The Quiet Seduction Read online

  She had trusted her instincts and they hadn’t let her down. In spite of the difference in their backgrounds, Jake had wanted to confront her father and ask for her hand. Ellen had nixed that notion immediately. Her father might be a model citizen, a world-class financier and the recipient of more civic awards than his walls would comfortably hold, but he knew too many people in high places. Jake would have suddenly found himself transferred to the South Pole for an extended tour of duty, and before she knew it, she’d have been hustled into a match with her father’s ambitious junior partner, Greg Sanders. He of the Gucci loafers and the pungent personalized cologne.

  They had eloped, but Jake had insisted on calling her father immediately afterward to tell him she was all right. It was Jake who had notified her father of the change of address each time they’d moved. “In case he should take a notion to come see us,” he’d said, and she’d scoffed at the idea. Eight months after she’d married, her father had written to ask if she had come to her senses yet. He had demanded that she move back to Austin. She had ignored that letter as she had done all the rest—four in all—demanding that she return. “I had your tin soldier investigated, and I assure you, you can have no idea what kind of man he really is. What kind of neighborhood he grew up in. He’s not our kind of people, Ellen. I blame your lapse in judgment on your mother’s side of the family. I’m sure I taught you to be more discriminating.”

  That was one of her father’s favorite forms of discrimination. Anyone who didn’t go to the right school, belong to the right clubs, attend the right church or even drive the right kind of car, was “not our kind of people.” It used to make her cringe whenever he said it, as often as not in the presence of the staff or some of their children, with whom she used to sneak out to play dolls or jump rope.

  Since then she’d had only one occasion to contact her father. When Jake had been so desperately ill and she’d needed money to hire someone to help with Pete. Leonard Summerlin had ignored her pleas, just as she had ignored his letters. Her last contact, three months after Jake had died, had been through his lawyer, who had urged her to reconsider and move back home to Austin.

  “Go back and be treated like a recaptured prisoner?” she’d retorted. “No thanks. My father couldn’t be bothered to help me the one time I ever asked him for anything. I don’t need him now.”

  “Has he even met your son?” the pin-striped lawyer had asked.

  “No, and I don’t want him to. He’ll insist on taking over every aspect of my son’s life the way he did mine after Mama died, and it’s not going to happen.”

  She had learned many things in the years since she had defied her father and been disowned for her efforts—learned to manage money and to do her own housework. Learned to do without things she had once considered necessities. She had learned that she had worth as an individual, completely unrelated to who her father was.

  She liked to think of herself as a work in progress. Every day she learned something new. One of the first things she’d learned was to rely on her instincts. So far, they had yet to let her down.

  “All right,” she told herself now. “Think! Work it out step by step.” What if the man she called Storm was actually J. Spencer Harrison, the missing district attorney? Or what if he was only pretending to have lost his memory, but was actually a crook? Not all crooks looked like those two thugs who had turned up on her doorstep the night of the tornado. She knew of one man who had belonged to two of her father’s clubs and had actually dined at the Summerlin home, who had later been arrested for laundering money for a drug cartel.

  All right, so she didn’t have enough information to build a case either way. Instinct or not, she’d do well not to let her impulsive nature lead her into trouble. Pete desperately missed his father, even though he was trying hard not to let on. The last thing he needed was to start thinking of their unexpected guest as a hero and have him turn out to be some awful person who would suddenly disappear from their lives. Or worse.

  Of course, he really was a hero, she admitted. Whatever else he was or wasn’t, at least he was a gentle man. That much was evident in the way he treated Pete. Most men tended to talk down to children. Storm treated him as an individual, and Pete responded to him the way a puppy responded to a friendly voice.

  She just hoped nothing would cause either of them to regret taking him in. Poor Pete had lost too much to risk attachment to a new friend only to lose him, too.

  Oddly enough, it never occurred to her to put herself in that same category. Storm was an attractive man—even an intriguing man—but he was only passing through, she reminded herself, not for the first time. Like one of those gorgeous migratory birds she occasionally saw, wishing it would linger long enough for her to identify.

