Crystal Warrior: Through All Eternity (Atlantean Crystal Saga Book 1) (68 page)

Hands clenched on the wheel belied the casualness with which he leaned against the door waiting for her answer. The images he'd invoked forged in stereo color across the screen of her mind. Her body was rigid with the pain of it, the need, the longing. Had she known what to say, she couldn't have uttered a single word.

Torr continued.

‘I don't wish the first time I make love to you in this millennium to be in a single bed while listening with one ear for Harmony to come home.’

Tears slipped beneath Georgina's lids to course down her cheeks as she stared helplessly and unseeingly through the jeep windscreen. Her heart felt as bruised and torn as Gynevra's had that last morning, her mind as confused, as desperate. Notwithstanding the enigma of her own desires and uncertainties there were, now as then, others whose claim to her loyalty must come first.

Love? He spoke of love as if he had no doubts. What of Fran? The diamond pendant her fingers so constantly fondled? What of Gould, who'd taught her of love—so she'd thought. What was love anyway? Was it that orgasmic coming together of two bodies which harmonized with one another as perfectly as well-tuned violins? Or was it something else? Something she'd never really understood?

Though there was one thing she knew. If one loved, in any way at all, one suffered.

‘Gina?’

‘No,’ she grated, eyes closed, hands fisted in her lap.

‘Why not?’

Dragging in a deep, calming breath, she said, ‘I need to talk to Gould.’

In silence he observed her for a moment, then one dark eyebrow hooked in derision. Voice rough with incredulity, he asked, ‘You intend to ask his permission?’

Georgina's chin lifted and she brushed clumsily at the tears on her cheeks. She could almost hear Case telling her to talk to Torr, to tell him of her feelings. How could she talk about something she scarcely understood herself? All she knew was she owed Gould so much she could never walk away if he still needed her. Some would say she was a masochist when it was fairly obvious he'd been unfaithful to her—with her twin sister. The purist within her would point out she herself had been unfaithful first, albeit only in her mind. Who could say which was the more damning? Amid the welter of her thoughts this one was crystal clear. She couldn't allow herself to discover the reality of her feelings for this man beside her in this present millennium, at the expense of others. Gynevra suffered still from believing she'd done that.

‘I'd be grateful if you'd drive me to the hospital,’ she said frostily, her gaze fixed once more on the rows of cars in the parking lot, ‘unless you prefer I take a taxi.’

After a brief, fraught silence Torr ignited the engine and swerved grimly out of the parking lot. Driving north from Miami Airport, the sun hot on their faces and the wind tearing at their hair, they arrived at the hospital just after one o'clock.

‘I'll be back to pick you up about four.’

The ice in his voice almost took the tips off her ears.

‘Fine. Thank you.’

Slamming the door, she set off across the road to the hospital entrance, conscious of walking as stiffly as if her spine also had been frozen rigid. She'd thought he would come in with her as he'd done every day since they'd rescued the yacht. A small part of her was deeply relieved to be alone but a much larger part of her was totally bereft. Torr Montgomery stirred such a plethora of emotions within her there was little wonder she was incapable of dealing with it.

Their souls communicated on a level at once intensely exciting yet deeply jarring to one whose privacy of inner self had become sacrosanct. Her need of him tore at the fabric of the protective covering she'd woven so carefully about her heart and the harshly learned precepts by which she'd determined to live her life. It made her perception of Gynevra's pain the more acute for having betrayed Alan with his son.

Never again would she allow a man to attract her loyalty in any shape or form when it had been pledged to another. She simply couldn't live with the sense of guilt engendered by her own perception of having played false with another human being's expectations of her.

Beyond the anonymity of the tinted glass doors she went straight to the ladies rest room to tidy her hair and to try to draw together the tatters of her self-possession. A sense of self was something she lost around Torr Montgomery for she found herself constantly battling the need to be to him all that Gynevra had been to Taur of Nyalda. She lost herself in an overpowering need to be his woman, his lover,—his beloved. Even now she could hear his voice asking, ‘The Hyatt or the Hilton?’ and feel the terrible enervating longing to lose herself in his arms, in his body, in the memories and let precepts and principles go to hell. Even now she longed to run after him, call him back, be with him, anywhere.

