Finding Laura

by Kay Hooper

  She freed one of her hands and touched his face almost curiously, frowning a little as she wondered when it had happened. “You said you had a right,” she murmured.

  “I was wrong. Josie, we can go back to the way things were before. It’ll be enough.”

  “Will it?”

  His face tightened beneath her fingers, but Alex’s expression remained calm. “Yes.”

  She traced the shape of his bottom lip slowly with a fingertip. “But you said the next time I came to you, I’d have to come alone.”

  “As you may have noticed, you didn’t come to me. I came to you.” Alex uttered a soft laugh and then caught her hand against his cheek and pressed his lips against her palm. “Pride sunk and ultimatum in pieces. And after only a few days, yet. You should be proud of yourself, sweet. It takes a lot to bring a Kilbourne to his knees.”

  “That’s not where I want him,” she said.

  The chaise was narrow and the night was chilly, but neither condition had much of an effect on their passion. And if either of them realized that someone else might have been wandering the maze and would come upon a very private scene at the center, that didn’t inhibit them either.

  Their clothing was discarded hastily, dropped on the floor of the gazebo. Shoes were kicked aside and pillows scattered. They were so frantic for one another that there was no time or patience for foreplay, and no need. Within minutes, Josie was lying back on the chaise, her thighs cradling Alex and her fingers gripping his shoulders as he pushed inside her almost roughly.

  It was as if they had been apart for months instead of days, as if desire had built inside them both like pressure inside a boiler. All that mattered was the release of that pressure, and they found release in each other.

  Lying limply beneath him, Josie finally found the energy to murmur, “We didn’t even untie the curtains.”

  Alex pushed himself up on his elbows to look down at her. Smiling just a little, he said, “Do you really care?”

  In answer, she lifted her head far enough to kiss him. “But we should probably get dressed,” she said. “It’s getting colder out here.”

  “Mmm. I think I’ll suggest that we glass this place in and install some kind of heater before winter.”

  “Then it wouldn’t be a gazebo.”

  “Maybe not, but it would be more comfortable on chilly October nights.” He kissed her and then eased away, reaching for their clothing.

  Josie didn’t say anything else until they were both dressed and ready to head back toward the house. Then, looking up at him, she said, “Thank you, Alex.”

  Surprised, he said, “For what?”

  “For not making me—”

  Alex touched her lips with a finger to stop the words. “You’ll let him go when you’re ready,” he said. “I realize that now.”

  She wanted to say something else, to reassure him somehow, but he hadn’t asked for reassurances. So she just nodded and walked beside him as they left the gazebo. And it wasn’t until they were halfway out of the lighted maze that her hand crept into his.

  “Alex, will you answer a question for me, honestly?”

  “If I can.”

  “Are you and Daniel … up to something?”

  He looked down at her, surprised again. “Up to something? That’s an odd way of putting it. Makes us sound like two boys sneaking cigarettes out behind the barn.”

  She met his gaze, her own serious. “That wasn’t an answer.”

  He looked away first, and they walked for several moments more in silence. Then, finally, he said, “Peter left a mess behind, sweet. We’re just trying to clean it up.”

  “What kind of mess?”

  Alex shook his head. “I think this is very much a case of what you don’t know can’t hurt you. You trust me, don’t you?”

  “Yes. But—”

  “No buts.” His fingers tightened around hers. “It turns out that my dearly departed cousin was a bigger son of a bitch than even I realized, and if we can’t repair the damage he did … well, the family will suffer for it.”

  “But you won’t tell me what it’s all about?”

  “I can’t, Josie. Not yet.”

  They came out of the maze then and took the path that would lead them back to the house. There was enough light to see by, but when Josie looked up at Alex, she found his expression shadowed and unreadable.

  Slowly she said, “You told me days ago that Amelia was up to something. And Daniel. You made it sound like a war, as if you believed they were somehow fighting each other. You even wondered how many of us would be left standing when it was all over.”

