Shadows of the Past (16 page)

Jellic couldn’t see the qualities that he’d found in Maria. The angelic goodness that shone out of her.

Jellic had sullied her glow with his grubby fingers and it would be up to him to erase the tarnish and make her shine again the way he knew she would for him.

Only for him.

It was New Year’s Eve. Franc was planning something special.

He’d called Maria at work, saying he might not be there when she arrived home but he was taking her out. “Dress casual but elegant.”

Casual? Elegant? What exactly did that mean?

And he wanted to make sure of her shoe size. “You shall go to the ball, Cinderella,” she sang to herself as she picked up her purse. There had been no calls for hours. Most of the work she’d done that day had been for Stanhope Electronics and she was sure they, or rather Franc, could wait a few more hours until she collated the last of her findings.

He was going to be over the moon with what she’d discovered today. And no one was going to know or care if she left work early. Tomorrow was the first day of a brand-new year, and after Franc’s call she’d stopped thinking of the two days until the end of the summer break as a bridge between her earth-shattering love affair and the drab return of normality.

He couldn’t simply make love to her as he had last night then shut her out of his life forever. Once Randy was no longer looming on her personal horizon, maybe they wouldn’t live together, but surely he’d call her sometimes as he had today and say,
“Wear something casual but elegant”
again.

But, unless she got to the shops before they closed, she’d have nothing that fitted the description.

She locked the interior doors behind her, but her mind was focused on color. Which should she wear? And should it be something her mother would like or something that Franc would want to rip off as soon as he got her home?

The white envelope lying on the floor inside the plate-glass doors looked like something that could wait until next year, and then she noticed her name hand-written on the front.

No time now. She pushed the envelope inside her purse then locked the door and beeped the alarm system with her remote control.

Leaving everything behind her locked up tight, she hurried down the hill to Queen Street and a boutique that she thought might just have what Franc had in mind.

The sweater she chose was a pale, silvery lilac with fine white stripes. Sleek and silky, it had a wide rolled neck that drooped off one shoulder or could be pushed down off both.

Maria smiled as she glimpsed her workaday reflection in one of the large mirrors as she entered the bedroom. The wide neckline meant no bra was possible, but she couldn’t imagine Franc objecting.

The pants were silky too, plain white with lilac binding on the pockets that slanted across the curve from waist to hip. She flung her parcels and purse down on the bed as the doorbell rang. Had Franc locked himself out?

A woman holding a bouquet of dark red roses, that’s what Maria saw when she squinted through the peephole.

She opened the door. “Maria Costello?”

“For me? How lovely.” She opened her arms and took the bouquet, with no doubt of who had sent them. Something special was going to happen and she was glad she’d spent a small fortune at Perdito’s Queen Street boutique.

Her hand rifled through paper, cellophane and roses in search of the card. Then the deliverywoman spoke up, “Oh, there’s no card. They said it had been sent separately.”

Maria covered her mouth with her hand, “Oops, I pushed it into my purse and forgot about it. I’ll go read it now. Bye.”

She closed the door behind the deliverywoman. Rushed through to the bedroom, laying the roses on the kitchen counter on the way past. Now, where had she seen a vase? Did Franc even have one?

She took out her wallet. The card was underneath.

With impatient fingers she ripped the envelope. Was this all part of the surprise for tonight?

The card was white, expensive, embossed with silver writing. The words on the front read,
In Deepest Sympathy.

It tumed from her hands onto the bed she shared with Franc.

What kind of sick joke was this?

The card couldn’t have come from Franc.

Her heart pounded so hard she could hear its echo in her ears. Gingerly she picked up the card with the tips of her fingers. She could hardly bear to touch it, but she had to find out what it said inside. Find out who had played this cruel trick on her.

Suddenly, she remembered the roses. Remembered burying her nose in their scent as she’d carried them into the kitchen. She felt sick inside, their perfume was on her hands, and as she shuddered, a couple of photographs fell out of the card onto the bed. The first was of her, taken yesterday at the beach in her red swimsuit. Someone had cut tiny crosses through the photographic paper. One on each breast, the other from navel to the apex of her thighs. She threw it away in disgust.

Who knew about her scars? Randy? How had he found out?

The situation was worse than even she had imagined. Tears ran down her cheeks. She let them. Anything that blurred her vision from something she dreaded seeing couldn’t be that bad.

