‘But ... but surely...’ Ruth stammered. ‘I mean ... I don’t know anything about your business affairs and...’
‘And it’s time you damned well did,’ was the gruff reply, cutting off her objections for the moment. ‘And don’t, for goodness’ sake, forget the passport; you’ll need it for identification—which means you’re Ruth Goodwin — that’s important!’
Important, and slightly unnerving after nearly a year of using her maiden name, the name in which all her nursing accreditation was documented. She’d never got round to changing that, and had been glad of it when she’d fled from her marriage. Now, somehow, his comment sounded more of an accusation than he’d implied.
‘But ... surely Rosemary ...’ and she faltered only slightly over the hated name ‘... surely Rosemary can take care of all this. She is your partner, after all.’
Kurtis sighed, this time a sigh recognisable as being forced by frustration as much as exhaustion.
‘Business partner,’ he specified. ‘And that only in certain very distinct areas. You, dear witch, are my partner. And this little bit of business requires both Rosemary and you, since I can’t manage to front up. You, your signature, your proper identification, your status as my wife. Is that clear enough?’
Ruth hardly heard the last of it; her mind was still focused on that astonishing earlier bit about her being his partner. Not Rosemary — her!
It was a remark she knew would stay with her for a very, very long time, although whether its significance would survive their eventual decision about the future of their marriage she couldn’t imagine and didn’t dare try, just now.
Kurtis evidently wasn’t aware of having been so profound. More visibly weakening now, he began rushing through the rest of his instructions. And now, once again, it seemed to Ruth that Rosemary was the dominant factor.
Rosemary would meet her at the plane. Rosemary would take her to a depository where keys and signatures and identifications would be needed to retrieve certain documents. Rosemary would take Ruth, who would take the documents to where the documents could be inspected, itemised, receipted and signed for. Rosemary should be able to answer any queries the recipient might have.
‘But you’d better take the phone number here, just in case,’ he added. ‘I’m not sure I can depend on my memory real well under this damned medication, but I’ll manage somehow if I must.’
Then he went on to explain that for the first set of documents Ruth would be given other documents. Ruth would be given them, not Rosemary. And Ruth would have to sign for them.
‘You needn’t bother inspecting them, because they won’t make any sense to you,’ he said. And Ruth was sure she caught a flavour of ... disappointment? ...in his weakening voice.
But it wasn’t important, not in comparison with her growing concern that he was over-extending himself, stretching his now fragile physical resources further than he should.
‘You have to rest,’ she said, only to be ignored.
‘Plenty of time to rest later,’ he said. ‘Like you said, I’ll be here a while. But there’s damned little time to sort this business out. I want you on that plane today, if you can possibly manage it.’
And then, with a surprising softness in his voice, ‘Only make sure you drive carefully and take care of yourself. You’re more important than any business deal.’
It was, for a moment, as if he’d never said the words, as if they’d magically appeared from thin air. Ruth floated off into an instant of unreality, and when she returned he was all brusque and businesslike again, the softness gone from his voice, his eyes shadowed with fatigue but sharply focused.
The second set of documents would change hands. Rosemary would provide transportation and such introductions as were necessary … then money would become involved … real money, cash, in fairly stupendous amounts.
‘Count it,’ he said in a determined tone. ‘You won’t have to question the amount — that’s already been agreed. But count it and make sort of a show of doing so, because it will be expected.’
‘Count it,’ she repeated, her brain starting to go into overload at the complications of the whole thing. ‘And...?’
‘And then Rosemary will take you to a bank, where there is a special account in my name and yours, and you will put the money into the account, get a proper receipt for it, and then the hard part’s over,’ he said.
‘The hard part’s over?’ Ruth shook her head, annoyed with herself for seeming to repeat everything he said. ‘OK, and then what do I do?’
