Darkfall (3 page)

He scrubbed one hand over his face. “True.”

“You couldn’t have known what you were getting into. Blame it on lack of intelligence,” she said, going for the I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude.

He snorted. “Yeah. Mine.”

She frowned. “I’ve never seen you lack confidence. Has that much changed in three years?”

Three years since I last saw you. Three years since I touched you. Three years since we almost…
She shivered as the thoughts ran rampant. Thoughts of running her hands over that sinfully sculpted torso. Of those incredibly strong hands and arms holding her, feeling his erection rubbing her between her legs until—

He cleared his throat, and heat filled her face. Had she been staring at him? His gaze captured hers and held, and the molten quality in his stare said maybe he’d read her mind. Was he remembering what happened?

Before she could ask him anything else, he said, “Let’s take our minds off things for a while.”

She frowned, uncertain. “How?”

“Tell me what I’ve missed over the last three years.”

Now that surprised her. “That’s a tall order.”

“What did you do in San Diego?”

“I was a manager at a headhunter-type company for the last three years.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Did you like it?”

She shook her head. “Hated it. It paid the bills, but I needed to do something else. My business degree…well, you know. Mom and Dad thought it was practical.”

“You always liked art. Humanities, right?”

The fact he remembered these details impressed her. “Yes. But maybe it’s too late to enjoy a career in humanities. With what’s happened in the last three months, steady work is hard to come by.”

“You working now?”

“At a country club nearby in their member recruitment area. Believe it or not there are still people worried about exclusive memberships.”

He chuckled. “Do you like it?”

She grinned. “No.”

One corner of his well-cut mouth turned up. “Sounds like you need a reassessment of what you want to do.”

“Definitely. We don’t know what the next week or the next year has in store. Makes it a little hard to plan.”

“Agreed. Maybe we need to look at life differently.” His gaze intensified. “Now is all we have.”

Panic stirred in her stomach. “We have to survive this, Ian.”

“We will.” His voice was firm and self-assured. He tilted his head to the side, curiosity plain on his face. “Your father said something once about a boyfriend.” Penny knew she must have looked surprised that he’d heard, because he continued. “A year after you went to San Diego, you father mentioned that he wished you were back here.”

More amazement came over her. “You’re kidding me?”

“No. I could see he cared.”

She twisted hair around her index finger. “I can’t believe it. He never mentioned anything to me. He never asked me about my love life. He was talking to you about me?”

“Not really. It was more grumbling when he didn’t think people could hear him. After a while he didn’t say anything more.” Concern filled his voice. “Did something bad happen with this boyfriend?”

His gentleness disarmed her, and suddenly she couldn’t tell him fast enough. “Yes.”

Realization, though she hadn’t explained yet, filled his eyes. “Tell me.”

She wavered, uncertain. She didn’t speak often of what happened, preferring to think of more positive things in her life and what she was grateful for each and every day. At the same time, she also experienced a connection with Ian that hadn’t faded in the years since she’d last seen him. It hit her in the gut right then, a feeling she hadn’t comprehended until this moment. She trusted him. With her life if it came to that.

“Frank was…I met him through a coworker, Sally. She is his sister. He worked in construction; a foreman. He seemed like an amazing guy. We had a few dates over a two-month period and at first he was fun. But then I started to feel strange around him. He was possessive and not in a good way. He accused me of flirting with other men, and I’m not a flirt. Nothing he said at first was overt, but he nibbled away at things.”

“Such as?”

“I realized he was trying to isolate me from my other friends. Trying to keep my world small.”

“What an ass,” he said, his gaze hard.

“That’s when I broke up with him.”

He leaned closer, his gaze unwavering. “That wasn’t the end of it, was it?”

Fear edged into her thoughts, making her throat tight and her muscles clench a little. When she didn’t answer right away, he turned fully toward her, his eyes intent. She could refuse to tell him the whole sordid story, but getting it off her chest felt right.

She took a long swig of water. “He seemed to take the breakup better than I expected. He didn’t even protest. I was relieved and a couple of weeks went by before anything else happened. I thought that was the end of it. Even his sister
said
she understood. She didn’t.”

