If I Can't Have You (32 page)

“
There was a party at Sparta that weekend. It was the Fourth of July, and Harrison always threw a party to celebrate. I changed into a tux when I got home, got rid of the clothes I’d been wearing—I weighted them down and threw them into the ocean—and drove to Sparta.”

“Harrison said you were acting strange when you arrived.”

“Strange?” Trevor laughed. “I’d spent the night with a dead woman. I might have killed her, and I couldn’t remember. Of course I was acting strange.”

“You should have told Harrison. You should have told somebody what happened.”

“I didn’t want to drag anyone else into my problems. I’d already decided what I was going to do, so I just put on a good show for everyone, letting them think I was my normal self. I drank just as I always did. I ate and danced and played chess with Harry. Janet was there. I think she sensed something was wrong, but she didn’t say anything. When the fireworks started I took a bottle from the bar and walked down to the pool. Nothing seemed right any longer. My life might as well have ended in that bed with Carole because I felt dead. I couldn’t forget the sight of her body. I couldn’t forget the smell of her blood or the feel of that knife in my hand. I drank the rest of the bottle and I remember it slipping from my fingers and shattering on the marble. I said a quick prayer, maybe asking for forgiveness or something crazy like that, and then I walked into the pool. I lay facedown in the water and tried to think
of something other than death. Drowning seemed a pretty easy way to end everything. I was too big a coward to do it any other way.”

“That must be when Janet saw you.”

“I suppose. The last thing I remember was hearing someone scream, then everything went black, until I splashed out of the water and ended up here with you.”

Adriana squeezed his fingers tightly, and he wondered how she could listen to that story and still want to touch him?

“I should have died,” he said. “I didn’t deserve this second chance at life.” He looked into her warm blue eyes. “I’m sure I don’t deserve you, either.”

“Of course you do.”

“I don’t have many redeeming qualities.”

“You’re too hard on yourself,” she told him, placing a gentle hand over his heart. “When I look in your eyes I see nothing but warmth and kindness. When you smile, I want to smile, too. I don’t have to look too deeply to find the good, Trevor. It’s right out in the open. I’m afraid you’re the only one who hasn’t seen it.”

He leaned his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. “Maybe you bring out the good in me.”

She shook her head. “It’s always been there.” She tilted her face and kissed him lightly.

“I could be a murderer.”

“You’re not,” she said adamantly, shaking her head.

“What makes you so sure? Did I mention anyone else being in the house? Did I mention Carole haying any enemies?”

“I think you’ve spent so much time wondering whether you killed her that you’ve failed to wonder who else could have done it.”

“I was there. No one else was in the house.”

“It was dark. Carole rushed off to her room. You
grabbed a bottle of chilled champagne that you can’t explain and went outside for what, an hour? Two?”

“I wasn’t keeping track of time.”

Adriana knelt beside him again. “You were outside long enough for someone to kill Carole, someone who wanted to make love to you when you came inside.”

“Who?”

“Janet.”

Trevor laughed at Adriana’s preposterous statement. “That’s crazy. Janet wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“I don’t think she did it intentionally. I think she went crazy that night. I think your rejection at the party pushed her over the edge, and she didn’t know what she was doing.”

“Why would you think Janet did it?”

“That first day you were here, when I was gone all day, I went to see her.”

He frowned.
“Why?”

“I was looking for some way to prove that you weren’t really Trevor Montgomery.”

“I’d almost forgotten that you didn’t always believe me.”

“I believe everything about you now. Everything—especially that you’re not a murderer.”

“If she told you that she murdered Carole, she must be reliving some movie she’s seen.”

“She didn’t tell me that at all. She just wanted to talk about you. ‘He was a very wicked man,’ she told me. Of course, I already knew all that.”

“You’re stalling, Adriana. You’re accusing Janet of murder. What did she say to make you think that?”

“She just kept telling me that you left her, that you didn’t love her, that you liked other women too much.”

“That was common knowledge.”

“Let me finish. Please. She seemed so sad. She’d wanted you to love her the way she loved you.”

“I already told you. I didn’t want to get involved with her because I didn’t want to hurt her. I never touched her. Not once.”

“But that’s not what she thought. She was sick, remember? She’d been in a mental hospital. ‘He was my lover.’ That’s what she told me. She said that you had to keep it a secret from the public and from the studios.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Of course it’s crazy. But it’s what she thought. She was in love with you. She hated the fact that the studio wanted you to be with Carole. She was jealous.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“She didn’t have to. If I’d been Janet, I would have hated what the studio was doing, too. I would have despised Carole.”

“Enough to kill her?”

Adriana shook her head. “No, I couldn’t do that. But if you’d seen the look in Janet’s eyes, if you’d heard the way she told me that the doctors had made her forget all the bad things in her life, you’d believe that she was capable of killing someone.”

“I still don’t believe she did it. Where’s the proof?”

“You’re carrying it around with you.”

“What?”

Adriana touched his shoulders, sweeping one hand down his shoulder blade, over the five welts on his back.

