Promises to Keep Read online

  'I don't want you here and you know it!'

  'I'm ready to leave whenever you are.' A small smile hovered about his mouth, as if he knew it was only a matter of time before he succeeded in wearing her down.

  When Kathryn saw that knowing smile, the smouldering embers of her temper flared. 'I wouldn't cross the street with you,' she said angrily, lowering her voice only when several people, obviously coming home from work, tried to squeeze past them in the tiny hallway.

  He gripped her elbow, urging her up the stairs, ignoring her mutinous struggles. When they stopped outside her door, he held out his hand for her key. 'Or would you rather I asked your landlady to let me in again?'

  'Again?' Her eyes flew up to his.

  'I brought some groceries in earlier. I know all about you, Kathryn Marshall,' he said with a wry smile. 'Mrs Adams loves to gossip, doesn't she? You're an extremely neat housekeeper, but you're a month behind in your rent. You're next in line to lose your job at the nursery school because things are slowing down now and the enrolment is falling off. The only reason you're still there is that they pay you next to nothing. You rarely go out in the evenings—and never with a man. You can't make ends meet and your cupboards are bare. Need I go on?'

  A brilliant red swept up to the roots of her hair, but she thrust her chin up defiantly. 'I won't ask you how you managed to get her to let you into my flat or to tell you such things, but I will ask to you to leave. Please!'

  'Sorry—I'm not leaving. I've gone to too much trouble finding you.' Logan took her bag from her resisting fingers and tipped out the meagre contents. When he found her key he scooped everything back and handed it to her, tilting his head to an arrogant angle before quirking one black eyebrow. 'The fractious child act is beginning to bore me, Kathryn, and that's the one thing you never did before. You alone never bored me.'

  She stood in the dim hallway and watched him as he swung the door open and disappeared inside without waiting for her to follow. As if he owned the place! she thought with violent anger. But anger would get her nowhere; she would have to use tact. Ice shuddered along her nerves. How could she manage to get rid of him and still keep her dignity? She wanted to throw something at him. Why did he have to come here? One look at him and all her self-protective barriers came crashing down.

  The thought crossed her mind to turn and run. There was nothing much here anyway, just two tiny rooms furnished with Mrs Adams' cast-off furniture. But how far would the ten dollars in her purse take her?

  'If you're through weighing the alternatives, I've got dinner started,' Logan drawled from the doorway.

  Kathryn walked stiffly past him and closed the door with a decided slam.

  'Do you want to change into something more comfortable while I put the steaks under the broiler?' he asked, reaching for her coat like a perfect gentleman. 'If I remember right, you like yours medium rare.'

  She only pulled her coat tighter around her with an exaggerated movement and turned to face him full of outrage. 'How dare you come in here and take over as if you own the place?'

  One corner of his mouth quirked. 'Actually, I do. Own the place, that is. It's one of the projects my firm was asked to invest in recently. "Clean up the slums. Provide a healthy environment for our youth"—you know the sort of thing politicians urge in their campaigns all the time?' He flicked a quick look around the nearly bare room, then pinned her with an unrelenting gaze. 'You try hard—I'll have to say that much for you. Everything's spotless, but this is no place for you.'

  Kathryn knew the furniture was old and mismatched, the carpet faded and thin in places. The rooms were tiny and the building itself was in a poor section of town, but it was her home and she wouldn't apologise for any of it. 'I'm sure it doesn't meet with your approval, but I wouldn't expect you to see the charm it holds for me. You have no place here, Logan. Nothing in it reminds me of you.'

  'Did you find me so hard to forget?'

  She bunched her fists at her sides and stood staring at that handsome face with the hint of a smile playing about his lips, hating him more than ever before. He knew! No matter how many times she had tried to put him out of her mind during the last five years, he never would stay forgotten. And even now, with arrogant sureness, he knew nothing had changed. Her voice was reduced to an angry whisper. 'Please, just leave me alone.'

