Passion

by Marilyn Pappano

  With a weary sigh, he retrieved the book from where it had come to rest after bouncing off the wall. Crouching in front of her, he picked up the ragged pieces of paper, and he offered the pile to her. “I’m sorry, Teryl.”

  She made no move to accept it. She simply stared at it, her most prized possession, at the wrinkled jacket that hung loose, at the scrap of paper on top of the pile, the one bearing the great curling S.

  “I had no right to do that. I know it was important to you.”

  She didn’t say anything. She had no thoughts to put into words, no words to express the numbness left by sudden fear and greater shock.

  “I’ll get you another copy. He’ll be happy to sign it for you again.”

  She still said nothing, did nothing.

  He got to his feet. “Damn it, Teryl, please…” There was a frantic tone to his voice now, a pleading that she ignored. She knew he had acted out of frustration and anger, and she believed he had genuinely meant it when he’d said he was sorry, but, at that moment, she didn’t care. She didn’t give a damn how he felt. All she cared about was how she felt. Sorrowful. Dismayed. Heartsick.

  Abruptly she took the book and all the little scraps, turned toward the corner behind her, and dropped them all into the wastebasket there. The book landed with a thud. The papers didn’t make a sound as they floated down. Then she grabbed her bag off the desk, switched off the lamp, and left the office.

  She left him standing there alone.

  He had screwed up again. Teryl had finally stopped looking at him as if she were afraid he was going to do something awful, and with one stupid outburst, he had brought the fear back into her eyes. He had frightened her. Worse, he had hurt her, not physically—not even anger could drive him to that—but spiritually. He had destroyed something that she treasured, had committed a wrong that could never be put right. Even if she got another copy of the book, even if the bastard posing as Tremont signed it again in exactly the same way, it would never replace the original. It would never mean the same thing to her.

  He felt like a bigger bastard than Tremont could ever be.

  Muttering a curse, John left the office and the house. Teryl’s key was stuck in the dead bolt; she was waiting, her back to him, beside the Blazer. He locked the door and pocketed her keys, then hesitantly approached her. “Teryl.”

  She stiffened and lowered her head.

  “Jesus, I’m sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Her voice was thick, husky, a little bit quavery.

  Oh, hell, it sounded as if she were crying. He couldn’t deal with that, with knowing that he’d upset her badly enough to make her cry. Laying his hands on her shoulders, refusing to be shrugged off, he turned her to face him and saw that, damn it, yes, she was crying.

  He had never made a woman cry before. His mother had never cared enough, and Janie had been too strong. No one else—from Chrissy when he was a teenager to Marcia, the waitress—had ever cried because of him. He didn’t know what to say, what to do. He didn’t know how to offer comfort.

  “Please don’t cry, Teryl.” Tilting her face up, he clumsily brushed her hair back, then dried her cheeks. “Please… I’m so damned sorry.”

  She made a visible effort to stop the tears, to clear her throat, to regain control. The effort failed when she spoke. “If I had to give up everything I own and could keep only one thing, it would have been that book. It was mine.”

  He dried her tears again, then cupped his palms to her face. “It was mine, Teryl—mine with someone else’s signature in it. When this is over, you can have all the Tremont autographs in the world. When I prove to you that that man is a fraud, that I wrote those books, I’ll sign anything you want, from books to checks.”

  “What if you don’t prove it?” she whispered. “What if you can’t?”

  “I have to.”

  “Why?”

  He stroked her cheek with his thumb, wiping away one last tear, before bleakly replying, “Because without my books, I’m nothing. Because my writing has been my sanity. It’s been my life. Without it, I have no life. And because if I don’t prove it, you’re never going to look at me again the way you did that first day, without the wariness, without the doubt. I need you to look at me, Teryl. I need…”

  Letting the words trail away, he leaned closer, until his mouth was brushing hers. He waited, expecting her to pull away, so sure she would that it took a moment for the realization that it wasn’t happening to sink in. Then he kissed her.

  It wasn’t hot and erotic, as their first kiss had been, or so damned desperate, like the last kiss in that North Carolina motel room. It was tentative. He kept waiting for her protest, for her to push him away, disgusted with him for kissing her and with herself for weakly letting him do it. He waited for her good sense to kick in, to remind her that the last thing she needed or wanted was to endure this with him.

  It was sweet, as purely innocent as a kiss between two adults could be. It lacked passion and hunger, but it stirred them, just a faint little need buried deep inside him, just enough of an ache to make its presence felt. He could stop kissing her right now, and everything would be perfectly normal, or he could continue and slowly but surely bring to life an arousal as sharp and raw as any he’d experienced in the last week.

  It was comforting. Soothing. He didn’t know if it was doing much for her tears, but just being close to her, touching her, sharing this small contact with her, was working wonders on his spirit.

  At last, when he was starting to enjoy it too much, to kiss her harder, more greedily, to draw her closer and hold her tighter, the rejection he’d been expecting came. She pushed against his chest, trying to work her way free, and reluctantly, having no choice, he let her go.