His eyebrows lifted. “She didn’t?”

Penny twirled the water bottle between both hands, emotions rising until she thought she’d choke on them. “She said the breakup had to be my fault. That I was the one causing trouble in his life.” She placed the water bottle on the floor and stared at it. “I worked in the same cubicle with her so it sucked. We ignored each other. One night I found roses on my doorstep with a card from him. He apologized for everything and said he wanted to get back together.”

“You didn’t.” It wasn’t a question, but a stern hope in his voice that she hadn’t made that mistake.

“I didn’t. As you know, a controlling nature isn’t something I like in a man.”

He smiled for a half second. “Right.”

“I threw the flowers away. A month later he left another bunch of flowers. Again, I threw them away. In the back of my mind it worried me, but I also thought he’d go away if I refused to respond.”

Ian clasped his hands together between his knees, and a hardness came over his face. “Jesus.” His voice spiked with anger. “The wanker stalked you, didn’t he?”

Tears welled up in her eyes.
Okay, girl, now isn’t the time to cry.
But the sheer anger in his voice reminded her of Frank’s harsh tone when he got mad. One tear and then another rolled down her cheeks. She wiped them away, and then dried her hands on her thighs.

“Ah, damn it.” Ian moved closer to her on the bench, so close she could feel his heat. She lowered her legs, and he reached for her hands. He gathered them in his, so gently that her mind remembered that his anger wasn’t directed at her. “Are you all right?”

“I just…a therapist told me I have PTSD from my association with Frank and what happened. If a man raises his voice for any reason, it triggers that night…the last night with him.”

He rubbed her fingers, softness entering his eyes. “I’m sorry I raised my voice.”

“You didn’t know.” She retained the hold on his hands, happy for the strength in his touch.

“Tell me more.” His accent thickened. “If you can.”

Reluctance tried to edge out her ability to speak, but she pushed through. “Frank broke into my apartment one night about four months after I broke up with him. He just broke the door down, and that wasn’t easy to do with the locks I had. He had a…” Her voice faltered, and she closed her eyes. Ian’s fingers gently squeezed hers. She took a deep breath and continued. “Assault rifle. He shot up the locks and got in that way, kicked the door down. If I’d been standing right there I would’ve been killed.”

“Bloody fucking hell.”

She ignored his cursing. “As it was, I tripped over the ottoman and went down face first. Before I knew it he jerked me up and threw me on the couch. I figured with all the noise he’d made the cops would be there any minute, so I thought I’d be able to hold on. I just had to appease him.”

When she opened her eyes, his brow was furrowed. Anger blazed in his eyes, but not at her…
for
her.

“I went through a whole litany of appeasements. I told him I’d come back to him. Anything to get him to de-escalate.”

“Did it work?”

“No. He told me that I wasn’t going to survive this.” Remembered fear quickened her breath, anxiety knotting her stomach. “I heard later that a few people called 911 but before the cops got there, he dragged me out of the apartment and to his car. Fortunately a woman saw him drag me to the car, and she got the license plate. Cops started looking for him right away, but he headed out of San Diego toward Arizona. Police called my cell phone and his cell phone, but Frank wouldn’t let me answer my phone. We were an hour out of San Diego and during that time, I tried to talk him out of whatever he had planned.” She squeezed his hands and he returned the pressure. She drew in a slow breath. “The California Highway Patrol caught up with us and Frank started driving like a crazy man. He drove all over the freeway until we were on the wrong side of the highway.” Tension tightened her shoulders.

“Oh, God.”

“Yeah. I wanted to close my eyes, but on the other hand I couldn’t. I had to see what was going to happen, even if it…” Penny swallowed hard, unable to continue.

“Hey, it’s all right.” His voice held a soothing tone.

She drew comfort from that, her gaze locked with his. “I kept thinking I’d never make it. He would crash us head-on into someone.”

She wouldn’t say that the one thing she’d regretted, while facing down the imminent possibility of death, was that she hadn’t made love to Ian MacDaniel.

