The Last White Knight (18 page)

Sobbing, she thrust her arms out, intending to fend him off. Her palms connected with the hard, hair-dusted planes of his chest and she started to bolt away, but he caught her and pulled her gently into
his embrace. He wrapped his arms around her, imprisoning her trembling body against the strength of his, enfolding her in his warmth, offering her the comfort of his touch, his voice.

“We’ll work it out,” he said softly, his lips brushing her temple as he curled himself down over her and pulled her tighter against him. “We’ll work it out.”

“We can’t,” Lynn mumbled, her face pressed against his chest, tears running into her mouth, salty and bittersweet.

“We will,” Erik insisted, as if he could force events to change with the strength of his own determination. That was the way he had been raised—to believe he could accomplish anything if he set his mind to it. He didn’t want to think that this case might be the exception to the rule. He’d waited too long to fall in love to have it snatched from his grasp now. This was the woman he wanted, the woman he ached for with a need that went deeper than anything he’d ever known before. He wouldn’t let her go. He wouldn’t.

“I don’t care who you were. I don’t care what you did,” he whispered urgently as he slid a hand into her hair and tipped her head back. “I love you.”

He captured her mouth with his and kissed her deeply with a fervor that bordered on desperation, a desperation that intensified as he tasted Lynn’s tears.
The primitive need to brand her as his, to bond her to him, burned in his gut, and he swept his right hand down to the ripe curve of her buttock and lifted her against him, pressing her into his suddenly straining manhood.

Lynn felt her resolve drain away and need rise up to take its place. She didn’t want to push Erik away, she wanted to hold him forever. And in that moment it didn’t matter how wrong it might have been. She didn’t have the strength to fight herself, didn’t have the strength to be noble. All she could do was want him and need him and hope that what little she could have of him would last her a lifetime.

Instead of pushing him away, her arms slid up around his neck and she pressed herself fully against him. He kissed her over and over, deep, drugging kisses that took her mind further and further from reality, immersing her in the fantasy of belonging to him until her physical sense took complete control. She stopped thinking and simply let herself experience—the feel of his big body against her, the taste of him, the warm, masculine scent of him, the sound of his breathing, the beating of his heart. She let herself float on sensation, lost herself in the dream.

Her head fell back as Erik’s mouth trailed down the column of her throat. The dress shirt slipped from her shoulders to pool at her feet. Then she was
falling, being lowered to the bed, and Erik was falling with her, into her embrace, into her body. She wrapped her legs around his lean hips and welcomed him into her warmth, cherished the feel of him deep within her. She arched into his thrusts, moving with him, soaring with him into oblivion, holding at bay the sure knowledge that what their souls were sharing couldn’t last.

“It’s time for action when our homes are defaced and delinquents are allowed to run rampant through our neighborhoods!” Elliot Graham declared. Splashes of hectic color rose on his cheekbones. His dark eyes burned bright with the fever of righteousness as the news camera zoomed in on him. The crowd behind him gave a shout of agreement. Their signs bobbed up and down above their heads. Interspersed with the now familiar slogans were freshly printed posters that read
Graham for City Council
.

Lynn stood off to the side, watching with a sinking feeling that weighed like an anvil in her stomach. Doom was in the air. The tide of sentiment was running hard against them. Elliot Graham’s followers
were becoming more numerous and more vocal, and she couldn’t help but think that it would be only a matter of time before the bishop silenced their roar by asking Horizon House to relocate.

They stood on Graham’s back lawn, the morning sun beaming brightly across an expanse of spray-painted obscenities that decorated the entire wall of his house. Whoever was running rampant in the neighborhood, they certainly knew where to go to get the maximum reaction for their trouble, Lynn thought. In addition to the Rochester press, Elliot had managed to rouse the attentions of the Twin Cities papers, as well as the Winona
Daily News
, whose story would undoubtedly heavily influence the bishop in the growing controversy. Lynn mentally recited the words that were scrawled across the clapboard.

“I’m calling for a meeting between the mayor, the bishop, Father Bartholomew, and myself—as representative of Citizens for Family Neighborhoods,” Graham said.

Lynn shook her head and tuned him out. She turned to the rest of her little knot of supporters, wanting to find some ray of hope among their faces, but there wasn’t any. Father Bartholomew was wringing his hands and humming little notes of worry. As usual, his glasses were askew and his hair
was disheveled, but instead of this giving him the effect of being merely unkempt, he looked frazzled, like a man who was being given electric shocks at regular intervals. Martha stood with one hand on her ample hip, a posture that suggested anger and impatience, but her other hand was rubbing insistently at the amethyst crystal she wore as a pendant around her neck—a sure sign of worry. Even Lillian, who always managed to keep her cool, who had probably looked the part of the Mayo Clinic doctor’s wife since infancy, was obviously distressed. Apprehension glowed in her eyes behind her prim tortoiseshell librarian glasses and tightened her mouth into a distressed line.

“Will he get his meeting with the bishop?” Lynn asked quietly, her gaze homing in on the priest who had so valiantly come to their rescue.

Father Bartholomew huffed a little breath and pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Not for a few days, he won’t, thank the angels. The bishop has gone to Chicago for a conference on the new age of miracles.”

“Maybe he can bring one back for us.” Lynn said dryly.

She turned toward the media spectacle just as the reporters swung their attention to Erik. He was looking stern and senatorial, a far cry from the man
who had held her in his arms all night. The contrast made him seem remote, separated from her by a gap that couldn’t be bridged. She cynically told herself to get used to it.

