One Summer’s Knight

Chapter 12

All the way home Riley berated himself without mercy. What had he been thinking of? For the last week behaving like a horny adolescent with his brains in his boxers, allowing his lust for a woman to lead him so far astray that he’d lost sight of who he was, who she was, and even more unforgivably, the fact that there were very probably the lives of two innocent children at stake. He couldn’t recall ever having behaved so badly, even when he was a horny adolescent

There was no excuse for his actions-none at all. He could have no future with this woman. She’d said it herself: she didn’t belong in his life. She didn’t fit. How could she possibly? God knows he was not cut out to be a father, much less a stepfather! And with this woman anything short of full commitment would be unthinkable. Unforgivable.

What had he been thinking of? Summer Robey was his client. He was responsible for her safety. What could have possessed him to kiss her?

It was Monday morning before the truth finally hit him. It came while he was shaving, staring at his reflection in his bathroom mirror, the image repeated in the mirrored wall behind him over and over to infinity. His image…

Ah yes, his image. There he was, eyeball to eyeball with the Riley Grogan he’d so carefully crafted, honed and polished and placed on display before the world, and in his mind, in his heart and soul, the real Riley Grogan was whispering, You’re a fraud, Grogan. The truth is, all that lofty rationalization about ethics and moral responsibility and all-it’s nothin’ but hooey, that’s what it is, just a bunch of hooey to hide the fact that you’re scared to death somebody’s gonna find out what a fraud you are. You’re afraid, Grogan. Afraid…

So, needless to say, he wasn’t in the best humor when he walked into his office later that morning. For one thing, his sore foot was giving him trouble, it being the first occasion he’d had to put on a pair of dress shoes since stabbing himself in the instep with a pair of hedge clippers. And naturally, it was the first thing his secretary took notice of when he stopped by her desk for his messages. She glanced up at him, covered the telephone receiver with her hand and sang out, “Hey, what’d you do to your foot?”

“What happened to ‘Good morning, Mr. Grogan, how was your weekend?’ ” he said sourly.

“Good morning, Mr. Grogan, how was your weekend? What did you do to your foot?”

“I kicked a door. Who’s that on the phone?”

“It’s your old buddy-Jake Redfield. Want me to take a message?”

In spite of himself, his heart gave a lurch. Please, Lord, let this be good news. Maybe, he thought, while he was spending his weekend cutting hedges, rescuing tots from trees and groping his client on the beach, the FBI had managed to find Hal Robey, bring down the syndicate and lock up all the bad guys so everybody could go home. Uh-uh. “No,” he said, frowning, “I’ll take it Put it through to my office.”

“Tom Denby’s waitin’ for you in there.”

“That’s okay. Anything else of interest?”

“Couple things…” Hands busy with the phone, Danell jerked her head toward the tray on the corner of her desk. So, since Riley had to look down in order to gather up the message slips that had collected there, naturally the next thing he heard was “Hey, what’d you do to your head?”

“None of your business,” he growled as he shuffled through the pile. He picked up his briefcase and started down the hallway.

“Bumped into a door, I bet…”

In his office, Riley closed the door behind him and said “Mornin’ ” to Tom, who was sitting in the client’s chair with one ankle propped on the opposite knee reading a Stephen King paperback. The investigator dog-eared the page and closed the book, even though Riley checked him with a hand gesture while he went to pick up his phone.

“Agent Redfield,” he said crisply, making eye contact with Tom Denby as he hitched his backside onto a corner of his desk, “what can I do for you?”

The FBI agent gave a mirthless snort. “I think you know the answer to that. Mrs. Robey ready to talk to us yet?”

“Depends,” Riley drawled. “You arrested the people responsible for burnin’ down her house yet?”

There was a pause, during which he could almost hear the FBI man counting to ten. Then, in that patented bureau monotone, Redfield said, “As a matter of fact, we may have gotten a little bit of a break in that regard.”

“You have?” Riley glanced at his investigator, who had lifted his briefcase onto his knees and was snapping it open.

There was a long pause; clearly, sharing information with an attorney-the enemy-wasn’t something the FBI enjoyed doing. Finally Redfield said, “We have reason to believe he may have been in contact with his wife’s parents.”

