Nightway (20 page)

“Yes. I heard you were with him when he had the attack. This must have been very hard for you,” he said, comforting her.

Lanna was tempted to lean her head on the shoulder of this man, who seemed to understand so much of what she was feeling. “We had gone out to dinner to celebrate my birthday. I asked John to come in for coffee when we got back to my apartment. When I went into the kitchen to fix it, I heard him fall. I—”

“You don’t need to talk about it,” Chad offered when Lanna hesitated. “It didn’t turn out to be much of a birthday with all this happening, did it?”

“No.” She began to feel she was treading unfairly on his solicitude and stood up straighter, withdrawing her hand from the clasp of his. She smiled weakly to show him that she was all right. All the while in the background, she was conscious of the man watching them, so aloof, so unreadable.

“Lanna—may I call you that?” Tipping his head to the side, Chad smiled in an engaging fashion that brought an immediate nod of permission. “I have something to ask you, but I don’t want you to misunderstand my reason.”

“What is it?” She gave him her undivided attention.

“I would prefer that no one knew my father had been with you this evening when he had his attack. However innocent your friendship is with my father, once the newspapers get hold of the story, it won’t matter. I don’t want to see my family hurt or your reputation damaged by any sly innuendos that would appear in print,” he explained. “With my father being who he is, the news that he has suffered another heart attack will naturally be reported. That can’t be avoided. But I can shield you and my mother from the gutter mentality of the press. I can do this with your cooperation.”

“How can I help?” His thoughtfulness and his concern for her reputation touched Lanna and disarmed her completely.

“I’d like you to go home. Hawk will take you.” At her expression of dismay, he added, “And I promise I’ll call you if there is the slightest change in my father’s condition. Reporters will be coming. If I’m going to keep your name out of the paper, it will be wise if you aren’t here; otherwise, your presence will cause a lot of difficult questions. I wouldn’t want to put you through that.”

“Yes. Yes, I understand,” Lanna agreed.

“Thank you, Lanna.” His smile warmed her with its gentleness. “And I promise you, your name won’t be mentioned at all in connection with my father. I know it’s what he would want.”

There was no question in her mind that John was a gentleman in the truest sense of the word. So, it seemed, was his son. She found that very reassuring.

“You are very kind, Mr. Faulkner,” she murmured.

“Call me Chad,” he insisted, then straightened with a certain grimness. “I’m sorry I can’t stay any longer, but you must understand that my mother needs me.”

“Naturally. I don’t mean to keep you,” Lanna assured him with a quick shake of her head.

Chad half-turned, reaching out to touch a hand to her shoulder in silent comfort. “Hawk will see to it that you arrive home safely. And I will call you as soon as there is something to report.”

“Thank you.” But a certain wariness crept into her eyes when she glanced at the taciturn man who was to escort her back to her apartment. The man Chad had referred to as Hawk returned her look with a blandness that made it difficult for Lanna to tell whether he was displeased that his services had been volunteered.

Chad paused at the door to say something to the man. The indifferent blue gaze swung lazily to Chad. Lanna didn’t hear what was said. The man called Hawk nodded in brief response, but whatever was said, it didn’t alter his expression. There was an alertness about the man that was never relaxed, even when he appeared to be. It made Lanna feel uneasy when Chad left the lounge and she was alone with him.

“I could take a cab,” she suggested.

There was mockery in the rash line of his smile. “You wouldn’t want to upset Chad’s plans, would you?” His voice drawled around concisely spoken words. “He might worry about you. You wouldn’t want that.”

“No.” Lanna wondered why she had the feeling he was ridiculing her.

The traffic on the city streets had thinned with the lateness of the hour. The beams of streetlights illuminated the car in a rhythmic pattern, with traffic lights turning green as they approached each intersection with a regularity that seemed uncanny.

Lanna inspected the man behind the wheel with a sidelong study. From shadow to streetlight, his thick hair was the black color of a gleaming onyx stone. There was a faint crook in a nose that was otherwise straight as a blade. His cheekbones were sharp and prominent, intensifying the lean hollows of his cheeks and the deep grooves that arced from his nose to the corner of his mouth. It was a thin mouth, but not lacking in humor. His chin and jaw were strong. It was a hard face, an arresting face that excited interest while it aroused caution.

