The Brooding Stranger Read online

  Leaning forward, Karen planted an affectionate peck on Liz’s cheek. ‘I don’t want another drink, thanks. I’ve had a great time, but now I’m going home. I’ll see you next week … enjoy the rest of your weekend, won’t you?’

  ‘What about Sean?’

  ‘What about Sean?’ Karen echoed, bewildered. The last she’d seen of Liz’s handsome young brother he’d been dancing with a pretty brunette who—going by her entranced expression—was completely enthralled by him. Now, glancing over the bobbing heads of the dancers on the floor, she failed to spy his tousled fair head anywhere.

  ‘I’m a bit concerned about him. For someone celebrating his birthday he’s a little too down in the dumps for my liking,’ the redhead asserted. ‘Do me a favour before you go, will you, Karen? See if he’s outside, and if he is wish him a happy birthday again … it would mean a lot, coming from you. See if you can cheer him up a bit. Thanks, my friend … and thanks, too, for your wonderful singing.’

  The sharp cold air that hit her as she opened the door to step outside had never been more welcome. At last Karen could breathe freely again, without the impediment of the muggy heat inside and the inevitable fumes of alcohol. Standing her guitar up against the brick wall, she tied the wraparound-style jacket she’d donned over slim black trousers and a matching sleeveless top, and almost jumped out of her skin when Sean peeled out of the shadows to greet her. She saw him flick the cigarette he’d been smoking into the alleyway next to the building. His green eyes were instantly warm as they alighted on her.

  ‘It’s a bit like a sauna in there, isn’t it?’ He smiled. ‘Much better out here. You’re not going home?’

  ‘I’m afraid I am,’ she answered, swiftly checking the urge to ask him where the pretty brunette had disappeared to, in case it was the worst thing to say because she’d left him. ‘I know you probably think I’m extremely boring, but I’m actually feeling quite tired.’

  It wasn’t a lie, Karen thought sadly. Emotion—particularly negative emotion—was apt to sap her energy, and she’d experienced enough emotion to drain her dry since Gray had walked out on her last night.

  ‘I’d never think you were boring in a million years, Karen.’ As he stepped a little closer to her, Sean’s expression changed subtly to become more serious. ‘If you want to know the truth, I think you’re pretty incredible.’

  Embarrassed, Karen shrugged. ‘That’s sweet of you … even if I can’t agree.’

  ‘It made my birthday, you coming to sing for me. I could listen to you sing every night if I had the choice.’

  The next step he took towards her brought his body mere inches away from hers. He was so close that the almost overpowering scent of his strong cologne made her wince.

  Feeling suddenly uneasy, Karen pushed back her hair and furnished him with an uncertain smile. ‘Well … happy birthday again, Sean—and thanks for setting me up with the amp and everything. No doubt I’ll see you around … probably at Liz’s some time.’

  When she would have moved away, Sean reached out to touch his hand to the back of her waist. In the next instant she felt herself drawn towards him. The kiss he’d clearly intended for her lips clumsily dropped against the side of her cheek as Karen quickly realised his aim and stepped away, her heart drumming hard as she reached for her guitar.

  ‘Don’t go,’ he implored, expression contrite. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you—but you just look so beautiful tonight that I couldn’t resist trying to steal a kiss. Can’t we go back inside and at least have a drink together, maybe share a dance?’

  ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea, Sean.’

  ‘Karen!’

  The sound of a heartrendingly familiar voice coming from the shadows of the small car park across the road almost made her knees buckle with relief. But at the same time Karen was confused. What was Gray doing here? Surely he hadn’t been waiting for her?

  As she peered into the night his dark, imposing figure emerged from the gloom to be highlighted by a streetlamp. He was dressed completely in black. The droplets of rain glinting off his leather jacket and ebony hair sparkled like tiny gemstones beneath the lamp’s yellow glare, and made him look like the brooding hero of some cinematic thriller. She froze, torn between running across the road and throwing herself into his arms or moving directly towards her car and driving home.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ In a few long-legged strides he was in front of her, his hands firmly on her arms, his stormy grey eyes burning down into her upturned face as if she was the home he longed to return to.

