If I Can't Have You (24 page)

She drew back and glared at him. “All it takes is an insane caption printed beneath the picture to turn it from something innocent into the makings of a scandal. I’ve avoided all of that for nearly eight years.”

“You’ve run away from it, that’s all. But you’ve run away from life at the same time. You can’t run away forever.”

“Why not?”

“Because running away doesn’t solve anything. Just ask me. I know all about it.”

She stared at him for the longest time, then rested her head on his shoulder.

“You taught me how to dance tonight,” she whispered into his ear. “Can you teach me not to be afraid?”

“I’m afraid of things, too, Adriana. I need your help just as much as you need mine. We can’t change things overnight.”

“One step at a time, right?” she asked, tilting her head to look at him once more.

He kissed her forehead, her nose, then tenderly kissed her lips.

“And we’ll take each step slow and easy. There’s no need to rush, Adriana. No need to rush.”

Adriana touched her lips, lightly smoothing her fingers over the tender flesh, remembering the kisses she’d shared with Trevor in the cemetery, in the car during the long drive home, and when they’d parted company at her bedroom door just an hour ago. So many times she’d dreamed of his kiss, but her dreams couldn’t compare with the warmth she’d felt in his arms. Never before had she felt such gentleness, such passion.

The man she’d dreamed of h
ad traveled sixty years through
time to show her there was nothing wrong, nothing sinful about enjoying a kiss and the touch of a man. For only a moment she let her father’s anger cloud her memories. She remembered the last time he’d caught her with one of the young gardeners who worked at Sparta. It was the second time he’d caught her with Robbie, it was the second time he’d yelled and screamed, but it was the only time he’d had a stroke.

This time no one told her what she’d done was wrong. This time she hadn’t questioned herself or even thought of her father. For once in her adult life, she wasn’t going to question the right or wrong of something. She was just going to cherish the memory
and pray there would be many more to come.

She stifled a yawn as she slipped her feet into black patent sandals. She’d slept briefly during the trip home, giving in to Trevor’s pleas to let him drive. But sleep was far from her mind now. She wished she could ignore the meeting she had to rush off to and spend the day with Trevor, allowing him to teach her new and wonderful things. Fortunately, there was always tonight.

The scents of frying bacon and strong French roast coffee wafted down the hallway when she opened her bedroom door. He’d said he’d fix her breakfast, even though it was well past noon. She wasn’t hungry for anything more than his kisses, but he’d insisted on preparing her a meal she’d never forget. Cooking was a trait she hadn’t expected from him. Golf, maybe. Polo. Betting at the track. Those were the hobbies men like Trevor indulged in—not cooking or clipping roses. He was so much different from the man she’d idolized, so much better than the man she’d dreamed of.

She found him standing over the stove turning slices of crispy bacon in a pan full of hot grease. She leaned against the doorjamb and contemplated his body. Strong, long legs encased in slim black jeans. His legs had looked good in tights when he’d played a knight of the realm and a devil-may-care pirate—they looked even better when he acted out the all-American boy next door. The white cotton shirt, its cuffs rolled up two complete folds, stretched across his shoulders and back, and she could see the flex of his muscles under the sleeves. He looked like a piece of heaven fallen down into her home.

A piece of heaven with many earthly faults.

Maybe it was all of those faults that made her care so much.

“Smells good,” she said, wanting to capture his attention.

He turned, and when she saw that movie-idol smile shining across his face she felt a tug at her heart and a quiver racing through her chest.

He switched off the flame on the stove and perused her body slowly, from the tip of her head, over the white silk T-shirt she wore with a lacy camisole beneath, down the entire length of her black pinstriped trousers, to the toes of her shoes, then back again. Slowly he beckoned her toward him with a wiggle of his finger, and she floated into his open arms.

Tilting her face toward him, he captured her lips.

Gentle, so very, very gentle. How could anyone find fault with a feeling like this? There was no sin involved, just pure, heavenly bliss.

“You’ve been sampling the bacon,” she whispered.

‘I was hungry,” he murmured, “and you weren’t around.”

She tensed when his fingers brushed over her bottom, when he trailed tender warm kisses from her lips, over her chin, and down to the hollow of her throat. “You smell of strawberries.”

“Raspberries.”

“I could have smelled like raspberries, too, if you’d let me shower with you.”

“I believe you said something about taking things slow and easy.”

“Maybe I lied.”

She felt his fingers slide through her hair as he pulled her close, his kisses turning hot and hard. She opened her mouth to him and shivered with excitement when his tongue danced with hers.

The hand he held against her back tugged at her blouse, pulling it from the waistband of her trousers, and suddenly she felt the warmth of his palm against her bare skin, felt the strength of his chest, the hardness of his desire.

What little experience she’d had with men hadn’t prepared her for the intensity of his passion, but an instinct as old as time seemed to take over. Like Trevor had done with her blouse, she pulled his shirt from his jeans and slid her fingers over his back. His skin was smooth and warm, and...

She felt the five welts on his shoulder blade, welts made by another woman at another time in another heat of passion.

