by Anne Stuart
She took off her shoes, anyway, walking barefoot in the wet sand, letting the icy foam wash over her toes. She was half tempted to throw off her clothes and jump into the water, letting the chilly Pacific Ocean scrub away everything….
She wasn’t going to think about it! Denial had its uses, and today was one of those days. She’d walk for miles along the beach, watching Roofus leap and frolic, and she wouldn’t think about a damned thing but what a clear, clean, beautiful day it was. She’d ignored the strange knotted feeling in the pit of her stomach, the weird ache between her breasts. Ignored the intrusive memories, sensations.
Hell and damnation. It wasn’t even sex. It was heavy petting, and it was nothing but an accident. She’d had too much to drink, she’d been feeling feisty, and she should have known that someone like Coltrane would take advantage of her.
It was also an unpleasant fact of life that the longer you did without sex the less you needed it. Until something started your motor again. She’d been jump-started but good last night, and she couldn’t stop thinking about it. About him.
She didn’t want to see him again. The very thought of being in a room with him made her cringe. It would be one thing if she could count on him to be gentlemanly and ignore what had happened between them. But if she’d learned one thing about Coltrane it was that he’d do the unexpected.
She didn’t want to go home. There were places she could go—she could drive all the way up to Berkeley and visit with her old friend, Margie, and her husband, or she could head down to San Diego to see Christie. She wasn’t trapped at La Casa with the man.
But she also knew perfectly well that she wasn’t going to let him drive her out of her home. La Casa meant too much to her—she’d fought for it for too many years, worked for it, to cede it to the first interloper who used sex as a weapon.
Not that he wanted the house, she admitted fairly. She didn’t really know what he wanted. It wasn’t Rachel-Ann, as she’d first suspected, and it wasn’t her, thank God. She was sure of that—last night had been nothing more than an accident, an aberration. She never was much of a poker player. She should have been wise enough not to try to call his bluff.
Maybe Coltrane was just trying to worm his way into Meyer’s family, to make himself indispensable.
But a smart man would know that Meyer didn’t give a damn about most of his family. And Coltrane was definitely a very smart man.
So what did he want? And how the hell could she get rid of him? By giving him what he wanted, whatever that might be? Chances were, it wasn’t in her power to give it.
She sat down in the damp sand, watching the waves, while Roofus came and collapsed beside her, his tongue lolling happily. Her choice was simple. Turn tail and run, or go back and brazen it out.
It was really no choice at all. She wouldn’t abandon her house, her siblings, or her life to him. Most importantly, she wouldn’t abandon her self-respect, and if she ran she’d never be able to look herself in the mirror again.
She’d survived Alan, dealt with him. Coltrane was a piker compared to Alan’s self-centered game playing. Wasn’t he?
Except the unhappy truth was that half sex with Coltrane was more arousing than the entire act with Alan.
The sun was moving slowly toward the horizon, and there was nothing Jilly wanted more than to stay there, watching until it turned into a bright-red ball and sank into the roiling Pacific. But the longer she put it off the harder it would be.
She rose to her feet, and Roofus immediately took that as a sign to play. “Come on, baby,” she said, starting back along the pathway to the car. “Time to go home and see that man.”
And Roofus, undiscerning creature that he was, barked with cheery enthusiasm, racing ahead of her.
15
“I wish I knew why I was edgy,” Brenda said, reaching for Ted’s omnipresent cigarette.
“Honeybunch, you’re always on edge on Saturday nights and you know it. It’s your Catholic blood. You want to be going to mass.”
She glared at him. “Hardly. I stopped going to mass once I got involved with you, you wicked creature. One can’t very well confess to the sin of adultery, accept penance, and then go right back home and do it all over again.”
“I’ve told you, I’m the one who was married, not you. I’m the one who committed adultery,” Ted said gently.
“The Catholic church doesn’t see things that way,” she drawled. “There’s not much bargaining room when it comes to penance. If you intend to keep repeating your sin then it’s a waste of time confessing.”
“I’m sorry, darling.”
She smiled at him. “Don’t be. You aren’t a wicked seducer, darling, I am. And I don’t regret a moment of it.”
Not even the moment of their death, she thought.
They were sitting on the sofa in the living room, her feet in his lap, and he was giving her the most divine foot massage through her silk stockings. She’d seen their girls pulling on panty hose, and while they certainly looked convenient, they were hardly as erotic. Nevertheless, it might have been nice to live long enough to try them.
She’d be an old woman by now, Brenda thought. A very, very old woman, wrinkled and ugly. She should count her blessings—Ted would never have to see her as an old hag. She’d stay throughout eternity as she’d been in her prime. Well, to be truthful, not quite in her prime. At seventeen she’d been perfect. At twenty-three almost as glorious. She’d been thirty-three when she died, and if she’d looked very closely in the mirror she could see her firm, gorgeous skin was beginning to lose some of its elasticity.
They speculated that was why she’d killed him, of course. She’d heard them talking about it, those wretched, smug, filthy creatures who’d taken over La Casa and destroyed its beauty decades ago. They said she was afraid of losing her looks, her career and her man, and so she’d killed him and herself. And they’d laughed at her, at the silly vain movie star with her shallow values, and she’d screamed at them, tried to hit them.