Riley’s eyebrows shot up. “Hal Robey? What reason? Did he or didn’t he?”

Another pause. Then, on a resigned exhalation, Redfield explained, “This past weekend, Mrs. Robey’s mother received a call from someone claiming to be from her daughters’ high school class reunion committee, requesting information as to how they might be reached. Mrs. Robey’s mother didn’t recognize the voice-said it may even have been a woman-but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s possible Robey could have disguised his voice or had someone else make the call for him.”

“What makes you think it was Robey?” Riley held up a finger to forestall Tom Denby, who ignored it and leaned over to hand him several sheets of paper with what looked to be photocopied credit card receipts on them. He took them, stared at them.

In his ear, Redfield’s voice was saying, “We’ve been monitoring credit card activity on Robey’s known aliases. Over the weekend we had a hit-a Motel 6 on Interstate 10 in Pensacola, Florida.”

Riley swore, dragged a hand through his hair. Winced. He frowned, his mind in high gear, chewing it all over. “Mrs. Robey’s parents live in Pensacola Beach.”

“Uh-huh…”

“All right, so he’s looking for her.” Riley was silent for a moment, listening to the sound of his own breathing. “You’re thinking when he doesn’t find his wife at the address and phone number he’s got, he’ll get in touch with the sisters next.”

“If he hasn’t already. From what I understand, the only one reachable is the one here in Georgia. He’s gonna be careful about it-he knows he’s a target.” Redfield paused, then said very quietly, “What we’re thinking is, when and if he does, if we’re not already too late, we’d like to make his next move a little easier for him.”

Riley sat still for about three beats, then came up off the desk as if somebody’d shot him in the butt with a BB gun. “No. Lure him in, you mean-using Summer as bait. Are you out of your mind? No. Absolutely not. I can’t allow it.”

“You can’t allow it?” Redfield’s voice had gone soft. “You mean, advise, don’t you? In the final analysis, isn’t the decision up to Mrs. Robey?”

“Dammit, Redfield, the woman’s got two kids!”

“I know she does-and you can’t keep them locked away forever, now, can you?”

Riley said nothing. His skin felt itchy and hot, but there was a cold, sick feeling in his stomach. If I’m not in jail, I might as well be…

“Look-” Redfield exhaled gustily in his ear “-you know as well as I do, if the bad guys want her badly enough, sooner or later they’re going to find a way to get to her. You want to live with that? You want her and those kids to live with that?” Riley said nothing; his eyes were following Tom Denby as the investigator paced at a polite distance, fidgeting with things in his pockets. The FBI man continued, almost gently, “They might be on Robey’s trail right now. He could be leading ’em right to her. If they get the chance to use the wife and kids to leverage Robey, they won’t hesitate for one minute, and you and I both know it. Robey’s gonna find her, the bad guys are gonna find Robey, and who knows who’s gonna find who first? Isn’t it better to have us be the ones writing the script? And if it gives us a chance to clear this thing up, once and for all…” The agent’s voice had taken on a curious vibration, and Riley remembered suddenly what Summer had said about Captain Ahab and Moby Dick.

Then Redfield paused, and Riley could almost hear him fighting down his demons. Finally, once more back in the classic feds monotone, he murmured, “At least let us talk to her. That’s all we ask.”

Sometimes, you know, I think I’d rather confront the fear. Go out there and face those…those bastards! Like-I don’t know, set myself up as bait for an FBI sting, or something. Anything to get those people caught.

“I’ll talk to her,” Riley said heavily. But he already knew what her answer would be. “I’ll get back to you.”

He cradled the phone and sat for a moment, staring at it. Then he straightened and looked at Tom Denby, who had turned from the window and was regarding him with a small, waiting smile. Denby was a stocky, nondescript man with thinning hair and nondescript glasses, the kind of man who would be easy to overlook in a crowd. But a man whose eyes and ears missed nothing, and the one man Riley wanted at his back in a brawl.

“Tom,” he said on an exhalation, “I’m gonna have to ask you to be on standby for a while.”

“I gathered.” The investigator nodded toward the phone. “That was the feds?”

