Maidenstone Lighthouse (14 page)

W
eariness hit me like a felled tree as I locked the door and slumped onto the pine deacon's bench in the foyer to catch my breath. “I love him,” whispered the small romantic voice inside my head.

“Maybe,” countered Miss Practical. “But since you haven't slept for, what—twenty hours?—you're hardly in a position to be making judgment calls.”

“Will you two just shut the hell up and let me think?” I grumped.

“How about a nice, hot, lavender-scented bath?” suggested Little Miss Romantic. “That always calms you down.”

“Good idea,” Miss Practical snottily piped up. “And while you're at it, your legs could use a good going over with a razor. You've got more stubble down there than a corral full of cactus.”

Ignoring them both, and too tired even to bathe at the end of this bizarre and exhausting day, I climbed upstairs to my room, tossed my limp clothes in a heap on the floor and crawled into bed.

“What about Aimee?” asked Miss Romantic, her voice tinged with anticipation.

“There's no sense in my trying to contact Aimee tonight,” I yawned as my head sank into the softness of the down pillows. “I'd better wait until I have all of my faculties about me.”

“Oh, hell, it looks like we're in for a very long haul, then,” Miss Practical sniped as I fell abruptly into a deep and exhausted sleep.

At some point, hours later, I thought I heard the sound of distant bells ringing.

Wedding bells, I murmured with a smile.

 

“I can't wait any longer, Sue, honey. I need you so badly. I want things to be like they were.”

“Mmmm.” I sighed and arched my back like a sleeping cat that is being scratched in just the right spot.

I was sleeping on my side, my bottom tucked comfortably into the crook of a warm stomach. The familiar sandpaper roughness of a light masculine beard brushed pleasantly against my bare shoulder, hard-wiring the tingling sensation between my thighs to reality. Moaning with anticipation I pressed backward against the taut, unyielding core of my fantasy lover.

God, I thought sleepily, but I was having the most beautiful dream of my life. In the space of a few more seconds, I knew, a gentle hand would tenderly cup my breast and I would languidly turn to face my lover. Then…

“Oh, God, Susie…You don't know how long I've dreamed of being with you like this again.” The masculine voice, vaguely familiar, but breathlessly low and rasping, purred in my ear. “I've wanted you, fantasized about you…”

Susie? No one had called me Susie since high school.

Suddenly the expected hand slid around my rib cage, eager and grasping, but cold and not at all gentle. Rough fingers found my nipple. Squeezed. Hard. Much too hard.

I opened my eyes in sudden panic, squinting through the darkness at the glowing numerals of the bedside clock. 1:28
AM
.

No dream, this.

Real, screamed my panicked mind.

This was really happening!

Rough hands were pulling at me now. I craned my neck around in fright and dimly saw the outline of a man's face, its features masked in inky shadow. Then his hard hands were turning me, as I had myself planned to turn in my interrupted reverie. Pulling me close to the stubbled chin, the stiff, ironlike hardness below.

“What are you doing?” I squealed. A stale, nauseating odor assaulted my nostrils as hot, wet lips engulfed my mouth, forcing me to silence.

“Wake up, you moron,” yelled the dual voices in my head, for once in total agreement with one another. “Wake up, for God's sake! You're about to be raped!”

The thought jerked me rudely into full consciousness and I screamed at my assailant. “Let me go, you bastard!”

The unseen face retreated from mine, even as the strong hands grasped my hips, dragging me closer to his thrusting pelvis.

“No, Sue! Wait!” he protested. “Just want to hold you close to me…”

I gagged as the stale odor on his breath hit me again full force and I recognized the smell for what it was.

Scotch.

In that same instant, the lighthouse beacon flooded the room with hard white illumination and I found myself staring into the familiar puffy features of my attacker.

“You!” I screeched, going for his piggish, red-rimmed eyes with my fingernails and bringing my knee up solidly into his crotch.

Tom Barnwell moaned in agony and half-crawled, half-fell out of the bed. “Sue,” he gasped. “It was just a little joke…”

I switched on the bedside lamp and grabbed for the only heavy object in sight, the antique telephone I'd found in the attic and had the phone company wire in a few days earlier. Jerking the clunky receiver off its cradle, I held it up like a club.

