Until You

by Sandra Marton

  A smile curved over her mouth. "You made that up."

  "Yeah." He smiled, too, as he took the flower from her and tucked it in her hair. "But you have to admit it's a nice thought."

  He slipped his arm around her again and they headed into the leafy coolness of the Ramble. "So," he said, clearing his throat, "you were telling me about the scam you pulled on old lady Blakely. Why'd you want to swap places with the kid on K.P. duty?"

  Miranda laughed softly and ducked her head against his shoulder.

  "Well, how else could I switch Blakely's dinner plate for one containing a dead mouse?"

  Conor burst out laughing. Ahead, the graceful grey stone of Bow Bridge arched across Central Park lake.

  "You didn't."

  "I did. Poor little guy met his end in a trap in the stable but I gave him the closest thing I could to a big send-off. Oh, it was wonderful! Blakely whisked off the cover and there was Mickey, lying on a bed of watercress with his little feet pointing straight up."

  The bridge was deserted and lit by the sun. When they reached the center of the span, Conor leaned back against the warm stone and put his arms around Miranda. She was still smiling but darkness was stealing into her eyes.

  "Blakely knew, right away, that I'd done it. So she sent for Eva, told her what I'd done and said I was unfit to continue at the school."

  "Did you tell Eva about the rotten food and that you'd tried to have it changed?"

  "Remember your father's little speech to you? Eva's was pretty much the same. She said I'd been nothing but trouble all my life and that the next school she sent me to would know how to deal with 'problem girls' like me." She gave a soft, sad little laugh. "And I was on my way."

  Conor took her face in his hands and kissed her.

  "Nobody's allowed to feel sad on the first really nice spring day."

  She smiled and lay her palms against his chest.

  "Another old Irish proverb?"

  "A rule," he said solemnly. "Besides, you haven't finished your story. What part did poor Beryl What's-Her-Name get to play in all this?"

  "Beryl Goodman. Poor Beryl is right. All she'd done was watch the door while I made the switch but Blakely chewed her out and sent for her parents. Beryl cried and cried. I felt awful about it, but..." She made a face. "Come on, O'Neil, that's enough about me. You haven't finished your story. Was that how you broke your nose? In the motorcycle accident?"

  "Actually," he said, with a little smile, "my old man did it."

  Her face paled. "What?"

  "He beat the crap out of me for taking the bike. Hey, I had it coming."

  "Nobody has that coming," Miranda said furiously. "What kind of a man would do such a thing to his son?"

  "He was a hard-liner, I guess. You know, spare the rod, spoil the child, that kind of stuff." Conor took her hand and brought it to his mouth. "If it makes you feel any better, I hated him for it for a long, long time."

  "It doesn't make me feel a bit better, O'Neil, and don't you patronize me!"

  "Whoa, take it easy. I'm not trying to—"

  "A boy shouldn't have to hate his father, dammit. No child should have to hate a parent." Her voice broke as Conor gathered her against him. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I don't usually waste time feeling sorry for myself. It's just that I've never been able to figure out why a child wouldn't be loved."

  "Maybe there is no why," he said softly, stroking her hair. "Nobody ever said life was perfect."

  Miranda smiled, framed his face with her hands and brought his mouth to hers.

  "Until now," she said, kissing him, and the knowledge that he was deceiving her rose within him until it felt as if it might stop his breath.

  * * *

  He told himself he wasn't violating her confidence, that he was only doing his job when he telephoned Thurston.

  "Check out a Beryl Goodman for me, Harry. She attended a place called the Jefferson Academy with Miranda fourteen, fifteen years ago."

  "A kook?"

  "Probably not. Look, just check, okay? It's not much but it's something."

  Harry told him the lab people had finished going over every inch of the box Bob Breverman had intercepted, as well as its ghoulish contents.

  "Nothing," Harry said glumly. "Not a print, not a smudge, not a clue. Any leads on your end?"

  "No."

  "Nobody with reason to come after the girl?"

  Conor rubbed his forehead. "Not as far as I know. Any more notes delivered to Eva?"

