“I don’t care what he tells the management, he can tell them anything he likes. I’ve been feeling like a caged bear for the last six months, and I’m sick to death of this job anyway. If I got fired it would be no great loss.”
“A caged bear—strong language. Is that why you go sailing on the lake in a south wind?”
“Well, of course.”
Luke let out his pent-up breath in a long sigh. “I’ll deal with Guy. I’ve got enough leverage that I could ruin him if I chose to.”
“I don’t need your help! Let him say what he wants—I’m leaving here by the end of the summer, so why should I care? My friend Anna knows who I really am, and the rest don’t matter.”
“And where am I in that?”
“I’ve already told you,” she said stonily. “Whatever my secrets are, they’re nothing to do with you.”
“I do wish you’d tell me,” Luke said with such intensity that he was taken aback.
“Too bad.”
“You’re one heck of a stubborn woman!”
“If I weren’t, you’d be trampling all over me.”
She had a point. Taking a moment to gather his thoughts, Luke said, “Katrin, you egged Guy on in the dining room—if you were really scared of him, you wouldn’t have spilled the brandy, or showed him you knew your way around the financial pages. But when he was threatening you a few minutes ago, you looked…despairing, I guess, is the closest I can get. Beaten.”
The words tumbled from her lips. “Have you never had anything so awful happen to you that when you go back there, even in your imagination, all the old emotions overwhelm you? Just as they did when it was going on?” She drew a ragged breath. “Or are you immune from all that, Luke?”
As though time and space had collapsed, Luke was suddenly back in the shack at Teal Lake the day his mother had left, never to return. His father’s drunken rampage, smashing glasses and crockery, the flames from the old woodstove flickering crazily over the ceiling. And in one corner, clutching an old teddy bear, cowered a little boy with black hair and dark eyes, terrified and alone.
Katrin said slowly, “So you do know what I’m talking about. What happened to you, Luke?”
With a shuddering breath, Luke hauled himself back to the present, away from an abyss that he’d fled years ago, a nightmare filled with noise and fire and unending fear. God knows what he looked like. He raked his fingers through his hair. “Nothing happened. Your imagination’s working overtime.”
“I don’t think so.” With sudden violence she cried, “What’s wrong with admitting you’re vulnerable? Just like the rest of the human race?”
Had he ever, wittingly or unwittingly, revealed as much of himself to anyone else as he had to Katrin in the last few seconds? And how he hated himself—and her—for that revelation. Not knowing what else to do, Luke went on the attack. “What if Guy goes to the media? What then?”
She hugged her arms around her chest, lines of strain bracketing her mouth. “He won’t. He’ll be so hungover in the morning, he’ll do well to get out of bed.”
It was painfully obvious she was trying to convince herself as much as Luke. Luke said savagely, “In effect, he’s blackmailing you.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic!”
“I’m telling it like I see it.”
“You’re overreacting,” she said coldly. “Luke, I’ve got to go home, I’m really tired.”
She looked more than tired. She looked at the end of her rope, with faint blue shadows under her eyes, her face haunted and unhappy. His only desire to comfort her, to somehow let her know that she wasn’t alone with her secrets, he awkwardly rested his hand on her wrist.
She looked down. In a strange voice she said, “You have such beautiful fingers. Long and lean…”
By mutual compulsion they fell into each other’s arms, Luke’s hands locking around her waist, her mouth straining upward to his. Her palms were flat to his chest, burning through the fabric of his shirt; the first touch of her lips enveloped him in a tumult of desire. He thrust with his tongue, pulling her hard against his body. As she melted into him, tinder to his flame, she fumbled with the buttons on his shirt. Then, like a streak of fire, Luke felt her touch his bare chest, almost shyly, with a tiny tug at the tangled hair on his torso.
He groaned with pleasure, aching to feel her naked breasts, warm and soft and yielding against his flesh. His kiss deepened. Then he reached for the clasp that held her hair, wanting to free its silken flow over his wrist. Nibbling at her lips, he said huskily, “You should never wear your hair like this. I want to see it loose on a pillow, Katrin, I want to bury my face in it. I want you naked in my bed…”
As precipitously as she’d reached for him, Katrin pulled back. Her hands pressed to her cheeks, she whispered, “What’s wrong with me? I’m doing it again, kissing you as though I’m in love with you, as though I can’t get enough of you—oh God, I can’t bear this.”
In the dim light, Luke was sure he could see the glimmer of tears in her eyes. “Don’t cry…”
“I’m not! Two years ago I swore I—” She stopped, aghast.
“What happened two years ago?” Luke said with dangerous quietness.
A shudder rippled through her body. Fear and pain flashed across her features so fast Luke might have imagined them. But he hadn’t. They were real. Her voice cracking, she said, “If you have the slightest feeling for me, Luke, leave me alone. Go back to the resort. Go to New York, go to San Francisco, go anywhere in the world. You’ll forget me by the time you arrive at the airport, I know you will—your normal life will catch up with you and take over. That’s all I ask—that you forget about me.”
She bit her lip, and for a moment he thought she was going to say something else. Then she struck his hands from her waist, whirled and ran away from him toward the staff parking lot, her black uniform blending into the night.
Luke took one quick step after her. Then he stopped dead. He could chase her and force his way into her car. Or he could let her go. It was his choice.
For a crazy moment that was outside of time, Luke felt as though his heart were being torn apart; as though every choice he’d ever made had been leading to this one. To a woman who’d been swallowed by the darkness. A woman with a secret.
He took a deep, harsh breath. He had no use for such fanciful guff. Woman of darkness, woman of secrets. He was losing his marbles. It was time he went back to civilization, to the sophisticated types he dated who knew the score. In fact, he was going to do precisely what Katrin had suggested: get on his plane tomorrow morning and forget all about her.
The quicker the better.
But first he had one piece of unfinished business.
Luke marched back to the lodge and took the stairs two at a time to the third floor. Then he halted outside Room 334. He tapped gently, rather as Katrin might have tapped, and waited.
