by Carol Devine
Sounds came through the walls of the hotel. Distant sounds. He recognized not a one, only that they were far away, and he and Meg were alone. Completely alone.
He controlled the natural response of his body, using it as an exercise in discipline, like he did with martial arts. She became like a sparrow to him, with his mission being to coax her, feed her even. He measured his success by what she entrusted him with.
Eventually she sighed. Hearing her relief, he focused on what it took to give her more. He cupped the back of her head, imagining Katie, of how he’d hold and comfort her.
Except he couldn’t forget Meg was the one he held. She fit him, intimately, her woman’s body shaped to meet his. All he had to do was lift her against him and the desire he had barely leashed would be exposed.
Yet he remained still. What he wanted and what she needed were two different things. Much as he might regret passing on the present opportunity, he had a wife to consider now, and they had to maintain some semblance of a relationship because of the child they shared.
Dropping his arms, Jack. stepped back. She dropped her arms, too, folding them behind her back, studying him with a new yet grudging respect. “You don’t know how much that helped me,” she said.
“I’m glad,” he replied, though the couch where he would spend the night mocked him.
“Well...” She retreated a step. “I guess this means good night.”
“Good night.”
She turned towards the bedroom in her ivory gown, gliding away from him like a current-drawn swan.
“Meg?”
“Yes?” She paused at the door.
“Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
But Jack wished the bedbugs were biting a few days later, once he had officially settled in the suburban wilds of Oradell, New Jersey. Even bedbugs were preferable to dodging hordes of paparazzi by day and tossing and turning in a narrow twin bed by night. Jack had never felt so frustrated in his entire life.
Building Meg’s trust would resolve his sexual frustration, but Katie was proving to be the real challenge. She accepted him into the household easily enough. He soon discovered, however, that the concreteness of life and death was a lot easier to explain to a four-year-old than what happened in the middle of the night when her eyes were closed.
She wasn’t going to be denied this time, either. Adamant, she stomped her pajama-clad foot. “I don’t care what you say. They dance all night. I know they do. My bear and my bunny and my dollies dance, too.”
Jack settled on the floor of her room with his back against the side of her frilly pink bed, and considered the pint-size shoe he held in his hands. The primary focus of their discussion, a pair of shiny black patent leather shoes, did not exactly lead to answers. The last couple of weeks with Katie had taught him how rarely the laws of physics applied to the imaginative world of a four-year-old girl.
He placed the shoes side by side and rubbed his jaw, giving Katie the benefit of his most serious deliberation. “I checked your shoes last night after you went to sleep, Katie. I never saw them move.”
“But they don’t start dancing till even grown-ups are asleep.”
“How can you be absolutely, positively sure?”
She nodded emphatically, not even tempted by his show of skepticism. “I have an idea,” he said:
Fifteen minutes later, he returned, armed with the Betz family video camera. Allen had not been the type to leave the important moments of life unrecorded. Jack also, very fortunately, believed every moment was important, from Katie’s first hiccup as an infant to the girl Jack had come to know. After Katie went to bed, he would spend his evenings reviewing the backlog of the Betz family videotapes.
Now Jack zoomed in on the shelves of dolls, recording whether they were sitting, standing, the up-and-down position of arms. At his request, Katie ran to open her closet. The camera’s viewfinder filled with stuffed animals. “Do you think all your toys come alive in the middle of the night?” he asked.
She nodded, firm in her belief. He scanned the lot of them, wondering if this idea had a chance in hell of working. Katie was a lot like her mother They both possessed a belief system that bordered on pure stubbornness.
Once he finished cataloging everything in the room, he rewound the tape, then let Katie compare the images on the viewfinder to the objects in the room. “Tomorrow we’ll check this tape again. You’ll see for yourself that the toys haven’t moved.”
“But they never move,” she declared.
Jack scratched his head in confusion. “I thought you said they danced all night.”
“Don’t you know anything? They always go back to their exact right places.”
What a pistol she was.
She bustled with energy. Not J.J.’s energy, headlong and hell-bent, but the purposeful kind. She loved to set things in order.
She hosted elaborate tea parties between her stuffed toys and dolls. Dolls always got to drink first, and they had to have real water in their cups. Teddy bears did not.
Her favorite plush rabbit with pink satin ears got priority seating. Unfortunately, the designated throne for grown-ups changed without rhyme or reason, and pity the poor guy who didn’t magically make the “tea” disappear when Katie’s back was turned.
She made up stories based on her picture books, going into long soliloquies about what she saw on the pages. She was able to do it by herself, too, when he was forced to take a pressing call from his office the three days a week he got to spend with her, flying solo.
And talk. How she talked on and on about being a princess when she grew up. Or a firefighter.
“What about being a doctor or a nurse?” he asked.
She wrinkled her button nose and shook her dark head. Too many messes to clean up, she said. And doctors and nurses gave icky shots. Icky shots didn’t save people. But princesses and firefighters did.
Jack wished he could tell Katie she was a princess—his princess. She had already saved someone. Him.
