When I Found You (A Box Set)

by Webb, Peggy

  Stunned silence overtook the room. While the Cordays were far from ordinary, they had always managed the semblance of normality within the family circle. In spite of the currents of discontent that flowed deep in the subterranean levels of consciousness, they loved each other, loved in a fierce, protective way that had allowed them to survive twenty-five years of virtual isolation in the beautiful, treacherous Virungas.

  “You’re overwrought, my dear.” Joseph calmly picked up his fork and continued eating. “Dr. Tigrett said Brett will compensate for his loss of depth perception. Besides, he’s as familiar with these mountains as he is the back of his hand. The notion that he’d fall off a cliff and kill himself is ridiculous.”

  Eleanor was not to be placated.

  “Don’t you dare call me ridiculous, Joseph Corday. You sit there eating as if that’s all that matters, while my son ...” Her lower lip trembled when she looked at Brett’s face. “My beautiful son is scarred for life.”

  Malone bolted from the table. Brett assessed the situation. Eleanor had Joseph, but his brother had no one. Except him.

  “Brett, where are you going?” Eleanor asked when he pushed back his chair.

  “To find my brother.”

  He found Malone hunched in the front seat of the Jeep, his knuckles white on the wheel. Brett slid in on the passenger side.

  “How about taking me down the mountain, Malone?”

  Malone turned a stony face in his direction. Eleanor’s words echoed between them. “My son,” she’d said, as if Malone didn’t even exist. “My beautiful son.” A stunning reminder that Malone was the plain one, the ordinary one.

  “Aren’t you afraid I’ll run over a cliff and ruin the rest of your pretty face? Why don’t you take your own damned self down the mountain?”

  Brett caught his brother’s arm as Malone slid toward the door.

  “Because I don’t want the Jeep parked in front of the lady’s house all night until I find out how she feels about gossip.”

  “Hey. All right!” Malone revved the engine and tore out of the driveway; then he grinned at his brother. “Sometimes I’m a jerk.”

  “You’re entitled ... as long as you don’t make a habit of it.”

  More exhausted than he’d expected to be, Brett leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eye. Perhaps he’d made a mistake in coming back to the Virungas. If he went somewhere else to do his work, maybe Malone’s light could shine.

  The thought of leaving his beloved Virungas again made him sick at heart. He’d deal with the problem when he was stronger.

  “Brett, about your eye ...”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “You’ll look as good as new when the doctors have finished with you.” Malone gave him a sideways glance. “Dr. Tigrett says you can hardly tell the glass eyes from the real thing.”

  “I’m not getting a glass eye.”

  Malone twisted toward his brother, his face horrorstruck. The Jeep swerved perilously close to the edge of a steep embankment. Brett caught the wheel and brought it back under control.

  Malone’s body was rigid as he turned his full attention toward the road.

  Brett understood his brother so well, he could almost hear his thought processes. An eye patch would be a constant reminder of the sacrifice Brett had made. Surgery would wipe away the evidence.

  Uncomfortable silences were rare between the brothers, but Brett did nothing to break the one that settled over them. He could have said, “It will be all right.” But he didn’t.

  He was tired. Physically and emotionally exhausted. At the moment, he had nothing left to give.

  “Where to?” Malone asked, only because it was necessary.

  “A little cottage on Raintree.”

  “Which one?”

  “I’ll know it when I see it.”

  o0o

  Lorena’s cottage was set back from the road, half-hidden behind the moss that swayed like drunken sailors from the limbs of twisted trees. A neat picket fence marked the boundaries of a flower garden that looked as if it had been freshly planted. On the front porch sat two white wicker rockers, and the swing was draped with a colorful patchwork quilt, signs of her Georgia heritage.

  “This is it,” Brett said.

  “You sure?”

  “I’m positive.” Brett swung from the Jeep. “Pick me up in the morning.”

  “Sure thing ... Brett, I owe you my life. I’ll do anything in the world for you.”

