Strangers in Paradise (3 page)

“I'm, uh, sorry.” She pushed away from him, feeling a furious rush of embarrassment. She was apologizing, and he was in
her
house. Gene's house. A total stranger. “Who are you?”

He stood. She instantly felt the distance between them. It was over—whatever it had been. The violence, and the tenderness.

“Rex Morrow.”

Rex Morrow. Her mind moved quickly now. Rex Morrow. He wasn't going to kill her. Rex murdered people—yes, by the dozens—but only in print. Alexi had decided long before this miserable meeting between them that his work was the result of a dark and macabre mind.

She sprang to her feet, desperate for light. Rex Morrow. Gene had warned her. He had told her that he shared the peninsula with only one other man: the writer Rex Morrow. And that Rex was keeping an eye on the place.

He had promised that the electricity was on, too. She fumbled her way toward what she hoped was a wall, anxious to find a switch. She bit her lip, fighting emotion. Emotion was dangerous. Maybe she was better off with the lights off. She'd panicked at his assault; she'd fallen hysterically into his arms with relief. She'd screamed, she'd cried—she, who prided herself on having learned to be calm and reserved, if nothing else, in life.

The flashlight arced and flared abruptly, its glare of light showing her plainly where the switch was. She came to it and quickly hit it, swiveling abruptly to lean against the wall and stare at the man who already knew her weaknesses too well. Perhaps light would wash away the absurd intimacy; perhaps it could even give her back some sense of dignity.

He was dark, and disturbingly young. For some reason she'd been convinced that he had to have lived through World War II to have written some of the books he had on espionage during the period. He couldn't have been older than thirty-five. Equally disturbing, he was attractive. His jeans were worn, and his shirt was a black knit that seemed almost a match for the ebony of his hair. His eyes, too, were dark, the deepest brown she had ever seen. He was tanned and handsome, with high, rugged cheekbones, a long, straight nose—somewhat prominent, she determined—and a full mouth that was both sensual and cynical. He didn't seem to resent her full, appraising stare, but then he was returning it, and she was alarmed to discover herself wondering what he was seeing in her.

Dishevelment, she decided wearily. It would be difficult for anyone to break into a house through a window and be attacked and wrestled down and still appear well-groomed.

“Alexi Jordan—in the flesh,” he murmured. His tone was cool, as if everything that had happened in the darkness was an embarrassment to him, too. He shook his head as if to clear it, strode toward Alexi and then right past her in the archway by the light switch, apparently very familiar with the house. She watched him, frowning, then followed him.

He went through the big, once-beautiful hallway and disappeared through a swinging door.

The door nearly caught her in the face, fueling her anger and irritation—residues of drastic fear. She was the one with the right to be here—and he had assaulted her and mauled her, and had not even offered an apology.

Light—blessed light! She felt so much more competent and able now, more like the woman she had carefully and painstakingly developed. She paused, reddening at the thought of how she had whimpered in fear, reddening further when she recalled how easily she had cried in his arms when he had simply told her that he wasn't going to kill her. She should call the police. She had every right to be furious.

She slammed against the door to open it and entered the kitchen.

He'd helped himself to a beer. The rest of the house might be a decaying, musty, dusty mess, but someone had kept up the kitchen—and had apparently seen fit to stock the refrigerator with beer.

“Have a beer,” Alexi invited him caustically.

He raised the one he had already taken and threw his head back to take a long swallow. He lowered the bottle and pulled out one of the heavy oak chairs at the the butcher-block table.

“Alexi Jordan in the flesh.”

What had he heard about her? she wondered. It didn't matter. She had come here to be alone—not to form friendships. She smiled without emotion and replied in kind. “The one and only Rex Morrow.”

He arched a dark brow. “I take it your grandfather told you that I lived out here.”

