Beloved (3 page)

166

Beloved

Diana Palmer

167

task, building the strength in her hands and attuning her focus to more
detailed pieces.

It wasn't until she finished one of Simon that she even
realized she'd been sculpting him. She stared at it with contained fury and
was just about to bring both fists down on top of it when
the
doorbell rang.

Irritated at the interruption, she tossed a cloth over
the work in
progress and went to answer it, wiping
the clay from her hands
on the way. Her
hair was in a neat bun, to keep it from becoming
clotted with
clay, but her pink smock was liberally smeared with
it. She looked a total mess, without makeup, even without shoes,
wearing faded jeans and a knit top.

She opened the door without questioning who her visitor
might
be, and froze in place when Simon came into
view on the porch.
She noticed that he was wearing the
prosthesis he hated so much,
and she noted with
interest that the hand at the end of it looked amazingly real.

She lifted her eyes to his, but her face wasn't
welcoming. She
didn't open the door to admit him. She
didn't even smile.

"What do you want?" she
asked.

He
scowled. That was new. He'd visited
Tira's
apartment
in
frequently in the past, and he'd always
been greeted with warmth
and even
delight. This was a cold reception indeed.

"I came to see how you were," he replied
quietly. "You've
been conspicuous by
your absence around town lately."

"I sold the ranch," she said
flatly.

He nodded. "Corrigan told me." He looked around
at the front
yard and the porch of the house.
"This is nice. Did you really
need a whole
house?"

She ignored the question. "What do you want?"
she asked
again.

He noted her clay-smeared hands, and the smock she was
wear
ing. "Laying bricks, are you?" he
mused.

She didn't smile, as she might have
once. "I'm sculpting."

"Yes, I remember that you took courses in college.
You were
quite good."

"I'm also quite busy," she
said pointedly.

His eyebrow arched. "No invitation
to have coffee?"

She hardened her resolve, despite the frantic beat of
her heart.
"I don't have time to entertain. I'm getting ready for
an exhibit."

"At Bob Henderson's gallery," he said knowledgeably. "Yes,
I know. I have part ownership in it." He
held up his hand when
she started to
speak angrily. "I had no idea that he'd seen any of your work. I didn't
suggest the showing. But I'd like to see what
you've done. I do have a vested interest."

That put a new complexion on things. But she still didn't
want
him in her house. She'd never rid herself of
the memory of him
in it. Her reluctant expression told him that whatever she
was feeling, it wasn't pleasure.

He sighed. "
Tira
,
what's wrong?" he asked.

She stared at the cloth in her hands instead of at him.
"Why does anything have to be wrong?"

"Are you kidding?" He drew in a heavy breath
and wondered
why he should suddenly feel guilty.
"You've sold the ranch,
moved house and
given up any committees that would bring you
into contact with me...."

She looked up hi carefully arranged surprise. "Oh,
heavens, it
wasn't because of you," she lied
convincingly. "I was in a rut,
that's all. I decided that I
needed to turn my life around. And I
have."

His eyes glittered down at her. "Did turning it
around include
keeping me out of it?"

Her expression was unreadable. "I suppose it did. I
was never
able to get past my marriage. The
memories were killing me, and
you were a constant
reminder."

His heavy eyebrows lifted. "Why should the memories
bother
you?" he asked with visible sarcasm.
"You didn't give a damn
about John. You
divorced him a month after the wedding and

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never seemed to care if you saw him again or not. Barely a week
later, you were keeping company with Charles Percy."

The bitterness in his voice opened her eyes to something
she'd never seen. Why, he blamed her for John's death. She didn't seem
to breathe as she looked up into those narrow, cold,
accusing eyes.
It had been three years since John's
death and she'd never known
that Simon felt this way.

Her hands on the cloth stilled. It was the last straw.
She'd loved
this big, formidable man since the
first time she'd seen him. There had never been anyone else in her heart,
despite the fact that she'd let him push her into marrying John. And now, years
too late, she
discovered the reason that Simon had
never let her come close to
him. It was the last
reason she'd ever have guessed.

She let out a harsh breath. "Well," she said
with forced light
ness, "the things we learn about
people we thought we knew!"
She tucked the
smeared cloth into a front pocket of her equally
smeared smock. "So I killed John. Is that what you think,
Simon?"