“That was the feds.” Riley smiled, but he felt dark and cold inside. “And I’m afraid we might not be working on quite the same agenda, if you know what I mean. We have…different priorities.”

“I hear ya,” said Denby softly. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Riley said in an undertone as he ushered Summer and the children into his office the following afternoon. “Please keep that in mind-you are not obligated to do anything they ask you to do. Do you understand?” She sure should understand, he thought; he’d told her that often enough in the past twenty-four hours. Emphasized it, with silent gnashing of teeth, knowing how futile it was.

As he’d feared, she’d jumped on the idea of using herself as bait in an FBI trap the instant he’d mentioned it to her. Far from being nervous or apprehensive, the notion of putting herself in jeopardy in order to bring about an end to her present state of fear and uncertainty seemed to have ignited something inside her-something fierce and purposeful. He could see it in the light that gleamed in her eyes, in the lift of her chin and the set of her shoulders. Feel it in the excitement and tension that seemed to emanate from her like a field of electrical energy. For the first time, he saw and understood just how strong and brave she really was, this woman he’d once allowed to be judged an airhead and a bimbo. Understood that for all her gentleness and nurturing heart, Summer Robey was a woman to be reckoned with, and an adversary to be feared.

And she’d never looked more beautiful to him. Maybe it was because of the way she was dressed, which was the way he’d always pictured her, in a dress of soft, sunshine yellow with buttons all down the front, a scooped neckline and belted waist, her hair falling to her shoulders in gleaming golden waves, or it could be that new inner fire, or simply a change in his own perceptions. Whatever it was, he couldn’t seem to keep from looking at her. And whenever he did, his heart would begin to pound.

“I’ll be fine,” Summer said in a quiet voice just for him, and at the same time with a radiant smile for Danell, who responded with a syrupy, “How’re you, Mrs. Robey, nice to see you again.”

“They here yet?” Riley asked in a muttered undertone.

“Waitin’ in your office.” She leaned across her desktop, braced on her forearms, to smile at the children. “Hey…who’s this we got here?”

“David, Helen,” said Summer, “say hello to Mrs…uh-”

“Johnson-but y’all can call me Danell if you want to, okay?” The children both nodded; apparently overcome with awe, they were expressing it in their own individual ways-David in round-eyed silence, Helen antsy and primed for battle.

“It’d probably be better if they stayed out here,” Riley said, frowning. “Danell, do you think you could-”

“Oh, sure-no problem.” She shooed them off with a wave of her hand and a toothy grin for the children. “We’ll be fine-won’t we, hon? Hey, you guys like to draw pictures?”

Riley murmured, “Thanks,” and put his hand on Summer’s waist, his heart already beating like a trip-hammer.

“Can I watch you work the computer?” he heard David ask shyly as he ushered Summer into the hallway.

And his secretary answered, “Well, sure, I guess you can if you want to. How ’bout you, ladybug? Hey, that is a very pretty dress you’re wearing.”

And Helen’s response, in a tone of uncharacteristic sweetness: “Uh-huh-Mr. Riley buyed it for me. He buyed us lots of stuff-books…even one about dinosaurs. An’ you know what else…?”

Riley closed his eyes and gave an inaudible sigh as he opened his office door and waved Summer in ahead of him. Oh, Lord. Danell was never going to let him hear the end of this.

The feds had gone. The outlines of the plan to trap and capture Hal Robey were in place; all that remained was the phone call that would set it in motion. Summer looked drained but resolved; Riley felt as if he’d spent a week in court. He felt exhausted, but wired, too, a mood he normally might soothe with a quiet evening in feminine company… an elegant dinner…good wine…soft music… He tried putting Summer into that picture, but it just wouldn’t work, somehow. Somehow he’d known it wouldn’t. No matter how lovely she was in that yellow dress and high-heeled shoes, she was always going to be more at home in blue jeans and sneakers.

In his secretary’s office, they found David jammed in between Danell’s knees and the computer, avidly click-clicking away with the mouse. When she heard them come in, Danell threw a look over her shoulder long enough to say indignantly, “Hey, did you know there are card games on here?” And then, turning back to David, she said, “There you go-red nine on that black ten right there. See it?”