  “Did I say all that?” Alex shook his head. “Damned indiscreet of me.”

  Josie didn’t let his light, offhand tone deter her. “Daniel and Amelia have always … grappled with each other. But since Peter died, it’s worse. Much worse. It’s almost as if they hate each other. Do they?”

  “I don’t know, sweet.”

  “Do you—do you know who killed Peter?”

  “No.”

  Josie wanted to ask him if he had gone out that night after she had left him, but couldn’t bring herself to. Instead she said, “All this is … connected, isn’t it? Amelia and Daniel’s fight, Peter’s murder—and the mess he left behind. It’s all tied together somehow.”

  “Leave it alone, Josie. You’ll be better off if you’ll just leave it alone.”

  His tone warned her, but she couldn’t help saying, “Why do I feel as if, sooner or later, I’ll have to choose sides?”

  “I hope you won’t,” was all he said.

  She let the subject drop then, unwilling to push him because he had been so willing to give her the time she needed. And when they went into the quiet house and upstairs, she answered his questioning look with a nod and went with him into his bedroom.

  • • •

  LAURA DID DECIDE to stay at the Kilbourne house over the weekend, and so arrived on Friday morning with a bag packed. She unpacked in the same suite in which she’d spent Wednesday night, and then went downstairs to find that Amelia was ready to sit for another sketch.

  Laura had another idea. “Amelia, I know you have things to do; I heard what Josie told you about all the mail that’s come in. And what I really need to do is get in some practice with my paints. I brought everything with me. Why don’t I set up somewhere out of the way—the conservatory, probably, since there’s plenty of light in there—and occupy myself for today.”

  Amelia hesitated, then nodded. “I think that’s an excellent idea, child. I do have quite a few calls to return and notes to respond to, and I should go into the city this afternoon to see to several business matters. If you really don’t mind being on your own today—”

  “No, of course not, Amelia. I’ll be fine.”

  The old lady nodded again. “Then I’ll leave you to it.”

  So Laura got her paintcase and easel from her car and set up in the conservatory while Amelia and Josie settled down to work in the library. The house was very quiet, and as was so often the case, Laura had so far seen only those two. She had no idea where the others were.

  She was restless, oddly on edge, and as the morning wore on, she was more and more conscious of a sense of waiting within her, a feeling of expectation she couldn’t begin to explain.

  Laura had positioned herself to take advantage of the view out into the gardens, deciding to practice by painting the section of the gardens that contained the arched footbridge. She tried to divorce her mind from her fingers, something that was fairly easy to do considering the thoughts and questions darting through her head. And it wasn’t until Josie came to get her for lunch that she realized she had not been painting the footbridge at all.

  “Hey, that’s lovely,” Josie said admiringly.

  “Thank you.” Laura dropped her brush into a can of turpentine and frowned at the canvas, baffled. The feathery strokes of color showed flowers and trees along the edge of a lake, with mountains beginning to rise
in the background. It was a beautiful place—but Laura had no idea where it was or why she had painted it.

  Josie didn’t seem to notice anything wrong. “Ready for lunch?”

  “Just let me clean this brush …”

  Both Madeline and Kerry appeared for lunch, though there was no sign of Anne. Nobody explained where Daniel and Alex were, and Laura didn’t have the nerve to ask. Afterward, forgoing her usual rest time, Amelia left for her afternoon engagements with Madeline, who had decided to ride along, since she had a doctor’s appointment.

  The family chauffeur, Laura was wryly amused to note, was a thin, upright gentleman with gray hair who was clearly on the shady side of sixty.

  When the big Lincoln had gone, Kerry headed off to practice her music, and Josie, after checking to make certain Laura didn’t want to join her, went for a walk in the gardens.

  Laura returned to her painting, but the more she stared at it, the more restless and uneasy she felt. There was something wrong with it, although she didn’t know what. Something missing. It bothered her. She caught herself pacing back and forth like a caged cat and abruptly decided that enough was enough. She needed to do something else for a while.

