Return to Tomorrow

by Marisa Carroll

  How long had he been there? Had he overheard her exchange of confidences with Lonnie? What could she say now that he knew about her son? Would he see the rest of her secrets in her eyes? He read people so well. If she told him her pregnancy had resulted from a random act of violence, as she’d told the others, would he believe her? Or would he know that she was lying?

  She’d hidden the truth so well, for so long, she had begun to believe it herself….

  “I have to go,” she said, so urgently that Lonnie handed Domha to her without another word. “I have to go.” She stood up, holding the sleeping baby tightly to her breast, and fled.

  THE MOON WAS FULL AGAIN, as it had been the first night Rachel had come to the temple nearly a year ago. Brett sucked on the stem of his pipe to keep the tobacco burning steadily, but he did so absently, his attention fixed on the courtyard below the parapet where he stood.

  Behind him, the jungle settled into uneasy sleep. Cicadas sang in the flame trees, birds tittered and argued among themselves as they dozed off. Somewhere off in the distance the roar of a hunting cat echoed through the trees. He noted and catalogued each sound, each silvered flash of movement, with a predator’s objectivity, yet his eyes never left the woman bathing at the temple wall.

  She was naked and moonlight sparkled in her hair like diamond drops, rippled down the curve of her spine and over the gentle swell of her hips like a lover’s caress. She knew he was there, watching, yet she didn’t turn around. She wrapped a length of Thai silk, whose color he could only guess at in the moonlight, around herself and tucked in the ends sarong-style above her breasts. Kneeling, she poured fresh water into the copper wok in which she’d bathed Ahnle’s baby that afternoon and began to wash her hair. He watched a moment longer, then left the parapet without making a sound to disturb the night and descended the griffin staircase.

  Rachel was still kneeling on the flat stones surrounding the well. Her hair was wet and glistening as she poured water from a bowl over her head to rinse out the soap. He dropped to the balls of his feet and touched her shoulder lightly. “Let me help.”

  She turned her head, looked at him for a long, heart-stopping handful of seconds, then nodded. “All right.”

  He picked up the bowl and poured the clear cool water over her hair. She smelled of soap and clean, damp skin and wet silk. His fingers brushed across the nape of her neck. Her skin was smooth as velvet and milky white in the moonlight, her movements graceful as she twisted the water from her hair and wrapped her head in another length of silk. She sat back on her heels and took the empty bowl from his hands.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly. “I feel really clean for the first time in days and days.” She let her head drop back on her shoulders and lifted her hand to massage away the tension.

  “You’ve been through a lot.” He cupped the bowl of his pipe in his hand and stuck the other one in the pocket of his pants to keep from reaching out to her.

  “Ummm.” She leaned back a little farther to look at the stars. Brett looked at her, his eyes following the rise and fall of her breasts above the thin silk that obscured but didn’t hide what lay beneath. She felt him watching her and looked back into his eyes. “It was worth it.”

  “I know.” He looked away, across the deserted courtyard.

  “What are you thinking?” Rachel asked in a voice that stirred his senses almost as much as the sight of her naked had done.

  “That when we leave this place the jungle will take back the temple, just as if none of us had ever disturbed its rest.”

  “That’s the way it should be.” She shivered a little as an errant breeze swept across the temple clearing, looking for a way back into the treetops. “I was sorry to hear that the Acharya died.”

  Rachel was looking at the moon shadows in the courtyard, too. He turned his head once more to watch her profile, making no move to touch her or frighten her away. He wanted her here, beside him. He wanted to make love to her, take her with him to a place where there was no one but the two of them, but he had to move very slowly or she would slip through his fingers like smoke.

  “He was very old.” Her bone structure was delicate, her nose a little too large to be called snub. She made him think of cloud castles and butterfly wings. But there was strength beneath the softness. Her chin and jaw were firm, with a stubborn tilt that hinted at the determination and courage of the woman inside the seemingly fragile body.

  “How did he die?” she asked.

