Shadows of the Past (7 page)

The chattiness took a nosedive and smiles gave way to frowns as Maria’s sister, Giovanna stod and began gathering up the coffee cups. Franc pulled Maria out into the hall away from the brooding silence as the others began clearing the table. “You feel okay? You’ve gone a bit pale.”

“I’m all right, just tired. It’s late.”

“Guess you won’t want to go outside for some air.”

“No. I think I’ll go up and get ready for bed, but you go ahead, get some air, it’s a nice night. I’ll see you later.”

Then he remembered the sight of her lace chemise and imagined the feel of satin and lace in his hands. “You going to wear something like that nightdress you shoved inside your drawer? It would look great on you, make your eyes look like pansies.”

The compliment was worth it just to see the color return to her cheeks. “You flatter me, my eyes are plain brown. And whatever I wear to bed, you aren’t likely to see it.”

“You can’t blame a man for trying.” He stopped at the foot of the stairs. Her hand was still in his and he lifted it to his mouth, rubbing his lips across her knuckles. “Sure you wouldn’t like me to come up and help you?”

“In a word,
no.
” She climbed the stairs in silence, and when she rounded the top, he saw her touch the back of her hand to her lips. She was thinking about him.

It was enough for now.

Maria’s eyes were closed. Tight. She refused to open them. Refused to look. If she didn’t look, maybe it would go away like the other nights when she’d had the dream.
Nightmare.

There was a spiked band around her head, pressing into her skull. Excruciating anguish forced tears from under her lids that cooled on the journey down her hot face. She was neither asleep nor awake, but somewhere in between, where the past met the present and she was part of both.

A shudder ripped out of her soul as she broke the silence with her sobs. She could hear them, knew they were her own, no matter that the sound seemed to come from a distance.

“Don’t dare to move,” said the voice that belonged to her past, present and future, for it never went away.

She tried to lie still, but knowing that pain would follow the voice, her skin quivered with tension. She was a bowstring stretched too tight and ready to snap.

The slow sting of cold steel caressed her breast with a lethal kiss.

Her eyes snapped open.

It was dark in her room. Dark as in that other place she wanted to forget. Managed to forget while she was still awake.

The knife glinted as if a breeze had blown moonlight into her room. Blood dripped from its tip onto her breast then it sliced again and completed the sign of the cross.

She screamed and sat up in bed.

Her heart thundered in her chest as she sat up and tried to remember the dream, but as always, when she was fully awake it elud

Maria staggered to the bathroom, her night blindness sending her spinning into the five-drawered chest in the unfamiliar layout.

With her hand clenched on the faucet, she tried to relive the last few moments of the dream. If only she could see his face, she knew she would be safe. Would be able to point the finger and say, “He’s the one,” for no one had ever been caught, never been sent away and jailed for her abduction.

Cold water sluiced over her wrists as her panic subsided, faded like her memory.

She splashed her face with cold water, jumping when Franc’s voice came from behind her. In her stupor she hadn’t heard the door open.

“Maria, are you okay? I thought I heard you call out.”

“I had a bad dream.”
A nightmare.
Turning off the faucet, she scrabbled blindly for the towel, and one was placed in her hands that bore the scent of her mother’s favorite fabric softener. “Thanks.”

Though she didn’t turn around, she could sense how close he’d come by the warmth that enveloped her from his body. She shivered as she patted her face dry. Not from fear, but from the potent male scents that filled her head and charged her nerves with a different kind of tension.

She realized at that instant Franc didn’t worry her that way. It had never occurred to her not to trust him. He’d been up front with what he’d wanted. A sexual encounter only, no ties, no commitment.

Her mother would throw up her hands at the idea, but to Maria it was a hundred times more acceptable than the sort of guy who got his jollies by sneaking around after her.

“Do you want to talk till the memory goes away? I don’t mind.” His voice came closer as his hands pressed down on her shoulders and squeezed.

“I was hoping not to waken you. That’s why I didn’t switch on the lights.” She bunched the towel and pressed it to her breasts as his palms slid down her arms and transferred their warmth onto her skin where the short sleeves ended.

“No problem. I’ve been awake since the third time I almost rolled out of bed.”

That made her smile, but she didn’t turn into his arms, though the temptation was humming through her veins, propelled by the heat of him. “I suppose you’re used to bigger and better.”

“In beds, certainly. But I prefer my women to come just about here.” His chin rested on the top of her head. She looked straight ahead into the mirror. Night blindness was no longer a problem. Though she saw them both through the glass darkly, she saw the truth. They looked good together.

