She could understand why Denver had been so overwhelmed by grief, but she was sure there was more to his sorrow than simple heartbreak despite Wikipedia offering no supporting evidence.
She browsed further through her internet search results and found some links to the news items at the time. Denver’s alter ego, Todd Morgan, was sufficiently famous by then for the death of his wife to be newsworthy.
And there it was: Anna Bane, 32, was found dead in her pool yesterday morning by her husband, noted thriller-writer, Denver Bane, who writes under the pseudonym, Todd Morgan. It is believed Mrs. Bane died from natural causes and the police are not treating her death as suspicious.
Rudi exhaled sharply. She hadn’t even realised she’d been holding her breath but, as awareness of herself and her surroundings returned, she discovered she was trembling all over. The pool. His wife’s body was found in the pool. That explained so much. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to go back there.
She quickly scrolled through all other mentions but didn’t find any further details. Still shaking, she went back outside, needing more fresh air to calm herself. Some feminine intuition told her that this was important, although she couldn’t as yet quite figure out why.
Poor Denver, finding his still-young wife dead in their pool. How ghastly it must have been for him, how shocking. And yet, Rudi couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that Denver’s grief was more than just that of a man bereft by the loss of his childhood sweetheart. There was another emotion wrapped up in there; she was sure of it. She could feel it, even if she couldn’t name it.
After a few quick turns around the garden and some deep breathing, Rudi managed to calm herself enough to return to her desk and get on with her work well aware that Denver could return at any moment. Meanwhile, she had found a new piece of the puzzle even if she wasn’t sure quite what to do with it.
Denver didn’t mention his meeting until dinnertime. As they finished eating, he told her his friend would give her a job and she could start work as soon as she’d found somewhere to live and was settled. She had a choice of offices, including Melbourne, which Denver seemed to think was the best option. No! It was too far away, she wanted to cry, but she said nothing, sure that she had no words to dissuade him from his plan.
But in bed that night, she turned over in her mind again all she knew. Denver had been happily married to his childhood sweetheart. She, Anna, had died suddenly and tragically of a stroke in the pool. Denver had not written anything for two years afterwards, and since then had done nothing else but write.
He’d taken her, Rudi, in after she’d forced him to run her down, and he’d taken such tender care of her she was sure he still had a loving heart, even if part of that tender care was giving her hard spankings when she messed up. And that’s how they felt to Rudi; not like bullying authority at all, but just part of his tender care.
And despite his reluctance, he had shown her the pool, then allowed her to use it, and now regularly joined her. She was sure that it was the first time he’d done so since Anna’s death, and equally as sure that if she, Rudi, had not been here, he would still not have gone into that room.
So, Rudi’s presence, she told herself, had helped him to partially break out of the prison in which he’d locked himself for the last few years. But their kiss and curtailed lovemaking hadn’t managed to break down the biggest barrier of all: His heart, it seemed, was still hidden away under lock and key.
Her own heart had soared when they’d kissed. He’d wanted to kiss her, she was certain; she could feel it in his passion, the way he tightly held her in his arms and the tiny moan at the back of his throat. And in the deeply troubled look in his eyes, as he pushed her away, she could see that he wanted to make love to her but couldn’t.
Without even realising that he needed her help, and certainly with no conscious plan in mind, she could see now that she had helped him in some ways, just as he had helped her. But she wanted more. She loved him desperately, and she wanted all of him.
As she lay there in the dark thinking, she suddenly knew what she must do. He was going to move her out on the weekend anyway; she had nothing left to lose. She had to be bold; it was her only chance.
The next day was incredibly hard to get through. She didn’t want to make Denver suspicious, but it was almost impossible to act normally. He, at least, was much more distracted than usual too, seemingly caught up in his own thoughts. Every now and then, though, Rudi would notice he had stopped typing and she’d look up to see him gazing at her instead of his screen.
A couple of times, she thought he was about to say something, but then he just looked at her coldly and went back to work. Rudi’s hands were clammy as she thought about what she was going to do and wondered how serious the consequences might be. It was undoubtedly a make or break, it certainly felt like that, but she had no choice. She couldn’t leave without having done everything she could think of to stay. If he still sent her away, well, there was always Perth and bourbon, she thought ruefully.
As soon as they finished dinner that evening, she put her plan into action. Excusing herself from the table, implying she needed to go to the bathroom, she went quickly to her bedroom and then snuck downstairs into the poolroom and into the pool. Now she just had to wait and pray she was doing the right thing.
She knew Denver would not take long to notice her absence and, when he did, he would come looking for her. It might take him a while to even suspect she might be downstairs, but if he looked everywhere, he would eventually have to look here and then… Rudi shuddered. He would be angry; she knew that. But how angry? And how would that anger manifest? Would he punish her? Throw her out tonight? Something worse? Whatever the consequences, Rudi knew that she had no choice. She simply could not live with herself without at least trying.
