The Secret of the Villa Mimosa (19 page)

When the coffee came, he smiled and said quietly, “I seem to have done all the talking. Now what about you? Tell me about your life, Phyl Forster. About your fascinating work.”

She came regretfully back to reality. “It
is
fascinating,” she admitted, “finding out how people’s minds work. You would be surprised at the apparently ordinary people who live outrageous fantasy lives. And the brilliantly successful people who tell me that their lives are full of despair and self-doubt. I treat manic depressives who can see no reason for living, and sociopaths who commit terrible sins and show no signs of re
morse. I see abused children, disturbed teenagers, distraught new mothers who long to kill their babies.” She shook her head, gazing sadly into her glass of wine. “Sometimes I go home at night wondering if anyone in this world is sane. Including myself.”

“But you have taken on the burden of their problems,” he said. “Surely that’s wrong?”

“Of course, it’s wrong. And I try not to. At night I try to relax, to forget about it. I drink a glass of wine, I listen to music, read a book. There’s only one case I’ve allowed myself to become personally involved with, and that’s because of my own needs as much as hers. It’s a case of lost memory.”

“But isn’t it easy to reinstate someone’s memory? Don’t relatives come looking for them? A brother or husband, or mother?”

“Not this one. This girl lost her memory as a result of an accident, and so far no one has come forward to claim her.” She smiled. “I make her sound like lost property.”

“And in a way she is.”

“I suppose that’s true. Still, I haven’t yet been able to bring back her memory. Now I’m trying to rehabilitate her so that she can get on with her life. I found her a job with a friend of mine. That’s why I’m going to Antibes next week. To see her.”

“Checking on the progress of your experiment?” he asked, cynically, she thought.

“It’s not quite that clinical,” she replied, with a touch of her old assertiveness. “My patient is just a young girl. It means a lot to me to be able to help her.”

“Touché, Doctor.” He grinned apologetically. “I guess I just don’t have time for maladies of the head. A broken leg”—he shrugged expressively—“now that I can understand. But madness? Never.”

“My patients are not mad,” she protested. “They are disturbed.”

He laughed and took her hand. He turned it palm
up and kissed it tenderly. He said, looking at her, “I think you are a very kind lady, Dr. Phyl Forster, as well as a very beautiful one.”

Desire lurked in his light blue gaze. In an instant she forgot all about work and murders and Bea. All she could see were his eyes; all she could feel was his touch. She was suddenly breathless with desire.

She wafted from the restaurant on his arm, barely aware of the polite good-byes from the staff. They drove back to Brad’s apartment in silence, not touching, but alive to each other’s nearness. He parked in the downstairs garage, and they walked hand in hand to the elevator.

He put his arms around her as they waited. He began kissing her. Gently. Small kisses, covering her face, her eyes, her throat. The elevator pinged, and a smart older couple got out. They glanced, amused, at them, wrapped in each other’s arms, but Phyl didn’t even notice.

Alone in the elevator Brad slid his hands under her jacket. He pulled her to him, holding her tight, as his mouth covered hers. Shivers of delight rippled through her; she did not want the kiss to end. When the elevator stopped at the penthouse, Brad swung her up in his arms and carried her into the apartment, his lips still on hers.

They sank together into the depths of the big brocade sofa, still lost in each other. Finally he stopped kissing her. He stroked back her tumbled hair and looked questioningly into her eyes. He read the answering message of desire in them. He tilted her chin and held her mouth up to his again, drinking her like wine. A charge shivered from Phyl’s lips to her breasts, from the depths of her belly to her toes, and she moaned happily.

He took her by the hand and led her willingly to his bedroom. Dark-shaded lamps cast muted pools of light across the big four-poster bed, and a fire glowed in the
ornate limestone grate. Silky soft rugs in muted pewter and rose covered the dark parquet floor, and tall shutters closed them off from the night. They were in a world of their own, a place Phyl had not been for a long time. Maybe never before.

