Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale
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“But nothing. Your marriage to Tak is fine as long as the two of you keep the world out of it. He is so in love with you. Still. Do you know how rare that is?”
Rare?
“Allison, the question has never been one of whether John loves you—”
“You think infidelity isn’t a question of love?” She accepted her cappuccino with a snort. “I should have asked you that when you thought Tak and Aubree were bed buddies.”
Lightening scissored through the parking lot. On its heels was the boom of thunder. A car alarm protested in the distance.
“I can’t speak to your husband’s motivations,” Deena said. “He betrayed you. You have every right to be heartbroken and furious.”
“But?” Allison said. She looked, not at Deena, but to both of their untouched drinks.
“But John doesn’t talk. He barely eats, or grooms, or sleeps from the looks of him. He has bags under his eyes and hopelessness in them. He’s ruined. Whether it’s what he deserves or not is a matter for you to decide. But, for the record, he is heartbroken.”
Allison’s gooseberry eyes narrowed to slits.
“I didn’t call you here to be his advocate.”
“No,” Deena said. “You came to Aruba to spy, to feel nearer to your husband. You called me here for the same reason.”
Allison blew a gust of air from her mouth, sending wisps of ash blonde hair adrift.
“Deena. I hate his guts.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“But I love him. And I feel so weak for that.”
Weak. Allison Tanaka, the powerhouse divorce attorney that made her living by terrorizing wealthy philanderers. In some sick quirk of fate, her husband had turned into one of them.
“Maybe it’s what I deserve,” she said as if reading Deena’s mind. “This misery. After salivating at the mention of divorce all these years, maybe I deserve the most heartbreaking, gruesome variation possible. I’ve done nothing but delight in the irreparable damage of matrimony.”
Deena exhaled.
“You said you love him still.”
“Yeah?”
“So take him back.”
Allison sat back, face drained of color.
“Deena, no.”
“No?”
“I can’t. I won’t. My parents. My family? I couldn’t bare the humiliation.”
“But you can bear to see him marry another woman? To see him move on?”
Allison gasped. It was as if she’d never considered it.
“My sister would gloat,” Allison said. “You’ve met Claire. You’ve met her husband Broderick. They’re perfect.”
Perfect, Deena thought. No doubt Asami and Ken perfect.
“Are these really your concerns? Embarrassment? Because that’s temporary. Divorce is forever.”
Allison scowled.
“You’re like everyone else, chock full of answers when none of it concerns you.” She rummaged in a purse seated in an adjacent chair and slapped a few dollars on the table.
“Allison—”
“My husband slept with another woman, Deena. I can’t take him back. I can’t even look at him, okay? I just pray that you never know what this feels like.”
Allison rose, grabbed a purse and umbrella, and strode out. Deena stayed to finish her coffee.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Deena made it back in time for lunch. She dropped down in a chair across from her husband, just as the soup was served. His gaze was on a point just past her. His mother.
“Tak?” Deena said, an edge of worry in her voice. “Is everything alright?”
He looked at her. “Where’d you go?”
She opened her mouth. Let it hang. Then her cell phone throbbed.
“Are you going to get that?” he said.
She swallowed. “No,” she said and brushed bangs from her face. “I’ll check it later.”
Of course she would.
The phone continued to throb. Tak clenched his teeth and shoved back a mocking voice of doubt. So, now he could add disappearances to a list that included secret phone calls and secrets period.
No matter. Tanakas didn’t get divorced, he reminded himself. So, whoever stayed on his wife’s phone would be shit out of luck. He’d deal with it, whatever it was. That’s what he told himself, at least.
His wife.
His.
Tak stood so fast he toppled his chair. He went over the oversized stereo in the corner and turned it on. A medley of pop emerged from the speakers. Tak returned to extend a hand to his wife.
“Dance with me,” he said and whisked her to open floor.
One song ran into the next and Tak slipped in, only to be rewarded with a livelier, demanding beat made for dancing. A wry smirk crossed his lips before he tucked into a straight line. Already, the music melted the edges of his sharp irritation.
She came to him, palm to palm, and their fingers laced. They stood close enough to kiss and smiled. Close, Tak thought, but they’d get closer still.
A child cart wheeled by.
He wrapped one of Deena’s arms behind his waist, before tucking his in behind hers, so that their bodies cinched together, tight. His wife grinned. They moved together, snug, in a sharp, seamless flow that poured from his body to hers. It was borne of lessons together and practice, of making love to the same person for years.
Tak whipped her, dipped her, and drew her up slow, warming to the thrill of closeness and smiling when they pressed nose to nose. They kissed before he released her again, parting just to whip her in quick, surprising her. She laughed, reminding him of old days, freer days, when they’d never last a song at home before he had to have her—against a wall, somewhere, anywhere.
His feet moved without thought, gaze steady on pretty pink lips. Soft lips, full lips that knew every part of him knew.
Every part.
He brought a thumb to them and traced, other arm still snug at her waist, still conscious of the music, somehow.
