Blind Passion

by Bronwyn Stuart

  While they’d talked, Brandan felt his way along a wall, moving over to the hotel phone. When she stopped sharing her automobile fantasies, he picked up the receiver and punched the 1 button for the concierge.

  “I would like to hire a car,” he said to the person on the other end.

  Sophie’s jaw dropped.

  “A convertible Jaguar if you can find one, if not, a Lamborghini will do.”

  She snapped her mouth shut then open again. “Brandan, you can’t,” she shrieked.

  “Can you drive?” he asked her again, his hand over the mouthpiece.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have a driver’s license?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then I can.” He turned his back to her, muscles playing as his shoulder blades sank and relaxed.

  “Thanks, just buzz when it arrives.” He hung the phone up and turned back in her general direction. “You have forty minutes to get ready.” Then he was gone, his door shutting with a thud on her surprised expression.

  “Where are we going?” she yelled at the closed door.

  “Out,” came his muffled reply.

  Muttering to herself about how lucky rich people were, she went to her room. How was she supposed to get ready when she had no idea where they were going?

  She went into the bathroom and tied her long blonde hair up into a ponytail, put on some light make-up, although for who, she wasn’t sure. It wasn’t like she had to impress him.

  It wasn’t like she could impress him.

  He seemed to be at ease in her company but Sophie wondered what he thought of her? Really thought of her? So far she had made herself out to be an air-headed bimbo painted red and wearing a polka-dotted hat. She giggled at the mental picture.

  When she went back into her room her phone began to ring loudly from the nightstand where she’d left it.

  She didn’t recognise the number displayed on the digital screen. For a moment she contemplated not answering it but she was in no danger from a phone call. “Hello?”

  “Miss Wright?”

  “That’s me,” she replied, sitting down on the edge of her bed.

  “This is detective Peter Brown from Adelaide again.”

  “Yes?” Her heart thumped painfully, skipping a beat.

  “Well, I don’t know quite how to tell you this.”

  Then it leapt into her throat. Had they caught Max? Was he dead? Would Brandan ask her to leave if she didn’t need to be here anymore? She didn’t know if she should be elated or disappointed.

  It did tell her one thing though. She’d already been there too long if the first thing she thought about was Brandan and not her safety.

  “Are you still there?” the Detective asked.

  “Yep.”

  “We’ve lost him.”

  “He’s dead?” she breathed.

  “Who’s dead?” Brandan asked from the doorway, clearly concerned.

  “Max.”

  Brandan felt his way into the room, bumped into the bed and then knelt at her feet taking her free hand in his.

  “Miss Wright?” Detective Brown called to her. “He’s not dead. Least as far as we know.”

  “But you said...”

  “We have lost him, he disappeared completely. There were roadblocks, dog squads, even a helicopter, men at every airport, but there is no trace of him.”

  Sophie breathed a sigh of relief. If Max died right now, it would be on her hands. If it hadn’t been for her he wouldn’t have been in jail in the first place. She didn’t kid herself to think if she really cared if he lived or died. After the way he’d come after her the last time and beat her to within an inch of her life she could honestly say she never wanted to hear his name, his voice or anything about him for the rest of her life.

  The weeks in hospital, the collapsed lung, broken ribs, it had given her the time she’d needed to rest and think about her future. One without her crazy ex. She couldn’t remember much from the actual night of the attack. One minute he’d been yelling at her after breaking into the house they’d shared, the next she was in the hospital, hooked up to leads and tubes. Her screams had woken her neighbour and he’d called the police.

  The doctors had told her she was lucky to be alive.

  Little did they know...

  “Sophie?” Brandan said her name. She had gone unnaturally still and her breathing was very shallow. Her hands were trembling and what felt like a tear drop landed on the back of his hand.

  He reached up and followed the length of her arm until he reached her hand and gently took the phone from her.

  “Hello, this is Brandan McAllister, I’m a friend of Sophie’s. Is he dead?”

  “No, Mr McAllister, as I was telling Miss Wright, he isn’t dead we just don’t know where he is.”

  “You said your people were going to catch him by last night.” Brandan was furious. This man caused Sophie pain and he didn’t like it at all.

  “Well, we usually have a good track record. Mostly the crims’ head back to their old haunts, family or friend’s places, and we get ‘em. But this time he’s gone to ground and we have no idea where.”

  “What are your plans now?” he asked the inept detective.

  “Well, we’ll keep looking but we’re fresh out of leads.”

  Brandan sighed. Incompetence was another of his pet hates. “Keep us notified.”

  “Will do.” The detective responded and then the line went dead.

  “Sophie, he’s not dead,” Brandan reassured her once he’d calmed down a bit.

  “I know,” she sobbed, her body was wracked with tremors against his hands.

  “Why are you crying?” Brandan asked, folding her into his chest as she cried.

  He was confused. He’d heard her sigh of relief. He thought it was because the bastard was dead. Maybe she still loved him? Had her sigh had been a happy one? Relief that he lived.

  “It’s all my fault,” Sophie hiccupped.