But, of course, they didn’t even know she was there.
At least Ted hadn’t heard them. He was down watching the Bad Man, for what little good it did him.
And they said the dead were frightening. The Bad Man was far more terrifying a creature than Brenda and Ted had ever been, despite Rachel-Ann’s silly panic every time she spied them.
He’d been so young, so handsome, so charming, and the group of gypsylike young people who sprawled all over La Casa adored him. Brenda had seen that kind of charisma in the past. She was too young to remember Valentino, but she’d worked with others who’d had it in spades. If the Bad Man had decided to use his acting talent he could have reached the top.
There was no question that he could act. They watched him manipulate his followers, lie and bewitch and trick them, all without them guessing what lay behind his charming façade.
Of course they were doing all sorts of drugs, which could have accounted for their absurd gullibility. They treated the Bad Man like he was the voice of God.
But they hadn’t known what he could do. Most of those poor, credulous fools hadn’t watched him, as Ted and Brenda had. They never questioned what happened to the young man who’d played guitar and sung like an angel and used a hypodermic needle to inject drugs into his arms. And no one knew about the red-haired girl who’d come back to meet the Bad Man down by the pool house. The woman he’d drowned in that pool, while her desperate hands scratched at his face and arms. The baby he’d been ready to throw in after her mother without even thinking.
It made no difference that after a long, horrifying moment he’d stepped back from the edge of the pool, the baby still in his arms. Brenda had hidden her face against Ted’s chest, trembling in horror at their helplessness. The woman was already dead, floating facedown in the pool, and there had been nothing they could do but watch. The baby was safe, but for how long? Maybe he just had a different plan to dispose of it.
It was the last time they’d seen him,
thank God. While the baby had screamed blue murder he’d taken the woman’s body out of the pool and dumped it in the trunk of his car. She and Ted had stood there, frozen and helpless, until she’d finally pushed away from him. “I can’t stand it,” she said and circled the pool to kneel by the tiny bundle lying on the ground screaming.
She already knew that no one could see her, no one could hear her. But she reached out and touched the furious, red face of the infant, stroking it gently, and to her amazement the screams began to quiet to dull sobs.
“Poor little one,” Brenda had crooned, feeling her heart break. She’d never had children—the studio had forbidden her to get pregnant during her two short-lived marriages—but looking at the poor little bundle of humanity made her want to take it in her arms and hold it tight against her body, soothing it.
But she couldn’t. There was no body warmth to calm the child, no voice to hear, nothing she could do.
The sobs shuddered to a stop, and the baby looked up at her, focusing intently on eyes she couldn’t see. “Poor baby,” she’d whispered, stroking its face, down the tiny, flailing arm to the baby’s dimpled hand.
And to Brenda’s astonishment, the baby’s fingers curled around hers, holding tight.
The man had pushed right through her when he came back, and the baby started to scream once more. Brenda had beaten on his back, yelling at him, but he hadn’t noticed. She might have been a fly, batting at his head. He walked away, with the crying baby in his arms, and she’d tried to follow, but once the car left the grounds she was trapped, bound to this place. All she could do was weep in Ted’s gentle arms.
The Bad Man had never returned to La Casa de Sombras, a small consolation. It wasn’t until the old lady came and took over, years later, bringing the girls and the brother, that Brenda and Ted began to feel cheerful again.
If there was punishment for their sins, that had been a major one, and it still haunted her. Bad enough that they were trapped on earth for their crime. Far worse to have had to witness murder and be unable to do anything about it. And to be unable to stop him from taking the baby, when she wanted it. She would have been a good mother if she’d been given half a chance, and the child had looked up at her with such trust in its eyes.
“Why the sigh, honeybunch?” Ted asked, massaging her toes.
“Just remembering,” she said honestly.
“Don’t, love. It’s a waste of time. We can’t change things. Isn’t that what you’ve always told me? What does it matter what happened, how or why? It happened, we’re here, and we’ll make the best of it. As long as I have you then I’m happy. You’re what I need.”
But he hadn’t had that choice. For almost fifty years she’d been able to keep it from him, the truth about their deaths. If he knew what had really happened, if he knew the truth, would he be happy? If he could leave, would he, abandoning her?
She didn’t want to think about it. She glanced around the living room. In the fading sunlight it almost looked like the glory days when she and Ted had entertained the beautiful and the powerful. The Holland covers had been removed, and in the shadowy light the rips in the upholstery weren’t as apparent. The two low-slung sofas faced each other across a large, glass-topped coffee table that had been a more recent acquisition, though Brenda approved of it, and she recognized the tall, tarnished silver candelabra. She’d stolen one of them from the set of her last movie, The Runaway Heiress, and Ted, her director, had stolen the other. She’d always loved those candelabra—it was sheer luck they’d been hidden away during what she tended to call The Occupation. They probably wouldn’t have survived the gypsy hordes—they would have been smashed or sold for drugs.
But they remained, and while no one had bothered to light them yet, their presence was a gentle reminder of the past.
“What do you suppose that boy has in mind? I’ve never trusted him,” Ted said.
