Chapter Five
It was the prick of cold steel along her forearm that woke her. Confused, she moved her arm to a more comfortable position, only to feel a sharper sting along the outer edge of her hand. She might have gone back to sleep, but as the pain dawned on her, so did the sudden smear of moisture she felt on her hand.
The knife. She’d cut her hand on the butcher knife. Of all the stupid things.
Realizing that she was probably bleeding all over her sheets, Anna groaned. Bracing her other hand and knee against the mattress, she went to push herself up and off the bed, but instead of soft mattress, her knee came down solidly on something hard. She let out a small cry and jerked back before realizing the something hard was the baseball bat she’d brought to bed. At her movement, it rolled off the mattress and onto the floor, leaving her feeling like a total idiot.
The feeling was magnified when she swung her legs off the bed and stubbed her toe on the bat where it lay on the floor. And even more so a moment later when she limped toward the door, only to ram her shin into the chair that braced her doorknob to keep out the stranger in her brother’s bed. She grunted in pain, then, furious, wrestled the chair out of her way and jerked open the door.
Gavin couldn’t sleep. His conscience kept teasing him with discomfort, like a small sliver just beneath the skin. He should have thought of some way to get through to Ben other than by barging in on the kid’s sister. He hadn’t come here to scare Anna Collins.
Hell, he couldn’t blame her a bit for being leery of him. He was a stranger, after all, and she was right, a woman couldn’t be too careful.
Still, the thought that he might hurt her was ludicrous.
Yeah, but she doesn’t know that, buddy.
No fooling.
Tomorrow he needed to find some way to make this up to her. What that way might be, he had no idea. He needed to figured out if there was something he could do for her. Something she maybe wanted that he could give her to make up for invading her home, scaring her, inconveniencing her. She was too damn prickly to open up to him, so he’d have to find some other way to ferret out what she might need or want that he could give her.
At the sudden noise coming from beyond his closed bedroom door, Gavin stiffened. After a moment he relaxed with a grin and wondered how long it had taken her to remember about the chair she’d braced beneath her doorknob. From the muffled curse, she didn’t seem all that pleased with her safety precautions.
Ha! And she told me to watch my language.
Finally he heard her go into the bathroom, heard the slight click of the light switch, then the rush of water through the pipes and into the sink.
The water ran for a long time, then a drawer opened, a cabinet door closed. And the water kept running.
Frowning, Gavin sat up in bed. She was sure taking a long time. What the devil was she doing in there? He was tempted to get up and find out, but told himself it was none of his business. Probably woman stuff. She wouldn’t appreciate his concern.
When he heard a soft growl of irritation mixed with pain, he tossed the covers aside and stepped into his jeans.
She’d left the bathroom door open, so he had no trouble seeing her. And what a sight, with her short hair mussed enough to look like a man had just run his fingers through it over and over. The sudden urge to run his own fingers through that short, honey-colored hair shocked him. As did the sudden rush of blood through his veins when he realized that her knee-length nightgown was so thin he could see through it to the mole on her right hind cheek. Without thought, he stepped quietly to her side.
The sight of her blood flowing bright red from an inch-long slice in her right arm just below her elbow, and a smaller cut on the outer edge of her right hand, cooled him off quicker than a bucket of ice water in the face. The blood trailed down her pale skin and turned pink where it mixed with water in the sink. Gavin swore.
At the sound of his voice, Anna shrieked and jerked, banging the back of her hand against the faucet. “Damn.” She squeezed her eyes shut for a long moment before opening them and glaring at him in the mirror. “I was right. You came here to kill me.”
“What happened?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. You and your stupid suggestions,” she muttered.
Gavin scowled. “My suggestions? Good grief, you mean—I meant for you to put the knife somewhere close so you could get to it, not cuddle up with the damn thing. Let me see that arm.”
Anna covered the cut with her free hand. “I can handle it.”
Gavin snorted. “You can’t even get out of bed without hurting yourself.”
“This, from a man who can’t negotiate his way around a coffee table?”
“Yeah, yeah, I was a charm school dropout. Stick your arm under the faucet. Where do you keep your peroxide?”
“I said,” she managed through gritted teeth, “I can handle it.”
“Then handle it,” he answered tersely, “before you bleed to death.”
