Beloved

by Antoinette Stockenberg

The next day it was foggy again. By now Jane was wild from the constraint of not having anything constructive to do. She wanted to finish painting the house so that she could begin distancing herself from it emotionally. But Jane wasn't deluding herself: She knew she was edgy because she hadn't yet told Mac about selling Lilac Cottage to his lifelong enemy. She knew it, but she seemed helpless to do anything about it. And in the meantime Phillip was due back that night, expecting to pick up the signed agreement waiting on the table near the new front door.

  Late that afternoon Jane was rearranging her stolen roses into smaller vases for no other reason than to burn off excess energy. She was as jumpy as a cat; even Wicky was staying out of her way. When the knock on the door came, Jane let out a startled cry and promptly knocked over the vase she'd been setting up on the mantelpiece. She grabbed unthinkingly at the thorny stems at the same time that water from the vase went flying over the mantel's edge, landing on the brick hearth and scaring the cat, who ran scrambling from the room with his fur on end.

  "Oh, for pity's sake!" she said angrily.

  She'd pierced her middle finger. Annoyed, she squeezed a tiny droplet of blood from it as she went to answer the knock. She swung the door open sharply, as if it were the door's fault that she was smarting.

  It was Mac. Standing there in the fog, dressed as he was in jeans, a dark blue turtleneck, and a dark blue windbreaker, he looked almost more sinister than brooding. She hesitated whether to ask him in; she'd never seen him look that way before.

  He saw that she was rubbing the tip of her finger. "Thorn," she explained briefly, holding it up for his inspection. "I don't know why I can't just pick daisies like everyone else. Would you like to come in?" she asked suddenly.

  So much for hesitating. It was no use; she could no more act indifferent to him than she could ignore the act of breathing.

  Mac nodded and walked in ahead of her, straight to the fireplace room. She couldn't begin to imagine why he'd come; that's how much of a mystery he still was to her. He went up to the window that looked out at Bing's house, the window from which she'd once seen him lurking in the shadows outside, and stared into the fog-darkened twilight. His hands were on his hips; she heard him sigh and saw his shoulders droop a little, as if he didn't have the heart for what he was about to do. It threw a perfect chill around her soul.

  "I'd rather say this to almost anyone else on the island than to you," he began. "I know they'd understand."

  Here they were at the eleventh hour and he was still at it, putting her in a separate box from his friends and relations. Anger rushed in, replacing the chill he'd made her feel.

  "Suppose you try me, just this once," she said with obvious resentment.

  Mac turned around, surprised by her tone. "I'm sorry," he said. "You think I'm patronizing you. I'm not. But you've laughed at my warnings so many times before —"

  "Oh, for crying out loud. Is this about Philip again?" she said, disappointed.

  His cheeks, ruddy from the cold and fog, turned a deeper hue. "I hate to be a bore," he answered. "But yes. It is. Harrow's due on the island late tonight. That's why I'm here ... against my better judgment."

  She wanted to say, "Your judgment stinks." Instead she simply said, "Go ahead. I'm listening."

  One thing about Mac McKenzie: He got straight to the point. "First of all, let me say I don't think your life's in danger —"

  "What?"

  "But then I didn't think Cissy's was, either."

  "What?"

  "Her death wasn't premeditated, but it wasn't exactly an accident," Mac said quietly. "The footbridge was sabotaged. The handrail was rigged to give way; I found the bolt for it a few feet away, in the gully. It couldn't have fallen there. You were meant to get a dousing, Jane; but that's all. It was just rotten luck that Cissy slipped and fell hard on the rock."

  "Oh, this time you've taken your paranoia too far, Mac," Jane said seriously. "I saw Phillip's face; he was horrified when we found her."

  "That doesn't mean he didn't pull the bolt."

  "No," Jane had to admit. "It doesn't." A troubling image flickered in her memory, like a navigation buoy glimpsed and then lost again in the fog. "I don't say it's not possible," she said vaguely, going up to the mantel. "I just don't think it's probable."

  The fact was, she had the power to turn Mac's suspicion upside-down with one short sentence: "I've accepted an offer from Phillip." Obviously no one would bother with dirty tricks when money could do the job so much more pleasantly.

