by Sandra Brown
The worst of them was a hollow as large as her fist where a section of his quadriceps had been gouged out. From there a scar cut a gully half an inch wide down the entire length of his right thigh and curved around toward the back of his knee. On his lower legs was a network of crisscrossing scars, some raised and bumpy, while others looked like flat, shiny ribbons of plastic that had been stretched between puckered skin. His calves were disproportionately small and flaccid. He was missing the smallest two toes on his right foot.
Overwhelmed with compassion for the agony he must have suffered, she timorously traced one of the raised scars with her fingertip. “Do they still hurt?”
“Sometimes.”
She looked up at him sorrowfully, then leaned forward and kissed one of the worst of the scars that snaked up his shin. Reaching down, he stroked her cheek. She lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed the palm.
He said, “Now that your morbid curiosity has been satisfied, can we get in one fast fuck before breakfast?”
She yanked her head back. “What?”
“I think you heard me.”
As shocked as if he’d struck her, she stood up, reached for her nightgown, and held it against her, a flimsy shield. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing except an early morning woodie that needs your attention.”
She shook her head in befuddlement. The coarse language wasn’t that startling. But he wasn’t being naughty for naughtiness’ sake. No flirtatious wink accompanied his words. He was being purposefully, hurtfully crude. “Why are you acting like this?”
“This is what I’m like, Maris.”
“No, you’re not.”
He gave a dismissive shrug. “Okay, whatever.” He pushed his chair backward, then turned it away from her and headed across the room toward the chifforobe. “I’ve got something for you.”
“Parker?” she called in exasperation.
“What?”
“Why are you acting this way? I don’t understand. What happened between last night and this morning?”
“You don’t remember? Well, let’s see. Between last night and this morning, I’d say your orgasms outnumbered mine about two to one, but after your fifth or sixth, I honestly lost count. Of course, with women it’s sometimes hard to tell when one leaves off and another starts, or if they’re even for real. But if you fake it, honey, you fake it convincingly.”
He’d opened the door to the chifforobe and removed a box from one of the interior drawers. Now he spun around and faced her, grinning cruelly as he looked her up and down. “And I’ll say this for you, Mrs. Matherly-Reed. You’re tight. As a goddamn fist. And wet as a mouth. Very nice. I wonder why your husband went out for it.”
Tears of mortification filled her eyes. Angrily she swiped one away as it slid down her cheek. Hastily, she pulled on her nightgown, the only article of clothing available. “I don’t know what’s the matter with you, but I won’t continue this. I can’t match you for vulgarity.”
“Sure you can. You’ve got an expansive vocabulary. Maybe not one as colorful as mine, but if you put your mind to it, I’ll bet you come up with something suitable to say. Maybe on your plane ride back to New York. I assume you’re leaving.”
Not even deigning to answer, she headed for the door. “Wait!” He rolled his chair over to her. “Envy. The final draft.”
He practically thrust the box into her hands, so she had no choice but to take it. She looked at it, then at him. “It’s finished?”
“Has been. All along. From the beginning. What you’ve been reading in installments is the polishing draft.”
She gaped at him. Words failed her.
“I never submit a partial manuscript, Maris. No one sees my book until it’s finished. I wouldn’t have sent a prologue unless I had a book behind it.”
“Why, Parker? Why?”
Deliberately mistaking her meaning, he shrugged. “Personal policy. That’s just the way I work.”
Maris felt as though the spot on which she stood were eroding rapidly and that at any second it would disappear out from under her altogether. But she wasn’t going to sink without a fight.
“That’s just the way you work?” she repeated, raising her voice to a shout. “What the hell was all this for, Parker? Or is that even your name? How many do you have? What in hell has this been about? Why the lies, the games?”
“They seemed like fun at the time. We both got laid. Several times last night you moaned, ‘Yes, yes, harder, faster, Parker.’ X-rated things, too. Sounded to me like you were having fun.”
For several beats, she just stared at him, wondering at what point he had become this sarcastic stranger. Then she hurled the box as far as she could throw it. It upended in midair, the lid came off, and some four hundred manuscript pages scattered in that many directions across the polished hardwood floor and Aubusson rug.
Maris stalked to the door and jerked it open.
Mike was standing on the other side of it, one hand raised, about to knock. The other was holding a cordless telephone. “Maris.” There was no surprise in his voice. He had expected her to be with Parker. Her emotional state, however, seemed to alarm him.
Looking beyond her shoulder, he took in the situation at a glance. The look he gave Parker went beyond reproof; it was that of a hanging judge about to hand down the sentence. Stiffly, he extended the telephone toward Maris. “For you. I hated to disturb you, but the gentleman said it was an emergency.”
She took the telephone from him with a shaking hand and stepped out into the hallway. Mike went into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. Maris leaned against the wall and took several seconds to compose herself. She breathed deeply, sniffed her nose hard, blinked away tears.
Then, clearing her throat, she said, “Hello?”
“Maris?”
“Noah?” His voice was strangely muffled and subdued. She barely recognized it.
“It’s imperative that you return to New York immediately. I took the liberty of making your travel arrangements. A ticket is waiting for you at the Savannah airport. Your flight departs at eleven-ten, so you haven’t got much time.”