He wielded his charm like a sword to ward off Graham’s accusations, striking back with a sense of conviction and compassion that managed to subdue the crowd somewhat. He restated the fact that no one had been charged with the vandalism, that people in this country were supposed to be protected by the presumption of innocence. Lynn listened, her heart swelling with love and pride as Erik demonstrated a depth she hadn’t thought him capable of the first time they’d met. She listened, awed by his charisma and the power of his personality, and all she could think was that he was a man destined to go a long, long way … without her.

To distract herself from the hollow ache in her chest, she forced her gaze away from Erik and placed it on Elliot Graham. Anger had always been an effective defense for her against sadness, hurt, and loss, and anger was definitely what she felt when she looked at that mild-mannered engineer who had the soul of an unscrupulous evangelist. Graham had set his sights on the city council, and he was bent on using Horizon as his stepping-stone to get there. She wondered if he ever gave a thought
to the lives he was affecting with his slam campaign. She wondered if he ever gave a thought to the son he was pulling along in his wake of venom.

E. J. Graham stood slightly behind his father, obviously fresh from the shower, his hair slicked into a duplicate of his father’s nerdish do, his hands stuffed into the pockets of a pair of suit pants that were just a fraction too big for him. His gaze was riveted on the back of his father’s head, as if he might somehow be able to reach the man telephathically if he concentrated hard enough.

Lynn’s gaze narrowed as her mind picked up the thread of an idea and slowly began reeling it in. Young Graham turned away then and followed his father toward their garage as the party broke up and the crowd began to disperse.

“This isn’t good, Erik.” Rob William’s low, clipped voice intruded on Lynn’s thoughts. Erik took up a stance in front of her, blocking her view of the Graham garage. She looked up at him, her gaze locking with his. There was a private message in the depths of his blue eyes, an intimate warmth, a possessiveness, a protectiveness, an expression that resurrected the need within her. She had to fight the urge to go into his arms and lean against his strength.

“We’re losing ground,” the aide said, his attention
darting back and forth from Erik to the retreating flock of reporters. He was a spare, wiry young man with round wire-rimmed glasses and a regimental striped tie, his sleeves rolled neatly to his elbows as if he were prepared to stick his hands into something messy—like the situation his boss was involved in. Nervous energy hummed in the air around him as he swung an arm in the direction of the graffiti. “This kind of thing doesn’t go over well with the Minnesota masses, you know. If the situation deteriorates any further, we’ll be at the point of having to effect some kind of damage control, image-wise.”

Erik shot his employee a piercing look. “I’m not in this for the sake of my image, Rob,” he said, his voice as sharp as the crack of a whip.

The aide flinched a bit in response, his eyes rounding. He came to heel like a repentant bird dog, visibly stepping back over the line he’d crossed. “Of course not, Senator.”

“I’ve got a call in to Judge Gunderson. Get back to his office and see if we can set something up for later today.”

“Yes, sir.” William ducked his head deferentially and trotted off to see to his boss’s orders.

Erik held Lynn’s gaze for a moment, obviously
weighing his choice of words. At last he said, “This is not good, Lynn.”

Lynn bridled at the subtle implication that it was the fault of one of her girls and therefore her fault. “Well, don’t look at me, Senator,” she said tightly. “I have an alibi for last night.”

His cheeks colored slightly, but he didn’t back down. “Can all your girls say that?”

No, and he knew it. Lynn’s jaw tightened. Her hands curled into fists at her sides. Martha and Lillian had greeted her that morning with the news that Regan had managed to ditch them at the movies and had come sneaking back into the house at two in the morning. The girl had had plenty of time to do the deed, and God knew it wasn’t beyond her, but Lynn just couldn’t let herself believe Regan was guilty.

“If Regan is the one doing this, then Horizon will have to take responsibility,” Erik said gravely. “You can’t just go on hoping she isn’t the problem and let her shenanigans ruin everything for the home and the rest of the girls.”

“Erik is right,” Lillian said, stepping forward, hands folded primly against her flowered voile skirt, her expression both earnest and apologetic. “We’ve given her so many chances, Lynn, and she isn’t showing any sign of coming around. If she’s not
only resisting us but trying to get us shut down besides, we’ll have to send her home.”

Lynn looked from Lillian to Martha. Lillian was all rules and regulations. Martha was the one who went on instinct. Martha was the one who could always see past a show of bravado. Martha was meeting her gaze with a look of regret.

“We can’t sacrifice everything we’ve worked so hard for, Lynn,” she said gently. “It might be time to effect some damage control of our own.”

Lynn stepped back from them, feeling hurt and betrayed, as if she were the one they were accusing of painting swearwords on the side of Elliot Graham’s house. Sometimes they lost one. She knew that. She just didn’t want Regan to be one of those negative statistics in their books.

“Why didn’t anybody catch her at it?” she challenged, planting her hands at the waist of her jeans and tilting her chin up to a pugnacious angle. “Elliot Graham has the cops combing this neighborhood every night. Why didn’t they catch her?”

Her only answer was silence. The group stood regarding her intently, their brows furrowed in thought.

“If Regan was that bent on causing trouble for Horizon, don’t you think she’d
want
to get caught—the same way she always wanted to get caught
shoplifting and smoking dope, so she could humiliate her parents?”

“Maybe she’s tired of seeing juvenile hall,” Erik offered.

“And maybe she isn’t guilty,” Lynn countered.

“You see too much of yourself in her, Lynn,” he murmured.

The rest of the group ceased to exist for Lynn in that moment. She and Erik had moved to a different plane of understanding. He had listened to her story. He had believed her. He had offered her comfort and caring. She had watched him grow over the course of their relationship, had watched him struggle to become more understanding. If she could get him to go this one extra step, at least she would feel she’d given him something worthwhile when the time came to let him go.

She looked up at him with her heart in her eyes, begging him to take that step with her. “If
you
could see a little bit of me in her, too, Erik, you might give her the benefit of the doubt.”