Promises in the Night: A Classic Romance - Book 2 (6 page)

Alex understood more about the power of television than anyone Larkin had ever met. He was using that power to keep a woman alive. The sweat on his forehead glittered in the hot stage lights, but he seemed to notice nothing beyond the camera focused on him and the woman whose life he held in his hands. He had taken a cool medium and transformed it into something as intimate as a hand to hold when life seemed at its bleakest.

Her admiration for him skyrocketed.

However, the fact still remained that unless help could reach her in time, Karen would die.

The director raced in from the reception area. “What’s going on?” he asked Larkin. “Any progress?”

“Not much,” she whispered. “A first name.”

Marty muttered a curse. “The phone company is getting nowhere. A storm has some of the lines down.”

Alex caught Marty’s eye. Marty shook his head and Larkin saw a brief flash of despair on Alex’s face.

“What’s all that music in the background?” Marty asked Larkin as an aria from
Carmen,
badly sung, floated from the studio’s sound system. “She got a radio on?”

“No. She lives over a music studio.”

“Great,” Marty muttered. “There’s only seven thousand music studios in our viewing area. We should be able to find her by the turn of the century.”

On camera, Alex turned slightly to wipe sweat from his face. “I like the music,” he said calmly. “Do they give recitals, Karen?”

No response.

“Don’t give up on me now, Karen! Damn it, answer me.”

Karen’s voice, weak and indistinct to begin with, faded until her words were totally obliterated by the sound of a railroad train rumbling close by.

“What train is that?” Alex asked over the roar of engines. “What train would you take?”

“Tired... let me sleep.”

Alex stood up and the camera angled upward to maintain the close-up of his face. “Sleep later. What train; Karen? How can I get to the school?”

“Will you let me sleep then?”

“Of course,” he said, and Larkin knew he was lying. He wasn’t a man to give up while there was still hope. His power and energy seemed to fill the studio.

“Syosset,” Karen said finally.

Alex continued to speak, but Larkin was pulled back into memory. When the Learning Center was first starting up its music courses, she had personally visited every musician and coach on Long Island in an attempt to lure them into teaching a class for her. There were at least five in Syosset that she knew about. It was worth a shot.

Larkin turned and ran for the reception area and the telephone book. Alex’s strong voice and Karen’s steadily fading one echoed in her ears as the studio door closed behind her.

“Hang on, Karen,” she whispered as she reached for the phone. “We’re almost there.”

T
hanks to Larkin’s call
, the police were able to track down Karen O’Rourke to a small apartment next to Ogilvie’s House of Music and Dance in Syosset, a stop on the Huntington line of the Long Island Railroad. A squad car and ambulance were on their way.

For the last ten minutes the silence from Karen’s end of the line was so complete that Larkin feared the worst. Alex ordered the camera to stop rolling after Karen lost consciousness, and the stage was only dimly lit. The telephone connection seemed to be fading in and out. Each time it seemed as if they’d lose it altogether, Larkin found herself clenching her fists until her nails dug red grooves into the palms of her hands.

Alex vibrated with nervous energy, as if his state of near constant motion could transmit itself to Karen and keep her breathing, keep her alive. He paced the perimeter of the sound stage like a captured animal seeking escape. All of his concentration was on the woman whose life he’d tried to save, and Larkin found herself yearning to comfort him but knowing she hadn’t the right.

Suddenly shouts of “Police! Open up!” and the sound of splintering wood echoed from the speakers ringing the stage. Alex stopped pacing, and his eyes met Larkin’s. She held her breath and waited, her heart thudding wildly.

Next to her, Marty Benino crossed himself.

“Doctor Jakobs?” A male voice came on the line. “You there?”

Alex went back to the desk where the remote hookup was. “Speaking.”

“Yeah, this is Sergeant Wozniak. We found the victim.”

Alex’s eyes closed and Larkin saw a vein throbbing along his right temple.
Let her be alive,
she thought.
Please, God, let her be alive.

“She’s unconscious, but the EMT’s are working her over right now. Her vital signs are good. We’ll take her to the—”

The rest of Wozniak’s words were drowned out by a cheer, loud and spontaneous, from the crowd in the studio. Marty and a few of the stagehands raced up to Alex, pumping his hand and slapping him on the back.

Larkin stood at the edge of the stage, watching. The intensity of Alex’s efforts had transmitted itself to her, and her heart was filled with more emotions than she could put a name to. Dark shadows ringed his beautiful eyes, shadows that hadn’t been there an hour ago. Finally he broke free and approached her.

