by Anne Stuart
And then he was easing her back down on the bed, following her, his mouth traveling back to hers. And suddenly she was afraid of him, afraid of his power over her, and she kept her mouth tightly shut against the encroaching advance of his tongue.
He moved away, a bare fraction of an inch, and she could feel the soft breath of his laughter on her upturned face. “You aren’t seventeen any more, Maddy,” he whispered. “You should know by now how to kiss. Open your mouth for me.”
She was startled enough to obey, and he took immediate advantage of it, dipping his tongue inside with a calculated wantonness that drew an immediate response from her. Her hands slid down the front of his chest, inside the chambray shirt, and for the first time revelled in the warm sleek hide of him.
He trembled again, and the feel of his response against her swept the last misgivings from her mind. His hands were still on her shoulders, but this time he was pulling the dress away, down her arms, down to her waist, and she couldn’t even remember when he’d unbuttoned it. He undid the front clasp of her lacy bra, his mouth never leaving hers, his lips and tongue a soothing litany, stealing away any doubts or fears. And the feel of his hard, calloused hands on her breasts was another wonder, a miracle that she’d never thought to experience. All she could think, as she arched against his strong, clever hands, was that she wanted more.
She could feel reality and common sense slipping away from her in a haze of desire unlike anything she’d ever felt before. He felt so good, smelled so good, tasted so good, that she didn’t think she could ever get enough of him. Nothing had prepared her for the intensity of her response to him, the dazed wonder of her movements beneath his practiced touch. She hadn’t known it could be like this, ever.
Then suddenly, like a snake in the garden of paradise, reality began to intrude, accompanied by its bastard kin, self-preservation. With every last ounce of effort she pulled herself back from the abyss into which she’d been sinking, and her hands slid away from his chest, back up to his shoulders, and she began to push.
She expected more of a fight. With only a lingering of regret his hands left her taut and tingling breasts, pulling the dress back up her arms and around her as he broke off the kiss. She stared up at him out of angry, passion-dark eyes, but once more his mask was in place.
“You changed your mind?” he asked quietly, his husky voice one more part of his seductive arsenal.
He’d moved far enough away, and he was no longer touching her, but she could still feel the heat emanating from his body, and her skin could still remember the touch of his hands. Carefully, so as not to touch him and start something anew that this time she couldn’t stop, she pushed herself until she was sitting up, back against the bedstead.
“I learned long ago,” she said, and her voice was rusty and a little raw, “never to sleep with men I despise. It’s bad for my self-esteem.”
He didn’t even flinch. A small, doubting smile played at the corner of his mouth. “So you despise me, do you? What made that happen? A few hours ago I thought we were going to be friends.”
“I’d forgotten about Soledad.”
He sighed, the small smile diminishing somewhat. “I’ve told you before, Maddy, I’m not going to offer you any excuses about Soledad.”
“And you feel no qualms about sleeping with Sam’s daughter as well as his wife while he lays there dying?” She was pleased to see him wince then, a shadow of pain cross his face.
“I can’t stop him from dying, Maddy. I can’t stop from … wanting you.” His voice was low, hypnotic, and she found herself slipping beneath its spell once more. “Life and death are cheap and quick here. I’ve been living that way for too long to start paying attention to a lot of half-formed ideals that have never been tested. Right now things are black and white. I want you. And you want me.”
If he touched her again she’d be lost, and they both knew it. She couldn’t refute his calm statement, not with her breasts aroused and aching from his touch, not with her mouth swollen and tremulous and barely able to keep the words back that would call him to her.
“So why else do you despise me?” he asked gently. “There must be more to it than Soledad.”
Everything she could say in response would only damn her more. Yet she knew him well enough, recognized the nuances in his distant expression, to know that she would get nowhere until she told him.
“You left me,” she said on a bitter sigh. “You took my father and you left me without a word, without saying good-bye. You let my father abandon me and my brother without a backward glance, not caring what kind of person my mother was. You knew her as well as anyone, hated her. And yet you left me to her.”