Her dread was so absolute, it felt as though her heart had been replaced with an anvil. She was suddenly very cold. She closed her eyes, but tears leaked through. It would have been useless to try and hold them back. “It’s Dad, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so, yes.”
“Is it bad? A stroke?”
“He… God, this is tough. Telling you like this. You shouldn’t have to hear this news over the telephone, Maris, but… he’s dead.”
She cried out. Her knees buckled and she sank to the floor.
* * *
Parker was at his worktable in the solarium, but he wasn’t working. Instead he was staring out at the ocean. He broke his stare only occasionally, and that was when he compressed his bowed head between his hands in abject despair and self-loathing.
He’d heard Mike when he returned from the mainland, but he didn’t seek him out, and Mike didn’t come to him. He’d gone straight upstairs and had been moving around in his room ever since. It sounded as though he were pacing.
Parker had been replaying in his head his last conversation with Maris. If you could call it a conversation. His stomach knotted when he recalled the horrible things he’d said to her. Her stricken expression haunted him.
She might be consoled to know that he was as miserable as she, but he doubted it. The only way she might be consoled was if he were drawn and quartered and the pieces thrown to a herd of ravenous wild pigs. Starting with his mouth. His foul, abusive, nasty mouth.
The afternoon dragged on interminably. It was hot and muggy outside and that oppression had eked into the house to contribute to his feelings of suffocation. Or was the weather to blame? Maybe he was being smothered by remorse.
“I stayed with Maris until they boarded her flight.”
Parker hadn’t heard Mike come into the solarium. He sat bolt upright a
nd glanced over his shoulder toward the door. Mike was standing as stiff as a girder in his seersucker suit.
“It took off on time,” he added.
As soon as Maris could pack her things, she and Mike had departed for the mainland. She left without a word to Parker, but he hadn’t expected her to tell him good-bye. He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve a kiss my ass, or a go to hell, or even a screw you. Her leaving without even acknowledging him had been more eloquent than any epithet. Eloquent, classy, and dignified. Typical of her.
Hiding behind the drapery, he had watched her departure through the dining room window. She had looked very small beneath her wide-brimmed straw hat. She’d also worn sunglasses to conceal her weeping eyes from prying strangers. The tan she had acquired on the beach seemed to have faded with the news of her father’s death. She had looked pale and vulnerable, fragile enough to break from the air pressure alone.
Yet there was a brave dignity about her that suggested an enviable inner strength.
Mike had stowed her bags in the trailer of the Gator, then assisted her into the seat. Parker saw her lips move as she thanked him. Then he watched until the utility vehicle disappeared from sight through the tunnel of trees. He would probably never see her again. He had expected that.
What he hadn’t expected was that it would hurt so goddamn much.
He had believed himself to be beyond the grasp of pain. After what he had endured, he had imagined himself immune to it. He wasn’t. He had decided to anesthetize himself with several belts of bourbon, but the first one had made him so sick, he’d thrown it up. He didn’t think there was an analgesic that would be effective against this particular kind of pain.
Now his back was still to Mike. He kept his stinging eyes on the surf. “Maris was worried about her father last night. Maybe she had a premonition.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. They were very close.”
After Noah’s call, she had been in a state of complete emotional collapse, but she’d had the wherewithal to tell Mike that her father had fallen down the stairs of their country house. She’d been told that he had died instantly of a broken neck. It had happened during the middle of the night.
The noise had awakened Noah. He had rushed to Daniel’s aid, but when he couldn’t get a response out of him, he called 911. The rural emergency service had reached the house in a matter of minutes, but it didn’t matter—Daniel Matherly was dead.
Noah had refused to accept the paramedics’ word for it. The ambulance ran hot to the small community hospital. Doctors there pronounced Daniel dead, making it official and indisputable. Noah had seen no point in calling Maris until daylight.
“She probably feels guilty for not being there,” Parker said.
“She said as much on the way to the mainland.”
“How was she when she left?”
“How do you think she was, Parker?”
He frowned at Mike’s snide comeback, but he didn’t challenge it. He had asked a stupid question with an obvious answer. “She probably felt like she’d been run through a thrasher.”
“You certainly did your part.”
Unlike its predecessor, that cutting remark demanded to be addressed. Parker came around. “Are you suggesting that I’ve been a bad boy?”
“You know it without my saying so.”
“What are you going to do, Mike? Park me in the corner? Ground me for a month? Restrict my TV time? Rap my knuckles with a ruler?”
“Actually, I was thinking that you’re the one who should be run through a thrasher.”
Parker agreed that that was the least he deserved, but, while it was okay for him to think it, he resented hearing it from someone else. “Getting Maris into bed was part of the plot. You probably guessed that.”
“I guessed it. That doesn’t mean I liked it.”
“Nobody asked you to like it.”
“Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Like it.”
A scathing retort was on the tip of his tongue, but he foundered under Mike’s incisive stare. Turning his head away, he mumbled, “Irrelevant.”
“I don’t think so. I think it’s not only relevant but key to how you progress from here.”
