Shadows of the Past

by Frances Housden

  Michel looked at his wife, who had to be at least six months pregnant with their first child. He touched his wife’s stomach as if for reassurance. “Sorry, Mamma. You’re right, I forgot. It’s been so long.”

  The chattiness took a nosedive and smiles gave way to frowns as Maria’s sister, Giovanna stod and began gathering up the coffee cups. Franc pulled Maria out into the hall away from the brooding silence as the others began clearing the table. “You feel okay? You’ve gone a bit pale.”

  “I’m all right, just tired. It’s late.”

  “Guess you won’t want to go outside for some air.”

  “No. I think I’ll go up and get ready for bed, but you go ahead, get some air, it’s a nice night. I’ll see you later.”

  Then he remembered the sight of her lace chemise and imagined the feel of satin and lace in his hands. “You going to wear something like that nightdress you shoved inside your drawer? It would look great on you, make your eyes look like pansies.”

  The compliment was worth it just to see the color return to her cheeks. “You flatter me, my eyes are plain brown. And whatever I wear to bed, you aren’t likely to see it.”

  “You can’t blame a man for trying.” He stopped at the foot of the stairs. Her hand was still in his and he lifted it to his mouth, rubbing his lips across her knuckles. “Sure you wouldn’t like me to come up and help you?”

  “In a word, no.” She climbed the stairs in silence, and when she rounded the top, he saw her touch the back of her hand to her lips. She was thinking about him.

  It was enough for now.

  Maria’s eyes were closed. Tight. She refused to open them. Refused to look. If she didn’t look, maybe it would go away like the other nights when she’d had the dream. Nightmare.

  There was a spiked band around her head, pressing into her skull. Excruciating anguish forced tears from under her lids that cooled on the journey down her hot face. She was neither asleep nor awake, but somewhere in between, where the past met the present and she was part of both.

  A shudder ripped out of her soul as she broke the silence with her sobs. She could hear them, knew they were her own, no matter that the sound seemed to come from a distance.

  “Don’t dare to move,” said the voice that belonged to her past, present and future, for it never went away.

  She tried to lie still, but knowing that pain would follow the voice, her skin quivered with tension. She was a bowstring stretched too tight and ready to snap.

  The slow sting of cold steel caressed her breast with a lethal kiss.

  Her eyes snapped open.

  It was dark in her room. Dark as in that other place she wanted to forget. Managed to forget while she was still awake.

  The knife glinted as if a breeze had blown moonlight into her room. Blood dripped from its tip onto her breast then it sliced again and completed the sign of the cross.

  She screamed and sat up in bed.

  Her heart thundered in her chest as she sat up and tried to remember the dream, but as always, when she was fully awake it elud

  Maria staggered to the bathroom, her night blindness sending her spinning into the five-drawered chest in the unfamiliar layout.

  With her hand clenched on the faucet, she tried to relive the last few moments of the dream. If only she could see his face, she knew she would be safe. Would be able to point the finger and say, “He’s the one,” for no one had ever been caught, never been sent away and jailed for her abduction.

  Cold water sluiced over her wrists as her panic subsided, faded like her memory.

  She splashed her face with cold water, jumping when Franc’s voice came from behind her. In her stupor she hadn’t heard the door open.

  “Maria, are you okay? I thought I heard you call out.”

  “I had a bad dream.” A nightmare. Turning off the faucet, she scrabbled blindly for the towel, and one was placed in her hands that bore the scent of her mother’s favorite fabric softener. “Thanks.”

  Though she didn’t turn around, she could sense how close he’d come by the warmth that enveloped her from his body. She shivered as she patted her face dry. Not from fear, but from the potent male scents that filled her head and charged her nerves with a different kind of tension.

  She realized at that instant Franc didn’t worry her that way. It had never occurred to her not to trust him. He’d been up front with what he’d wanted. A sexual encounter only, no ties, no commitment.

  Her mother would throw up her hands at the idea, but to Maria it was a hundred times more acceptable than the sort of guy who got his jollies by sneaking around after her.

  “Do you want to talk till the memory goes away? I don’t mind.” His voice came closer as his hands pressed down on her shoulders and squeezed.

  “I was hoping not to waken you. That’s why I didn’t switch on the lights.” She bunched the towel and pressed it to her breasts as his palms slid down her arms and transferred their warmth onto her skin where the short sleeves ended.

  “No problem. I’ve been awake since the third time I almost rolled out of bed.”

  That made her smile, but she didn’t turn into his arms, though the temptation was humming through her veins, propelled by the heat of him. “I suppose you’re used to bigger and better.”

  “In beds, certainly. But I prefer my women to come just about here.” His chin rested on the top of her head. She looked straight ahead into the mirror. Night blindness was no longer a problem. Though she saw them both through the glass darkly, she saw the truth. They looked good together.

  Made for each other. Too bad.

  Franc touched her collar. “I see you didn’t take my advice. At a guess I’d say pajamas…God, I hope it wasn’t because you were scared of me.”

  He stepped back.

