Free If I Can't Have You by Patti Berg Page B

either.”
    Since he went away! He hadn’t been gone sixty years, she tried convincing herself. He’d just drunk too much and lost his mind.
    He was right, though. She hadn’t changed what had once been Trevor Montgomery’s. She’d had no reason to believe Trevor would ever return, but each thing was a part of him, and it seemed an easy way to help keep his memory fresh and alive.
    But no one else knew about that camouflaged key holder. She’d found it by accident. How could this stranger have known? Easy, she told herself. He’d stumbled across it when he took out the coffee mugs.
    There was an explanation for everything.
    “You shouldn’t have come in here,” she told him. “I locked the door to keep you out.”
    “I realize that.”
    He moved toward her. He was wearing his shrunken slacks and a sleeveless ribbed undershirt, the kind her father had worn when she was a child. His beard was thicker. Dark circles had formed under his eyes. He looked exhausted, but he also looked sober—the first good sign.
    “Did you sleep?” she asked.
    “No. I drank the coffee you made instead, and once I figured out how to operate your percolator, I drank even more.” He set the black-lacquered tray beside her on the bed.
    Coffee steamed from the cup next to a glass of orange juice. A white linen napkin was folded in a neat triangle, and a pink rose from her garden lay on top.
    “You shouldn’t go into the garden. Someone might see you.”
    “I bought this place because it’s private. It sits far off the road, and the adobe wall keeps out intruders.”
    Adriana frowned. He’d been nosing around again. It made her uncomfortable. She liked her privacy. That’s what made this place so perfect.
    Just as he’d said.
    She lifted the orange juice from the tray and took a sip, trying to ignore his piercing gaze.
    “You didn’t sleep much better than I did,” he said, sitting finally in the chair next to the bed. “I could hear you from the guest room.”
    “I’m sorry if I disturbed you.”
    “You didn’t disturb me.”
    He leaned back in the chair, his eyes never leaving hers. He smoothed his index finger over the pencil-thin mustache above his lips. With his growth of whiskers she hadn’t noticed the mustache before, but it was definitely there.
    Just like Trevor’s.
    “I still frighten you, don’t I?” he asked.
    “Yes.”
    “I admit my appearance could give anyone a start.”
    “It’s not that,” Adriana interrupted. “No one’s ever broken into my home before, and if someone had, they wouldn’t be serving me coffee in bed.”
    ‘That’s not what’s frightening you. It’s the fact that I’m Trevor Montgomery, and you think I’m a madman.”
    “If Trevor Montgomery were alive, he’d be in his nineties.”
    “Ninety-four.”
    You don’t look much more than forty.”
    ‘Thirty-four. Stress has a way of aging a man.”
    ‘Too much liquor can do that, too.”
    “So I’ve been told.”
    The intruder got up from the chair and walked around the room. He touched the videos beside the TV, picked up one after another and read the titles. “Which is your favorite?”
    “Captain Caribe.”
    Shaking his head, he laughed lightly. ‘Just like every other woman. They like those dashing, daring heroes.” The stranger leaned against the dresser and stared absently at the videocassette. “I sprained my ankle swinging from the yardarm,” he told her. He seemed to be reminiscing, but Adriana knew he was telling a lie. She’d never heard this story before, and she knew everything there was to know about Trevor Montgomery.
    “We had only two more days of shooting,” he said. “I was young, and that was my first starring role. I didn’t want anything to jeopardize the film or my career, so I wrapped the ankle myself, borrowed a few painkillers from a friend, and pretended nothing was wrong. That night I took a little whiskey along with the pills.”
    He looked up at Adriana, a deep sadness, maybe a