasn’t a five star evening.”

“How many stars was it?”

Larkin headed back toward her office, with Patti right on her heels. “I don’t know why you’re so nosy, Franklin,” she said over her shoulder. “Your own social life could keep Masters and Johnson busy well into the next century.”

Larkin pulled open the drapes in her office and looked down at the almost flooded parking lot.

“What was his name?” Patti made herself comfortable on the leather sofa adjacent to Larkin’s desk.

“Howard.”

Patti made a terrible face. “Why are all blind dates named Howard? I suppose he wore bifocals and had bad breath.”

Larkin settled down in her chair. Her toes sank into the thick silver carpeting. “Actually, he was quite nice looking,” she said, enjoying the look of surprise on the younger woman’s face. “About six feet tall, light hair, blue eyes.”

“No bifocals?”

“Twenty-twenty vision.”

“Did this Howard have the IQ of a raisin?”

“Afraid not. He has a master’s in business from Creighton University.”

“What about his breath?”

“I didn’t get close enough to find out.”

“I’ve been engaged to worse men than that.”

Larkin took a long sip of coffee while Patti fidgeted on the sofa. “I never said anything was wrong with him.”

“Then why were you home by ten o’clock? Unless...” Patti’s grin was wicked.

“We said good-night in the driveway and I went inside alone. Get the picture?”

“No, I don’t get the picture. If he wasn’t stupid or ugly or psychotic, what was the problem?”

“There was no problem, Patti. We had dinner together and that’s it. Sharing poached fish doesn’t mean a lifetime commitment.”

“Neither does sharing a few hours of pleasure,” Patti shot back. “I don’t understand how you can—”

“And I don’t understand how you can,” she said. “There must be more to talk about than poor Howard Wallace. Like business, for instance?”

Larkin’s gentle reproof was all that was necessary. Once again, Patti switched gears smoothly and filled Larkin in on all that had happened the day before.

Larkin listened, making careful notes on a big yellow legal pad. Patti’s greatest talent lay in her ability to distill the events of a fourteen hour workday into a five minute briefing that the White House staff would envy.

“You won’t believe this,” Patti said, “but we have to separate the red auras from the blue. The seer says she can’t work when the auras clash.”

“I knew we never should have listened to Sharon on this. All we need is a race riot in classroom number one.”

Patti laughed. “Can you imagine explaining it to the cops? ‘Well, officer, the silver auras refused to sit on the same side of the room with the yellows.’”

Larkin rolled her eyes. “They’d end up arresting us, for sure!”

They quickly ran through the rest of the day’s agenda, Patti stood up. “I guess that’s it—” she grinned at Larkin “—unless you want to talk about Dr. Wonderful Jakobs?”

“What happened to poor Howard? I thought he was the topic for this morning.”

“Just trying to see if you’re paying attention.”

“Out with you!” Larkin pointed toward the door. ”We have a school to run.”

Patti started to leave. “Hey, wait a minute!” she said, walking back toward Larkin. She bent down to examine the delicate pendant suspended around Larkin’s neck. “When did you get this? It’s beautiful.”

Larkin touched the golden ballet slippers with one finger. “Last night.”

“From Howard? I’m lucky if my blind dates don’t present me with the bill for dinner, and you get one who sends 14-karat presents. I give up!”

“You’re jumping to conclusions again, Patti. I don’t know who sent it to me.” She explained how Roger had accepted delivery on the package the previous afternoon. “For all I know, it could be a belated birthday present from one of my brothers.”

They heard a knock, and Larkin looked over to see Gordon standing in the doorway to her office.

“Come on in and see what
some
brothers give as birthday presents, my dear,” Patti teased as she pulled the young man into Larkin’s office. “Take a look at that little trinket around Larkin’s neck.”

Gordon looked uncomfortable as he glanced at the ballet slipper charm that Larkin’s heart went out to him. “Is Patti always so cruel to you?” she asked lightly, allowing the charm to drop back beneath the neckline of her dress. “I should draw up a law against older siblings.”

Gordon’s smile disappeared as suddenly as it had come. “You draw it up, I’ll sign it.” His eyes met Larkin’s for an instant. “I’m almost done with the ceiling,” he said, gesturing toward the rear classroom. “All I have to do is get the tiles over at the hardware store, and that’s it.”

Before Larkin could say a word, he disappeared.

“Why do I feel that I make him a nervous wreck? Every time I say more than two words to him, he takes off like a fugitive.” She looked at Patti. “Have I done something to offend him?”

