Summer Of My Secret Angel (32 page)

Breathing deep, I kept still in his hold but
focused on his tense face. After a long moment, he switched his
gaze to me.

“Marie, call an ambulance!” my mother
cried.

“No,” Julian commanded, without tearing his
gaze from my eyes. “I’ll drive her.”

I sniffed, completely dumbstruck, as he
wrapped a clean dishcloth around my hand, probably just to cover up
the evidence of healthy which, by now, should have started to
blister. I let him proceed and moved toward the door at his firm
urging.

Grabbing Marie’s car keys, which he’d
previously placed on the credenza, Julian wrapped his arm around my
middle and made me walk outside at a resolute stride. My head
swarming, I had to carefully watch my step as he pushed me along.
In the garage, he opened the passenger door, helped me climb into
the seat, and leaned over to buckle me in.

Seconds later he pulled the car out. The
tires squealed as he sped off toward town.

The spinning of my mind ceased. I gave my
hand a test as I clenched it around the dishcloth. Nothing. No
pain, no tickle, no soreness. How was this possible? What was there
in Julian’s touch that made a second-degree burn heal in the blink
of an eye? As if it had never happened.

I gave him two minutes—precisely one hundred
and twenty flicks of the second hand on my watch—to come up with a
reasonable explanation.

But he remained silent.

I removed the cloth and tossed it into his
lap. “You can stop now. We both know I don’t need to see a
doctor.”

A couple of heartbeats went by without a
change on his face. He just stared out the windshield. Then the car
skidded to a halt at the side of the street. Pressed by the
seatbelt, all air whizzed from my lungs. When I could breathe
again, I waited for his reaction.

And he still said nothing. Gaze focused in
front, his knuckles turned white.

“You’re going to break the steering wheel.”
Slowly, I reached out to touch his clamped hand, but he hissed as
if in deep pain and jerked it away. So did I.

“Julian, what is going on?” My voice cracked
on the last word.

He inhaled deeply, swept his finger and
thumb over his eyebrows, then pinched the bridge of his nose. All
of a sudden, he yanked the door open and climbed out, faster than I
could reach over to stop him.

After a long moment and a deep, encouraging
breath, I eased out, too. Julian kept up his angry pacing, up and
down the street, kicking at stones in his path.

Something held me back, rooted to the spot.
But the moment he pivoted once more and I caught a glimpse of his
torn face, I realized it wasn’t wrath that drove him wild like
this. It was frustration.

He stopped a few feet away from the car.

“Julian, I need to know what’s going
on.”

“Then tell me what you want to hear!” he
shouted, rounding toward me.

“The truth, for God’s sake!” I yelled back,
feeling cornered between the car at my back and his wild face in
front of me. “How about your last name, for starters? Or where
exactly the agency you apparently work for is located? And then, of
course, how the hell you healed my hand?”

He braced himself against the roof of the
car, hemming me in between his muscular arms. His head dropped
between his shoulders. Silky blond strands fell over his forehead,
begging me to run my fingers through them.

My hands fisted at my sides. “Why won’t you
tell me?”

“I can’t.” He spoke through gritted
teeth.

He couldn’t answer any of my questions? Rage
soared from my gut to my tightening chest. “You can’t, or you don’t
want to?”

Suddenly, his eyes turned from their usual
brilliant blue to a misty gray. I sucked in a breath, and he
quickly shut his eyes.

“What are you?” I whispered, tears of
tension trying to battle out of my eyes. But I fought hard to keep
them at bay, because however alien Julian seemed to me at this
moment, I still wouldn’t cave to my qualms. I wouldn’t be scared of
him.

There was a long pause in which his lips
compressed to a thin line. “Please, Jona, don’t do this to me.” The
softness of his tone failed to cover the torture he was obviously
going through. His forehead lay in wrinkles; his eyes were squeezed
shut. Short breaths erupted fast from his chest.

Cupping his face, I made him look at me
again. To see so much torture in his gaze was hard to bear. I
swallowed hard at the light in his eyes that I had gotten so used
to since the first day we had met; it was fading. “Why don’t you
trust me?”