“I think we missed our reservation at Mario’s,” he said when he reached her. His smile was warm but tired. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be!” Larkin touched his forearm. “You were wonderful.”

His expression was rueful. “Not that wonderful. If you hadn’t gotten the ball rolling, the police would never have found her in time.”

“It was that close?”

“It was that close. Thank you.”

He draped his arm lightly across her shoulders and led her out of the soundstage and toward his little shared office down the hall. His action surprised her; Alex Jakobs seemed a man who gave comfort to others rather than one who sought comfort for himself.

Once in the cramped office, he grabbed a weathered trench coat from the coatrack and slid some papers into a leather briefcase that had seen better days. She liked it that he didn’t feel the need to surround himself with the slick symbols of success currently popular.

“I can’t promise you Mario’s, but we might be able to get a table at the Red Caboose. It’s not a five star restaurant but the food’s good and—”

“It’s after ten. Most kitchens are closed by now.

“Damn it!” He thought for a moment. “How about a diner? There’s the Candlelight on Vet’s Highway or the Townhouse on--”

“No,” she said, pulling her car keys from the pocket of her coat and slipping her arm through Alex’s as they left the building. “I know a better place.”

“Will the kitchen be open?”

She grinned. “I can guarantee it.”

Some of his fatigue seemed to lift and he grinned back at her. “How’s the food?”

“I’ve never heard any complaints. All you can eat, great music, wonderful atmosphere. You can even take off your tie and put your feet up if you like.”

“Sounds too good to be true. What’s the catch? Do you have to hunt for your own steak or trap your own lobster?”

“The menu’s limited to omelets and salad tonight, and you might have to help with the dishes.”

“And the name of this perfect hideaway?”

“Larkin’s,” she said. “Larkin’s Place.”

T
he drive
to Larkin’s house took fifteen minutes, and Alex found that he needed every second of that time to regain his emotional balance.

The agonizing tension he’d felt as he tried to keep Karen O’Rourke from tipping over the edge had given way to euphoria. Unfortunately, that elation was usually short-lived, and Alex knew it wouldn’t be long before reality took hold once more.

However, at the moment he was pleased with himself, his profession and what was left of his evening with Larkin.

She turned off Main Street in Bayport, then headed farther south, leading him down a winding tree-lined street. She signaled, then pulled into the driveway of a two-story Cape Cod that seemed perched at the edge of Great South Bay. A light burned in the living room, and through the rain he was able to make out the shape of a piano near the enormous front window.

Not exactly the condo with community pool he’d been expecting.

Alex parked his car next to hers. Larkin was already hurrying through the rain to her front door, and by the time he ran up the flagstone walk, she had the door open and ushered him inside.

“Ah, relief!” She sighed and slipped off her heels the second she locked the front door behind them. “Here, give me your coat, then make yourself comfortable. I’ll go hang these up.”

She disappeared down the narrow hallway, and Alex stepped into the living room. Even his eye, uneducated though it was in the fine points of interior decoration, recognized the skill with which she’d blended comfort and beauty. The room glowed in soft shades of peach and cream and Wedgwood blue, and the faintest trace of her perfume seemed to surround him.

Classical music, low and intimate, suddenly floated through the room, and he noticed speakers unobtrusively placed in the walls. The baby grand piano gleamed in the lamplight, and the photographs atop it spoke of a history of family and friendship that, despite years of training in suppressing such feelings Alex envied with all his heart. Brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, nieces and nephews, parents and friends—the whole wonderful chain of human experience was right there in a collection of Polaroid shots and Kodak prints that, while not enough to send Scavullo running scared, were more than enough to remind Alex of all he’d missed.

“Looking for skeletons in my family tree?”

Larkin stood in the doorway, watching him. Her hair was loose around her shoulders.

She glided into the room with that ballerina walk of hers and pulled a bottle of Scotch from the bar against the long wall. “I can promise you there are no fugitives from justice mingled in with the masses,”

He picked up a photo of two red-haired little girls with smiles much like Larkin’s own. “Not even these two? They look like they could be a pair of hell-raisers.”

She handed him a glass filled with two fingers of a very fine Scotch and poured herself a white wine. “Those are my nieces Emily and Rachel. My brother Billy never knew the meaning of hard work until they came along.” Her laugh was low and womanly. “You think a pearl in the nostril was difficult? You’d be in intensive care after an evening with those two.”

She took a sip of wine, then motioned for him to follow her.

Moments later Alex found himself settled in a captain’s chair at her kitchen table. He took off his jacket and tie; Scotch warmed his soul, while the sight of Larkin in her sexy green dress did wonders at warming his body. He was just about to tell her how much he appreciated her offer of dinner when a large and arrogant calico cat sauntered in from the living room and with no preamble whatsoever leaped onto his lap.

