Games People Play (4 page)

Chapter Five

S
he found Max in the house’s gym with a new massage therapist, a young sandy-blonde who looked pale and nervous as she cradled his head in her hands and gently moved it side to side. Sydney knew he often had muscle spasms, and she prayed his temper wouldn’t run this therapist off as it had the last three.

“You finished early.” He jerked his head aside and brushed the woman away to look at Sydney from his prone position on the table.

“I wanted to talk to you before I go into the city. I need more models for this particular project,” she added quickly, before he could ask about Colm. “They’ll have to come out here for a few sessions, unless you wouldn’t mind me working in the city.”

“I’d rather you work here, naturally. And what about Hennessy?

“He’ll be part of it, of course. But while we’re on that subject, I have something to say.”

Max raised a hand to stop her and glared at the massage therapist, who, to keep from being in the way of the conversation, had gone to work gently limbering his legs. “For Christ’s sake, Tina, are you trying to shove my knee down my throat?”

She murmured an apology and resumed bending his leg more gently, but her hands shook around his bony knee.

Sydney couldn’t stand it anymore. “I need to speak to you in private.” It was the truth, but she also felt sorry for the therapist and wanted to give her a break. “Give me five minutes,” she told the woman.

When the grateful-looking therapist had washed her hands and departed, Sydney came around the table and perched beside Max. “Why did you hire Colm?”

He looked at her, his gray eyes searching her face, and then sighed. “I’m aware of your restlessness lately. I wanted to encourage you to start again as soon as possible. Between shows, you seem lost. This time, I thought—”

“But why didn’t you tell me this before? And warn me? I would have listened to your idea, even if the thought of having a single model out here in my studio makes me uncomfortable. And why a male one?”

“Hennessy seems like a superior specimen.” His gaze shifted away, his mouth thinning. “Surely you can see that. I’m a man, and even I can recognize that he’s art on legs. I thought having a male model might help you work through some of your idiosyncrasies.”

Hurt bolted through her, stinging her eyes. “My idiosyncrasies? They’re fears!”

“And when will you get help for them, for Christ’s sake? When will you let go of the past?” Max reached out and grasped her wrist when she went to jerk away. “Sydney. You talk about our lack of a sex life, but I never know who you’re thinking of in bed with me—that bastard who took such advantage of you years ago, or me.”

She dropped her head and squeezed back the tears. She never thought of that man from so long ago, but she couldn’t convince Max of it. She’d tried counseling a couple of years ago to rid herself of the bad memories, but it had only seemed to feed them. Then the accident happened, and since then, she hadn’t had time to think about the past, her youth, anything much but Max, his needs and her own for him. She couldn’t explain it. She didn’t know if she loved him anymore—maybe hadn’t since the night he cheated on her—but he was her stability.

Until lately. Until Colm Hennessy.

“I don’t want you to run off to the city,” he said, caressing the wrist he had grabbed. “Every time you go, you’re gone all day. You’re so far away. Maybe I’ve hired this man for selfish reasons, but only because I miss you. I need you out here, Sydney.
I need
you.”

Sydney hesitated, her chest pulling tight. She didn’t often see beyond his cheerful, steely bravado, but the plea in his gray eyes now grabbed her anger and ran off with it. He seemed smaller, lying on the massage table with two useless limbs and that prison of a wheelchair hovering ever near.

She sighed. “I’ll try to recruit a couple of women models to buffer things. I know you meant well by hiring Colm, and I’m trying to understand.”

He offered her a smile that didn’t quite warm the piercing way he studied her. What was he thinking when he looked at her like that? She fought the urge to fold her arms over her heart, to protect herself, and yet this was Max. The same man she’d known and loved for four years. When had it all become so strange?

He broke from his trance and squeezed her hand. “I’ve got to finish this damned massage therapy, but tonight I’ll take you out and we’ll talk more. We’ll have dinner in Middleburg at that inn you love. Would you like that?”

Mixing food with discussions of their relationship issues didn’t exactly appeal to Sydney, but she wouldn’t dash his well-meaning intentions. “I would. And what about Colm?”