“I do.”

“But not enough.” I leaned forward to brush
my lips against his. “You broke through to me so easily. Now let me
know what I can do to get through to you.” Pressing my lips to the
corner of his mouth, I inhaled the scent of warm, wild wind and
ocean, feeling the need to get closer to him. Not physically. But
to reach the part of him that he fought so hard to keep locked away
from me.

His stiff reaction told me he didn’t want me
to proceed with the kiss, but he didn’t pull away either. A deep
moan tore from him as he finally gave in to my urge. His hands slid
from the roof of the car to lock behind my waist. I cupped his
neck, stood on tiptoes and pressed hard against his chest. His
tongue swept over my lips, delved in between the seam, and began a
slow game of give and take.

With a sigh, I broke the kiss and gazed into
his eyes. The blue was shining through again. “You taught me how to
trust you. It’s time to return the trust, don’t you think?”

He shook his head. “This isn’t like me
helping you step out onto the balcony.”

“Then what is it like? Me jumping off a
cliff?”

His soft lips pressed against my brow,
infecting me with a new rush of relief and serenity. For the flash
of a second, I knew it would be wise to jerk out of his hold now.
To keep my mind clear and stop whatever magic he was trying to
weave around me. Because—

Not again
.

Tension eased from my body and mind. I
didn’t react fast enough, and it took him only a heartbeat to make
me surrender. I sank into his embrace, reveled in his scent and
touch.

“In your case,” he whispered, and his lips
brushed my hair, “it would be like sky diving.”

In spite of the unusual sleepiness that
crept over me, I heard myself say, “I would sky dive with you.” And
it was nothing but the truth.

It had to be the shock of my burn and the
argument with Julian that exhausted me. My eyes refused to stay
open, yawns kept breaking my train of thought.

“And yet, you wouldn’t trust me enough to
love me.” His voice came from far away as darkness closed in around
me.

1. HE CUT OUT A CHAPTER
   

I AWOKE TO the monotonous drone of the
engine in Marie’s car. My temple was pressed against the cool glass
of the passenger side window. My head throbbed as the car rolled
over the cobble stone driveway and into the garage. A low moan of
pain escaped me as I turned toward the driver.

The sight of Julian confused me. I searched
my mind for the reason why we’d been out this late. It was already
dark, and no one was with us. In what little light the dashboard
provided, Julian’s face appeared tense.

“Did I fall asleep?” I rubbed my eyes and
noticed something was wrapped around my left hand, preventing my
fingers from spreading.
A bandage
. “What’s going on?”

Julian cut the engine, leaving us in the
dark, and turned to me. “You fainted.” His ominous tone made my
toes curl inside my boots.

“I fainted? Why? And where have we been?” I
tried to go through the events of the day. Marie had taken me to
the cemetery. I cleaned windows all afternoon. Albert tried to
shoot me with an ancient pistol because I couldn’t find any useful
information about Julian’s employer. And a huge potato knocked me
over.

Okay, something was seriously wrong with my
head.

“You burned your hand with boiling water
when you were helping Marie in the kitchen. Don’t you
remember?”

No.
And what was with that testy edge
to his voice?

I shook my head. The fog in my mind
irritated me to no end. It was like an entire chapter of today had
gone astray.

“I drove you to the local clinic to get your
hand examined,” he said.

I shook my head again; nothing of what he
said made sense.

“They applied antibacterial ointment and
bandaged your wounds. You need to leave the gauze on for the next
forty-eight hours. Then your skin should be fine again. They said
there shouldn’t be any scarring.”

“Ah, okay.” If my hand was burned so badly,
I probably wouldn’t want to see it anyway. “And when exactly did I
pass out?”

“You collapsed on the way home. Aftermath of
the shock most likely.” He pulled the key from the ignition and
grabbed a dish towel that lay in a bunch on the middle console.
What it was doing in the car was, like the rest of his story, a
riddle to me.

“It’s normal that you wouldn’t remember what
happened in the hours before you passed out.” Julian grimaced. “The
missing information might never come back.” The resoluteness in his
tone was hard to understand. I followed him when he climbed out of
the car.