“Is Helen-”

Danell jerked her head toward the waiting room. “She’s out there paperin’ the place with pictures of dinosaurs on sticky notes.”

“Could I please use the rest room?” Summer murmured.

“Sure,” Riley said. “Down the hall on the left.” While she excused herself, Danell surrendered her chair to David and came around her desk. Riley saw the look in her eye and held up a hand. “Don’t even start.”

“Don’t tell me don’t start,” she huffed in a whisper. “That woman and those kids been livin’ with you.”

“Oh, hell.” He scrubbed a hand over his eyes and whispered back, “It’s not what you think.”

“Hey-you don’t even know what I think.” He looked at her then and saw that she had a sparkle in her eyes and a big grin on her face-clearly tickled to death.

“Hush, Danell-you know she’s not my type.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Seriously-you’ve known me how many years now? How many women have I been out with in that time? Now, tell me-have you ever known me, even once, to date a woman who had kids?”

She didn’t say anything, just nailed him with one of her looks. Riley rolled his eyes; he knew he wasn’t off the hook yet. Sure enough, Danell folded her arms, moved in close and poked him in the chest with one of her inch-long silver-blue fingernails. “Now, you tell me somethin’. If all those women you been datin’ all these years were your type-how come you never married any of ’em? Hmm? Tell me that.”

Riley just looked at her. He’d have come up with an answer for her, though; he was sure he would have, except that right then Summer came back into the room, looking like she’d just washed her face and brushed her hair. Looking as fresh and lovely as a field full of daffodils. And his words, his breath, and it felt like his whole beating heart, somehow wound up stuck in his throat. “Ready?” he asked in a garbled croak.

She nodded and said breathlessly, “Mrs. Johnson, thank you so much,” but her eyes were on Riley’s face.

And he couldn’t take his eyes away from hers. He thought, Why not? At least…dinner? And he was seeing her sitting across the table from him, candlelight shining in her eyes and in her hair.

“Can we go now?” Helen whined, shuffling in from the waiting room. “I’m hungry.”

“Yes, honey, we’re going.” And Summer turned her face away from him, reaching out to pull her child against her in a one-armed hug, leaving him feeling strangely off balance and bereft, as if something precious had been wrenched from his grasp. “Do either of you need to use the rest room before we leave?” That was directed at the children, of course.

“Uh-uh,” said Helen with a decisive shake of her head, and David elaborated without looking away from the monitor, “We just went.”

“Why don’t I take you out for dinner?” Riley said to Summer, ignoring Danell’s smirk. He was still thinking of nice restaurants-one of Charleston’s less touristy seafood places, perhaps. Somewhere the children wouldn’t be too out of place…

“Pizza!” yelled Helen, doing her bunny-hop thing, and David looked up long enough to echo, “Yeah, pizza! Can we, Mom? We haven’t had pizza in a long time. Please?”

Riley’s vision of a romantic dinner vanished like a puff of smoke.

“There’s a very nice pizza place right down the road-would you like me to call and make you a reservation?” Danell purred with a perfectly straight face.

Riley looked pointedly at his watch, then said with a pained grimace, “Danell, it’s past quittin’ time-don’t you have someplace you need to go?”

“Yessir, boss-” she shut off the computer’s monitor to David’s yelp of disappointment “-I am goin’ home to mah man an’ mah kids.” She made two syllables out of both “man” and “kids,” which she could do when she chose to lay the Southern molasses on thick. She swooped down to collect her pocketbook from under her desk and slung it over her shoulder. “Hey-I’m serious about that pizza place. Down the road to the left, ’bout a mile on your right. Poppa Joe’s.” She gave them a wave, and Riley a wink. “Y’all have a nice evenin’, now.”

“It was nice of you to do this,” Summer said an hour or so later as she dropped a crust onto the pizza platter with a small, replete sigh. “They’ve had a good time.” Her eyes were on the children as she said it; they were across the room in an alcove that held a dozen or so video games, and she could see David’s head jerking as he worked the controls, and Helen’s head bobbing up and down beside him as she watched.