  Her cheeks were flushed, her lips red, her expression troubled. She liked kissing him. He had enough experience to recognize that. But she didn’t want to like it, didn’t want to want him. He was smart enough to recognize that, too.

  Christ, everything he did made her feel bad. She really needed him out of her life… while he desperately needed her in his.

  She turned away, using the side mirror to comb her fingers through her hair, to check her face and to wipe away a bit of eye makeup that her tears had smeared. When she finished, she faced him, but she couldn’t quite meet his gaze. “I’d like to go home now.”

  “What about lunch?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “I am,” he lied. Faced with food, he imagined he would be able to eat, but the only appetite he was harboring right now was of a sexual nature. It would be safer dealt with in a restaurant, surrounded by other diners, than at her house, just the two of them alone.

  “You can drop me off at the house, then go—”

  He touched her hair, and she abruptly stopped speaking. “It was just a kiss, Teryl,” he said softly, regretfully. “You don’t have to feel guilty for letting me kiss you. You don’t have to feel guilty for anything.”

  “Please… don’t…” She moved away, her hair tangling briefly around his fingers before sliding free.

  Once again he let her go. He gave her the space she wanted, the distance she needed, the distance that he thought just might drive him crazy. “All right,” he said reluctantly. “I’ll take you home.”

  Back at the house, Teryl tossed her keys into a basket on the kitchen counter, laid her purse beside it, and turned toward John. “I’m going to go upstairs,” she said, and right away a new layer of guilt darkened his eyes. He obviously thought she was retreating to her room because she was still upset over what had happened at the office—the damage he’d done to her one and only signed Tremont and the kiss outside. It was true. She was upset. But that wasn’t the reason she wanted to be alone in her room.

  She had phone calls to make.

  As she started to walk past him, he extended his hand, blocking her way. “Teryl, I’m—”

  She cut him off. “Don’t apologize again, please. I just want to be alone now.�
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  He stepped back, as she’d known he would, and she slipped past. She felt him watching her all the way down the hall, and when she turned at the end to climb the stairs, she could see him, just standing there.

  Upstairs in her room, she closed and locked the door behind her, then turned on the stereo. After a moment’s hesitation, feeling sneaky and guilty, she sat down on the bed, pulled the phone book and a notepad from the nightstand drawer, and reached for the phone. It was a simple matter finding the area code she needed for Florida; for Colorado, she made a note of the two numbers that covered the entire state. Locating Rapid River without a map would be a matter of trial and error, but at least the choices were limited.

  First she dialed information for Verona. There was no listing for Jane or Janie Smith, but there were seven J. Smiths, and she coaxed the disinterested operator into giving her the numbers for every one of them. What were the chances, she wondered as she doodled around the numbers on the notepad, that one of these was John’s Janie? What were the odds that his thirty-something sister had never married or, if divorced, was still using her maiden name?

  Hell, even if she was married, even if her name was no longer Smith, she was a high school Spanish teacher in a small town. How difficult could it be to find her?

  With the first two calls, she was informed that there was no Janie at those numbers. The third netted her a recording: Hi, this is Jack. I’m not home right now… The fourth was another wrong number, and the fifth was busy. Luck was with her, though, on the sixth. The message on the tape was standard, the voice feminine but no-nonsense, as befitted a teacher, and the accent was indistinct—a result of growing up on the West Coast, perhaps, tempered by living on the East Coast? Hi, this is Janie. I can’t take your call right now, but if you’ll leave your name and number at the beep, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Adios, amigo. A Spanish farewell. This had to be the one.

  The machine beeped, but it didn’t register with Teryl. She hadn’t thought ahead to what she would actually say to John’s sister if she reached her. She couldn’t very well announce to the woman that her brother had gone around the bend and kidnapped an innocent woman or blurt out that he was delusional and thought he was a famous author and needed psychiatric intervention before the police were brought into the matter. She hadn’t prepared for actually talking to Janie at all, and before any words popped into her head, the machine beeped a second time, stopping the tape.

  Muttering a curse, she redialed the number, listened to the four rings and the message again, then cleared her throat. “Hi. My name is Teryl Weaver, and I—I’m looking for the Janie Smith whose brother John lives in—used to live in Rapid River, Colorado. If you’re the right one, I need to talk to you as soon as possible. It’s really very important. If you’re not the right one, I’d really appreciate it if you would let me know. Call me any time between nine and five, Monday through Friday.” She gave the agency number, briefly considered adding her home number, then decided against it. If Janie Smith could verify John’s story, receiving her call at home was no problem. But what if his story wasn’t true? What would he think when his sister, who would surely tell Teryl that it wasn’t true, called her home? What would he do?

  She hung up, then, just to satisfy her own curiosity, dialed the fifth number again. That J. Smith was Jennifer, and the seventh and last one, a man, offered no name. He simply said he didn’t know a Janie Smith, then hung up in the middle of Teryl’s murmured apology.