He waited for me at the entrance to the
house. “They gave you some medication, so at least you shouldn’t
feel any pain.”

He was right. My hand felt totally normal.
Just the pull of the bandage annoyed me a little bit. It might have
been easier to accept the gauze if my skin hurt, but then again I
was better off with feeling nothing.

Julian unlocked the front door, pushed it
open, and let me enter first. All three members of my family
stormed toward us as soon as we crossed the threshold. Gathered
around me, Marie and Albert took turns firing off questions. “Are
you all right? Is your hand all right? What did the doctors say?”
It was touching how much they cared.

But one person looked the most worried of
all. My mother stood next to her sister, not daring to touch me
like Marie did, but her terrified eyes captured me from three feet
away.

The vague memory of her and Julian entering
the kitchen this afternoon swam in my mind. I also recalled she’d
been seeing a doctor today. Strange how I could gaze at her face
and, for once, feel no hatred.

The cemetery.

Images of her name carved into white marble
danced up and lanced my heart. I shoved the disturbing thought
aside and focused on her pale face again. She looked like shit and
shouldn’t have been up. But like my aunt and uncle, she’d been
staying awake for my return. In a way I was grateful.

“I’m fine,” I said before turning away from
her. “But it seems I passed out. Julian can fill you in on the
details. If you don’t mind, I’d rather go to bed now.”

Everyone stepped aside to let me ascend the
stairs. Julian’s words, as he retold the story I’d heard a few
minutes ago, chased me upstairs. It still felt like he was talking
about someone else.

The blanket wrapped around my shoulders kept
me warm while sitting on the threshold of the open French door in
the late night hours. At my last check, it had been eleven fifteen.
The nagging feeling of having lost a part of the day, however
small, left me anxious for a chat with Julian. But he hadn’t come
upstairs yet.

My hand itched underneath the bandage. Since
I felt no pain at all, I played with the thought of taking the
white gauze off in spite of the doctor’s warning. But not being a
fan of blood or wounds, I restrained and decided to go looking for
Julian instead.

My tailbone hurt from sitting on the floor
for so long. Rubbing my bum with one hand, I tossed the blanket
onto the bed and sneaked out into the dark hallway. No sounds
drifted from the ground floor. Most likely everyone had gone to bed
already. Why hadn’t Julian?

On my tiptoes, I descended the flight of
stairs, sliding my hand along the rail. I turned left to peek into
the parlor. It was dark and empty, and so was the kitchen. The door
to Albert’s study was closed, no light shone underneath. My trip
down here had been in vain.

Then the sudden sound of Julian speaking
made me spin on my heel, kick-starting my heart into high gear.
Of course
. I slapped my brow. Where else would he be than in
my mother’s room?

I drew closer, staying to the side and away
from the door in case one of them came out. Unlike the last times
I’d accidentally eavesdropped on their conversations, this time I
deliberately chose to stay and listen. If Julian spoke to her about
my misfortune today, it was my bloody right to hear it.

And then there was the slight chance he
would talk to her about his little secret…his dual life. I might
have forgotten part of today, but last night’s conversation with
him rang in my ears clear as Christmas bells. He wouldn’t get away
with
there’s nothing we need to talk about
.

“I had no choice.” Self-reproach pealed in
Julian’s tone.

“You did the right thing,” my mother said,
farther away than him.

“Then why does it feel so wrong to push her
away every time she brings it up?” And with
she
he meant me,
right? Oh, it seemed I’d jumped in at the perfect moment.

“Julian.” Charlene paused, maybe for a sigh.
“I know how you feel about Jona. But you of all people must
understand that there is no chance for a future together.”

Wait
. Who was talking about a future
together? Was that what Julian was aiming at? My insides warmed. I
leaned back against the wall.

“She’s suffered so much already,” my mother
continued. “And now…don’t look at me like that. I’m well aware that
most of it was my fault. But don’t you see that you’ll break her if
you commit to her? You know you cannot stay.”