“Maddy, I had no choice—”
“You had every choice,” she interrupted ruthlessly. “You’ve never let anyone else dictate your life, you can’t blame that on anyone. You left, and you ignored the letter I wrote you. For God’s sake, Jake, I was a poor, love-starved teenager! Couldn’t you have written back, let me dream a little longer? Do you have any idea what kind of hell my life was for the next few years?”
He was very still. “I can imagine.”
“But like my father, you thought the starving masses were more important than a stupid, lovesick child.” She shook her head, trying to banish the clawing sense of desertion that had washed over her unbidden. She managed a shaky smile. “Well, I suppose you’re right. I shouldn’t hold grudges, or wallow in self-pity, or any of the weak, unpleasant things I’ve been doing.”
He still didn’t move, but she could see the flash of pain in his hazel-dark eyes.
“But I’m not going to get embroiled with you again. It was bad enough when I was seventeen. Now I should be old enough to know better. Anything I feel for you is nothing more than nostalgia for a lost childhood,” she said ruthlessly. “It has nothing to do with reality.”
“Of course,” he agreed, his voice distant and toneless. He moved from the bed then, and in the darkening room she couldn’t see his expression. Not that it would have told her anything if she could. “Someone will bring you up something to eat. I assume you’d prefer it wasn’t Soledad.”
“Is she even here? I thought she might have gone off for a roll in the hay with General Ortega,” she said cattily, her heart aching for the loss of him, for his sudden withdrawal, ignoring the fact that she’d driven him away.
A smile lit his dark, weary face. “She did. She’s back already.”
“Do you think that’s safe?”
“Soledad has a good head on her shoulders, despite her particular weaknesses. Alcohol and passion have never made her politically indiscreet. Socially indiscreet, perhaps, but she’s always been acutely aware of how tenuous life is.” He hesitated for a moment. “You might try not to judge her too harshly. This has been a hard life for everyone, and Soledad gets lost and frightened sometimes.”
“Is that the story she told you?” Maddy shot back. “I think she gets drunk and horny sometimes.” It was an impossibly bitchy thing to say, and Maddy was ashamed of herself the moment it came out. She tried to tell herself it wasn’t jealousy that made her hate Soledad, tried and failed.
Jake withdrew even more. “I’ll have Ramon bring you something to eat.”
“Why can’t I come down?”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“But—”
“It’s not open for discussion, Maddy. You’ll stay in your room.”
“Why can’t I eat with my father?”
“He’s … asleep. You wouldn’t want to disturb him.”
“I wouldn’t disturb him. I’d just sit quietly by his bed,” she said, pushing.
He moved closer then, stopping on his way toward the door, and his face was bleak and cruel. “Do you really think Sam Lambert would care one way or the other?”
It was worse than a low blow, it was a glittering shaft of pain that left her breathless. “May all heaven and hell damn you,” she whispered, stricken.
&nb
sp; “Yes,” he said wearily, “I expect they will. As a matter of fact, I think both heaven and hell already have.” Without another word he was gone.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Bean paste again, this time without even the dubious saving grace of tortillas. The sight of the candy box was driving Maddy crazy, and even the knowledge that only an inedible videotape rested inside didn’t soothe her chocolate cravings. She spent the hours after dinner planning just how many raspberry creams she was going to eat once she got back. There was a French confectionnaire in Manhattan Beach. She might even stop on her way home from the airport, assuming she was ever going to see LAX again. At this point even that seemed doubtful.
For a while she lay there in the dark. The dim light bulb wasn’t much to read by, and it attracted the swarms of mosquitoes that Ramon still insisted were nothing compared to a real infestation. Every now and then she thought she heard the muffled sound of gunfire, and each rumbled blast shot through her body like lightning. She was beginning to understand something of what Jake had told her. The guns seemed to be getting closer. He had told her life and death were quick and cheap, and she wondered if she was going to die in her bed that night.