The second photo wrenched a sob from her lips. It was of a headstone. On it, in black ink, someone had printed:

Franc Jellic

Born March 14, 1970, Died January 1, 2005.

Tomorrow!

And underneath written much larger, the letters RIP.

The threat contained in the photo was blatant, but this time it wasn’t aimed at her. It was meant for Franc. Her thoughts railed at the devilish nature of the fiend who’d sent the threat, and a moment’s sanity only just prevented her fingers ripping the photo in two.

If she had ever thought it could be a joke, she didn’t now.

But who had sent it? Randy? Was he that mad? That devious?

To threaten his boss…

She opened the card carefully, as the thought of preserving forensic evidence jumped to the forefront of her mind.

Of course, the coward hadn’t dared to sign the threat.

It was weird how he knew what would motivate her to leave Franc. Were her feelings so obvious that he knew how to exploit them, how to rob her of the last few hours of her once-in-a-lifetime fling?

She felt numb, dead inside. Knuckling the tears from her eyes, she left Franc’s bedroom to go pack.

Once more the rose perfume on her hands made her feel sick.

Sick with anger.

She shook from the intensity of it as she walked back to the kitchen. Before she pack she had one urgent task to deal with, some roses to kill.

F
ranc put the shoebox he was carrying down on the counter and stared around his kitchen.

It took a lot to amaze him these days. From the instant Maria gate
-crashed into his life she had dazzled him, turned his world upside down and made him see his future from a different perspective.

And again, the unexpected.

He drew a deep breath. The room held the same lush smell of roses that he’d caught the moment as he walked through his apartment door.

Deep red roses like the petals scattered all over the floor, like the few thrusting their bruised heads above the lid of his garbage bin.

What’n all hell had Maria been up to while he was out making arrangements for their New Year’s Eve entertainment?

Leaving the floral disaster scene behind, he waded through the petals into the hallway. “Maria!”

The word echoed back at him with an emptiness that took him by the throat, as through the gaping door of the second bedroom he saw the bed strewn with Maria’s bags and clothes, some neither in nor out, like a shattered rainbow of all the colors that suited her best.

She was leaving him.

“Maria.”

Her name bounced off the walls, off the closed doors that shut him out of the other rooms. Picking up speed, he dashed into the room they’d shared every night since, at his impulsive insistence, she’d moved in to share his apartment.

The best impulse he’d ever had.

Pink shopping bags brightened the grayness of his bedcover in a splash of optimism that typified Maria. Hadn’t she done the same to his dull workbound life?

His heart rate eased from a racing trip-trap to the slow heavy thud of the largest Billy Goat Gruff of troll-killing fame. She’d been shopping at Perdito’s.

He wondered what she’d forgotten that she’d had to dash out in a hurry to buy. Well, he’d surprise her by cleaning up the mess.

She might have won the game of hide-and-seek, if a low, keening sob hadn’t stalled him at the bedroom door and sent him charging into the en suite.

Fear hit him fair and square in the middle of the chest and the heart stopped, missed one beat then another. He let out a curse as her grip on the curved edge of the white-faux marble basin tightened as if she’d collapse without its support.

She was sick. Had to be to pretend she hadn’t noticed him. Her head bowed, hair a tumble of black waves hiding her face, shutting out his reflection as if she couldn’t bear to look at the two of them together. He came up behind and gripped her shoulders.

“God almighty, what happened?er breath rattled, a harsh, dry sound torn from her throat that unmanned him. He loosened her grip on the basin, turned her in his arms and pushed her hair back from her face. Her eyes were dry too, hot, burning with a light he’d never seen before.

Hoped never to see again.

“Speak to me, hon, what happened? Who did this to you?”

She pushed his hands away, slapped at them when he resisted. Her laugh reminded him of dry ice, cruel and cutting, as she said, “I did. I did it to myself. Dumb, huh?”

Her hair swung as she tossed her head back, defiant, daring him. “I thought I’d be gone before you got back, but you caught me and now I have to tell you to your face instead of writing a note. How cowardly was that?”

“You’re leaving, why? We still have…”

“Oh…yeah, what is it, two days three nights of your precious time left.” Her hand formed a fist to clutch against her breasts as he reached out. “No, don’t! Don’t touch me. Don’t lay one finger on me.”

