Wildfire

by Susan Lewis

  Rhiannon’s heart gave an unsteady beat. She knew Galina of old, knew only too well how easily she manipulated and lied and twisted people around her fingers. ‘Is that why you married her?’ she said. ‘To stop her killing herself?’

  His eyes came to hers and he smiled. ‘I could find other ways to stop her killing herself than marrying her,’ he said.

  Embarrassed, Rhiannon looked away. ‘So what are her symptoms?’ she said quietly.

  His eyes moved out to the darkness and she heard him swallow as he said, ‘Maybe now isn’t the time to go into it all, maybe it’s enough just to say that she has taken on the burden of the old Countess’s suffering and lives it as though it were her own. She’s obsessed by the violence and believes that the only way she can atone for what happened to her grandmother is to suffer the same way. She has no sense of right or wrong about this, nor of self-worth or self-preservation. She does it because she believes she has to and because in a perverse, tragic kind of way it makes her feel good. It’s why I have her telephone monitored and why she’s followed or watched when she’s not with me, so that I can try to protect her from herself. I don’t always succeed, but I try. It’s more than anyone else would do for her, more than she would ever do for herself.’

  He took another breath and let it out slowly. ‘The real problem now’, he said, ‘is that she has someone helping her, someone who doesn’t give a damn what happens to her, but who sure as hell gives a damn what it’s doing to me. He’s using her to get to me in ways it would make you sick to hear. He helps her find the crazies who live out their warped and sadistic fantasies on a woman who can’t help the way she is. He exploits her weakness, pays them to abuse her, then sends her back to me. I’ve even received photographs, most recently from Memphis, which turned up on the desk of one of my editors. The curious thing about that was why the pictures were taken to one of my magazines, when it was obvious they’d never find their way to print. Blackmail is the easy answer, but there has never been any demand for money. And now I know there won’t be, because the motive isn’t money.’

  He stopped so abruptly that Rhiannon’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘How do you know?’ she asked. ‘How can you be so certain?’

  ‘Because’, he answered, ‘Ramon’s managed to find out who paid the photographer to take the shots, then deliver them to Southern Belle, and it’s very definitely not money that this guy wants.’ He pulled a hand angrily across his face and stared hard into the night. ‘The photographer’s dead now,’ he said. ‘He was killed a couple of hours after he delivered the photographs to Southern Belle. And the guy who was in the photographs with Galina? Well, I guess like most guys with his kind of tendencies, he’d rather not have them made public, so he doesn’t pose any threat.’

  ‘So who’s behind it?’ Rhiannon asked.

  Max’s eyes briefly met hers, then he lowered them to the lake. ‘Maurice,’ he answered.

  ‘Maurice? Your lawyer, Maurice?’ she murmured in amazement.

  He nodded. ‘My lawyer Maurice. He’s using Galina in a way that makes me want to kill him just to think of it, and he’s just paid for a guy to be shot and very successfully made it look like it was me who did the shooting.’

  Rhiannon’s eyes moved anxiously over his face. ‘But why?’ she said. ‘Why is he doing it?’

  He took a moment to get his anger back in check, then looking at her he said, ‘I guess you could say that it’s his way of paying me back for Carolyn’s death. He was in love with my wife from the day I married her and remains in love with her to this day. The ironic part of it is that she never loved him. Oh, I think they may have had an affair somewhere along the line, Carolyn and I were always having affairs, but we always knew about them and neither of us ever tried to hide it. Sometimes we discussed them, other times we even shared them. It was a promiscuous marriage, to say the least, but that’s not to say we didn’t ever get jealous of the other’s partners, because we did and Carolyn could get pretty noisy about it at times, like threatening to divorce me, take the children away and never let me see them again, that kind of thing. But it was always said in the heat of the moment and by the next day it would be forgotten. At least by us it was, what we had no idea of was the way Maurice was taking it all to heart and starting to see himself as her avenger.

