Blush

by Suzanne Forster

  Gus's throat tightened and her heart wobbled. She could hardly believe she was thinking anything so impossibly sentimental. She knew the dangers of wishful thinking, of attaching romantic fantasy to real-life situations. Apparently she hadn't outgrown her childish dreams of princes and cindergirls. Nothing could come of this bizarre relationship with Jack Culhane for more reasons than she could count, but just for a second—for one stolen moment in the heedless rush of time—she wished they were a real family, all three of them.

  She wished that quite desperately.

  "My favorite part was the sorcerer's apprentice," Bridget enthused as the three of them came out of the movie theater the next evening. "Wasn't that great when Mickey tried to stop the broom by chopping it in splinters?"

  "Magnificent," Gus agreed, "especially when all those splinters turned into more brooms. "

  "I saw it as a lost opportunity," Jack said, apparently determined to be the voice of reason. "If Mickey'd been smart, he could have cornered the broom market. "

  Bridget danced out in front of them, walking backward down the carpeted promenade of the Westpark Cinema Center, a complex of several theaters, which comprised most of the east end of the huge Westpark shopping mall.

  "Could we get something to eat now?" she pleaded. Her golden pigtails bounced with each step. "I could go for a Johnny Rocket's original and some chili fries. "

  Gus's groan was incredulous. "After a jumbo tub of popcorn and an entire box of Jujubes? Where would you put it?" Gus, herself, had feasted on two boxes of Red Hots. Not only were they her favorite movie candy, but she'd even immortalized them on her Mercedes' personalized license plates.

  Bridget pulled up the skirt of her sundress and puffed out her stomach, grinning at the potbelly she made. "Look at me, I'm one of the hippos!"

  "Just like her aunt, " Jack stage-whispered to Gus. "She's a flasher. "

  The little girl skipped back to Jack and linked her arm in his. "Wish I had that stuffed hippo now. It was way cool, just like the ones in the movie. "

  Pretending that she was too heavy to budge, Jack emitted a power-lifter grunt as he picked her up, hoisted her over his head, and fitted her onto the saddle of his shoulders. The skirt of her sundress billowed into his face.

  "A piggyback ride!" she squealed, wrapping her arms around him and clinging so frantically to his face that she inadvertently blinded him. "I've never had one!"

  "This is a first for me, too," Jack said, laughing as he struggled to get her arranged. He pried her fingers from his eyes and nose. "I've never bench-pressed a hippo. "

  Again, Gus was captivated by the interplay between the two of them. In the last twenty-four hours she'd glimpsed qualities of gentleness and caring in Jack she wouldn't have thought possible, especially toward Bridget. And as for Bridget's reaction to him, it was almost reverent. There didn't seem to be anything he could do that wasn't wonderful in her niece's eyes.

  It was a bittersweet experience for Gus. She wanted to let herself enjoy the situation moment to moment and block everything else out, but she couldn't seem to do it. Wistful thoughts kept sneaking past her guard, thoughts of bliss that could never be. Whatever had driven him to seek her out and force his way into her life would ultimately wreak havoc for her and her family.

  She and Jack Culhane were star-crossed, she reminded herself. He threatened everything she loved. She'd nearly killed him three times, saved his life once, and had sex with him twice. That should have been enough excitement to hold her, if not to warn her off, but it had only fed the obsession. He was too powerful a man to ever think you could have a taste of him like some dish at a smorgasbord and then move on. He hit too hard. He went too deep.

  Bridget's giggles and Jack's horsing around brought a smile to her lips and sadly, more heartache. Why couldn't it have been Rob whom Bridget reacted to this way? Gus had some perplexing and painful decisions yet to make, one of them about Rob himself. But utmost on her mind was the crucial appointment she had set up for later that week, which might well decide everything. She was going to find out who Jack Culhane really was. Watching him now, she wondered how dangerous that knowledge might be... and if she really wanted to know.