‘By then you’ll probably be as tired as I am now,’ was the reply. ‘You’ll most likely want to hit the sack and sleep the clock around. We don’t have the flat in Sydney any more, which presents a slight problem, but Rosemary will expect to put you up if you get there tonight, so I imagine she won’t mind doing it again tomorrow night if it’s needed.’
Not on your life, was Ruth’s immediate reaction. She would, she determined, sleep in the streets first! But she didn’t say so, didn’t even bother to question Kurtis’ presumption. In his condition it would only cause unnecessary agitation.
She said instead, with studied casualness, ‘I’m sure Rosemary will have plenty of other things to do. I see by today’s paper she’s just about to marry.’
Was it her comment that caused the flicker of pain so obvious to her trained eye? Or was it expectable, logical pain caused by his injuries? Ruth had to admit she couldn’t tell the difference; all she could recognise was the pain itself.
But she was more than capable of deciphering Kurtis’ next move, which was to reach up with his uninjured hand to draw her down closer to him, then to cup his hand round her neck, his fingers touching with deliberate tenderness, deliberate sensuousness, at the nape. The gesture caught her slightly off balance, its effect even more so, Ruth felt the tingling that seemed to flow through her entire body, tautening her nipples, flowing through her loins like liquid fire, weakening her knees so that she almost fell across his bedridden figure. She was so sensitive to his touch that she could have melted right there on the spot, but so sensitive to the emotional chasm between them, she wanted only to run, to flee.
As it was, she found herself half sprawled across her husband, hampered in her ability to get away by the need to avoid leaning on him, falling on him.
Kurtis had no such impairment, or seemed not to. His fingers played a time of agonising sweetness at her nape, his lips moved against her cheek, sliding along her jaw line to her ear.
‘Remember to drive carefully,’ he whispered, the very words a caress, as tangible as his physical touch. ‘And remember too, my lady witch, that I love you.’
He waited then, until she had regained her balance, was upright once again and looking down at him, before adding, in quite deliberate tones, ‘And remember that Rosemary isn’t your enemy, Ruth — isn’t and never has been.’
To which … how to answer? That he was wrong, mistaken, deliberately blind, hideously biased? Ruth didn’t know the answer herself, could see no logic to any reply. She could only nod, her senses overwhelmed by his physical touch and her own startling reaction at seeing him so helpless, so in pain.
‘I ... I’d better be getting on, then,’ she said, and would have turned and left without another word. But Kurtis forestalled such action by reaching out to grip her wrist, pulling her down to where his lips, swollen and in pain, could touch her own with a softness, a sweetness her mental barriers couldn’t withstand. He held her that way for hours, days, an instant, his lips as much a physical trap as the fingers that slid across her wrist in an equally deliberate caress.
‘Go well, witch,’ he finally sighed. ‘And remember — this is important. Try and get it right.’
The final word to her fleeing back; Ruth was screaming inside herself, Run like a rabbit, but she couldn’t not run, or she might never leave at all, she thought.
The next three hours, while she quickly packed a small bag, made the required telephone call to Mrs O’
Connor, explaining the situation, outlining Kurtis’ injuries, then filled up her car with petrol and began the drive to Hobart, seemed endless, timeless.
The journey south along the Midlands Highway, a journey so familiar as to be boring beyond all logic, took forever; she was harassed by every slow-poke, every labouring truck and semi-trailer, every Sunday driver puddling his way home oblivious to the traffic disruptions he caused.
And throughout she kept hearing Kurtis’ voice saying ‘you’re more important than any business deal’.
When she got to Hobart, the simple act of unlocking the now unfamiliar door of the flat made her distinctly uncomfortable. She felt ... not quite a stranger but even less a woman who’d spent nearly ten months living here. The aura of strangeness deepened as she rummaged through wardrobes to find clothes she’d left still hanging as she’d left them, still tidily snuggled in bedroom drawers, her jewellery all laid out in the jewel case.
‘I feel like a housebreaker,’ she muttered to herself, only to flinch as the sound of her voice echoed spookily through the empty flat.
