In From the Cold (5 page)

I cradled her against my chest, murmuring nonsense, disturbed and bewildered. What had set her off? What had I done? Moved too fast? Pushed too hard?
Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.

Finally, she stilled. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, the sound muffled against my shirt, wet now from her tears.

I squeezed her gently. “It’s okay. Better now?” I pressed my lips against her hair, breathing her in, willing my body to calm down. She nodded, her face still buried.

“Hey. Look at me.” I gently lifted her chin with one finger, and she hesitantly raised her face and met my eyes. I felt relieved. At least she would still look at me. “Can you talk about it?”

She shook her head.

“It might help. And I want to. I want to know all about you. And seeing you like this. Jesus, I—”

“You don’t understand.” She muffled a sob in her throat, then pressed away from me, out of my arms.

“Help me then. Tell me.”

“You’ll hurt me,” she whispered, her shoulders hunched, her arms wrapped around her again. She stared at her feet. “Just like him. And I can’t take it—not again.”

I was confounded. She’d been wounded big time, I got that. But I would never hurt her, never
want
to hurt her.

But how to convince her?

I started to reach for her and opened my mouth to speak, then stopped.

I also knew, better than most, that despite what we want, despite the best of intentions, people get hurt all the time. I couldn’t promise never to hurt her. There were no guarantees, no vows that couldn’t be broken. Could I ask her to take such a chance with me? What had this guy done to her? What did I really know about Claire? Or she about me?

Barely anything.

But I did know one thing. Whatever might or might not happen between us, I owed her honesty.

“Claire,” I said, lifting her face in my hands, my thumbs sweeping her hair from her eyes. “I don’t want to hurt you. Never. Ever. But promises…they’d just be words right now. We don’t know each other well enough yet. Please. Give us a chance.”

I brushed my lips on hers, my lips pleading what my words could not. She trembled as she pulled away, her head down, and let her forehead bump my chest.

“Claire. Look at me,” I whispered.

She shook her head, her forehead still against my chest. “I can’t.”

“I’m sorry.” I kissed the top of her head, then felt her nod against me. Then with her face still averted, she sagged into her room, shutting the door quietly behind her.

I stared at her closed door, then walked down the hall to my bedroom—confused, frustrated, and alone.

Chapter Seven

Claire

I leaned against my bedroom door. My eyes burned, and my stomach ached. My head said I’d done the right thing, but my heart insisted I’d done myself severe bodily harm. I stumbled into the bathroom and threw cold water over my face, then curled into a fetal position on my bed, the riptide of memory pulling me under.

Jim.
Across the college commons, walking toward me, confident, his gaze fixed on me, like I was the only woman in the world. A leaner Robert Redford, all blond hair, pale blue eyes, dimples. Our first date, a dance club to hear my favorite band, dancing bebop, twirling, dipping, flinging in the air. Laughter. So much laughter. Joy. Walking, hands in the other’s back pockets, tickling, the slow sweet kisses. Our first time, making love in the theater storage room, on a pile of old costumes. The feel of his mouth on my neck, on my breasts, his tongue twirling my nipples, his fingers brushing my slit, our bodies so slick and eager, my moans, his groans. Then for months afterward, one touch, one look and we blazed—in hallways, elevators, the library, the stairwell, against a wall, in the woods, in the car. It was bliss. It was crazy, consuming, obsessive. It was love.

At least for me.

Until the night when he didn’t come after the show, didn’t call, and I opened my dorm room to find him with my roommate, her body spread across my desk, his cock shoved up her ass. He hadn’t stopped, only smirked at me, gripped her hips and pumped harder.

I closed the door, then lost my dinner on the hall floor. That had been March my senior year, and I lived like a mole underground for the last two months before graduation. I camped out in a friend’s quad in another dorm, tried and failed to study in a different library, barely ate. I lost fifteen pounds, my face gaunt with dark circles under my eyes, my hair falling out by the fistfuls. My days passed like a slow train through a long dark tunnel. I never heard from him nor saw him or my roommate on campus again.

Graduation came and went. I hid at home that summer and rarely left my room, sleeping for days at a time. My parents worried, but I couldn’t talk about it. Luckily, I had snagged a teaching job before the breakup, so I moved to Fairfax that August and buried myself in the drudgery of a first-year teacher.

I got through the first year and found a waitress job in DC for the summer. I’d regained some weight, the dark circles finally gone, and even considered getting out more, maybe hanging out with a couple of the other teachers. Life had started to feel possible again.