  “None of this is your fault.” He set her away from him and stood. Then he thought the better of it and sat next to her on the bed, pulling her awkwardly onto his lap. He wrapped his arms around her and held her.

  “It is my fault,” she whispered. “If I’d done it differently—maybe one thing differently—none of this ever would have happened. We would have been a family.We could have been happy. I should have just given him what he wanted from the beginning.”

  “What did you do, Sophie?” he asked her again. She was still holding something back from him and he found he hated it. How was he supposed to comfort her if he didn’t have all the facts?

  “Something terrible,” she sniffed.

  “Tell me.”

  “I can’t.” Sophie shook her head and burrowed deeper into his arms, like a child seeking solace.

  “It can’t be that bad,” he told her, dropping a kiss on her hair. “Nothing could be that bad.”

  She stiffened in his arms and began to pull away. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” She wriggled free, stood up and walked back into the bathroom. He heard water splashing and then her footsteps as she came back.

  “There is nothing I can do about Max and I don’t want to sit around here crying about it for the rest of my life. It’s my holiday and you promised me a drive in a very expensive sports car.”

  Brandan hesitated. She was putting on an act. She was smiling, it was there in the tone of her voice but she didn’t mean it. The false bravado was only helping to bottle everything up and very soon she would find that a body can’t take it.

  Emotionally, physically, she had to let it out but she wouldn’t and he couldn’t force her so he let her lead him from the suite into the elevator and out into the sunshine of another beautiful Queensland day.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “This is fantastic,” Sophie yelled to Brandan who was sitting in the passenger’s seat of the sleek Jaguar, his knuckles tight where he clenched the door grip.

  “Yeah...” he replied do
ubtfully. He was calling himself all kinds of stupid for letting an emotional woman behind the wheel of three hundred thousand dollars worth of fine motor car. What could he have possibly been thinking to embark on this journey? He was feeling kind of queasy. He could feel the dip of the car as she cornered, the light jolt each time she ran through the gears. She was obviously used to an automatic transmission. The wind blew through the top of his hair above the bandages bringing with it the salty tang of the ocean, the only relief from what he was starting to think was motion sickness.

  Sophie was laughing. Really laughing. Her exhilaration eased his nerves somewhat. It wasn’t the laugh of a maniac. It was the pure freedom of feeling the wind in your hair, the rumble of the engine purring in your bones and sunshine on your face.

  “Are you alright?” Her voice competed with the wind.

  “I’m fine,” he yelled back. “Are we nearly there?”

  “Nearly,” she said and then hesitated, “I think.”

  “Are we lost?”

  She’d exclaimed over the GPS, so surely she couldn’t have gotten them lost? Brandan hated being so dependant. She could have run them off a cliff into the ocean and he wouldn’t have known until they were soaring over the edge.

  Damn, damn, damn.

  “No,” she said forcefully as the car slowed. “I am not lost. Exactly.”

  “What do you mean, ‘exactly’?” They were supposed to be on their way to surprise his sister at Noosa. It couldn’t be that hard?

  “We’re in Noosa but I can’t find the house. You said opposite the Surf Lifesavers shack?”

  “Yeah,” he replied as the car stopped altogether and the roars of the breeze quieted until only the sharp shrill of gulls could be heard.

  “But the only thing across the road is a function centre of some kind.” Sophie had pulled up in front of a monstrosity of a building. It was all dark windows and metal. There were massive steel double doors at the entrance but the rest of the frontage was entirely mirrored glass.

  “Yep, that’s them.”

  “What?” Someone lived there?

  “Bruno’s idea, man has more money than sense,” Brandan grumbled. The house was the ugliest construction he’d ever seen from the outside but from the inside the view was almost uninterrupted ocean and white sands, cool in the summer and warm in the winter. His sister and her husband had spent a small fortune on the house but they were happy with it. It provided a safe haven for the kids, a comfortable study area for Bruno, and Michaela loved to entertain on the top floor open space when the weather turned too bad for the outdoor area. All three stories had been specifically designed to accommodate their growing family.

  “You can’t be serious?”

  “If it’s across the road from the Surf Life Saving Club and it looks like a restaurant with lots of glass then we’re in the right place.” It was ostentatious, especially for a town of only ten thousand citizens. The first time Brandan had seen photos of the house he’d asked his sister what the neighbours thought of the place. She said they didn’t give a fig for what anyone else thought, they were the ones who had to live there.

  “Well, ok. How long do you think you’ll be?” Sophie’s question jolted him back.

  “You’re coming in,” he told her. It wasn’t a question.

  “Don’t worry about me, I’ll find stuff to do.”

  “No.” He felt along the door until he found the handle and then with a click he pushed it open.

  “Brandan?” she called after him, frustration filling her tone.

  He pretended not to hear and closed the door on her. Standing on the footpath, he waited for her to get out.

  “Brandan, I’m not coming in. Your sister doesn’t know me and I’m sure she won’t want a perfect stranger coming into her house unannounced.”

  “Michaela will love you,” he assured her. He wondered for a moment if she thought she’d be intruding or if she just wasn’t interested in spending time with him or his family.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do, any friend of mine is a friend of hers.”

  “But you don’t even know me,” she sighed, exasperated.