And she felt more like one as she crouched in the laundry with poor light making even more difficult the task of fumbling through the combination of Kurtis’ well-concealed safe.
Which, once opened, revealed exactly what he’d said it would. Her passport — the first real document in her married name but a document never used. At her insistence, Ruth recalled, because, much as she’d wanted a honeymoon and much as Kurtis had offered, the timing just wasn’t right. Her work didn’t allow sufficient time off when he could fit it into his hectic schedule. Instead of Europe or North America, their honeymoon had involved visiting Tasmania’s waterfalls in a scanty series of day trips and weekends.
And the well-concealed key was there, which she tucked into her handbag with the passport. And money! Money in quantities she found quite startling in her own hands. She had seen Kurtis handle such blocks of currency before, handle it casually as so much waste paper, but when her fingers touched the manifold bundles of fifty-dollar and one hundred-dollar notes they seemed to take on a life of their own, a stunning importance she simply could not take as lightly as Kurtis did.
‘I probably shouldn’t keep this much cash about the place,’ he’d once said. ‘It would serve better out there in the marketplace earning more money, but sometimes ... well... sometimes deals require cash; sometimes it’s the only thing that will make the ultimate difference. Cash money has a power all of its own, one you can see and feel and almost taste.’
Ruth had paid little true attention then, but now, with the bundles in her fingers, she could feel the power in them, knew just what Kurtis had meant. And she wondered why she hadn’t before, why he had never filled her hands with bundles of large bills, why he hadn’t forced her to recognise their power.
She was extra careful in closing up the safe and concealing it again, suddenly all too aware of how vulnerable it might be while Kurtis was in hospital. And afterwards — where would he recover? It couldn’t, she thought, be here. Not alone. But the thought of having him with her simply wouldn’t come into focus when she tried to force it into reality in her mind.
Thinking about telephoning Rosemary in Sydney was no less difficult, although Ruth knew it must lie done, and soon! Still, having found the number in Kurtis’ office, she found herself dithering over making the call itself. Dithering, nervous, angry, but — she discovered suddenly and with not a little surprise — the anger wasn’t with Rosemary; it was with herself. She had Kurtis’ own words to guide her, but not enough faith in either him or herself simply to accept them.
‘Accept. That’s all I have to do,’ she told herself aloud, making the simple statement a litany as she slowly began punching the buttons that would connect her to Sydney. Then, startling herself with the laugh it created, she glanced down to the phone and, seeing it had a memory function, Rosemary’s name clearly marked, realised that would have made the process substantially simpler.
‘One button — nine buttons — ten buttons. Does it really matter?’ she said to herself, and continued as she’d begun. But somehow that tiny contradiction calmed her, and when Rosemary picked up her telephone on the second ring Ruth was comfortably in control.
She explained the accident, detailed Kurtis’ injuries in layman’s terms, then went on to explain the problem the two women now faced as a result. Rosemary was far more concerned with Kurtis’ health than the business problem.
‘That’s easy fixed,’ she said. ‘Give me half an hour—less—and I’ll call you back with the details. I’m on a first-name basis with practically every airline booking clerk in Sydney, so it’ll be faster for me to make your arrangements from this end. You just get yourself packed and put a cab on stand-by. I’ll get back to you soonest.’
Then she left Ruth holding a silent telephone and silently cursing herself for forgetting to make her own airline booking before telephoning Sydney.
‘Flighty,’ she muttered, then changed the word to just plain ‘stupid’ and repeated that over and over as she stared out of the window at the Derwent estuary with its scattered confetti of varying sails, her mind numbed by the rapidity of events.
She thought of phoning the hospital, only to drop the idea because it might tie up the telephone just when Rosemary might try to reach her. There wasn’t really anything to pack, either, she thought, then realised she might need clothing substantially more sophisticated than what she had brought with her.