“It’s not very deep,” she said, looking down at her arm. “It’s just messy.”
“Messy is right.” Gavin opened the cabinet door next to the mirror above the sink and grabbed a washcloth and the brown plastic bottle of peroxide. “I can’t believe you actually went to bed with a butcher knife.” Setting the bottle and cloth beside the sink, he carefully pulled her arm from beneath the running water. “That is what you did, isn’t it?”
“I plead the Fifth. What are you doing?” She tried to tug her arm from his grasp.
Gavin kept his hold as gentle as possible, but firm enough to hang on. “I was beginning to wonder about that.”
“About what?”
He poured peroxide first into the cut on her arm, then the one on her hand. “If you had a sense of humor. Glad to see you do.” He pressed the folded washcloth over the slash on her arm and placed her hand over it. “Hold that. Press hard”
“I’m sure I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
“It will stop the bleeding.”
She scowled at him in the mirror. “My sense of humor?”
Gavin stared at her reflection, wondering why she should suddenly seem so much more appealing to him at two in the morning with her face scrubbed clean, a little puffy from sleep, her hair mussed, than she had in the light of day with makeup on and her hair neatly combed.
Hell, he thought, returning her scowl. He’d meant what he’d told her earlier in the evening—she damn sure wasn’t his type. He must still be half-asleep himself if he was thinking about leaning down and kissing that tip-tilted nose.
With a shake of his head, he pulled his gaze from her face in the mirror and looked down at her arm. “I meant the pressure on the cut. Pressure will stop the bleeding.”
“I know that.” Irritation, and maybe pain, roughened her voice.
Gavin grabbed another washcloth from the cabinet to press against the smaller cut. He reached for her hand, and felt again that sharp zap of electricity. He jerked his hand away. “Stop doing that,” he ordered tersely.
Anna had felt it, too, that tingling charge that had shocked her when they’d both reached for the phone. “Me? I’m not doing it. It just happens.”
That, Gavin thought, was what he’d been afraid she would say. Damn, that’s all he needed. A static charge every time they touched. It wasn’t sexual, he told himself firmly. It couldn’t be. No way.
But she couldn’t cover both cuts herself, so he reached for her hand again. Sort of snuck up on it.
This time there was no shock. Relieved, he pressed the cloth against the cut. Which essentially left him holding her hand.
When was the last time he’d held a woman’s hand? He couldn’t remember. High school, maybe, he thought, surprised.
His fingers rested against the inside of her wrist where the skin was so transparent he could see her veins. Beneath his touch the steady beat of her pulse sped up. “Does it hurt?”
Anna scowled harder. “Some.” But that wasn’t her immediate problem. Her immediate problem was a sudden breathlessness, a catch in her throat. Maybe she’d lost more blood than she realized, if simply looking at him in the mirror made her feel light-headed. She looked down instead.
The change of view didn’t help. She must have lost a lot of blood. Otherwise the sight of his big, dark hand wrapped around her smaller, paler one wouldn’t send her heart up into her throat to flutter like a trapped butterfly.
With fingers that suddenly trembled, she lifted the washcloth from the cut on her arm. The bleeding had slowed to a slight ooze. “Uh, thanks. I can take it from here.”
Gavin eased the washcloth away from the cut on her hand. “Much better.” But instead of stepping back to give her room, he reached into the cabinet again and pulled out a box of strip bandages. Without comment, he poured more peroxide on her cuts, then tore open a bandage and placed it over the cut on her arm. It took two to cover it.
Anna stood still and watched him as though she weren’t involved in the process at all. The fingertips of his left hand were callused, but his touch was gentle. Being taken care of this way felt odd. Anna wasn’t used to anyone fussing over her. She was the one who normally did the fussing.
How many times had she cleaned and bandaged Ben’s countless cuts and scrapes in his younger days? Too many to remember.
Nor could she remember the last time anyone had cleaned and bandaged anything of hers. It made her feel weak, helpless. Made her knees watery. She didn’t much like it.
“Are you about finished?” she demanded.
“Aw, shucks, darlin’, and here I was hoping for a big ol’ kiss by way of thanks.”
Anna scowled, certain this must be another one of his jokes, but she failed to see the humor. “You’ll have to settle for my verbal thanks.”
“That’ll do fine.” He finished bandaging the cut on her hand. “So? Where is it?”