Made for each other.
Too bad.

Franc touched her collar. “I see you didn’t take my advice. At a guess I’d say pajamas…God, I hope it wasn’t because you were scared of me.”

He stepped back.

Without a second thought, she turned, dropping the towel at their feet as she hurried to reassure him the only way she knew how. His chest was bare, but she didn’t hesitate to slide her arms up , secretly thrilled at the muscles her hands detected. “I’ve never been frightened of you. I can sense you’re not the kind of guy who likes to hurt women.”

His arms swept round her back and held her, but not like the night before when he had pressed her close enough to feel every inch of him. “Can I take it from that remark that you know guys who like to hurt women?”

Just like that, between one heartbeat and the next they jumped into the middle of her problem.

Should she tell him? Dare she? What if she was wrong? Franc employed Randy Searle. How would she feel being responsible for him losing his job if she’d got it wrong?

Then she remembered the feeling of eyes boring into the back of her head, and turning just in time to see Searle ducking into a shop doorway. “Randy Searle is stalking me.”

It felt as if he stood at the center of a vortex, a false calm holding him steady while everything round him spun. A calm he dared not let loose, or the primitive beast at the back of his mind would let go a howl that would strike fear in the hearts of men. Particularly Randy Searle when he ripped out his throat with his bare hands.

His hands felt rough, huge and barbaric as he pulled her closer, but he couldn’t
not
hold her,
not
protect her. He’d never felt this way in his life before, but knew that somehow his instincts had been fine-tuned to work this way, and Maria had it sussed when she sensed he would never harm her. He might break her heart, but he’d protect her body with his life.

Franc breathed through his nose, slow breaths, one after the other, meant to silence the growls still rumbling through his brain. As a child he’d been told one of his ancestors had come from the high mountains beyond Makarska, where civilization had yet to venture and a man’s woman was sacrosanct, not to be touched on pain of death. He’d thought his brother Kurt, the climber, had been the only one to inherit that gene, but it seemed it hadn’t passed him by.

Maria’s body had melded to his. There was only one way to be any closer, and there was no way that would happen tonight after what she had told him.

After what she had told him.

“What the hell were you thinking of, gate-crashing the party, looking for Searle? Are you out of your mind? If I hadn’t got rid of him, God knows what might have happened.”

“You got rid of him? What are you talking about?”

“That’s not important.” The realization of what he’d told her struck a blow to his vanity. And he thought he’d been so clever. Too clever to brush her off now. “I took one look at you as you entered the restaurant and knew you were too good for him. So I tricked him into leaving.”

Maria’s breath vented in a long stream. “How could you? If you’d left things alone, this might have been finished. I could have outed him in front of everyone at the party and he wouldn’t have dared come near me again.”

He rubbed his hand down her back and clunked his knuckles against the basin. “Let’s talk this out someplace more comfortable. Your rooor mine?”

“Yours has a chair.”

“Okay, come with me.”

Maria heard his mattress sigh as their combined weight touched down on the bed. She knew how it felt as the sound it made echoed her own sighs.

A burden that for some inexplicable reason had grown lighter when she met Franc was now twice the size it had been before.

That thing they said about a trouble shared was a trouble halved? Was it ever wrong? The chair forgotten, they sat on the bed because he didn’t appear to want to let her go.

The way she saw it, what had gone on two days ago had everything to do with Franc’s heroic qualities and nothing about justice. That’s what she’d gate-crashed the party in search of.

“I take it you didn’t go to the police and report him?” Franc was holding her hand in his huge one, yet she didn’t have a feeling of being overpowered or swallowed up. For a big man there was gentleness in his touch that he’d probably deny if she mentioned it.

“No, I didn’t think they could touch him until he actually did something to me.”

His big body jolted as if he’d been struck. “Don’t tell me you wanted him to assault you so you could call the cops?”

How could he think she would do that, when all she wanted to do right now was curl up in his arms and go to sleep, a reaction to all the adrenaline that had pumped through her body as she dreamed. “I only wanted to shame him, hoping he would leave me alone.”

“I can’t figure out why you thought someone was watching you in the first place. Or why you didn’t at least tell your parents or your brothers.”

“Because I know how it feels. It’s like a tap on the shoulder, and then I turn around, hoping someone will truly be standing behind me. But there never is, except those times when I saw Randy.”