  First thing every morning, as soon as he’d washed the breakfast dishes, Storm took the morning paper and a second cup of coffee into the living room. There were beds to be made and laundry to be done, but he felt a deep compulsion to read every word in the Mission Creek Clarion. At this point he was grasping for straws. Too much time had passed and he was still drawing a blank. By now the storm news had been relegated to a few paragraphs in the second section, but sooner or later, something had to ring a bell.

  New District Attorney Appointed Following Harrison’s Disappearance. The headline was centered on the front page above the fold, accompanied by a photo of a well-dressed, middle-aged man with a skimpy moustache and a bad comb-over. Storm skimmed the pull-quote and then returned his attention to the picture, studying every detail. Waiting for something to trigger a reaction. Standard rent-a-bookshelf background. Nothing particularly alarming about the guy, who looked like a typical chamber-of-commerce type. So what was there about the new D. A. that affected him like a hard right to the solar plexus?

  Sitting in Ellen’s man-size leather chair, in her attractive, if slightly cluttered, slightly shabby living room, he suddenly felt compelled to do something. To collar someone and protest—

  Protest what?

  He felt the first qualms of nausea. Taking a deep breath, he carefully reread the headline, the pull-quote, then devoured the complete text again. He stared at the photograph of the new district attorney and then he clenched his fists, closed his eyes and began to swear.

  J. S. Harrison.

  Storm Harrison?

  There was a connection there, but until he knew which side of the law he was on, and who he was running from, he’d do well to keep his suspicions to himself.

  A few minutes later he rose to begin gathering up the laundry. Ellen’s bundle had been carefully sorted and left on the washing machine. She did her own intimate garments, which Storm found amusing. Evidently she’d picked up on the way he was beginning to feel about her. Guilty, for one thing. While the last thing on his mind should be sex with his benefactress, it was growing increasingly hard to see her bursting in through the back door, her silky brown hair windblown and her green eyes sparkling, and not react.

  Gratitude would have been an appropriate reaction. Friendship—sure, why not? He knew more about her now than her closest neighbor did—probably even more than her own son. And the more he came to know her, the more he found to like. To admire.

  The fact that it wasn’t solely friendship he was feeling was inconvenient, to say the least. Even that first night, when his head had felt like a busted melon and she’d come into his room wearing that shabby old bathrobe, shoved up his pajama leg and began massaging liniment into his knee, he’d felt the first stir of sexual awareness. Since then it had grown to the point where he was wary of being alone with her after Pete went to bed. With his mind an empty slate, he found it too easy to fill it with visions of himself following Ellen up those stairs—of Ellen stepping out of the shower and reaching for a towel. Of Ellen tossing restlessly in her bed, which happened to be right above the room he was using.

  “Judas priest, man, get a grip!” he muttered as he ran water into the washer, tossed in a pair of his jeans and two pairs
of Ellen’s, and looked around for Pete’s things. He was supposed to have brought them down before leaving for school.

  Well, hell, if he could tote a basket full of wet laundry, he could handle a few stairs. All signs of inflammation in both his ankle and his knee had disappeared. The knot on his head was gone. Basically he was good as new, if only he could fill in a few Grand-Canyon-size potholes where his memory was supposed to reside.

  He’d quit using the crutch a couple of days ago. Now he held on to the banister, taking one step at a time. No pain, no gain. Where had he heard that before? Did that work in reverse? Because he didn’t feel so much as a twinge.

  He was grinning triumphantly by the time he reached the top of the stairs. That was, he was grinning until he saw Ellen. She was clutching her bathrobe and a pair of slippers in front of her. Jaybird naked, as far as he could tell.

  “Omigod,” she blurted.

  “I thought you were outside.” Stepping back, he grabbed the newel to keep from tumbling down the stairs. He was breathing heavily. From exertion, he told himself, trying hard not to stare at the satiny flesh above the chenille robe.