  “He died of a heart attack, at his prayers.”

  “You spoke of leaving here. Does that mean you don’t intend to keep using this place as your base camp?”

  He knew what she was really asking. He answered as truthfully as he could. “We’ll stay here as long as necessary, not one day more.” He thought of the three-quarters of a million dollars in gold hidden beneath the temple floor. He thought of the five hundred pounds of processed heroin in Khen Sa’s camp and the misery and death it would bring in the West. It could never be allowed to leave these hills. But he couldn’t tell Rachel that. It was dangerous for her to be here, at all. If he failed, no one would take the blame but him. If he succeeded, no one would know that, as well.

  “I see.” She was silent. She reached out and let her hand trail along the fronds of a fern growing at the base of the well. “Perhaps, someday, you’ll trust me enough to tell me why you’re doing this.”

  “Perhaps, someday, you’ll tell me your secrets, as well.”

  The delicate fern snapped beneath the convulsive tightening of her fingers. Her breasts rose and fell as she sucked in her breath to deny his words. He didn’t touch her, although his hands itched to reach out and pull her close. His heart beat heavy and hard in his chest. His blood surged through his veins and he felt himself grow hard and aching with need and desire.

  “You heard what I said to Lonnie this afternoon.” She reached up and pulled the square of silk from her hair. Her hands were shaking, he could see that, even in the half-light of the high-riding moon.

  “Yes.” He wondered if she would fight him if he took her in his arms. She had been hurt badly in the past. He wanted to be the man who helped her get beyond that pain. Perhaps tonight was the night to try. Yet he sensed she wouldn’t welcome his lovemaking and that was what he wanted more than anything else. He wanted her to turn to him, to come into his arms, willing and desiring. He wanted it with such intensity it scared him.

  “It was a long time ago.” She looked down at her hands, saw that she was twisting the silk, and began, instead, to smooth it between her fingers.

  “I’m sorry that your son died. I’ve never fathered a child but I’ve lost friends and family. I can understand something of your pain.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” Her words were stiff, her jaw set. She began to twist the silk again. “I’ve learned to cherish my memories of him and to blot out all the rest—the pain and the fear. Don’t make me remember it again.” It was a plea but he ignored it.

  “You haven’t learned to trust me at all, have you?” He ground the coals from the pipe under his heel. The smell of tobacco smoke momentarily overpowered the smell of the jungle and dusty stones and the warm sweetness of Rachel’s hair and skin.

  “Yes, I have. But I can’t trust myself where the past is concerned.” There were tears in her eyes, making them sparkle like diamonds. She blinked them back with an effort. “I’ve worked so hard to keep from remembering.” She held out her hand. “I do trust you.” She looked at him with wonder on her face and haunting questions darkening her eyes. “But I don’t know you, not really. And I’m afraid of you because you make me feel too much. You make me look too deeply inside myself, into those places that I fear, just as much as Lonnie said I did.”

  He stood up then, pulling her with him, and she came into his arms with no more hesitation. She pressed herself close; her arms lifted to circle his neck. The feel of her body against his sent a jolt of desire arcing along his nerve endings. She was
naked beneath the silk, soft and hot and damp, and he wanted to bury himself in that heat, slip into that welcoming sweetness and take her with him into oblivion.

  “There isn’t anything you can’t tell me.” He cupped her buttocks in his hands, molded her close, and the thin silk between them was nothing more than a whisper of sensation. He could feel her nipples harden against his chest and the softness of her belly pressed against his hips. She lifted her face for his kiss and her lips were honey and fire. He let his tongue slide inside her mouth, explore its sweetness, mimic a more intimate joining of their bodies, a coupling he longed for more than anything else.

  “I’m not ready to remember.” She sounded like a little girl, a kid, lost in the dark.

  “Then maybe it’s time for us to start making new memories of our own.” He lifted her into his arms. His voice sounded hoarse and strange, even to his own ears, so he didn’t speak again, just carried her beneath the shadow of the ruined wall into the main room of the temple, echoing and vast, and on into the warren of small rooms beyond.

