'I don't ever want to see you again.'
'Alexi--'
'Where are you, John?'
'Close, babe, real close.'
How close? she wondered. She felt the tremors rake along her spine again. Her tongue and throat felt dry; her palms were damp.
'Well, John, forget it. I--'
She was startled when the receiver was wrenched from her hand. She gasped slightly and looked up to see that Rex was back. She hadn't heard him come into the room. Nor had he ever looked at her quite like that. His eyes were burning coals. His features were taut and strained, and he seemed a very hard man at that moment, striking, but cold as ice.
'What do you want, Vinto?'
'Who the hell are you?'
Even Alexi heard John's reply. She bit her lip, listening to the harsh tone of Rex's answer. He told John exactly who he was and exactly where he could be found. And then he told John to leave Alexi alone--or else.
Then he slammed down the receiver.
Alexi sat motionless for several long moments. She felt drained, and found that curious, for Rex seemed to be a mass of tension and knots, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides as he watched her.
'I didn't tread on any toes, did I?' he said.
'What?' She looked up at him at last.
'Did you want to see him?'
'No! Of course not. You know that! I--I'd like to feel that I could have handled it myself, but--'
'Sorry.'
He turned around again and was gone. Miserable, Alexi continued to sit there. She got up at last and followed Rex across the hall.
Skip and Terry had gone. Rex was sitting there by himself at the butcher-block table, staring at the window seat that had so recently given them both such pleasure.
Alexi came and sat down next to him. He glanced her way. A brief smile touched his lips and then was gone. He squeezed her fingers and rose. 'I'm going out for a few hours.' He started for the kitchen door.
Alexi rose, too. 'Rex?'
'It's all right,' he assured her. 'I'm just going out for a few hours.'
The kitchen door swung. She heard Rex's footsteps on the stairway, going up. Then, seconds later, she heard them coming down again. He hesitated, as if he was going to walk straight to the front door but then decided not to.
He came back into the kitchen. He'd donned a striped tailored shirt and moccasins and was busy tucking the shirt into his jeans. He came around behind Alexi. With his fingers he lightly stroked her upper arms.
'I'll be back,' he promised her.
There was so much she wanted to say. She didn't seem able to say any of it. She nodded, and he kissed the top of her head.
'Alexi, I...'
'What?'
'I, uh, I'll try not to be gone too long.'
She looked up at him curiously. He smiled and kissed her distractedly on the forehead again. A moment later, the kitchen door was swinging in his wake, but then he caught it again to say, 'Come on out and lock the door.'
Samson started barking. He raced up from the cellar stairs and brushed past Alexi and jumped on Rex.
'Get down, you monster.'
'He doesn't want to be left behind,' Alexi murmured.
'All right, all right, you can come for a ride,' Rex told the dog impatiently. ''Alexi, make sure you lock the door.' 'I will, dammit, Rex. I know how to do it now.' He didn't answer her. Alexi heard him yell at Samson to get into the car; then she heard the Maserati rev. She locked the door and leaned against it and felt like crying.
She muttered fervently to herself about the absurdity of such a thing and went back into the kitchen. She threw away the pizza boxes and the empty beer bottles and swore softly as she washed down the table and the counters. She curled up on her new window seat, but she couldn't seem to take any pleasure in it. Then she heard a mewling and remembered that she still hadn't fed any of the animals-- his or hers.
'Okay, my loves. I'm coming.' Alexi uncurled herself and started down the cellar stairs. The kittens played around her feet. “Samson went out without any dinner. Serves him right, don't you think? Men. They're all alike, and they deserve what they get, huh?'
Alexi glanced through the shelves of food. 'Chicken, tuna or liver, guys?'
She shrugged and decided on cans of chicken. She picked up the bowls to wash them in the big, ancient sink and bit her lip against the temptation to cry again.
Rex had been in such a hurry to get out, to get away from her. He'd been counting the damn days, she thought spitefully. He wanted her to go back to work.
And then he'd grabbed the phone away from her. He hadn't thought her capable of dealing with John. But then, really, just what did he think of her, and what could she really expect? They'd met because she'd broken in-- because she hadn't been able to get that stupid old key to work. Then she'd heard the footsteps of someone chasing her in the sand. And she'd been convinced that someone was in the house that night the lights had gone out. And then again, when they'd come back after their night out on the beach, she'd been so sure...
He thought she was neurotic, surely. He'd run out tonight because he just had to have a break from a neurotic woman who was perhaps becoming just a little bit too much like a clinging vine.
Alexi ruefully turned the water off, thinking that the kittens would surely have the cleanest bowls in the state. Then she paused, startled, her heart soaring with hope as she thought she heard the door open and close.
She dropped the bowls into the sink and hurried back to the bottom of the stairs. 'Rex?'
She didn't hear anything, but she could have sworn that the front door had opened. Alexi started up the stairs and entered the kitchen. There was no one there. She hurried out into the hallway and saw that it was growing dark. The stairs to the second floor and the landing above them loomed before her like a giant, empty cavern, waiting to swallow her whole.
'You are neurotic!' she charged herself aloud. In a businesslike manner she turned on the hallway light, and she felt better. She moved on into the parlor and turned on the globe lamp behind the Victorian sofa.
'A little light shed on the matter,' she murmured. Then she paused uneasily again, shivering. It felt as if someone was near. She couldn't really describe why--it just felt that way.
John.
Ice seemed to course through her veins. He had said that he was near, hadn't he? Had he been here all along, stalking her? Running after her on the sand the second night she was there, somehow slipping into the house once she had run into Rex, escaping when she had screamed...
No. It just couldn't be John. What could he want with her?
He said that he wanted to talk to her....
The shadow in the Chinese restaurant, watching them through the screen...could that have been John?
Who else? She gave herself a shake, then stood very still. She hadn't heard a thing. She was just nervous because Rex was gone and she was so accustomed to being with him now.
Alexi cut across the hall. She meant to go into the kitchen, but paused and walked into the ballroom instead. She turned on the lights and walked down to stand beneath the portraits of Pierre and Eugenia.
'You were really so beautiful!' she told them both softly. And she smiled, wondering if they had ever loved each other on the beach, watching as the sun came up in an arc of beauty. Had they laughed in the waves, played in the surf?
They had been great lovers, she knew, according to family legend and some documented fact. Eugenia's father had been a rich Baltimore merchant, but she had defied him to marry Pierre Brandywine, a Southern sea captain. They had eloped and run away to Jamaica to honeymoon, even as the conflicts between the states had simmered and exploded. In 1859, Pierre had brought Eugenia to the Brandywine house on the peninsula and carried