The frontal assault was unexpected. His guard was down
and
he didn't think before he spoke. "You played at
marriage," he
accused quietly. “He
loved you, but you had nothing to give him.
A month of marriage and you were having divorce papers served to him.
You let him go without a word when he decided to work
on oil rigs, despite the danger of it. You didn't
even try to stop
him. Funny, but I
never realized what a shallow, cold woman you
were until then. Everything you are is on the outside," he continued,
blind to her white, drawn face. "Glorious hair, a pretty face,
sparkling eyes, pretty figure...and nothing under
it all. Not even a spark of compassion or love for anyone except
yourself."

She wasn't breathing normally. Dear God, she thought,
don't
let me faint at his feet! She swallowed once,
then twice, trying to
absorb the horror
of what he was saying to her.

"You never said a word," she said in a haunted
tone. "In all
these years."

"I didn't think it needed saying," he said simply. "We've
been
friends, of a sort. I hope we still are."
He smiled, but it didn't
reach his eyes.
"As long as you realize that you'll never be al
lowed within striking distance of my heart. I'm not a masochist,
even if John was."

Later, when she was alone, she was going to die. She
knew it.
But right now, pride spared her any further hurt.

She
went past him, very calmly, and opened the front door,
letting in a scent of dead leaves and cool October breeze. She
didn't speak. She didn't look at him. She just
stood there.

He walked past her, hesitating on the doorstep. His
narrow eyes
scanned what he could see of her face,
and its whiteness shocked him. He wondered why she looked so torn up, when he
was only speaking the truth.

Before he could say a thing, she closed the door, threw
the dead
bolt and put on the chain latch. She
walked back toward her stu
dio, vaguely aware
that he was trying to call her back.

The next morning, the housekeeper she'd hired, Mrs.
Lester,
found her sprawled across her bed with
a loaded pistol in her
hands and an empty
whiskey bottle lying on its side on the stained gray carpet. Mrs. Lester
quickly looked in the bathroom and found
an empty bottle that had contained tranquilizers. She jerked up
the telephone and dialed the emergency services number
with trembling hands. When the ambulance came screaming up to the
front of the house,
Tira
still
hadn't moved at all.

Diana Palmer

171

Chapter 2

It took all of that day for
Tira
to come out
of the stupor and
discover where she was. It was a very
nice hospital room, but she
didn't remember
how she'd gotten there. She was foggy and dis
oriented and
very sick to her stomach.

Dr. Ron Gaines, an old family friend, came in the door
ahead of a nurse in neat white slacks and a multicolored blouse with
many pockets.

"Get her vitals," the doctor
directed.

"Yes, sir."

While her temperature and blood pressure and pulse rate
were
taken, Dr. Gaines leaned against the wall
quietly making notations
on her chart. The
nurse reported her findings, he charted them and
he motioned her out of the room.

He moved to the bed and sat down in the chair beside
Tira
. "If
anyone had
asked me two weeks ago, I'd have said that you were
the most levelheaded woman I knew. You've worked tirelessly for
charities here, you've spearheaded fund drives... Good
God, what's the matter with you?"

"I had a bad blow," she confessed in a subdued
tone. "It was
unexpected and I did something stupid.
I got drunk."

"Don't
hand me that! Your housekeeper found a loaded pistol
in your hand."

"Oh, that." She started to tell him about the mouse, the one
she'd tried unsuccessfully to catch for weeks. Last
night, with half
a bottle of whiskey in her, shooting
the varmint had seemed per
fectly logical.
But her dizzy mind was slow to focus. "Well, you
see—" she began.

He sighed heavily and cut her off. "
Tira
, if it wasn't a suicide
attempt, I'm not a doctor. Tell me the truth."

She blinked. "I wouldn't try to kill myself!"
she said, outraged.
She took a slow breath. "I was
just a little depressed, that's all.
I found out
yesterday that Simon holds me responsible for John's
death."

There was a long, shocked pause. "He doesn't know
why the
marriage broke up?"

She shook her head.

"Why didn't you tell him, for
God's sake?" he exclaimed.

"It isn't the sort of thing you tell a man about his
best friend.
I never dreamed that he blamed me.
We've been friends. He never
wanted it to be
anything except friendship, and I assumed it was because of the way he felt
about
Melia
. Apparently I've been five kinds of an
idiot." She looked up at him. "Six, if you count last
night," she added, flushing.

