BENNO WOKE with a start. The room was dark. It took him a minute to adjust his mind set. He was in his own bed. The curtains were closed. Gingerly, he moved his arm. Tender, but the throbbing had stopped. Sydney had been correct in bullying him to see the doctor.
Sydney.
He had an immediate urge to see her.
Rolling out of bed, he removed his jeans from a nearby clothes stand and stepped into them. He was pulling up the zipper when he opened the door and walked barefoot into the living room.
“Sydney?”
The house was quiet, eerily so. Benno strode to the other bedroom and banged open the door. No Sydney.
“Damn.”
Where could she have gone? Out trying to find a killer by herself? He was on his way to his bedroom to grab a shirt and shoes so he could go looking for her when he glanced out the bay window. Expelling a sigh of relief, he allowed his tense muscles to sag when he spotted her.
She looked mad as a wet hen, but Benno hadn’t ever seen a more welcome sight.
She was safe.
He opened the door and waited on the stoop. When she came within hearing distance, he asked, “Who got your dander up?”
Sydney didn’t answer, rather gave him a searching look as she passed him. Worried, he followed her back into the house. About to try a different approach, he stopped when he realized she was working herself up to say something. Her cheeks were flushed, her brow creased, her eyes wide with a stricken look that scared the hell out of him.
“Tell me about Nissa.”
The breath caught in his throat and his chest squeezed tight. “Who have you been talking to?”
She didn’t answer, merely leaned back against the loveseat, crossed her arms over her chest and waited.
He should have known she would find out sooner or later, Benno thought. He should have told her himself. Now she would probably despise him.
“Nissa was... a friend... one of the few I had in this town. Like Kenneth, she came from the right side of the tracks. Nissa had everything... brains, beauty, class... and Parnell Anderson for a brother. But you already know that, right?” Would she hate him now? he wondered. “What did he tell you, Sydney?”
“That you killed his sister.” She paused for a beat, then asked, “Well, aren’t you going to deny it?”
“No.” The guilt that had plagued him all these years was never far away. “It was my fault,” he admitted, remembering.
He stopped at the window and looked out as if he could see the spot in the dark.
“What happened?” Sydney asked, sounding very contained.
“We were holed up in The Sugar Loaf – Kenneth, Nissa and me. It was a crummy night, raining off and on.” He could feel the damp settle in his bones as if it were yesterday. He would never forget the feeling. Never. “I’d gotten my hands on a six pack and we lost track of time drinking and making jokes about graduating in a couple of weeks.”
“Parnell said you left town two days before graduation,” Sydney interrupted.
Caught up by the past, Benno barely noticed. “It was such a stupid fight -- about the prom. Nissa expected me to take her, but I was busted. Pa had wandered off somewhere the week before. I worked, but I had to eat, you know? Anyway, Nissa didn’t care that I didn’t have the money. Said she had enough to pay for everything. Me and my stupid pride.”
He began pacing as if the simple activity could release him from the wired feeling over which he had no control.
“I couldn’t just say no and thank her for being so sweet. When she insisted, I got angry and told her what she could do with her money. I called her a spoiled little rich girl.”
“One who obviously cared about you.”
As he had her, Benno thought, cursing himself for the millionth time that the last words he’d spoken to Nissa had been harsh. He swept a hand over his eyes but couldn’t wipe away the memory.
“She started to cry. I’ll never forget the look on her face before she ran out of the cave. I tried to tell myself that she’d be better off without me. If Kenneth hadn’t called me a jerk and suggested I go after her, I might never have known what really happened to Nissa.”
“The tide,” Sydney murmured, her tautness softening.
“I couldn’t stop her,” Benno said, not any more than he was able to stop himself from reliving the painful memory. His chest was so tight he could hardly breathe. “She was already making her way down. It shouldn’t have happened!” he cried. “Nissa was sure-footed, used to the climb. But I’d given her that beer and she was being a little reckless. If I’d gone after her thirty seconds sooner...”
Benno took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He could see Nissa’s terrified expression as if the tragedy was happening now. That expression had haunted him all these years. It was as if a photograph had been implanted in his brain.
“She lost her balance and a breaker washed her right off the face of the rock.”
“Oh, my God. That must have been awful.”
“The current sucked her under.” His voice broke and he took a deep breath. “Just like that.” His heartbeat had speeded up and his pulse was pounding as it had been that night. “I tried to go after her, but Kenneth held me back, told me not to be stupid... no reason for me to chance drowning before we even spotted her. He flashed a light all around but all we saw were swells of water. No Nissa. Not even a trace.”
“You loved her, didn’t you?” Sydney asked.
“Up until recently, Nissa was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Benno said.