  Remembering Amelia’s advice to explore the house in order to better understand her, Laura thought about where she could go without invading anyone’s privacy, and realized she hadn’t yet seen the basement or attic. Since both had presumably been virtually cleared out for the estate sale, she doubted she would find anything interesting, but before she could think too much about it, she found herself moving back through the house.

  AS SHE CLIMBED the stairs to the second floor, Laura wondered idly why it was the attic that drew her rather than the basement, and thought it might have something to do with the general atmosphere of the house. As dark and repressive as she found most of the house, the thought of descending into its bowels, so to speak, held no appeal for her at all.

  She found the stairs to the attic easily enough, not far from her suite. The narrow stairs themselves were rather dark, but there was a switch at the top, and when she flipped it, several shaded bulbs that hung from the rafters glowed with life. They showed a vast space, roughly finished with unpainted, unpolished flooring and Sheetrock walls. There were no windows, and though the lights provided adequate illumination, there were shadowy places among the stacks of boxes and trunks, the old furniture, and the unidentifiable bundles of family possessions.

  Laura was about to begin exploring when she caught a faint spark of light at the far side of the attic. She walked past two huge steamer trunks and several pieces of furniture that had for some reason escaped being sold, her attention focused on the far wall. There was something hanging on the wall, covered by an old blanket. A corner of the blanket had come loose, and she could see a bit of an elaborate frame and the glint of something shiny.

  A mirror.

  Even though the bottom of the frame seemed to be on a level with Laura’s thighs, it was a huge mirror; she had to reach high to tug at the blanket that was tucked over the top of the frame. Wary of dislodging the mirror, she pulled carefully until the blanket began to slide down, then swept it off to the side and took a step back as the mirror was revealed.

  She didn’t know why it had escaped the sale, perhaps because it was a Kilbourne family heirloom or simply because there was little demand these days for so huge a mirror. But it was beautiful, the frame solid oak carved with an artist’s skill and the glass polished to perfection.

  But as always, Laura noted those things only in passing. She stared into the mirror itself, looking past her own reflection, over her right shoulder at the room behind her. The attic was so shadowy, so filled with odd shapes and silhouettes and patches of inky blackness, that it was like gazing on something mysterious and dreamlike.

  And dreamlike, the reflection shimmered and changed.

  There was a shifting of darkness, a faint movement, and her heart began to pound wildly against her ribs. She could have sworn she saw the room behind her transform, saw it become first a candlelit bedroom, then a parlor, a living room, another bedroom. And through those rooms, a man walked slowly toward her, changing as his surroundings changed, first dark and then blond and then dark again, his faces different, his clothing altering from one style to another.

  Then the reflection shimmered faintly again, and Laura stared at Daniel as he came out of the shadows behind her. His eyes caught and held hers, and a certainty stronger than anything she had ever felt in her life swept over Laura with the force of a tidal wave.

  It’s you. It’s you I’ve been looking for.

  She couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe. She watched him, felt him behind her. His hands touched hers, then glided up her arms slowly until they rested on her shoulders. His fingers curled under the collar of her silk blouse and pulled it aside, and he bent his head until his lips touched the skin he had exposed. She heard herself make a low sound, sensual beyond belief, and saw her head fall back to allow him more room to explore her neck. His other hand slid across her collarbone and surrounded her throat, tilting her head back a touch farther, his thumb and middle finger lying across her carotid arteries, and she felt her blood pulsing underneath them.

  At some point, Laura closed her eyes, the reflection she had been watching less important to her, less real, than the sensations he was arousing in her body. Her blouse was unbuttoned and pushed off her shoulders, and her head rolled against his shoulder in a helpless response when his hands cupped her breasts through the bra. She heard another sound escape her, a sound of such immeasurable longing that the pain of it hurt her throat, and her hands went back, searching for and finding his hard thighs, gripping with all her strength.