  Agony twisted Malone’s face. Brett could not remain unmoved in the face of his brother’s guilt—and his love.

  “Anything?” he asked, keeping his voice light.

  “Just name it.”

  “Come early.”

  “Son of a gun! I’ll show you. I’ll be here so early, the sun will be ashamed for being a slugabed. Just be sure you’re finished with what you’re going to start.”

  His brother drove off, laughing. Relieved, Brett turned toward Lorena Watson’s front door. He wasn’t sure what he was going to start, didn’t even know what he wanted to start.

  All he knew was that Lorena made him forget.

  As he lifted his hand to knock, the enormity of his loss overwhelmed him. Drained of all energy, he pressed his hand over the bandage and leaned his forehead against the rough boarding on the front porch.

  No left eye.

  No depth perception.

  No leaping from mountain crag to mountain crag without second-guessing himself.

  No flying his own plane through the bush.

  He balled his right hand into a fist and struck the wall. A splinter stung his flesh and drew blood.

  Slowly the door swung open, and Lorena’s soft hand closed around his arm. Without a word she drew him inside.

  Dressed only in a slip, she took his hands and led him into a small bathroom. He leaned against the door frame while she rummaged in her medicine cabinet. She took out tweezers, iodine, and bandages, then bent over his hand.

  The top of her hair was shiny and smelled fresh, as if it had soaked up the scent of flowers that grew in her front yard. He could bury his face in her hair and dream of the softly scented mornings of his youth when he’d been whole and full of dreams and the sun had bathed the Virungas in light that had turned the trees to gold.

  His breathing became harsh, filling the room with desire. Lorena looked up, and the box of bandages clattered to the tile. Silently she wrapped herself around him and squeezed. Hard.

  He rested his cheek against her hair.

  “This is need, Lorena. Nothing more.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  The darkness came upon them without warning, as if the sun had suddenly decided to hide behind the brooding volcanic mountains that guarded the cottage. Lorena reached for the light switch, and in the harsh illumination of an incandescent bulb she cupped his face and kissed the bandage that hid his scars.

  “You are so beautiful,” she whispered.

  He slid her slip from her shoulders, and lost himself in her.

  Chapter 9

  LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, 1984

  The memories came to Max at odd times. Sitting across the table from his wife, watching the lines in her mouth pucker as she aired yet another lengthy complaint, he remembered another time, another place. He remembered the white room, the white roses, and the smell of oil as he’d rubbed it onto Ruth’s slender young body..

  Not a day, not a moment passed that he didn’t think of her. She belonged to him as no one else ever could, had belonged to him from the moment he’d seen her sitting in a pink ruffled sun suit on the beach pounding the sand with a toy shovel.

  It had been one of those hot July days that made wearing clothes an act of stupidity rather than a necessity. He’d just finished a difficult day’s shooting on a movie set that had turned into hell. The star had been drunk, the makeup supervisor late, the camera crew mutinous, and the set so hot, the chairs had to be periodically wet down with a hose.
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  Not wanting to go home and face another of his wife’s headaches or bellyaches or whatever kind of aches she’d have that day, Max had ditched his shirt and shoes, rolled up his pants, and gone to the beach with the intention of sticking his feet in the water and forgetting there was ever such a thing as making movies.

  He had almost stepped on the little girl. She’d looked up at him with such fierce challenge that he’d laughed aloud. She was an enchantress, all pink ruffles and dark curls and big luminous brown eyes.

  He squatted beside her.

  “How are you, sweetheart?”

  The dimpled chin went up a belligerent inch or two.

  “I not a wheat haht. I Roof.”

  Satisfied that she’d put him in his place, she attacked the mound of sand at her feet with her shovel.

  “Where’s your mother, Ruth?”

  “Gone.”

  He shaded his eyes and searched the beach. Except for him and the child, it was empty. Had something tragic happened to the mother? She couldn’t have been gone long, or surely the child would have been crying.