  But to tell that to Mac would take more courage than Jane currently possessed. She needed a moment to gather her wits. Stalling for time, she carefully lifted the pale pink roses from their spilled vase and began adding them, one by one, into the pitcher that held the darker rugosa roses.

  "Isn't this pink one incredible?" she remarked, holding her nose close to one of the yellow-stamened roses. "Such a strange, exotic fragrance. It's called 'Belle Amour.' I swiped it from ... in town. It's quite ancient; I looked it up. They say it was discovered in a German convent."

  The scent really was remarkable: intensely fragrant, and yet faintly bitter. She'd never known anything like it. "Here. Smell," she said, offering Mac the one she was holding. In the meantime she was thinking, I have to tell him. I have to tell him.

  He reacted with a daunting scowl. "What the hell is wrong with you? Have you heard anything I said? Do you understand that Harrow's undoubtedly the one behind the attempts to frighten the daylights out of you? That he's the one who threw your laundry in the mud?"

  "What can I tell you? You're wrong," she said calmly. She looked down to see that she'd pricked her finger yet again on the Belle Amour rose, this time in two places. She stared at the drops of blood in amazement. She was reminded of a friend who'd once crumpled a wineglass in her hand as she washed dishes during an argument with her lover. The friend, too, thought she was being perfectly normal, perfectly calm.

  "You're bleeding," Mac said in a low, tense voice.

  "No I'm not," she answered stupidly. "Anyway," she added, popping a Kleenex out of a nearby box and wrapping it around her finger, "I'll think about what you said. Honestly I will. And thanks."

  "It'd be nice if you believed me," Mac said with a dark look. "Phillip Harrow can be dangerous when it suits him."

  "Good grief," she said gaily, trying to keep it light. "Next you'll be saying he murdered his wife."

  "Her fall from the boat was very convenient," Mac agreed, astonishing Jane with his bluntness. "She was a wealthy woman."

  He's obsessed, Jane realized with dismay. And yet something — maybe his sudden, surprising candor — drove her to provoke him. "Where has all the money gone, in that case?" she demanded to know. "Phillip is strapped for cash. Everyone on the island knows that."

  "Everyone on the island knows what Harrow wants them to know."

  "I've heard very nice things about him," she persisted, struggling to fit the last pink rose in the pitcher without pricking herself again. "And besides, why haven't you taken your suspicions to the police?"

  "Because they're only that — suspicions. This is a small island. Reputation is everything. Trust me," he added caustically. "On a more cynical note, I can't afford a lawsuit for slander."

  Jane turned away from her flower arrangement on the mantel and looked Mac straight in the eye. "Aren't you taking a risk in telling me, in that case?"

  She saw a flash of the fire that she'd seen in his eyes the week before, under the Austrian pines. He turned away from her and leaned both hands into the mantel, pushing against it. He reminded her of a runner, stretching before he hit the road; she took it as a sign.

  She was expecting some why-did-I-bother response from him. Instead Mac looked down at the brick hearth and shook his head and said, "If you don't know that I trust you, Jane Drew, then you don't know anything at all."

  In its left-handed way, it was a wonderful compliment. Jane was deeply moved. It was no small thing for a man like Mac McKenzie to admi
t he trusted an off-island female who was on record as being in a hurry to cash in her piece of his beloved homeland. How could she possibly betray that trust? Instantly Jane resolved not to sell, not to leave — not while there was still hope.

  She fiddled with the pitcher of roses on the mantel, trying to think of the right thing to say. One wrong move and he'd bolt.

  And yet Mac didn't seem inclined to bolt. He seemed inclined to stand on the hearth next to her, engulfed in the delicious, overpowering scent of the old-world roses. Even Jane, unconsciously aware that the faint bitterness of the Belle Amour rose had disappeared in the combined new scent of the two roses, was mesmerized.

  "Well, if you trust me, and if you're worried about me," Jane said softly, "then why —"

  "— do I steer so clear of you?" he asked, anticipating her question. He took a deep breath and held it, then exhaled. When he turned to her there was a surprised look in his eyes, as if someone had spiked the office punch.