  He stepped closer to her. 'You left me once, Kathryn, but you'll never leave me again. I've spent years searching for you and now I've found you. You're mine!'

  'You're wrong.'

  'You loved me once. I knew it then, and it's still true now. I asked you to marry me and you said yes. Remember?'

  She blinked rapidly at the dry sting of tears at the backs of her eyes. 'Stop it!'

  Without thinking, Logan reached out to tangle his fingers in her glorious hair. It was still thick and shining, tumbling its way far down her back, but she jerked away from him.

  The small width of the room separated them as they both stood stiffly staring at one another like a hunter and his prey. The air crackled.

  Kathryn struggled with herself. After all these years Logan was here, reminding her that she belonged only to him. His quiet strength unwillingly drew her to him, but she fought against the traitorous emotions she had long ago buried. 'How did you find me?' she choked.

  'It wasn't easy. You led me one hell of a chase.'

  'You didn't think I'd stay in Vancouver, did you? You underestimated me.' A fleeting white smile of acknowledgement passed his lips. 'All right, so you've found me. But it's all been a waste of time for you.'

  He didn't say anything, just stood there smiling faintly.

  The hair on the back of her neck stood on end and a knot of fear expanded in her chest, but she kept her face expressionless. She felt the calculating glitter of his eyes slashing from the top of her wind-tangled hair all the way to her feet, and shivered.

  'I've come to take you home,' said Logan quite naturally, but all his muscles tensed as if he was about to spring.

  'This is my home, Logan.'

  He did spring then. His long fingers fastened on her shoulders, dragging her up close to him. 'Why? I wanted to give you everything! Everything I had was yours. But you walked away. You left me without a word, without a trace. Why?'

  She trembled in his arms, looking up at him with tormented eyes, but before she could say a word, something snapped inside him, releasing his finger-hold of self-control. His big hands jerked to either side of her head, sliding through her hair, forcing her mouth up to his.

  She knew she should resist him, but at the first touch of his hard demanding lips, the pain and disillusionment of the last five years rolled away as if it never existed. His tall broad body brushed against hers and her response was instinctive, wild with longing. His mouth burned against hers with demanding urgency. His fingers threaded through her glossy hair as she melted to all the hard angles and planes of his solid unyielding strength. He was warm and vibrant, and her arms unthinkingly circled his neck and shoulders.

  She hadn't forgotten the texture of his body, the hardness of his rippling muscles, the smoothness of his skin, the thick springy blackness of his hair. He was her other half, the vital part that made her whole. When she had left him all those years ago she couldn't deny that her heart had stayed with him.

  His kiss changed then, became gentle, lengthened and deepened, and she heard a low moan, but whether it came from her throat or his, she couldn't be sure. She was here in his arms again—Logan Ramsey, the man she loved, the man who had asked her to marry him.

  But he had married her sister instead. She still had the newspaper clipping tucked away in a book somewhere. The picture of the happy couple and the accompanying article had covered half the society page. How could she forget even for a minute?

  With an exclamation of self-disgust, her whole body clenched as she jerked herself out of his arms and crossed to the other side of the room on shaking legs. Her heart pounded in her throat and her breath came in sh
ort gasps, but she managed to keep her voice from wobbling. 'You'd better leave now. I don't think Carol would be too happy if she knew where you were or what you were doing.'

  Logan let out a long shuddering breath and dragged his hands through his hair before pulling himself together. He threw her a sharp frowning glance full of a strange bitterness. 'Haven't you kept in contact with anyone? Any of your old friends? Do you expect me to believe you don't know?'

  A wary look crossed her face at his ragged tone, and she unconsciously held a tiny breath. 'Know?'

  'Your sister's dead! A heart ailment,' he said callously, not believing she didn't know. 'It was only a week after Jon was born.'

