His hands clamped down on my hips and he lifted me onto the counter, never breaking our kiss. I scooted forward till I was perched on the edge, wanting to be as close to him as possible. He trailed kisses down my neck, licking and nipping along the way until he reached the hollow at the base of my throat.
Then he stopped.
He stayed perfectly still, his head resting against my chest, no doubt listening to my racing heartbeat. We stayed that way for a long moment, neither of us moving. Finally I broke the silence. “Julien?”
He answered me without moving. “Sí?”
I needed to see his eyes. I felt at a great disadvantage not being able to see his face. “Will you look at me please?”
Slowly he raised his head until we were face to face. He looked defeated. Tired. “What is it?” I asked.
“I am conflicted.”
I waited for him to continue. He pushed away from the counter and paced to the center of the kitchen, then turned to face me again, running his hands through his hair in a show of frustration. “You have hated me for three and a half years, yes?”
I nodded and started to defend myself but he stopped me with a gesture. “I understand. You thought I had willingly abandoned you along with my child.” I nodded again. He narrowed his eyes in thought, as if trying to decide how best to phrase his next question. “And now that you know the truth - well, in so much as I didn’t even know about Alex - How do you feel about me? Do you still hate me? Is there still anger there?”
I opened my mouth to say of course I didn’t hate him, but nothing came out. I closed my mouth again and frowned. He was right. Under all of the crazy things jockeying for shelf space in my brain, I still felt anger toward him. I had been carrying these feelings around for so long, it was second nature.
He smiled in understanding. “It is all right, Chérie. I understand. I have anger too.”
He was angry? With me? “Why?” My voice was so soft it was almost a whisper.
“For leaving. For keeping my son from me...”
I was quick to point out to him, “But I didn’t keep him from you! I told you I was pregnant-”
He held up his hands to placate me. “I know, I know. You tried to tell me. And you thought you had been successful in relaying that information. But you weren’t. You weren’t, and because you weren’t, I missed out on the first years of my child’s life. It is upsetting, yes, but it isn’t your fault any more than it is my fault you thought you had been abandoned. So I am conflicted, you see.”
I nodded, not because I understood, but rather to encourage him to continue.
“We are both angry about things neither of us had any control over. So even though rationally we know it doesn’t make sense, still, those feelings of anger are there. That is why trying to apply rational thought to matters of the heart is so futile.”
“So how is it that you are conflicted?” I asked. I could hear the edge in my voice. I wasn’t as calm as I seemed.
“Because even through my anger, I want you. There is still this... passion between us. This chemistry. It is like nothing I have known before. You feel it - don’t try to deny that you feel it. It is obvious even to the casual observer.”
I started to shake my head. His eyes flashed and he stilled my denial with three words. “Marla saw it.”
Julien was gone when I woke up. He was always gone when I woke up. The man needed very little sleep. At first I had wondered where he was, but now I knew. He was with her. He had to be. Where else would he be?
Hot tears suddenly sprung to my eyes. I knew I was being ridiculous, but I couldn’t stop them from coming. Ten days. I had known Julien a mere ten days. How was it that I could fancy myself in love with someone I had known less than two weeks? I should have known he was too good to be true.
I felt so foolish. Ever since the incident with Marla and the oil, I kept catching her watching me. She looked like the cat that ate the cream, but there was something else too. It was almost as if everything she did was calculated to watch my reactions. I could never meet her gaze for more than a second before I would look away in a show of submission. I knew the rules. This was her show. Her yacht. Her man. I was only here out of her generosity.
I dashed at the tears on my cheeks and considered leaving. We were never far from the coastline, so it would be a simple enough thing to go when next we docked. But I couldn’t do it. I told myself it would be stupid to leave such plush accommodations to backpack across terrain and sleep in dirty hostels. I was pretty good at lying to myself because I knew that my decision to stay had very little to do with avoiding dirty hostels and everything to do with not avoiding Julien.
The tears started afresh. They were not pretty, delicate tears that fell poetically down my cheeks. They were giant, sloppy tears. Tears born of heartache that clumped my eyelashes together and made my face blotchy and my nose runny. At almost twenty, I had known heartache before. I had lost my mother just the year before to breast cancer. With her loss came a grief so intense I thought it would swallow me whole. No, I was no stranger to heartache, but this was a different breed entirely. I had never given my heart away to a boy before. Never imagined a happily ever after with someone.
I jumped when the door opened. Julien peeked his head in and shock registered on his face as he took in my horrified expression. I was mortified to be caught blubbering like an idiot.
“Oh non non non! Pourquoi les larmes, ma douce? What is all this, Chérie? Are you ill?”
Instantly he was by my side, cradling my face and wiping at my tears with his thumbs. The concern on his face coupled with his tender touch only made my tears come harder. I pulled away from him and tried to bury my face in my pillow, but he would have none of that. He scooped me into his lap and tucked my head under his chin, rocking me gently as I sobbed against his chest. I was still half wrapped in the sheets, which I was grateful for because these days I tended to sleep in the nude.
After a while my crying ceased and my breathing returned to almost normal. When I had reached the last stage of calming recognizable by the occasional shuddering of the diaphragm, Julien shifted my weight in his arms and kissed the top of my head. “Are we feeling better, Chérie?” he asked.