  "No. Eva's not the key to this, Conor, I'm certain of it. The Beckman girl is. Find out what you can about her, anything she's kept hidden in her past."

  "I'm here to protect her," Conor said angrily.

  "You're there to do a job," Thurston said, and broke the connection.

  * * *

  Conor told himself not to think about the deception.

  There was no reason to think about it. He could protect Miranda and love her at the same time. He didn't have to let his thoughts revolve around what a conniving bastard he was. As for learning about her past... she was more than willing to talk about herself, and he loved to listen.

  It was easy to let himself think they were like any other couple, exploring the city while spring overtook the grey canyons. They did the things lovers do, strolling through the South Street Seaport, riding the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building, dining on pushcart hot dogs or in pricey restaurants as the spirit moved them.

  Early one evening, they sat at a table at a rooftop bar, she sipping a glass of white wine and he drinking an ale, with the city far below.

  "We could have dinner here," Conor said.

  "Or?"

  He smiled. "How'd you know there was an or?"

  Miranda grinned, put her elbows on the table and propped her chin in her hands.

  "Innate genius," she said. "So, what's the or?"

  "We could go to this place I know in Chinatown."

  "That sounds good. I like Chinese food."

  "Szechuan?"

  "Is it really, really hot?"

  "Guaranteed to make your eyes water and your ears turn red."

  "In that case, what are we waiting for?"

  "You had me worried there, Beckman. That was a test and for a couple of seconds, I wasn't sure you were going to pass."

  "And?" She smiled. "If I hadn't?"

  "If you'd turned up your nose at Szechuan, you mean?" He shook his head. "I guess I'd have been forced into rethinking this whole arrangement."

  Miranda looked at him over the rim of the glass, her smile suddenly soft and vulnerable.

  "Is that what we have?" she asked. "An arrangement?"

  It was such a cool, businesslike term but the way she said it and the way she looked at him, made it anything but cool or businesslike.

  "Yeah," he said gruffly, and reached for her hand, "I think we do. Is that okay with you?"

  Her eyes glowed.

  "It's wonderful with me," she said.

  Conor leaned across the table and kissed her.

  * * *

  They took a taxi to the restaurant. Conor asked for a corner booth and ordered for both of them.

  It had always bothered her, the easy way some men had of taking over as if the female of the species were incapable of making decisions, but it was different with Conor. He made her feel safe in a way she never had before, not just from physical danger but from the things she'd feared for as long as she could remember.

  Love and desire, and, most of all, trust.

  Sometimes, in the middle of the night, she awakened in his arms and wondered how such a miracle could have happened. Nita had once called her a cynic where men were concerned, but she wasn't, she was just a pragmatist and anyway, despite their closeness, there were things about her Nita didn't know, things she'd never told anyone, not even Jean-Phillipe.

  Things that might change the way Conor felt about her.

  "Miranda?"

  She started. Conor was watching her, a puz
zled smile on his face.

  "Don't you like the hot and sour soup?"

  She looked down at the table. A bowl of steaming soup had appeared before her but she had no idea when.

  "Because if you don't, that's okay. We can order something else."

  "Conor." Miranda folded her hands in her lap. "You've never asked me—you've never asked me why I married Edouard."

  Conor put down his spoon. "No," he said carefully, "I didn't. You married him and that's that. You don't owe me any explanations."

  "I know that. But I want you to know. There are things about me..."

  Pieces of her past, she meant. And he realized he ought to encourage her to share them. For all he knew, they'd shed light on why someone had targeted her.

  For all he knew, de Lasserre, that pompous son of a bitch, had been the love of her life. And if that was true, he didn't want to hear it.

  "I married him because I was lonely."

  Conor looked across the table at her. "Did you love him?"

  "I thought I did. You have to remember, I was seventeen years old. I had no real friends—I never stayed in one school long enough to make any. My mother and I didn't—we didn't get along. And suddenly this man came into my life. He was kind to me. He was handsome, too, and sophisticated—a teenaged girl's dream, you know? And he told me all the things a lonely kid dreams of hearing, that I was beautiful and desirable and that he'd take care of me forever."