She lay on her back with her eyes closed, surrendering herself to whatever was going to come next. From upstairs, she heard him calling her, his voice becoming angrier and more concerned, and she wanted to rush to him, but she couldn’t; she had to see this terrible thing through.
At last she heard him run down the stairs and burst through the door. With the cry of a wounded bull, he jumped into the pool and grabbed her, pulling her against him.
“No,” he wailed.
“It’s all right,” Rudi said, wriggling. “I’m fine. Look, Denver, I’m not hurt. I’m perfectly okay.”
Denver’s face was as white as if he were looking at a ghost. As Rudi spoke to him and wriggled free, his expression changed to one of blank confusion. He stared at her as if he’d never seen her before, and then as the panic subsided and his memory returned, his expression turned to anger.
“How dare you!” he growled furiously. “I told you never, ever, ever to come here alone. How could you so flagrantly ignore my wishes, and how dare you in my home? What if…” his voice faltered and such a look of exquisite agony passed across his face, Rudi thought her heart would break. The moment passed and his face set in grim anger again. Grabbing her hand, he dragged her to the side of the pool.
“Get out,” he spat ominously.
Rudi pulled herself out of the pool and waited for him to get out too. She’d created this situation but wasn’t sure now what she should do. She didn’t have long to find out. Taking her hand, he dragged her to the banana lounge, sat down and pulled her over his knee.
“I am going to tan you so hard for pulling this stunt,” he growled as he started spanking her hard.
Being bent over had caused her bathers to ride up exposing more plump flesh than usual above her thigh for him to sting with his big, hard hand, and he seemed to be concentrating most of his attention on just that sweet and tender sit spot. When his hand ventured further up, though, the little skirt on her bathers afforded some protection and the spanks thudded rather than stung.
It seemed he was also aware of that, though, and, pausing briefly, he tucked the legs of her bathers into her bottom to expose her cheeks.
“I told yo
u,” he said, each word coinciding with another hard smack and a grunt from Rudi, “you would be very sorry if you disobeyed me and went in the pool alone.”
“But I’m not Anna,” she tried to say, although it was hard to get the words out as each fresh assault from his hand wrested an increasingly hard to control cry.
At the mention of Anna, he stopped, the silence now broken only by his laboured breathing, and pushed her up off his lap.
“What do you know about Anna?” he barked.
“I know she died in the pool and you found her here,” Rudi said gently, kneeling beside him desperate to erase the profound suffering from his eyes.
“I expressly forbade you coming here on your own. What if…” he stammered almost as if he’d not heard her.
“What if I died in the pool too?” she asked softly. “Why would I? What happened to your beautiful wife was a terrible tragedy, Denver, but even if you’d been there, she still would have died, wouldn’t she? It wasn’t your fault. You have nothing to feel guilty about.”
“How do you know?” he wailed. “Maybe I could have done something. She shouldn’t have been alone.” His face was twisted with grief, and the last piece of Rudi’s puzzle fell into place. Guilt. That was the emotion she’d not been able to name. And fear. Now that she’d recognised them, it seemed so obvious.
Denver blamed himself for his wife’s death and he was terrified that if he loved another woman, he might fail to protect her when she most needed it. No wonder, he’d felt obligated to take Rudi under his wing, but she was more certain than ever that he had developed real feelings for her, and it made him afraid. He was scared to love again because it made him vulnerable and he was terrified of ever having to go through the bottomless pit of grief, guilt and misery he’d suffered after Anna’s death.
“It wasn’t your fault, Denver,” she said again. “You can’t keep blaming yourself.”
Denver gave a mighty shudder and Rudi could see he was close to tears, but too proud to let her see him cry.
“Go to your room and stay there until I say you can come out!” he barked, pushing her away. “Go! Now!
Rudi realised she couldn’t do anything for the moment other than allow him as much dignity as possible so, grabbing her robe and towel, she fled. He needed time alone, too, to think things through, and she would just have to be patient and wait to see if her plan had worked.
It was still too early for bed, but with nothing else to do for the moment, Rudi showered and, in a probably pointless but somehow cathartic homage to Denver, paid particular attention to ensure her bottom was scrupulously clean. After drying herself, she put on her pyjamas, changed her mind and put on a nightdress, brushed her teeth and her hair, which was now down to her neck and curling over her ears, and sat on her bed wondering what would happen next.
She could just go to bed and try to sleep, but her fevered mind and twitching muscles were going to make that extremely difficult. She could just disobey him again and go and find him. She was deeply worried that, left to his own devices, he would shore up that wall he’d built around himself after Anna died, and any opportunity to break through would be lost forever.
But first, she would give him time on his own, just not too much time. If he didn’t come to find her in half-an-hour or so, she would go and find him and hang the consequences. She picked up the book of his she was reading, and tried to settle down, ignoring the fact that all of her senses were more attuned to any noises in the hall or at her door than anything happening in the book.
Although her plan of being in the pool may have achieved something, there was one thing clearly missing. While it did result in her having her bottom spanked, she didn’t get the after-cuddle she’d been so longing for, and it still seemed there was no way for her to get herself into Denver’s arms than first submitting to a spanking. Well, if that’s what a girl had to do, that’s what a girl had to do, she sighed. And the best way to get spanked, unless there was more coming for her being in the pool, was to break another rule.