This wasn’t right. It wasn’t right at all.

She drew away, and his eyes narrowed in question.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

She shook her head, unable to tell him. “Nothing.” She tucked her shirt back under her waistband. “I have an appointment I need to get to.”

“Don’t run away from me, Adriana.”

“I have a meeting. You know I have to go.”

“I’m not interested in your meeting. I’m interested in knowing why you’re running away from the feelings you have for me.”

“Things are going too fast.”

“You’re making excuses. Dammit, Adriana, I thought we were beyond all this. I thought you’d finally stopped pulling away from me.”

“I made a mistake, that’s all. I got wrapped up in the dancing and the music and... and I made a mistake.”

“You think kissing me was a mistake?”

“Yes! Letting you into my life was a mistake, too.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re trying to seduce me.”

He laughed darkly. “And I’ve failed at every attempt because you get scared and run away.”

“I have good reason to be scared of you.”

“Give me a reason.”

“I could give you plenty.”

“Let’s start with just one.”

“Okay. That’s easy. I don’t like drunks.”

“What you like is making excuses rather than facing things head-on.”

“That’s not true.”

Trevor shook his head, then ripped open a cabinet above the sink. He pulled down the only bottle of whiskey remaining in the house, twisted off the cap, and poured the amber liquid down the sink.

“You wanted to see me get rid of the whiskey, well I have. What’s the next reason you have for being afraid of me? My well-documented womanizing? Do you want me to wear blinders, so I’ll never look at another woman?”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“I can stop drinking for you, Adriana. I can easily forget other women because I’m not interested in anyone other than you. But I can’t do the one thing that you really want. I can’t prove to you or to me that I didn’t murder Carole Sinclair. Either you believe in me or you don’t.”

She looked away from his eyes and walked to the window, staring out at the bright blue sky but seeing nothing. “I want to believe.”

“Wanting to believe and actually believing are two different things.”

“What do you want me to do, forget sixty years of speculation about that murder? Do you want me to forget the fact that you woke up in bed with a dead woman? Forget that you were holding the knife and that you were covered with blood?”

“That’s exactly what I want you to forget.”

She spun around. “Then you forget it first. You’re the one who brings it up constantly. You’re the one who lies in bed at night tossing and turning, then drowns out the fear with a bottle of whiskey.”

“I’m not the only one trying to hide.”

Adriana sighed deeply. They were getting nowhere. The morning had been ruined, all because of
those scratches on his back and a reputation and murder he could never live down.

For the first time in days she wished he’d never stepped foot into her life. She wished that she was lonely again.

She wished she’d quit lying to herself. She wasn’t afraid of Trevor’s past, she was afraid of herself.

She was afraid of falling any deeper in love—then losing him.

She looked at her watch, knowing she had to get away before they said even more things they might regret. “I’ve got a meeting to go to.”

“Go ahead. Run again, but nothing will have changed while you’re gone.”

“I’m not running. I’m taking care of business.”

Turning, Adriana walked out of the kitchen, but she couldn’t miss his parting words.

“I’ve come sixty years through time to find you, Adriana. You can run from me, push me away, even tell me to leave, but I’m not going to give you up without a fight.”

What the hell was he doing? For nearly a week he’d done nothing but cook, eat, clip flowers, and feel sorry for his lot in life. But not any longer. He was bored with others tellin
g him
what he should or shouldn’t do. Tired of sitting around with nothing fulfilling to occupy his time, with the exception of the glorious moments he spent with Adriana.

Hell, how could he possibly fight for her or make her love him when he had nothing to offer?

All of that was going to change, though. He was taking charge of his life. He had to find a job, preferably one in Hollywood. He had to make some money to replace the stash he’d hidden away in 1938 and nearly depleted in 1998. And he had to get that new I.D. He had very little money, no job, and an identity he could never prove. He had to start a new
life, and he wasn’t going to sit around and wait for Stewart Rosenblum to call Adriana about the identification. This was one issue he had to take into his own hands.

Half an hour later Trevor was seated in Stewart’s office. “Any luck obtaining a birth certificate?”

Rosenblum leaned back in his chair, his hands steepled in front of his face. “Why the hurry? I told Adriana I’d call her when the paperwork was ready.”

“I need to find a job. It’s difficult getting one without some form of identification.”

“You could always lie.”

“I could, but I’ve never been good at it.”

Rosenblum raised a doubting brow. “My sources tell me otherwise.”

Stewart reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a file of papers. “I sent someone to that little village in Mexico. Funny thing. No one had ever seen you.”

“We lived in the mountains,” Trevor lied, keeping calm as he attempted to patch the holes Stewart had uncovered in his story.

“There are no mountains nearby.”

“Then your spy must have gone to the wrong Santa Elena.”

“I don’t think so,” Stewart said. He thumbed through the papers and ran his fingers down a typewritten page of notes.

“The only Gabrielle Ramon Montgomery we could trace was born in 1872. She was a socialite, the wife of a well-respected Chicago lawyer in the early part of this century. His name, by the way, was Trevor Montgomery.”

“My grandparents.”