Endless Fear (5 page)

“
It smells wonderful, Helga.” Spence leaned against the counter.

As he pushed the sleeves of his pink and gray cable knit sweater up to his elbows, revealing muscular forearms, furred with sleek sable hair, April felt her pulse bounce. Quickly, she forced her gaze elsewhere. “Do you need any help, Helga?”

“
As a matter of fact, Spencer could do me a big favor. Fetch a bottle of wine from the cellar. A full bodied red.”

“
Sure.” Spencer shoved away from the counter.

April wasn’t about to let the opportunity to see the basement pass. “I’ll help.”

Spencer stiffened. The last thing he wanted was to be in the basement with April. “That’s not necessary. Why don’t you stay here and visit with Helga?”

She moved toward him. “Actually, I’d like to see the wine cellar. My education is lacking in numerous fundamentals and I could use a lesson in wines…if you wouldn’t mind playing teacher.”

One look at her eclipsed the protest Spencer had started to voice. The stubborn determination in the set of her slender shoulders and delicate jaw said she intended to go to the basement with or without him. Any argument he might put forth would only seem suspicious. Resignedly, he motioned her to follow, and headed toward the laundry room.

April felt an anxious twinge in her stomach as she fell in step behind him, but soon her attention veered to his lilting stride. With rapt fascination, she watched the shift of his jean-snugged hips and the flex of his broad shoulders beneath his loose sweater. His walk emitted a raw sensuality April found unsettling. There was no room in her life for men—not until her lost memory returned. And maybe not even then.

He switched on the light. To April’s chagrin, the laundry room had also been enlarged and windows added. The glass threw back their reflections and their gazes met and held. The dismay she felt was written on her face for all the world and Spencer to see.

Despite his resolve to remain apathetic to her during the next two weeks, Spencer couldn’t help but respond to this lovely, tormented woman. He spoke without thinking. “It can’t be easy coming back to find so much changed.”

The tenderness in his voice was too much. Sympathy was the one thing April hadn’t hardened herself against. Tears burned the back of her eyelids and a lump clogged her throat, forcing her to swallow hard. “No, it’s not. Even the rooms that haven’t been…redone…show more wear than I expected to see.” The smile hovering on her lips felt weak.

Realizing the danger of encouraging this conversation, Spencer pulled his gaze from her entrancing aqua eyes and changed the subject. “Sounds like the storm is over.”

He skirted the dryer and waited by a wide archway to give her, as well as himself, a moment to regain composure. The fierce silence was punctuated by the patter of dripping water from the eaves and downspouts. Ducking through the arch, he proceeded down the steps. “Come on.”

April caught hold of her courage and mixed it with a deep breath for good measure, reminding herself her stay here was only temporary. Once she recovered her lost memory, she could go back to the life she’d established in Arizona. And the first step toward the goal started with these stairs. “I’m right behind you.”

With her heart pounding wildly, she followed Spencer down and down, colliding into his solid backside when he stopped abruptly at the bottom stair.

“
Sorry,” she stammered, too conscious of the intimate touch of her fingertips against his muscled back, too conscious of his heartbeat beneath his soft sweater, too conscious of Spencer Garrick the man. Levering for balance, she leaned away from him.

The door swung inward, releasing a dank smell and a breath of cool air. The cellar was medium-sized with an unswept cement floor and an over bright ceiling bulb. The light glared yellow across the cold, dusky room, conjuring creepy shadows in corners and along ledges.

Proceeding into the room, April glanced from the metal shelves lining the walls—crammed with home-canned foods in every size and shape of glass container imaginable—to the heaped gunnysacks of potatoes and onions on the concrete floor.

Spencer moved ahead to a door stuck between the metal shelves. As he reached for the knob, uncertainty tangled with expectancy inside her. Her voice held a telltale quaver. “Everything is backward. We used to get to this room through this door.”

Spencer heard her misgiving and suspended his hand on the doorknob. Perhaps she’d changed her mind. He glanced over his shoulder. “Are you sure you want to go on?”

“
Absolutely!”

The nod of her head set her golden hair dancing wildly about her arresting face. Spencer stared, mesmerized. She looked so like Lily just now, younger of course, but the similarities, the place, aroused unwanted memories, memories better left forgotten, he reminded himself. He twisted the doorknob and pushed. “The door is stuck. It swells in this damp weather. Move back.”

April retreated to the center of the larder and watched him apply his shoulder to the stubborn door. A second later it scraped across the cement floor, setting off an eerie echo in the large open area beyond.

Spencer stepped over the threshold and flicked on the light switch. The dim bulb did little to dispel the darkness or ease the shadows in the vast room. It felt as cold and damp as a mausoleum. Indeed, over the past few years it had been designated as a graveyard for August’s failed inventions. Discarded metal skeletons peered around stacked cardboard boxes that looked more like bulky tombstones draped in cobweb shrouds. He heard a rat skittering into a corner and felt a shiver slice up his back.

This was the moment of truth, but he wasn’t ready. His pulse was beating too fast for his liking. Deliberately, he positioned his body to block April’s range of vision.

April gazed through the doorway at Spencer’s back. Why didn’t he move aside? Impatience skipped along her nerve endings and crept into her words. “You’d never make it as a tour guide.”

He wheeled around to face her with his dark brows crooked in a frown. “Huh?”

Barely containing the urge to shove past him and into the room, she fought to keep her tone light, teasing. “The object of any tour is to let the customer
see
the scenery.”

The frown turned into a scowl. Shifting position, he further barricaded himself between April and the doorway. “Tour? What tour?”