  “Laura …” His voice was low, rough. He turned her swiftly in his arms, and his mouth came down on hers, almost bruising in its hungry force.

  She thought she was melting, merging into him somehow, her entire body burning. His mouth on hers seduced and compelled, drawing her to him as surely and completely as the moon drew the tides. She fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, blindly desperate, and felt him unfasten her slacks, felt the cool slide of the material down her legs, and she automatically stepped out of them and nudged off her loafers and socks.

  His shirt finally gave way, and she pushed it off his shoulders. His chest was hard, and springy hair teased her fingertips as she stroked him, and the harsh sound that escaped him when he lifted his head to stare down at her trailed over her nerve endings like a caress.

  He wasn’t enigmatic now. His eyes burned and his rugged features were taut in a masklike expression of intense desire, and when he lifted his hands to frame her face, they were shaking. “God, Laura …”

  Her mouth was wild under his and her hands fumbled with his belt, somehow got the pants unfastened and pushed down over his narrow hips. Her bra was gone, and her breasts flattened against his chest when he held her fiercely against him. Laura felt the hard swell of his arousal and moaned when her body answered with a throb of need.

  She wasn’t conscious of moving or being moved, but suddenly she was lying on her back, completely naked now, the blanket that had covered the mirror a jumbled bed beneath her, and he was there with her. His big hands were on her breasts, stroking and shaping, his thumbs rubbing across her tight nipples in a touch like fire. One of his knees pushed between her thighs in a rough and primitive caress, and his mouth on hers devoured.

  Laura had believed that she had experienced the full range of sexual pleasure before. But now she realized that what she had felt before this had been merely a healthy young body’s response to simple physical stimulation. Like any sexual creature’s, her body was designed to react positively to a male for whom she felt an attraction; when he kissed her, when he touched her, she experienced pleasure.

  But when Daniel touched her, she felt something far beyond a simple physical response. It was as if every cell of her body lacked something only he could provide, as if she were designed
to merge with him, created to dovetail perfectly with him because he was the other half of herself.

  “Daniel …” His mouth was on her breasts now, and Laura didn’t know how long she could endure the burning pleasure of it. Her fingers slid into his thick hair and she held his head against her, moaning. “Daniel, please …”

  His lips slid up over the slope of her breast, up her throat, and slanted over her mouth. He kneed her thighs farther apart and then moved between them, and in a single powerful thrust was deep inside her.

  For an instant they were both still, almost stunned, their bodies as close as two people’s could be. Then Daniel was moving, driving himself into her in a fierce, quickening rhythm, and Laura cried out because the pleasure exploded all through her body without warning, like nothing she had ever felt before. Dazed and trembling in the aftermath, she held him with what strength was left to her while he groaned and shuddered with his own shattering climax.

  THE DRY, STALE air of the attic felt heavy, languid. Or, at least, that was what Laura blamed for her disinclination to move. Their bed was hard and unyielding, the thin blanket providing almost no cushioning between them and the unfinished wood flooring. With her head pillowed on his almost equally hard shoulder, she looked across his chest at the scattered jumble of their clothing, feeling her cheeks warm absurdly at the tangle of her panties and his shorts.

  My God, what’s happened to me?

  What she had seen—what she had thought she had seen—in the mirror seemed very dreamlike in retrospect. Unreal. Of course unreal. But no amount of reason, no logical arguments, could change the certainty she felt down to her bones. In countless mirrors all through her life, she had looked for him, knowing that one day he would be there.

  It was, like so much in her life, inexplicable. And Laura shied away from thinking about it right now, because she was half afraid of any answer she might have arrived at.

  Realizing, suddenly, that there were other people in this house, that Josie might have returned from her walk or Amelia and Madeline from the city, Laura tried to force herself to move, to push back away from the hard heat of his body and the disturbing comfort of his embrace. But her muscles had barely tensed when his arms tightened around her.