“The contrary. I think he’s so dazzled by you that he can hardly think straight.” Larkin made a face and Patti laughed. “Face it, Larkin, you’ve been cursed by the gods: Every man who meets you automatically falls at your feet.”

A crystal clear vision of Alex Jakobs, stubbornly refusing to fall at her feet, popped up and Larkin tried to ignore it. “What I’ve been cursed with is an assistant with a smart mouth.” She glanced at the enormous clock on the wall opposite her desk. “It’s almost a quarter to nine. Unless you plan on greeting our seer with a towel wrapped around your head ...”

Patti reached up and touched the soggy towel. With a groan, she hurried down the hall, and Larkin heard the bathroom door slam shut behind her.

She’d give him forty-eight hours to make his first move, and then it was caution be damned.

“
I
’m too
old for this.” Alex collapsed into a kitchen chair and gasped for breath. “Anyone who thinks running a marathon is hard work should try playing catch with an eight-year-old.” He accepted a glass of orange juice from Judy and shook his head. “How in hell do you and Phil manage?”

Judy Lincoln, a small, pretty brunette with a ready smile, bit into a still warm blueberry muffin. “We’re younger than you,” she said. “It makes a big difference.”

“Three months younger, doesn’t count, Judy.” Alex was seriously concerned by his lack of stamina. “I swear Tommy is turbocharged. Five minutes into the game and I thought I was going to have to call time for an oxygen break.” He took a long sip of orange juice. “Do you take special vitamins? A space age diet the rest of the world hasn’t caught on to yet? There must be some secret.”

“It’s known as parenthood. You’d be surprised how much energy you can muster when you have two juvenile demons on your hands.” She leaned over to pat his hand. “You’ll learn about it someday, friend.”

“When I’m on Social Security, at the rate I’m going.” He poured himself some coffee from the pot on the table. “Work doesn’t leave me a lot of time for socializing.”

“Try that excuse on someone else, Dr. Jakobs. I’m married to a psychologist, too, remember. Phil manages to find time.”

“That’s an old friend for you. Never let me get away with a thing, do you?” It was a hell of a lot easier to blame his aloneness on work pressures than to admit that the thought of trying again sometimes seemed the most difficult thing he would ever do.

“I don’t mean to push, Alex. It’s just that it’s been four years. Life does go on, you know.”

“I know. It took me quite a while to remember exactly why it did.”

From high school through graduate school it had been Alex-and-Rikki-and-Phil-and-Judy, an eight-legged organism that suffered the pain and poverty of student life together. Both couples had married in their freshman year of college; both had visions of a wonderful life. The American Dream had seemed easily within reach: careers, a house in the suburbs, two perfect children, and a new car every other year.

Phil and Judy had been lucky.

Alex and Rikki had not.

He’d worked through the anger and rage and denial, all the classic textbook stages of grief he’d studied in school and never really understood. Knowledge had done little to shield him from the sheer force of sorrow that hit him at odd moments and rendered him almost numb with a grief so intense that he wondered he didn’t die of it.

He hadn’t known that a man could feel such pain and still live.

But live he did. His rage burned itself out and his sharp-edged sorrow had finally dulled. He had managed to turn his life around and had become a reasonably happy—if often lonely—man.

It was only at times like this, surrounded by evidence of what could have been his if the fates had been kinder, that he found it hard to pretend he didn’t still want more.

Phil Lincoln burst through the back door, streaked with axle grease, and mercifully stopped Alex’s descent into melancholia.

“Look out the dining room window fast, Judy,” he said, pushing his hair off his brow with the back of his arm. “Your one and only daughter is doing wheelies in the driveway on her new tricycle.”

Judy leaped up and disappeared from the kitchen. Phil poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down in the seat Judy had vacated.

“First they want a tricycle, then a new Corvette.” He shook his head ruefully. “There’s no stopping progress, I tell you, Jakobs.”

Alex grinned at his friend of long standing. “Cameron’s only five, Phil. Aren’t you rushing things a bit? She hasn’t even graduated to training wheels yet.”

Phil groaned and took a sip of coffee. “Spoken like a true innocent. The distance between training wheels and training bras is shorter than you think.”

Obviously, this was going to be one of those days where every other remark was destined to remind Alex of the gaping holes in his life. “You still have a while, Phil. I don’t think either Cameron or Tommy is ready to leave the nest yet.”