  If Jack was aware of Gus's intense scrutiny, he assumed it was because her niece's physical safety was momentarily in his hands. For his part he knew exactly what he was doing. He was stealing fire. He'd been running that risk ever since he met Gus Featherstone, and the thought of going up in flames only seemed to compel him more.

  But this child, this sweetness he felt with her and Gus, just the three of them together... for that the gods would make him pay dearly. They'd already started. He couldn't look at Bridget without thinking of his own daughter, he couldn't touch her or lift her in his arms without wondering if Haley would have been that light and buoyant.

  He had stopped short of allowing himself a total flight of fancy, of wondering what it would be like to be a real husband and father, part of a bonded family again, only because he knew how impossible that was. The Fates did not give new happiness to a man who had already destroyed his allotted share of it. Instead they tortured him with the prospect by offering to return every precious thing he'd lost at a time when he couldn't accept the gift.

  "Oops!" Bridget said, bouncing on his shoulders as they started down a flight of stairs that led to the mezzanine. She gripped his face again, this time clamping her sticky little fingers over his mouth and nose. There was no way to unlatch her, so he succumbed to the mauling and concentrated on getting both of them down the steps.

  When they got to the bottom, he lifted her over his head and somersaulted her once before he settled her on the ground. She grinned up at him dizzily, tilted and then hugged herself to his arm. God, how his heart squeezed at the sight.

  "Can you perform one more miracle and find us a Johnny Rocket's?" Gus wanted to know.

  She linked her arm in his and gave him a dazzling smile as they left the theater complex and entered the mall. The brightness of it made him ache almost as much as Bridget's antics had done. Gus was the impetus for all of this, he acknowledged silently. Because of her he'd felt things with a woman he hadn't experienced in years. She'd put him back together, made him feel whole again, even if only for a few moments. He didn't know how to thank her for that. He did know that he wanted to make love to her again. Badly.

  She was waiting, her dark expressive brows arched expectantly. She wanted a miracle performed and he must look like the man to do it. Both she and the kid were gazing at him as if he were the hero they'd been waiting all their lives for. No one had looked at him that way, no one since Maggie.

  He smiled ruefully, his throat tight and hot. "One burger and chili fries, coming up."

  Webb Calderon glanced at his Rolex and realized he'd just checked the time five minutes ago. He rarely anticipated an appointment the way he was this one, though he would take care not to let his imminent visitor know. He'd come out to the storage room, thinking to complete some unfinished business and make use of the brief time he had to wait.

  His work area was even chillier than usual this afternoon, but Webb preferred it that way, uncomfortable. Coldness made the flesh rise and ache and harden. It set the nerves exquisitely on edge, leaving the body caught somewhere in the gradations between discomfort and outright pain. But more important was its effect on the inner world. The cold that burned his flesh also made his blood hum with life and his brain buzz with energy.

  He needed it, the penetrating chill, the pricking flesh. For him there was little else life had left to offer. Food, wine, and sex, the satiation of the senses—he hadn't experienced any of that as pleasure in years. Nothing stimulated him except the extremes of sensation, because nothing else could penetrate the barrier his mind had built.

  Tonight he'd unpacked a crate that contained his latest acquisition, and he hadn't known whether to laugh or cry when he'd seen the work. It was a small early fifteenth-century oil of the Ferrara school, and to the extent that h
e could be moved by art, or by anything, he had been. He hadn't bothered with an easel. He'd simply propped it up against the crate it came in and stepped back from the worktable to study it.

  Even now the thing made him want to shake his head in disbelief. Framed in intricately carved wood, the picture showed a wounded, bleeding deity. The face was gaunt with sorrow, the body starved of flesh, skin lying over bone. Webb had no religious connection at all to the figure. He wasn't a believer in any traditional way, but in the presence of such helpless suffering, he had felt something, just the tiniest bleat of pain echoing through his mind, a soul's plea for mercy.

  He wanted to keep the piece for himself, but that wasn't going to be possible. And though it would have commanded a small fortune on the open market, it would never see the auction block, either. His ineffably beautiful oil was a fake, destined for the private collection of a South American drug lord, who expected to be getting a priceless Italian primitive.