“Where is what?”
“Your verbal thanks.”
She gave him a tight smile. “Thank you.”
With laughter in his eyes, he gave her a mocking nod. “You’re welcome, Ms. Collins.”
On her way out the door, Anna tossed a look past him over her shoulder before pausing to look at him. “By the way, when not in use, the seat and the lid go down. Good night, Mr. Marshall.”
When Gavin woke the next morning, the sun was well up and he was alone in the house. How he knew the latter without even crawling out of bed, he had no idea. There was just this empty feeling in the air.
The idea that he could feel such a thing irritated him. It was only his imagination. He sure as hell wasn’t so tuned in to Anna Collins that he could tell from behind his closed bedroom door that she wasn’t even in the house. The very idea was ludicrous. And scary.
She was a quiet person. She was probably sitting on the couch reading the Sunday paper. Or at the table, eating breakfast.
The thought of food lured him from the bed. Looking down at himself, he figured he’d better at least tug on his jeans before leaving his room. In case he was wrong and he wasn’t alone in the house.
The instant he opened the door a moment later, jeans in place, he knew his first waking thought had been correct. Except for him, the house was empty. There was an absence of something. Energy? Scent?
Neither idea made any sense. Anna wasn’t a particularly energetic woman. She didn’t fidget, didn’t rush around. In fact, he hadn’t noticed that she wasted a single motion, no matter what she was doing.
And how could he miss her scent when the only thing about her he’d smelled was the clean fragrance of her sleep-warmed hair and skin last night when he’d stood next to her in the bathroom? He didn’t remember smelling any perfume.
So how could “something” be missing from the air? How could the air feel empty? He didn’t know. He only knew, without checking, that Anna Collins had left the house.
That’s bull hockey.
He of course couldn’t know any such thing. He stalked into the living room to prove himself wrong.
She wasn’t there. Nor was she in the kitchen, bedroom, or bath. Her car, when he thought to look, was not in the garage.
Okay, it was Sunday. She had probably gone to church.
Gavin assumed that being able to feel her absence this way was a bad sign. He had friends who spoke of being so close, so connected to a woman that they knew her thoughts, felt her feelings, sensed when she was near and when she wasn’t.
That was fine and dandy for his friends, but Gavin had no desire, no intention whatsoever, of being that connected with a woman. At least not in the foreseeable future. Particularly not with a settling-down kind of woman like Anna Collins.
He didn’t need that type of connection with a woman, didn’t want one. Wouldn’t have it. He had things to do, places to go, songs to write. No time for a regular woman of his own. He liked to keep things loose. Liked to be able to walk away whenever he wanted without worrying about leaving a broken heart behind.
Still, there was no reason to keep on making Anna angry. While she was gone he needed to come up with an idea or two to get on her good side.
Sitting in the pew at church, Anna prayed fervently that Gavin Marshall would be gone from her house when she got home.
She’d been taught in Sunday school as a young child that God answers every prayer. What she’d had to learn on her own was that sometimes God’s answer to a prayer was no. Anna was reminded of this when she pulled in her driveway and noticed that the Sunday paper, which she’d left on the porch, was gone, and that the living room drapes, which she’d left closed, were open.
This time, realizing that Gavin was still there, God’s answer didn’t feel like a simple no. It felt like a “No, and furthermore, Anna, my dear...”
Sitting in her car staring blankly at the garage door, Anna took a slow, deep breath. Maybe if she were nicer to Gavin, she could get him to tell her what Ben had been up to lately. Maybe if she made friends with him she could get him to leave. It seemed worth a try. Nothing else was working right in regard to that man.
Resigned to trying to be nice to him—although to be honest, he was rather likable in a rough sort of way—she got out of her car and went to open the garage door. She didn’t waste her time praying that the door would open easily for a change. Instead she used her key to open the lock, then bent, grabbed the handle, braced herself, and pulled hard, putting her back into it the way she knew she had to, to get the door to budge.
Instead of hanging, dragging and groaning in protest, the wide, heavy door flew up in its tracks so fast that Anna barely got her hand free of the handle before being yanked off her feet. A sharp squawk of surprise escaped her throat. She lost her balance and staggered against the brick wall beside the door.
Immediately she straightened and glanced around to see if any of her neighbors was looking.