Maria shuddered, hating herself for the part she’d decided to play once she’d discovered she was trapped in the apartment with her bags half packed. No way out and no way back. If it hadn’t been for those damn roses she would have made it. Even now their perfume hung about her like a miasma of evil thoughts.

She had to keep up the act, play the part and make him hate her. She had to smile and hide her broken heart.

“I don’t get it, what’s changed?”

“My mind. I’ve changed my mind.” She turned her shoulder to him and turned on the faucet. It took guts to hurt someone she…she cared for. Even to herself she couldn’t say the word.

She thrust her wrists under the cold water, but it didn’t quench the painful burn in her blood, in her belly. The urge to spill her guts and lay it all out and let Franc take the responsibility for his life.

Or death.

The water shushed over her wrists, swirled round the basin, gurgled down the drain as she waited for him to say something, anything. She glanced into the mirror. His face was carved in stone. Not a good memory to carry away with her.

She grasped the faucet hard, tight so it cut into her palm. “I’ve discovered that I couldn’t play happy family any longer and pretend that you weren’t going to toss me away like yesterday’s newspaper as soon as Stanhope Electronics reopened its doors.”

“It doesn’t have to end then.”

She sensed the words were forced, puzzled. It made it worse knowing he might have caved, might have taken a chance. That they could have made this affair work, could have turned it into something that didn’t have a use-by date.

“But it would end someday. And I find myself getting too used to seeing your face in the morning. Better to cut the cord now and give myself a shot at looking round for a guy who’s interested in something more permanent.”

“So, you want someone el

Anger at last. Leashed anger, but maybe she could set it free. She grabbed the guest towel off the ring and looked away from the mirror as she dried her hands, unable to face the results of her handiwork.

“Well, duh? You must have noticed how I enjoyed the sex. I don’t want to give that up. I just need to find someone I care less for, so I don’t get hurt again.”

“You think I would hurt you?”

His voice crowded her, rippled across the nerve endings at her nape the way it did when he spooned with her in bed and talked close to her ear.

“Hell!” She could imagine the lift of his eyebrows, for she never swore. “You couldn’t help yourself. My fault, I walked into our deal with my eyes wide shut, but I already know how to do victim, and I refuse to play the role again, so just let me go and forget me.”

She didn’t say “the way I’ll forget you.” That was one lie she couldn’t bring herself to mouth.

“And if I don’t want to forget you? If I don’t want to give up the sex, the great sex, what then?”

She wouldn’t look, didn’t need to. She could sense how close he was. The heat of his body invaded the taut muscles of her back as she breathed in his scent.

Why had she imagined she could pull this off? Burying her face in the towel to hide the emotions, twisting her expression, she stepped away and hit the wall. A real wall.

Trapped, by her feelings for him.

Trapped between his arms as he flattened his palms either side of her head against the cold sheen of white painted wall. His breath was hot on her neck, on her ear. “How about something to remember you by before you leave.”

Indignant heat suffused her face. Franc was playing his part too well, had his lines off
too
pat.

His mouth traced the line of her neck and muttered temptation in her ear. “I liked the sex, as well, the great sex. How about now? Right here, right now against the wall. No one knows what you like the way I do, hon. No one knows which buttons to push, what turns you on.”

The thick hard ridge of his arousal pressed against her bottom, flattening her against the cold wall. Her nipples froze, hardened into beads of ice while flames licked at her neck.

If she was going to make an end to this, she knew it had to be now. Before her wants, her needs, led her astray.

She let her body go lax, let it sag against the wall, using his triumph at her imagined capitulation against him. Twisting, bumping him out of the way, she turned, hand held high to wipe the satisfaction off his face.

She hesitated a second too long.

Long enough to look in his eyes. Long enough for him to press her palm to his hair-roughened jaw, to feel him swallow convulsively instead of humoring her futile resistance with laughter. When he carried her palm to his lips and placed a kiss at its heart, she allowed him unconditional surrender.

Wanting Franc was killing her.

Wanting her might kill him.

Franc was past taking anything concerning Maria for granted, or blaming the maelstrom they’d come through with anything as crass as PMS. One emotional storm was over and another in the making as Maria stretched up on her toes to close in on his mouth.

He took her mouth gently, carefully, wary of tipping the teetering balance of their relationship past the point where nothing could be retrieved.

It was Maria who forced the issue, forced the pace with her succulent mouth; questing tongue and torturous sweet bites that made his bottom lip throb from her attentions.

