“You were hurt too,” I said.
He gripped his fingers around mine and stepped back so I could no longer touch him.
“I don’t remember,” I continued, more frustrated than before. His wound must have been nearly fatal. It was so close to his heart. I had its beat beneath my fingers when they’d brushed over the scar.
“It’s better this way. It’s better if you don’t remember anything at all,” he said.
His whole body was tense. The tension transferred itself to me though the grip of his fingers. He was wrong. I needed to remember. No matter how horrible the memories would be they were a part of me, without them, without him, I was a cracked hour glass and before long I would be empty, bereft of all I’d been before.
My time was running out.
I didn’t stop him when he let go of my hand and crunched through the discarded portraits to make it to the door. He turned, standing at the door with the dark hall at his back, his beautiful form only marred by the one puckered scar on his chest. His hair was mussed. His lips, full and well-kissed. His eyes flashed, darker than ever before.
“I’ll kiss you again. Unless you forbid it. And even then I’ll want to and you’ll know it, every second of every day…and night,” La Croix said.
His words made a hot coil of heat twist inside of me.
“I won’t forbid it,” I said.
Ever.
My words seemed to pull him back into the room a step or two before he caught himself again with his hands on either side of the door jam.
“You can’t know that when you don’t know everything,” he said. He paused, his grip on the door jamb tighter than it needed to be…if he had been casually standing and not holding himself back.
And then he turned in a sudden rush of movement and left me alone.
I blinked against the sting in my eyes. I stood with my feet firmly planted. I didn’t cry or chase him down the hall to beg for answers he didn’t think I was strong enough to hear.
I turned to my painting instead.
When I did, a fission of unease skittered down my spine.
Reluctantly, I forced myself to move closer. Step by step, I approached the painting I’d worked on all day and into the evening until La Croix had pulled me from its hold..
The doll was no longer in the chair near the giraffe where I had painted her. She was now sitting on the floor near the dead woman, slumped forward as only a spineless doll can slump.
The eyes that had made me uncomfortable earlier seemed to gleam an even more focused glassy blue.
My body went numb from my heart—gone strangely sluggish and slow—outward to tingling fingertips that still held the scent of the jasmine I’d touched in my room.
No.
I hadn’t changed the painting.
And no part of me could imagine La Croix painting the eerie old doll in a different location or painstakingly fixing the spot where she’d been.
No. No. No.
Something very wrong was happening at Belle Aimée.
Chapter Seven
I didn’t think.
Instinct drove me from the altered painting and out of the studio. I hadn’t seen which direction Jonathan had turned, but I followed nonetheless.
I knew.
Or my heart knew and whispered its wise instructions to my feet.
Down the hall, up another flight of stairs and into a suite of rooms at the top of the house with the best view of the garden below. Familiarity enveloped me from the sachet scent of lavender and cedar to the soft glow of lamps with golden silk shades.
My steps slowed.
I came to a stop in the middle of a sitting room. I lifted one hand up to press against my lips to quiet the cry that wanted to escape. I wanted to call for Jonathan. The familiarity held a threat I couldn’t understand. My pulse leapt and my respiration came quick and light.
I knew this place.
These rooms were a part of me and my past, but there were shadowy corners here I was suddenly afraid to face.
“Chloe,” Jonathan said, whispering my name as I kept myself from calling out his.
He came from the other room where I could see the large solid shape of a rice bed. Its gleaming dark wood complimented the bed clothes of vivid white damask.
He’d already removed the shirt I’d loosened. His bare chest was both vulnerable, with its scar, and intimidating with the intimacy of its masculine ripples and planes. He stepped toward me and his beltless black trousers sat so low on his lean hips that I could see a hint of pale skin, untouched by the summer sun.
I stood on the precipice of revelation when I saw him stride from the bedroom, when he whispered my name in raw welcome in this suite some part of me knew so well. But instead of being relieved I was terrified. This moment of almost knowing sent a warning flow of adrenaline rushing beneath my skin.