  “What are you doing up here? You’re not supposed to tackle stairs yet.”

  “I could ask you the same thing. I didn’t hear you come inside.” To reach her bedroom she would have to pass close by where he was standing.

  “I came in the back way. Look, I don’t know what you’re doing up here, but if it can wait…?” She’d managed to slip her arms into her robe. Now she tightened the sash around her waist.

  “Sure. I mean, I was only going to see if Pete had anything to wash. He forgot to bring his things down this morning.” Storm couldn’t take his eyes off her waist. Couldn’t be more than twenty inches—in another era, hers would have been called an hourglass figure.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to stare—only, Ellen, you do know how beautiful you are, don’t you?”

  Her jaw fell. “I know what? Storm, have you been drinking?”

  “Coffee. That’s all, I swear. I just thought…I mean—” He shook his head. What did he mean? That she was beautiful? That was a given.

  That he would like nothing better than to open her bedroom door, lead her over to her bed and join her there?

  Absolutely.

  That he was acting like a man who’d lost not only his memory but every grain of decency he’d ever possessed?

  Yeah, that, too.

  “I slipped and fell down in the manure pile.”

  The way she was glaring at him, you’d have thought it was somehow his fault. He blinked and tried to control his grin. It was better than rampaging lust, but not a whole lot better. “Soft landing, I hope.”

  “That damned mare—I think she’s going to drop her foal any day now. The vet said they get irritable just before they deliver. Do you call it deliver when it’s a horse? Oh, Lord, the things I don’t know,” she said, looking helpless, hopeless, and totally irresistible.

  Closing the distance between them, he eased his hands over her shoulders, leaned closer and sniffed. And tried not to laugh. The lady reeked of barnyard effluvia. “Yeah, I guess you do need a shower. Use all the hot water you need, the laundry can wait.”

  She didn’t even try to escape, just stared up at him with those changeable green eyes of hers. “Oh. Um, thanks.”

  “And listen, those mares of yours don’t care what you call it—they’ll come through just fine. We can call the vet and he can either come out or tell us whatever we need to know. We’ll set up camp out in the barn if we need to, okay?”

  “We?”

  “Uh, you. Me, too, if it’ll help.”

  The way she was staring at him, she must think he’d lost what few wits he’d managed to retain. All she said, though, was, “I stink. For goodness’ sake, let me go wash this smell off. I left my clothes on the back porch, but don’t even think about putting them in the wash until I’ve soaked out the worst of the…the—”

  “Essence of horse. You got it. And, Ellen, promise me you’ll quit worrying?”

  “No, but thanks, anyway. I mean, for caring— I mean, being concerned about—”

  “Shh. Caring will do. It’ll do just fine.” And he leaned over the few inches that separated them and kissed her. Gently, holding her away from his body. Better to let her think he was leery of getting too close to the smell of horse manure, than allowing her to realize how she was affecting him. At this rate, it was going to take more than a long cold shower to bring him back down. About a five-mile jog should do it.

  The kiss ended almost before it began. He would have liked to explore further—much further—but it was the kind of kiss she needed at the moment. Non-threatening, non-demanding. Just the soft, hesitant press of his mouth to hers.

  She stepped back as if just remembering that she was practically naked. “Don’t come any closer. I warned you, I stink.”

  “Yeah, now that you mention it…” Grinning, he turned toward Pete’s room. If she thought that was why he hadn’t made more of the moment, let her believe it. Better that than she find out that while his head might be screwed up, there was nothing at all wrong with his libido.

  Now that he was improving physically, he obviously needed something more demanding than housework to work off excess energy. He would just have to figure out whatever he could manage to do, inexpertly or not, that would wear him out and at the same time allow Ellen to sit and put her feet up for a few minutes. He owed her that much and far more.

