His hand tugged at the covers with excruciating slowness until they revealed the small of her back, and only then did he remember to take another gulp of air. Her oversized pajamas bunched in crumpled folds that extended down to her thighs. He caught the hem of her blouse between his fingers and started to pull it up as slow as a snail, only stopping for a short moment to turn his flashlight on.
A pale patch of skin finally showed from underneath the fabric. Justin held his breath and kept pushing the blouse up further, then his lungs refused to let air in and out. He stared stunned at the long, horrifying old scars that extended on her back in arbitrary directions, looking like they had been inflicted by a belt in a savage bout of rage.
“What the hell do you think you’re doin’?” Lizzie’s voice made his heart take a leap.
The flashlight slipped from his fingers like a slimy fish.
She turned around with lightning speed and grabbed his wrist in a vise-like grip, panting so hard she sounded as if she couldn’t breathe.
Justin extended his other hand to hit the light switch above the headboard.
Her panting intensified as she scrambled closer to the edge of the bed, almost curling into a ball, her fingers clenched on the covers underneath her chin.
“Who did this to you, Jimmy? I want an answer and I want it now,” he said, his voice soft yet commanding.
Lizzie suddenly reached out for her glasses, smashing her hand on the bedside table in panic. The red frames snapped in two in the middle, right where the big ball of superglue was holding the halves together.
“Oh, shit.” She winced. “Go to hell, Winters. I’m not tellin’ you anythin’.”
Justin suddenly locked a steely arm around her waist and pulled her in the middle of the bed. He then pinned her arms on the sides of her head, shifting his body over hers to hold her down.
Panic rocked through her, and she stared imploringly at him. She didn’t know what she wanted; to have him close or to push him away. Her confusion only grew as she kept gazing into his eyes. It was a scary yet thrilling sensation, being helpless and at his mercy, although somewhere at the back of her mind she knew he wouldn’t harm her.
“Tell me,” he murmured, looking down at her.
It had been either the shock or the surprise of his gesture that had made her forget to avert her gaze. He was now staring into honey-colored eyes, slightly tilted upwards at the corners. Golden and green specks fanned out from their pupils, looking like mystique jewels trapped in pure, transparent amber.
She suddenly realized she was gaping at him and dropped her gaze to his chin.
“Get the hell off me. I won’t tell you a damn thing. What the hell do you care, anyway?” she cried, starting to struggle.
He tightened his grip on her wrists. “Look at me, Jimmy. Look at me,” he commanded gently.
She lifted her stare to meet his once more as if she’d been hypnotized.
Justin let go of one wrist to run his fingers up and down her cheek.
She froze.
“I do care,” he almost whispered. “And it’s precisely because I care that I want to know what happened to you.”
Lizzie’s head started to spin. His words stunned her; it was beyond her comprehension. It may have been out of pity, or just friendliness, but this was the second time in a row when he insisted on talking about it. If that translated for him into care then so be it, it was good enough for her, because it was a beginning. Although he had showed patience and care for her before: during the mountain trip for instance.
“Got beaten,” she muttered then her mouth turned into a thin line.
Justin felt a painful lump jam in his throat. “By whom?” he asked, letting go of her other wrist too.
She didn’t protest that he was still pinning her to the bed with his body. He wasn’t restraining her hands anymore, instead bracing his arms on the mattress on the sides of her head. His proximity was intoxicating and frightening all at once, forcing incoherence into her clouded mind.
“My dad,” she answered curtly.
“Arthur?” His eyes opened wide in surprise.
“Nah.” She shook her head. “The other one. Wallace.”
It hadn’t been just a spanking or two. The scars on her back showed repeated torture. He wasn’t going to twist the knife in the wound by asking how many times it had happened, and how hard. There was only one question he needed her to answer.
“Why?”
Her gaze turned from uncertain and fragile to unreadable. Only the almost imperceptible shake in her voice gave away the still raw emotional wound. “Cuz’ I wasn’ born a boy, and he hated I couldn’ always behave like a damn one,” she said.