  All her breath left her and she stared at him. She couldn't believe it. Looking at him standing across from her so tall and still, she managed to feel an unwanted sympathy cutting through her shock. 'I didn't know.' And then swiftly another thought struck her. 'Aunt Miriam must be frantic! You know how she always doted on her. Carol was her whole world—there wasn't anyone she loved more. I really should go to her. Maybe just being there might help. That's why you came, isn't it? Why didn't you say so at once?' Without waiting for his answer, she turned blindly towards her bedroom, intending to throw several things into an overnight bag, but Logan stopped her.

  A strange expression flickered across his face, but he was quick to mask it. 'I'm glad you have sense enough to agree to come with me tonight, but there's really no great hurry. We'll go after you've had something to eat. No sense travelling on an empty stomach.'

  She should have been warned by his lack of sorrow, his expressionless face, his whole attitude. But in Kathryn's frame of mind, she was only intent on helping her aunt through this terribly difficult time. Logan might not feel the loss as sharply as Aunt Miriam would. He had his lumber business to keep him occupied, but Aunt Miriam lived alone and had always centred her whole world on Carol. She would be devastated.

  The meal Kathryn shared with Logan was quickly and tastefully prepared, but it could have been sawdust for all she cared. He washed up the dishes while she went to pack. It was understood that he would drive her as far as her aunt's home and like a blind fool, she leaned back and actually relaxed in the plush leather seat of his sports car as they drove to the northern outskirts of Vancouver.

  If she began to remember how it used to be, sitting beside him like this, she put it out of her mind at once. It did no good to remember such things. That part of her life was over. Logan had proved to be a man of little substance. He was all fine talk and empty charm and still emptier promises. She had seen him for what he was, and she could only thank God her eyes had been opened before she had made the mistake of marrying him. It would have been a disaster. But all her barriers were once again in place, and they would stay there.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was only when they missed the turn-off to Aunt Miriam's house that Kathryn began to suspect something was wrong. She tensed and sat forward, peering out the windshield at the eerie shadows in the darkness on either side of the road. The traffic was thin at this time of night. They were leaving the city behind, driving into the wild and sometimes desolate timber country of British Columbia with its lush greenery dripping with rain. She felt nervous and uneasy, and she looked at Logan with rising suspicion.

  'Where are you taking me?' she demanded tightly. 'You missed the turn-off.'

  He easily negotiated a sharp bend in the road before flicking a cool glance at her. 'I'm taking you home, just as I intended.'

  'But you said you'd take me to Aunt Miriam's!'

  'No, I didn't. You assumed I would.'

  'But—' she breathed harshly, 'she'll need somebody to be with her.'

  'You didn't care about her for five years. Why the sudden concern now?'

  Kathryn flushed. 'That's not true. It's not a sudden concern. She knows how much I care— I've kept in contact with her all these years.'

  'But you never once came back to see her.'

  I couldn't bear to be reminded, she wanted to tell him. Instead she said: 'No, I didn't come back, but we wrote to each other at least once a month.'

  Logan's face was like finely chiselled granite. 'I know. I read all your letters.' He ignored her sharp indrawn breath and went on callously, 'You very conveniently omitted your return address, so there was never any way she could get in touch with you, was there? She wrote, but she could never post the letters. She could never tell you all the things she wanted you to know. For five years she got letters postmarked from all over the world. She had to read about how well you were doing—all the wonderful places you'd seen, the things you'd done, the people you'd met. But you never fooled her for one minute.'

  Kathryn turned her face away and breathed deeply, trying to control her rapidly mounting shame at having been found out. 'I have a friend in a travel agency who arranged to mail the letters for me. I thought it best to do it that way so as not to worry her.'

  Logan gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles turned white. 'But she was worried. When Carol died, she was sick, she had no one to turn to. She kept hoping you'd read about it in the papers and come home. But you never came…'

  Kathryn jerked her head up and felt her skin prickle as a sudden icy coldness swept over her. 'You make it sound—' She swallowed hard and clenched her hands in her lap before she said very softly: 'Carol didn't die recently, did she? She's been dead a long time. How long, Logan?'