  What he didn’t owe her was to move in on her like a rutting animal. For the first day or so after she’d lugged him home with her, his physical reactions hadn’t been so pronounced. She had iced his swollen joints with a sack of frozen peas and rubbed something smelly on the injured flesh. Horse liniment, probably. He must have made a sound the first time, because she had glanced up and asked if it stung.

  Looking back, he was pretty sure it hadn’t been the liniment that had caused his reaction, nor even the painful pressure of her hands on his swollen flesh. It had been those hands of hers stroking his bare skin while she’d knelt in front of him. Even in the condition he’d been in then, it hadn’t taken much memory to know that some things were off limits, no matter how great the temptation.

  Ellen was one of those things.

  By the end of the week the tornado news had been relegated to a few inches on page thirteen. Dump trucks were still hauling away the ruins of a trailer park and parts of a strip mall. A new steeple was already being built for the church. The warehouse had been reroofed and the dispossessed residents of Shady Grove Trailer Park had been relocated. Storm continued to read the daily newspaper from front page to last, including the classified ads. Still no mention of a missing husband, father, brother, son or business partner. The district attorney was evidently still missing, but after the first few days, there were no more stories.

  Strange. He’d have thought it would be big news. Maybe the guy had turned up, in which case he would need to find himself a new identity.

  Ellen was in and out during the day while Pete was in school, doing chores that Storm insisted he could be helping her with now that he was physically able again.

  “Don’t even think about it,” she’d insisted right back. “The last thing either of us needs is for you to get kicked by a horse or to slip on a patch of fresh manure the way I did. In your condition, you’d probably be laid up for the rest of the year.”

  “What do you mean, in my condition? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m in peak physical shape now.”

  She’d stared pointedly at his forehead, noting that the knot was gone, and the bruising had faded to a grayish shade of yellow. “Yeah, yeah, you’re ready for the Olympics,” she’d jeered softly. “Look, if I have to have more help, I’ll call on one of my neighbors.”

  “Speaking of neighbors, it’s been a week now and I haven’t noticed any of them coming around to check on you.”

  “Because they know we’re all right. Joey’s folks cal
led and I told them—”

  “About me?”

  She’d hesitated for so long he’d thought she wasn’t going to answer. Later he might wonder why. “Look, if you want me to spread the word, letting any interested parties know where to find you, just say so. I offered to do it before, if you’ll remember. Maybe I’m wrong, but I got the idea you weren’t too eager to advertise your presence until you’re back in your right mind.”

  “Ouch. Did you have to put it that way?”

  A smile had tugged at the corners of her mouth. “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I do. I’m only teasing, Ellen.”

  She’d sighed then, and flopped onto the sofa. Tugging a plastic jet fighter out from under her left hip, she’d waved the F-18 in a careless gesture, then set it on the coffee table along with two comic books, a copy of Horse Breeders Quarterly, a pot holder that had somehow strayed in from the kitchen, and a stoneware vase of dried flowers.

  “I guess I’m out of practice. Being teased, I mean. Jake used to tease me about— Oh, you know. Things like not knowing the difference between a holdback horse and a cutting horse. And not liking fried liver and strawberry ice cream.”

  “Together?”

  “Of course not, silly. They’re just two foods I don’t happen to care for.”

  “Right. Uh, what is the difference, by the way?”

  “The difference?”

  “Holdback and cutting.”

  “Oh. Well, this is book learning, you understand—we never made it to the training part—but from what I’ve read, a holdback horse is trained to hold back. Actually, they back up. I can give you Jake’s books on the subject if you’re really interested. Right now, training is the least of my worries. I just want my mares to give me two healthy babies I can either sell or breed when they’re old enough. I might eventually hire a trainer, or maybe not. Maybe just producing and selling will be enough.”

  For several moments neither of them had spoken. It had been an oddly comfortable silence. The kind that occurs when two people know each other well. Although just how he could be so certain of that, he couldn’t have said. All the same, he knew he liked her company. Liked looking at her. Liked talking to her. Would have liked doing more than looking under other circumstances.