I covered my face with my hands and nodded. I must have looked a mess. He set me on the bed and went into the en-suite. I could hear the water running for a minute, and then he returned with a damp face cloth, which I expected him to hand to me, but he didn’t. Instead he sat beside me on the bed, the weight of him causing the mattress to sag and my body to lean toward him. He folded the cloth in half and dabbed gently at my eyes before pushing me to a lying position and draping the cloth over my eyes and forehead.
I could hear his shoes drop to the floor, and the bed bounced around a bit as he crawled over me to drape himself along the length of my body. I shivered at his warmth through the sheet. I could feel his breath on my neck as he dropped a kiss on my shoulder. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I was ever so grateful my face was mostly covered with the cloth. At least he couldn’t see me cringe, even if I couldn’t keep the disdain from my voice. “No. It’s nothing.”
His warm arm wrapped around me, rolling me to my side and pulling me up against his chest so we were spooning, his front to my back, the sheet slightly bunching between us. The damp cloth fell from my face and lay crumpled beside me on my pillow. “Surely it was something, Lara, to make you so upset.” Suddenly he stiffened. “Was it Marla? Has she done something?”
“No!” I gasped, then within the same breath my face crumpled. “Yes. No... I don’t know.” I started crying again.
“Oh, shhh shhh shhh...” He rose up on his elbow so he could look down at me, mumbling sweet nonsense in French. I was much quicker to stop crying this time. I stared up at him with watery eyes and gave him an embarrassed smile. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m an idiot.”
He returned my weak smile but it didn’t reach his eyes. “No, you’re not.”
He blanched at this. “Don’t be silly. Of course you belong here. What do you mean?”
I sat up and leaned against the headboard, careful to keep the sheet wrapped around my torso. “I mean,” I said, “that I’m not cut out for this kind of lifestyle.”
His brows furrowed. “‘Lifestyle’ Chérie?”
“This...” I waived my hand around in an effort to convey my meaning. “...party yacht lifestyle. The whole free-love and life’s-an-orgy mindset. It’s not my thing.” I could tell he wanted to say something but I cut him off, speeding up my speech like an auctioneer. “And I know the way we met would lead you to believe differently, but I can’t do this. I can’t have this type of physical relationship with someone and not have it mean something. I can’t welcome you into my bed at night knowing you’ll be in someone else’s bed come morning. My heart can’t take it. This isn’t ‘fun’ for me. Maybe it was in the beginning, but it’s not anymore.”
He stared at me, waiting to be sure I was finished before trying to answer me. Before he could draw a breath to speak, and before I lost my nerve, I blurted out the crux of my problem. “I’ve fallen in love with you Julien.”
His eyes grew large and his perfect bow lips parted in surprise. I had caught him off guard and he was at a loss for words. I immediately regretted my confession. “Oh, God.” I shook my head in disbelief. “Please just forget I said that.” I dropped my face into my hands in mortification. I could feel my cheeks burning in humiliation.
He pried my hands away from my face, and grabbed my chin, forcing me to look at him. “You flatter me, Lara. I am undeserving of your affection.” He rubbed his thumb softly over my bottom lip. He stared at me intently before chuckling softly to himself. “And I can assure you, the only bed I’ve been sharing is yours, though it’s no small stroke to my ego that you think I’m capable of satisfying another woman after spending all night making love with you.”
That got a small laugh out of me. Really? Had he really been ignoring Marla these past ten days? That would explain her animosity toward me. But why then, would she put up with me? Why let me stay on her yacht and steal her boyfriend?
“Why does Marla let me stay?” I asked.
He slumped the tiniest bit. I could tell he didn’t want to talk about Marla. “Because I want you to stay, Chérie.”
I cocked a brow at this. “And Marla gives you everything you want?”
His answering look grew heated and I could feel my body responding to his silent promise. “Marla is incapable of giving me everything I want,” he said simply, and then he lowered his lips to mine and proved to me that he hadn’t been expending any energy in his absence. He’d been saving it all for me.
It didn’t escape my attention that he hadn’t returned my sentiments.
I stared stonily at him, angry that he would mention her name in a discussion about our passion. “Well, for all that she saw it, it made no difference in the end, did it?”
My icy tone put him on edge. “What do you mean by that?” he asked.
“I mean, she won. She got you in the end despite this chemistry we have. As strong as it is, it wasn’t enough for you to give up the pampered life of a favorite pet.”
There was a hard glint in his eye. I could see the edges of his mouth tighten the slightest bit. “What?”
I jumped down from the counter, leaving my hands anchored on the edge behind me.
“You chose her Julien. You chose fancy yachts and expensive champagne over the silly American girl. So don’t talk to me about how amazing this thing is between us, because it wasn’t amazing enough for you to give up your sugar mama.”
His laughter was bitter and harsh. “‘Sugar mama’? Is that what you think? What, that I was some puttana maschio? A gigolo?”
His dramatic reaction gave me pause. Why was he so offended? Of course that’s what I thought. He had blatantly admitted to me that he and Marla were lovers. He had always seemed so cocky about the effect he knew he had on women. The man was walking sex, and he knew it. Why the sudden sensitivity?