  ‘Of course it was her death that really triggered him and looking back, I can only blame myself for not having seen it all sooner. He believes I shot her because of Galina. He believes that I wanted her out of the way so that I could marry Galina and keep my children. I can understand why he would have thought that, but he’s wrong. Galina and I never had an affair, though not even Carolyn believed that. She hated Galina, she wanted her out of our lives and most especially out of the children’s lives. Marina’s been crazy about Galina almost since she was born and Carolyn was jealous of their closeness. But Galina had nowhere else to go. Her grandmother was dead and I was the nearest thing she had to family. So to have turned my back on her then would have been an act I’d never have been able to live with. Besides, I didn’t want her to go. I cared about her and I still do. She’s a victim of what happened in Russia’s dark years as sure as if she had been there herself. And there are many more like her. Ramon and I and several others we know do what we can to help, but Galina is my responsibility and it’s not one I want to be rid of as if she were nothing more than a statistic in history. She was the centre of my grandfather’s world, and now she’s the centre of Marina’s and Aleks’s too. She’s so much a part of my life, of all our lives . . .’ He paused, then after a breath continued, ‘No one’s ever really understood her, but as far as it’s possible I do. I know what she is and isn’t capable of and I know that Carolyn’s fear that she might harm the children, considering how she suffered herself as a child, was unfounded. Galina would never hurt my children, not only because she loves me and them more than anything else in the world, but because Galina simply doesn’t have it in her to hurt anyone, except herself.’

  Rhiannon was watching him closely. His unfocused eyes stared into the darkness and the distant tone of his voice made it sound as though he didn’t know whether he believed what he was saying or not. A fleeting memory of the way Galina had held her head beneath the water flashed through Rhiannon’s mind, then she was thinking about Carolyn and understanding why she would have been so afraid for her children. But Max knew what he was doing and if there was one thing Rhiannon could be sure about it was that he would never put his children at risk.

  He started speaking again. ‘My grandfather always wanted Galina and me to marry,’ he said, ‘and Galina always believed we would. I guess I thought we would too. I thought that maybe the older she got the less I would think of her as a sister and start thinking of her as a woman. But it never really happened. And then I met Carolyn, Carolyn got pregnant and we married. The psychiatrist thinks it was my marriage that finally ended what little self-control or self-worth Galina had and started her off on this course of masochism and self-destruction she’s now on.’ His eyes came back to Rhiannon’s and he looked at her for a moment before saying, ‘Which means I’m partly to blame. No, listen,’ he said as she made to interrupt. ‘I’m going to tell you something now that you probably never knew, never even dreamed of. Galina running off with the man you were going to marry was very likely a result of me marrying Carolyn. She had suffered a loss, so someone close to her had to suffer one too. It took several years for her to find a way of doing it, but she found it with you. She needed to prove to herself that she had the power to break a heart the way I broke hers. Of course, once she’d got the guy to run off with her she didn’t want him any more, so they split up, he moved to Oklahoma I hear, and she returned to LA. The first I knew about her being back was when I got a call from Cedar Sinai telling me she’d been admitted. She’d been gang-raped the night before, which resulted in a hysterectomy.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Rhiannon breathed, reeling with the shock of his bluntness.

  Th
ey were both quiet until Rhiannon said, ‘Is there nothing anyone can do to help her?’

  He shook his head. ‘They say not. It’s too inbred in her now, she’s gone too far and besides she won’t accept any help. She hasn’t seen the psychiatrist in over a year and if I try to make her she simply goes out after and gets herself beaten half to death. It’s as though she’s using it as a way of punishing me for making her do something she doesn’t want to do.’ He sighed heavily and rested his head on one hand. ‘It’s a god-damned nightmare,’ he said. ‘I care about her, I want to protect her and I want her to stay a part of our lives, but . . .’ His voice trailed off as though he really didn’t know what he wanted any more.