He turned her around and unzipped the black lace dress. She wriggled her arms free and let it slide to the floor. In a minute both of them were naked.

They stood looking at each other. Then he held out his hand. She gave him hers, trustingly. He drew her toward him, and they stood, trembling naked body pressed against naked body. She threw back her head ecstatically as he began to kiss first her throat and then her breasts until they sank together onto the bed. He put his hands under her, lifting her body to his mouth, drinking her in until she trembled and moaned and gasped for mercy. And only then did he enter her.

He was a hard lover, demanding more from her than she had known she had to offer, and she wrapped her legs tightly around him, reaching for the almost unattainable peak of desire. Again and again.

A long time afterward, they finally lay silent and spent, tremors like aftershocks rippling through their bodies.

He lay back on the pillows, his hands behind his head. He glanced at her and said softly, “I haven’t felt like that since I was fourteen.”

Phyl smiled at him, still lost in a sweet, hot afterglow. She waited lazily for him to tell her about his first love, about some fresh high school girl and the first kiss that rocked him back on his teenage heels.

But Brad’s voice was suddenly harsh as he said, “I was fourteen and brimming with sexual curiosity, though I had absolutely no practical knowledge. One afternoon I was out riding my bicycle when I got a flat. It happened just outside the house of a friend of my father’s, so I pushed my bike up the driveway, thinking to get help.

“The door was open, and no one was around. I looked into the hall, but it was empty. I circled the house, expecting to find him at the tennis court or in the pool. The window of what he called his entertaining room stood open, and I heard a sound coming from there. I stopped to listen. It was a different kind of cry: strange, eerie. Something inspired me to caution, and I tiptoed closer and peered in the window.

“I saw a woman lying naked on the huge golden fur rug. It was she who was making those sounds. Her legs were wrapped around the man’s neck; his hands were underneath her buttocks, holding her high.
And he was devouring her.
She was moaning and crying out. Her eyes were shut, and her face was contorted with passion.”

Brad stared silently at the ceiling, and she waited, wondering what was coming next. After a moment he said, “It was my first introduction to sex, and the results were immediate. I hurried away, ashamed. But I’ve never forgotten that scene. It’s indelibly imprinted on my memory, and I swear I’ve never made love once in my life without thinking of it.”

“I can imagine,” Phyl said understandingly. “Your first pornographic experience.”

“More than that.” Brad got up and walked naked to the window. He picked up a packet of Gitanes from the table, shook one out, and lit it. He drew deeply on it, then exhaled the pungent smoke, staring blindly out of the window into the lamplit leafy courtyard. His voice was chilling when he said finally, “The man was a friend I had known all my life. And the woman he was devouring so avidly was my mother.”

Brad’s eyes had a terrifying emptiness. Phyl knew she was looking into his soul, and she could think of no words to comfort him. There was nothing she could say to her lover. In her professional capacity, with the proper distance between patient and doctor, she would have been able to find the formula, the correct answers
to lead him out of his bitter memories. But this was different. As she lay naked in his bed, with the imprint of his lovemaking still on her, all she could say was “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged moodily. “That’s just the way Rebecca was. How my father put up with it all those years, I’ll never know. Nor why. My father was a good-looking man—rich and successful. But my mother was aristocratic, a socialite from way back. And he was just the son of a rancher.” He shrugged. “I guess they must have suited each other. I never talked about it with him. And I have never told anyone else about what I saw.” He came over and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “I shouldn’t have told even you. Forgive me.”

She forgave him, of course, but she was still shocked. Brad Kane’s mood swings from somber to cheerful were disquieting.

But then once again, he shrugged off his dark passion and took her for breakfast at the Café Flore. Later they shopped on the Rue du Cherche-Midi and browsed among the book stalls on the banks of the Seine. Phyl forgot all about the conference she was in Paris to attend. Brad was handsome, he was charming, and he was amusing. And by now she was so sexually crazy for him and he for her that she thought people must be able to sense the heat coming from their bodies as they paused to kiss shamelessly in shop doorways or just to stare deeply into each other’s eyes. They were in that flash heat of sexual attraction when they wanted nobody but each other. Phyl didn’t think about Bea or Millie. Or Franco Mahoney. All she thought of was Brad.