Then, feeling silly for checking, she looked up at the garage door, wondering what had happened. Cautiously she reached up to pull the door down to try it again, just to see what would happen. It was surprisingly harder to pull down than usual. Normally, one tug and the double-wide door more or less fell down its tracks and slammed closed and woe be to anyone standing in the way. This time she had to actually tug it—although only slightly—all the way down.
It couldn’t be broken. Please, God, it couldn’t be broken. She had no money set aside for a new garage door.
With more reluctance than care, Anna bent and grabbed the handle again, this time pulling gently. The door raised easily. Easier than she ever remembered. It rolled up all the way without much effort on her part at all. Slowly she turned in a circle, craning her neck as she looked up at the door where it rested in its tracks above her head.
The door to the kitchen opened and Gavin smiled at her. “What do you think?”
Frowning, Anna looked back up at the garage door. “Is it broken?”
Gavin laughed. “It’s fixed.”
Anna straightened and stared at him. “Fixed?”
“Try it again.”
She did. Again it went down at a controlled speed instead of a crash. And again, it flew up with virtually no effort. Amazed, she closed and opened it yet another time.
Gavin got a kick out of the look on her face. As if she’d just discovered ice cream for the first time in her life. “Like it?”
Actually, he got a kick out of looking at her. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a grown woman looking so damn prim and proper. Her pink suit was more feminine than tailored, with a waist-length, collarless jacket. The skirt hit the bottom of her knees, and her white blouse sported a crisp wide bow beneath her chin.
Prim. That was the only word for it, for her. Except maybe for cute.
Slowly, Anna smiled. She didn’t want to smile at this man, but she and that stubborn, heavy garage door had hated each other for years. “What did you do?”
“Adjusted the tension.”
“That can’t be as simple as you make it sound.”
He gave a slight shrug. “Pretty simple. It only took a few minutes.”
Anna pursed her lips to hide her smile. “You disappoint me. You’d have been better off to tell me you’d spent hours fixing it and that you broke three fingers in the process. Just so I could feel properly grateful.”
There came that sense of humor again, Gavin thought. The one Ben said she didn’t have.
But as Gavin looked into her eyes, he realized there was no humor there, the smile was forced.
Damn. She wasn’t joking. “Is that what Ben would have done?”
Anna turned abruptly away and marched toward her car. “Thank you for fixing the door.”
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly but loud enough for her to hear. “None of my business.”
Anna opened her car door, then turned to face him with another fake smile. “Don’t apologize. I appreciate your efforts. That door and I have been enemies for years.”
The prim pink Sunday suit was gone, and Gavin found himself missing it. Which was absurd.
After pulling her car into the garage and making another fuss over the garage door, she’d gone to her room and changed clothes. The suit had been replaced with beige slacks, tailored white blouse tucked in at the waist, brown leather belt, white socks and white sneakers. Everything straight and neat, as though she had to pass inspection. Instead of prim, now she looked too damn neat for comfort.
It occurred to him that she never looked as if she were comfortable. She always looked stiff, on guard. Did his presence cause that, or was she just an overly cautious woman? Or overly uptight?
Not his problem, he told himself. Except that if he was the cause, it was his problem.
And that hint of a bandage showing through her sleeve, not to mention the bandage on her hand—those were his doing.
Dammit, he hadn’t come here to scare or upset her or cause her any trouble, yet he’d done all three. He was sorry for that. But not sorry enough to give up and let her brother off the hook.
He sat on the couch and watched as she went to the kitchen, listened as she rattled around in there for a minute. The fridge opened. Ice cubes clinked. Liquid poured. Then she surprised him by returning to the living room and taking the chair across from the couch, a sweating glass of iced tea held in both hands.
“What do you do with yourself on a Sunday afternoon?” he asked, keeping his voice easy.
His question took her by surprise. She took a slow sip of tea. “What do you mean?”
He flopped against the back of the couch and accidentally kicked the coffee table while crossing one foot on the opposite knee. He frowned at the table that always seemed to be in his way. Then he shrugged. “I mean, do you go visit friends? Cook out on the patio? Go to the zoo? Fly a kite in the park? What do you do?”
She couldn’t help it. She laughed. “Me? Fly a kite?” The idea was ludicrous.
“You don’t fly kites?”