Then one night in August, I saw him. The place was packed, and two customers waited at the bar, their backs to me. I’d walked over to lead them to a table, fumbling in my uniform pocket for my order pad. When I looked up, there he was.

“Hello, Claire,” he said.

I dropped my pad and rushed blindly for the side exit, lost in the crowd near the bar. He ran after me, and I raced to the back, away from the parking lot. He grabbed my arm.

“Get away from me!” I shrieked, and wrenched my arm away from him.

He held up his hands. “Claire. Calm down.”

“Asshole! Just get away. Leave me alone!”

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“It’s way too late for that.” I looked desperately for something, anything, to throw at him. I grabbed lemon peels from the garbage cans beside me and chucked them at him.

“Go away. Leave me alone. Leave me alone!” I sobbed, my arms flailing.

He ducked beneath the barrage and slammed me against the wall, pinning my arms above my head with one hand and my body against the wall with his. I thrashed and shoved, but it did no good. He reached up and stroked my cheek with his other hand.

“Look, chill out. Stop. Shhh.” His voice softened, and his hand stroked my hair, my cheek, my neck. Slowly, my breathing calmed, while my chest heaved.

“Let me go!” I spat through gritted teeth, still struggling against his hold.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, as if talking to himself. “I’d almost forgotten those freckles and that mole. I’ve missed them.” He bent to kiss me and I jerked away. He dragged my jaw back to face him, and he smiled, that devastating sparkly smile that used to pull me to him like a winch. But this time, for an instant, I saw a hardness in his eyes, some suppressed emotion that frightened me.

“I’ve missed you, Claire. I’ve tried to stay away, but when I heard you were working here, I thought I’d take a chance, that maybe in public you wouldn’t go nuts on me…”

I glared at him, my breathing ragged, and pulled at my hands still trapped in his. A vision of his face as he fucked my roommate scorched my brain. I thrashed again, growling.

“My mistake…” he murmured, his voice husky, his hands still tight on my wrists. His eyes roamed down my body in a way that made me feel naked. He gripped my wrists tighter, his gaze focused on my breasts. The blouse was low-cut, my curves evident. He pressed closer, and I could feel his erection as he pushed himself against me.

“Get away from me!” I screamed again, and tried to knee him in the balls. He ground his hips and legs against me hard, trapping my legs, then slid his free hand down my neck and cupped my breast. He slid his thumb across my nipple, his eyes locked on mine. My body responded despite myself, but I felt dirty, used.

“You know you’ve missed me, Claire. You know you want this. There’s never been anyone but you.” He swooped down and kissed me hard, thrusting his tongue in my mouth, painfully squeezing my breast.

I screamed in his mouth and bit down, hard, on his tongue. I tasted blood. He plunged backward with a roar, blood dripping from his mouth.

“You fucking bitch!” he roared and backhanded me across the face so hard it slammed my head against the wall. I saw stars, felt my blouse rip, and then became dimly aware of movement, shouting, someone pulling him away. Then José, the bartender, had his arm around me, wiping my face with a rag, murmuring over and over. “It’s okay. Shhh.
Dulce
, sweet Claire.
Dulce
.” He took me home, and I remembered slowly coming to the next day, my head and jaw aching, with a shiner worthy of a prizefighter.

I never went back to the restaurant, never saw Jim again. I returned to my teaching job a couple of weeks later, but I only mimicked the motions. Like a ghost, I wandered through each day with only shadowed memories of routines. My heart, my soul, my mind seemed to exist only by an effort of will that left me annihilated by the end of each day.

I made it, barely, through the year, but I was not rehired. I should have hunted for a job, but I couldn’t force myself out of bed. I slept through June, then July, and was halfway through August when my sister rescued me. She took me home, parked me in her guest room and called her doctor. Slowly, very slowly, she and her family lured me back into the land of the living.

When Drake kissed me and held me in his arms, he had breached a wall I had thought impregnable. Now I was drowning in a sea of emotions I thought I’d escaped, as if I’d felt sand beneath my feet only to find a riptide sucking me under again. It was impossible. I was a mess, a washed-up teacher-on-hold, who’d been hiding in her sister’s home until ready to face the world again. And his kiss was proof. I wasn’t ready.

But something whispered
try
. That maybe, with practice, I could do this again. Find the real thing this time. Something in his glance, his smile, his touch. Even though it was happening so fast and was based on so little, I wanted…God help me…I wanted him.