  He slowed the powerful car and turned slightly towards her. 'A little more than four years ago.'

  'You tricked me!' she cried. 'You made it sound like she died only yesterday. How could you?'

  'You jumped to conclusions. I merely took advantage of the opportunity.'

  She fumed in the explosive silence that fell between them, 'I should have known how low you'd stoop! What other things do you have up your sleeve for me?' She glared sarcastically. 'I suppose you'd be happy to spring it on me that Aunt Miriam's dead too? Knowing what a snake in the grass you are, nothing would surprise me!'

  A harsh spasm of pain flashed across his face before he jerked his car to the side of the road and pulled to a stop, keeping the engine running. His hands curled into fists, striking the steering wheel over and over before curling around it with crushing power. His whole body was stiff and strangely rigid. 'You're right, Kathryn—you have lost your aunt too. But before she died, she made me promise to find you and take care of you.'

  Her heart stopped like a frozen fist in the middle of her chest as the cruelty of his words rolled over her. She couldn't utter a sound.

  'I'm sorry,' he muttered. 'I shouldn't have said it like that, but you—' He put his head in his hands and slumped forward, resting his elbows on the steering wheel. 'She was sick for a long time. Cancer, they said. She died last month.'

  Everything was still, Kathryn's eyes closed, remembering the woman who had given her so much.

  'It was never my intention to trick you,' he said gently. 'For years I've had private investigators following up your letters, trying to find you. Not only for her—for me too. Several weeks ago one finally succeeded. I've followed you for days now and tonight I fully intended to tell you about her straight off. Only I couldn't find the words— especially since you didn't know about Carol either. But I did make it clear I intended to take you home with me.'

  'Because you promised my aunt.' The whispered words were squeezed from her throat.

  'Because it's where you belong.' He turned to her in the close confines of the car and took her ice-cold hands in his, looking deeply into her stricken blue eyes. 'You've lost your family, but you still have me. You'll always have me.'

  She blinked and shuddered as the reality of his words punctured her shock. As she pulled her hands out of his crushing grip, her voice was quiet and coolly dignified. 'Thank you, Logan. You can consider your promise to a dying woman fulfilled. You found me. But I'm capable of taking care of myself and I prefer to be independent. Any obligation you might have felt is at an end.'
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  'No, it's not,' he said just as quietly, searching her white face in the gloom. 'You're coming home with me. You have me—and my son. We'll be married—'

  Her eyes flew up to his. 'You can't mean that!'

  'You promised to marry me five years ago. You'll keep that promise now!'

  'Do you honestly expect me to go home with you? To the house my sister lived in? To assume her role as your wife? To care for her child as if I were his mother?' Kathryn's shrill voice rose with each question and bordered on hysteria.

  He turned abruptly away from her, his eyes smouldering with angry impatience, and backed his car on to the road. 'You made me a promise, then vanished without keeping it. I've never found out why but you're going to tell me and we'll go on from there. I've searched for you all this time without giving up, thinking only of what might have been, what almost was. You still love me, Kathryn—I know you do. It's there in the way you move, the way you look, only you're afraid to admit it. You're mine. You'll never leave me again!'

  They drove the rest of the way in silence, and it was only when they passed through a massive iron gateway dully glinting in the watery moonlight that Logan broke the strained silence between them.

  'This was my parents' house,' he said in a roughly quiet voice. 'Carol never lived here. I don't know if she even knew about it.' The car continued to purr along a tree-lined drive with dim lights set low against the ground to guide the driver towards the house and the quiet hum of the engine made his grim voice that much more unsettling. 'I brought Jon here for the first time yesterday. Until now, I've simply considered this the big empty house where my brother and I grew up. Now, together, we can make it a happy home.'

  His eyes clashed with hers in a silent challenge before she let out the breath she was unconsciously holding. 'You're taking entirely too much for granted. I'll admit I thought I was in love with you once, just as I thought you loved me. But that was a long time ago. We've both changed since then and you married my sister. That alone makes everything different now.'