Eternally Yours 1 (29 page)

The demand came from
Daphne, but a Daphne he barely recognized. Swollen, red-rimmed eyes spilled tears onto chalky cheeks. Normally flawless makeup streaked her face like a multi-hued Rorschach test. Trembling arms enclosed her in a self-imposed bear hug, fingers skittering up and down her forearms as if to ward off a chill. She rocked up and down at the midsection, lips moving in frantic whispers.
Please, oh, please. Let him be all right. Wake up, Luc. Please, God, wake him up.

Luc did a double-take. Was Daphne praying? For him? Why?

A quick flurry of sea green curtain ushered Matt into the room, a chilled bottle of water clutched in one hand. “Daphne? Any change in his condition?”

The words, filled with concern on the outside, blazed with an undercurrent of pure hatred that bounced off the walls and sliced into Luc with the power of hollow-point bullets.

Jesus! How could he have misjudged the man so drastically? Matt Cooper despised him!

With an obviously forced air of compassion, Matt pressed the bottle into Daphne’s shaking hand. “Here. Drink something.
”

She pointedly ignored him, removing her hand from the water bottle in one smooth, graceful motion. “No, thank you.”

“You’ll dehydrate if you don’t.”

“I want nothing from you, Matt. You’ve done enough.” Her tone sounded so brittle in Luc’s ears, as if she really was completely undone by
the severity of his condition.

Matt edged closer to her side, a cobra slithering toward its unknowing victim. “What did the doctor say?”

“That…” Her voice caught on a sob, and she sniffled. “…There’s absolutely no chance he’ll pull through.”

Daphne coughed. “Dr. Shane says I should start making ‘final arrangements’ for Luc.”

“What kind of final arrangements?”

She leveled a teary gaze at Matt. Luc’s chest constricted. God, she really looked torn up. Which begged the question: if he’d misjudged Matt’s animosity, could he have also misjudged Daphne’s level of guilt in his death?
The crushing possibility nearly drove him to his knees. Was that where he’d gone wrong? Blaming Daphne for his death when, perhaps, she was an innocent victim, just as he’d been? Did that explain his Karmic Justice?

“
Final
final arrangements,” she snapped. “As in
done
,
finito
,
over
. Everything. Dr. Shane said if I plan to donate any of…” The sobbing increased to thunderstorm intensity. “…Luc’s organs, they should be harvested soon.
Harvested
. Can you believe that cold son-of-a-bitch? Couching things in friendly-sounding terms when it’s little more than picking over a dying man’s remains?”

Matt’s defeated sigh could have garnered him an Oscar nomination. “But the doctor’s right, Daphne.”
He pointed to the still figure lying in the hospital bed. “That’s not Luc. He ceased being Luc when he landed flat on his back on the ledge at Slanting Cracks.”

Luc glowered at his former friend.
You oughta know, you conniving bastard.

“It should have been me,” she murmured. “I should be lying in that bed right now. Not Luc.”

“It was an accident, Daph.”

She leveled shimmering eyes at him, her expression furious. “
Another
accident. Just like Castelan, right, Matt?”

Matt
stiffened, eyes narrowing to slits. “You don’t know squat about Castelan. So if I were you, I’d keep my mouth shut.”

“I know enough. But you found out, didn’t you? You found out I planned to tell Luc what I knew. That’s why he fell.”

“It was an
accident
, Daphne,” Matt repeated while he curled his fingers around her shoulders and began kneading her muscles. To an outsider, the action would look consoling. But Luc saw Daphne wince, noticed how stark white Matt’s knuckles appeared beneath her veil of rich auburn hair. “Besides,” he added in a hushed tone, “it’s a little late to play grieving widow now. Your marriage was already over.”

She shrugged out of his grasp and craned her neck to glare at him. “Shut up!”