  ‘I’m fine.’ She heard the slight quiver in her voice. ‘What are you doing here?’

  He didn’t answer straight away, just continued to stare at her as if mesmerised. But then he glanced towards Sean, as if suddenly aware of the younger man resentfully watching them.

  ‘Good party was it, Sean?’ he mocked, and Karen sensed the held-back fury in him.

  Her stomach flipped. Had he seen the younger man’s clumsy attempt at kissing her? Did he believe she’d encouraged him?

  ‘It was fine,’ Sean mumbled, awkwardly digging his hands into his jeans pockets. ‘It’s still going on. Do you fancy coming in for a drink?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ His mouth tight, Gray reached for Karen’s guitar, then slipped his hand possessively into hers. ‘Me and the lovely lady here are going home … Oh, and Sean?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Next time you want to try and kiss some unsuspecting and uninterested woman, make sure it’s not Karen … okay?’

  ‘Gray!’ Shocked, Karen tried to wrench her hand free, but the man by her side was having none of it.

  ‘He needed to be put straight about us,’ he muttered darkly as he led her back across the road to the car park.

  Stopping in front of the familiar Range Rover, he opened the passenger door at the back to deposit her guitar on the seat without even asking her. By now she, too, was furious. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘I came to pick you up and take you home,’ he announced, slamming the door shut, then turning towards her.

  ‘I don’t need you to take me home. I brought my own car. And what do you mean, “He needed to be put straight about us”? Last night you slammed out of the cottage in a temper just because I stood up for myself and wouldn’t let you bully me into doing something you wanted to do because I’d already committed to coming to Sean’s birthday party. Now you’re talking about us as if we had some kind of meaningful relationship! Have I missed something, Gray?’ Breathing hard, Karen couldn’t hold back the tide of emotion that engulfed her.

  The man in front of her grimaced painfully. ‘First of all, I owe you an apology for the way I lost my temper last night. Secondly, I want you to know that I wasn’t angry with you for saying what you did about Maura leaving me. You had a right to get back at me. But I also want you to know that I felt nothing when she went except relief. For a while she was company for me during a difficult time … when I lost my father, to be exact. But we both knew we neither wanted nor expected a future together. I reacted badly because you seemed to find it so easy to believe that she would walk out on me … as if you wouldn’t dispute that I must have deserved it.’

  Roughly combing his fingers through his hair, Gray furrowed his indomitable brow. ‘I don’t deny that I was probably hell to live with at the time, and now all I feel for the woman is compassion that she put up with me for as long as she did. I wallowed in grief and guilt for too long, and anyone close to me or who had dealings with me took the brunt of it. I honestly regret that.’

  Digesting his frank confession with surprise, and something like hope flooding her heart, Karen breathed out a sigh. ‘You didn’t love her, then? Maura, I mean?’

  ‘Good God, no. For a while we simply found each other. shall we say convenient?’

  Knowing immediately that he meant sexually, she felt a jealous jolt shoot through her like a flame-tipped arrow. ‘Oh …’

  Gray punctuate
d the cold night air with a throaty chuckle. ‘I’m a man with a healthy libido—I don’t deny it. And I’m not going to pretend those needs don’t disturb me if they’re not met even if admitting it makes you blush, sweetheart.’

  Catching her by the waist, he brought Karen’s body up close into his lean hard middle, and the chill that was making her shiver fled as though a blazing sun had just appeared in the sky and was shining down on her.

  ‘I owe you an apology, too, Gray. I didn’t mean to upset you with what I said. I just reacted in the heat of the moment.’

  ‘Like I said, you had every right to retaliate. It’s commendable that you wanted to honour a promise … I had no right to try and tell you what to do. Was the party good?’

  Without you, every minute felt like a lifetime … She didn’t say the words out loud, but she longed to. ‘It was okay. As it turns out I wasn’t really in the mood for a party after all. I would have preferred to have stayed at home.’

  ‘Or gone to Paris with me?’ Gray suggested ruefully, the beginnings of a surprisingly tender smile touching his lips.