But it was his eyes that Lanna found most unnerving of all. Their deep cobalt-blue color was such a contrast to that black hair and skin the shade of an old penny. They could dance with humor, taunt with a mocking glitter, sharpen with steel hardness, or become mirror-smooth, reflecting nothing. If eyes were supposed to be mirrors of the soul, he had none.

Her head was throbbing. And Lanna still felt a bit woozy from all the champagne she had drank. The silence inside the car became stifling. She had to break it or scream to release the tension.

“Do you work for John—Mr. Faulkner?” she asked.

He let his gaze leave the traffic long enough to single out her profile in the darkness before it returned to the street. “Not exactly.”

“Are you a friend of the family, then?” Lanna was positive he had to be one or the other, since he was obviously in Chad’s confidence.

“You could say that,” he agreed.

Lanna was irritated. She wanted to talk—to have her mind diverted from thoughts of the hospital and John. Why couldn’t it have been Chad who brought her home? But she already knew the answer to that. She tried to remember which of John’s two sons was married—the younger or the older? She couldn’t recall that John had told her. Chad hadn’t been wearing a wedding band, though.

She tried again to make conversation, a stubbornness surfacing. “Chad called you Hawk. Is that your first or last name?”

“My last name.” Again there was that brief answer that made her attempt all one-sided. He wasn’t abrupt, merely indifferent.

“What’s your first name?” Lanna persisted.

“Jim, but no one uses it.”

“Just plain Hawk?”

“Just plain Hawk,” he agreed, but there was nothing plain about the man.

There was a quality about him that eluded Lanna, something that made him different. She searched for it in his face until he turned to intercept her gaze in silent challenge. Aware that she had been staring, she looked away, forcing her attention onto the city streets.

“You can turn at this corner,” she told him.

Her apartment building was only four blocks away. She curled the fingers of her right hand into her palm and stared out the window, rubbing her thumb against her mouth. Fear washed through her again as she remembered the ambulance that had taken her along this same street.

“Chad reminds me of his father—so thoughtful and gentle,” she murmured absently.

“Yes, he knows the right things to say.” It hardly sounded like a compliment; the tone was much too dry. He slowed the car. “Is this the place?”

“Yes.”

When the car was stopped parallel to the curb, Lanna reached for the door handle. The motor was switched off, causing her to turn her head in surprise. The driver’s door was already being opened as Hawk stepped fluidly onto the pavement. Obviously, he was going to follow his instructions to the letter and see her safely all the way to her apartment.

Hawk walked at her side, not touching her. He held the entrance door open for her and followed her down the hallway to her apartment. As she reached inside her evening bag for the keys, Mrs. Morgan peered through a crack in her door.

“You’re back from the hospital,” she observed. “How is he? I checked to see that you had shut off the stove, like you asked. It wasn’t on, but you did forget to lock your apartment. Is everything all right? How is your friend?”

“Everything is fine.” Hawk answered the question before Lanna could come up with a reply.

“Yes … it’s fine, Mrs. Morgan,” Lanna managed to agree. “Thank you.”

Her gaze ricocheted away from the dryness of his look as he moved to block her from the view of her
neighbor, effectively ending the conversation between them. Taking the keys from her fingers, he unlocked the door and placed a hand on the small of her back to firmly guide her inside.

A light was still burning above the chrome breakfast table. Lanna paused inside the living room, seeing again in her mind’s eye the sight of John crumpled on the floor near that chair now pushed aside.

“I should have asked Mrs. Morgan if she heard my phone ringing.” Lanna murmured the thought aloud. “Chad might have called before we arrived.” She seized on the possibility. “I’d better call the hospital to be sure.”

“No.” His hand was on her arm, restraining her when she took a step forward. “I’ll call. Why don’t you fix some coffee?”

“Are … are you staying?” A tremor ran through her nerves.