“Great-grandfather,” Alexi corrected him. “Yes, of course. How else would I know you?” She should have known right away. Gene had told her that Rex Morrow was the only inhabitant of the peninsula. She had just been too immersed in her own thoughts at the time to pay proper attention. Thinking back, she should also have known that Gene might have him watching the place. She'd heard that Morrow had tried to buy the house so that he could own the entire strip of land. But, though Gene seemed fond of his neighbor, he would never sell the Brandywine house.

“My picture is on my book jackets,” Rex told her.

“I certainly wouldn't buy your books in hardcover, Mr. Morrow.”

He smiled. “You don't care for my writing, I take it?”

“Product of a dark mind,” she said. Actually, she admired him. She couldn't read his books easily, though. They were frightening and very realistic—and tore into the human psyche. They could make her afraid of the dark—and afraid to live alone. She didn't need to be afraid of imaginary things.

And his characters stayed with the reader long after the story had been read, long after it should have been forgotten.

Besides she felt defensive. She'd known him a few minutes; because of the circumstances, he had seen far too deeply into her fears and emotions. And he'd attacked her. He still hadn't apologized. In fact, it seemed as if he was annoyed with her.

“Would you like a beer, Ms. Jordan?”

“No. I'd like you out of my house. I'd like you to apologize for accosting me on my own property.”

He gazed down, then looked up again with a smile, but there was a good deal of hostility in that smile.

“Ms. Jordan, it isn't your house. It's Gene's house. And I don't owe you any apology. I promised Gene I'd watch out for the place. You weren't due until tomorrow—and who the hell would have expected you out here, alone, in the pitch darkness, breaking into the house through a window?”

“I wasn't expecting anyone to be inside.”

“I wasn't expecting anyone to break in. We're even.”

“Far from even.”

As he watched her, she had no idea of what he was thinking; she felt that his assessment found her wanting.

“You won't be staying,” he said at last with a shrug and a smile.

“Won't I?”

She liked his smile even less when it deepened and his gaze scanned her from head to toe once again.

“No. You won't be here long.” He stood again and walked toward her. His strides were slow, and didn't come all the way to her. Just close enough to look down. She estimated that he was six-three or six-four, and she was barely five-six. She silently gritted her teeth. She wasn't going to let him intimidate her now. He had already done so, and quite well. There was light now, and he wasn't touching her. She could bring back the reserve that had stood her so well against so much.

“This is a quiet place, Ms. Jordan. Very quiet. The biggest excitement in these parts is when Joe Lacey pinches the waitresses in the downtown café. There are only two houses out here on the peninsula—Gene's here, and mine. I get the impression that you need a certain amount of society. But you've only got one neighbor, lady, and that neighbor is me. And I'm not the sociable type.”

“How interesting.” Alexi crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back against the wall. “Well, then, why don't you take your beer out of my refrigerator and then get your gruesome soul out of my house, Mr. Morrow?”

He took a long moment to answer; his expression in that time gave away nothing of his emotions.

“You can keep the beer. You're going to need it.”

“Why is that?”

“This place is falling apart.”

“Yes, it is, isn't it?” she returned pleasantly.

“And you're going to handle it all?”

“Yes, I am. Now, if you'll please—”

“I don't want company, Ms. Jordan.”

“You keep saying that—and you're standing in my house!”

He hesitated, taking a long, deep breath, as if he were very carefully going to try to explain something to a child.

“Let me be blunt, Ms. Jordan—”

“You haven't been so yet? Please, don't be at all polite or courteous on my account,” she told him with caustic sweetness.

“I don't want you here. I value my privacy.”

“I'm really sorry, Mr. Morrow. I think I did read somewhere that you were a total eccentric, moody and miserable, but there are property laws in the good ol' U.S. of A. And this is not your property. You do not own the whole peninsula! Now, this house has been in my family for over a hundred years—”

“It's supposed to be haunted, you know,” he interrupted her, as if it might have been a sudden inspiration, an if-you-can't-bully-her-out-scare-her-out technique.

She smiled.

“As long as the ghosts will leave me alone, I'll be just fine with them,” she told him.