  There was a candle burning on the rough wooden table in the room he’d staked out as his own. He set Rachel gently on her feet. He slipped his hand beneath the heavy, damp layers of her hair and cupped the nape of her neck. He kissed her again, the corners of her mouth, the curve of her cheek and the velvety softness of her eyelids. She was trembling once more, but this time with pleasure, not remembered pain. The knowledge made him realize the power of love, what it could do to your heart and soul and brain. It took you over, possessed you. It was wonderful and it was terrifying.

  He opened his eyes and found her looking at him. She lifted her hands, traced the outline of his jaw, the heavy growth of beard on his cheeks. She held his face captive between her hands, searched his eyes, as though she might read his thoughts in their depths. “Do you believe you can forget the past if you have someone to help you?”

  “I think love can heal most every kind of hurt. If you’re lucky enough to find it.” He took a deep breath. He felt as if he’d been running hard, for a long time. He felt as if he were trying to breathe underwater. She shook her head slightly. Her breasts were pressed against him. Her body fit his like a glove. “Let me make love to you, Rachel.”

  “I don’t know…it’s been so long.” She was trembling again.

  “It’s like riding a bike,” he said with a smile. The last thing he wanted to do was frighten her more. Whoever had hurt her in the past had nearly destroyed the passion in her.

  “Brett?” She looked around her a little wildly. Her hands clamped over his as he worked at the knot of her sarong.

  “Trust me.” The length of silk whispered to the ground. He held her close, kissed her again and again until she melted against him, until she moaned with desire that matched his own.

  Brett laid her on the rough cotton blanket covering the narrow cot that was his bed. He stripped off his clothes and lay down beside her. He pulled the mosquito netting around them, sealing them inside a gauzy cocoon. For a time he only held her, caressed her, letting his hands move lightly across her shoulders, down her arms, over the curve of her hip. Slowly he increased the intensity of those caresses, moved closer to the swell of her breast, the shadowed, hidden places between her legs.

  Rachel shuddered and turned her face into his shoulder. She lay passive for a while but slowly she began to respond; then he felt her lips on his skin. She drew her fingers along the roughness of his jaw, slid her hand behind his neck and urged his mouth down to cover hers. She pressed against him, let her hand slide between them to touch him, a caress so feather light and so explosive he moaned out loud.

  Brett pulled her beneath him then, urged her legs apart, refused to see the wariness in her eyes because he knew her body, at least, was ready and willing to receive him. He entered her slowly, resting his weight on his elbows, cradling her face between his hands as he kissed her reluctance away. She stiffened at the unfamiliar feel of him within her, then relaxed beneath him. Her arms curled around his neck and she began to move in concert with him as her body adjusted to his.

  He kissed her again and again. He led her on with slow deliberate strokes but old fears held her back, and when his release broke over him, he knew she hadn’t experienced her own.

  “I’m sorry.” She turned her head to the wall. “I told you it had been…”

  “Shhh.” He turned her face so that she had to look at him. Her hair spread out over the pillow and the silver strands among the black caught and held the feeble light of the candle. “Next time will be better. And the time after that and the time after that.” He smiled and brushed a damp strand of hair from her cheek. It was silky and soft. The scent of soap mingled with the musky warmth of their lovemaking.

  “Do you want to make love to me again?” He felt her tense beneath him. The movement pushed their lower bodies together. He hadn’t withdrawn from her and he felt himself grow hard again.

  “This time is for you.” His mind was swirling with desire and need and the beginning of dangerous dreams. Dreams of tomorrow and the day after and every day for the rest of their lives, when all he really had was tonight.

  “Brett?” She sounded breathless, confused, and excited. “Brett, please, help me.” Her eyes fluttered shut and she moaned in mingled pleasure and frustration. “Please.”