She tilted her head and studied him. “Do you?”
“I’ve been known to.”
“Why?”
He blinked. “What do you mean, why?”
“Why does a grown man fly a kite?”
“For fun.”
She frowned. “Fun?”
Something in the back of Gavin’s neck tingled. “Enjoyment? Entertainment? You know—fun.”
She gave him a look that seemed to say, If you say so. “I wanted to talk to you about Ben.”
“I’d rather talk about fun. What do you do for fun?”
“Mr. Marshall—”
“If you don’t start calling me Gavin, I’m going to have to get rough with you.”
To give her credit, she didn’t look impressed with his threat. “How long have you known Ben?”
Gavin studied her through narrowed eyes. “That depends on who you’re asking.”
“Pardon?”
“If you’re asking Mr. Marshall, that’s my dad. He’s known Ben for several months.”
Her foot started a rapid tapping on the carpet. “All right. ”How long have you known my brother, Gavin?”
Gavin grinned. “A little over a year.”
“Why did you lend him money?”
His smile slipped. “If he wants you to know, he’ll tell you himself.”
She shook her head. “I’m not asking why he borrowed it from you.”
The words were hard for her to say. Gavin could read every thought that crossed her face. He could feel the sudden tension radiating from her, feel it pulling at him. She might not be asking why Ben borrowed the money, but she damn sure wanted to know. Or thought she did.
“I’d like to know,” she continued, “why you would bother lending him the money at all.”
Trevor shrugged. “He’s a friend. If I hadn’t loaned it to him, he’d have gotten it somewhere else that maybe wasn’t too smart.”
She seemed to shrink in on herself. “You mean, like a loan shark?”
“A thumb-breaker? Yeah. It was a possibility.” There were other possibilities, worse ones that made his gut clench thinking of them, but he didn’t mention them.
“So you loaned him the money yourself.”
“That’s right.”
“Because you’re such a nice guy?”
“Why, thank you.”
“I was asking a question, not stating an opinion.”
Gavin placed a hand over his heart. “You wound me.”
Her mouth firmed, lips thinned. The lady obviously was not amused. “When and how did you meet my brother?”
He gave a negligent shrug. “At a party.”
“What kind of party?” she asked sharply.
“You’ve been reading too many tabloids, sugar.”
“What kind of party?”
He shrugged again. “Just a get-together at a friend’s. Ben was pecking out a tune on the piano. Something, I learned later, that he’d written himself.”
“Ben wrote a song?” There was that baby-owl blink again.
“He’s written several in the past year.”
She cocked her head. “You like him.”
“Yeah. I like him. I’ve. told you that several times. He’s a likable guy.”
Deep furrows dug into her brow. “If you really like him, then why...”
“Why am I after his hide?”
“Is that what you’re after? His hide?”
Gavin shook his head. “I’m not out to hurt him, Anna. But I think if he doesn’t wake up real quick, he’s headed for trouble. Bad trouble. I like him too much to sit back and let that happen without trying to stop it.”
She took a small sip of tea and stared down at her glass for a long moment before looking up at him again. “I don’t understand what it is you’re planning to do if and when he shows up here. I don’t understand what you think you can do.”
“I can make him own up to his responsibilities.”
“How? By telling him to? Do you think I haven’t tried that?” Her voice wavered. “Do you think I don’t know his faults?”
“I don’t know,” Gavin said bluntly. “Do you?”
From the neighbor’s backyard, a dog barked. Out in the street, a car door slammed. Ordinary sounds of an ordinary neighborhood. They soothed something in Gavin, eased the tension that tightened his shoulders whenever he thought of the trouble Ben was headed for if somebody didn’t give him a hard, swift kick in the seat of his pants.
“Are you aware,” he asked her quietly, “that he likes to gamble? And that he’s not very good at it?”
He read the pain in her face before she spoke. “He promised me he wouldn’t do that again.”
“You sound just like my aunt Marilyn.” Gavin’s wry laugh was tinged with sadness. “The two of you have a lot in common. Or rather, her son, Danny, and Ben have a lot in common. Unfortunately.”
Anna took another sip of tea, pursed her lips and leaned back in her chair. “I suppose you’re going to explain what you mean.”