She arched against him, fumbling at his shirt buttons and ripping them off when they failed to yield to her gentler persuasion. He’d thought to persuade her with slow seduction, to get to the truth. She’d said so much yet left everything important unsaid. But if he weren’t to fall behind in the race she’d started, seduction would have to give way to unadulterated lust. The only L word he dared use.

Her hands were on his belt buckle. “I want you now.”

It took her forever to reach for his zipper. Her blouse parted in his grip like it had been made of tissue paper, and her bra gave way before he resorted to nipping it off, its straps sliding down her arms to bare her breasts.

He didn’t see the scars, simply recognized she was beautiful, and made to fit him, and to tremble at his caress, as she did now. One-handed, he bunched her skirt round her waist and cupped her, feeling the damp warmth of arousal flow through her panties onto his fingers. He removed the last barrier with a simple twist of his fingers and slid one inside.

She moaned, reaching for him, nearly setting him off from the pleasure of her talented caress as she measured the weight of him, sliding her thumb, back and forth, again and again. He had taught her that, taught her too well.

Cold sweat beaded his forehead and top lip. He fought for control, groaning, “No more, hon. No more. When I explode, I want to be inside you, driving you crazy the way you’re doing to me.”

She backed off, but only with her hands. The magic she worked with her mouth on his nipples made his chest feel as if it had been pierced with hot nails. “Better?” she asked as he gasped his needs out loud.

There was only one thing for it. He rid himself of his pants and boxers. Stepped out and left them huddled on the floor as he lifted Maria onto the vanity and set her purse spinning onto the floor.

“Ouch! It’s cold.”

“It’ll get warmer.”

He pulled her skirt down, sliding her bottom closer as he opened her thighs and stepped between them till they were touching but not joined.

Her eyelids hid what he needed to see. Needed to know.

“Look at me.”

No butterfly flutter of lashes answered his demand; her lids were heavy with the weight of desire. They opened slowly, grazing across deep violet irises blurred with need.

“Now look down.” He kissed his fingertips and touched them to the scar that had been gouged across her belly. “That is past history. Long gone. The are only two of us in this room. You and me.”

He leaned into her as her gaze lowered. Slid his aching length up over her moist folds, simulating the act that nature had shaped them to perform when she stirred their pheromones and called them to the dance. He pulled back, felt her shiver as the blunt tip she’d caressed dragged over the hot button hiding at her center. “Do you want this?”

“I want you.”

“It’s all part of the same deal. Take it or leave it. I’ll stop now and let you go if that’s what you want. No more caterwauling or threats, just goodbye.”

He bent his head and took her lips, filled her with all the tenderness he could muster. “What’s it to be?”

“Heaven forgive me, I can’t leave. I just pray we never rue the day we met. Two weeks isn’t long enough to know if our relationship has staying power. But I want to find out.”

“Same goes.” He pulled back and cupped her hips in his large palms.

“Before we go any further there’s something you should know.”

“Tell me later, just don’t try to stop me now,” he growled, spreading his legs until his long-suffering flesh was angled for the perfect entry and he slid into her waiting heat with one impatient thrust of his hips.

The noise of their mating bounced off the hard surfaces around them in echoes both erotic and tender, skin slapping against skin, and murmured endearments entwined them in a melody played to a rhythm written by Mother Nature.

Maria dazzled him with her touch and raised the hair on the back of his neck with her dangerous enthusiasm, her willingness to put everything on the line to please him. And he gave back measure for measure till he thought his heart would burst with the emotions swelling it.

He’d known this was no casual fling, known from the first time he’d made love to her that his feelings were a banner twisting in the wind that only Maria could unravel. He’d hidden the knowledge, shoved it to the back of his mind and pulled a dark curtain across to render it invisible.

Maria had cut a swath through the curtain, but with his family history he knew better than to hope he could have it all.
Maria and his ambitions.

But he was running out of road, taking off into a space where nothing mattered but being with Maria, rocking her in the cradle of his hips as her climax rippled over him and blew him apart in a starburst pleasure he’d never found with anyone else.

It took a long time for Maria to come down from the place Franc had taken her. Had she ever been so high before? Ever soared amongst the galaxy?

Then Franc brought her down to earth with a bang, fluttering in freefall with no notion of making a safe landing. “What was it you wanted to tell me? Before…”