And now Sydney was. But how could he tell her? The daughter of a judge, she was out of his class, too. He was no better for her than he’d been for Nissa. Knowing didn’t stop him from wanting. That had always been his problem.
“I was no good for Nissa,” he said, “and I should have known that I would be responsible for ruining her life if not for taking it away.”
Sydney noticed his voice had grown softer as he spoke. The back of her eyelids stung. Such a senseless loss, but certainly not what Parnell had wanted her to believe.
“Nissa’s death was an accident, Benno, no matter what her brother says. And you had no way of knowing something so awful would happen when she left the cave.”
Sydney remembered asking Benno what the dumbest thing he’d ever done was and he’d responded getting involved with the wrong person. She’d completely misinterpreted his statement at the time, but now she understood. He felt that if he hadn’t been involved with Nissa, she would still be alive. With a sense of relief, and with a measure of guilt for doubting Benno, she reached out to him.
“You can’t blame yourself forever,” she said, touching his bare shoulder. His flesh was warm and vibrant beneath her fingers.
“You don’t forget something like that, Sydney.” Benno’s eyes were haunted, but he covered her hand with his. “The memory stays with you, even when you do your best to forget.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t left town.”
“They would never have let me live down Nissa’s death,” he insisted, pulling away from Sydney. He moved to the fireplace and stared at the painting. “A nothing like me lives while one of the respectable ones dies?”
How sad that he should have had such a low opinion of himself. “And so you went in search of respectability.”
“Not at first. I just left because I couldn’t stay, not after seeing her body when it washed up. Not after the accusations.” He turned to face her and leaned against the fireplace mantle. “The mighty Andersons wanted me to pay for Nissa’s death. Old man Anderson kicked my butt up one side and down the other. And I let him. If Kenneth hadn’t been with Nissa and me at The Sugar Loaf that night, I would have landed in the slammer. At the time, I thought I deserved to be in jail.”
Realizing that Benno was more open than she’d ever seen him, Sydney pressed on. “What about your father?”
“What about him?”
“Didn’t he support you?”
Benno
laughed. “Pa came home for a week, commiserated when I got beat up, then drank himself into a stupor. I hated my life and with Nissa gone, there wasn’t any reason to stay.”
“Where did you go? How did you survive?”
“Any way I could. I did any menial job I could get, worked my way down the Northwest Coast, always trying to forget my guilt, never quite succeeding. I did have success running a coffee house/bar in a southern California town these past few years, however.”
“Obviously, that wasn’t enough.”
“You’re right. All the while I knew someday, I’d have to prove I wasn’t a worthless no good bum like Pa. No one knows what happened to him. One day he wandered off and never came back. I used to tell myself he went looking for my mother on his excursions.”
“Maybe he found her.”
Benno shrugged. “Maybe. A couple of months ago I came back to Stone Beach and opened a second business. Despite Parnell Anderson trying to force me out, Benno’s Place is doing okay. Some of the locals don’t know him, and the tourists wouldn’t care if they did.” He moved away from the fireplace. “When you came to town, I was back in California, making legal arrangements to give my manager a cut of my place there as an incentive to keep the profits healthy. I’m not figuring on going back any time soon.”
Things began to click into place, especially Parnell making that reference to justice in the photo shop.
“Parnell has held you and Kenneth responsible for Nissa’s death all these years, hasn’t he?” Sydney asked, her growing realization spurring a renewed anger. “So he had a motive for wanting Kenneth dead. But you didn’t tell me. All this time, you let me think you were helping me out of the goodness of your heart.”
Benno had the grace to look penitent, and yet he touched her cheek and said, “I was trying to protect you because I was afraid it was my fault that you’d been dragged into the mess.”
An excuse. Sydney slapped his hand away. “But you didn’t tell me that. You had a hidden agenda all along,” she accused, quickly working herself into a rage. “You’re no different than Al Fox.”
“I am different,” Benno insisted, stepping closer. He almost sounded desperate that she believe him when he said, “I love you. I’ve never felt this way about a woman before.”
“Pardon me if I have trouble believing that.”
“If you don’t, it’s because you don’t want to. You felt the same way I did in The Sugar Loaf last night. You wanted to make love to me. But you withdrew and now I know why. The things I told you about my past were too much for you to handle. I can imagine what you think of me now.”
Sydney sensed Benno’s very real hurt. But could she trust her own intuition? She vacillated. Her insight hadn’t been the most reliable lately, true, but could she really go through life questioning every person she met, everything she felt?
“I don’t think any less of you because of Nissa,” she said, regaining her calm. “You’re harder on yourself than anyone could be... other than her brother. But I prize honesty, Benno, especially after what Fox put me through.”