  "Why do you think? We're a complete mismatch, I ... I've told you that," he said vaguely. He seemed to be struggling to remember exactly what constituted a mismatch. "You have a master's degree," he said at last, picking up the thread of his thought. "Whereas I have a high school equivalency. You've circled the globe; I've hardly been off the island. You have what my folks used to call expectations ... while I'm up to my ears in mortgage debt. I don't know," he said, baffled and disoriented. "There must be other reasons .... You say tomahto ... I say tomayto ..."

  Something was happening between them. She could see it in his eyes; she could feel it coursing through her. He was smiling now, bemused and enchanted, now sliding his hands into the thick silk tresses of her hair, wrapping them once around, lowering his mouth closer to hers. "Did I mention money ... that I don't have any?" he asked in a dreamy, drunken voice.

  "That's okay," she said with a dizzy, champagne smile of her own. "I don't have what you're calling expectations, either."

  "And another thing ... this urban thing," he said, his brows still drawn in reverie. "I'm a country boy; I don't think much of red lights ...."

  She slipped her arms around his neck. "The light is green, Mac," she whispered.

  He brought his mouth down on hers in an open kiss of piercing sweetness; it was like the time he gave her the daffodil, without the daffodil. It simply took her breath away, that he could be so tender and so overwhelming at the same time. Jane had been kissed by gentle men, and she'd been kissed by strong men, but she'd never been kissed by the perfect man before. This is it, she thought with a kind of panicky ecstasy. He's ruined me for anyone else.

  He kissed her again, a long, lingering kiss that was light-years different from their torrid encounter in the pine grove. She rejoiced in it, because this time, he was taking his time. There would be no impulsive dash into mindless passion, no wrenching away with agonies of second thoughts. This time they were in perfect accord. This time they had forever.

  She lifted her head and their eyes met. Mac said simply, "Are you sure?"

  She threw her head back and chuckled, a rich sound of confidence that echoed deep in her throat. "Mac. My darling, deliberate Mac — does McDonald's have arches?"

  "What's a McDonald's?" he said through his smile, his mouth trailing to her throat.

  She laughed out loud, amazed at the change in him, wondering how and why he'd decided to open his heart to her. But her happiness got swept away in a new and deeper thrill when he began to undo the metal buttons of her shirt, sliding it just away from her shoulders.

  He dropped a feathery kiss on the outside curve of her shoulder and said, "I've wanted to do this since I saw you on the staging, scraping paint with Billy B." He trailed a path of kisses from her shoulder to the hollow of her throat, murmuring, "It was all I could do ... not to knock Billy off the staging ... and take his place."

  She moaned a delicious, vindicated moan. "Ah, Mac, I wish you had. It would've saved me so many sleepless nights."

  "Yeah, but Billy might not paint so well in traction." Mac's laugh was as shaky as his touch, as he skimmed the outline of her breasts with his fingertips. "Ah, love ... I've wanted you much further back than that," he said, sounding almost baffled by his own desire.

  Her eyelids were heavy with passion, but she was afraid to close her eyes completely, afraid that when she opened them, he'd be gone. "How far; how far back have you wanted me?" she begged to know.

  His laugh was bemused, unsure, as he unbuttoned the last of the metal buttons. "Since ... I want to say, the funeral, but it must be ... before that. I suppose, since I was fifteen, and you spent the summer here .... No, even that's not right."

  He cradled her face in his hands and gave her a look so intense with longing that she felt his pain in addition to her own. "I've wanted you as long as memory itself," he said at last, struggling to express his thought. "It's a very strange thing."

  Even more strange was the fact that she felt exactly the same way he did. She didn't understand it, any of it. It was all too much — the intoxication of the roses; his sudden, seductive candor; the addictive sound of his voice; and especially, the overwhelming sense that they'd been together before. That they'd been apart, and that now they were together again.

  He lifted her up in his arms as if she weighed nothing at all. "Will you let me make love to you, Jane Drew?" he whispered, kissing her, leaving her dizzy with desire for him.

  It was so typically endearing of him, this blend of courteous knight and lusty warrior. It made her drunk with power and crazy with love to know that if she said, "Fat chance," Mac McKenzie would put her back down and bite through steel before he'd push himself on her. She wondered whether he had any idea how erotic his self-control was.