“Why haven’t you told your parents?” The gruffness in his voice underlined how seriously he took the situation, and the vibrations that communicated with her arm through his chest wall urged her to take the plunge.

She took a deep breath as if ready to dive into a bottomless pool she might never find her way out of. Was she ready for this? Was Franc? She’d never told a living soul what she couldn’t remember. Until now.

“I didn’t want to put them through that again.”

His hand tightened, swallowed hers whole. “Again?”

“I was abducted when I was seventeen.” His arms tightened around her and she felt the tension in his muscles flow through his palms into her.

For long seconds she sat still, silent. The dark magnified sounds she never noticed in daylight, like inhaling and exhaling. Like Franc’s breath softly going in, rushing out in a sigh as he waited for her to speak.

“It made the family very protective of me. Now, Mamma thinks she kept me home too long and ruined my chances of getting marri’m fine on my own, but you know…she’s my mother. We do things to stop them from worrying.”

“My mother died before I was two, so I never had to lie to her. No, wipe that! I don’t know what I would have done to keep her from fretting.”

“I’m sorry, Franc.”

“Save your sympathy, hon, it happened a long time ago.” The back of his knuckles caressed her cheek and he discovered it was wet. “Hey, hey, baby girl, don’t get all wound up. If that guy is bothering you, don’t worry, sweetheart, he’s dogmeat,” he growled in a good gangster imitation and got another hiccup for his reward. A tear-free one this time. Franc didn’t think her knowing he meant every word was a good idea. For good or ill, he would keep her close until this was settled.

H
ad her tears been for him? A small part of Franc wanted to push her away before he got in too deep. The small impulsive part that wanted to know what the hell she wasn’t telling him.

The majority of his instincts won. He pulled her onto his knee and hugged her to his chest, didn’t matter that the back of his neck tightened, the hairs on it prickling as if something walked over his grave.

He recognized the honor Maria had done him. Maybe it was something to do with the hour and the darkness, but he felt closer to her than he had to anyone in a long while. At the same time, he wasn’t sure he had it in him to bare his soul the way she had done.

He qualified his reluctance with the thought that his situation was different. His father had been the perpetrator of the crime, not the victim.

“Don’t you think that what happened before is all the more reason to tell them about the stalker?”

“I thought I could handle the situation myself. This is the first time I’ve been home since he began stalking me. And while he was only following me, I thought I could sort it out and move on.”

Make that something pounding on his grave.

“Back up a minute. What exactly do you mean by
only.
”

“I think, I’m not saying I’m positive, but I think he might have been in my room when I went out…yesterday afternoon.”

“Hell, Maria! You need to talk to someone about this. My sister’s a cop, I can put you in touch with her.” Jo would know what to do. She was used to dealing with these situations, diplomatically. Well, some of the time.

“As a detective sergeant with Homicide at Auckland Central, most of the victims she deals with are dead before she gets anywhere near them. Unless you count her husband, Rowan. He took a bullet for her during a hostage situation and saved her life, then two years later he got stabbed saving her a second time from a nutcase who had her staked out as a human sacrifice. I’m pleased to say that since they got married, she seems to have stopped taking so many r

Franc’s gut clenched at the thought of what Maria had tried to do. What if he hadn’t prevented her from confronting Randy? If Randy
was
the guy watching her, what harm might he have inflicted on her? He shuddered as a list of consequences came to mind.

There was no end to the worst-case scenarios his brain could come up with. As the possibilities presented themselves, he became more and more certain that he had to help her find out one way or the other.

Hell, this was New Zealand; so small a population the possibility of running into a neighbor—or at least their first cousin—a thousand miles from home wasn’t unheard of. How hard could it be to keep an eye on Searle?

Very few cases of stalkers were ever reported in the papers. Rapes, murders, yeah, they had their share of those, but stalking was something that happened to celebrities, wasn’t it?

He’d have to ask his sister when she came back from her vacation. She would know. Jo had worked as a cop for ten years, a detective for almost seven of them, both in Auckland and down country in Nicks Landing, a little East Coast town. She’d been back in Auckland for a year now, ever since she got married to a Stanhope. That was how he’d gotten his chance to run a Stanhope Holdings company. A chance he’d accepted with open arms. Nepotism? Maybe, but he wasn’t too proud. He couldn’t afford to be, but that didn’t mean he was excused from the need to prove himself. Something he was still working on.

He threaded his fingers through Maria’s, and on a rough-honed sigh, said, “I have to say, Randy never struck me as that kind of guy, a loudmouth, maybe. He’s always calling the odds on his success with women, but a pervert who stalks them? It just doesn’t gel. Not that I’m saying you’re wrong, but maybe you got the wrong guy.”