  “What are you building?”

  “A dog.”

  “A doghouse?”

  “No!” Ruth poked out her lips and lowered her eyebrows at him. “A dog. My dog.”

  “I see.” He laughed again, enchanted by the child’s imagination and determination. “What are you going to name your dog?”

  “Dange’wus.”

  “A dog named Dangerous. I like it.” His quest for wading in the water completely forgotten, he stretched out beside the child and reached toward her creation in the sand. “May I help?”

  “No!” Her lips poked out once more, and she shoved with a strength amazing in such a tiny person. Her strong will more than made up for her lack of size.

  Everything about her delighted him. If he’d had children, he’d have wanted one exactly like Ruth.

  “Okay, then. I’ll just watch.”

  She’d left sand on his hand where she’d shoved. As he watched those tiny dimpled hands working on her “dog,” Max rubbed the sand back and forth between his fingers, back and forth, back and forth, until the friction became heat, and the heat became an eroticism unlike any he’d ever known.

  “Ruth!”

  He had forgotten about the mother until he heard her scream. She raced toward them, dark-auburn hair flying in the wind and a large straw bag banging against her tight jeans. Her toe caught in a piece of driftwood buried in the sand, and she lost her hold on the bag. It landed only inches from Max, its contents spilled over the sand—lipstick, suntan oil, hairbrush ... and a pair of panties.

  The bit of black lace had a sassy red bow at the waist and a rip down the side. Max let his eyes roam boldly over the woman whose calling card lay on the beach. She was early thirties, he guessed, stunningly beautiful, her hair disheveled from more than the wind, and nothing hidden beneath her thin white shirt. She had the tall, regal body of an aristocrat and the lush mouth and smoky eyes of a courtesan.

  He hooked his index finger through the tear in the panties, then slowly stood up.

  “Your calling card,” he said.

  She didn’t pretend outrage, didn’t protest, didn’t even reach for the panties. Instead she treated him to the same bold perusal he’d given her.

  “Do you like what you see?” he asked.

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On your generosity.”

  They studied each other with the possessive looks of predators who understood the quarry was already theirs. The woman wet her lips with her tongue in slow, provocative invitation.

  “When I get what I want, I can be very generous.” Never taking his eyes from her, Max stuffed the bit of black lace into his pants pocket.

  “I can give you exactly what you want.” The woman smiled. “I’m Margaret Anne Bellafontaine, and this is my daughter, Ruth.”

  “We’ve already met.” He squatted back beside the child and touched the top of her head. One soft, shiny curl had wrapped itself around his finger. He rubbed the silky strand between his thumb and forefinger. “You shouldn’t leave her unattended.”

  “I could see her from the car.”

  “I could have snatched her and been gone before you got here.”

  “It took me a while to get my clothes back on.” Margaret Anne bent to retrieve her lipstick, then carefully painted her lips. “I’m a good mother. I do whatever is necessary for my child.”

  “Pickups on the beach will no longer be necessary.”

  Sensing her advantage, Margaret Anne smiled. She didn’t yet know his name, but the Jaguar on the edge of the beach and the Gucci watch on his arm were all the references she’d needed. He would be her ticket home.

  “I’ll want a house,” she said “... in Mississippi.”

  “Mississippi?”

  “Yes. I promised myself I’d go back one day and show them all.”

  He didn’t have to ask what she’d show them. He’d known. A woman picking up men on the beach was hungry for something she didn’t have, something he could give her—money and the prestige to go with it. What did it matter where he kept her? In fact, Mississippi would be perfect, about as far removed from Hollywood as he could get. No spying eyes. No scandal.

  “Done.”

  He patted the sand and Margaret Anne sank down beside him. With the single mindedness of a child, Ruth ignored them and pounded the sand with her shovel, intent on making herself a dog. The gut-level instincts that had made him one of the most successful filmmakers in the business told Max that he had bargained not for the mother, but for the child.

