All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) (53 page)

Come upstairs, come upstairs, come upstairs….

He dressed in jeans and polo shirt, comfortable clothes for doing paperwork, but he was loath to return downstairs to his desk. He lay on his bed in the dark, hands clasped behind his head, and thought longingly of a cigarette. For once, he was tempted to break his own rule and smoke in the house, as if the simple mindless pleasure of nicotine could chase Laura’s specter away into the night.

His shoulder ached of an old wound.

But not as lethal as the wound he had dealt Laura all those years before.

You might have turned to me.

She was right. Had she not come down with the flu, she would have been there with him that New Year’s Eve night. Oh, Laura would never have thought, as Francie had, to bring a bottle of her father’s finest champagne, so something else would have loosened the bitterness he felt welling up as Diana danced out the door on her way to her overnight trip to Washington. He might still have voiced his deep, biting suspicion that Diana did not intend to spend the night alone, the first crack in his monolithic silence about the disintegration of his marriage. And Laura, a warm, lovely young woman, witnessing the despair and pain he could no longer conceal, might have put her arms around him to comfort him.

It might have begun as innocently as that, as it had with Francie (and hadn’t it?
hadn’t it?
), and lost all innocence as he saw in her lovely upturned face the ghost of Diana past. And when he lowered his head to kiss her –
face it, damn it, you did!
– she would have opened her mouth for him.

And he might have fallen into that sweltering morass of desire and guilt with her instead.

But he had chosen Francie instead, simply because Francie was there.

You never saw me
. And she was right about that. He never had.

The temptation was too great. He lit a cigarette, drew on it too deeply, and coughed.

I saw you there on Ash Marine. My God, you made sure of that.

But impossible to dwell on that terrible afternoon, impossible to avoid the memory of Laura under the kitchen lights an hour ago, defiant, lashing out in pain and anguish. Crumbling beneath the weight of a lifetime of unspoken longing, sinking to the floor in his arms, touching his face, finally recognizing in him what he had so long refused to recognize in himself. Laura….

And Laura there, as he left her, stricken again, as he walked off in the self-righteous certainty that he had done the right thing, and when, he asked himself savagely, when had he ever done the right thing for her? All those years before, when he had let Francie blind him to her desperation?
I was getting ready to run.
She had planned her departure for over a year, according to Julie, but in all that time, he had seen nothing wrong. Had he done the right thing by drawing Francie away, causing heaven knew what hatred and unspoken jealousy between the sisters, and then throwing the intolerable burden of her sister’s pregnancy on a seventeen-year-old girl? Had he done the right thing in London, accepting St. Bride’s harsh rebuff without protest when she might have needed him? Had he done the right thing since the night she had come home, holding himself aloof, rejecting her, letting the chasm of the past yawn between them?

And tonight… he had left her there, alone as usual, to face the emotional wreckage of his rejection, just one more piece of debris of his damnable marriage. He had left her there.

He had a sudden mental image… not even a memory… of standing at his car and glancing back through the night. She had stood in the doorway of the old house, and slowly, slowly, she had slid down the door frame.

He swung his legs to the floor in one movement, stubbing out his smoldering cigarette.

~•~

She lay there for minutes; she lay there for hours. She no longer knew. Her mind had emptied of all thought, all feeling, when he had left her. Better to empty than to feel the great onslaught of pain that surely waited if she remembered any part of him.

She was aware of the chill coming in from the starlight outside the open door.

The part of her mind that still thought, but could not feel, knew the beginning of shock, but it could not rouse her from the fugue that had trapped her. He had left her. He had wanted her, he had rejected her, and then he had left her. Across the years, across her life, he had occupied the greatest part of her heart, and in one hour that corner of the universe had crashed down into dust.

She did not think she could ever get up again.

It seemed to her finally that he came back to her. The door, half open, he flung wide, and the long tall silhouette stood there for a moment against the night. He called her name, first quietly, then in urgency. He even knelt there beside her on the floor, displacing Max, and his voice as he spoke to her was urgent and worried. She heard a frantic element in his voice that she had heard only once before, and maybe she heard something new, something that might have been precious but now could only be unbearable for what it wasn’t. She imagined his hands running over her, smoothing her hair, touching her face, calling her name again and again.
You wake up now, Laurie. Wake up, wake up!
She even imagined that eventually she opened her eyes and saw him through the light in her mind.

She thought she said his name once, “Richard,” and she dreamed that he lifted her up against him, that he pulled her against his body and enfolded his arms around her.

That he said, in a voice shaking with some unfathomable emotion, “Oh, my dear Lord.”

But this really wasn’t happening. She had so disconnected that she only imagined his hand against her back, his heart beating hard against hers, his arms trembling because – because why? Why? He didn’t ache for her; his heart didn’t beat for her; his arms didn’t tremble to hold her.

This couldn’t be real.

“Richard.” Did she really whisper? Did he hear?

“Laurie,” he whispered back in her mind, “oh, my God, Laurie.” She filtered his words into the meaningless void of her pain, vaguely aware that if she woke up and remembered any of this, she might want to seize upon those words, ponder them, tuck them away in her heart.

Perhaps then she imagined him forcing her to stand up in his arms, coaxing her up the Chippendale staircase, step by step by step.
Come on, Laurie, keep walking, don’t you stop….
Maybe she dreamed the warmth of his arms holding her, beside her that long journey down the hall to the room she had chosen for her own. She had gone so far into insanity that she dreamed the sight of him pushing that door open, guiding her through the door to that bed overlooking the pool. But, in a dream, she wouldn’t have winced against the light he turned on by the bed, her arm coming up instinctively to shield her eyes.

“No.” She even sounded normal.