  He surged into her and felt her body contract around him, clutching him with velvety strength as the tension built within them. “Let go, Rachel,” he murmured, his voice taut with strain and his own aching need. “Let go.” She held him tightly, still fighting for control. He wrapped her legs around him and filled her completely.

  “I…can’t.” The words were nothing more than a breathless whisper. “I can’t.”

  “You can.” He stroked into her again and again and then reached between them to touch her, a feather-light caress that sent her spinning out of control. “Let go,” he whispered once more against her lips as he felt her shatter into ecstasy beneath him and felt his own release build to a climax. “Let go and step into the whirlwind.”

  “IT’S LATE. BETTER get some sleep.” Simon McKendrick leaned against the door frame of Rachel’s flimsy cottage and swatted at a mosquito singing past his ear. Malaria mosquitoes came out at night. He tried to remember if he’d taken his antimalarial pill that morning and decided he had. They’d been in the camp five days and he was beginning to lose his patience with the slow pace of Thai officialdom. He had no more idea where his sister and her young Hlông friend were now than he’d had eight days earlier when his plane touched down in Bangkok.

  “You go ahead. I’m not tired. I think I’ll just sit out here and watch the stars.” Micah was hunkered down on the wooden plank, supported by two cement blocks, that did duty as Rachel’s front step, his back propped against the side of the cottage, his face turned up to the sky. The stars, brighter now that the full moon had set behind the hills, were shimmering points of light in the inky darkness.

  “The sky sure looks different here.” He sat down on the plank beside his brother. If ever, for a moment, he forgot just how far away from home he really was, all he had to do was look at the night sky. The unfamiliar alignment of planets and constellations might have belonged to an alien world.

  “What did you find out today?” Micah crossed his arms over his chest but didn’t take his eyes off the sky.

  Simon considered what to say. Micah had spent the day helping Father Dolph and Dr. Reynard distribute a shipment of clothing donated by a parish in Louisiana, while he’d spent most of his time in Father Dolph’s office, trying to get through to Bangkok on the telephone. It had been a tedious and time-consuming exercise in frustration. The phone system in and around the city was excellent. This far into the hills, it left a lot to be desired.

  “DEA doesn’t know what the hell your friend Tiger Jackson is up to but it’s something big. If the CIA knows, they aren’t saying. DEA also says a lot of their usual sources of information have suddenly, and mysteri
ously, dried up.”

  “Tiger never does anything halfway. You can’t in his line of business and stay alive, you ought to know that.” Micah didn’t sound as if Simon’s words surprised him in the least. It was going to take more than a few rumors of something big going down in the hills north of Chiang Rai to shake his faith in his friend.

  “As soon as we get some word on Rachel, we’ll go get her.”

  “What makes you think Tiger won’t bring her back safe and sound?”

  Simon turned his head. He wished he had his brother’s faith in Tiger Jackson’s abilities…and integrity. He didn’t trust the man at all but he wasn’t about to start a fight with Micah over it.

  “Okay, I’ll rephrase that. When Rachel gets back here, with Tiger’s help or with ours, we’re going to have to track down your friend and have a cozy little talk. And I don’t intend to end the conversation until I have all the answers I need.”

  RACHEL WOKE FROM A DEEP sleep in stages, slowly, with a feeling of peace and contentment that faded into familiar and unwelcome sadness as she grew aware of her surroundings. She lay very still, listening to the dawn sounds outside the temple and to the steady, even breathing of the man sleeping beside her. This was the second time she’d awakened in Brett’s bed, and this time she had experienced the full measure of his love. She closed her eyes to try once more to capture the memory of his touch but the pleasant fantasy slipped through her fingers and was gone.

  She sat up and drew her knees up to her chin. Brett stirred in his sleep and turned on his side, facing her. She saw the silver tracery of old scars crisscrossing his chest and shoulders, the new, angry red line of the graze on his arm, and almost against her will, she reached out to touch him. She felt the solid warmth of his skin, the crisp dusting of dark blond hair, familiar now, beneath her fingertips, and she wanted more.