Instantly Max’s expression hardened. “He isn’t a guest here, he’s an employee. He can find his own meals when he isn’t invited to join us.”

Sydney pressed her lips together and nodded.

“Now will you tell Theresa to get back in here? I want this hellish session over with.”

“I think her name is Tina.” She bent to kiss his lips and to her amazement felt the touch of his tongue, just for an instant. “I’ll see you tonight.”

“Yes,” he said. “If it’s good for you.”

She didn’t know what was good for her anymore, only that something had to change,
was
changing, and she couldn’t stop it.

* * *

W
ith the afternoon off, Colm buried his frustration in a long run around the estate. The gold and russet trees canopied the soft path, the call of unseen wildlife soothing his irritation. He hated every moment of the situation with Sydney and Beaudoin. He hadn’t deciphered Sydney yet, but his knowledge of the finer sex had become honed in the last three years, and he recognized an easy mark when he saw one. She reminded him of the myriad clients who’d passed through his doorway since the whole Avalon thing had started. Lost women too long neglected, beautiful, untouchable except with a total stranger between the sheets. Then they came apart under his hands, a double-edged sword that spoke to his male ego but also left him feeling empty and desperate.

Long gone were the days of worshiping and designing civil architecture. He’d been so self-important then. Another Louis Henri Sullivan or Frank Lloyd Wright. He’d thought the world spun solely for him.

Amelia’s face floated through his mind, and he picked up speed. This was all for her. Maybe one day when they were old, he would tell her what he’d done to keep her in good care and she would understand. He couldn’t help Jill now, but his sister . . . she was the life that remained. Real life.

Tears stung his eyes as the unseasonably cold wind assaulted him, and he sprinted faster, leaping over logs and debris, mindless and driven, until his lungs threatened to rise into his throat and choke him.

He circled the entire estate without realizing the distance he’d covered until the house and its outlying buildings came into view. Then he half-stumbled to a stop and braced his hands on his knees, panting and nearly sick. When he glanced at the mansion, the draperies in the living room wafted aside and he found himself the object of Beaudoin’s unyielding regard. He didn’t bother to raise a hand in greeting. He looked away, caught his breath, and then walked the rest of the way to the guest cabin.

* * *

T
he shower beat down on his head, washing away vestiges of his run and lingering waves of pain. He dressed, and with his hair still damp, climbed into his black Ford Explorer and headed back toward the city, past mansions that rivaled Beaudoin’s whitewashed brick behemoth, past worlds he couldn’t possibly understand except when the ladies of the house crawled into his bed at Avalon. Then he lived and breathed their opulence, and it echoed with empty restlessness.

Near his home in Silver Spring, he stopped at the usual flower stand and purchased a bouquet from an old man, who said, “Mums today? What happened to the usual roses?”

Colm smiled and took the bouquet. “I like to keep her guessing.”

The house was chilly. Amelia’s nurses were changing shifts and though they both greeted him, the one departing—the new one—spoke a little more warmly than the other. Colm recognized the smile all too well. He returned it, holding her gaze just long enough to ensure maybe an extra kindness or two for Amelia. There were times that head-to-toe appraisal bolstered him. He’d come to rely on slow looks for all sorts of twisted reasons.

He didn’t realize how tired he was until he stepped into his sister’s bedroom and set the flowers on the bedside table. Her closed eyelids didn’t flutter. She was so still, her dark lashes like smudges of ashes against her cheeks. For one horrifying instant he imagined her dead, even though he knew better. She always slept deeply after particularly taxing physical therapy sessions. But the same jolting fear woke him up a lot of nights, soaked in sweat and heart pounding.

Sleeping. She’s just sleeping.

The world shrank, drawing in its ragged edges until it was just the two of them, siblings against the world. Their world, the strange and wonderful one they’d forged as twins. But now . . . he was a whore. She was a quadriplegic, and nearly unrecognizable. He was responsible for all of it, and here he stood, offering a damned bouquet of flowers, a sad symbol of the bright promise they’d both displayed once upon a time.

Sinking to the chair, he glanced around and sighed. Three years ago this room had been his home office. Cluttered computer desk and drafting table in the corner near the window, no blinds or curtains, sunlight flooding the space. Plans on that drafting table. Dreams. Now the room felt arctic, its cold seeping through his gray Henley shirt, and the place smelled like Pine-Sol.