“Maybe not, but you didn’t see the way he looked at me.”

“That’s what I mean. The guy is so obvious. He looks at most women that way. Even so, we’ll need to make some sort of plan to discover if he actually
is
the one.”

“You believe me?”

Until now, Maria hadn’t struck him as a woman without much faith in herself. But who knew what fancies played on the mind when you were frightened. Just because he was confident of his abilities to handle anything didn’t mean that one day he wouldn’t find himself in a situation that scared the heck out of him. “Why wouldn’t I believe you?”

“We hardly know each other, how can you be sure I’m telling the truth?”

Amused, he laughed softly under his breath and reached up to touch her face. Her skin felt like satin to his fingertips as he trailed them down her cheek and round to her chin. “Maria, believe me, this close I’d know if you were lying.” Franc rubbed the pad of his thumb over her full bottom lip. “Even in the dark your expression gives you away. Your feelings are written on your face for the world to see, so don’t ever try fooling anyone.”

“I guess it’s as well you fooled Searle into going home. He’d have known I was frightened of him.”

“You could be right, but only a fol wouldn’t have realized the courage it took to come there and spit in his eye. That’s what you were going to do, right?”

“Something like that, I thought I’d play it by ear, but I was shaking inside when you went off to fetch him.” She laughed, but her humor had the high-pitched quality of a wet fingertip on a crystal glass. The tension in her body increased. It was as if she had to hold herself together or shatter.

“There’s a story about that. Do you want to hear it?”

“Is it something bad?”

“Not from where I’m standing. I told you my friend Brent took care of it, but when I asked him to get rid of Searle, he told me he loved me like a brother but he wasn’t going to kill for me.”

He felt her relax and wished he could do the same.

If Searle was responsible for stalking Maria, he wouldn’t put the onus on Brent to take care of him, he’d do it himself.

A feral growl built at the back of his throat as he relived the moment she’d asked for the jerk, but this wasn’t
just
about Searle. Mainly it concerned him and Maria. “The thought of Searle laying a hand on you. Like this…”

His hand slid under her silky hair. “Hell, it makes my back teeth ache.”

She tilted her head to give him access as he cupped his fingers round her nape. Both movements brought her face closer. Close enough to breathe in the sharp peppermint tang that clung to her breath.

The urge to taste sent his libido into overdrive.

Heart pounding, Maria accepted Franc’s embrace, trying to act as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Nothing had prepared her for the emotions this tender caress engendered, for the quivering inside, or the desire to burst into tears again. The experience was all so new, new and wonderful.

It had been one thing to imagine satisfying her curiosity about men, women and sex. But right here, right now, she couldn’t conceive of letting anyone other than Franc get this close to her. Close enough to kiss the way they had before.

Franc lifted his thumb higher and traced the whorls of her ear, as the thought of slanting his mouth over hers seemed more and more like the right thing to do. Without conscious guidance, his other hand brushed lightly over her breast.

Her gasp of pleasure filled the silence.

“So, what do you think, are you gonna hit me or kiss me?”

“A kiss would be better,” she sighed, wishing she was equipped to handle the longing building inside her.

Such a feeble answer she’d given him, words only words, and none of them capable of explaining the tumult of emotions whirling through her brain.

Her head lifted. Had she come to meet his kiss or had he pulled her closer? She didn’t know, didn’t care. A rush of sighs tangled in a fine web of anticipation in the bare microsecond it took their mouths to meet.

Ah, God, now she knew her memories of last night weren’t an aberration. The sweet, sweet taste of his mouth made her head spin as if a whirlwind had taken hold of her, tossing her so high in the air she never wanted to come down.

Maria struggled in his arms. For one dire moment Franc thought she wanted him to stop, then her hand lifted to hold his head still as their tongues dueled and lips clashed. His overeager libido wanted to sample each sensation, and do it twice, no, three times over.

A startling revelation.

A warning that ought to have made him wonder where this path he was treading led. Too late, he felt hungry as a bear, nose deep in a hive, which had lost its fear of being stung the moment it discovered a feast of honey on the menu.

It was warm under her pajamas. He found the curve of her breasts under the satiny layer. One, then the other swelled to fill his hands with burgeoning female flesh.

He didn’t remember turning, moving them onto the bed, but suddenly Maria was under him, arching up as she struggled to fit against his length.