Heat rushed into her cheeks at the inadvertent admission, but the chill emanating from him quickly sobered her. “I want to see what changes Dad has made to the basement.”

Spencer narrowed his eyes as anger licked through him. He knew he was probably going to be too blunt; he always was when he cared about something. It was a flaw in his nature he had never been able to overcome; the one thing that would always keep him from receiving the political success that came so easily to Thane. “April, I assume you have your reasons for wanting to see this room and I suppose you have a right, but we can’t afford to have you fall to pieces again. Lily is dead. Accept that fact and get on with your life. And let us get on with ours.”

April blanched, then felt her face flame anew, this time in anger. In her elation at being reunited with him, she’d actually forgotten how single-minded Spencer could be. Always thrusting his opinions on people as though he, and only he, had the solution to the world’s problems. “I—“

Cutting her off before she got started, Spencer raged on, “You can’t know the torment the family has suffered at the hands of the press. Politicians are under intense scrutiny these days, and there are any number of unscrupulous opponents who will win an election however they can. Every election year, including the one four years ago, some by-line-hungry reporter digs up the whole mess again. The engagement festivities should be Thane and Vanessa’s celebration. But I’m afraid this year your presence here is going to stir that hornet’s nest worse than ever.”

Alarms went off inside her. Had Spencer sent the note? “Are you telling me to leave?”

He sighed loud, frustrated. “It would have been better if you hadn’t come—but you’re here now.”

She could no more contain the fury building inside her than she could contain her need to see the room beyond him. Arching one brow higher than the other, April glared at him. “Don’t worry. I won’t do anything or say anything that will ruin the family festivities.”

The tartness in her voice made him wince. “You won’t have to.” He grabbed her by the shoulders, but when he pulled her near and gazed into her eyes, his breath and his anger snarled in his throat. His words came out whispered, sounding husky, sensuous, even to him. “Your beautiful face will do the damage.”

As his heated breath embraced her face, April’s ire gave way to a much stronger emotion, a deep yearning to be kissed, to at least once in her sterile life know the secrets of intimacy most women her age took for granted.

The unmistakable invitation in her bewitching aqua eyes was his undoing. Lowering his lips to hers, Spencer kissed her gently, then possessively and felt her innocent response as her body arched instinctively toward his. His arms snaked around her, pulling her closer.
God, she felt good, tasted good. She was everything he’d always
dreamed she’d be, and more.

The stirring deep in his belly brought him to his senses with a jolt. He released her as though he’d been bitten instead of kissed. Anger twisted his gut, anger at himself. He hadn’t meant to take advantage of the situation nor let the situation take advantage of him.

Bracing his frame against the open doorway, he spoke to April with all the reproach he felt toward himself. “Go back upstairs. I’ll get the wine.”

Her spirits felt as bruised and abandoned as her lips. How dare he dismiss her like a naughty child! Damn, he was arrogant! Was that what politics did to a person? With every ounce of willpower she possessed, April managed to rein in her shortened temper, realizing it would do more harm to defy him than to let him believe he was getting his way. She couldn’t quite eliminate the ice from her gaze, but she did manage to tip her head in acquiescence. “All right. I’ll go.”

Scrambling through the larder, she ascended the stairs, pausing halfway up. Her fingers strayed to her swollen lips, gingerly caressing them. The kiss had been wonderful, but now she felt humiliated. She’d allowed him to think he could deter her from seeing the basement by using the oldest trick in the book. Seduction.

Now, he was probably laughing at her naiveté, judging her a pushover, a fool. Heat burned into her cheeks and she knew they were undoubtedly as red as the wine Spence was selecting. The only consolation was that he had sorely underestimated her determination.

As soon as she heard him cross the basement to the wine cellar and close the heavy door, April hurried back down the stars. In seconds, she’d moved through the larder to the door. Her heart raced with anticipation, then skipped two full beats as she stepped into the large open room. The temperature was definitely several degrees lower in here. Oddly, April felt flushed with heat.

The low watt bulb offered inadequate illumination and several precious seconds passed before April’s eyes adjusted enough to survey the room that spiders and neglect had veiled in webby, ghostly mantles. Her nose wrinkled at the musty smell. As children, the twins, Karl, and she had been allowed to play in the spacious room, roller skating almost daily in the winter.

Now there was only a narrow pathway between boxes and metal hulks leading to the wine cellar.

At length, her seeking eyes located the coveted spot.

The muffled sound of a scuttling rat brought April to her tiptoes, but her hopes fell flat. As far as she could tell, the landing was intact and being used as a storage shelf, but the staircase had been removed.

Yet, as she stared at the desecrated site, April found she could see the staircase distinctly in her mind’s eye. And something else, too. Something indefinable, intangible, something April sensed in the hidden recesses of her memory banks. New hopes sprouted inside her. Perhaps even without the staircase she would be able to retrieve those lost minutes so vital to her full recovery.

The creak of unoiled hinges announced the opening of the wine cellar door and shattered April’s musing. She scurried through the larder and back up the stairs, arriving in the kitchen, slightly breathless, only seconds before Spencer. A telltale blush warmed her cheeks, but April was counting on the arrogant man to think that she was blushing because of their kiss, and not because she had disobeyed his edict to leave the basement.

July and Helga were bent over one of the huge sinks peeling potatoes. As Spencer strode toward them, the cook dried her hands on her apron, then reached for the dusty bottle. After daubing at the filthy glass with a damp paper towel, she read the label, then looked up at Spencer. Her smile included April. “This is exactly what I had in mind. Now you two had better get on into the living room.”