  Without a second thought, she turned, dropping the towel at their feet as she hurried to reassure him the only way she knew how. His chest was bare, but she didn’t hesitate to slide her arms up , secretly thrilled at the muscles her hands detected. “I’ve never been frightened of you. I can sense you’re not the kind of guy who likes to hurt women.”

  His arms swept round her back and held her, but not like the night before when he had pressed her close enough to feel every inch of him. “Can I take it from that remark that you know guys who like to hurt women?”

  Just like that, between one heartbeat and the next they jumped into the middle of her problem.

  Should she tell him? Dare she? What if she was wrong? Franc employed Randy Searle. How would she feel being responsible for him losing his job if she’d got it wrong?

  Then she remembered the feeling of eyes boring into the back of her head, and turning just in time to see Searle ducking into a shop doorway. “Randy Searle is stalking me.”

  It felt as if he stood at the center of a vortex, a false calm holding him steady while everything round him spun. A calm he dared not let loose, or the primitive beast at the back of his mind would let go a howl that would strike fear in the hearts of men. Particularly Randy Searle when he ripped out his throat with his bare hands.

  His hands felt rough, huge and barbaric as he pulled her closer, but he couldn’t not hold her, not protect her. He’d never felt this way in his life before, but knew that somehow his instincts had been fine-tuned to work this way, and Maria had it sussed when she sensed he would never harm her. He might break her heart, but he’d protect her body with his life.

  Franc breathed through his nose, slow breaths, one after the other, meant to silence the growls still rumbling through his brain. As a child he’d been told one of his ancestors had come from the high mountains beyond Makarska, where civilization had yet to venture and a man’s woman was sacrosanct, not to be touched on pain of death. He’d thought his brother Kurt, the climber, had been the only one to inherit that gene, but it seemed it hadn’t passed him by.

  Maria’s body had melded to his. There was only one way to be any closer, and there was no way that would happen tonight
after what she had told him.

  After what she had told him.

  “What the hell were you thinking of, gate-crashing the party, looking for Searle? Are you out of your mind? If I hadn’t got rid of him, God knows what might have happened.”

  “You got rid of him? What are you talking about?”

  “That’s not important.” The realization of what he’d told her struck a blow to his vanity. And he thought he’d been so clever. Too clever to brush her off now. “I took one look at you as you entered the restaurant and knew you were too good for him. So I tricked him into leaving.”

  Maria’s breath vented in a long stream. “How could you? If you’d left things alone, this might have been finished. I could have outed him in front of everyone at the party and he wouldn’t have dared come near me again.”

  He rubbed his hand down her back and clunked his knuckles against the basin. “Let’s talk this out someplace more comfortable. Your rooor mine?”

  “Yours has a chair.”

  “Okay, come with me.”

  Maria heard his mattress sigh as their combined weight touched down on the bed. She knew how it felt as the sound it made echoed her own sighs.

  A burden that for some inexplicable reason had grown lighter when she met Franc was now twice the size it had been before.

  That thing they said about a trouble shared was a trouble halved? Was it ever wrong? The chair forgotten, they sat on the bed because he didn’t appear to want to let her go.

  The way she saw it, what had gone on two days ago had everything to do with Franc’s heroic qualities and nothing about justice. That’s what she’d gate-crashed the party in search of.

  “I take it you didn’t go to the police and report him?” Franc was holding her hand in his huge one, yet she didn’t have a feeling of being overpowered or swallowed up. For a big man there was gentleness in his touch that he’d probably deny if she mentioned it.

  “No, I didn’t think they could touch him until he actually did something to me.”

  His big body jolted as if he’d been struck. “Don’t tell me you wanted him to assault you so you could call the cops?”

  How could he think she would do that, when all she wanted to do right now was curl up in his arms and go to sleep, a reaction to all the adrenaline that had pumped through her body as she dreamed. “I only wanted to shame him, hoping he would leave me alone.”

  “I can’t figure out why you thought someone was watching you in the first place. Or why you didn’t at least tell your parents or your brothers.”

  “Because I know how it feels. It’s like a tap on the shoulder, and then I turn around, hoping someone will truly be standing behind me. But there never is, except those times when I saw Randy.”

  “Why haven’t you told your parents?” The gruffness in his voice underlined how seriously he took the situation, and the vibrations that communicated with her arm through his chest wall urged her to take the plunge.

  She took a deep breath as if ready to dive into a bottomless pool she might never find her way out of. Was she ready for this? Was Franc? She’d never told a living soul what she couldn’t remember. Until now.

  “I didn’t want to put them through that again.”

  His hand tightened, swallowed hers whole. “Again?”

  “I was abducted when I was seventeen.” His arms tightened around her and she felt the tension in his muscles flow through his palms into her.

  For long seconds she sat still, silent. The dark magnified sounds she never noticed in daylight, like inhaling and exhaling. Like Franc’s breath softly going in, rushing out in a sigh as he waited for her to speak.

  “It made the family very protective of me. Now, Mamma thinks she kept me home too long and ruined my chances of getting marri’m fine on my own, but you know…she’s my mother. We do things to stop them from worrying.”

  “My mother died before I was two, so I never had to lie to her. No, wipe that! I don’t know what I would have done to keep her from fretting.”