Only his thin cotton boxers, and her summer-weight pajamas, separated them. Franc’s heat radiated through the layers into her, and when he swung his leg across hers, she thought she would die from the luxury of having the weight of his body press her down into the soft mattress. A moan tore from her throat as he left his hard male imprint on her belly.

Franc kept the momentum edgy, varying his kisses;
soft,
like a butterfly’s caress;
hard,
deep as if to swallow her whole. So much to experience, so much to taste, and only a few days to do it in. He swung from taking mouselike nibbles from her bottom lip to vampire bites on the cord of her neck.

His shoulders bore the kiss of her fingernails as she thrust her hips up under him and into him in a prelude of what was to come.

Wait.
Savor the moment, the rush, the longing, and let the pitch build until taking her, being inside her, exceeded everything that had gone before.

The room smelled of sex and sweat, and the clean flavor of peppermint had given way to a hot, fierce, hungry flame that consumed them both and soon would fuse them into one.

Thrusting the edges of her pajama jacket aside, Franc basked in her whimpers while his hands, his mouth found her breasts.

“God, I want to see you, I must.” His words grazed past her face, edgy like a fight, all bared teeth and bare knuckles for right of possession.

Her breath stuttered as his hand reached for the bedside-light. For an instant her grip tightened on his scalp, demanding his attention, next moment her hands were sliding between them covering the soft flesh he was determined to see. “No, I’d rather it was dark.”

Maria’s voice crackled out of a throat gone suddenly dry. “You see,” she explained, “I’ve never done this before.”

Shaken, his hand froze midair. A hush settled over the room broken only by the sound of Maria’s faltering breath close to his ear.

His own caught in his throat as the magnitude of what he’d started hit him like a two-ton truck with a reminder of time and place. Did he dare initiate a virgin in all the delights ofex, with her mother sleeping three doors away?

Magnified a thousand times by the silence blanketing the house, a lock turned and clicked into place. His head swiveled to look over his shoulder as he rolled off Maria, pulling the edges of her top into place as his knees touched the floor and waited for the door to open.

“Santa Claus,” Maria whispered as ragged murmurs floated along the hall, followed by footsteps padding in the direction of the stairs.

“What?”

“Someone has gone to put the children’s presents out.” She didn’t want to feel ashamed of what they’d done, or were about to do, but whispering in the dark twisted their encounter into a secret, to be hidden at all cost. She’d hoped for more.

“Your mother?” Another hushed question floated on the silence, as if to speak louder would shatter it.

“No, probably my brothers.” They’d protected her for years, and now, albeit unconsciously on their part, they’d blighted her first sexual experience.

Why couldn’t she simply have a relationship, a slice out of time where the past didn’t count? Hadn’t she enough to conceal already: the damaging scars, the worries shrouded in the mystery of what happened during her abduction.

Franc was still kneeling by her bed, not as comfortable as lying beside her but not as dangerous. Keeping his voice low, he asked, “Do you think they heard us?”

“We heard them.”

Her reply was simply confirmation of his own line of thought, but she distracted him by scraping a finger over his late-night stubble. “It’s no use you thinking to make a dash for it. In case you’ve forgotten, this is your room.”

“So they aren’t liable to burst in, is that what you’re saying?” Franc sucked in a breath as her finger found the hollow in his throat. No wonder, he couldn’t recollect ever being so turned on. He’d heard of men experiencing the pain of un-relieved lust, but never knew it could feel so bad, excruciating, as if he were caught in a vise. It was going to take more than a cold shower to relieve his discomfort.

It would take Maria, but it wasn’t going to happen tonight.

Hell, the interruption might have put a damper on his lust, but even dead it wouldn’t lie down.

Slipping an arm around her, he rolled Maria, covers and all, into a bundle, then climbed back onto the bed, wrapping the end of the coverlet touching the floor round him. With her settled in his arms, head tucked under his chin, reluctantly, he began to extricate himself. “Hon, I’m thinking we got our timing all wrong. I still want you.”
Boy, did he want her.

“But I can’t say I feel comfortable making love to you while your parents are practically sleeping next door.”

No point in avoiding the question, Maria had to know. “Is it because I’m a virgin?”

“Hell, no! No, but your first time should be something special. I can’t do that for you here with all this tiptoeing around in the dark. making me nervous.”

“That makes two of us.”

Special,
he’d said. Maria hoped it lived up to its name, though she didn’t think anything could thrill her more than being in Franc’s arms a few minutes ago.