Gavin sighed. “I suppose I am. Marilyn is my mother’s sister. Her three boys were in their early teens when her husband left her. Danny was the youngest. About twelve, I guess, when his dad ran off.”
Gavin hadn’t been much older himself at the time. Lord, he’d never forget the day Marilyn and the boys had come crashing into the house, awash in hysterical tears. Steve had left them. Just said goodbye and waltzed out the door.
Gavin shook his head. It was a long time ago now. “The two older boys, Steve Junior, and Tom, they did okay with it after a while. But Danny apparently couldn’t accept that his dad was never coming back. He started acting up, getting in trouble in school, that sort of thing.”
Ah, the look on Anna’s face was priceless. She knew where he was headed with this story. He could read it in her eyes. She was already tallying up the similarities between Danny and Ben. Ben’s parents might not have walked out on him deliberately, but dying was still leaving, and the ones left behind still felt anger and pain and a sense of betrayal.
“The older Danny got,” Gavin continued, “the more trouble he managed to stir up. By the time he was twenty, he’d milked nearly ten thousand dollars out of his mother to get him out of one scrape after another. The rest of us kept telling her to stop, but she couldn’t. He was her baby. She loved him. She couldn’t just stand back and do nothing when he needed her.”
Pain and stubborn denial mixed with fear in Anna’s eyes. Gavin wished...hell, he didn’t know what he wished. Only maybe that she wouldn’t hurt so much, wouldn’t care so much. But Ben was her brother. If she didn’t care, Gavin wouldn’t admire her—and he was starting to realize that he did—he wouldn’t be feeling this dull ache in his chest on her behalf.
“She sold her new Lincoln and bought an old clunker, she hocked her jewelry, mortgaged her house. And good ol’ Danny just kept coming back asking for more. She borrowed every cent she could from anyone who’d lend it to her, until finally she couldn’t borrow any more.”
“It’s a sad story,” Anna said, denial hard on her face. “But it has nothing to do with Ben.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“No. I’ve never gone into debt for Ben.” But only because she couldn’t, Anna acknowledged silently. She’d been too busy paying off the debts their parents had left them.
“Good for you. Marilyn wasn’t that smart. If she had cut him off sooner, maybe he wouldn’t have ended up where he did.”
Anna did not want to hear the rest of this story. She most definitely did not. “I suppose you’re going to tell me where he ended up?”
Gavin gave her a single nod. “I am. When his mother couldn’t lend—give—him any more money, he tried the rest of the family. Everybody told him to grow up, to stop being so damn irresponsible. Danny didn’t listen. He kept throwing his money away, kept gambling, kept losing. Eventually he lost too much to the wrong kind of people. The kind who break kneecaps for fun. My brother bailed him out of that one after making Danny promise to straighten up and get counseling, get a job.”
“But he didn’t.”
“No, he didn’t.” It still hurt, Gavin thought. After two years, it still hurt to think about what Danny had done, where he was now. “He turned right around six months later and got in even deeper with the same people. Only this time no one was willing to bail him out. So he came up with another way to get the money he needed. Unfortunately, he wasn’t very good at that, either. He’s now a guest of the State of Washington, doing twelve years hard time for armed robbery.”
Anna shivered and looked down at the glass of tea she still held, mildly surprised to notice that her knuckles were white and the glass was in danger of shattering. She eased her grip.
Not Ben. Ben wouldn’t end up like Gavin’s cousin. Ben wouldn’t—
“Right about now I figure you’re telling yourself that couldn’t happen to your brother.”
Anna flinched but refused to look up.
“Don’t kid yourself,” he said. “It can happen. Probably will, if he doesn’t straighten up. One of these days he’ll be in so much trouble you won’t be able to bail him out. Then what will you do?”
This time she did look up at him. “So I stop helping him now? Speed up the process so he can get in real trouble that much sooner? What kind of answer is that?”
“If we handle it right, maybe he’ll learn his lesson now, before it’s too late.”
“We?”
“You and me, Anna. Together. What do you say?”
“I say that considering what you do for a living, it’s incredibly presumptuous of you to think you can teach responsibility to anyone.”
His eyes hardened. His voice softened. Dangerously, she thought.
“What I do for a living?”
“You write songs, Gavin. Rock-and-roll songs. If that’s not a frivolous and irresponsible way for a grown man to spend his time, I don’t know what is.”