“But you didn’t?” he asked.

“He surprised the hell out of me. I guess I talked him out of it, because he pulled onto the right side of the road and gave up to the police. But he vowed he wouldn’t forget me.”

He cursed again, long and virulently. When he finished, he released her hands. “Shit.”

She managed a grin. “That’s good punctuation for it. And true.”

“At least he’s in jail now.”

“Maybe not.”

“What?”

“He got a two-year sentence.”

Ian’s expression went from incredulous back to his famous glower. “You’re kidding? That’s all?”

“Yes. He was supposed to be out in January. Right around the time the volcano went up.”

He kept his gaze tangled with hers, as if he could draw some truth from her she didn’t even know existed. “He hasn’t tried to contact you?”

“No. I’d moved to another apartment before Long Valley started percolating. So maybe that threw him off. In this day and age there’s plenty of ways he could have found me. I made sure I had my weapon nearby all the time.”

“Like you do now.”

“Yep.”

“He probably didn’t make it out of California.”

“God, how I want to believe that. I want to believe the volcano got him, but I don’t know. It’s the not knowing that bothers me the most.”

Determination hardened his face. “I’m here now. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Pure heat washed through her, and deep within desire stirred. It was a primitive beast, an undeniable arousal. His protectiveness stirred needs inside her she couldn’t deny as much as she wished she could.

Silence sheltered them for a few moments before he asked, “You left California in time to escape the volcano, but you went through a lot to get here.”

Oh, yeah. She had. But did she want to tell him all she’d seen?

“Tell me,” Ian said.

His insistence was quiet, a request and not a demand. She slugged down more water and gathered her courage. She held the water bottle tight in both hands, almost using it as a barrier. Against what, she didn’t know.

“Traffic jams out of San Diego were awful. The real mess happened on I-10. Everyone was jammed onto the freeway. I spent more than eight hours trying to get to Tucson when it should have taken about three…” She left it hanging there. “I had to stop wherever I could to go to the bathroom and just getting off the exits was a nightmare. Waiting in tremendous lines to go to the bathroom. They were running out of toilet paper…” She shrugged. “You can imagine.”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“I got to Tucson and stopped there for the night. The hotels were almost full. I found a room at this one place they hadn’t cleaned yet at this hotel that was a real dive.” She squirmed on the bench as she recalled how nasty the place had been. “I slept on the bedspread in my clothes with my gun next to me.”

He winced. “Don’t blame you.”

“I went through several towns like that before I hit New Mexico. Hatch, New Mexico. I took as many back roads as I could, then started to realize that wasn’t any better or faster. Tons of people had the idea. It was almost gridlock. I was surprised how calm most people were. I guess once they escaped California they started to feel better. I was glad I had a good supply of food in my car. I had to hope people wouldn’t try and steal my car, and that’s why I started sleeping in the car with one eye open. After that I made it through Albuquerque.”

“Did you have any other trouble while on the road?”

“Most of it was regular misery. It took me so long because so many people were on the highways. I managed to charge my phone, but I couldn’t get a call out to Dad in all that time. It kept going to voice mail. At first I wondered if he was just ignoring me.”

“He wouldn’t do that. I saw how he was while you were traveling.”

She lifted one eyebrow. “Oh?”

“He was sweating bullets. He could barely contain himself, and I’ve never seen him that worried. He kept busy like we all did. But he was thinking of you the whole time.”

Ian’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and his face held an emotion she couldn’t identify. She wondered if her father had been as frantic as he reported.

“When I called from Bangor he sounded relieved,” she said. “Then he was his usual clipped self.” Penny heard resentment in her own voice and wanted to take it back.

“You never give him an inch, do you?” Ian crossed his arms.

More resentment arose. “Maybe not. Would you?”

Ian stared at her a long time before answering. “In this case, yeah, I would.”

“You’re a lot of help, MacDaniel.”

“I just know how he felt while you were traveling cross-country.”

Hope rose inside her. She experienced a strange and eager desire to have Ian MacDaniel confess once and for all what he felt about her…one way or the other.