“Get out of my house!” I screamed, raising the blunt instrument threateningly over my head.

Tom stood shakily, backing away toward the bedroom door while fumbling to fasten the belt on his wrinkled khaki slacks. “I honestly didn't mean any harm, Sue,” he said with a sickly smile that I suppose was meant to set me at ease regarding his true motive.

Frightened and enraged, I was having none of it. For, despite the premature flab showing around his waist and neck, at nearly six feet two inches tall, Tom Barnwell was still a big and powerful man. He easily outweighed me by a hundred pounds and I wasn't in the mood to take any chances on his intentions.

“Get out of here,” I said evenly, forcing my voice into a lower register. “Now, Tom.”

He took another halting step toward me. “If you'll just let me explain,” he said, advancing.

I raised the antique phone higher. “Tom, if you don't get out of here right now you can explain it to the police,” I said. “The only reason I'm not already dialing 911 is that it would kill your father to have you arrested for attempted rape and trespassing.”

Tom's florid face went pasty white, but he held his ground. “Trespassing?” he gasped. “Sue, you gave me the keys to this house. I'm your rental agent and property manager. Remember?”

“Right now you're nothing but a goddamned criminal!” I shouted.

Tom wagged his head violently from side to side, his pouchy jowls flapping like a bad caricature of Richard Nixon. “Look, I'll admit that climbing into bed with you was a stupid stunt,” he blustered. “And I apologize…”

I couldn't prevent myself from screaming at him. “I don't want your damn apology! I just want you out of my house!” I reached over and fumbled with the old-fashioned telephone dial on the nightstand. “I mean it.”

“Okay, okay!” He raised his hands palms upward and backed slowly toward the door. “But I did not break into your house, Sue,” he persisted. “As a matter of fact, I drove by earlier today to see if you needed anything. I thought it was strange that your Volvo was here but you weren't. So tonight, on my way home from Krabb's, I swung by again, just to make sure you were okay—”

“I am dialing the police in exactly fifteen seconds,” I threatened.

“Listen. I'm sure I saw somebody prowling around the back of the house,” he continued, speeding up his delivery but still not leaving. “I rang the bell and when you didn't answer I let myself in with my key…”

I stuck my finger in the 9 hole on the rotary dial and spun it. The old mechanical steel wheel clacked noisily on its springs.

“When I peeked into your room and saw you sleeping, all I could think about was that night we spent together on Dad's boat.” Tom's face was ashen and the words were spilling out at a rapid-fire clip as he raced to finish his alibi. “You looked just like you did then, all curled up on your side,” he said. “I remembered how I crawled into bed beside you, to wake you up…”

A wan little smile curled the corners of his wet mouth. “You told me that night that you loved being awakened that way…I've never forgotten that, or the way we felt about one another, Susie—”

I cut him off by dialing another number. The 1.

He fell silent and reached up to brush a fleck of spittle from his chin, then touched his forehead. Big, greasy beads of perspiration were sliding into rivulets of blood seeping from the two deep scratches I'd inflicted when I went for his eyes in the dark. He winced in pain, finally convinced by the sight of his own blood that I was deadly serious about calling the police.

“I'm sorry I scared you,” he muttered, looking down at his scarlet fingertips. “I guess I must have had a few too many down at Krabb's.”

Sensing that whatever he had intended when he had crawled into my bed had indeed been inspired by too much scotch, I slowly and deliberately replaced the phone in its cradle. Then I folded my arms across my chest and stared at the doleful, paunchy man cowering before me.

“Time for a reality check, Tom,” I snapped nastily. “That great romantic evening on your father's boat consisted of exactly fifteen minutes of clumsy groping, followed by not more than three minutes of very painful intercourse. I was seventeen at the time and we were both extremely drunk. Afterwards, as I recall, I passed out cold and you only woke me up because you were terrified that your father was going to catch us.”

I paused to let the harsh facts behind his carefully nurtured memory sink in. “On the very rare occasions that I think of that night on the boat at all,” I continued after several seconds of strained silence, “I remember mostly the fact that I spent the next three days throwing up.”