  "And you believed him."

  "Sure. Why wouldn't I? Edouard was very polished and I was this dumb kid." She drew a deep breath. "I met him through my roommate, Amalie. Did I ever tell you about her?"

  Conor cleared his throat. "No. No, you didn't."

  "Amalie hated me on sight. I tried everything I could think of to make friends with her. I let her copy my homework, I coached her in the subjects she was failing. God, I must have seemed so pathetic! But it didn't matter. For some reason, she flat-out disliked me from the start and when Edouard—he was her cousin—when Edouard started paying her visits, taking her out to lunch and inviting me along..."

  Conor reached for her hand across the table. "Amalie was pissed," he said, with a little smile.

  Miranda laughed. "Exactly. I knew it upset her and honestly, I didn't want that but I was so flattered by Edouard's attention, so—what's the word?—so infatuated..." She let out a long sigh. "Anyway, he proposed. He loved me, he said, and by then I was convinced I loved him, too. I told him my mother would never give permission, she'd say I was too young, and he said we didn't need her permission, that we'd elope." Her eyes met Conor's. "He thought I was eighteen. I let him think it. I'd been afraid that if he knew the truth, he wouldn't bother with me."

  "Miranda." Conor's hand tightened almost painfully on hers. "You don't have to say any more. Look, we all make mistakes. Hell, I was married, once, too, but it didn't work out. And I didn't have the excuse of being a lonely, mixed-up seventeen-year-old kid."

  "I'm not apologizing for what I did, Conor, I'm just trying to explain why—why I never..." She swallowed dryly. "By the time we reached Paris, I knew I'd made a terrible mistake. I tried to tell that to Edouard. I said I wanted to go home. And he laughed." Her voice dipped; Conor had to lean forward to hear her. "He said nothing would part us, after he'd—after he'd..."

  "Baby, don't. It isn't important, not anymore."

  "He raped me," she said, with sudden, awful ferocity. Her head came up, all the pain of so long ago blazing in her eyes. "When it was over, he said I was pathetic, that I'd have to learn to make believe I was a real woman if I didn't want him to teach me a lesson I'd never forget. Then he locked the door and left."

  Conor felt the rage twisting inside him like a snake.

  "Eva turned up the next morning. Oh, I was so happy to see her! I was sure she'd come to take me home." Her eyes went flat. "But it wasn't like that. She said I was no better than a whore."

  "Jesus Christ, your own mother?"

  "She said she'd take care of Edouard and that when she and I got back to the States, I'd be going to a special school for girls who were bad, like me." Her voice quavered. "I knew the place—we used to joke about it, at Miss Cooper's, we'd say, well, this place isn't the end of the line anymore, now there's the Newton Academy, where they lock you in your room and pump you full of dope if you don't behave." She took a deep breath. "I begged Eva not to do it. I said I'd rather stay in Paris than be locked away like that and she said, then stay. The next thing I knew, I was standing in the street, watching her taxi drive away."

  He was almost afraid to speak because of the rage he felt.

  "Let me get this straight," he said carefully. "Eva drove off and left you?"

  "Yes."

  "Just left you?"

  "We didn't see each other again, or even speak to each other, for years," Miranda said in a shaky voice.

  Conor's eyes narrowed. "Surely, she sent you money to live on," he said, remembering what Eva had told him.

  "No. But that was okay," she added with a touch of defiance. "I wouldn't have accepted it if she had. Anyway, I was lucky. Jean-Phillipe found me standing on the street corner where Eva had left me. It had started to rain and he took pity on me." She gave a little laugh. "It's not a very pretty story, is it?"

  "Dammit, how could Eva have done such a thing? Kids get into trouble, it happens all the time, but to turn her back on her own daughter, to abandon her for an elopement and a few indiscretions—"

  "There were no indiscretions!" Miranda hunched forward. "I'd done some dumb things. Drinking beer. Breaking curfew. Smoking a joint one time."

  "And inhaling," Conor said, trying to bring a smile to her face, telling himself that he was a civilized man and that there were laws that said he couldn't rip out Eva Winthrop's throat or fly back to France and beat Edouard de Lasserre to a bloody pulp.