Damn!

Damn, damn, damn! She couldn't face either Fran or Gould in this fractured state, nor was she fit to do any healing. What on earth was she supposed to do now she was here? Aghast at the hungry glitter she recognized in the depths of the eyes looking back at her from the washroom mirror, she hurried out into the hospital foyer. Sinking onto a conveniently placed bench she tried to calm her mind by reading the inventory of departments and their relevant floors beside the lifts.

Cafeteria. Coffee! Leaping to her feet she entered an empty lift and punched a button. It was ludicrous how much better she felt already just because she knew exactly what to do with the next half hour. Come to that, she could actually stay in the cafeteria until four o'clock!

Inwardly mocking her cowardice, Georgina entered the hospital restaurant, purchased a large cup of coffee and a succulent looking apple and cinnamon muffin and seated herself at a window table with a view over the distant ocean. Her hands busy with cream and sugar she let her mind go blessedly blank, stirred absently at the coffee, and watched a tanker cruise slowly by on the far horizon.

Case is right. You have to start talking.

Damn! Her mind was off again. There was no getting away from it. If she couldn't talk with Torr until she'd settled with Gould—and Fran—then it was time to start that process else some part of her was going to disintegrate. Gould couldn't talk much because his mouth and throat was still very painful but his mind was generally settled.

Settled enough to keep asking for Fran.

The thought slipped in like an insidious snake slithering through grass. And all Fran worried about was Gould. As if they'd both forgotten
she
was Gould's live-in partner, not Fran. She'd made excuses in her mind, kept silent because they were ill, told herself she owed Gould loyalty, even taken an inverted kind of pride in her ability to function on a level removed from the reality of their tangled relationships.

From the reality of her anger.

She began pulling the paper cup off the muffin. Suddenly it was a mess of crumbs in her clenched fist. Carefully, slowly, she opened her fingers and brushed the mangled bun onto the plate. For a long time she sat staring at it, hands clenched in her lap to stop them from trembling. God! She was so angry she was like to fly apart. Sitting absolutely still, she had the oddest impression of clinically observing the effect of the fury on her system. As if she stood aside from herself, watching through an x-ray machine.

Her eyes were wide, staring, hot, and dry. It didn't feel as if she could close them if she tried. Her skin prickled all over her body but by far the most amazing sensation was the fountaining of a white hot, lava-like emotion deep in her belly. Seething upwards, it churned, searing its way through her vitals and pouring through her heart with the scorching delicacy of a gas torch through steel. With slow-dawning horror she realized she was going to be sick. Glancing feverishly round she thankfully located a washroom sign and bolted for it.

As she leaned weakly against the toilet wall a woman's voice called, ‘You all right, luv?’

Georgina moaned.

‘Feeling poorly, luv?’

The assistant who'd served her only moments before peered concernedly round the door. Georgina shook her head.

‘I'll be all right now, I think.—Thanks.’

‘Anything I can get you?’

‘No thanks. I'll be okay.’

‘You pregnant, luv?’

Georgina jerked off the wall and stared at the woman for a brief second of panic, then subsided back with a shaky laugh.

‘Hell! You trying to make me sick all over again? No, I'm not pregnant—just—’ But the habit of emotional silence was impossible to break round a stranger. Dragging in a deep calming breath, she continued, ‘—I'm okay now. I'll be out in a minute. Perhaps you could keep an eye on my wallet. I left it on the seat.’

‘Sure thing, luv.’

Got a knife, luv? I feel like killing someone!

God! Crossing to the basin Georgina splashed handfuls of water on her face until her blood began to cool.