Larkin turned from the stove where she was frying large slices of Virginia ham and groaned. “Amanda’s spoiled rotten, Alex. Feel free to shoo her away.”

“No need.” He took a swallow of Scotch and let it blaze its way down to his belly. “I like cats.”

“She sheds,” Larkin warned as she took a carton of eggs from the refrigerator. “Your nice black suit will never be the same.”

He scratched Amanda behind her right ear and was rewarded by a deep and luxurious purr. “There are plenty more nice black suits where this came from.” Amanda stretched and settled in for some more tactile pleasure.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“I was surprised to see you had a house,” he remarked, scratching Amanda behind her left ear now. “I’d imagined a—”

“I know just what you imagined,” Larkin interrupted with a laugh. “A condo, right?”

He grinned. “The thought did cross my mind.”

“Never! I come from Nevada and I need as much space as I can find. My dad owned a three-hundred-acre ranch way out beyond the Hoover Dam, where we spent our summers, and we thought we were overcrowded!”

“How big
is
your family?”

“Seven, including my parents.”

Alex laughed. “That’s almost forty-five acres per person. In my old neighborhood in the Bronx you could have fit two hundred families, three churches and a synagogue in that much space.”

“Can you imagine my culture shock when I moved to Manhattan? The crowds on the subway were enough to send me running back home again.”

The idea of having a home to run back to was alien to Alex, as alien as the idea of wide-open spaces had once been. He had spent his adolescence going from foster home to foster home, living in cramped quarters with total strangers who had no idea how to reach the introverted child he had become after his parents’ death. Even the notion of family had seemed no more than a sweet children’s fable before he met Rikki. It was she who had found the key to his secretive, private heart, and it was she who had opened his heart up to love.

“Alex?” Larkin had stopped what she was doing at the stove and her great green eyes seemed concerned. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he said, finishing his Scotch and moving Amanda to a more comfortable position on his lap. “I was just thinking that the reason I took up flying was to get away from the crowds.”

She was still watching him closely, and he could tell by the look on her face that she didn’t buy his explanation—not totally. “Some people take up boating for the same reason.”

He made a face. “Have you seen Long Island Sound lately? It looks like the Expressway during rush hour. Give me the open sky anytime.”

Larkin looked unconvinced. “You have one of those tiny little planes I see at Republic Airport?”

He nodded. “A Cessna 207. I’d like to take you up one day.”

“My brother Billy flies a Piper Cherokee. He’s been trying to get me to fly with him for years, and so far I’ve managed to think up an excuse every time.”

He leaned forward, smiling at Amanda’s grumble of displeasure at being disturbed. “You don’t need excuses with me, Larkin. But if you’d like to give it a try, we could fly out to the Cape one day.”

She considered it for a moment, then shrugged her slim shoulders. “Oh, what the hell!” she said finally. “Maybe we’ll start offering flying lessons at the Learning Center. Would you be interested in--?”

“I’m not qualified to teach,” he said, “but I can put you in touch with someone who is.”

The water boiled for coffee and she turned back to the stove, fussing with filters and freshly ground beans. Suddenly the big country kitchen was redolent with the smells of ham and cinnamon muffins and good strong coffee. Soft music drifted in from the stereo in the living room, and he enjoyed watching the way Larkin’s slender form seemed to absorb sound and turn it into motion. Amanda moved her furry face against his hand and he stroked her until the sound of her purring mingled with the other sounds in the room.

Outside, rain beat against the windows and the wind blowing off the bay beyond the backyard made the house shudder with its force. Inside, he was surrounded by intense beauty and a feeling of tenderness that had been absent from his life for a long, long time.

Alex had forgotten exactly how seductive a force domestic bliss could be. Now that he had been reminded, he wondered how he had survived without it for so long.

H
er home felt
different with Alex there. It was as simple—and as complicated—as that.

Larkin didn’t know if it was her overactive romantic imagination or the fact that she had the monthly blues with a vengeance, but she was inordinately pleased to have Alex Jakobs sitting at her big maple kitchen table, with Amanda sprawled on his lap like visiting royalty.

Even when her Manhattan friends had called her crazy for giving up city life for a house in the suburbs, Larkin had known that it was the right move for her. The instability of her life with Vladimir Karpov had made her yearn for security; so she bought a house that pleased her and decorated it in a way that made her happy. She filled it with family and friends, music and good food, then wondered time and again why a small part of her heart always seemed to be searching for more.