  “I’m sorry, Franc.”

  “Save your sympathy, hon, it happened a long time ago.” The back of his knuckles caressed her cheek and he discovered it was wet. “Hey, hey, baby girl, don’t get all wound up. If that guy is bothering you, don’t worry, sweetheart, he’s dogmeat,” he growled in a good gangster imitation and got another hiccup for his reward. A tear-free one this time. Franc didn’t think her knowing he meant every word was a good idea. For good or ill, he would keep her close until this was settled.

  Chapter 5

  Had her tears been for him? A small part of Franc wanted to push her away before he got in too deep. The small impulsive part that wanted to know what the hell she wasn’t telling him.

  The majority of his instincts won. He pulled her onto his knee and hugged her to his chest, didn’t matter that the back of his neck tightened, the hairs on it prickling as if something walked over his grave.

  He recognized the honor Maria had done him. Maybe it was something to do with the hour and the darkness, but he felt closer to her than he had to anyone in a long while. At the same time, he wasn’t sure he had it in him to bare his soul the way she had done.

  He qualified his reluctance with the thought that his situation was different. His father had been the perpetrator of the crime, not the victim.

  “Don’t you think that what happened before is all the more reason to tell them about the stalker?”

  “I thought I could handle the situation myself. This is the first time I’ve been home since he began stalking me. And while he was only following me, I thought I could sort it out and move on.”

  Make that something pounding on his grave.

  “Back up a minute. What exactly do you mean by only.”

  “I think, I’m not saying I’m positive, but I think he might have been in my room when I went out…yesterday afternoon.”

  “Hell, Maria! You need to talk to someone about this. My sister’s a cop, I can put you in touch with her.” Jo would know what to do. She was used to dealing with these situations, diplomatically. Well, some of the time.

  “As a detective sergeant with Homicide at Auckland Central, most of the victims she deals with are dead before she gets anywhere near them. Unless you count her husband, Rowan. He took a bullet for her during a hostage situation and saved her life, then two years later he got stabbed saving her a second time from a nutcase who had her staked out as a human sacrifice. I’m pleased to say that since they got married, she seems to have stopped taking so many r

  Franc’s gut clenched at the thought of what Maria had tried to do. What if he hadn’t prevented her from confronting Randy? If Randy was the guy watching her, what harm might he have inflicted on her? He shuddered as a list of consequences came to mind.

  There was no end to the worst-case scenarios his brain could come up with. As the possibilities presented themselves, he became more and more certain that he had to help her find out one way or the other.

  Hell, this was New Zealand; so small a population the possibility of running into a neighbor—or at least their first cousin—a thousand miles from home wasn’t unheard of. How hard could it be to keep an eye on Searle?

  Very few cases of stalkers were ever reported in the papers. Rapes, murders, yeah, they had their share of those, but stalking was something that happened to celebrities, wasn’t it?

  He’d have to ask his sister when she came back from her vacation. She would know. Jo had worked as a cop for ten years, a detective for almost seven of them, both in Auckland and down country in Nicks Landing, a little East Coast town. She’d been back in Auckland for a year now, ever since she got married to a Stanhope. That was how he’d gotten his chance to run a Stanhope Holdings company. A chance he’d accepted with open arms. Nepotism? Maybe, but he wasn’t too proud. He couldn’t afford to be, but that didn’t mean he was excused from the need to prove himself. Something he was still working on.

  He threaded his fingers through Maria’s, a
nd on a rough-honed sigh, said, “I have to say, Randy never struck me as that kind of guy, a loudmouth, maybe. He’s always calling the odds on his success with women, but a pervert who stalks them? It just doesn’t gel. Not that I’m saying you’re wrong, but maybe you got the wrong guy.”

  “Maybe not, but you didn’t see the way he looked at me.”

  “That’s what I mean. The guy is so obvious. He looks at most women that way. Even so, we’ll need to make some sort of plan to discover if he actually is the one.”

  “You believe me?”

  Until now, Maria hadn’t struck him as a woman without much faith in herself. But who knew what fancies played on the mind when you were frightened. Just because he was confident of his abilities to handle anything didn’t mean that one day he wouldn’t find himself in a situation that scared the heck out of him. “Why wouldn’t I believe you?”

  “We hardly know each other, how can you be sure I’m telling the truth?”

  Amused, he laughed softly under his breath and reached up to touch her face. Her skin felt like satin to his fingertips as he trailed them down her cheek and round to her chin. “Maria, believe me, this close I’d know if you were lying.” Franc rubbed the pad of his thumb over her full bottom lip. “Even in the dark your expression gives you away. Your feelings are written on your face for the world to see, so don’t ever try fooling anyone.”

  “I guess it’s as well you fooled Searle into going home. He’d have known I was frightened of him.”

  “You could be right, but only a fol wouldn’t have realized the courage it took to come there and spit in his eye. That’s what you were going to do, right?”

  “Something like that, I thought I’d play it by ear, but I was shaking inside when you went off to fetch him.” She laughed, but her humor had the high-pitched quality of a wet fingertip on a crystal glass. The tension in her body increased. It was as if she had to hold herself together or shatter.