Surely a dream figure would not have turned off the light at her protest. In the soft light from the window he stood there, a tall dark ghost against the darker wall. She knew that dark shade, she had dreamed it through the years, she had glimpsed it from the corner of her eye, felt its presence behind her wherever she had walked in the time of her exile. But she had never known him in the night, in her bedroom, the two of them alone in a room that now had become the entire world.

And she had never conjured up the reality of him stepping forward into the starlight, flipping back the comforter and blankets on her bed.

He came to her and led her to the bed.

“Get into bed, Laurie,” and his touch felt real and warm against her cheek. “You’ll be more comfortable.”

She stared at him.

He drew in a ragged breath in the darkness of the room. “Laurie,” he said, “stop looking like that, are you in shock—” and she felt his hand along her face again. “Come on, get into bed.”

She obeyed the pressure of his hands on her shoulders, and sank down onto the side of the bed. And she heard him sigh, perhaps in relief, as if – as if some burden had just lifted from him.

He moved away from her then, towards the chair, as he had moved away earlier that night. She watched him widen the distance between them, once more putting time and space between them, and a terrible rage bubbled up through her. She hadn’t even known it lay there within her, a vast unknown magma chamber of fury, until the moment it erupted, burning its way up through the layers of shock and despair into her heart and mind and soul.

She screamed, and he swung around at the sound.

“No! No, no, no,
no
—”

Terror, fury, rage propelled her then towards him, across time and space, towards that tall ghostly silhouette, and she reached for him, reached before he could vanish.

“You left me!”

He stood stock-still, as if her scream had stabbed him clean to the heart. She felt only his reaction, as his hands reached out to hold her.

“You left me! Oh, my God, you left me,” she cried, as her mind shattered and the anguish she had tamped down flooded into her heart, and she pushed against him even as he tried to hold her, and her panic escalated. “You left me—”

His voice, shaking, the words torn from deep within.

“I came back.”

The words hung there between them like a talisman.

Who moved first remained forever unknown. They met in the center, body to body, mouth to mouth. Neither offered restraint or gentleness; neither accepted it from the other. “Laurie,” he whispered, and “Richard,” she whispered back, and their whispers set fire to the smoldering embers and all that remained unspoken and unresolved between them roared up in flames, and he kissed her again, a second, harder kiss that drove them back against the wall.

Somewhere I will always taste you….

And he tasted like – he tasted like Richard.

His mouth, warm and living against her throat, made a hungry exploration, learning the feel and flavor of her. She caught her breath as he tasted the curve of her neck into her shoulder, and she leaned forward to bury herself in the spring freshness of his silver-tipped temple. The thick feel of his hair against her fingers, the summer smell of his skin – how had she forgotten, how had she not remembered – oh, but she had, she had….

His hand against her back, too, now a voyager, ventured down her spine, and his other hand trembled, fingers shaking as he freed the sash of her robe. She felt it swing free against her legs, and then she paid no more attention, for those slim fingers now worked the top buttons of her gown, and his mouth followed the trail they blazed across her flesh.

She closed her eyes against the rush of feeling that surged inside her, savoring every second of the lovely feathering of his lashes across her breast, the warm breeze of his breath against her skin, the heated imprint of his body against hers. She felt him bringing her back to life. She touched the crown of his thick hair, her hand skimming through the fine strands until her fingers reached his ear and journeyed from the temple down along the jaw line. She leaned over his bent head, and tasted the subtle valleys and hills of his skin.

She felt herself bringing him back to life.

“Laura….”

In eleven years, her body had never forgotten. She remembered now: for this she would have destroyed the world, for this she would have laughed among the ashes.

Slowly, slowly, he raised his head.

“Laura, listen,” he said, and she heard the breath that she’d knocked out of him, she felt his heartbeat against hers. “God help me, I
have
lost my mind – listen—”

She moved against him, and loved the catch in his throat.

“No,” he said, and with some last resistance, he held her an inch or two away, enough to break the current that ran through them both. She obeyed the demand of the hand that forced her chin up; she met his gaze with glazed eyes that saw only him, and knew only the bed behind them. “Listen! I want you, I want you badly, but – this is it, there’s no going back – Laura, are you listening, do you even understand what I’m saying—”

Oh, yes, she understood. She understood that, in that moment, she stood at the brink of joy and catastrophe, and if she jumped, she risked it all.

She moved back against him.

“Laura?” She would remember his voice all her life, low and warm and promising against her temple. “Do you want this?”

“I want
you
,” she whispered, and this was not a dream.

His fingers moved against her breast, and she closed her eyes and stepped into the abyss.

~•~

She did not recognize the disaster until they had gone too far.

She turned away towards the bed. She knew she must move first, so that he knew her willingness to roll the dice. Once there, she turned and held out her hand. He crossed the room to her, knowing her acceptance, signaling his own, and she saw him coming towards her, stranger, friend, lover, as he had once come towards her….

~•~

She stood somewhere far off and watched him as he knocked on the door.

She’d been shocked to see him there, standing against the afternoon glare of the sun. He looked different, older, eyes full of shock and wonder. “Richard,” she said, with the trace of her newly acquired alto huskiness. When he stepped inside, something possessed her, she didn’t know what, and she reached for him. Oh, he looked so good to her, no matter what he’d done, no matter what he and Francie planned. He resisted her there, just for a moment, and then he kissed her as only Cam ever had. He didn’t realize, he thought she was….

But hadn’t Francie told him? her mind screamed, as her mouth opened for him, didn’t he know where Francie was? Had he no idea—

~•~

“My God,” he whispered in a trail down her throat to her breast, “you taste even lovelier than I remembered—”

Possessed of an old passion, caught up in an old dream, she reached for the buttons of his shirt, and almost came back to herself with the shock of his warm skin against her fingertips and the fresh scent of his hair in her lungs.

He was here; he was real; he was Richard.