Jonathan saw my distress. He came to me. He took me in his arms. He didn’t speak beyond soothing wordless murmurs hummed into my still-damp hair.
And, suddenly, memories could wait because my body was completely present in the here and now.
My dress was thin, my underthings light. I could feel the heat of his chest against my breasts and my nipples responded with tightened peaks. I thought I could tell when his concern tensed into awareness and need. His hands came up and he threaded his fingers into my hair. My face was pressed into the hollow of his neck.
I breathed cedar and soap and the faintest hint of expensive tobacco.
And then I tasted him, opening my lips and kissing the spot where his pulse beat to heat his skin.
“Chloe…don’t,” he warned, but his grip in my hair pressed my face closer.
I lifted my hands to run my palms over his muscled back while I continued to taste him. I nipped his shoulder, my teeth against his tanned skin, and suddenly his hands swooped down and he lifted me. I wrapped my legs around his waist and the move was as natural to me as walking.
As he backed into the bedroom, my heat was pressed to the insistent ridge of his arousal. His steps caused movements that made me writhe and sigh.
He sank down on the snowy duvet and I sank down with him. He was cushioned by the downy soft linens and I was supported by his muscular body. Together, we pressed an indention that felt like it welcomed our weight and shape.
I raised myself up with my hands on either side of his head and looked down at his handsome, flushed face.
“You need to go back to the guest room and lock the door,” he groaned. He closed his eyes only after a long look up into my face.
We fit. I’d noticed if from the first time his hand had touched my face. I wasn’t going to lock myself away from that. His nightmare eyes might scare me. His kiss might strip away all the simple and shallow things I’d known for 365 days and bring me to the heart of what was aching and raw and waiting to be discovered.
But I wasn’t going to run away.
Not when our molecules practically sang aloud as we fit together.
I waited.
Finally, after long tense seconds of holding himself taut and still beneath me, Jonathan opened his eyes and I knew my window for escape had closed.
They burned a midnight blue with a glow I’d never seen in my darkest dreams, but some part of me had recalled with soul-deep yearning.
My dress had ridden up, but his hands raised it up farther and over my head until I straddled him in wispy bra and panties, the dark tips of my breasts showing through filmy lace.
He cupped and held the weight of them, teasing his thumbs lightly over my pebbled nipples.
“I can’t let you go,” he said.
“Don’t,” I begged. “Never let me go.”
He had been my lifeline to the past. I held him now, both hands buried into the black waves of his hair.
“Never,” he said. I heard the weight of a solemn vow in the word as it came from his lips in a slow, cultured Louisiana drawl that was more ragged than I’d ever heard.
He roll
ed me onto my back then, easily spilling me onto the soft duvet and covering me with his hard body. I reached for his waist, a not so subtle hint that I wanted him exposed to me, but he popped the clasp of my bra first, freeing my breasts for his hot lips and tongue.
“Oh,” I sighed. My excitement dampened the lace between my thighs. It had been so long since I’d been intimate with anyone. I couldn’t remember details. Only flashes of lips and teeth and tongue.
He moved so I could pull his zipper down and with his help his trousers and boxers joined my dress and bra on the floor.
Now, only a bit of lace and my sudden nerves kept us apart. Jonathan had enough courage for both of us. He reached to find damp lace and me, hot and wet beneath it. He claimed me gently with one exploring finger and I rocked up against its thrust with startled and eager hips.
“I can’t go slow, Chloe. It’s been too long,” he warned. His erection was the only evidence I needed to go with his warning, but to my delight I also saw his desire in his flushed cheeks and I felt it in his shaking fingers and in the eager way his tongue plunged between my lips again and again. I fisted my hands into the duvet to try to keep myself from flying apart too soon, but my body was also impatient. I spread my legs in unspoken invitation and he accepted. He moved to settle himself between my thighs and guided himself home.