  No one the wiser, Webb thought. In the end it didn't matter whether art, or anything else in life, was authentic, only that people believed it was. It was all illusion. And that, if anyone cared to take the trouble to think it through, was the royal road to success. The good illusionists were the winners because people wanted so desperately to believe. Fortunately, Webb was one of the good ones.

  Culhane was another. They had many things in common, he and Jack Culhane. And they were about to have another.

  A sudden and persistent beeping told him his appointment would arrive momentarily. He hit a button on his wristwatch, silencing the alarm as he left the workroom. Its double doors opened onto a corridor that separated the area from his office and the gallery.

  He'd spread the Devil's Tarot out on his desk earlier that day, still curious about the cards' origins. The arcane images greeted him as he entered his office. The London dealer who'd found them had guessed them to be of Romanian origins and at least a century old. Webb had found that hard to believe because of their pristine condition, but they were unlike anything he'd ever seen.

  He was about to gather them up when he became aware of another presence. The sweet rush of a flowery fragrance laced with female warmth pervaded his senses for a moment. "Come in, " he said, glancing at the doorway. "I've been expecting you. "

  The woman who gazed back at him did not look warm, flowery, or sweet. She did look taut, however, as she stood lithe and tall, her dark slenderness made more striking by a severe white Chanel suit. The short skirt and stiletto elevator pumps enhanced legs well-toned by runway work.

  She knew how to pose, Webb admitted, admiring her cool, watchful elegance. There was only one telltale flaw. Her fingers were too tight on the bag she was clutching. Augusta Featherstone was here to make a deal with Mephistopheles, but it was out of necessity, Webb acknowledged, not choice.

  She strode toward him, moving so briskly that two of the Tarot cards floated off the desk and fell to the floor.

  "Sorry." She knelt and scooped up one of them, handing it to him.

  A smile flickered as he turned it over and saw which it was. "Congratulations," he told her, showing her the image—a young man in Renaissance garb holding a slender tree branch that was taller than he was. "The Page of Wands. "

  "What does it mean?" she asked, clearly wary, but curious.

  They always were, he thought. Fatally curious.

  "Good news," he assured her. "It's the signal to move ahead with a new venture. The future looks bright, Gus. " He pointed to the second card still lying on the floor. "You missed one. "

  She bent again, and he found himself wondering what the view must have been from behind her. The twinge in his groin told him that perhaps he wasn't quite as incapable of pleasure as he thought.

  She handed him the card, but he resisted smiling this time as he gazed at it. "The Ten of Swords, " he said, meeting her violet eyes. He turned the card to show her the figure of a man, sprawled on his face, his body pierced by ten huge, gleaming swords. The weapons seemed to be pinning him to the ground as blood oozed from the wounds. It was a grotesque image, even to Webb.

  Her eyelids dropped, creating a dark sweep of lash that extinguished whatever emotion might have been hidden in there. "I know the Tarot slightly. That means loss, doesn't it?"

  "It can mean that. It can also mean advantage, profit, power. Given the first card, I think it means your gain will come through someone else's loss. "

  She went silent, gazing at the bag she held, at her hands, seeming transfixed by the pale grip of her own fingers.

  "You're going to get everything you want." His voice harshened as he registered the tension that was rising inside her. She was trembling. "As long as you're willing to give to get. There will be a price, Gus. "

  It was a glorious summer evening. The sun hovered over the foothills like a stage-struck entertainer, refusing to leave the proscenium before it lit up the indigo sky with one last burst of burnt-orange glory. Warmed by the conflagration, Jack skipped up the short flight of front steps to the mansion, a stuffed hippo tucked backward under his arms. He was puffing from having jogged up the long driveway, but luck was with him as he opened the front door and entered the house. The woman he was looking for was right there in the foyer, assaulting the bric-a-brac with a bright yellow feather duster.

  "Where's the brat, Mrs. Brightly?"