Surely she would! The real impact of Kurtis’ instructions suddenly struck her, and she spent ten minutes going through drawers and wardrobes to put together two business outfits from clothing she’d left behind in her fleeing.
A two-piece suit in ivory and black, the fabric sleek and clinging, but ideal for travelling in being uncrushable, never needing ironing. She had missed that outfit, she now admitted to herself, more than any other in the left-behind wardrobe. And the other was a warmer, slightly more sedate blazer and skirt in basic navy with vivid scarlet underpinnings and a blouse which carried through the colour scheme.
It felt strange, somehow, sorting through clothes that had become relics of a shattered relationship, a part of the past now yanked into the present through necessity. But it felt even stranger, Ruth found, when she pulled open what had been her lingerie drawer to find vivid, more intimate memories flooding out in a riot of colour.
A memory more than two years old but fresh as morning reached out to touch her, and the reaction was much the same as when Kurtis had touched her neck with his fingers.
The first time he had brought her a present of lingerie, sleek and frilly and almost indecently scanty and ten times more expensive than anything she had ever remotely considered for herself, she had been torn between embarrassment and naive shyness, almost balking at his laughing insistence on an immediate modelling.
‘It won’t take long, because I intend to take it right back off you and then make mad, passionate love to you,’ he’d said, and the gleam in his eyes had matched his grin, the tenderness of his touch at her throat.
There had been a special intimacy, then, in the touch of the cool silk against her skin, a touch somehow as delicate and sensitising as that of Kurtis’ fingers. Her shyness had risen to the bait of the minuscule suspender belt, the unfamiliar difference in the feel of stockings instead of tights. But it had been compensated for, and more, by the look of admiration as Kurtis had watched her, caressing her with his eyes, and she had finally thrown back her shoulders and strutted, revelling in the effect despite knowing he had created it as much as she.
‘I don’t ever need reminding that you’re very much woman indeed, my lady witch,’ he’d said in a whisper against her ear as he slowly, delicately, began to reverse the process she’d only just completed. ‘But you, on occasion, on the blue and bad days, might just find it nice to be reassured.’ Then he’d laughed, a booming, lusty, comfortable laugh, and added, ‘Besides, it’s the kind of gift that can always guarantee t
o be for both of us.’
And it had begun a love-game between them, a tradition that had evolved from the first time she’d collected him at the airport wearing what he called her ‘pedestrian underwear’, the very utilitarian, basic underwear she had always worn with her uniforms.
In the very process of hugging her, kissing her, his fingers had crept tantalisingly down her back, then halted abruptly as they somehow detected the difference between sultry silk and sensible cotton. His whispered suggestion concerning the bra’s immediate future had left Ruth gasping with surprise and laughter, but the seriousness of his attitude was never in question.
‘You can wear that sensible, pedestrian stuff for work if you must,’ he’d said on the way home. ‘But never, never when you’re going to be with me, unless you want to cause a serious and immediate domestic when I remove it from your wondrous body and cut it into very, very tiny shreds. Do I make myself clear, my mistress lady witch?’
Ruth allowed herself a chuckle at remembering her flamboyant response.
‘I don’t see much difference — you take the fancy stuff off just about as quick,’ she’d quipped, only to have him reach across to put a hand on her thigh and murmur in overdone, sultry tones,
‘Ah, no ... slower. Much, much slower. When we get home, my love, I shall demonstrate.’
And he had. Ruth found herself remembering that wondrous occasion, her fingers idly stroking the fabric of a crimson silk chemise, when the ringing telephone brought her back to reality.
‘It’s all organised — the plane leaves in an hour and a half; your ticket will be waiting for you. You’ve got money to pay for it? Right, see you when you arrive; just go straight out the front door and watch for a white BMW ... See you.’
Rosemary’s expectably efficient arrangements were delivered with gunfire rapidity, with no opportunity for Ruth to broach the subject of where she would stay that night or the next. And now, Ruth accepted, was hardly the time to worry about it.
A Magical Affair Page 14