  ‘She has regular health checks,’ he continued after a while. ‘I insist on that and she doesn’t put up too much of a fight. She knows about AIDS, obviously, but knowing about it and understanding what it could do to her still doesn’t stop her. We thought, Maribeth and I, that landing the Conspiracy contract might act as some kind of deterrent, that the fear of disgrace, should it ever get out what she was doing, might just stop her from doing it.’ He laughed drily. ‘Naive, to say the least,’ he said, ‘but by then I’d exhausted all other means of distraction or moral persuasion and I couldn’t help wondering, if she had something of her own, a career that would put her name and face in lights and give her the recognition and adoration she craved, if it might just be the cure we’d all been looking for. Not that I was going to let Maribeth or Lanny Harman, Primaire’s chairman, go into it blind. They had to be told about her promiscuity, which they were, and in the end they decided to take the risk. I pay for the security that surrounds her and, should anything ever go wrong, should the Conspiracy range fail because of something Galina does, I have signed an agreement to make full financial reparation.’

  Though Rhiannon didn’t comment she was well aware of how enormous a sum that would be and could only marvel at how far he was prepared to go to try and give Galina a life.

  ‘But it won’t fail,’ he went on. ‘To that degree Galina knows exactly what she’s doing and though she likes to tease and alarm the people around her, she won’t put anything into jeopardy because she knows how much it matters to them all.’ He smiled. ‘It’s just a shame she doesn’t care as much about herself as she does for others. If she did, we could be looking at a whole different scenario here.’

  As their eyes met, Rhiannon lifted a hand to his face. ‘So what you’re really saying’, she whispered, ‘is that you married her out of pity.’

  His mouth moved to one side as he considered what she’d said. ‘You’re right, I do pity her,’ he said finally, ‘but it’s not the only reason I married her. I married her because it was what everyone wanted, including me. We’re used to each other, we know each other so well. There was no reason not to marry her – and all I’ve told you tonight is what’s wrong with her, but there’s a whole lot that is right with her too. Though I guess’, he went on softly, ‘that I’m never going to feel like this about her.’

  Rhiannon’s eyes were still on his and as he looked at her in the moonlight she could feel the power of his emotions stealing into her heart. ‘What are you going to do about Maurice?’ she asked after he kissed her.

  He inhaled deeply, then letting it go he said, ‘I still haven’t come to a decision on that.’

  ‘Does he know you know?’

  ‘Not yet. He will though, when the time is right. Ramon and I staged a meeting with him, Ula and Ellis the other day and I have to hand it to the guy, he plays a pretty cool game. He’s got it all worked out, right down to getting me accused of insider trading so that when I walked away from the charges it looked like I’d bought my way out of it – again. What’s more, he manages to make it look as though it was him and his loyal expertise that got me off. Max Romanov, the guy who killed his wife and got away with it, now gets away with a serious financial indiscretion too because he can afford to buy the right people. God only knows what he’s got stashed up his sleeve for the future, but he’s going to find out soon enough that he shot his strategy to pieces the day he ordered that photographer killed.’

  ‘How?’ Rhiannon asked.

  ‘A man is dead,’ he said soberly. ‘That is something, unlike the rest of it, that has to be addressed and soon. Ramon is ready to go to the police with what we know, which is enough to put Maurice behind bars for a good long while.’

  ‘When will Ramon go?’

  ‘As soon as I give the word.’

  Rhiannon nodded, then resisting the urge to reach out for his hand, she said, ‘I want to ask what’s stopping you, but I think I already know the answer. He’s got something on you, hasn’t he? Something to do with Carolyn’s death?’

  His failure to answer was answer enough and her heart turned over at the distant look that came into his eyes.

  ‘Whatever answer I give you now’, he said finally, ‘will not be a truthful one. So, please, don’t ask any more.’

  ‘Are you afraid to trust me?’ she said.

  ‘Not now, tonight,’ he responded. ‘But in a month, maybe a year, I’ll be afraid to trust you then.’ He looked down into her face, then putting his hands on her shoulders he smiled through the pain in his eyes. ‘The two nights we’ve spent together have been two of the most precious I can remember,’ he said, ‘but there’s nowhere for us to go now that isn’t going to lead to misery and heart-break . . . No, don’t!’ he said as she tried to pull away. ‘There’s no point trying to fight it. Galina’s my wife now and that’s the way it’s going to stay. You can survive without me, she can’t.’

