Beloved (7 page)

194

Beloved

Diana Palmer

195

Charles prodded her forward and
Tira
didn't look Simon's way. She was barely able to see where she was going at all.
Until Jill's
piece of mischief, she'd actually
thought she could get through
the evening
unscathed.

'That cat!" Charles muttered as they made their way
to the
bottom of the steps.

"The world is full of them," she breathed.
"And how they
love to claw you when you're
down!"

None of the valets were anywhere in sight. Charles
grumbled.
“I’ll have to go fetch the car. Stay
right here. Will you be all
right?"

"I'm fine, now that we're
outside," she said.
He gave her a last,
worried glance, and went around the house
to the parking
area.

She drew her wrap closer, because the
air was chilly. Once,
she'd have made
Jill pay dearly for her nasty comments, but not
anymore. Now, her proud spirit was dulled and she'd actually
walked away from a fight. It wasn't like her. Charles
obviously
knew that, or he wouldn't have rushed
her out the door so quickly.
She heard footsteps behind her and her
heart jumped, because
she knew the very
sound of Simon's feet. Her eyes closed as she wished him in China—anywhere but
here!
"What did she say to
you?" he asked shortly.
She
wouldn't turn; she wouldn't look at him. She couldn't bear
to look at
him. The humiliation of having him know how she felt
about him was so horrible that it suffocated her. All those years of
hiding it from him, cocooning flier love in secrecy. And now
he knew, the whole world knew. And worst of all,
she loved him
still. Just being near
him was agony.

"I said, what did she say to you? " he repeated, moving
directly
in front of her so that she had to look
at him.

She lifted her eyes to his black tie and no further. Her voice
was choked, and stiff with wounded pride. "Go and ask
her."

There was a rough sigh and she saw his good hand go irritably into the
pocket of his trousers. "This isn't like you," he said after

a minute. "You don't run and you don't cry, regardless of what
people say to you. You fight back. Why are you
leaving?"

She lifted tired eyes to his and hated the sudden jolt
of her heart at the sight of his beloved face. She clenched every muscle in her
body to keep from sobbing out her rage and
hurt. "I don't care
what anyone thinks
of me," she said huskily, "least of all your malicious girlfriend.
Yes, I've spent most of my life fighting, one
way or another, but I'm tired. I'm tired of everything."

Her
lack of animation disturbed him, along with the defeat in
her voice, the cool poise. "You can't be
worried about what the
newspapers
said," he said, his voice deep and slow and oddly
tender.

"Can't
I? Why not? They believed every word." She inclined her head toward the
ballroom.

His
features were unusually solemn. "I know you better than
they do."

She searched his pale eyes in the dim light from the
house. Her
heart clenched. "You don't know
me at all, Simon," she said
with painful
realization. "You never did."

He seemed to stiffen. "I thought I did. Until you
divorced
John."

Her
heart stilled at the reference. "And until he died." Defeat
was in every line of her elegant body. "Yes,
I know, I'm a mur
deress."

His face went taut. "I didn't say
that!"

"You might as well have!" she shot back,
raising her voice,
not caring if the whole world heard
her. "If
Melia
had died in a
similar
manner, I'd never have believed you guilty of her death!
I'd have known you well enough to be certain that
you had no
part in anything that
would cause another human being harm. But
then, I had a mad infatuation for you that I couldn't cure." She
saw
his sudden stillness. "Don't pretend that you didn't read all
about it in the paper, Simon. Yes, it's true, why
shouldn't I admit
it? I was obsessed
with you, desperate to be with you, in any way
that I could. It didn't even matter that you only tolerated me. I

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Beloved

Diana Palmer

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could have lived on crumbs for the
rest of my life—" Her voice
broke. She shifted on trembling legs and
laughed with pure self-
contempt. "What
a fool I was! What a silly fool. I'm twenty-eight
years old and I've only just realized how stupid I
am!"

He frowned. "
Tira
..."

She moved back a step, her green eyes blazing with
ruptured
pride. "Jill told me what you
said, that you blame me for making
you look
like a villain in public with my so-called suicide attempt,
as well as for John's death. Well, go ahead, hate me! I
don't give
a damn anymore!" she spat, out of
control and not caring. "I'm
not even
surprised to see you with Jill, Simon. She's as opinion
ated and narrow-minded as you are, and she knows how to
put
the knife in, too. I daresay you're a match made
in heaven!"

His face clenched visibly. "And you don't care that
I'm with another woman tonight, instead of with you?" he chided, hitting
back as hard as he could, with a mocking smile on his
lips.

Her face went absolutely white. But if it killed her, he'd
never
hear from her how she did care. She smiled
deliberately. "No," she agreed softly. "Actually I don't. All
this notoriety accom
plished one good thing. It made me see
how I'd wasted the past
few miserable years
mooning over you! You did me a favor when
you told me what you really thought of me. I'm free of you at
last, Simon," she lied with deliberation.
"And I've never been
quite so
happy in all my life!"

And with that parting shot, she turned and walked slowly
to the
driveway where Charles was pulling up in
front of the house,
leaving Simon rigidly in place with
an expression of shock that
delighted her
wounded pride.

After what she'd said, she didn't expect Simon to follow
her,

and he didn't. When Charles had installed her in the
passenger

seat, she caught just a glimpse of Simon's straight back
rapidly

returning to the house. She even knew the posture. He was
furious.