She didn’t want to look at Riley; she didn’t have to know how uncomfortable he was in these surroundings. His look of abject misery was like a black storm cloud on the horizon-enough to cast an uneasy pall on the picnic, but not enough to cancel it. She almost felt sorry for him-the suave and elegant Riley Grogan, brought to this. Pizza and video games! What next? Almost. To her surprise, what she did feel was annoyance. Even anger. Like a mild undercurrent of electricity running just beneath her skin.

“It’s all right,” she said, unable to keep that little burr of irritation out of her voice, “the effects aren’t permanent, you know.”

He came back from the dark place where he’d been with a small start and a puzzled “What?”

“This place…us…our life-style. It won’t rub off on you-unless you wanted it to, I suppose-which I’m sure you don’t. Once this is all cleared up and we’re out of your life, you’ll have no trouble at all going back to the life you’re used to.”

He shifted uncomfortably, but didn’t smile or deny. Instead he held her eyes with a long, dark look and said quietly, “I’d rather not talk about my life right now, if you don’t mind.” Then, in abrupt reversal of that, he looked down, released a long, audible breath. “It’s just that sometimes places… things…remind me of places I’ve been in my life…places I’d just as soon not be reminded of. Do you understand?”

Summer nodded, the anger tremors inside her becoming something else-tension…awareness…anticipation. But she didn’t want to let it go. “A pizza place?” she murmured, smiling a little, letting him see the compassion-and a little of the sadness-in her heart. “Can that be so bad a memory?”

And then he smiled, too, finally. “Not the place-the time. Reminds me of when I was in college, if you want to know the truth.” The smile slipped sideways and he abandoned it in a swallow of beer. “My college days were a time of-” he searched for a word and found it “-struggle. Not the best time of my life. Nor the worst.” He laughed suddenly. “Even the music’s the same.” And he tilted his head, listening to the song-an old one of Olivia Newton-John’s that had just come on the jukebox.

Summer sat up straight “I remember that It’s from the movie Grease. I was in high school when that came out.” She began to sing softly, and after a moment, he did, too. Then they both stumbled over the lyrics and stopped at the same time, laughing together.

“Hey,” said Riley suddenly, “would you like to dance?”

She blinked and said, “What?”

“Dance. You know-man, woman, step-together, one-twothree…”

Dance? Oh, God, thought Summer. I will not think of Cinderella… I will not! She felt an overwhelming desire to laugh, but there was no room in her chest for anything except her rapidly beating heart. She made a small, desperate sound. “I-I don’t think they do that here.”

He looked around. “Don’t see why not-there’s plenty of room.” It was true; at that hour on a weeknight the place was nearly empty. He slid off the end of the bench, braced his hands on the table and leaned close to her. His voice, when he spoke, was low and held a current of urgency. “Come on, Mrs. Robey, dance with me.” And he tilted his head and smiled with heart-melting charm. “You know, I was gonna take you out on the town, after that ordeal this afternoon, but… well, that seemed a little impractical under the circumstances. So this looks like the only opportunity I’m gonna have. Dance with me.”

Why do you want me to? It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him that. But she was too afraid of the answer. And it was on the tip of her tongue to say yes. She wanted to-oh, how she wanted to. But her tongue, her whole body felt heavy, weighed down by the wash of memories of all the times and ways he’d touched her, heart, soul and body…of Cinderella’s Prince, Rhett in a blue silk dressing gown, and a wounded hero with her child in his arms…of his hands enclosing hers around a perfect sand dollar, the feel of his mouth on hers. Her lips had felt swollen, hot, on fire, that day. Now she felt like that all over.

“Could I dance?” It was Helen, who had come without either of them noticing. She was standing at Riley’s elbow, smiling up at him and squirming with unwonted shyness, winsome as a kitten, and as irresistible.

For a moment longer his eyes clung to Summer’s, burning with a strange, wild light. Then he dragged them from her and in one graceful motion, straightened, turned and swept Helen’s small hands into his. “Can you…? Sure you can.” He bowed low over their clasped hands, making her giggle. “Miss Helen, may I please have this dance?”