At that moment, however, it was more than enough to be able to look across her kitchen and see the handsome and renowned Dr. Alex Jakobs up to his tailored elbows in calico-cat fur.

She was just about to dish everything up when the telephone rang. Amanda jumped from Alex’s lap and disappeared from the kitchen, obviously highly affronted by the interruption.

For once Larkin thought Amanda had the right idea. “Oh, just let it ring,” Larkin said to Alex as it blared a second time. “Omelets wait for no one.”

“I can take over for you, Larkin. It might be important.” Doctors, evidently, never let a phone go unanswered.

She shook her head and took two plates from the cabinet overhead. “Let the machine get it;” she said, taking the cinnamon muffins from the toaster oven and putting them on a plate. “That’s one of the few real blessings of the age of technology.”

The machine in the living room clicked on as Larkin folded the enormous omelet onto a serving platter. Beep. “This is Roger, darling.”

Alex’s left eyebrow arched in question.

“No one but no one is doing the clubs tonight. I’ll be home early. You light a fire and I’ll bring the wine. Ciao, bella.” Beep.

So much for the age of technology.

Alex, to his everlasting credit, didn’t say a word. He simply got up from his chair to help Larkin carry the food to the table.

“I should explain about Roger,” she said as she sat down opposite him and began to serve, up the bacon and cheddar omelet.

“You don’t have to explain anything.”

She noted the amused twinkle in his grey eyes. “Roger is my best friend, my next-door neighbor and the piano player at Rick’s Place.”

“Rick’s Place?”

She detected a note of above average curiosity in Alex’s voice and savored it. “It’s a club,” she said. “The best on Fire Island.”

Alex grinned. “I imagine that’s why I haven’t heard of it.’’

“We met a few years back at a fund-raiser for the arts. He’s the one who told me this house was available.”

“Where did you live before?”

“A terrible little sixth-floor walkup on the West Side. My apartment was next to a drummer who practiced morning, noon and night.”

“How did you manage to get any sleep?”

Looking back, she found it hard to imagine. “I suppose Mr. L. worked us so hard that I could have slept in Penn Station during rush hour. We’d have classes all morning, rehearsals all afternoon, then performances each night: It didn’t leave me much time to worry about ambience.”

“Reminds me of grad school,” Alex said. “I used to race from class to my night job and fit in homework when normal people slept. There were times when Rikki and I didn’t see each other for days on end.”

“Rikki?” Larkin looked up. It was the first time Alex had referred to anyone in his past, and she was instantly fascinated. “Your roommate?”

His deep grey eyes met hers. “My wife.”

She felt as if the air had been knocked out of her. So he wasn’t perfect, after all. “Well,” she said, her voice crisp and matter of fact, “perhaps we should hurry this meal along so you can get home. I’d hate for her to be worried about you.”

“My wife died four years ago, Larkin.”

Impulsively she took his hand. “Alex, I didn’t know.”

He nodded. “I didn’t expect you to know.”

A million questions hammered at her brain. How long had they been married? What was Rikki like? Did they have children together? Had they been happy?

“Hell of a conversation stopper.” Alex’s voice broke the awkward stillness in the kitchen. “There’s no easy way to work that into things.”

She started to remove her hand from atop his, but instead, he laced his fingers through hers. His hand felt warm and strong and very alive.

“I want to say I’m sorry, but it seems so inadequate.”

“You don’t have to say anything.” The look on Alex’s face told her that he understood all she was feeling—both her discomfort and her sympathy. “I loved Rikki very much. She’ll always be part of me.”

His statement, simple and honest, touched her heart. When she left Vladimir, she had felt as if her world were coming to an end. Looking at Alex, hearing his words, she understood how little she really knew about love and loss.

“She must have been very special, Alex.”
She was also very lucky.

“What we had was special. I’d like to find that again someday.”

“You will,” she said, feeling inexplicably sad.

His hold on her hand tightened, and Larkin felt an odd sensation in the center of her chest. The kitchen was quiet except for the sounds of their breathing, the rain tapping against the bay window and the relentless ticking of the antique clock in the corner.

If Larkin didn’t know better, she would think she was falling just a little bit in love.

T
he dark grey
car had been in her driveway for over an hour now.

He didn’t recognize the license plate but quickly committed the number to memory. It was important that he know everything about her in order to keep her safe from harm.

The kitchen light was on, and he moved quietly along the side of the house, shielded by the evergreen bushes lining the walkway. Rain, slashing and violent, obscured his vision„ but still he was able to make out her figure at the kitchen table. Her long hair shimmered in the lamplight. She was saying something to a man whose back was to the window, and he could see her hand in his, resting on the maple tabletop.