Savage fury started pounding inside Justin’s chest.
“But it wasn’t your fault that he kidnapped the wrong baby,” he exploded, forgetting himself.
Lizzie flinched a little at the force of his outburst before realizing that it wasn’t directed at her.
“I know,” she said, nodding slowly.
He swallowed hard a couple of times. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.
She briefly bit her upper lip. “I wanna sleep now,” she said.
His stare caressed her face once more. Her strawy hair was still covering most of it even as she was lying on her back, and she was once again averting her gaze. But for the first time since he’d married her he could see her mouth other than clamped in a thin line. Her lips were full and sensual, although they bore the marks of continuous nibbling. Even so, she had the most beautiful mouth he’d ever seen.
She felt his stare and instantly drew her upper lip between her teeth and started chewing on it.
Justin moved away from her with reluctance and watched her as she scrambled back to her edge of the bed, turning her back on him.
“Good night,” he said.
“Good night,” she answered back, a little gruff.
The lump wedged in his throat kept growing as he lay on his back, his mind reeling with what he had just found out. Elisabeth Winters aka Jimmy had lived her entire life trying to be the boy then the man her abductor had expected of her. Why she had tried so hard to do the bastard’s bidding, it was beyond Justin’s understanding. Lizzie had given her heart and soul to everything that was part of her past. That was the world she understood. She loved Momma and Johnny with unwavering intensity, so she must have loved Billy Wallace just as much. Every belt strike on her back must have renewed her determination to please him, and had added a manly accessory to her appearance. All the more when her blossoming womanhood had started to show in her early teenage years, not long before the bastard had turned up his toes. And even after his death she had kept hiding behind the same facade, thickening it year after year, as a self-inflicted punishment for having failed to achieve it while Billy was still alive and kicking. Billy Wallace had not been punished for torturing a little girl for fourteen long years, but if there was a hell somewhere, Justin hoped he would slowly burn in it.
Justin turned his head toward the curled bundle that lay fast asleep on the edge of the bed. Somewhere behind that harsh appearance there was a dormant woman whose past nightmares could be chased away. With time.
He got out of bed as quiet as a cat then walked around it to her bedside table to pick up the two halves of her glasses. It was only when he closed the door behind him in his study that he dared to breathe again. He dialed a number on his cell phone and waited for some time for the other end to pick up then started to speak in a low, urgent voice. He listened for a few moments then started again.
“I don’t care that it’s so late at night,” he snapped, struggling to keep his voice down. “Go and find one right away. Drag him out of bed and get the job done. I want the glasses here before dawn. Is that understood?”
He listened a little longer then said. “All right. Come and get them, I’ll be waiting for you.” And with that he hung up.
It was past one a.m. when Justin finally got to bed, moving as slow as a sn
ail when he slipped under the covers. Lizzie was still curled in the same position. His heart broke in two.
Haunting thoughts roamed through his mind until it was almost dawn, when an almost imperceptible vibration of his cell phone made him get up once again. He returned in a few minutes and walked to her bedside table with small, quiet steps. Exhaustion got hold of him as soon as he placed down the box he was holding. He trudged his feet to his side of the bed. A few seconds later he was fast asleep.
The sun rose in some distant place and with it the birds started chirping and feeding their young. The flowers and leaves turned their faces up to bathe in its light. Only the bedroom remained engulfed in obscurity, sheltered by heavy curtains.
Lizzie opened her eyes and rubbed them hard with her knuckles. Tumultuous thoughts came to batter her as soon as the slumber slipped away. Last night she had told Justin things she’d never told to anyone. Things that only Momma and Johnny had ever known. Johnny had had his eyes blackened many times for trying to stop the belting, but he’d thrown some solid punches of his own in return, particularly when he’d grown up. Only that he couldn’t be there all the time to protect her.
But that was not the point now. The question was, why had Justin been so gentle with her last night? He’d caressed her cheek even before she’d said a word about the beatings. He was a damn puzzle, but one she loved.