“‘I wanted him to play rough,’ she told me.
‘I
did everything I could to make him mad. I even scratched his back until it bled. But he wouldn’t play my game. He just left me.’ That’s what she told me, Trevor. I’m sure she was in the beach house that night. I’m sure she killed Carole. When you came up from the beach, and told her to leave you alone, she
scratched you. She desperately wanted your attention.”

“Do you think I wouldn’t have known the difference between Carole and Janet?”

“You were drunk. It was dark. You were sicker than you’d ever been, and you said the woman who scratched you never spoke. You assumed it was Carole because it was her house. But I think it was Janet. That’s the only thing I can think. Maybe those scratches on your back don’t seem like convincing evidence to you, but they do to me.”

Trevor took a deep breath, trying to remember what he had felt, trying to remember the kisses and the feel of the woman’s hands on his body.

He closed his eyes, thinking about Janet and Carole. One tough, one sweet. One dead, the other possibly a murderer.

No, he could never believe that about Janet.

“It’s too much of a stretch to think Janet could have killed Carole,” he said. “A person would have to be mad to kill someone so brutally.”

“You’re forgetting something Trevor. Janet might be sweet, she might have been your friend, but she’s been in a mental hospital for the last sixty years and, as much as you hate to believe it, she
is
mad.”

A breeze blew in from the ocean when Trevor and Adriana returned to Santa Barbara, cooling the unusually warm night air. They crawled into bed and made love, as if for the first time, as if for the last, and Adriana fell asleep in his arms, her soft breathing music in his ears.

He loved her. God how he loved her.

That blessed thought lured him to sleep, to dreams filled with Adriana.

There were no nightmares—at last.

oOo

The buzz at the front door startled Trevor from sleep.

“Ignore it,” he begged as Adriana jumped up in bed. He rolled over and looked at the luminous numbers on the alarm. Nine o’clock. No sane person would ring unannounced at
that time of the morning
.

“I can’t just ignore it,” Adriana mumbled, climbing from bed and wrapping the body he knew so intimately in a white terry cloth robe. “What if it’s something important?”

“What could be more important than staying here with me and making love again?”

She leaned over his naked body and kissed his
lips. “Nothing’s more important than you, but I’ve given you my undivided attention for the past four days and nights. I have a job, responsibilities.”

Another ring and a pounding knock silenced her.

“I’ve got to get that,” she said, blowing him a kiss before she walked from the room.

Trevor slid from the bed and struggled into the tight black jeans Adriana had promised would loosen up. Man wasn’t meant to wear tight clothes—he’d definitely have to go shopping again.

He was buttoning the top button on the trousers when he walked into the living room through one door, and Stewart barged in through the front with his wife right behind.

“Calm down, Stewart,” Maggie mumbled as she followed her husband. “You’re going to have a stroke, sweetie.”

Stewart jerked around. Trevor couldn’t see the look on the lawyer’s face, but he assumed it was grim, considering the way Maggie instantly backed off and sat demurely on the love seat.

Stewart faced Trevor again, his face red with anger as he glared at Trevor’s naked chest, his bare feet, and his mussed-up hair.

“You look a bit upset, Stewart,” Adriana said, closing the door. “Would you like some coffee?”

“I’m not here for breakfast, I’m here for explanations,” Stewart stated. “First off, where have you been for the past four days? I’ve called the shop, I’ve called your number here, I even called Sparta, and Elliott said he hadn’t seen you.”

“We were at Sparta.” Adriana walked toward Trevor and slid her hand into his.

Stewart’s brows knit together as his gaze darted quickly over Adriana’s attire, then back to her eyes. “Why did Elliott lie?”

“I asked him to,” Adriana said calmly. “I didn’t want to be disturbed.”

“Was that your idea, or his?” Stewart asked, turning his glare toward Trevor.

“Mine, originally,” Trevor admitted. “I was tired of intrusions.”

“Why? You needed to get Adriana alone so you could seduce her, make her fall under the same spell you’ve put on other women?”

Trevor frowned, not liking the vicious turn of the conversation, but he kept his tone light and a smile in his eyes, “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

“Neither do I,” Adriana said. “Care to explain?”

“Why don’t I begin here,” Stewart said.

He threw one of the papers he was holding onto the coffee table.

“What the hell were the two of you doing wandering around Forest Lawn?”

“Looking at headstones,” Adriana answered quickly. “Haven’t you and Maggie done crazy, spur-of-the-moment things on occasion?”

“What my wife and I do or don’t do isn’t of the least importance at the moment.”

“And what we do is absolutely none of your business, either,” Adriana tossed back, standing her ground with Stewart.

“It
is
my business when you go gallivanting around in cemeteries. What I want to know is why the hell you had to check out Carole Sinclair’s grave?”

Trevor grabbed the paper from the table and held it out so he and Adriana could see the photo. They were embracing in front of the massive marble memorial, and Carole’s name blazed in the background.

“
Trevor Montgomery and Carole Sinclair
—
together again,’
” Trevor read. “Well, at least they’ve got my name correct.”

“This isn’t funny,” Stewart bellowed. “Adriana’s
in that photo, too. Maybe you should read a little further.”