  Now on to Colorado. Hoping that Rapid River shared Denver’s area code, she tried it first and was right. This time a friendlier operator gave her the name of the county—Grant—and the number for the sheriff’s department. The sleepy-sounding young man she spoke to told her no, he didn’t know anything about a recent house fire and that she needed to speak to the sheriff himself, who wouldn’t be in until the next morning, and no, he couldn’t track him down for her for anything less than an emergency. Wishing she could lie and say it was, she left her name and, again, the office number with him, then returned the phone to the table, rolled onto her side, and stared moodily out the French doors.

  Did it mean anything that the man hadn’t heard about the fire? Maybe he’d been on vacation, or maybe he simply wasn’t as well-informed as a deputy or dispatcher for a county sheriff’s department should be. But either excuse was hard to believe. Rapid River was a small town, and people in small towns were supposed to know everybody’s business. Heavens, house fires that totally destroyed everything were news even in a city the size of Richmond. And John’s hadn’t been a simple fire. It had been arson, if he was to be believed—arson involving three bombs that were supposed to have killed him. How could anyone living in the area not know about it? How could an employee of the law enforcement agency investigating it be ignorant of its occurrence?

  She knew the answer to those questions, the logical, reasonable, rational answer. She didn’t want to face it, but she forced herself to let it form, to put the words together into sentences in her head. Maybe the young man hadn’t heard anything because nothing had happened. Maybe the tale was just another part of John’s story. Just another part of his fantasies.

  Maybe it was just one more part of his delusions.

  Afternoon passed quietly into evening. John saw little of Teryl, considering that they were spending all of their time in a house so small that he wouldn’t have believed two people could share it without tripping over each other. She stayed in her room, the door closed, the CD player kept busy. They had much the same taste in music, he’d noticed in the times he’d passed by: Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and Duke Ellington. They had similar taste in movies, too, he’d discovered in the hours he’d spent alone with the television and VCR. Many of the old Hollywood greats that he’d lost in the fire were duplicated in her private collection. It was one of those old movies from the fifties, a bittersweet romance, that he chose to pass the time that evening, and it was the movie that finally lured Teryl back into his presence.

  She came down the stairs and was on her way to the kitchen when she detoured into the living room. He glanced at her, standing there in the doorway, but said nothing. If she wanted to ignore him and pretend he wasn’t there, the least he could do was make it easy.

  But this time she wasn’t ignoring him. She edged into the room, going to sit on the arm of the sofa, a fairly safe distance from the chair where he was sprawled. “You like old movies?”

  “I like her.” He gestured to the star whose face filled the screen in a tight shot. “She was a beautiful woman.”

  “Hmm.” She slid down onto the cushion without taking her gaze from the television. “The camera certainly loved her.”

  “Everyone loved her. She ranked right up there with Marilyn Monroe, Carole Lombard, and Grace Kelly. She was gorgeous and incredibly talented. Too bad she quit so young.”

  “Maybe she found something else she’d rather do.”

  He looked at her again. “What else could possibly have compared to the fame, the money, and the adulation that came with being a movie star back in the days when that was really special?”

  “Gee, I don’t know. Maybe having a life of your own? Maybe getting married and having children? Maybe being able to gain ten pounds or quit bleaching your hair without it being treated with the importance of a national scandal? Maybe being able to go to the grocery store or to church or out to lunch without being mobbed by rabid fans?” She gave him a dry look. “You tell me. Why would someone rich and famous choose anonymity over life under a very big microscope?”

  He would like to take her question as a sign that she was leaning at least a little toward believing him. After all, John Smith, some poor crazy schmuck who was, at best, delusional, would live anonymously because that was who he was, because he had no claim to fame. On the other hand, the John Smith who had given life to Simon Tremont, legendary author and mysterious millionaire, knew a few things about fame, adulation, and rabid fans.

  But
he didn’t believe her question was an indication of anything, other than the fact that after an afternoon and evening of virtual silence, she was willing to talk to him again.

  And after an afternoon and evening of her shunning, he was willing to settle for simple conversation. He was grateful for it.

  “I moved into the mountains because I thought that was the best place for me. I wasn’t doing well at dealing with the world, and the world—or, at least, the people I knew in it—wasn’t dealing well with me.”

  Her expression turned somber. “You mean because of the accident.”

  The accident. She made it sound so simple, so blameless, so damned accidental and therefore undeserving of guilt. He had a tendency to think of it in harsher terms, such as the day he killed his brother and crippled his sister. The day his own life should have ended. The day he destroyed his family and his future.

  Lately he’d discovered that he wanted a future. He wanted it a lot.

  “Yeah,” he agreed at last. “Because of the accident.” Picking up the remote control, he stopped the tape, then muted the volume. “I’m the luckiest bastard in the world. I walked away from a wreck that, by rights, should have left me as dead as Tom, and I didn’t have a scratch. I spent six years drinking too much, looking for ways to die, living as dangerously as I could, and nothing ever happened. I made it through school by the skin of my teeth and was about to flunk out of college because I was too damned stupid, and a few years later I lucked into a career that has earned me more money than I can spend in the next fifty years. I’m damned lucky… and my life is still the pits. Moving into the mountains was both my salvation and my punishment. I couldn’t hurt anyone up there, and no one could hurt me.”