  ‘Maybe.’ Karen dipped her head.

  ‘By the way, was Sean bothering you?’ he asked. His tone definitely had an underlying thread of jealousy in it.

  ‘No. I expect he just had one Guinness too many—but then it is his birthday.’

  Dropping a kiss at the side of her mouth, Gray pulled back to examine her face. ‘I expect I’ll have to get used to that. men looking at you and lusting after you. But woe betide any man who tries to do more than just look,’ he warned.

  ‘That sounds a little possessive.’

  His silvery eyes flared. ‘That’s because I am possessive where you’re concerned.’

  ‘Well, don’t be. I’m human, Gray … not some object you can own like that portrait of me you’re painting!’

  Karen pushed away from him even before she realised she was going to, swamped with disappointment and hurt that she still seemed to mean nothing more to him than the ‘convenient’ and unlucky Maura. As much as she loved him, she wouldn’t settle for anything less than his love in return. She might be unsure about a lot of things, but she wasn’t unsure about that.

  Delving into her jacket pocket, her fingers curled round her car keys. ‘I’m going home now. Can I get my guitar?’ she said with a thumping heart.

  Gray caught her hand. ‘Wait. Please listen to me. You’ve got me all wrong, but I guess that’s my own stupid fault. I certainly don’t want to own you or just think of you as some pretty object. Look … this isn’t coming out the way I wanted it to. The truth is I’d hoped you would come home with me tonight … stay the night with me. At least if you come back to the house I can better explain my feelings to you. What do you say?’

  Another leap of hope rocketed through her, but Karen couldn’t allow herself to trust it … not when she’d been down that uncertain and painful road with Gray before. ‘I don’t know …’ She shrugged, feeling cold again, and couldn’t prevent her voice sounding a little disconsolate.

  ‘I’ve got an idea.’ He opened the front passenger door and held it wide with a flourish. ‘Get in and we’ll drive down to the beach. We’ll stand in the moonlight and watch the waves lapping onto the shore. What do you say?’

  Regarding the vital, handsome man issuing the invitation, his haunting grey eyes compelling her like nothing else could, how could she refuse?

  Even if things didn’t work out she’d always have the memory of him asking her to go to the beach one night to look at the ocean together in the moonlight. Only a man with poetry in his soul could do that.

  Shivering again in her inadequately warm jacket, Karen smiled tentatively. ‘Okay,’ she agreed simply.

  They travelled in silence down to the deserted beach, and a strange sense of peace came over Gray that he had never felt before. He could only put it down to the pleasure of Karen’s company and the feeling that somehow, by some miracle, everything in his world was beginning to change for the better. It was the most exhilarating thought. For the first time in the longest time hope had found a chink in the fortress he’d built round his feelings in order to protect himself from further hurt, and he was glad it had. Locking the car, he swept his arm firmly round Karen’s waist and guided her down to the seashore.

  As they walked, their feet sinking a little into the sand, the raw wind whipped at her hair and her warm, musky perfume subtly invaded his senses—not only making his blood slow and heavy in his veins but making him smile, too. As they reached the water’s edge Gray’s appreciative glance met the stunning vista before him in silent awe. The lapping of the ocean against the moonlit white sand sounded like hushed breath … the breath of life, he realised. It was as though life was beckoning to him to live it again as never before. Being here, with this lovely woman who made his heart beat faster every time he saw her, every time he so much as thought of her, made him feel intensely alive—almost as if he’d been holed up behind a hundred-foot wall for years but had now been miraculously freed.

  ‘If I were a painter,’ Karen said softly beside him, ‘this is the scene I’d most want to paint.’

  Turning towards her, Gray curved his mouth in a smile. ‘I’ll teach you.’

  ‘To paint, you mean?’

  As she fastened her big blue eyes on him her eager glance all but made him dissolve. The moonlight bathed her exquisite features in its soft ethereal ray and her incandescent beauty took his breath away. She was utterly ravishing. Gazing into her lovely face, Gray longed to get back to the portrait he’d started and finish it. When it was done it would occupy pride of place in his house … above his bed.