  Frances Brightly looked him over haughtily. It was clear she didn't approve of anything about him, from his well-worn chinos and black collarless shirt to the dark, spiky-soft hair on his head. The woman who'd sold him the hippo earlier that day had flushed visibly and told him he looked like the Diet Coke guy's evil twin. It had seemed to work for her, but apparently Frances B. didn't agree.

  "If you mean Gus," she said brusquely, "she hasn't come in yet. She had a full schedule today, including a doctor's appointment."

  "Doctor's appointment?"

  "Annual checkup. I assume that's what's held her up. "

  Gus Featherstone at the doctor? An unbelievably hot thought crossed Jack's mind that had to do with Gus in stirrups and him between her legs. He laughed and flushed as hotly as the Venice Beach vendor, which got another suspicious look from the housekeeper. "Actually, " he explained, "I meant the kid—Bridget. "

  "Didn't you see her out front?" The housekeeper tucked the feather duster under her arm and slipped her hands into the pockets of her gray cardigan sweater. "She was on the front steps a moment ago. I was just going to call her for dinner. "

  "I'll do it." He patted the hippo's rump. "I want to give her this anyway. "

  Bridget wasn't on the steps or anywhere in sight as Jack descended the stairway and strode toward the fenced perimeter of the estate. As he reached the gate his uneasiness rose. It wasn't completely closed, and the night-duty guard wasn't in the booth.

  "Bridget!" he yelled, spotting the little girl across the road. Somehow she'd gotten out, crossed the highway, and she was playing on the shoulder of the road.

  "Hi, Jack!" She sprang up and waved. "It's a squirrel! Look, I'm feeding it peanuts!"

  "Wait!" he called as she started across the road toward him. He could hear the roar of an oncoming car, but Bridget kept coming, seemingly oblivious of the wildly flashing headlights.

  The car careened toward her, galvanizing Jack. He scaled the fence as if it weren't there and sprinted toward the road. But before he could get to the child, the car careened wildly and came straight at him.

  "Look out!" he shouted, diving for her. He managed to shove her out of the way, but he couldn't save himself. REDHOTTT, the letters of a specialized license plate, ripped through his mind as the car ripped through his body.

  He was wide awake as the car plowed into him. He was so agonizingly alert he could hear the crunch and snap of his own bones, and the shriek of the child's terror. The impact lifted him off the asphalt and flung him into the air as if he were weightless, and through it all, he was aware of everything, every bloodred streak of sunset pouring through the silhouetted
trees, every gleaming white pebble on the roadside. There was a strange, joyous freedom in the flight, as if he might never come down, but as his body cartwheeled endlessly and began to plummet, he saw the ground leaping up at him like a howling black wolf.

  He hit so violently he could feel his teeth shake loose from his head, his backbone snap like a bow, and his skull split wide open. He could hear every creak and crash of his terrible collision with the earth, but he could feel nothing. There was no pain, nothing but a dark, fleshy pressure.

  It occurred to him as he lay there in the wetness that was seeping out of him that his own blood was rushing to warm and comfort and cushion him. It also occurred to him that he was going to die incomplete, without having kept his date with the blindfolded woman, Justice. The killers of his child would go free, they would never pay for their wanton destruction, and there was more agony in that realization than in whatever was happening to his body.

  The last thing he saw before he gave in to the deadly black floodtide that was engulfing him was the red Mercedes speeding away from him. Gus's Mercedes.

  Chapter 24

  Jack couldn't open his eyes the sunlight was so ragingly bright. He turned his head into the ground to block out the blinding rays and slowly pushed himself to a sitting position, but even when he had himself there, with his arms fully extended, he couldn't seem to escape the white heat. What he could see of his hands looked as if they'd been bleached to the color of skeletal bones. What he could see of the world looked as if nuclear winter had taken place and left it in ashes.

  There was noise. He could hear static hissing and buzzing in his ears, but he couldn't make it out.

  Bridget. Through slitted lids, he fought to bring the little girl into focus. She was curled up in a ball across the road, her head tucked into her knees, much like the position he'd found her aunt Gus in when he'd crawled out of the snakepit. The child hadn't been hit. He was reasonably sure of that, but she was probably suffering from shock.