I cried out when he pulled aside the lace and replaced his finger with the much smoother and hotter shaft of his penis.
We fit. Oh, yes, we fit.
It had been too long for me too.
I whispered his name against his shoulder and moved my hips, accepting a fierce, sudden wave of pleasure that dispelled my fear and doubts in long seconds of shuddering release.
“Please, come back to me,” he groaned against my lips and then his orgasm followed mine with a sudden thrust and the beautiful tensing of his entire body above me.
I held him as he collapsed, his damp forehead pressed to my scarred brow.
Chapter Eight
I couldn’t sleep even with the added incentive of Jonathan’s embrace. Sex had thrown my synapses into overdrive. They fired relentlessly as if seeking to rewire connections that had been lost.
Please, come back to me.
I made my way downstairs through a dark house to the studio.
The altered painting sat where I had left it.
This was my work, my nightmare and my memory I sought to reclaim. Anger overcame my earlier fear. I wouldn’t allow anyone or anything to interfere. I reached for a trowel and scratched away the fresh paint that I hadn’t placed on the canvas. When I did, it was as if my mind was emboldened. Flashes came to me. Then faces. Then conversations.
I fumbled for paints to express it all. My life from before the butterfly on my brow.
The woman on the floor was Sienna Musgrave. She had held a gun and pointed it at…someone…someone I loved. I had stopped her. I had struggled with her for the gun and it had gone off.
I looked down once again at the scarlet on my hands. That night it hadn’t been paint. I had turned from Sienna where she lay on the floor.
And La Croix’s eyes had been terrifying.
I’d painted those eyes at St. Mary’s again and again and again.
I had been shell shocked. Horrified. I’d reached for him with bloody hands…and he had suddenly, ferociously pushed me away. I had fallen. Hard. And the last thing I’d seen was my own blood running into my eyes.
I couldn’t reconcile the man who had just tasted and touched me so tenderly with this violent man I painted. Something wasn’t right. I remembered. I painted all I knew, but I didn’t know it all.
“I’ll never forgive myself,” Jonathan said.
I whirled. He stood in the doorway again and this time I thought I could understand the shadows in his eyes. He came into the room. He approached me and my heartbeat sped. He had hurt me. He had made me lose myself for a whole year at St. Mary’s.
I was the murderer. I had killed Sienna Musgrave. But Jonathan was my nightmare, tall and dark and stepping closer and closer. It didn’t matter that his lips were still swollen from my kisses or that my skin still glowed from his touch.
“I don’t blame you for looking at me with those tragic eyes—so beautiful, so betrayed,” Jonathan said. He’d clenched his fists. The white of his knuckles caused my body to brace, ready to run, ready to fight.
“We’d just returned from our honeymoon. Sienna had gone mad. Or, worse, she’d always been mad in spite of the excellent references and the Au Pair Agencies’ referral. She had taken care of my daughter from the time she was born. I had no idea of her ever trying to harm a hair on her head. I hired her to help me with a brand new baby I hardly knew how to hold, but she saw an opportunity with me grieving and my first wife dead and she thought one day she could become my wife. When I met you and fell in love, Sienna decided to hurt us both by taking away the person most precious to us.”
“Aimee,” I said. The name in its modern Americanized form immediately freed the rest of my sluggish memories. I had a step daughter. I had saved her life. My being sang with that knowledge even as I mourned all the days we’d lost.
“Our flight landed ahead of schedule. No one was expecting us. When we arrived the house was deathly still and we thought we would interrupt a bedtime story in the playroom,” Jonathan reached both hands up and fisted them at his temples as if he could unsee what we’d seen that night. “Sienna had waited for my aunt to go to bed. She was going to shoot a child she’d taken care of for seven years in cold blood the night before we were supposed to come home. We came around the corner, but you were in front of me. You were so excited to see Aimee and give her the gifts we’d bought in Paris. You saw the gun before I did. It was…my God…Sienna was pointing it at Aimee. You saved her. You threw yourself at Sienna and grappled for control of the gun. When the gun went off, I saw red even before you turned around, but when you turned to me, Sienna managed to raise it to fire again. She was dying, but she was still determined. I saw her bloody fingers pull the trigger. I pushed you from the bullet’s path and…” Jonathan began.