“Then I promise I’ll be as honest as I know how.”
“I’m not sure that’s good enough.”
“My word is all I have to offer.”
They stared at each other. Impasse. Her move. Sydney knew Benno wouldn’t push himself on her. If she believed that, why couldn’t she trust him completely?
“I want to believe you,” she told him.
Sydney remembered when he’d said the same to her. Everyone else had thought she was crazy, but not Benno.
“That’s a start.”
A start was enough to propel Benno into action. He took her in his arms as he’d done so often during the last week. But this time he wasn’t trying to comfort or reassure her, Sydney thought. And this time, her awareness of him reached new heights. His beard stubble scraped her forehead, a small hurt that made her feel alive. His solid flesh against hers sent a flame more powerful than her fading anger coursing through her veins. The silky matting on his chest burned her palm.
“I would never do anything deliberately to hurt you,” Benno murmured. “But perhaps you think it best if we didn’t explore what we could have together further. I’m not a safe person to be around.”
“The dark knight rushing headlong into danger,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she murmured. “Just a fantasy.”
He cradled her head, stared into her eyes, undoubtedly waiting for a signal that she believed, trusted and wanted him. Pulse ragged, Sydney wondered if she were a fool. If only she could be as certain of her own path as she was when it came to others. She’d known Lex had meant trouble for her friend Candace without ever meeting the man, but she hadn’t been able to see the truth about Kenneth face-to-face.
Consequently, Sydney didn’t know how she should feel about Benno.
Should feel? Or did feel?
She loved him, Sydney reminded herself. What he’d been hiding from her was his own hurt. Nissa had been the best thing that happened to him until recently, he’d said. Until recently, when he’d fallen for her?
“I do love you,” he whispered as if he were the one with psychic abilities.
The time for indecision over -- she was to get no miraculous insights – she tangled her fingers in his loose hair and drew his head down as she raised her face. Their lips touched, sweetly at first, then more sensuously as she loosened her reserve.
Without freeing her mouth, Benno lifted her. Sydney tried to protest and make him release her to no avail. Afraid he might hurt his wounded arm, she clung to his neck and readjusted her weight. As easily as if she were a feather, he carried her into the bedroom. Setting her down on the bed, he removed her khaki trousers and lace-trimmed briefs. She gasped as his fingers trailed down her thighs, calves, ankles, before freeing her completely of the garments.
Dressed only in an over-sized coral t-shirt and a pair of dangly shell earrings, Sydney curled her legs under her and reached out to unzip Benno’s jeans. No underwear. Even in the darkened room she could see he was ready for her. She touched him intimately. His jeans had barely hit the floor when Benno lunged forward and in one smooth motion had her pinned under him lengthwise.
Sydney had trouble breathing as she looked up into Benno’s eyes – not that he lay on her too heavily. Fear stalked her even as she was about to capitulate totally. As if he sensed her insecurity, he waited. Their ragged breaths filled the quiet room with the sound of delayed consummation. Sydney touched Benno’s face, slid her hand under his fall of satin-dark hair, ran a finger around the diamond stud in his ear, yet never gave him leave to look away.
She held him captive as she attempted to look into his soul and hoped that this once she would receive a true message.
What she saw reflected through his eyes was love. She sensed a rightness to this union she hadn’t felt with her supposed husband. While she’d been happy at the time – relieved to find a positive force in her life – she hadn’t experienced the joy she did at this moment.
“I love you, Benno,” she admitted, spontaneously and without reservation.
“I know.”
Benno slid the oversized t-shirt up over her hips. Without breaking eye contact, he smoothed a hand over her belly and between her thighs to prepare her for him. With a sigh, Sydney lowered her lids. Responding sinuously, she arched and felt relief when he finally entered her. This joining was right and true, she thought, unlike the last time.
But even as she gave herself up to a desire that seemed to rage through her, Sydney was saddened. In a short time, she hoped, the real murderer would be apprehended and she would be safe. And soon after that, Stone Beach would be no more than a memory.
The thought brought tears to her eyes and an intense finale to their lovemaking. When Benno lay over her, whispering her name and words of love, she felt her own betrayal beginning.
For, rather than responding, rather than
concentrating on him and the love they shared, Sydney thought of motives and suspects. Revenge rather than greed. Parnell Anderson instead of Martha Lord.
Fear could be more powerful than love, she realized. Fear made her want to protect herself from another hurt even now. Benno rolled off her and onto his back. He stared up at the ceiling in silence.
He knew, Sydney realized, and yet he said nothing.
She was certain Benno knew that, once her name was cleared, she intended to leave him as had every person he had ever loved.