  Ruth. Worth any price.

  The high-pitched whine in his wife’s voice brought him back to the present.

  “I’m going to have to fire her.” Betsy’s mouth was so pinched with bitterness and petulance that her lipstick bled into the deep groves and made her look as if she’d sprouted pink whiskers.

  “Fine.” Max didn’t know whom she was talking about. And didn’t care. “Whatever you want to do.”

  “She’s totally untrustworthy. Yesterday I caught her spraying herself with the perfume I brought from Paris. As if I’d lost my sense of smell along with everything else.”

  Max shoved back his chair. He had given the woman everything money could buy. He wasn’t about to sit still and endure another of Betsy’s lengthy monologues on what she had lost.

  “I’m leaving town,” he said.

  “I’ll manage on my own.” Betsy patted her lips with the white linen napkin, smearing the lipstick even more. “I always have.”

  She never asked where he was going, never inquired how long he planned to stay. Long ago they’d come to an understanding. When she had caught him in his office with a sixteen-year-old, she had promised silence in return for a guaranteed lifetime of being Mrs. Maxwell Jones with all the privileges of that title, including an unlimited budget. Though the teenager was a known piece of work with acting aspirations, besides, he’d agreed to the terms, promising never again to do anything that might cause his wife public humiliation. Betsy was essential to him—the kind of placid, socially acceptable woman who could provide a safe cover.

  The key to keeping his promise was not to get caught. Get far enough out of town, and anything was possible. That was his motto.

  “Have a nice time, darling,” she said when he reached the door. It was one of the things he hated most about her, her insistence on pretending the public image of them as a happily married couple was true, even in private.

  What would she do if he told her he planned to have a nice time with a girl who was barely fifteen? Would she drop her ridiculous sham?

  For two years he’d thought of nothing except Ruth. He’d been a fool to agree to only two weeks with her.

  It was time to do something about it.

  Chapter 10

  OXFORD, MISSISSIPPI

  The Thunderbird convertible parked in the driveway was sky-blue.
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  Shifting her books to one hip, Ruth ran her hand over the front fender. The sun coming down through the branches of the oak tree glinted on the polished chrome and reflected off the pristine windows.

  A brand spanking new sports car. Every teenager’s dream.

  She set her books on the sidewalk and cupped her face against the glare of the sun so she could see inside. The seats matched the paint job. Sky blue. The softest-looking leather she’d ever seen.

  Who could be visiting her mother in a convertible? It must be somebody old, or they’d be driving with the top down in such pretty spring weather.

  It was exactly the kind of car she’d imagined her father would drive when he returned. For a moment she pictured how he would look: tall and distinguished and handsome, the handsomest man in all of Mississippi, sitting in the living room waiting to take her away.

  Setting her books on her hip, she hurried up the sidewalk. Miranda pounced out of the forsythia bushes, tiny yellow flowers caught in her fur like stars. She arched her back and rubbed herself ecstatically against Ruth’s legs.

  Brought quickly back to the real world, Ruth’s silly dreams of her father vanished. She was too old for such childish dreams.

  Too old and far too wise.

  She scooped up her cat and carried her inside, not because Miranda wanted it, but because Margaret Anne didn’t. Ruth slammed the door as loud as she could, then yelled in her most unladylike voice.

  “Clear the decks, Margaret Anne! I’m home.”

  o0o

  The sight of her quickened Max’s pulse.

  For two years he’d kept his bargain. He’d stayed away, contenting himself with secondhand news through Margaret Anne and the occasional good fortune of having Ruth answer the phone when he called.

  Now he called himself a fool.

  Ruth stood in the doorway holding her cat to her breasts. She’d grown tall during his absence, taller than Margaret Anne. Her figure had budded, too, breasts softly rounded and pressing against the T-shirt she wore, her hips flaring slightly, her legs curved and firm beneath her blue jeans. And yet she still had the wholesome, innocent look of a child.