Twice, I had fallen into a dark hole and twice, had barely managed to crawl out, but now I leaned over its edge for a third time. I felt its pull like vertigo—dizzying, tempting—one gust of emotion away from toppling in. I knew—
knew
—I couldn’t survive another fall. And when Drake held me in his arms, I couldn’t tell if he was pulling me back from the edge or pushing me in. I was terrified.

It was a risk I wasn’t ready to take, but I deeply feared it was already too late.

Chapter Eight

Drake

Thick snow fell over the next two days. Claire and I were polite, but distant. I was at the Fritzes’ estate most of the time, trying to close the deal with Fritz Industries and brush off Sharon as best I could. It was tricky. We had both been Miles’s victims, and I knew she’d been through hell. I didn’t want to hurt her, but she was toxic. As a large shareholder in Miles’s company, which also did business with Jason Fritz, she’d been invited as a courtesy, but like a black hole, she seemed to suck those around her into her emptiness. People skirted away from her as they might from a dog walking cockeyed down the street, unsure if she was sick or wounded, but possibly dangerous either way.

I knew she didn’t really want me. I was her “game
du jour
”, her chosen target to prove, once again, her desirability. She was persistent though, and I had to keep alert. I avoided corners and tried to stay in groups—not that it seemed to slow her down. She took every chance to rub against me, touch me, brush my fingers. Luckily, she started drinking early in the day and was usually barely conscious by the time we returned to the guesthouse. She must have felt terrible every morning.

I felt terrible too, but for an entirely different reason. Claire was never far from my thoughts, and I was surprised by my own obsessive bent. I’d been rejected before—granted, a long time ago—but I’d always been able to walk away, even with Wanda. But not this time. Not with her.

I couldn’t understand her effect on me. When she was out of sight, I felt anxious until I could see her again. I wanted to know what she was thinking, what she was doing, what she was planning. I hated the awkwardness between us, but I didn’t know how to fix it because I didn’t know what had caused it. And when I thought of her body—the firelight on her freckles, her sweet mouth, her sighs, her whispering my name—I grew hard so fast it was painful, downright embarrassing.

No woman had ever affected me this way. Not to sound conceited, but many had wanted me and I’d been happy to oblige them. For a night, for a weekend, we would enjoy what the other offered and then easily walk away. It seemed a part of my business world. A little investment for a little easy profit, and everyone walked away happy.

Some had wanted a more long-term investment, Christine André most recently, but I wasn’t interested. She was beautiful, no doubt about that, but in all the usual ways. She exhibited the modern artistry of the beauty spa, but in a roomful of beauties, she was merely one of many. Christine was a dull streetlamp on a busy commercial street.

Claire was dawn’s light on a pristine mountain.

And while she might look like prey, Christine was a hunter, stalking her next payer of bills—husband number three. I didn’t really blame her. It was an expensive lifestyle after all, the perk
and
bane of the rich and famous. I had lived it already with Wanda and found it bare and ugly. I had suspected before, when I allowed myself time to think about it, that I hungered for something different. I still wasn’t entirely sure what that was, but I knew in my gut that Claire did.

I had come home early tonight, blowing off the party at the estate. My schmooze tank was empty after so much socializing, and my distracted state didn’t help. I stood at my bedroom window and watched Claire, Suzie and Yvette build a snowman in the backyard, the sun setting on the Tetons behind them. The snowman was only about three feet tall and leaned crookedly, but Suzie and Yvette wore intense expressions, clearly absorbed in their efforts. Claire watched from the sidelines and let them work. The gap yawned between us, and I couldn’t think how to bridge it. I didn’t want to interrupt them, and it was growing dark, so they would probably come in soon. Maybe…

I searched the kitchen for hot chocolate and marshmallows, and I had filled each mug when I heard them clatter up the stairs. I hurried to the top of the landing and squatted to toddler eye level.

“Hey!”

“Daddy!” Suzie raced up the stairs in her snow boots and hurled herself into my arms. “You’re home!”

“Yup. I missed my girl.” I rubbed my thumbs on Suzie’s rosy cheeks. “Your snowman looks terrific.”

“You’ve already seen him?” Suzie stared at me as if I were a magician.

“I watched you from the window; you were working very hard.” Claire and Yvette climbed up the stairs as I pulled Suzie’s parka off her tiny wiggly frame.