She stopped rubbing her eyes and reached out for her glasses. Oh, she had broken them in two last night. Shit! Now she would have to glue them again, dammit. Her hand almost swept a rectangular box off the bedside table. She looked. The halves of her frames were nowhere to be seen. She picked up the box and opened it then her mouth dropped and she forgot to breathe. A pair of glasses with ultra-thin lenses and delicate, inconspicuous frames was encased in the velvet interior, looking almost too fragile to be touched.
Shock and horror hammered into her chest, knocking the breath out of her then the claw started ripping at her heart, drawing blood once more. “Hell no! What you’ve done to me?” she croaked, swallowing air in harsh intakes.
Justin bolted upright staring around in panic, his rapid panting matching hers.
“What happened?” he cried, scrambling toward her with a bewildered look on his face.
She clenched her hand around her throat and let the tears flow in heavy streams on her cheeks, mopping them away with the back of her hands.
“What’d you do with my glasses?” she asked.
He looked at her open-mouthed for a moment then understanding hit him. For some unfathomable reason, she was upset for loosing those, horrible red ones.
“They were broken, Jimmy,” he said. “I got them replaced with new ones. These are lighter, with thin lenses, virtually unbreakable.”
She covered her face with her hands and started sobbing. “Nobody asked you to do anythin’ about my glasses. They were mine. Johnny bought them for me. Go to hell, Winters,” she cried, her voice almost an unintelligible mumble.
He felt a knife sparring through his heart, twisting inside it. What a fool had he been. He hadn’t stopped to think of her emotional attachment with them, thinking they were just a pair of glasses. True enough, he couldn’t have known, but he was smart enough to look at all possibilities, and he had not. He reached out and pulled her to him, making her lie down on his chest, her head nestled in the crook of his neck.
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Jimmy. I didn’t know,” he murmured.
She didn’t make any gesture to pull away. Just kept shaking with heartbreaking sobs, soaking his naked shoulder with endless streams of tears that burned his skin, as if they branded his sin onto it with a red hot iron.
He started to kiss the top of her head while his fingers threaded through her hair.
She kept crying cradled in his arms until her tears dried up. Not that she’d run out of them. Her heart held enough to last her a lifetime. But right now, Justin was holding her. Clasping her to his chest, placing soft kisses on top of her head, and caressing her in a way she’d never thought possible before. She took in the feel of the muscles of his naked chest bunching under her cheek, and the intoxicating scent of his skin. No glasses on earth were worth losing this moment. Sorry, Johnny, I hope you’ll understand, she mused and closed her eyes, letting the pacifying rhythm of Justin’s rocking to overwhelm her.
“I’m sorry… I’m so sorry,” Justin kept murmuring as he gently rocked her in his arms. Sorry wasn’t going to heal the pain he’d inflicted. It was another belt strike he’d added to the countless ones she’d received throughout her life. Only that this one wasn’t physical. It went straight to her soul. He felt her steadily relax in his arms until her breathing got soft again just as it was during her sleep. Yes, she was sleeping, he realized after a while. Oh, God! Falling asleep in the arms of the one who has just hurt you, he thought tenderly. His wife was a woman so full of contradictions, now so harsh and belligerent then so vulnerable and fragile. What he felt for her was not pity. She had surprised him from the beginning with her wit and humor, rebellion and childish recklessness. When not around him, she would make everybody laugh. She was an enigma. He was beginning to want to know his strange wife. His eyelids grew heavier with the exhaustion of his sleepless night, and the last thought his mind registered before he dozed off was that somehow along the way he had fallen in love with Jimmy Winters.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Krissie kept tapping her lower lip with the tip of her fingers, measuring Lizzie up and down with a critical look.
“Hell no.” Lizzie crossed her arms over her chest, sending a stubborn stare back from underneath her untamed fringe.
“Oh, yes.” Krissie took a step closer. “There’s no escape. He’s away for the entire week, here’s your chance.”