“You took the bullet meant for my back with your chest,” I finished for him, finally understanding just how dark that night had been.
“Yes. I pushed you aside and I was shot. I didn’t know until many weeks later when I woke up in the hospital that you had disappeared. I didn’t know you had lost your memory. I didn’t know my aunt had decided to hide you away to try to spare me from seeing what I’d done. But I knew I had hurt you. Even as I dropped to my knees, I saw you fall. I saw you hit the chair. I saw the blood on your head,” Jonathan said. He was back in the shadows again, dwelling on a night and the mistakes and madness that had almost destroyed us. “Aunt Marie had always been eccentric and she was nearing her ninetieth birthday. She must have panicked. Trying to care for Aimee and handling even the most cut and dried police investigation into the incident all on her own while we recovered. It wasn’t until she died that I discovered what she had done.”
“I had never won her over,” I recalled. I remembered how I had hoped she would grow to accept me. “She thought you deserved someone from a more important family. She had a long list of debutantes she wanted you to consider. I was a starving artist. Worse than that, I had no family at all. I grew up shuffling from foster home to foster home. When I forgot you and Aimee, Aunt Marie must have thought my memory loss was a godsend,” I said. Now, I could remember the austere octogenarian who had disapproved of me from the beginning of my relationship with the nephew who would inherit the La Croix estate.
“I was shocked when I found out her disapproval had almost caused me to lose you even when you’d survived Sienna’s attack… and the push from me that had made you fall,” Jonathan said.
I went to him. I placed my scarred head on his scarred chest. We had both gone through hell in the past year. We had lost so much. My whole life had been lost in me. Locked deep in the recesses of my mind. But now it had all been found.<
br />
“If it weren’t for you, I would have been shot. I might have been killed,” I said. “You couldn’t have known that push would hurt me. You were trying to save me.”
I relished the steady beat of his heart beneath my cheek. As the meaning of my words soaked in, his tense body relaxed, little by little, until he lifted his hands to hold me.
***
I paused on the garden path. The girl in the swing had riotous black curls and ribbons in her hair. Her cheeks were porcelain pale and her mouth red and pursed in a bow as she spun around in a circle surrounded by a jasmine breeze.
The doll had been a look-a-like made generations ago for the original Belle Aimée.
I had brushed this Aimee’s hair and braided it with ribbons. I had often read to her from the book of French fairytales we both enjoyed. She was no eerie doll come to life. I recalled that in sunlight her pale cheeks were covered in smattering of freckles and that the bow of her mouth would widen into a happy grin when she smiled.
“Chloe!” she shouted and she slipped from the swing to run to my side.
Tears stung my eyes as I felt the familiar curl of her fingers in my hand.
We walked to the porch and sat on a swing hung there to take advantage of shade when the sun was high. Tonight, we only had the glow of fireflies and the faint light from the windows as we talked for hours.
She had given me the sprigs of jasmine. She’d left them in my room because she’d been forbidden to “bother” me until I settled in. She had watched me from a distance trying to be as patient as her father urged her to be. When she wasn’t sneaking flowers into my room, she’d been staying next door with a neighbor her own age, enjoying an extended summer sleepover while the grownups she loved sorted things out.
At one point, when midnight approached and a whippoorwill sang from the garden gate, Aimee stopped my heart.
Innocently she began…
“Grandmere says you’ve proven your love for me and papa. She says you can stay.”
We swayed on the porch swing, to and fro, as my heart started again with almost painful beats.
Lost in Me Page 4