Not her bed. Jake’s bed. Would he dare come back to try to join her there? She remembered the bleak, cynical look in his eyes, and she knew he wouldn’t. She had driven him away, forever, and he wouldn’t come near her again, not unless she made the first move.
What a ridiculous thought! Why should she make any move toward him? For once in her life she’d been smart enough not to get involved with someone who was no good for her. Her luck up to then hadn’t been spectacularly good. Tom McAndrews and Carl Aguilar hadn’t been a noticeable improvement over Jake Murphy. And nothing, not even Carl’s athletic and inventive sex, had moved her the way a simple kiss from Jake’s hard, unsmiling mouth moved her.
Except there was nothing simple in Jake’s kisses. They were all wrapped up with guilt and wanting and childhood dreams that had never quite died. There was no way she could view them objectively, no way she could view her feelings about him objectively, except to treasure her good sense in leaving him alone.
So why was she lying there in the dark, thinking about him, dreaming about him, being obsessed by him? For all her denying his power over her, it was unavoidable.
Sighing, she climbed off the bed, moving toward the light. Maybe Hemingway would distract her once more.
The night was dark and silent, and she paused at the short string for the light, then moved on without pulling it to stare out the window into the dark garden. The moon was behind the clouds, and not for the first time Maddy wished she knew what time it was. Probably after ten, judging by the utter stillness of the rambling old hacienda. She looked upward, to her father’s bank of windows, and saw nothing but darkness. She wrinkled her forehead in sudden worry. With a man in her father’s weakened condition she would have thought someone would be there at all times and at least a small light be kept burning. Uneasiness washed over her in waves, an uneasiness she pushed away. If there was one thing she could trust, it was that Jake would keep Sam Lambert safe.
Closing the shutters, she went back and pulled the light cord, flooding the small, barren room with dim yellow light. At some point during the afternoon her purse had been returned, and surprisingly enough, the money and passport were intact. The only thing missing was the stash of candy bars. At that point Maddy would have gladly forked over the five hundred dollars in travelers’ checks for one Hershey bar.
It didn’t take her long to wash up that night. She managed a fairly thorough sponge bath in the small, stained sink in the bathroom. Even if the water was rusty and only lukewarm she felt somewhat refreshed and definitely more human. She’d asked earlier, but apparently a shower was out of the question. The water supply, such as it was, was extremely limited. She had no choice but to make do.
There was no sign of a living soul in the darkened hallway as she made her way back from the bathroom, and no sound permeated the thick walls except for the distant, almost constant thud of gunfire.
Boy, it felt good to get the contact lenses out. She perched her thin, wire-rimmed glasses on her nose, pulled on a loose cotton nightgown, and climbed between the rough sheets.
Hemingway had lost his charm. She dropped The Sun Also Rises with a sigh, pushed the Faulkner away, and concentrated on the others. It wasn’t a promising choice, probably culled from the deserted library of the old hacienda. There was Dickens, and she’d rather die than read David Copperfield again. Joyce Carol Oates wasn’t worth the effort. Only the last held promise. It was an aging volume of The Oxford Book of English Verse, dated 1901. With a sigh of pure pleasure she settled back against the lumpy pillow, ready to lose herself.
The book opened readily enough to Christina Rossetti. It was “A Birthday,” one of the most beautiful love poems of all time. Maddy felt the pain slice through her heart at the simple, elegant lines.
“Damn.” She slammed shut the aging volume, and a cloud of dust tickled her nose into a sneeze. What the hell would Murphy be doing, having that by his bed? With that section marked? Well, the book offered more than enough poetry for every taste—she’d find something dour and depressing and wipe Christina Rossetti’s lush romanticism out of her soul.
She opened the book again, searching for something deathly, but the papers tucked into the middle of the book interfered, and she pulled them out, tossing them to the bed beside her before turning back to the book. Then she froze.