Eight
“Meg, I warned you this would happen. The paparazzi are insatiable.”
To show how upset she was, she jerked the curtains over the living room windows, shutting out the morning light. “I told you so? Is that all you have to say?”
“We can’t stay in this house,” he said, repeating the same old refrain. “The cameras, the reporters are not going to go away.”
The cut-and-dried statement sent her stalking to the kitchen. With Katie still asleep upstairs, the last thing Meg wanted to do was raise her voice, not to mention allow the parasites lurking around the house to find out that she and Jack were engaged in another one of their heated discussions. She banged the coffeemaker into production, taking refuge in the ritual. “It’s been weeks since we married. Surely they will leave us alone at some point.”
“This problem is not going to solve itself. I don’t know how to put it any plainer than that. We need to move—now.”
Meg faced him. “How do you put up with the constant attention, Jack?” she asked in a choked voice. “I feel like a monkey in a cage.”
“It’s a fact of life.”
“Not my life, it’s not.”
He folded his arms. “So you think you can pout and they’ll all disappear?”
Meg, too, folded her arms. “Don’t talk to me like a child.”
Exasperated, he blew out a gust of air. “Why won’t you consider moving to my apartment in New York? It’s across the street from Central Park, it’s close to your work, there are museums galore, and you and Katie won’t be such oddities.”
“Is that what Katie and I have become?” she bristled. “Oddities?”
“It comes with the territory. You’re a Tarkenton now.”
His name and his blood. Turning her back on him, Meg gripped her mug with both hands. He was right—she had to deal with the reality of the situation. But if they moved into Jack’s swanky penthouse apartment, she’d be lucky to find another family in the building, much less
one with children Katie’s age.
Yet that building was completely safe.
The Tarkentons didn’t talk about it much, but security considerations ruled them wherever they went. Their wealth and political influence made them targets for the crazies of the world. Meg knew for a fact that Bram and Amanda had discussed hiring a bodyguard for J.J., especially once he started school. Such precautions came with the territory, as Jack said.
Meg stared out the backyard window. Jack came to stand beside her. Such a small thing, too, to share a view, but it made her feel that perhaps there were some things they could face together.
“I know this house means a lot to you,” he said. “If you want, we can put off selling for a while—there’s no sense in alerting the world to our plans. The sales proceeds, of course, will go to you.”
His talk of money left her feeling cold inside. Why didn’t he understand? “I was six months pregnant when Allen and I bought this house,” she murmured, still looking out the window. “The day Katie was born, he planted that tree that’s in the backyard.”
“A veritable saint, your Allen.”
Something about the strain in Jack’s tone made her turn around and consider him. “Is that the real reason you don’t want to live here? Because Allen did?”
“No one can compete with a dead saint. I learned that when my father died. You want to hold on to Allen, fine. Just don’t endanger our daughter in the process.”
With the decision to move made, where to go remained the question. Meg rejected the city flat out, claiming she was looking for far more than safety or convenience She wanted a place where the three of them could be a regular family.
The Tarkenton estate popped to Jack’s mind. Meg immediately warmed to the idea, citing Katie’s familiarity with the place. She would also have a chance to get to know Eleanor better, Meg added, though neither Eleanor nor Katie would ever know the true extent of their bond.
Jack made the arrangements, and by the end of March, they were ensconced in their own private wing of the mansion. To avoid gossip among the servants, he insisted that Meg share the master suite with him, but since it consisted of two separate bedrooms joined by a luxury bathroom, she didn’t put up much of a fuss. He thought it a good sign for other reasons as well, but was reluctant to push the issue until he knew for certain that Meg had worked through her grief about Allen.
To allay any problems Katie might have with the transition, Jack had her new room painted the same color as her old one, and made sure he and Meg were with her when the movers came to pack her furniture. Katie watched the entire process with her thumb in her mouth, and screamed when the doors closed on the moving van.
But they were prepared for that. Meg sat in the back seat of the Jaguar with her as he followed the van to the estate. But it was still traumatic for her. The ghost of Allen still lived in the questions she asked. She wanted to know if he’d be able to see her from heaven if she lived somewhere else. How would he find her?
Meg answered as best she could. Jack put in his two cents’ worth when necessary but found that the closer he got to the estate, the more resentful he grew. At least Allen’s tree wouldn’t be around anymore as a constant reminder of the man Katie and Meg had lost.
Jack saw the color of the gown first. Emerald green steeped in deep aqua blue, the rippling fabric shimmered down the length of Meg’s body, though there wasn’t a bead on it. It was more than a gown, he realized It was a work of art.
His first thought was he wouldn’t let her wear it. Erotic in the extreme, it flowed down the stairs as she did, innate with her fluidity and grace. Once she walked into the gala tonight, every man there would strip her in his mind and want that high-breasted, willowy body for his own.
Diamonds dripped from her hand. “Would you mind?” she asked, handing him the jewelry.
“Did Allen give you this?”
“I bought it myself, actually. You don’t have to worry about how much it cost,” she said. “It’s fake.”