He stepped toward me, flustered and angry, but I didn’t fear his wrath. I knew in every cell of my body that he would never so much as raise a hand to me. “So what does that make you, Lara? What do you call a woman who partakes of the services of a whore?”
I slapped him. Hard. It was the second time I had hit him in as many days. I watched his green eyes fill with the watery sting of my assault. He stayed stone still for several heartbeats with the exception of the muscles working to clench and unclench his jaw. When I felt my own eyes filling with angry tears, I turned sharply away and stormed out of the kitchen.
For the second time that day I found myself running away from my house. More specifically, running away from Julien. He was ‘conflicted’ huh? Well, he could be conflicted all by himself. “Bastard,” I mumbled under my breath.
I had left via the front door and felt a smug satisfaction in knowing he couldn’t follow me without setting off his little ankle gadget. I kicked at a rock as I made my way down the driveway. The wind had picked up and the smell of smoke was getting much stronger. I hoped Pops was making good headway on the Johnson’s firebreak. I decided to cut across the Dambacher property to see if I could be of any help. I wasn’t sure where exactly Mr. Johnson and Pops would be, so I took out my cell phone, grateful that I had thought to grab it on my way out.
It went straight to voicemail. I didn’t bother to leave a message. Snapping the phone closed I stuffed it back into my back pocket. Once I got to the Johnson’s I could just follow the firebreak until I ran into them.
The Dambacher house was a very interesting piece of architecture. It had been designed in the standard log cabin style, with river stones as accents, but all of the doors and windows had been framed with twisting Manzanita branches. The result always made me think of the fabled witch’s house in Hansel and Gretel.
It was home to Doc Dambacher; a very sweet, eclectic man that had to be pushing a hundred years old if he was a day. He lived alone with only a handful of chickens and a few friendly goats for company. His great-grandson, Morty, would stop by every couple of days to check in on him.
There was no sign of Morty today, but Doc was out by his goat shed looking rather upset. I waved to get his attention, knowing calling out would be useless as he was stone deaf. “Hi Doc. Is something the matter?” I said when I reached his side.
“Oh, hello dear,” was his sweet reply. “I’m afraid my Milly has wandered off. She gets real nervous when the fires get so close...” He was shaking his head and scanning the edge of the tree line. The smoke was definitely getting thicker in the air, and I started getting uneasy, wondering if the fire had made its way closer than I thought.
Wild fires were a common occurrence in our area. We were known for them. At least once a year we could be counted on to need the assistance of out of state firefighters to help put out a blaze started by a careless smoker or some idiot with a campfire. One year it was even discovered that a brush fire had been purposefully started by a firefighter in need of the extra work.
“Well, she wouldn’t be foolish enough to walk into the flames, so I’m sure she’ll turn up.” I tried to sound reassuring. My words did nothing to comfort Doc however, and he continued to scan the woods for signs of his missing goat. “She’s due to kid any time now...” he murmured more to himself than to me.
I was at a loss as to what to do in this situation. I felt like a heel leaving Doc to worry about his goat alone, but at the same time I wanted to find Pops and try and get some idea of how close this fire was getting. “I’m on my way to the Johnson’s place to see about the firebreak. I’ll keep a look out for Milly, okay?” was the best I could offer.
He waved me away with a nod, and I continued across his field and into the trees. I stayed to the path until it opened into a meadow. The smoke hung thick in the air, and I caught myself questioning if I was headed in the right dire
ction. The meadow was eerily quiet, as if the birds couldn’t sing through the smoke. I had just made up my mind to turn around and head back when I thought I heard a faint bleating from the far side of the meadow. Doc’s goat, Milly.
Smoke does funny things to the way sound carries. It’s similar to fog, in that you’re never quite sure which direction a sound is coming from. When I reached the edge of the meadow the bleating was louder. “Milly?” I called. “Here girl!” I don’t know what I expected to happen. She wasn’t a dog. The bleating became more insistent at my voice. It sounded almost panicked. “Milly?” I continued on, deeper into the far woods until I stubbed my foot against a chunk of cement and stumbled forward gracelessly. Looking down I realized the cement was part of an old house foundation. I had never come across this place before.
“Milly?” I called again.
The foundation wasn’t large by modern standards, but it did sink down to form what must have been a basement toward the far end. I was grateful I had tripped over the shallow lip instead of the other side. Tripping over there would have meant an eight-foot drop. There were the remains of a fireplace and chimney to my right. It sounded as if Milly’s bleating was coming from behind it.
I chose my footing carefully to avoid any more stumbles. There were rusty broken pipe pieces sticking out of the ground here and there and other bits of debris to navigate around. The smoke was getting thicker by the minute and I couldn’t tell if it was my imagination or if the temperature was rising. At last I made it to the chimney ruins. Milly was there, wide eyed and frothing a bit at the mouth. Her collar had caught on an iron hook at the back of the old fireplace, and every time she pulled against it she choked herself. “Easy girl, it’s okay...” I crooned to her as I eased over to unhook her collar.
Sudden Legacy Page 6