He’d been in love with her hair first. Rivers of cascading chocolate, honey, and chestnut, weaving a waterfall as lustrous as spun glass. Admiring her from afar might have been enough, had she never looked at him, spoken to him, saved his life on that first night. He’d been so hopelessly, irrevocably gone from the start that, by the time he made love to her, he’d known what she’d be to him—even then.
“I wonder,” Deena said. “If we could slip away unnoticed.”
“Oh, they’d notice,” Tak said, thumb still at her lip. “Not sure I’d care though.”
Deena’s gaze skated toward the exit.
“Me either,” she whispered.
His mouth made a silent ‘o.’
Hand in hand they side saddled from the ballroom to the entrance hall, where stairs would take them up. At the moment she reached for the rail, Tak snatched her back, claiming her mouth for his, pinning her to the balusters.
Maybe he wouldn’t wait for upstairs. Maybe he wouldn’t chance running into someone with some problem, some insistent thing that needed to be said.
He pulled her into the coat room and shut the door.
She met his kisses, hungry kisses, desperate kisses that probably meant more than he could make out. Still, she pressed into him with each one, arms around his neck, mouth ravenous. His hands found her backside and squeezed, before shoving up her dress, looping fingers through her thong and tearing.
Deena shuddered, strained against him, core to the crotch of his jeans. Fingers—his fingers—fumbled at his waist, shed his pants, and felt his breath almost come before he thrust into her with the hardest of strokes.
She gave way like butter.
He ran a hand down the side of her body, pausing so both could adjust. But she was so sensitive, so sensitive everywhere, that already he could sense her tremors. So close to release. Had the thought of him really brought her so close? The idea was enough to unhinge.
Tak kissed peek-a-boo nipples through the sheerness of her shirt, be
fore coming down harder to suck. Deena yelped, back arched, fingers winding in his hair.
Tak groaned.
“Hold on,” he whispered. “I’m gonna…”
Gonna what? Try to hold on himself? Or try not to find a tempo where the whole house would know he was doing his wife in the closet?
Tak shook off the thought and thrust. She rewarded him with an outcry of pleasure. Another cry gave him a moan of the same. Tak pulsed, no longer moving, and even that minute movement earned a whimper from his wife.
“Baby,” he whispered and sunk fingers in her flesh.
There’d been a warning on his lips, but it slipped away the second she moved against him, grinding and burying to the hilt.
Too much.
Tak yanked her up by the legs so her back hit the wall and sunk. She grabbed him with both hands and pulled his mouth down on hers, both kissing as if it were much needed CPR. He remembered how to breathe again, though air dragged in and out of his lungs, forcing him to steady with a hand above her head, heart hammering.
“I love you,” she whispered. He grinned as if it were the best thing he’d ever heard.
In fact, he knew it was.
They were up against the wall, moving and pulling at each other and way too desperate. Coats clamored rained down and a fedora from another generation tumbled from the top shelf to the floor. They worked up a frenzy. God, he realized, he could have run her through the wall; they couldn’t go hard enough, fast enough, deep enough to tame him.
He took her to the floor, mounted her, knees bent, head cowering from the brush of jackets and sweaters overhead. Her legs went up again, not wrapping his waist, but further, until her feet scrapped the bottoms of fabric and she yanked him down for what should have been a kiss.
Instead, she moaned his name into his mouth. He plunged.
He went in like a riot and she buried her mouth in his neck, stifling her cries to muffles. Fingers in his hair, running, then clutching, as his strokes grew rough and frenzied. He was close, desperate, hurtling towards the finish line.
Deena cursed and shook until she curled against him, a hot, pulsing sheath.
He couldn’t explain the sound he made.
This woman, he thought. Forever.
She held on to him, damp with both their sweat, body trembling. Tak’s forehead pressed hers and he tunneled deep, driving against her earthquake, stoking it more, until he exploded in a place he knew well.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Exactly yes.”
They lay there, crammed into the closet, hearts slowing, breathing labored. Tak shifted, only to have her touch his shoulder.
“Not yet,” she said and drew him into her embrace, eyes closed.
They had so much they needed to say, so much they needed to talk about. But not then. He could drift away, he realized. There in her arms, as content on a closet floor as he was in grandeur. So long as she lay next to him.
He’d needed this. This—her—in that way. In that gasping, drowning, never able to recover kind of way. It made the worst seem surmountable. It made the world conquerable.
“Dee—” he said, then stopped. As he had no idea what should come next.
So, he kissed her forehead, then her lips, because it was impossible to see them and not want to. But his mouth continued on a plan all its own, tracing a path to the pulse of her neck. A sharp rap at the door stopped him.
Deena clamped a hand on her mouth, eyes wide and alight with laughter.
Tak cleared his throat and did his best not to look at her.
“Er, yes?” he said in his most formal of voices.
She giggled, leaning on him. He tried to shove himself free, only to give up when her laughter claimed him, too.
“Would you stop?” Tak managed, and sat up straighter, as if it might help him keep the straight edge in his voice.
“May I help you?” he said too loud and heard the absurdity of it all.