  Rhiannon’s eyes were closed, her brows were drawn against the pain of his words. ‘I don’t want to believe this is happening,’ she whispered.

  ‘Listen,’ he said firmly. ‘I know what you’ve been through, I know how much Maguire hurt you and the last thing I want is to add to that pain. But that’s what I’ll end up doing if we try to pretend there’s any future in this. It would be the easiest thing in the world for me to tell you I want you to stay; that I want you to be a part of my life so that we can see if what we have is as special as it feels right now. But do you hear what I’m saying? Do you understand what that means? It means I’m asking you to be my mistress. So tell me, is that what you want? That we live a life of deception? That I turn you into a woman who’s got no real place in my life, who has to come second always to my wife . . . ?’

  ‘Then why don’t you get her some proper help?’ Rhiannon cried, breaking away from him. ‘Why did you have to marry her, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘I thought I’d just explained that,’ he said.

  ‘But you don’t even make love! What kind of marriage is that?’

  ‘It’s not going to stay that way,’ he answered.

  Rhiannon’s eyes closed as the jealousy seared through her.

  ‘Hey, come on,’ he said, ‘what do you want, that I go back there and tell her it’s over?’

  ‘Yes, why don’t you? I had it done to me!’

  He watched her as she turned away again, then sliding a hand into her hair he said, ‘Look, what happened, happened. I don’t regret any of it, but I couldn’t call everything off because I’d just had what amounted to the best fuck I’d ever had. And maybe that’s all there is here, Rhiannon, maybe we’re just getting this out of proportion . . .’

  ‘You bastard!’ she yelled, rounding on him ready to strike.

  Catching her hand, he pulled her to him and held her so tightly she couldn’t move. ‘Listen to me,’ he growled, ‘right now I never want to make love to another woman in my life except you. But we’ve both got to face the fact that it’s not going to happen that way. The way it’s going to happen is we are going to say goodbye to each other here and never see each other alone again.’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ she cried. ‘Stop making decisions as though I have no part in them.’

  ‘Just go back to London and forget . . .’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Max!’
she seethed. ‘I have no life in London. There’s nothing there for me now. Everything I want is here, right here, looking at me now. No! Don’t shake your head that way!’ she cried, stamping her foot as she spun away from him in anger.

  He waited a moment, then laying a hand on her shoulder he said, ‘Rhiannon, I’d give anything in the world for it not to be like this, but you have to understand that I can only give what’s in my world. I can’t give what’s in Galina’s, or in my children’s. I can’t wreck their lives for the sake of my own. You’re strong and they’re not. They need me, you only want me. You’ll get through this. In time you’ll forget and move on to someone else. Someone who is free to love you and give you everything you deserve. I wish to God that man were me, but it’s not. So please don’t make this any harder than it already is.’

  Her back was still turned as his arms closed around her again. Tears ran down her cheeks as she struggled hard to overcome the pain and denial that were racing through her. She gazed out at the horizon. The early dawn sky was like honey melting over the desert, the warmth was like a balm before the coldness set in.

  ‘Let go of me now, Max,’ she said finally.

  ‘Rhiannon . . .’

  ‘No,’ she interrupted. ‘You’ve told me what you brought me here to tell me, now please, let me go.’

  His hands didn’t release her immediately, but when finally they did it was as though he was letting her fall apart. ‘I’ll call Ramon and have him come pick you up,’ he said.

  Rhiannon nodded and continued to gaze out at the dawn. Anger and confusion mingled painfully in her heart and filled her throat with sadness. So that was it. Once again, life had offered her so much with one hand, only to slap her in the face with the other. Would she ever find the courage to trust again? Would she ever stop wanting this man who, even as she looked at him now, could turn her heart inside out with longing?