He grabbed an extra blanket from the foot of the bed and spread it over Amelia, then focused on her face and reached out to finger the dark silky strands on the pillow. She had always been petite, but now she was as small as a child, and so damned pale. Grief welled in his chest and he laid his forehead on the bed near where her hand lay. “Just sleep,” he whispered. “Rest.” As long as she slept, she escaped her reality, and he could find a moment’s respite from the guilt.

It’s always about you, isn’t it?

The knot in his throat grew. Usually he could keep it together when he was home, but today he felt so beaten. Maybe it came from being inundated with Beaudoin’s malice and the knowledge of Sydney’s inevitable victimization at Colm’s own hands. Maybe it was the fact that on a rain-soft night three years ago, he and Jill had been arguing about nothing in the car—with Amelia in the backseat, unbelted, the stubborn fool—and he was more interested in his own irritation than the wet bridge, and when their Lexus hydroplaned into oncoming traffic, he hadn’t been able to stop it. Maybe it was because he still missed his wife sometimes, not the fighting, but the way they had been in the beginning . . . and maybe it was because in three years’ time he had nearly screwed her out of his memory.

“You never feel anyone else’s pain, do you?”
Jill had accused him.
“You’re like an automaton. What will it take to wake you up?”

The last words he’d heard before the collision. They stayed with him.
What will it take to wake you up?
He was the one sleeping now, not his sister.

Without warning his shoulders started shaking, and he pressed his face against the sheets by Amelia’s hand. Every time he thought he was cried out, the emotions surprised him. He was so empty, but the tears—they lurked, each one a scalding reminder of his and Amelia’s destruction.

When the nurse came in to check on his sister, he kept his head down. The nurse acted like she didn’t notice, and he was grateful. He liked this warm, heavyset woman who watched over his twin. Hell, she took care of him, too, when he needed it.

After a while he regained his decorum, snatched a tissue from the nearby box and wiped his face. “How long has she been asleep?”

“An hour,” Jane whispered. “She’ll sleep into the evening. She had a rough day.”

He swallowed and looked at Amelia’s hand rather than at the nurse. His sister’s skin reminded him of rice paper. The veins marked a diminutive map beneath it. “I can’t stay long enough to see her awake,” he whispered back. “I’m working out of town for the next couple of weeks, but I’m still as close as the phone. All you have to do is call and I’ll get here, Jane. Any issues, any problem, and—”

“You’ll know immediately,” she said gently.

“Tell her I was here when she wakes up.”

Jane smiled and cast a glance at the bright bouquet he’d set beside the bed. “Oh, she’ll know.”

* * *

T
hough the grief sat like a stone in his chest and guilt assailed him, he finally left Amelia and headed over to Avalon, where he parked a safe distance down Connecticut Avenue from the large, innocuous-looking trio of town houses.

Inside the pleasure club’s main building, he picked up his mail from Azure’s secretary and rifled through it. Two notes from women thanking him for the best sex of their lives, one of which read like
Penthouse
Forum. So different from the mail he got at home. He swallowed as he thought about the daily bills for Amelia’s care, a familiar anxiety tightening his chest. He was almost caught up, thank God, but Azure had him enslaved, and she knew it. She reveled in it. In typical clairvoyant fashion, she appeared at the end of the corridor, wraithlike in a gauzy white pantsuit, her black hair woven back in a soft braid. Colm knew what the outfit meant. She was in a benevolent mood.

“Colm, darling. Tell me this is not bad news.”

“On the contrary.” He forced a smile. “I think Sydney and I are off to a good start. She needs more models, though. I figure at least one of the guys might be agreeable to earning a little money on the side.”

Azure reached him and smoothed the front of his button-down shirt with a gentle hand. “I’m sure that’s doable. It’s a quiet week here.” She started into her office, then paused and looked back at him, her catlike eyes unreadable. “You’re asking Garrett in particular?”

Jesus, she was a mind reader. “Is he here?”

“He’s got appointments tonight.”

“Sydney won’t need him tonight.”