Impulse (20 page)

“In the woods, collecting wildflowers with Janie Winters. She didn’t wear braces either, but I did. It isn’t much fun kissing when you’ve got a mouth full of steel. Darleen didn’t wear braces, obviously.”

“My mom didn’t like camping, so to be perverse, I
went to camp until I was sixteen. Did you camp out with your dad?”

He stiffened and all the fun went out of his voice.

“No. My dad died when I was eleven. Even before, he wasn’t the kind of man to take off his glasses and get dirty.”

“I’m sorry.” A raw nerve, she thought, and kept the rest of her questions to herself. “I never had a dad.”

“I know. At least you didn’t until your mom married Charles Rutledge III when you were sixteen.”

She jerked away from him, pulling on his arm to make him face her. “What do you mean, you
know
?”

“You’re illegitimate, so what? We both spent our teenage years without a father and we both survived. You’re awfully pushy, you’ve got a smart mouth, and perhaps a father would have curtailed that in you, but who knows?”

“Did you tell Mr. Giovanni?”

He frowned at her even as he shook his head. “I didn’t think it was relevant.” He shrugged. “If he does a check on you, he’ll find out anyway.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

“Would you like to tell me something incriminating, Ms. Holland? Any little thing I could use to get you off this island and back to your safe little harbor in Boston?”

“No. And Boston’s anything but a safe little harbor. Forget it, Marcus. I don’t have a single skeleton in my closet.”

“Sure, and we’ll see pigs flying overhead any minute. Go to sleep, Ms. Holland.”

“I’ll bet you still dream about Darleen.”

“To a boy of thirteen, she was the best, the most wonderful, the sweetest—”

“Go to sleep, Marcus.”

Marcus tried to get comfortable, and he did, but still sleep wouldn’t come. He was worried, but more than that, he found himself thinking that he quite liked
her smart mouth. She was sleeping deeply, her breathing even and deep. He should have asked her if she still liked to camp out. Perhaps, someday, he could ask her that, once his life was his own again.

Marcus stood up and wiped his hands on his dirty pants. “I can’t tell,” he said. “I really can’t. We need an expert, and that, unfortunately, isn’t possible.”

“How about Merkel?”

“He could take a look, but he’s just good, like me, not an expert. We might as well get going. You up for a long walk?”

It wasn’t, in fact, such a long walk. They reached the resort at seven-thirty in the morning, sweaty, dirty, their clothing ripped, but otherwise, in Marcus’s opinion, they just looked like a couple of lovers who’d gotten carried away. Not a couple who’d walked away from a crashed helicopter on the middle ridge, one half of the couple worried that a lion was going to pounce at any moment, and the other half of the couple thinking he should tell her the truth about the animals, but not doing so.

Marcus stopped her before she turned off the path to her villa. “You’re a good sport,” he said. “Do I smell as rank as you do?”

“As rank as a mountain goat. Lord, it’s hot. I feel like the humidity’s eaten through my skin.”

Rafaella was walking across the pale gold-and-white marble floor in the bathroom to pour Chanel bubble bath into the Jacuzzi within three minutes of closing the front door. She turned on the gold faucets full blast. In another two minutes she was sprawled in the hot water, her mother’s journal in her hand, open to a September 1997 entry.

I’ve always loved Christmas. So many of my happy memories are of you and me on Christmas morning, me with my coffee and croissant, you with your huge
bowl of Cap’n Crunch and hot cocoa. Remember that year I got you that huge stuffed giraffe? I think it was 1981. You named him Alvin, as I recall.

Since I’ve been married to Charles, Christmas is more complex, I guess you could say. Not richer—ours were that; no, just more complicated, more unpredictable. My stepson, Benny, married Susan Claver in 1994, the year you graduated from high school. There was a baby at Christmas the next year. You haven’t seen little Jennifer in a very long time. She’s not quite so cute now as she was then.

Why am I prosing on about Christmas? Who cares, really? Charles gave me an incredible ruby-and-diamond ring, five carats of diamonds, on that Christmas of 1994. I didn’t like to wear it. I’m always afraid that I’ll lose it. It bothers Charles because he wouldn’t care if I lost it. He truly wouldn’t. He just wants to make me happy.

I tell him he does. I tell him all the time how much I love him. I exhaust him showing him how much I love him. It’s funny sometimes about our sex together. He treats me like a Victorian maiden whose sensibilities couldn’t take oral sex. Once I went down on him and I thought he would expire on the spot. He looked at me like I should faint rather than love him like that. Strange, isn’t it? Dominick always—Oh, no, no more about him!