Parker went back to his keyboard. “Excuse me. I’m trying to write.”
“Fine. Turn your back on me. Stare into that blank screen. Count the ticks of the cursor till hell freezes over, for all I care. Delude yourself into believing that you’re writing. We both know you’re not.”
Parker came back around, angry now. “Obviously you’ve reached a conclusion that you’re just dying to share. So spit it out. Get it out of your system. God knows I won’t have a minute’s peace until you do.”
The older man refused to take umbrage. “I’m not going to fight with you, Parker,” he said evenly. “But yes, I will tell you something you need to hear.” Ignoring Parker’s roll of the eyes, he went on. “You resurrected yourself when, for all practical purposes, your life was over. I was there to help. I needled you and badgered you along. But you did it. It was a heroic effort. You’re to be commended for overcoming incredible obstacles. You beat overwhelming odds. Beyond putting your life back on track, you have thrived.”
“Yea, me.”
The caustic interruption went ignored and Mike doggedly continued. “Your body has healed, but not your soul. The damage done to it was a thousand times worse than the injuries to your legs. Your soul is more twisted than they ever were. Pins and plates hold your bones together, and new skin patches the places where there was no skin left, but your soul hasn’t been mended. It’s still raw and bleeding, and you snarl at anyone who extends a hand to help you heal it.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for years, Mike,” he said sweetly. “I’m a lost cause.”
“You’re not a lost cause, you’re a coward,” Mike shouted angrily. “It takes far less courage to cling to the past than it does to face the future.”
“Very good, Mike. I should write that down. What was it again? ‘It takes far less—’ ”
“Sarcasm? Good. If I’m pissing you off, at least I know I have your attention.” Mike’s lined features softened and turned earnest. “Parker, consign Noah Reed to God. Or to the devil. Let them haggle over who’s to be his judge and what his punishment is to be.
“Then go to Maris. If you can get her to talk to you, lay open your heart. Explain everything. Start at the beginning and tell her all of it. Tell her Noah’s part. Confess yours. She may forgive you. She may not. But either way, you’ll be rid of it. For the first time in fourteen long years, you’ll be free of everything that happened in Key West. You will have saved yourself. Again. And in the only way that really matters.”
Parker’s heart was pounding hard and loudly against his eardrums, but he kept his expression passive. “Good sermon, Mike. Honestly. Very moving. But I’m going to stick to plan A.”
“And throw away a chance to be happy with a woman you love?”
“Love?” he scoffed. “Who said that?”
“You did. Every time you looked at her.”
“Have you been sneak-reading romance novels again? They’re not good for your blood pressure.”
“Okay, be funny. Deny you’re in love with her. You’re only wasting your breath. Maris hit you like those drugs you used to take. The night she came here, you got high on her, and after that you couldn’t get enough. She’s—”
“She’s Noah’s wife.”
Parker felt his control snap like the string on a tennis racket that had been whacked one too many times.
“She is Noah’s ‘dearly beloved, we are gathered here’ bride. That’s the important thing. That’s the only thing,” he yelled, slicing the air with his hand. “Nothing else matters. Not how I feel about her, or how she feels about me, or even how they feel about each other.
“She is Noah Reed’s wife, and I had her. But good. She was finger-fucked, and tongue-fucked, and mind-fucked. By
me!” He pounded his chest with his fist, his eyes shimmering with tears spawned by the white-hot rage that consumed him whenever he thought of Noah’s treachery. And now by the agony of his own guilt.
Mike’s features surrendered to gravity and settled into an aged mask of profound disappointment. “Perhaps you’re right, Parker. Perhaps you are a lost cause. Your cruelty to her goes beyond reprehensible. All you care about is this revenge plot of yours.”
“That’s right. Now you’re catching on.”
“What’s the next chapter?”
“Well, since Maris threw the manuscript at me, I don’t think I can count on her to get it to Noah. So I guess I’ll have to send it to him myself, registered and receipt requested, along with a cover letter saying that Envy is being simultaneously submitted to every publishing house in New York. If that doesn’t give his short-and-curlies a smart tug, then perhaps a postscript about his wife’s talent for giving head will.”
Mike shook his head with disgust. “And then what, Parker?”
“The gripping climax, of course.”
Mike subjected him to a long, hard stare, then turned and picked up two suitcases, which had been left in the kitchen and up till now out of Parker’s sight. “Going somewhere?”
“Away from you. I won’t be a party to this.”
Mike was walking out on him? That shook him up more than he let on. “You helped get her here, don’t forget. You played along.”
“For which I am now very ashamed. In any case, let this serve as notice that my participation is over.”
“Fine. Go. Have a nice trip.”
“Will you be all right?”
“Not your problem anymore, is it?”
He spun his chair around and faced his blank computer screen. A few moments later, he heard Mike leaving through the back door. And he was truly alone.
Chapter 31
Afterward, Maris could barely remember her return trip to New York. She had operated in a dreamlike state, except without the subconscious surety that it was unreal and that she would wake up soon. Parker’s inexplicable behavior and her father’s death had been a double-barreled assault. To protect itself, her mind had put conscious thought and reasoning powers on autopilot and allowed her to function only by rote.
