Moonlight Man (18 page)

When the maid knocked briefly and swung open a set of nine-feet-tall double doors, the black-dressed woman actually curtsied, for heaven’s sake! Then, stepping aside for Sharon to enter, she announced that the nurse was there and backed out, shutting the enormous doors, leaving Sharon on the inside.

On the far side of the room, an elderly, diminutive woman dressed in a red track suit sat erect on a hassock, toasting marshmallows on a very long fork over a blazing fire. Her hair was piled high in elaborate lavender curls and twists, and she peered with interest at Sharon.

A quick, infectious smile broke across her face as she bade her guest to come in and sit down, and offered her a marshmallow by holding out the fork with an already golden brown morsel on the end. The color of it reminded Sharon of Marc’s eyes, and she had to blink to keep tears from forming in her own.

“
Bonjour
,” she said, sitting on the edge of the chair the woman indicated and shaking her head at the offer of the marshmallow. The woman shrugged in a manner that was so familiar and so dear, Sharon was again forced to blink back tears. Quickly, she introduced herself and explained that she was there under false pretenses. She wasn’t the expected nurse but a personal friend of Jean-Marc’s, and she dearly hoped that someone could tell her where to find him.

“Ah …” said the elderly woman. “You are, perhaps, a lady-love of my grandson?” She had spoken in English, faintly accented.

“Yes, but not ‘a’ lady-love. I am the only one,” she corrected Marc’s grandmother gently. Black-penciled eyebrows rose, one higher than the other. “So? You seem sure of this.”

“Yes. I am sure of it.”

“How is it, then, that you do not know where Jean-Marc is?”

“We had a misunderstanding.”

The woman licked her fingers and placed another marshmallow on the fork. “A lovers’ quarrel?” she asked gleefully, leaning forward to poke her marshmallow close to the coals, only taking her bright eyes off Sharon for an instant. “Lovers’ quarrels are wonderful! Tell me all about yours.”

It was a command that Sharon ignored. “Wonderful?” she asked. “What is so wonderful about them?”

“Why … making up, of course.” Her eyes twinkled as she cocked her head to one side as if waiting for Sharon to say something, and when she did not, turned her attention once again to her cooking task.

“Enough for me,” she said, eating the last marshmallow. “I shall order coffee now, and cakes.”

“But … the nurse?”

“Pah! She can come back tomorrow. Today, I wish to speak with you, to hear your story. Begin.”

“Madame, please, I really must not waste time. Yours or mine. Can you tell me where Marc-er, Jean-Marc-is? I truly need to see him. To talk to him.”

The woman nodded. “Ah, yes. But does my grandson want to see you?”

Sharon was unable to control the tears that flooded up in response to the question. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I only know I have to try. Madame, please help me.”

Leaning forward, the old woman patted her hands and said, “Of course I will. Only … first you must tell me all about it.”

To her surprise, over coffee and cakes, it was easy for Sharon to explain in full detail not only the story of her time with Marc, but of her marriage and the insecurities she’d been left with. And when she was finished, Madame St.-Clair nodded slowly. “Yes. I can see how you might have been confused and frightened for just a small while and run away. It is a shame my grandson did not wait to speak with you. But that is his way. When he is ’urt, he goes to hide.”

“Then you understand? Where is he hiding, Madame?”

“Where?” The question was accompanied by widening eyes, lifted brows, and hands spread palms-up in a helpless gesture. “Where? I do not know! How would I know? I’m just an old lady. No one tells me anything.”

“Oh! But…” Sharon couldn’t hide her dismay. “I see. Thank you.” She got to her feet. “Forgive me for taking up your time, Madame.”

“Oh, sit down, sit down, child. I did not say I couldn’t find out where he is. I will ask his father. My son Reginald always knows where Jean-Marc is. They are close.” She crossed her fingers. “Like this, no?” She reached for a large, black rotary-dial telephone.

Sharon sat on the edge of her chair watching the play of expression and emotion cross the old woman’s face as she spoke in rapid French. Finally, with a sigh, and a moue of sadness, Madame hung up.

“My son … he says Jean-Marc does not want to see you, and that I am not to tell you where he is.”

Again, Sharon stood. Holding her hand out, she said in a taut voice that just hovered on the edge of a wobble, “Thank you, Madame St.-Clair, for trying. Good-bye.”