  “You are coming in,” he told her again through clenched teeth, his hands on his hips. He was determined to win the battle and the war where it came to Sophie.

  “Fine, but if I think your sister is uncomfortable with me there then I’m bailing.”

  “Look if you really don’t want to be here, I won’t force you,” he said softly, maybe a bit of reverse psychology was warranted.

  “I know what you’re doing,” Sophie hissed as she took his hand in hers and led him to the front door. Brandan smiled smugly to himself, she must be nervous. She’d taken his hand again, not his arm. She did that when she wasn’t over-thinking their situation.

  “It worked didn’t it?” he said to her after she rang the doorbell.

  Sophie didn’t have a chance to answer, the door was thrown wide open by a heavily pregnant and highly flustered woman, tall with the same dark hair as Brandan’s. Sophie wondered if his eyes would be the same colour as hers.

  She looked first at Sophie, her gaze showing her confusion, she must think they were at the wrong house, and then at Brandan, recognition brightening her hassled features at the same time as shock made her move.

  “Brandan?” She threw her arms around him and kissed his cheek.

  “Michaela, what the hell?” he demanded, pushing her back as her enormous baby bump pushed against him.

  “It’s nice to see you to,” she replied wryly, giving Sophie a cheeky wink.

  “You said you were only five months along.”

  “I am,” she responded coyly, rubbing her hands over her huge stomach.

  “You feel as a big as a house.”

  “That’s tactful,” Sophie nudged him in the ribs with her elbow all the while waiting for the panic to start, for the anxiety to swamp her as it did every time she saw a pregnant woman. But it didn’t come. Sure, her stomach flipped over but her fingertips didn’t sweat and the urge to throw up didn’t swamp her.

  “Well, she does,” he reaffirmed.

  Sophie caught the speculating gleam in Michaela’s eyes as she looked between the two visitors still standing on her doorstep, she could practically hear the other woman’s thoughts.

  “Since Brandan is too rude to introduce me,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Sophie.”

  “Nice to meet you.” Michaela shook her outstretched hand with a firm grip.

  They were ushered inside, through a house that was as beautiful inside as it was ugly from the out. She was going to take Brandan’s hand again but there were too many expensive things for him to run into so she put one arm around his back and her hand on his arm as if he was a ninety year old grandmother rather than a blind man. Vases, statues and urns adorned shelves and pedestals as if they were actually at a museum exhibit. An enormous Prohart original adorned one wall and on the opposite an unsigned oil of a field of flowers so beautiful it took her breath away. Again.

  “You have a spectacular home,” Sophie murmured politely.

  “Wait till you see the rest of it,” Brandan told her over his shoulder.

  “Forgive me for prying but don’t you have two boys?” she asked Michaela.

  “Yep.” Was her proud reply.

  “Aren’t you worried all this stuff will get broken?”

  “What’s the point in having beautiful things if they can’t be admired?” Obviously it was a question she’d been asked before.

  Sophie would give her right arm to have such a flippant manner towards priceless objects. She would probably even give her legs to have enough money to adopt such an attitude.

  The formal lounge was much the same, the space decorated skilfully without being cluttered. Michaela led them out into a courtyard at the back of the house and told them to take a seat on red Jarrah chairs placed around a matching table. She watched with concern as Sophie lined Brandan up wi
th a chair and then pushed until he lowered himself slowly into it.

  “I’ll go get us some drinks and then we can talk about this accident you had that isn’t supposed to be very serious. I’ll be back in a flash,” she said as she waddled away.

  “Michaela,” Brandan warned.

  “We’ll chat in a minute,” she told him and then looking at Sophie she said, “And then you can fill me in.”

  “Impudent wench,” Brandan growled.

  “Oh, stop it,” Sophie laughed. It was nice to see she wasn’t the only one who could push his buttons.

  They sat in awkward silence for a few minutes until his sister came back carrying a tray laden with jugs and glasses.

  Sophie jumped out of her seat next to Brandan and went to her. “Let me carry that for you.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Brandan tried to caution her.

  “You shouldn’t be carrying it,” Sophie said to her.

  “You don’t have kids do you?” Michaela laughed and shooed her away.

  “No,” Sophie replied wistfully, turning away, but not before Michaela must have seen the look of hurt in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Brandan’s sister apologised.

  “What for?” Sophie pasted a too-bright smile on her face and transferred the subject away from herself. “So, five months?” Hopefully Brandan would pick up the thread of conversation and she’d be able to just sit back and listen.

  “Yep.”

  “How many babies are you having?” Brandan asked, his tone low, worried.

  “Three.” Michaela bounced on her chair excitedly.

  “No way,” he breathed.

  “Three girls.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded.

  “I didn’t want you to worry. The chances of carrying identical triplets are not great.”

  “What do you mean by not great?” Brandan asked, leaning forward in his chair. He was about to completely miss the table with his glass when Sophie shot her hand out and took it from him.

  “Just that there is a chance of losing one or all three of the babies but don’t worry we are all healthy and happy,” she reassured him rubbing her enormous belly.

  “What are the odds?” Brandan asked.