Helen wriggled, almost overcome with shyness, pushed her tongue into the side of her cheek and finally mumbled, blushing rose-pink, “But…I don’t know how.”

“Ah,” said Riley. He thought about it. “Okay, I think I have it.” He winked at Summer as he led his diminutive partner to the open space next to the jukebox. “I think I saw this on a television commercial once…okay, missy, stand on my feet-that’s right, put your feet right…there.”

And he carefully guided Helen’s Marvin the Martian sneakers onto the tops of his polished leather dress shoes, wincing only slightly as her weight settled onto his injured instep. Then, with a grace and ceremony worthy of a palace ballroom, he danced the utterly dazzled little girl around and around while Olivia Newton-John sang sweetly of hopeless devotion, and Summer, watching, pressed her hand over her mouth and struggled with all her strength to hold back tears.

Oh, God, what have I done? They’ve fallen in love with him. And so have I.

The song ended, the music stopped. Helen immediately cried, “More! I want to do it again! Please, Mr. Riley, can we?”

But he shook his head and said firmly, “Nope-now it’s your mother’s turn. Here, tell you what-” he fished a coin out of his pocket and gave it to her “-you put this in the jukebox. Yeah, right there, like that. We’ll find that song again…okay, here it is. Now.” And then he was beside Summer, and her hand was warm in his grasp. She felt herself rising, standing up on legs that felt hollow, fragile as blown glass.

“You’re trembling, Mrs. Robey,” he said softly as his arms came around her and his hand pressed warm and strong against her back. “Why is that?”

She tried to laugh. “It’s been a long time since I’ve danced.”

“I was sure it had been.”

There was a strange timbre in his voice that made her shiver even more, and her voice was bumpy as she said, “What if I’ve forgotten how?” In her high-heeled sandals she was almost as tall as he was; his finely chiseled lips were on a level with her eyes.

He smiled, and the movement drew her hungry gaze. “Would you like to stand on my feet?”

“I’m wearing heels,” she said with a husky chortle. “You’d be crippled for life.”

He laughed and said, “I doubt that” But she thought, No, it is I who will be crippled. After this, when we leave here, how will I-how will we ever forget you? After you, Riley Grogan, what man can there ever be…for me?

When he checked suddenly in the middle of the song, she gave a small, almost guilty start, as if he’d walked in on her private thoughts. But his hand had gone to his side and was pushing back his jacket to unhook a beeper from the waistband of his slacks.

“Oops,” he said, glancing at it, “I’m going to have to see about this. Do you mind?” It was a formality, of course; she shook her head. Riley was looking around for a pay phone.

“Back there, I think,” she murmured, pointing. “Behind the video games.” He nodded, muttered his thanks and went off to find it, weaving his way among long wooden tables, while Summer went back to their table and Helen, who awaited her with smiles and eyes that sparkled with delicious feminine conspiracy.

I guess it’s like that with lawyers, too, she thought, remembering that she’d summoned hers in the middle of a black-tie affair. Remembering, too, the times when she’d still had her own veterinary clinic and had so often been beeped in the middle of family outings to tend to some pet emergency or other. The children were used to hurried endings. Thinking of that, remembering that she’d once had a life, and a good one, long before Hal’s desertion, crime syndicates, the FBI and Riley Grogan, helped to restore her equilibrium, calm her panic, and quiet her soul. She would have a life again, someday. After all this. After Riley Grogan. For the children’s sake, I must.

She had just settled onto the bench and gathered her daughter against her side in a one-armed hug when Riley came back to the table, steering David along with a hand on the back of his neck. His face was grim, and his eyes held a hard, steely glitter.

“I’m afraid we’re going to have to cut this short,” he said quietly. “We need to get home-now.”

Summer was already on her feet, her heart pounding. “What is it? It can’t be-” He shook his head, glancing at the children. “Okay, guys, clean-up time,” Summer said briskly, picking up his cue. “David, you take the trays. Helen, you gather up the trash. Hurry up-chop-chop.”

While they were thus occupied, Riley moved close to her and spoke in a low voice, for her ears alone. “That was the police. My security monitoring service called them. Somebody tried to break into the house this afternoon.”