“I don’t want any damn transformation, Krissie,” Lizzie exploded. “He doesn’t have eyes for me, anyway. Besides, I could bet my head that all his damn hussies grew wings and flew after him all the way down to Miami.”
The simple thought that Justin was away on his own for the first time was breaking her heart. For a whole week too, in Miami Florida. Business conference, my ass, she mused.
“Don’t you worry about his hussies, Lizzie,” Krissie said. “Mom and dad sent a whole army of spies on his tail. He won’t be able to go to the toilet without them breathing down his neck. His loyalty to you is safe.” She laughed.
“So what? It doesn’t mean I can change a damn thing if I do as you say.”
Krissie reached out to push away Lizzie’s strawy hair, and stared in wonder at Madeline’s features and honey-colored eyes.
“Oh, yes, you can change everything,” she nodded appreciatively. “We’ll start right now.”
Lizzie stared hesitantly at her. The beautiful pixie who was standing in front of her had spent the past hour or so blabbering non-stop about change. Change would mean leaving behind the manly appearance and behavior, and turning into a woman. In six and a half days.
Lizzie sighed. For once in her life, the idea of wearing dresses and high heels didn’t equate to hell. It slipped into her heart a hope she’d never had before. But it was a double-edged sword, due to the risk it entailed. What if she turned out to be a lemon in the end? Or even worse, what if Justin rejected her, mocking her transformation? She ballooned her cheeks and sighed once more through pursed lips.
“So what the hell do you want me to do, huh?” she asked.
Krissie stifled a victorious smile. “We’ll start by going to a beauty salon. Intensive skin, hair, nail treatment. Body hair removal. Then we’ll go to…”
“Hair removal?” Lizzie gasped.
“Of course,” Krissie nodded. “Yes, it is what we do.” She wrinkled her nose.
“Do you expect me to get undressed in front of a beautician and let her touch me?” Lizzie stared wildly at her.
“Of course. All women do.”
“Yeah, I knew there’d be a price to pay,” Lizzie admitted miserably. “And then?”
“Then I’ll take you to an eye laser clinic. You’ll have a procedure to get rid of these glasses,” Krissie said. “Not that they aren’t gorgeous, but you’d look so much better without them.”
“I’m not gettin’ rid of them things,” Lizzie snapped.
They were Justin’s present, and just as she had loved and cherished those Johnny had bought for her, the glasses she was now wearing were welded to her heart and soul. Inseparable.
“Nobody is asking you to get rid of them altogether.” Krissie rolled her eyes. “You can keep them in their little box somewhere in your souvenir drawer and pull them out any time, but if you want Justin to look at you, you need to be sexy from head to toe. And that means no glasses. Understand?”
Lizzie bit hard on her lower lip.
“And no more biting of your lips,” Krissie warned. “Or chewing on your fingernails. It will probably take a miracle to fix these flaws in a week. Let’s go.”
The beauty salon was in the heart of Rochester, more than an hour drive through winding roads. Yet not many cars were streaming in and out of the town, making the trip bearable. The limousine stopped in front of a luxurious boutique with shiny windows. Its door opened before the two women got out of the car.
A short, fat woman with red hair skillfully streaked with darker shades here and there burst out clasping her hands.
“Mademoiselle Winters, what a pleasure. I was waiting for you.” She bobbed her head in a reassuring nod. “Please come in.”
Her gaze swept Lizzie for a moment, a shocked flame dying in the depths of her eyes within seconds as she waved her clients in with exaggerated cheerfulness.
“So, this young lady must be Mrs. Winters,” she continued her fervent monologue once she closed the door behind her. “We definitely have a lot of work to do. It will take a few days. Intensive hair, skin and nails treatment.” She kept talking, walking around Lizzie in an assessing circle. “We won’t be able to decide on the hair cut until we achieve the right softness,” she concluded as she finally came to a halt.
Follow the white pebbles Page 14