"I'm glad you agree that it was
stupid."

She frowned. "Did you pump my
stomach?"

"Yes."

"No wonder I feel so empty," she said.
"Why did you do
that?" she
asked. "I only had whiskey on an empty stomach!"

"Your housekeeper found an empty tranquilizer bottle
in the
bathroom," he said sternly.

"Oh, that," she murmured. "The bottle was
empty. I never
throw anything away. That
prescription was years old. It's one Dr.
James gave me to get me through final exams in college three
years
ago. I was a nervous wreck!" She gave him another un
blinking stare. "But you listen here, I'm
not suicidal. I'm the least

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suicidal person I know. But everybody has a breaking point and
I reached mine. So I got drunk. I never touch alcohol.
Maybe
that's why it hit me so hard."

He took her hand in his and held it gently. While he was
trying
to find the words, the door suddenly swung
open and a wild-eyed
Simon Hart entered
the room. He looked as if he'd been in an accident, his face was so white. He
stared at
Tira
without speak
ing.

It wasn't his fault, really, but she hated him for what
she'd done
to herself. Her eyes told him so.
There was no welcome in them,
no affection, no
coquettishness. She looked at him as if she wished
she had a weapon in her hands.

"You get out of my room!" she raged at him,
sitting straight
up in bed.

The
doctor's eyebrows shot straight up.
Tira
had never
raised
her voice to Simon before. Her face
was flaming red, like her
wealth of
hair, and her green eyes were shooting bolts of lightning
in Simon's
direction.

"
Tira
,"
Simon began uncertainly.

"Get out!" she repeated, ashamed of being
accused of a suicide
attempt in the
first place. It was bad enough that she'd lost control
of herself enough to get drunk. She glared at Simon as if he was
the cause of it all—which he was. "Out!" she
repeated, when he
didn't move, gesturing wildly with her
arm.

He wouldn't go, and she burst into tears of frustrated
fury. Dr. Gaines got between Simon and
Tira
and hit
the Call button. "Get
in here,
stat," he said into the intercom, following the order with
instructions for a narcotic. He glanced toward Simon,
standing
frozen in the doorway.
"Out," he said without preamble. "I'll
speak to you in a few minutes."

Simon moved aside to let the
skurrying
nurse into the room
with a hypodermic. He could hear
Tira's
sobs even through the
door. He moved a
little way down the hall, to where his brother Corrigan was standing.

It had been Corrigan whom the housekeeper called when she

discovered
Tira
. And he'd called Simon and
told him only that
Tira
had
been taken to the hospital in a bad way. He had no
knowledge of what had pushed
Tira
over the
edge or he might have thought twice about telling his older brother at all.

"I heard her. What happened?" Corrigan asked,
jerking his
head toward the room.

"I don't know," Simon said huskily. He leaned
back against
the wall beside his brother. His empty
sleeve drew curious glances
from a passerby,
but he ignored it. "She saw me and started yelling." He broke off.
His eyes were filled with torment. "I've never
seen her like this."

"Nobody has," Corrigan said flatly. "I
never figured a woman
like
Tira
for a suicide."

Simon gaped at him. "A
what?"

"What would you call combining alcohol and
tranquilizers?"
Corrigan demanded.
"Good God, Mrs. Lester said she had a
loaded pistol in her hands!"

"A
pistol...?"
Simon closed his eyes on a shudder and ran a
hand over his drawn face. He couldn't bear to think about what
might have happened. He was certain that he'd prompted
her ac
tions. He couldn't forget, even now, the look
on her face when
he'd almost flatly accused her of killing John. She hadn't
said a
word to defend herself. She'd gone
quiet; dangerously quiet. He
should
never have left her alone. Worse, he should never have
said anything to her. He'd thought her a strong,
self-centered woman who wouldn't feel criticism. Now, almost too late, he
knew better.

"I
went to see her yesterday," Simon confessed in a haunted
tone. "She'd made some crazy remark at the
last cattle auction
about trying to make me jealous. She said she was
only teasing,
but it hit me the wrong way. I
told her that she wasn't the sort of
woman I could be jealous about.
Then, yesterday, I told her how
I felt about
her careless attitude toward the divorce only a month
after she married John, and letting him go off to
get himself killed
on an oil
rig." His broad shoulders rose and fell
defeatedly
.
"I