The Harder They Fall (7 page)

* * * *

Helene awoke several hours later to find Chris sitting next to her bed in a kitchen chair. She had a dim memory of the doctor’s visit, his stern warnings about low blood pressure and exhaustion, but it all blended in with her dreams.

“What’s the verdict?” she said, yawning.

“Dr. Stern says you’re to stay in bed for the next several days, and if I have to handcuff you to the headboard you will do just that,” he said grimly.

“Don’t worry,” Helene said quietly. “I know how much your brother’s child means to you. I’ll be good.”

“I’m going to see that you are,” he said. He stood and opened the door to admit Maria, who came in still wearing the dress she had worn to the wedding that afternoon.

“Oh, Chris, you didn’t,” Helene said in dismay. “This isn’t fair to Maria, she has her own family.”

“My children are grown and out of the house and my husband can do without me for a few days,” Maria said briskly.

“So you’re to be my watchdog?” Helene asked.

“We have to take special care of you,” Maria replied, shooing Chris out of the room. When the door had closed behind him she added in a low tone, “That boy practically promised me the moon if I came here tonight. I think he’s really worried.”

“He loved Martin, the baby is important to him.”

“But you’re not?” Maria asked softly.

“I’m the incubator,” Helene said lightly.

Maria opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it and settled for tucking the covers in around Helene’s feet.

“Now,” she said, “how about a nice cup of herbal tea?”

* * * *

Once Maria was on the job, Chris virtually vanished. He was gone before Helene got up in the morning and he came in for dinner at night, bone weary, and ate anything Maria put in front of him. Then he went to his room, took a shower and changed and left again, doubtless for Brodie’s or a similar destination. Sometimes Helene heard him come in before she fell asleep, but usually not. She had no idea how he could keep such hours and work so hard, and she had no idea what Maria thought of their somewhat peculiar living arrangements. Nothing was discussed.

When Dr. Stern returned in a week and pronounced Helene fit and rested, Maria went back home and Helene was allowed out of bed for the first time since the doctor’s previous visit. For two more weeks she wandered around the house, bored by inactivity, while Chris stuck to his previous schedule: work during the day and disappearances after dinner. One night at the end of September, looking for something to do, Helene wandered down to the living room to find a book on the shelves by the fireplace. She settled down to read. She read until well past midnight and then finally fell asleep with the book in her lap, waking by the chiming of the grandfather clock when Chris came in at two-thirty. He strode into the living room, spotted her on the couch and said wearily, “I thought you would be in bed.”

He was wearing faded jeans that clung to him like a second skin, with woven moccasins and a yellow oxford cloth shirt showing vividly against his suntanned throat. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing the well developed veins and tendons in his work-hardened forearms. His hair was tousled, doubtless from the homeward ride in his convertible. Helene wished, not for the first time, that she had the nerve, or the right, to stroke it back into place.

“I fell asleep reading,” she answered, holding up the book.

“Poetry?” he said archly.

“Yours,” she replied, thumbing to the flyleaf and displaying his name written there.

“I must have done that during one of my possessive periods,” he said. “Martin was always taking my stuff.” He folded his arms combatively. “Are you surprised that I read poetry? Or are you surprised that I can read?”

“Not at all, to both questions,” she said lightly, putting the book aside.

He slumped next to her on the couch. “I’ve been drinking,” he said almost belligerently, and smiled.

That was obvious, but he was not drunk—just clearly relaxed enough to lose his inhibitions. Warning bells went off in Helene’s brain; without his customary control he would be dangerous indeed. She rose smoothly and stepped into her discarded slippers.

“Good night,” she said.

“Wait a minute, where are you going?” he asked, waving her back into her seat. “Don’t you want to know why I’ve been going out every night? Aren’t you the least bit curious?”

“I have assumed the obvious, that you want to avoid me,” she said evenly.

“Bingo,” he responded. “Correctomundo, right the first time. But do you know
why
I want to avoid you?”

“Chris, is it really necessary to do this?” she asked, pained and a little frightened. Where was this leading?

“Certainly, certainly. Know the truth and the truth shall make you free. Don’t you remember that one?”

Helene waited.

“I have wanted to avoid you because I have a secret, a secret very difficult to keep in your presence.” He got up and helped himself to the bottle of Scotch on the sideboard, splashing a liberal dose of the amber liquid into a glass.

“Chris, don’t drink any more,” Helene said quietly.

“Oh, but I must. How else do I keep my secret, especially with you sitting there in that most fetching outfit?”

Helene glanced down at her cotton nightgown, as plain and practical as a nun’s. What did he mean? She glanced up at him again, her expression guarded.

He wagged his finger at her. “You’re humoring me, I can tell by that look of sainted patience on your face. Have I ever told you how much I hate that look?”

“You wouldn’t have to see it if you’d let me go to bed,” she pointed out reasonably.

“Bed,” he said. “Now there’s a subject of interest, actually in line with my first topic, one and the same, in fact.”

Helene sighed. Booze certainly made him loquacious. Which was worse, his sober silences or this?

“Haven’t guessed my secret?” he said, sipping. “Not a clue? Then I’ll tell you. It’s mundane, not original, very old I’m afraid. Biblical. Now what do you think of that?”

Helene was frozen in place.

“Don’t know what I’m talking about, Miss Innocence?” he said, examining her with those unsettling eyes, the same color as the liquor he held in his hand.