I could see that I had his full attention now. He stared shamefaced at the floor as I went on. “You were, in other words, a horrible lay,” I said with all the meanness I was feeling. “Hell, Tom, it's a wonder that I didn't give up men entirely because of you.”

Tom Barnwell stood there in my bedroom, looking completely defeated and shifting uneasily from side to side, like a sailor trying to regain his land legs after a long, rough sea voyage.

“Except for the memory of that dismal night, there is not now, nor will there ever be anything between us,” I continued, the cold fury I felt at his presumption in assuming that he could just climb into my bed was dripping from each carefully pronounced syllable of every word. “And if you are not gone from here in the next minute, or if you ever dare to mention that disgusting incident to me again, I will gleefully call the police and tell them that you broke into my house tonight and assaulted me in my bed. Do I make myself crystal clear, Tom?”

“Assaulted you? But I didn't—”

I cut off his feeble protest with a wave of my hand. “You're not listening to me, Tom!” I shouted. “I know you didn't rape me tonight. And maybe, as you claim, you weren't even planning on it. But I'll tell the police that you did, anyway.”

Tom Barnwell's slack mouth fell open, exposing a set of expensively bonded white teeth. “Jesus, Susie,” he whined, “you can't go around making groundless accusations!” He shook his head in disbelief. “A thing like that would destroy me in this town,” he said. “I can't believe you'd deliberately lie about something so serious.”

I pointed a trembling finger at him. “Just try me, Tom,” I hissed, looking pointedly at the bedside clock. “Half of your minute is already gone, by the way.”

Looking as if he was about to be struck by a cobra, Tom Barnwell backed out of my bedroom without another word. A moment later, I heard his stumbling footsteps trampling down the stairs.

I ran to the bedroom door and shouted after him. “And leave my keys in the hall on your way out, you bastard! You're fired! And stop calling me Susie!”

Still shaking with rage I pulled on a robe and ran downstairs the moment I heard the front door slam behind him. I found Tom's set of keys on the foyer floor and scooped them up. Depositing the keys in the pocket of my robe, I locked the door securely. Then I spent the next fifteen minutes prowling the house, checking all of the windows and doors.

In the kitchen I went directly to the back door to be sure it was double latched. And though I did not for a minute believe Tom's feeble story of having spotted a prowler, I peered out into the backyard through the glass. Out in the darkness thick tendrils of fog swirled around the oak tree, creating the impression of shadowy figures gliding through the gray haze shrouding the yard.

A sudden shuddering chill ran through my body and I retreated to the center of the brightly lighted kitchen and put the teakettle on the stove. The newly installed portable phone on the marble countertop was inches from my hand. I had only to dial Dan's number. He had told me that he was staying in his parents' old house down by the wharf, so I knew he could be with me in ten minutes or less.

I reached for the phone, then stopped myself, unwilling to play the helpless, hysterical woman before Dan Freedman. After all, I reassured myself, I was perfectly all right. Tom Barnwell had fled like a scalded cat and was not likely to come back tonight, or ever again, for that matter.

And, despite the darkness of the night and the eerie effects of the fog, there was certainly no mysterious prowler lurking beneath the branches of the ancient oak in my backyard.

The kettle shrieked and I made the tea, hunching over the kitchen counter with my hands wrapped tightly around the comforting mug for warmth. At least, I thought, the mystery of the open kitchen door had been solved. Tom Barnwell must have indeed come by during the afternoon and let himself into the house, though I still didn't quite understand why he had left the back door open. Perhaps, I speculated, he had done it deliberately, hoping to add credence to his prowler story when he returned late at night, bent possibly on demonstrating some phony macho heroics before hopping into bed with grateful little me.

I didn't know, and at that point I really didn't care, what had motivated Tom Barnwell to do the things he had done. I only knew that he wasn't going to get another chance on my account.

I scribbled a note to myself on the pad beside the phone—a reminder to have all the locks in the house changed the next day, just in case Tom had a duplicate set of keys. Then, with the entire unpleasant incident resolved in my mind, I trudged upstairs to bed for the second time that night.