“Here, I’ll take that,” Claire said and extended her hand for the coat. Our fingers touched and she smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. She took the coat back down the stairs. I sighed, then turned to Yvette who gazed at me with big somber eyes. Did the child ever smile? I must be losing my touch.

“Do you like hot chocolate, Yvette? I made you some.” She nodded solemnly, but her eyes sparkled.

“Well, come on then.” I held out one hand to her and the other to Suzie. We were seated at the bar with chocolate marshmallow mustaches when Claire came into the room.

She had changed into jeans and a black turtleneck, felted clogs on her feet. She looked delectable, her cheeks and lips rosy too, and I yearned to wrap my arms around her and press her back against my chest, to lean down and smell the crisp winter air in her hair,
L’aire du Claire
. She glanced at me, looking uncomfortable as if she read my thoughts, then flicked her gaze to the counter and the mugs of steaming cocoa.

“Wow. Look at the great hot chocolate. Is it yummy?” She spoke to the girls and avoided my gaze.

Both heads nodded in unison.

“There’s one for you too.” I pushed a mug toward her. “I wasn’t sure if you liked marshmallows.”

“Great. What a treat.” She threw a couple of marshmallows in her cup and elaborately made her own mustache.

Yvette giggled.

Suzie and I stared at her in surprise. We’d never heard her giggle, but Claire kept her reaction carefully nonchalant. She leaned into Yvette’s face, smiling. “What? You like my mustache? Is it big enough, dumpling?” She rubbed noses with Yvette, who giggled again and shook her head. It was a lovely sound, like sleigh bells.

Claire raised her eyebrows. “No? Then I’d better try harder.” She took another big swig of hot chocolate, and this time dripped melted marshmallow from the tip of her nose. She looked adorably silly and the girls burst into laughter.

“Better?” She waggled her eyebrows. The girls were belly laughing now.

“Come on, Daddy.” Suzie pulled my sleeve, bouncing on her stool. “Do bigger.”

I arched an eyebrow and scanned the trio. “You think?”

Two hopeful little faces nodded. I swiveled to face Claire. “How ’bout you, Miss Claire? Think I can do better?”

She raised one eyebrow and crossed her arms. “Give it your best shot, big guy.”

I held up my mug, paused dramatically, and practically dipped my face in the mug. I had marshmallow hanging on my cheeks, hot chocolate dripping from my chin.

“Ewwwwwww,” both girls howled. Claire chuckled too, her fingers over her mouth.

I threatened to rub my face against them, and they squealed again.

“You win. You win.” Still giggling, the girls gulped the rest of their chocolate, then started to scoot off their stools.

“Waaait a minute.” Claire wet a paper towel and started wiping hands and faces. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“We want to watch TV,” Suzie said.

“
After
you change into dry clothes.”

I walked around the kitchen bar. “I was thinking about ordering pizza for dinner. Is that okay, Miss Claire?”

The girls jumped up and down, chanting, “Cheese. Cheese. Cheese. Cheese.”

“Sure.” Claire held up her hands. “Why don’t you call while I change the knuckleheads?”

“What do you like?”

“Everything. Anything.” She grinned. “Cheese apparently.”

The girls scampered down the hall, and Claire turned to follow them.

“Wait.” I wet another paper towel and tilted her face toward me. I wiped the marshmallow off her nose, gently swiped the mustache from her upper lip, while my thumb rested on her lower lip. She stood very still, holding her breath, then I realized I was holding mine too.

I stepped away. “There.” My hands were shaking.

“Hold on.” She moved closer, her lips curling upward, her eyes lit with amusement. She laid her left hand on my chest, stilling me, then took my paper towel with her right. I could feel my heart thud under her hand.

“Your turn.” She reached up and wiped the chocolate and melted marshmallow off my cheeks, my upper lip, my chin. She ran the towel delicately across my lower lip. Every muscle in my body seized, the urge to clasp her to me almost unbearable. I felt lightheaded, my blood like sand, heavy in my veins, sliding south. She fixed her eyes on my lips, refusing to meet my eyes. She tapped her index finger on my lower lip.

“There. You’re all set.” Her hand still lay on my chest, and she slowly raised her gaze to mine.

I covered her hand, pressing it against me. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” She looked at our hands, flushed, then stepped back. She hurried after the girls.

She had missed a big spot, though—she couldn’t wipe the grin off my face.

We ate pizza, and the girls soon drooped into their plates. We each carried one back to their room, then we brushed their teeth and rolled them into bed. Claire left the room, while I snuggled against Suzie’s pillow and read
Goodnight Moon
to them, and before the end of the book, both girls had fallen fast asleep.