Slowly, carefully she shut the blue leather book once again. A trembling hand reached down to pick up the papers that had held his place.
It was the photograph Stephen had taken a lifetime ago. There she was, seventeen and anxious and terribly in love. She remembered well when that picture had been taken. Stephen had returned, reluctantly, when the scandal hit and Sam and Jake disappeared. He’d done his best to make Maddy smile, telling her long, fanciful stories of his trip out west, feeding her milkshakes until she was nauseous, keeping her out of range of her mother’s intense rage. He’d taken that picture two days before he left to go back to college. She was wearing the flowery dress she’d worn for her birthday, and her long legs were bare, the thick mane of dark hair a curtain down her back. She looked lost and lovely, and when she’d had the pictures developed she’d sent that one on to her father, with the absurd hope that he cared enough about her to want it.
Jake must have taken it from him. The shiny photograph was creased and wrinkled, fingerprints and marks marring the finish. It had been held a lot, looked at a lot, and beside it were the crumpled sheets of her letter to him.
She hadn’t been into elegant stationery at the time; yellow lined legal pads had seen the outpourings of her heart. The paper was crumpled and shredding, fourteen years old and soft as cotton with the passage of time. And all this time Jake had kept the letter, the picture, with him.
His tiny island of innocence, her father had called her with a trace of his aristocratic disdain. His moment of sanity, the one part of his adult life untainted by guilt. Well, it was untainted no more. She’d told him just how completely he’d destroyed her life, he and her father. After she left he’d probably come back and destroy the letter and she wouldn’t blame him.
Slowly, carefully she unfolded the delicate sheets of paper, leaning back to read the embarrassing words of her childhood. And then she refolded it without reading a sentence, putting it back in the book, this time next to Christina Rossetti’s own impassioned outpouring. She didn’t need to read it. All she had to do was lean back and close her eyes and she could feel the emotions washing over her. Because they were still there, still as strong, tempered by time and distance and a reluctant maturity that couldn’t talk her out of it. She still loved Jake Murphy, and she expected she always would.
The sudden flash of light was brilliant, blinding. The thunder that followed it shook the building, and Maddy could hear the crash of broken glass, the cracking, tumbling sou
nd of part of the building collapsing. It took her a moment to realize that it wasn’t a thunderstorm. Sam Lambert’s fortress was being shelled.
The next one was even more frightening, now that she knew what it was. She was about to dive under the bed when common sense reared its ugly head, and she realized that the second floor might not be the wisest choice. The first thing she had to do was to get her father down into the basement, and to safety. She couldn’t count on anyone there, with the exception of Jake, to see to that. And Jake would need help.
She didn’t hesitate before she leaped from the bed. She considered changing for only a moment before the next shell hit even closer, and the bed shook on the rough wood floor. She grabbed her sandals and headed out into the hallway, just as the power flickered off.
The darkness closed around her like a tomb. She paused long enough to slip on the leather sandals, then moved off into the darkness, running a hand along the wall for a small measure of security. She could smell the acrid scent of gunpowder mixing with the dryness of plaster dust, and the floor beneath her feet crunched with the bits of the building that had rattled loose.
The next shell was the worst. Closed in the darkness, Maddy sank against the wall, whimpering in sudden panic, as the villa shook around her. At any moment she expected it to crumble into dust, at any moment she expected to be blown to kingdom come. Fast and cheap, Jake had said of life and death. She was learning the hard way.
She slipped on the stairs, scraping her hands and knees against the plaster rubble. She had no thought in mind but to try to reach her father’s room, not because it would do any good but because Jake would be there.
She heard him calling her from a distance, his voice harsh and curiously panicked. She never would have thought Jake would be frightened of anything. She turned back from her father’s room without a moment of hesitation, making her way carefully back down the debris-strewn staircase in the darkness.