But she did know what he was talking about. After three weeks of listening for his footfall, straining to catch the sound of his voice, fingering one of his discarded shirts cast over a chair, she knew all too well.

“I know,” she whispered.

His sneer vanished and he thrust his glass onto the top of the television set. He was beside her in two strides and had seized her bare upper arms, holding her in a viselike grip.

“Please, Chris, you’re hurting me,” she gasped, twisting futilely in his grasp.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said gruffly, and then his mouth was on hers—hot, searching, the way she had dreamed of it since the first day she’d met him. For several seconds she was stunned, and then her arms crept up around his neck, her fingers sinking into the wealth of hair at his nape and her body molding itself to his.

When he saw that she was not fighting him and he felt her response, he moaned against her mouth and the sound turned her limbs to water. She clutched him as she kissed him back, her very lack of expertise inflaming his desire as he lifted her into his arms and onto the couch. They lay entwined as his lips trailed down her neck and inside the collar of her gown. She was wearing nothing beneath it; he fumbled with the buttons on the front to open it fully, then she whimpered as his mouth found her breast. Her eyes squeezed shut as his free hand trailed up her leg and to the inside of her thigh, and then she surged up eagerly when he moved to kiss her again. Thought fled, time stood still as his tongue found hers and Helene submitted completely to his kisses. Too soon, he drew back slightly, still holding her fast.

“Do you want me?” he whispered harshly against her lips, pulling her lower body against his. She arched to meet him.

“Do you?” he prompted.

“Yes, yes,” she moaned, drawing his head down to hers again, incapable of anything but desperate, headlong yearning.

“Then say it,” he demanded.

“I want you,” she sighed.

“Is that what you said to my brother?” he asked.

Chapter 4

Helene shoved him off her with as much force as she could muster and then jumped to her feet, sputtering.

“You... you,” she said and stopped, at a loss and shaking so hard she had to put a hand out to the wall for balance. She stared at him in malevolent silence; she just couldn’t think of anything vile enough to call him.

“Bastard?” he supplied, sitting up and then vaulting easily to his feet. “Isn’t that the word you’re searching for—doubly appropriate in my case, don’t you think?”

“You did that to me deliberately,” she gasped, when she could talk again.

“Just an experiment,” he said casually.

“I thought you wanted to take care of me and the baby, not upset me.”

“You’re not upset, lady, you’re turned on—don’t you know the difference?”

“So this was a test?” she said, rebuttoning her nightgown with trembling fingers.

“And you failed,” he said, with a slight insinuating smile.

“Then you failed, too,” Helene retorted, revamping her shattered defenses.

His expression changed, became guarded.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” he replied coldly.

“I’m not doing that,” Helene said, striving for calm. “I may not have your vast experience of... of physical relationships, but even I know that what just happened between us was not typical.”

“It was typical for me,” he said cruelly.

“So you just felt like seducing me?” she asked, staring at him in disbelief.

“Sure,” he said flippantly. “Why not?”

“Then what was all that talk about avoiding me because you have a secret?”

He turned away. “Whiskey rambling,” he said dismissively. “You shouldn’t pay so much attention to drunken drivel.”

“In vino veritas,” she said.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“That people often tell the truth when they’ve been drinking ,” she fired back at him.

“Not me,” he said, rounding on her with a leer. “It just makes me feel like stripping impostors of their pretenses.”

“You promised me that you wouldn’t touch me!” she burst out, stung by the unfairness of it.

“You wanted me to touch you,” he said darkly. “Every day you’ve been in this house you’ve wanted me to touch you.”

“You broke your word!” she insisted, dodging.

“I don’t remember forcing you to do anything you didn’t want to do,” he countered, folding his arms and glaring at her.

“That’s not the point!” she yelled. “You lied to me when you proposed marriage. You planned this all along.”

“I did not!” he said heatedly, and it was the first thing he’d said that she believed.

“Then what?” she said softly, changing tactics, sensing that she was getting closer to an admission.

“Then nothing!” he exploded, taking a step toward her, his fists balled at his sides. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“Then stay away from me!” she flung at him and ran into the hall, dashing for her bedroom as if it were a safe haven. She slammed the door and locked it, putting her back against it as if she expected him to break it down.

Nothing happened. She listened, her heart pounding, for any indications of movement, but the only thing she heard was her own ragged breathing.

Finally she lay down on her bed and waited for her heartbeat to return to normal.

It took a long time.

* * * *

Chris remained in the living room, pouring himself another drink and then slumping disconsolately on the sofa.

Why did he feel like such a heel? He hadn’t attempted rape, for God’s sake. She had certainly consented to what he was doing; she had kissed him as if she were discovering passion for the first time and he had an uneasy feeling that she was. The only thing his “experiment” had proved was that he wanted her as desperately as he ever had, even more now that he had actually felt her eager, untutored response.

Was it possible that he was wrong about her? The thought kept surfacing, annoying him with its insistence, but he dismissed it once more with a vengeance. So what if Martin had been her only previous sexual experience? That did nothing to prove she hadn’t been using his brother to solve her problems. In fact it made the whole scenario worse: she’d been planning to marry a man for whom she felt no desire, entering into a bloodless pact for mercenary reasons. She was just what he had always supposed and he’d better do exactly what she said and stay far away from her.
 

Because the next time he might not be able to stop.

* * * *

“So you’re not talking to him?” Maria de Salvo said, folding the last towel on top of the stack and handing the bundle to Helene.