Sometimes I sense that Charles is looking at me and I sense he doesn’t believe me. I realize that he can’t know about Dominick. I would never, never tell him. I keep my journals well hidden. He’ll never know.

I sometimes think that I would give almost anything to have had one Christmas with Dominick. But there wasn’t one. There was the Fourth of July when I was twenty and he told me he loved me, and that was about it. Of course when I was pregnant with you and he made his trips back to see me, he didn’t make Christmas. He was with his wife, naturally. The only gift he
ever gave me was you, my darling. You and that check for five thousand dollars. The bastard.

Rafaella fell asleep in the tub with the jets still going full blast. She came awake abruptly at a noise, her eyes flying open.

Marcus was standing over the tub.

Rafaella’s roommate at Columbia had told her that it was unnerving the way she came instantly and completely awake. She did so now. Her eyes narrowed on his face, but she made no sudden jittery moves. She wouldn’t let him get her goat again, not this time.

“What do you want?”

“To see if you’re all right. I knocked, but no answer. I got a bit worried.” He’d been looking at the book on the ledge beside the tub. It was the same one he’d seen her with that first night when he’d found her crying.

“I’m just fine. Now, get out of here.”

“Did I tell you that I like the way you’re put together? No tan, but I’m not complaining.”

The bubbles from the bubble bath were long gone. “Would you just get the hell out of here?”

“You sound angry. I can’t imagine why. I’m just being politely interested and nonjudgmental. As I was saying, you don’t have much of a tan—but I like that white stomach of yours.”

She looked at him dispassionately, an eyebrow cocked. “What is this? I didn’t think you took the final plunge. You just like to dominate, to humiliate, to prove what sexual power you have.”

“This time I’d like to make an exception,” he said, not taking his eyes off her. “After all, we’ve been out on several dates now. I just didn’t want you to think I was too easy. A man needs his respect, you know.”

He hooked his thumbs under his waistband and his shorts. He grinned at her and started pulling them down.

“All right, stop it, you ass!”

He stopped, then pulled his shorts and pants back up. “I so dislike the teasing-woman bit. I was just being cooperative.”

“If you don’t want me to throw every drop of water in this tub on you, get out, Marcus. Now.”

“I’ve already seen it all, and—” He got a sopping wet washcloth in the face.

“Rafaella! Are you here?”

Rafaella groaned. It was Coco. Marcus was calmly wiping his face with one of her towels and fastening his pants with the other. She quickly got out of the tub, ignoring him, and wrapped herself in one of the soft-as-sin Egyptian-cotton bath sheets.

“Just a minute, Coco!”

“Hi, Coco. We’ll be out in just a minute.”

Rafaella knew startled silence when she heard it. Then: “Marcus? Is that you? In there? With Rafaella?”

“I’m just wiping the water out of my eyes, Coco. Don’t come in. You’ll embarrass Ms. Holland. She’s already blushing from her eyebrows to her toes.”

“I’m going to kill you,” Rafaella said. “With a rock, I’ve decided. I’m going to pound you all over with a rock. Then I’m going to gut you like a yellowtail snapper. I’m going to debone you and then—”

“Coco is a very curious lady. I suggest you get your robe on. Use the one the resort provides. It covers up just about everything but it manages still to be real sexy. The resort provides different colors, you know. With your coloring, I’m guessing the robe is either a very dark green or a soft pale yellow.”

“Then I’m going to skin you, or is ‘flay’ a better word?”

“With your tongue or with a knife?”

“Marcus? Rafaella? What are you—? Are you in the bathroom?”

“Yes, Coco,” Rafaella called. “Please sit down. I’ll be right out.”

“Me too,” Marcus said, and tossed the hand towel to her.

He left the bathroom and Rafaella heard him say, “Good morning, Coco. Why didn’t you come to my villa? Why Rafaella’s?”

“Dom told me about the helicopter. I wanted to see if you were all right. I did go to your villa first. Then I even went to the gym and talked to Punk. Did you see that stripe in her hair? It’s mint green.”

“Yeah, the banker from Chicago didn’t like the yellow, so she had Sissy change it. So, then, Coco, you figured I’d be here, with dear Rafaella?”

“What are you doing here?”