  ‘Would you like to learn?’

  ‘I’d probably be hopeless.’

  ‘Like you’re hopeless at singing and playing the guitar, I suppose?’ he teased, catching a long strand of her honey-blonde hair and coiling it gently round his fingers.

  ‘I could teach you to play the guitar in return for you teaching me to paint. Can you sing?’

  ‘Not a note. Someone told me once that I had a voice that could shatter a double-glazed window.’

  His even white teeth glinted in the moonlight and the mirth in his unreserved grin made Karen yearn to hug him tight and not let him go for a very long time.

  ‘You’re cold,’ he observed, suddenly serious again. ‘Come here.’

  Gray pulled her close into his chest and her arms automatically slid round his waist. Resting her cheek over his heart, she briefly closed her eyes to breathe him in. It wasn’t just his incredible physicality that she loved, she reflected—though as men went he was pretty compelling—it was the sheer vibrancy and essence of the man, the innate goodness in him that she loved best of all. The goodness he had withheld from the world for too long through grief and guilt.

  ‘I still miss them, you know.’

  Realising straight away who he meant, Karen all but held her breath. Behind them the sound of the ocean lapping onto the shore was like mesmerising music.

  ‘I know I never really knew my mother, but somehow there’s a lingering impression of her warmth and softness that I can’t shake. The memory steals over me sometimes when I’m least expecting it.’ The strong arms that surrounded her tightened a little. ‘My father never spoke about why she took her own life, so I don’t suppose I’ll ever know the reason. For a long time I was angry with him for that. I expect he did it to protect me, but at the same time he probably blamed himself. He liked to promote the image that he was as tough as old boots, but underneath he was soft as butter and sentimental, too. He must have missed her like crazy when she went.’

  He fell silent. A moment later Karen sensed the shudder that went through him and, alarmed, glanced up to find the glistening sheen of tears in his eyes.

  Stricken by his sorrow, she put her arms round his neck and hugged him hard. ‘Oh, Gray.’ Reaching up on tiptoe, she planted a tender kiss on his mouth and gently wiped the track of moisture that dampened his cheek with the
pad of her thumb. ‘It’s all right, my darling. They’re together again now, and at peace. I’m sure of it.’

  Gray’s silver moonlit gaze locked with hers. ‘That’s a comforting thought. And what about Ryan? It must have broken his heart to leave you. Is he at peace, too, Karen?’

  Her heart swelled, but she didn’t cry. Somewhere locked in time was the ocean of tears that she’d cried for the kind, gentle man who had once been her husband. ‘I like to believe he is. God knows he deserves to be.’

  ‘Maybe all the ones we’ve lost look down on us, silently urging us to live the very best lives we can in their memory?’

  ‘That’s so beautiful, Gray.’ Laying her palm at the side of his face, Karen smiled gently.

  ‘Perhaps you just bring out the best in me?’

  ‘Maybe … But now that your secret’s out you can’t ever go back to how you were before,’ she told him solemnly.

  ‘What secret?’ Stroking his palm down over her hair, Gray stiffened for a moment.

  ‘You act like a lion, but underneath you’re just as sentimental and tender as your dad. In truth, you’re just a pussycat.’

  ‘A pussycat? That’s the most outrageous accusation I’ve ever heard in my life. Take it back—take it back right now, woman, or you’ll be sorry!’

  He started tickling her with intent, and Karen could scarce catch her breath for laughing. But then he clasped his hands round her waist and whirled her round and round on the sand, making her utterly and completely dizzy and disorientated.

  ‘Gray, please. Stop right now or I’ll be dizzy for the rest of my life!’ she begged, even as she laughed.

  ‘Only if you agree to come home with me right now.’ Kissing her ear, he came to a sudden standstill.

  Out of breath and with her heart racing, Karen didn’t hesitate to give him her answer. ‘Yes!’ She smiled as he returned her carefully to her feet again. ‘Yes, I’ll come home with you, Gray.’ His eyes were languorous with need, she saw, and the realisation thrilled her.