“What? No. You must not say good-bye, my dear child. Come, we will take a drive together, you and I. You tell me you have not been to my city for many years. I cannot let you go without showing you around.” Again, she reached for the telephone, and this time Sharon understood that she was ordering her car brought around. Argument was useless. Whatever she said was overridden and pooh-poohed. There was time, Madame assured her, for everything, and all would work out for the best. With a floor-length mink draped over her red track suit, and her feet stuffed into fleece-lined boots, Marc’s grandmother hurried her guest out to the chauffeur-driven car. Sharon, she ordered, was not to worry but to enjoy.

Sharon could not. Dutifully, she nodded and listened to the information spouting forth. This building was new, that one had been renovated, and see where they had torn down all those ugly old tenements and put in condominiums? All very lovely, yes? But what of the poor souls who now had nowhere to live?

“And this building is very special to our family. We own it. Come, we will alight. You must see something in here.” As soon as the car had stopped, she hopped out, not waiting for her uniformed driver to attend her, and dragged Sharon with her. A doorman bowed low and swung wide massive glass doors with gold lettering Sharon didn’t have an opportunity to read, and then ushered them to an elevator on which he used a key and bowed again.

The doors whispered closed with expensive ease, enclosing them in carpeted, mirrored luxury. Though the ride was smooth and carried them high, it was soon over, and the doors opened again just as silently as they had closed.

“Where—”
Are we
, Sharon had been about to ask, staring around the beautifully appointed penthouse apartment.

A dainty hand closed over her mouth, and a snapping dark eye winked at her. “Hush,” Madame whispered. “I said I would not tell. I did not say I would not show. The rest, child, is up to you.”

With that, she slipped back into the elevator. From a room somewhere within the apartment, a tape played loudly. A golden oldie: “King of the Road.” On shaking legs, Sharon followed the sound.

Marc lay on a wide leather couch, one long leg slung over the back, the other resting full length, his bare foot on the arm of the sofa. He was clean-shaven, his face craggy and worn looking, his eyes closed. With one hand he beat out the rhythm of the song on his bare abdomen just over the waistband of his jeans. His hair, she noted, was still too long.

The carpet underfoot was so thick, she could have walked across the room in army boots and he wouldn’t have heard her, but she went quietly anyway, switched off the CD player, and stood there as his eyes popped open.

“All right, King of the Road,” she said. “You seem to have come to rest.”

Slowly, he swung his feet to the floor and sat up, never removing his gaze from her face. “I said I didn’t want to see you,” he told her. “Didn’t you get the message?”

“I got it,” she admitted. “But I didn’t come all this way to hear that.”

“So what did you come all this way for?”

His slight slip in pronunciation told her more than anything that he wasn’t as calm and unmoved as he pretended to be. She stepped toward him. As if to ward her off, or to gain the advantage of height, he got to his feet. She didn’t stop until she was but inches from him. Tilting her head back, she looked at his stony face.

She widened her eyes in an attempt to keep the tears at bay. It was futile. “You don’t sound very forgiving,” she whispered, and blinked involuntarily, sending a curtain of shimmering drops down her face.

“Don’t … please!” The words were dragged from him. He lifted a hand as if to touch her, and then let it fall, clenching his fists at his sides. A muscle in his shoulder jumped spasmodically. His face was deathly white.

“I’m sorry. I promised myself I wouldn’t do that.” With the back of her hand, she dried her face. “I can understand your anger, Marc. Or do I have to call you Jean-Marc now? I can understand it, truly, and I know I deserve it. I knew you better than to believe those old rumors. Only when it all happened, I didn’t know you, and I believed them because of what was happening to me. So when I saw your name and realized that you weren’t just Marc Duval, that you were that other man, the one I’d read about and thought such terrible things about, I was shocked and frightened and disillusioned. But only for a while, Marc! When I realized how wrong I’d been, I called you, but you didn’t answer. It took me another hour to get home. By then, you were gone.”

He nodded. “I had to leave. I’ve known it all along, Sharon. That’s why I never asked you to marry me, because I knew it wouldn’t work.”