Good! Let him be furious. She was not going to care. She
wasn't!

"Take it easy," Charles said softly.
"You'll burst something."

"I know how you felt earlier," she returned,
leaning her hot

forehead against the glass of the window. "Damn him! And damn
her, too!"

"What did he say to you?"

"He wanted to know what she said, and then he gave
me his
opinion of my character again. But this time,
he didn't know he'd
hit me where it hurt. I made sure of
it."

Charles let out a long breath. "Why can't we love to
order?"
he asked philosophically.

"I don't know. If you ever find out, you can tell
me." She
stared out the dark window at the flat
landscape passing by. Her
heart felt as if it
might break all over again.

"He's an idiot."

"So is Jill. So is Gene. We're all idiots. Maybe
we're certifiable
and we can become a circus act."

They
drove in silence until they reached her house. He turned
off the engine and stared at her worriedly. She
was pale and she
looked so miserable
that he hurt for her.

"Go inside and change your clothes and pack a
suitcase," he
said suddenly.

"What?"

"We'll
fly down to Nassau for a long weekend. It's just Saturday. We'll take a
three-day vacation. I have a friend who owns
a
villa there. He and his wife love company. We'll eat conch
chowder and play at the casino and lay on the
beach. How about
it?"

She brightened. "Could we?"

"We could. You need a break and so do I. Be a gambler."

It sounded like fun. She hadn't been happy in such a long
time.
"Okay," she said.

"Okay." He grinned. "Maybe we'll cheer up
in foreign parts.
Don't take too long. I'll run home and
change and make a few
phone calls. I
should be back within an hour."

"Great!"

It was great. The brief holiday made
Tira
feel as if she had a
new lease on life.
Charles was wonderful, undemanding company,

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much more like a beloved brother than a boyfriend. They padded
all over Nassau, down West Bay Street to the docks and
out on
the pier to look at the ships in port, and
all the way to the shopping
district and the
vast straw markets. Nassau was the most exciting,
cosmopolitan city in the world to
Tira
. She
never tired of going
there. Just now, it
was a godsend. She hated the memory of Jill's
taunting words and Simon's angry accusations. It was good to
have a breathing space from them, and the publicity.

They stretched their stay to five days instead of three
and re
turned to San Antonio refreshed and rested,
although Charles had
confessed that he did miss his car. He
proved it by rushing home
as soon as the
limousine he'd hired to meet them at the airport
delivered
Tira
at her house.

"I'll phone you in the morning. We might have a game
of
tennis Saturday, if you're up to it," he
said.

"I will be. Thanks, Charles.
Thanks so much!"

He chuckled. "I enjoyed it. So
long."

She watched the limousine pull away and walked slowly up
to
her front door. She hated homecomings. She
had nothing here but
Mrs. Lester and an
otherwise empty house, and her work. It was
cold compensation.

Mrs. Lester greeted her with enthusiasm. "I'm so
glad you're home!" she said. "The phone rang off the hook the day
after you left and didn't stop until three days ago." She shook her head.
"I
can't imagine why those newspaper
people wanted to drag the
whole subject up
again, but I guess the shooting downtown Tues
day afternoon gave them something new to go after."

"What shooting?"

“Well, that man the attorney general had paroled—you
remem
ber?—was in court to be arraigned and he went
right over the
table toward the judge and almost killed him. They managed
to
pull him away and he grabbed the bailiffs
gun. They had to shoot
him! It's been
on all the television stations. They had the most awful photographs of
it!"

Tira
actually gasped. "For heaven's sake!"

“Mr. Hart was right in the middle of it, too. He had a
case and
was waiting for it to be called when
the prisoner got loose."

"Simon? Was he...hurt?"
Tira
had to ask.

“No.
He was the one who pulled the man off the judge. The
man had that bailiffs gun leveled right at him, they said, when a
deputy sheriff shot the man. It was a close call
for Mr. Hart. A
real close call. But you'd never think it worried him to
hear him
talk on television. He was as cold
as ice."

She sat down on the edge of the sofa and thanked God for
Simon's life. She wished that they were still friends,
even distant
ones, so that she could phone him and tell him so. But
there was a wall between them now.

"Mr. Hart wondered why you hadn't gotten in touch
with him,
afterward," Mrs. Lester said, hesitating.

Tira
glanced at her breathlessly. "He called?"

She nodded and then grimaced. "He wanted to know if
you
heard about the shooting and if you'd been
concerned. I had to
tell him that you were away, and
didn't know a thing, and when
he asked where, he
got that out of me, too. I hope it was all right
that I told him."

Simon would think she went on a lover's holiday with
Charles. Well, why shouldn't he? He believed she was a murderess and a
flighty, shallow flirt and suicidal. Let him think
whatever else he
liked. She couldn't be any worse in
his eyes than she already was.

"Give a dog a bad name," she
murmured.

"What?" Mrs. Lester asked.

She dragged her mind back to the subject at hand.
"Yes, of
course, it's perfectly all right that
you told him, Mrs. Lester,"
Tira
said quietly. "I had a wonderful time in
Nassau."

"Did you good, I expect, and Mr.
Percy is a nice man."

"A very nice man,"
Tira
agreed. She got to her feet. "I'm
tired. I think I'll lie down for a while, so don't fix anything to eat
for another hour or so, will you?''