He was already brushing past her to noiselessly cross the room to the wall telephone in the kitchen. Her question had been ignored. She hesitated, then followed him into the alcove, where the coffee was sitting on the counter. Setting the kettle back on the burner, she turned the heat on beneath it. She strained to hear Hawk’s conversation, but be spoke too quietly for her to make out the words.

When she tried to spoon the instant coffee into the cups, her hand shook so badly that the brown granules spilled onto the Formica.

“You’d better let me do that.” Hawk was beside her, startling her, as he took away the spoon and firmly set her aside. “Why don’t you go in the other room and sit down?”

“I can’t.” She was shaking all over. It seemed safer to stand in one place. “The hospital? Did Chad call?”

“No. There’s no news.”

“It’s the waiting that is so terrible.” Lanna turned to lean against the counter, gripping the edges the way she was inwardly gripping her shredding poise. She closed her eyes, holding on.

“Do you have a headache?”

“Yes.” She laughed at the question. It seemed a mild description for the severe pounding in her head.

When she opened her eyes, Hawk was no longer standing at the counter near the stove. She heard the flick of a light switch and placed the sound as coming from the bathroom. The door to the medicine cabinet above the sink creaked noisily as it was opened, then closed. He appeared seconds later with a bottle of aspirin in his hand.

“I bought new wallpaper for the bathroom,” Lanna remembered. “A birthday present to myself. I was just asking John if he’d help me hang it next Saturday when I heard this heavy thud. That’s when he—” A sob rose to choke off the rest of the sentence, but she didn’t let it out.

Effortlessly, he pried the fingers of her left hand away from the edge of the counter and turned her palm upward to shake out two tablets. “Take these.” He filled the water glass sitting on the counter behind the sink.

He waited until she had shakily emptied the pills into her mouth, then handed her the glass of water to wash them down. His fingers half-covered her trembling hand to steady the glass and guide it to her lips. The warmth of his touch made Lanna aware of how cold she felt. Her gaze lifted to his face and the blue eyes that seemed to regard her with a life of their own, yet they told her nothing. Lanna wished for some of his control.

As he took the glass from her hand, the tea kettle emitted its shrill, hissing whistle. She started at the piercing sound. In one gliding move, Hawk was there
to lift the kettle off the burner and end its scream. Lanna watched him pour the boiling water into the two cups, a brown foam swirling on the surface.

With a sideways glance that seemed to measure her, Hawk picked up the two cups and carried them out of the kitchen. She followed him uncertainly. As if sensing the association of the breakfast table with John, he bypassed it in favor of the green tweed sofa in the living area. He set one cup on the end table and kept the other in his hand.

Standing to one side, he waited for her to take a seat. Lanna sat stiffly on the edge of the sofa cushion, her fingers curling into the delicate fabric of the dress skirt flowing over her knees. It didn’t make her feel any more at ease to have him standing there watching her, not batting an eye. It was unnerving. Hadn’t she been through enough already?

“Take off your shoes and relax,” Hawk told her.

“I don’t want to.” That implied letting down her guard and allowing emotion to take over, something she didn’t want to happen.

In the next second, his cup was sitting on a side table and Hawk was crouching near her feet. Lanna wasn’t given an opportunity to protest as his hand cupped the back of an ankle and lifted a foot. After slipping off the high-heeled shoe and setting it aside, he ran his hand firmly over her nylon-clad foot and flexed muscles cramped from the artificial arch. The relief brought by that single motion was instant. Then her foot was being placed on the floor, her sensitive sole feeling the contact with the shag carpet.

As he picked up her other foot to repeat the procedure, she let her gaze slide to his face. Leaning forward as she was, his face was so close to hers that she could see the pores of his dusky skin and the fine lines that fanned out from the corners of his eyes. When his
head turned to meet her look, the sudden flare of his nostrils reminded her of an animal catching her scent.

Yes. Lanna grasped at the quality that had eluded her. There was something in the man that was primitive, an elemental streak of wild nobility beneath a civilized facade. From it came the recklessness and the ever-present alertness. It had been refined and controlled, but it smoldered there beneath the surface. The knowledge registered in a disjointed way, implanted amidst the worry, fear, and shock of the night’s events.