“Why wouldn’t it work?” She lifted her gaze and her hand toward an ornately carved crucifix on one wail. “We never discussed it, I know. Are you a religious man?” she asked, a slow ache growing bigger and more bitter inside her. Had Ellis reached out of the past to destroy her present and her future? She had tried to make her marriage work! She had worked so hard at it, taken so much! Was she to be punished now because of things that had been no fault of hers? “Is it because I’m divorced?”

“No!” he said hoarsely. “Oh, Lord no, love! But Sharon, listen to me.” He touched her then, his big hands closing over her shoulders, warm even through her coat. Over her collar, his thumbs stroked the sides of her neck. “I know how it would be, and I couldn’t stand it. Each time we had an argument, each time I forgot myself and raised my voice, you’d be frightened, you’d remember the past and Ellis. And you’d think about the rumors about me, the taint on my character, and wonder. It would kill me to see doubt or fear in your eyes, Sharon. Please, it’s better this way.” With a gentle shove he set her back from him and let his hands fall to his sides again. “Don’t make this any harder than it has to be. Just go.”

She touched his bare chest with the tips of her fingers. “Marc, I can’t go. Not without you. Please come home. Don’t be mad at me any longer.”

As if against his will, his hands flattened hers on his chest. His eyes burned into hers. “I’m not angry, Sharon. But I can’t come back. It wouldn’t work for us. Don’t you see that?”

“No, dammit, I don’t see that!” She snatched her hands free and wheeled away from him, turning at the other side of the room to face him, her dark eyes flaring with fury, fury he had never seen in her before. It startled him even as it fascinated him.

“I don’t see that at all! But fine, if you don’t want to go back, I can come here! I can live anywhere, Marc, as long as you’re there, too, and I won’t live without you!” She strode back to where he stood and continued speaking, her voice getting louder and louder as she jabbed his chest with a finger to make her points.

“Do you have any idea the agony I’ve been through this past month, not knowing where you were? Not knowing if you were alive or dead?” This time, he got two fingers in the solar plexus. “I advertised in all the papers, asking you to tell me, just tell me if you were alive! I didn’t even ask you to see me or call me. A note would have done! I’ve got a long-distance bill big enough to choke an ox from calling your colleagues in Toronto, but they wouldn’t tell me anything! They claimed to know nothing, but that was a lie, wasn’t it? Just another damned lie that men will tell for another man in order to hold off a woman who wants to find him. I hate the way men protect each other from the consequences of their own actions! You even told your father to say you didn’t want to see me! How do you justify that, Marc, making your own father, a judge, for heaven’s sake, lie for you!”

“It wasn’t a lie!” This time, he managed to capture her hand and hold it still. “I didn’t want to see you!”

“Oh, yes you did! If you hadn’t wanted to see me, if you hadn’t wanted me to find you, you’d have done what you did six years ago. You’d have taken off again, running all over the world in order to avoid me the way you did then to avoid the pain. But no, you came here, home to your family, where you knew I’d have to come and look for you. Right, Marc? Right?”

She poked him with the index finger of the other hand, and he snatched it into his control as well. “Wrong!” he thundered, dragging her tight against his chest, pinning her arms at her sides.

“Another lie!” she spat out, and her fury astounded him. He’d seen little fits of temper, tiny spurts of annoyance, but she had always backed down. He watched the dark of her eyes flare and dance with anger. She was not backing down now, that was obvious.

“Well, as you can see, it didn’t work. Not your leaving, not your evasions, not your lies or your fine, masculine protective net! Because I stopped trying to get a man to help me and went to the best place of all, a woman! Your grandmother understands, dammit! She understands that I love you and you love me, and that should be enough at least to start building on!”

“Sharon—”

“You just shut up! I haven’t finished what I came to say!” she said, wrenching free and grabbing him by the upper arms, trying to shake him. “You said you forgive me, but that’s another lie! I hate lies, Marc! I hate them so much, I found it damned hard to forgive you for not telling from the very beginning who you are. But because I love you, I tried to understand, to put myself in your place and figure out why you held so much of yourself back. Okay, I know how hard it must have been for you, once you knew about my past, but you mistrusted me and my maturity for a hell of a lot longer than I mistrusted your integrity! I knew within an hour that I’d misjudged you! You’ve known me for months, and you’re still misjudging me.