She'd become so good at hiding her emotions she'd hidden them even from herself. Back at the table she sat drawing circles in the muffin crumbs with a teaspoon. Her hand shook. Her blood still fizzed like a trounced bottle of champagne. If either Fran or Gould were with her now she'd stab them with—a teaspoon? There was nothing else to hand!

That took care of loyalty. With a shuddering sigh she leant back in her chair and gazed out the window, her mind flashing back to her reaction when the woman had suggested she might be pregnant. She'd at once felt grateful yet ineffably sad in the certainty of her denial. She wasn't meant to carry Gould's child just as she hadn't conceived with Gotham but her longing to carry and hold in her arms a baby fathered by Torr Montgomery was a desperate hungering in her soul. The smell of the rapidly cooling coffee made her feel nauseous again. So did the realization she needed to confront both Gould and Fran with their perfidy and then—then—

She'd go for a walk in the hospital gardens and hopefully calm down. By three o'clock Georgina thought she could probably draw a detailed map of the gardens and identify every plant by its botanical name with her eyes shut. But she did feel a little calmer and ready to—what was it Case had said? Hurl a few missiles of her own? Take control of her life?

Starting back along the pathway she entered the foyer and took the lift up to the ward set aside for the crew members of the ‘Astrid’.

‘Did Mr. Valois get away all right?’ Janet, the duty nurse, asked when Georgina stopped to check in.

Case had become a firm favorite with everyone on the ward and Georgina chatted for a moment with the young woman before asking how Gould and Fran were.

‘I believe they've both been out on the balcony briefly today. Ms. Hackville isn't as settled as she was yesterday though. Threw a bit of a tantrum when the doctor said they couldn't go out for more than ten minutes. He explained to her that though sunlight is very healing, too much at this point would be as damaging as the original burn. She was inclined to be a bit irrational but—your Mr. Barrington seems able to settle her down.’ The nurse smiled apologetically, then added, ‘After the way they were raving when they were first brought in here though, I guess we've a lot to be thankful for.’

Georgina's mind had cut off at the point where she'd mentioned ‘your Mr. Barrington’ and was following a tangent of its own. How had Gould settled Fran down? Was there an unwillingness in the nurse to look at her when she spoke of Gould and Fran? With their public personas they had the most to lose from a scandal.

Hadn't that occurred to them? At any stage? Didn't it bother them? Eight months ago Torr had asked her to go away with him and she'd refused because of the scandal it would cause and the effect it could have on them and their careers. She'd wasted eight months of her life for a principle her partner and her sister obviously hadn't considered at all!

‘Yes, um, thanks. I'll go along and see Gould now.’

Fingers clenched round her wallet, she strode off down the hall, hoping ‘yes’ had been the right answer to whatever Janet had been saying.

When she passed Fran's room the curtains were drawn so presumably her sister was resting. In any case she'd decided she needed to talk with Gould first. There'd been little communication between them. His face had been heavily bandaged until the last couple of days and he'd been unable to talk.  She'd always told him when she was present and slipped her hand into his and he'd clung tightly, sometimes making little grunting noises. Yesterday, with the bandages off he'd recognized her and spoken her name and some other words among which she'd distinguished ‘thanks’ and ‘sorry’. Had he been trying to apologize?

Did he, like Gotham, think an apology wiped the slate clean? Would she, when confronting him, become the old tongue-tied Georgina? With her hand on his door she stopped, closed her eyes and silently invoked the essence of Gynevra. The woman within her skin at this moment needed to be strong, articulate and confident, qualities she'd had in that ancient lifetime. Lifting her chin and straightening her spine, she pushed the door open.

Gould lay apparently asleep, the raw disfigured side of his head uncovered. The doctors had been reassuring that with plastic surgery his original looks would be largely restored but it was hard to equate this misshapen ugliness with the handsome man whose thick blond curly hair and intelligent laughing blue eyes had captivated her crippled heart nearly three years ago.

Just as hard as it had been for her to accept his double-dealing with her sister.