He threw up his hands. “You can't possibly mean to stay out here by yourself.”

“But I do.”

“Ah...you're running away.”

She was—exactly. And the old Brandywine house had seemed like the ideal place. Gene had been pleading with someone in the family to come home. To this home. Admittedly, she'd humored him at first, as had her cousins. But then the disaster with John had occurred, and...yes, she was running away.

“Let me be blunt, Mr. Morrow,” Alexi said. “I'm staying.”

He stared at her steadily a long while. Then he took in her stature from head to toe once again and started to laugh.

“I'll lay odds you don't make a week,” he said.

“I'll last.”

He made a sound that was like a derisive snort and walked past her again. “We'll see, won't we?”

“Is that some kind of a threat?” Alexi followed him down the beautiful old hallway toward the front door. The light was low once again, filtering into the hallway from the living room and the kitchen. His dark good looks were a bit sinister in that shadowed realm. He really was striking, she thought. His features were both beautifully chiseled and masculine, and his eyes were so very dark.

Mesmerizing, one might have said.

“I wouldn't dream of threatening you,” he told her after perusing her once again. “I'd thought you would be even taller,” he said abruptly.

It had taken him a long, long time to realize that he had seen her before this night. That he should have known Alexi Jordan for being more than Gene Brandywine's expected relation. He had seen her in a different way, of course. In a classic, flowing Grecian gown. With the wind in her hair. He had seen her on the silver screen, seen her in fantasy.

Her classical features had been put to good use.

Despite herself, Alexi flushed. “You recognized me.”

“‘The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships,'” he quoted from her last ad campaign for Helen of Troy products.

“Well, you son of a—!” she said suddenly, her temper soaring. “You kept denying that I was Alexi Jordan when you must have known—”

“No, I didn't know then. I didn't really recognize you from the ad until we were in the kitchen.” He was irritated; she really irritated him. She made him feel defensive. She made it sound as if he had enjoyed scaring her.

And, somewhere deep inside, she scared him in return. Why? he wondered, puzzled. And then, of course, he knew. Maybe part of it had been the way that they had met. Part of it had been the terror in her eyes, the fear he had so desperately needed to assuage.

And part of it was simply that she was so achingly beautiful. So gloriously feminine. She made him wish that he had known her forever and forever, that he could reach out and pull her into his arms. To know her—as a lover.

He didn't mind wanting a woman. He just feared needing her. And she was the type of lover a man could come to need.

“You don't resemble the glamorous Helen in the least at the moment, you know,” he told her bluntly. It was a lie. Her face could have launched a thousand ships had it been covered in mud.

“And whose fault is that?”

He shrugged. Despite herself, Alexi tried to repin some of the hair that was falling in tangles from her once neat and elegant knot.

He laughed. “I should have known from all the lipstick.”

“Go home, Mr. Morrow, please. I'm looking for privacy, too.”

His laughter faded. He studied her once again, and again, despite herself, she felt as if she was growing warm. As if there was something special about his eyes, about the way they fell over her and entered into her.

“Go—” She broke off, startled, as a shrill sound erupted in the night. She was so surprised that she nearly screamed. Then she was heartily glad that she had not, for it was only the phone.

“Oh,” she murmured. Then she sighed with resignation, looking at him. “All right, where is it?”

“Parlor.”

“Living room?”

“That living room is called a parlor.”

She stiffened her shoulders and started for the parlor. She caught the phone on the fifth ring. It was Gene. Her great-grandfather had turned ninety-five last Christmas and could have passed for sixty. Alexi was ridiculously proud of him, but then she felt that she had a right to be. He was lean, but as straight as an arrow and as determined and sly as an old fox. He seldom ailed, and Alexi thought that she knew his secret. He'd never—through a long life of trials and tribulations—taken the time to feel sorry for himself, he had never ceased to love life, and he had never apologized for an absolute fascination with people. Everything and everyone interested Gene.