  "Mr. McKenzie," she said, returning his kiss with a taunting tenderness to match his own, "if you don't make love to me, and soon, I'm going to throw myself off Sankaty bluffs."

  He gave her a sexy grin and carried her up the stairs, which delighted her. She thought — almost with pity — of the wife who'd divorced him, of what treasure she'd left behind on this enchanted isle. Jane had absolutely no doubt that Mac McKenzie was a perfect lover; she knew it, just as surely as she knew she was the one right woman in the world for him. In her heart, in her soul, it was that simple.

  Mac pulled back the green-striped comforter and laid her on the white eyelet sheets of her great-aunt's bed. She didn't expect him to be self-conscious about his physicality, and she was right.

  "We were taught no street clothes on the sheets," he said with a devilish sideways look before he yanked the turtleneck over his head. His jeans and underwear went next, and then he was sitting on the bed alongside her. Just like that, the mystery of Mac McKenzie was revealed to her.

  She liked what she saw — liked it so much, that she clamped her mouth shut, afraid that she'd say something just a little too modern for his old-fashioned taste.

  But of course he noticed. "What," he said, cocking his head and looking at her through half-lidded eyes.

  She shook her head, then touched the four-inch welt of an old scar on the lower part of his thigh. "You've been in a duel," she said with a sympathetic smile, remembering Bing's quip about men and their wounds.

  Mac took her hand and traced it across the scar, as if he wanted her to know everything about him, starting with the damaged parts and working her way from there. "Billy B. worked for me when he was fourteen. I think it was his Texas-Chainsaw-Massacre period. You know what mimics kids are," he said with his deadpan look.

  "And this?" she asked, tracing a triangle-shaped scar on his upper arm.

  "Misdirected tree limb. I'm no better than Billy when it comes to chainsaws."

  She tisked and said, "It could've been an eye," in a maternal kind of way. "And — this?" she asked, touching a small pink scar near the nipple of his left breast. It looked like a stab wound. "You really were in a duel."

  "Ah, that one's newish," he said, looking down at it, his chin doubling with the effort. "Th
at's where the arrow went that recently pierced my heart."

  Startled, she looked up and instantly lost herself in the profound depths of his hazel eyes. "Really, Mac?" she whispered.

  "Truly," he said, with a look that made her dizzy. He leaned over her and brushed his lips across her mouth. "Well, my fair one," he murmured. "We've had the worst. Now, it's my turn."

  He unfolded both sides of her blouse as gently as he might the petals of a flower. She was wearing a bra that fastened in front; he unsnapped it and drew aside the fabric, leaving it nestled in the folds of the blouse. She'd never been undressed quite that way before, with such care and attention. He had the naive curiosity of a youth from a very small town, the experienced touch of a Paris rake. It was a breathtaking combination. Jane knew that her breasts were more shapely than earthy, and that her waist didn't tuck in like, well, like Judith's — but he was making her feel like Venus de Milo.

  "You aren't fashionably thin," he said in his droll way.

  Jane knew that coming from Mac McKenzie, it was the highest of compliments. She batted her eyelashes and said, "Hauling trees around always gives me an appetite."

  He smiled, remembering. "I wanted you so much that day," he said, leaning on one arm alongside her. He bent his head over her breast, cupping it in his free hand and caressing the pink tip with his tongue.

  She closed her eyes and said, "Just ... hold ... that thought," between gasps of pleasure as he played light and magical games with her body. She brought her knee up and pressed the heel of her foot into the soft down of the comforter in a futile attempt to stay earthbound. But it was no use; no matter how she tried, she found herself spiraling upward, upward and outward, and bound for heaven.

  His hand slid lower, over her smooth, warm flesh, and stopped at the heavy brass zipper of her jeans. He slid open the zipper, which made a funny little questioning sound, like a sentry surprised at its post: "Yes?" went the sound.

  "Yes," she whispered in a shudder.

  She lifted her hips and he slid away her jeans and panties in one deft movement, and then caught her in his arms so that she could slip out of the rest of her things. She remembered other undressings, groping and awkward. How different this was, how completely without fear. Again she had the uncanny sense that they'd been together before, and forever.