Her laughter was unbidden this time.
“There’s a girl here,” John said through the door. “That needs to talk to you about Tony.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Tony stared at Lila, unable to believe that she had the audacity to come in the house after what she’d just told him. After what she’d just tried. Yet, there she was, head high, eyes bold.
“Who is this, Anthony?” his mother said, looking from him to her.
‘Anthony.’ Great.
Tony cleared his throat and studied the tiles.
“Her name’s Lila.”
“Look at your mother,” Tak said. “And try again.”
Tony took an exaggerated breath before meeting her hard gaze.
“Lila,” he said.
“And Lila is…?” Deena said.
“His girlfriend,” Lila supplied.
Tony shot her a look of venom. Oh, he’d be her everything now. Now that she was in a bad way.
“Your girlfriend says she’s pregnant,” Tak said. “Did you know that?”
His voice stayed even, gauging, studying.
“Baby’s not mine,” Tony mumbled and felt flames lick his cheeks.
“What?” Deena said.
He looked up.
“I said ‘it’s not mine.’ I don’t know whose baby she’s carrying. But it isn’t mine.”
Tony glared at Lila until she dropped her gaze.
Deena swallowed and folded her arms.
“You had sex with her,” she said. Not a question. An accusation.
Tony nodded.
“Then you’ll take responsibility,” she said.
“I’m not taking care of some other dude’s kid!”
“Anthony.” His mother took a step toward him, face pinched as if dealing with some hidden ache. “How can you, of all people, say that?”
“Deena—” Tak said.
She shook her head and tried again.
“Anthony, really. You should be ashamed. Your own father treated you no better.”
Shame. Furious shame. Shameless fury. It slithered on heavy as a coat, snug as his skin. Tony stared at his mother as if just seeing her, really seeing her, before the smallest of doors shut between them.
“Tony,” Tak said, and his name was a whisper, a regret, a want.
He shook it off and tore upstairs to his room.
Gone.
Gone from that.
Gone from her.
*****
Tak stormed for the front door.
“We’ll be in touch,” he said and yanked it open for Lila.
The girl rose and treated Tak, then Deena, to a thin-lipped smile.
“I should tell you that I need—”
“And I should tell you that I’ve already said, ‘we’ll be in touch.’”
The girl flounced out on a sniff of exasperation, hair bouncing, hips twisting too much.
The door slammed behind her. It opened just as abruptly as Lizzie went out.
“What the hell was that about?” Tak said to his wife.
“You’re mad at me? When our son is out there being reckless?”
“Oh, come on. Why don’t you bother to get the facts before you open your mouth sometimes?”
“Oh, I’ve got the facts. Or did you miss the one about the girl carrying our grandchild?”
Tak grunted.
“Some strange girl comes in here talking crazy about our son and I’m supposed to believe it?”
“Who’d lie about that?”
Tak stared at her. Really stared. Once, he’d found her naïveté to be the sweetest part of her, given the reality of where she’d grown up. Now, it just seemed absurd.
“Open your eyes,” he said. “Look around you and see for yourself why she’d lie.”
His wife’s mouth fell open.
“So, what? She’s poor and automatically out for his money? Is that how it works? You must have thought the world of me!”
Tak’s hands clenched into a fist and then opened, over and again, as he groped for calm.
“Yeah. Meanwhile, Tony’s child goes without prenatal care and Lord knows what else. Another Hammond without the start in life he needs.”
“It’s not even his!” Tak yelled.
“You don’t know that! You don’t know anything about this!”
Tak walked off, turned around and came right back.
“I know I’ve had a dozen conversations with him about sex and protection and responsibility. How about you? Ever do any better than shouting?”
Deena stopped.
“This is your fault. You should be discouraging him from having sex.”
“He’s eighteen!” Tak thundered. He threw up his arms in disgust. “Just because you were frigid—”
Shit. Did he really just say that?
The look on her face said he did.
“Deena—”
He reached for her. She took a step back.
“Deena, I didn’t—”
“Just because you carried on like a—like a whore—”
Tony stormed by, buffeted by a whirlwind of ferocity, swinging limbs on a straight shot, barreling for the door.
Tak snatched him by the arm.
“Don’t go out like this,” he said. “Go back upstairs and cool off.”
Tony’s teeth clenched. “I need air.”
“There’s air upstairs on the terrace.”
Tony snatched free and strode for the door.
Lizzie saw the girl when she’d sauntered up the driveway, windswept hair, long legs, determination. She’d listened to her as she explained herself, first to John, then to Deena and Tak. Now that she strode back out on foot—Lizzie rushed out to catch her.
Lila whirled the second she heard her.
“What do you want?”
All pretenses of the doting, scared girlfriend were gone. Here was the real woman, all cold, all steel. This was what Lizzie had expected.
Lizzie grabbed her by the arm and resumed the walk. Belly jutting before her, they took a pace twice as fast as before.
“I want to know how much,” she said. “How much you’d planned to clear.”
The shift in her was subtle, uncertainty quickly blanketed by impatience.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”