“You’re just being homophobic. He’s harmless. He spends all his time at that ridiculous computer. Besides, I do think he’s rather fond of his sisters.”
“The dog doesn’t like him. Neither do I.”
“Hush,” Brenda said, as a tall figure appeared in the doorway, silhouetted by the fading light.
“Don’t be silly, honeybunch. He can’t see us or hear us.”
It was the man from the sofa. The good-looking one, Coltrane. Brenda wiggled her toes appreciatively as he approached their sofa. “Just as well. Do you suppose he’d be embarrassed if he knew we watched him last night?”
Ted looked at him. “Doubt it. He’s a cool customer. And it looks like he’s going to sit down on us.”
“Come on.” Brenda jumped up, pulling Ted with her, just as Coltrane threw himself on the sofa. He glanced around him, an abstracted expression on his face. And then a slow, wicked grin crossed his face.
“Not as cool a customer as you think,” Brenda said, sliding on top of the piano, her negligee swinging around her long legs. “He likes her.”
“He has good taste,” Ted said. “But I don’t think he’s good enough for one of our girls.”
“He’s a step above their usual,” she murmured. “Look at Jilly’s husband. A major creep.”
Coltrane leaned forward and lit the candles, filling the room with a soft, romantic light. He was quite attractive in the candlelight, though Brenda decided not to point that out to Ted. A little jealousy had its uses, but tonight she wasn’t in the mood for games. Ted was right, she was letting the past get to her. As well as the future, when, sooner or later, he was going to find out what really happened. Whether she told him or not.
“Sun’s going down, honeybunch,” Ted said, taking her hand. She slid off the piano, into his arms. “And I want to be alone with you.”
“Sweetheart, you’re always alone with me,” she said with a laugh.
“Humor me. Let’s go up to the rooftops and dance in the moonlight.”
“There’s no music.”
“I’ll sing to you.”
“You’re tone deaf,” she said fondly. “I’ll sing. You just lead.”
Then Brenda caught sight of Jilly and Roofus standing in the arched entryway to the living room. She hesitated for a moment. “Are you sure you don’t want to watch?”
“We’ve seen enough, honeybunch. Allow them some privacy. Besides, I’m willing to bet you he’s not going to be able to get within touching distance for days.”
“Wrong,” she said. “They’ll be in bed by midnight. Dawn at the latest.”
“Are you crazy? You saw her reaction after last night,” Ted argued.
“I know my sex.”
“That you do,” Ted murmured.
She gave him a mock glare. “I mean I know my gender. She won’t be able to resist him. If it’s before midnight we might even be able to watch.”
“Behave yourself, darling!” Ted said.
“Don’t be a prude—we’ve been watching people have sex here for almost fifty years. It might be nice to see people do it with love for a change.”
“You think the two of them are in love? Precious, you are naive!” Ted murmured.
“No, darling, I’m right. Call it my woman’s intuition.”
“They hate each other.”
“That’s always a sure sign.”
“You did too many screwball comedies, honeybunch. When people hate each other it usually means they hate each other.”
“You’ll see,” she said with a smug smile. “Let’s go dancing.”
And he lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it.
16
The living room was a cavernous expanse of light and shadows, but Jilly could still make out Coltrane sprawled on the sofa, exactly where she’d left him the night before.
At least this time he was fully dressed, but the candlelight was even dimmer than the lightbulb that had illuminated the scene last night.
She would have backed up, disappeared, but even from such a distance he saw her, and she was torn between pride and p
anic. Roofus had no such qualms. He bounded across the room, his paws skittering on the parquet floor until he came to a sliding stop against the sofa, greeting Coltrane like a starving man at a banquet.
“Jilly!” Dean came up beside her, immaculately dressed in a white linen suit. He looked at her and sniffed. “You’re dressing for dinner, of course.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I’m not going to be here for dinner,” she lied instinctively. “I have other plans.”
“You can’t!” Dean said in the distressed voice she could never say no to. “I’ve gone to such pains to arrange this all. If you hadn’t taken off at the crack of dawn I would have given you more notice. You weren’t answering your cell phone, either. Really, Jilly, it’s most inconsiderate of you not to think about the rest of us. I needed to get in touch with you! What if there’d been an emergency?”
Jilly softened. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”
“I wasn’t worried. I know you’re perfectly able to take care of yourself. But I went to a lot of trouble for this little dinner and I’m counting on you to do your part.”
She glanced across the room toward Coltrane, but he was busy scratching Roofus’s head, seemingly oblivious to their conversation. She wasn’t fooled. Doubtless he was absorbing every word, the snake.
“What dinner party?” she asked warily.
“Just family. And Coltrane, of course, since he’s part of our happy household right now. Very low-key and relaxed. I’ve had Emilio’s cater it, to make things easier.”
“Fine,” she said shortly.
“I charged it to you, of course, since it’s your month for household expenses.”
It had been her month for taking care of the household expenses since 1998. “Fine,” she said again, too weary to argue. “Let’s get it over with.” She started into the living room, but Dean caught her arm.
“Aren’t you going to change into something a little more…festive? You look like something out of LL Bean. Surely you have some standards.”