  "And inhaling," Miranda said, with a little smile, "and then getting sick enough to never want to do it again." She hesitated, and he knew that whatever she was about to say was the thing that she'd been heading for from the start of her unexpected confession. "But when it came to boys—to sex..." Her hand suddenly trembled within his. "Edouard had always been so gentle, until that night. He hardly touched me and when he kissed me, it was like being brushed by a butterfly's wing. I wouldn't let him do more than that. Something had happened, you see, years before... What I'm trying to tell you is that I was a virgin when I married Edouard, and terrified of sex."

  The restaurant was a quiet one; it was one of the reasons Conor had chosen it. Hardly any sounds penetrated to this dimly lit corner. Now, suddenly, a vertiginous roaring filled Conor's ears.

  "Are you telling me that son of a bitch took your virginity by raping you?"

  She nodded.

  "And that was it? That one ugly experience was all you had, until—"

  "Until you."

  She was trying to smile, but tears rose in her eyes. She began weeping silently, as if her heart were going to break.

  Conor got to his feet, dug out his wallet and tossed a handful of bills on the table. Then he drew her from her seat, put his arm around her, and took her home.

  * * *

  He awoke abruptly in the middle of the night. Something had awakened him, but what? Miranda lay in the curve of his arm, her head pillowed on his shoulder.

  Conor's muscles tensed.

  She'd been telling him about de Lasserre, who had raped her. She'd been a virgin, she'd said, and terrified of sex.

  Something had happened. That was what she'd said. Something had happened, years before.

  Miranda stirred beside him. "Conor?"

  He shifted to his side and drew her closer, so they were lying breath to breath.

  "Yes, baby. I'm sorry if I woke you."

  "No, that's okay. I wasn't sleeping anyway." Her hand cupped his face. "I'm sorry about what happened in the restaurant." She kissed him, and he felt her lips curve in a smile. "Such terrific shrimp and because of me, we didn't get to finish it.
"

  Conor laughed softly, though his nerve ends were humming.

  "I don't know how you stay so skinny, Beckman."

  "I'm not skinny at all. Manuel says I've put on weight."

  "Manuel?"

  "The guy who's doing the Chrysalis ads."

  "Yeah, well, what does he know? He's probably got a boyfriend." Conor hesitated. "Miranda? When you were telling me about de Lasserre—you said something had happened, years before."

  "Did I?"

  Conor felt her sudden tension. He had the feeling she was on the verge of shoving him away and fleeing.

  "What happened, Miranda?"

  "Nothing."

  "Sweetheart, if somebody hurt you..."

  She pushed free of his arms, just as he'd expected, and rolled onto her back.

  "It isn't worth talking about, Conor. It was so long ago."

  He felt the coldness growing inside him. He sat up and switched on the light.

  "Who was it?" he said. "What did he do?"

  Miranda turned away from him and dragged the blanket almost over her head.

  "I don't want to talk about it," she whispered. "Please, it doesn't matter anymore."

  In that instant, he knew.

  "Hoyt," he said softly, and the sound that burst from Miranda's throat gave him all the confirmation he needed.

  Conor closed his eyes. He could see Hoyt's patrician face, hear that oh-so-cultured voice explaining how close he and Miranda had once been, how he'd painted the portrait of her, the one with that sad, haunted smile...

  "Son of a bitch!"

  "Conor, don't."

  "That goddamn son of a—" Conor roared with pain and rage. He flung back the covers, shot to his feet, and smashed his fist into the wall. "That fucking piece of shit! I'll kill him. I'll beat the crap out of him first and then I'll put my hands around his throat and—"

  "No!" Miranda flung herself at him and wrapped her arms around his waist. "I beg you, don't do anything."

  "Goddammit, Miranda!"

  "Listen to me. Please. Sit down and just listen."

  He felt like a coiled spring, tightened to the breaking point, needing to release all the energy stored inside him before it exploded. But this had been her pain long before it had been his, so he sucked in a couple of lungfuls of air, let her take his hand and tug him down to the edge of the mattress beside her.