She knew that being in the pool was his most enshrined rule and had expected a much more severe punishment, so she was half-expecting him to appear at her door with the stuff he’d brought before: the cotton wool, lotions, and harsh implement. So far, she’d only experienced the ruler and slipper, but she suspected he probably had other implements. He seemed experienced in the art of disciplining a naughty girl’s bottom, and Rudi was sure Anna had been a thoroughly spanked wife.
Her ears, still listening intently for any clues as to what was happening outside her room, picked up the sound of him walking from his bedroom to the spare room into which she’d peeked and in which she knew he kept all his reminders of Anna.
She couldn’t follow him in there, but she could take this opportunity to sneak into the kitchen for a drink. Walking through the family room and past the couch, she was surprised to see headlights near the end of the drive again. She paused to see if it was a car turning in, but it seemed to be stationary. Then, as she watched, it cruised slowly up the hill. Unless it had a destination there, it would have to turn around and come back.
As quietly as she could, she got a glass and filled it with cold, sparkling water from the fridge, all the while keeping one eye on the window. A few minutes later, she saw a car slowly cruising past again, this time going down the hill. Her brow furrowed into a frown. She wasn’t sure why the car was making her feel uneasy: whether it was just because cars that didn’t live in the street were relatively infrequent or whether it was more than that.
She thought about the car that had been prowling about earlier, and now this one also seemed to be behaving quite strangely. A cold shiver ran down her spine even though she couldn’t be sure it was the same car. As she watched, she saw its taillights disappear down the hill and put it from her mind. She had something more important to think about it.
Finishing her drink, she padded as quietly as she could down the hall to Denver’s bedroom. She hadn’t seen or heard him so he must still be in the spare room with the door shut. She snuck past and ducked through the door to his room. Taking a deep breath and praying she was doing the right thing, she walked to his bed, pulled back the covers and hopped in.
Her breath was coming in quivering gasps and her heart was racing as she pulled the doona over herself and piled the pillows behind her, so she was propped up facing the door. Now she just had to wait, but she didn’t imagine it would be for too long. Denver generally stuck quite closely to the same routine, which meant an early night as he’d be up early for the gym in the morning.
And she was right. In only a little over fifteen minutes, the door to the spare room opened and Denver came out and into his bedroom, stopping dead, a look of disbelief on his face when he realised he was looking at Rudi brazenly ensconced in his bed.
Ignoring the tremble in her smile and the quaver in her voice, Rudi looked him in the eyes.
“Hello, Denver,” she said. “Won’t you join me?”
Chapter 8
“What on earth do you think you are doing?” His words were cold, hard and measured.
“I’m disobeying you again,” Rudi answered as calmly as she could through chattering teeth.
Taking a couple of steps closer, he looked down at her in disbelief, running his hand over his head in bewilderment
“Why?”
“For a few reasons.” She made it sound dismissive, cheeky even. “Mostly because I want to.”
He stared at her as though lost for words. She pushed harder.
“And because I can!”
“I’m in no mood for this, Rudi.” He shook his head as though trying to clear it. “Go to your own room now.”
“And if I don’t?” Rudi kept her voice light, but she was holding her breath in apprehension. This was it. What if he just sent her out without caring?
And then, to her joy, she saw a slight change in his expression, just the merest twitch of his lip, but it told her he wasn’t going to send her
back to her own bed. Unfortunately, she also had a pretty good idea what he was going to do.
“If you don’t?” he repeated. “Well, then I am going to spank the daylights out of you, aren’t I? In fact, I’m going to spank the daylights out of you anyway. You didn’t get a proper spanking for being in the pool and now you pull a crazy stunt like this. You are definitely a very naughty girl who both wants and needs to be severely punished, including a sound and thorough spanking.”
“Not necessarily.” Now that she had the first part of what she wanted, she would be perfectly happy to skip it and go on to the good bit where she was on his knee kissing him and he was putting his hands all over her body in a much more friendly and less painful way. “Couldn’t you just hop into bed, instead?” she pleaded.
“As if you haven’t done enough already to warrant a long hard spanking, are you now also shamelessly offering yourself for sex?”
“Well,” Rudi replied slowly with a small smile and a flutter of her eyelids. “How about just a cuddle? Wouldn’t that be nicer than spanking me?”
“Ah, no. You’re not going to worm out of it like that, missy. You know this is deliberate disobedience and I can’t go back on my word, which was to punish you for breaking the rules. I have no idea why you want to get your bottom blistered, but this is the second stunt you’ve pulled tonight to get just that, so I don’t intend to disappoint you.”
He pulled back the covers.
“Get out. You broke my strictest rule, didn’t you, naughty girl?”
Rudi nodded, while standing in front of him.
“Please don’t nod at me when I am speaking to you,” he scolded her.
Rescuing Rudi Page 11