I found Claire in the kitchen, hanging up a towel from drying dishes, the dishwasher rumbling quietly behind her.

“Well?”

“Down before I got to ‘And goodnight mouse’.”

She smiled. “That’s great. I’m sure they loved that.” She crossed her arms and rubbed them like she was cold. “Well, I guess I’ll—”

“Claire.” I reached toward her, then dropped my hand. “Don’t. Don’t go.”

She looked down at the floor, and I ran my hand through my hair, frustrated.

“Look, you were right. We were tired the other night and a little drunk, and we started way too fast. I’d like to…back up a bit, get to know you. If that’s too much to ask, I understand, but I’d like to try. Could we just sit and maybe talk?”

I was nervous, so afraid she’d turn tail and run. And I wanted her to stay, more than I was willing to admit to myself.

She thought a moment, her arms still folded across herself like body armor.

“Just talk?”

I held two fingers in the air. “Scout’s honor.”

“And no wine?” She grinned.

“No wine. How ’bout some coffee or tea?”

She smiled, and hope sprang in my chest. “Okay. Tea would be great.”

I prepared the tea while she moved into the great room. She threw another log on the fire, then stretched out on the couch in her corner. I walked over and handed her a mug of tea, then settled into the opposite end of the couch. I took a sip of my coffee.

“So.”

“So.” She exhaled.

“The fire looks good. Feels good.” The room looked cozy and safe. Perfect.

“Uh hunh. It’s nice to sit too.”

“They keep you hopping, don’t they?”

“More like racing.” She chuckled. I loved the timbre of her voice, deep and sultry, with a touch of Southern accent. “It’s all good though. I’m glad to see Yvette coming out of her shell.” She blew on her tea. “You said you knew her parents. What’s her home like?”

I glanced over at the doorway, making sure Sharon wasn’t hovering just out of sight.

“Messy divorce. Busy screwed-up parents. Miles has always been careless. When we were kids, he’d bring home strays, lose interest in a week, and somehow, all his friends ended up with new pets.”

“Did you?”

“Rex, Tex and Lex—still got ’em too.”

“Dogs?”

“Cats.”

“Really? You struck me as more of a dog kind of guy.”

“Nah. Dogs always want to please. Cats—they’re more contrary, sort of like furry three-year-olds.”

She grinned over her tea. She had a beautiful smile.

“I can see that.” She swished her tea in slow circles in her mug. “So who does Yvette live with most?”

“I think Miles. Has she said?”

She shook her head. “No, and that’s strange. Suzie talks about you all the time, and her mom.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t worry.” She laughed. “She thinks you walk on water. And her mother’s the most beautiful lady in the world.” She paused. “How long have you been divorced?”

“Two years.”

It felt like a lifetime ago—and like yesterday.

“Was it messy or amicable?”

“Both. Suzie was just a baby. It was messy at first, but now we’re…cordial.”

Claire nodded and took another sip of tea. “What’s she like?”

“You sure you want to know?” I expelled a gust of air. I wasn’t sure I could talk about Wanda. How much to tell? How much to leave out?

I would always remember my first sight of her—at a party, laughing, her head back in full guffaw, her long blonde hair streaming down her back, surrounded by all my fraternity buddies. Her eyes caught mine when she stopped laughing, and like one of those romantic moments in a movie, suddenly, we were the only two people in the room.

I walked right up and claimed her, grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the others out onto the balcony and into my arms. It had been match to gasoline. I knew within the month that I would marry her, and if that made me a sucker, so be it.

At the time, Wanda seemed to want that too.

We dated for two years, then married soon after graduation, and moved to Chevy Chase. We’d both landed good jobs, and as newbies worked long hours, sometimes only seeing each other on the weekends. We thought that was normal, what kids our age did. Our careers grew, and my business took off. Life was great.

Then Wanda got pregnant.

I was ecstatic.

She was furious.

She blamed me, our lives, sex, work. You name it, she blamed it. She threatened to abort the child, but I convinced her not to, promising nannies and au pairs and whatever the hell else she wanted. Finally, she calmed down, and as the baby began to show, even seemed to enjoy the attention, but it was the fault line of our marriage. Although she acted the part of happy expectant mother, she grew more distant throughout the pregnancy, and a gap spread between us I felt helpless to bridge. Maybe a baby made it all too real somehow, made her realize what she did and did not want.