“He’s a lousy Peeping Tom,” Rafaella said, stomping into the sitting room. She pulled the sash tighter on her pale yellow satin robe.

“I think I’d prefer the dark green robe on you,” Marcus said, rubbing his chin with thoughtful fingertips. “Not that this one isn’t nice, mind you.”

“Marcus, a Peeping Tom?” Coco stared at Rafaella with a blank expression that said it all. Not only didn’t Coco believe her, Rafaella knew she was hard pressed not to laugh.

“Rafaella’s good,” Marcus said to Coco, nodding with grave understanding. “Quite good. More of the dominatrix than I usually like, but still she’s enjoyable. Hey, what’s a little pain?”

Rafaella turned her back on him. “This thing with the helicopter, what—?”

“I don’t know anything. Marcus called Dominick a little while ago. Merkel flew over in the other helicopter to get some equipment that was here at the resort. I came with him. He’s taking one of the motor scooters back to the wreck to check things out.”

“It wasn’t an accident,” Rafaella said. “Marcus thinks someone probably loosened a bolt on the tail rotor.”

“That’s what I told Dominick,” Marcus said. “Another
scare tactic,” he added to Coco. “And it worked, I don’t mind admitting. But it’s damned odd.”

“What is?”

“Your reporter’s genes getting fired up, Ms. Holland? No, don’t curse me out. What’s odd is that someone would begin now to scare me off. It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve been here over two years. Why now?”

“It’s obvious that you did something recently that scared someone,” Coco said. “What could it be?”

“I don’t know, but that’s a good point.”

Rafaella looked from one to the other, shaking her head. “I don’t believe this. You’re talking about it as though it were something about as important as the weather. We could have been killed. Someone
tried
to kill us! This is very serious, at least to me. Doesn’t anything shake you guys up?”

“Of course it’s serious,” Coco said. She paused, frowning. “Or,” she continued slowly, “as I said last night, someone could be trying to scare off Rafaella. She’s been involved both times.”

“We think it was DeLorio,” Rafaella said to Coco.

Coco looked thoughtful. “Plain speaking, then. DeLorio doesn’t like Marcus, that’s for sure. He’s jealous of him.” She paused a moment, then laid her hand on Marcus’s arm. “It’s not because Paula’s so obvious about wanting to get in your pants. It’s Dominick and the very real affection he has for you. I’ve heard again and again that all Dominick wanted to do was to build his dynasty. And all he got was DeLorio, whose mother was—Well, he doesn’t really like his son, and he’s tried to. He realizes it’s his responsibility to like him. His duty. You know that, Marcus. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if DeLorio was behind both the helicopter and the gunshots on the beach the other night. He wants you out of the picture. You’re a threat to him. Maybe he sees Rafaella as a threat too.”

Marcus was staring at Coco. She’d just spilled her
guts to Rafaella, like all the rest of them. It was uncanny. He started to say something, but Coco interrupted him.

“Rafaella? What’s the matter? Did that crash really shake you up?”

“Oh, no. Would you like some breakfast, Coco? I can order something and the two of us can sit out on my veranda and enjoy the early morning and—”

“I’d like some dry toast, please,” Marcus said. “And lots of coffee.”

Rafaella walked to the door, opened it, and said, “My knee is itching, Marcus, it truly is. I suggest you take yourself off while you’re still intact.”

“She doesn’t like talking afterward,” Marcus remarked matter-of-factly to Coco. “No gentleness, no sweet little nothings whispered about whether it was as good for her as it was for me, no smoking a cigarette—”

“Out. Now, Marcus.”

He nodded to Coco, walked to the door, then at the last minute grabbed Rafaella and kissed her hard, then was gone.

Rafaella slammed the door shut. She could hear him whistling through the open window.

“I’ve never seen Marcus like this,” Coco said. “He’s got it bad.”

“He’s got what? Oh, no, Coco, all that is just show, it means nothing. He likes to bait me, and I’ll admit he knows exactly which buttons to push.”

“Come on, Rafaella, you’ve already been to bed with him. I can tell; it’s how you look at each other. Your eyes give you away—that intimate look.” She shrugged, a very Gallic gesture. “And Marcus, he’s hard on women, but he’s got something and you want it. It’s—oh, what the hell!” She gave Rafaella a wicked grin, shook her shoulders in another very French shrug, rolled her eyes, and grinned. “
Un homme avec, ah, un
certain je-ne-sais-quoi.
” She shrugged again. It was incredible.