They spent long sensual afternoons in her shuttered bedroom, and romantic evenings in dimly lit bistros, and wonderful nights in his apartment. They would shed their clothes as they walked through the doorway, touching, kissing, devouring each other. One night Brad couldn’t even wait to undress, and he took her up
against the wall, lifting her onto him, driving savagely into her. She cried out with pain, but he didn’t stop until they slid, tangled together onto the floor, half sobbing, half laughing. They made love everywhere, in his bed, on the priceless Aubusson in front of the fire in the grand salon, and in the shower, slithering with soap and their own juices.

It was Monday night when Phyl finally came to her senses and remembered that she was supposed to fly to Nice the next morning. They were in Brad’s apartment, and they had just made love. He was standing by the bedroom window, lazily smoking a Gitane, when she told him.

He stared silently at her, then turned and gazed out over the rooftops. “Cancel it,” he said coldly.

“I can’t do that. I promised.”

“And your promise means more to you than I do?”

“Oh, please, Brad, you’re being childish. And you know it’s not true. I would much rather be here with you.”

“Then why won’t you cancel? Arrange to go some other time?”

Phyl shook her head, smiling at his foolishness, secretly pleased that he wanted her so much. She sat up in bed, pulling the sheet up to her chin, smoothing back her long dark hair, aware that her body was still damp with the heat and sweat of their lovemaking. “Brad, please,” she said coaxingly. “We’re talking about my patient. The one who has lost her memory. It is serious, and I simply can’t break my promise to her.”

“As you wish,” he said abruptly. She watched, blank-eyed with shock, as he strode into the bathroom and closed the door.

She heard the shower and wondered why he could not accept the fact that there was something important she must do. He must know that she would rather be here with him. She sighed as she told herself that she had been acting irresponsibly. Surely Brad would resign
himself to her absence when she told him she would be gone only a few days.

But he did not speak as they took the elevator down to the garage. “I’ll be back Friday,” she said when he dropped her at her hotel.

His blue eyes were remote. She stood on the sidewalk, smiling appeasingly at him, but he drove off without another word.

Tears stung her eyes as she walked forlornly into the hotel.

The telephone in her room was ringing. Her heart lifted as she ran to pick it up. Thinking it was Brad, she called a joyous “Yes?”

“Just checking in, Doc,” Franco Mahoney said cheerfully. “Making sure you’re keeping all those smart-ass Frenchmen in line. And to tell you that Coco is settling in nicely here, along with her kinfolk. I’m telling you, Doc, you’d better not stay away too long or she won’t want to go home again.”

Franco Mahoney’s voice sounded strong and straightforward. Light-years away from Paris and Brad Kane’s turbulent moods. “Thanks for looking after her for me, Franco,” she replied wistfully.

“No problem, Doc.” There was a long silence, and he said gently, “Say, are you all right? Don’t tell me the frogs are getting you down?”

“French, not frogs.” Phyl corrected him automatically. “No, no, I’m all right. Just tired, I guess. You know, jet lag and all that.”

“I figured you’d be seeing Bea tomorrow. Just wanted you to give her my best regards and tell her I’m still working on her case. And I hope she is, too. Maybe if she thinks of something, I’ll hop on a plane and come over there myself,” he added half-jokingly.

“I’ll call and let you know, Mahoney,” she said wearily. “Meanwhile, it’s late. I’ve got to get some sleep.”

“Yeah, that’s another thing I was going to ask you. What the hell are you doing out till four in the morning?
Are they working you to death at that conference, or what?” He had been calling every hour on the hour and had been worried.

“That’s right, Mahoney,” she replied. “Good night. Kiss Coco for me.”

“I’ll do that,” he replied laconically.

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