Free A Light For My Love by Alexis Harrington Page A

the rain was beginning to let up. A
long, narrow band of late-day sun brightened the western horizon
where the clouds had lifted.
    Then a sudden flash of movement and color
caught his eye, and Jake watched as China darted across the yard.
His eyes narrowed. He saw her long black hair hanging free, and the
tails of her wool shawl streaming behind her as she ran. Her maroon
skirt billowed in the winter wind. Through the glass he heard her
light steps on the flat stones of the path. What the hell was she
up to? he wondered once more. Then he had his answer. She flew
toward the carriage house. There a medium-built man in seaman's
dungarees and pea coat stood waiting for her. The sailor reached
out to grip her wrist, and China, with a furtive backward glance
over her shoulder, hurried them inside. Even from where he stood,
Jake sensed the powerful urgency between them.
    Jake stepped back from the window, recoiling
as though he'd been slapped. He wasn't sure what he'd seen, but he
sure knew what it looked like, what it felt like.
    An intense emotion, one he didn't want to
consider very carefully, knifed through him, painful and swift. He
took a deep breath and tried to smother the feeling, along with the
impulse to storm outside and drag China into the house. Had anyone
else seen her? He looked around at Captain Meredith, but the old
man slept on, oblivious. Aunt Gert sat at the desk, deep in
concentration, sorting and arranging what looked like some little
cards, and he'd last seen Susan Price in the sewing room
upstairs.
    All the pieces of China's puzzling
behavior—the sneaking around, the lying, taking trays of food
outside—began to fall into place, and Jake didn't like the picture
it created. He didn't like it at all.
    But it gave him an infallible means by which
to get what he wanted, and he planned to use it.
    *~*~*
    It was just after five, and dusk was upon her
when China glanced up through the kitchen window a half-hour later.
Good, she thought; Aunt Gert must be in another room. From where
China stood, she could see no one in the kitchen. She climbed the
porch stairs and turned the doorknob. Before she was inside she
recognized the delicious aroma of ham baking in the oven. Chicken
last night, and now ham. They so rarely could afford good meals
anymore, the meat seemed like a dangerous extravagance to her.
She'd have to talk to Aunt Gert about this. China suspected that
her aunt was cooking with Jake in mind, rather than economy.
    Despite what Jake had said at lunch, China
hoped he would eat dinner someplace else again tonight. She didn't
have much appetite when he was around, and the combination of lack
of food, her own anxiety, and hard work had her energy flagging.
She pushed open the door and pulled off her shawl to hang it by the
stove.
    "Hello, China."
    China swallowed a shriek and whirled to see
Jake sitting at the table. He slouched low in the chair, with one
foot crossed over his knee. His eyes were as cold as jade. She had
the awful feeling that she was being called to task. He'd changed
to a plain white shirt with a band collar, and it was unbuttoned to
his sternum. A small medal on a gold chain hung around his neck,
half hidden by the folds of his shirt, and her eyes were drawn to
it. In her confusion, her gaze moved on to the dark blond hair
revealed on his chest, and she felt her cheeks grow warm.
    "Jake," she acknowledged and closed the door
behind her, showing more calm than she felt. Blast it, she thought.
She hadn't realized till this second that someone had closed the
curtains on the kitchen door. And the big window was too high above
the path for her to see anyone who was sitting in the kitchen. If
she'd known he was there, she'd have gone through the side door and
right up the stairs to her room.
    "Nice evening, isn't it?" he remarked, lazily
pushing himself upright and unhooking his ankle. "Has the rain
stopped?"
    "Why are you always sneaking up on me?" she
snapped, the level of her words rising on