She turned away from him and lifted her hair, releasing a wave of fragrance, the fragrance that still haunted his dreams. The clean pearlescence of her neck matched his memory of her breasts, emphasized by the clinging cut of her dress.
He tossed the rhinestones on the nearest table. “I won’t have a wife of mine wearing cheap costume jewelry. Come on,” he said, taking her hand and leading her down the main hall.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
She came willingly enough, although the quick staccato of high heels on marble revealed how fast he was moving. He tucked her hand through the crook of his arm and, slowing his gait, spoke low. “Can you keep a secret?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“Not even Katie can know.”
Meg looked a bit taken aback by that. “What havoc are you about to unleash on me tonight?”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“Wait a minute—”
“We’re here. Hush, now.” Halting, he touched his finger to his lips and used his other hand to search the paneled wall behind him, feeling for the secret button disguised there. Suddenly the entire wall slid aside, revealing an open doorway. He pulled Meg in after him before the wall closed silently behind them, cutting off all light.
“Jack?” she gasped, grabbing his arm.
“Don’t worry,” he replied, addressing an electronic keyboard outlined in fluorescent green. He punched in the security code and another door automatically opened, switching on the recessed lighting that illuminated a large but entirely windowless room.
She glanced around like a curious bird, poised on the threshold of a whole new world.
Her fingers tensed, interlocking with his. “Don’t worry,” he repeated, and he led her inside. He’d designed the room to appear smaller than the twelve-by-twelve feet it actually was, making the walls close in with floor-to-ceiling black lacquer cabinetry and matching desk. Unadorned except for a leather writing pad and pen set, the desk and its companion chair were the only furnishings. Jack moved to stand behind them, regarding Meg with a hint of pride even though he couldn’t tell her all that he did here. “How do you like my den?”
“Your den?” she echoed, glancing around, a hand to her delectable but very naked throat. “Is that what this place is?”
“A den, an office, a vault, a bomb shelter.”
“Bomb shelter?” She turned startled eyes on him.
“Sorry. Bad joke. The first three, yes. Last one, no.”
“I was ready to believe you.” Clasping her hands behind her back, she circled the room, flowing in and out of the incandescent beams spilling down from above, the vividness of her colors like a waterfall against the dark walls.
He watched her drift while he prowled. Wanting coursed through his veins. “Would you like a drink?” he asked.
“We’ll be drinking at the gala.”
“One for the road, then,” he said, opening the large cabinet that revealed a fully equipped bar. He poured them both a Scotch on the rocks. “Let me show you why I brought you here,” he said, handing over her glass.
“I’m almost afraid to ask,” she admitted, sipping her drink.
The jewels were in the vault. He didn’t want to overwhelm her, so he brought out only two cases. She was sensitive about the extent of his wealth, about living among his family’s heirlooms.
Opening the cases, he presented the necklaces to her. Nestled on beds of black velvet, the emeralds reflected the awe in her eyes while the sapphires brought out their depths of blue.
“Oh, my,” she whispered.
He would never forget the allure of that sound, her saying nothing, soft as air. He would never forget how she looked in that moment, either, vibrant and full of life.
“Go on, Meg,” he urged. “Choose.”
“I don’t know if I can. I’ll worry the whole time we’re at the gala. What if I lost it? I’d never be able to forgive myself.”
“Let me worry
about that.”
She tilted her head in indecision, nudging the bright jewels. “Which do you think looks best with this dress?”
He studied her deliberately long. “Hmm. Hard decision.”
“If you don’t make it soon we’ll miss the opening of the gala,” she observed dryly.
He set down the boxes and lifted the necklaces, one in each hand. Facing her, he draped one over each of her bared shoulders, using the action as an opportunity to brush her skin. Stepping back, he stroked his chin. “I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully.
Her wise eyes told him she didn’t believe him for a minute. The rising color on her cheeks told him more. To see her so affected gave him the measure of control he needed to lift the emeralds and settle them around her neck. Holding the jeweled clasp closed in back, he put a thumb to the hollow of her throat, testing the fit. But what he was really testing was the rapidity of her pulse.
He hadn’t experienced such a rush since he was a teenage boy, raging with hormones and awkward with need. Except now he knew exactly where to touch a woman, and exactly how.
He centered the necklace by feel alone, measuring the throb of her heart, the quickening heat of her skin. He moved behind her for the best view possible, but she turned her head, keeping an eye on him.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” He fastened the necklace and stepped back. There were parts of this game that required an exquisite sense of timing. “How does it feel?”
“Why do you continue to do this to me?”
He loved innocuous questions. He loved playing the game of cat and mouse, captor and captive, of making conversation an art, rich with innuendo and blame. He knew it was his turn to push, so he ambled over to her, innocently asking the obvious question. “Just what exactly am I doing to you?”
“Hurting me.”
“Hurting you?” He kissed her gently on the lips and pulled back, amused. “How could that hurt?”
“It hurts because it isn’t real.”
“Show me what’s real, Meg.”