His hands flew up in the traditional mode of surrender. “What? You’re not going to deny it, are you?”
“Of course not. But that doesn’t mean I wanted him
dead
.” She pulled a tissue from the box on the table beside her and blotted her wrecked face. “We shouldn’t have married in the first place. It just seemed like the obvious next step. But we were so wrong for each other. You knew the wedding was a mistake. Hell,
everybody
knew. Except us. But I never wanted him dead, Matthew. I knew the marriage was coming to an end. I never expected it to end like this.” Without warning, she shot out of the chair and on a heart-wrenching wail, threw herself across Luc’s body lying in the bed. “Do you hear me, Luc? Not like this. Please. Not like this!”

A fireworks display of clarity burst in Luc’s mind, lighting up the dark secrets he’d never dared scrutinize before this moment. Daphne’s grief was overwhelmingly, frighteningly, amazingly sincere.
And in this moment of sheer vulnerability, Luc saw into her heart in a way he never had when they were married.

She hadn’t pulled the plug to keep his fortune for herself.
True, their marriage had faltered, but they were both responsible for the erosion of affection which had brought them to this denouement. He’d been too involved in the business to pay Daphne the attention she craved. Amity-For-All, her baby, had been a stopgap for her boredom. Until Castelan. The charity had never crawled out from the shadow of so many deaths. Had Daphne discovered what Luc was just now beginning to suspect? That Matt had, in fact, actually been smuggling cocaine when the authorities arrested him? That he’d destroyed Castelan because, as the police had stated, he believed the peaceful village hid a rival drug runner’s cache of cocaine?

Suspicion cloaked Luc in sodden guilt.
In death, just as in life, he might have underestimated his wife. Which led him back to one chilling conclusion. Daphne hadn’t killed Luc. Matt Cooper had.

Chapter 29

Dropping her arms to her sides, Jodie faced Mr. Lange’s curious expression head-on. Inhaling several deep cleansing breaths, she forced an attitude of banality.

“Sorry about that,” she said smoothly. “I forgot Luc had another appointment to keep. Obviously, so did he.”

Mr. Lange’s eyes narrowed. Okay, so she really sucked at lying. But she’d never had much practice with deception. Heat infused her cells as the man continued to stare her down, gaze mirroring incredulity.

“Please,” she murmured
, one hand extended in a gesture that was part plea, part comfort. “If you’ll follow me…?”

The stubborn ass shook his head, arms folded over his chest.

Oh, for heaven’s sake...

“Why not?”

“Because I’m staying here until Jen gets what’s coming to her.”

Why did every one of these bounties put up a fight? Just once, Jodie wished she’d get a case that didn’t involve psycho-bargaining to gain a spirit’s cooperation. “But I’ve already told you, your former wife’s justice might not occur until after her death.”

“I can wait.”

“No, you can’t.” Hoo-boy. Her feet itched to kick this guy’s ass and maybe knock some sense into him. “You have a new life to lead.”

She glanced around the wall of pig-headed male to the merry widow c
arefully fastening the seals on her doctored iced tea bottles.

A happier
life, I hope
.

Mr. Lange’s gaze followed Jodie’s.
“While she continues marrying and burying husbands here?” He waved her off. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Jodie sighed
and sought a new strategy from the air around her. Dammit, where had Luc gone? Okay, well, no time to speculate about his sudden disappearing act now. Right now, she had to get her man…or in this case, her bounty. Then she’d go after her man. Her
partner
.

On a deep, cleansing breath, she took a step toward the bounty. “Mr. Lange, you have to trust me.”

“Why?”

She stopped short.
“I’m sorry?”

“Why do I have to trust you? I don’t even know you. My wife…” He jerked his head in Jenny’s direction. “
I
knew
her. I gave her my heart, gave her a good home, gave her everything she could possibly want. But she killed me because she wanted more than I could give her. And now you’re asking me to trust
you
? You’ll forgive me if I don’t immediately drop everything to follow you.”

“I understand your anger. Really I do. But don’t you want to find peace?”

His lips clamped in a grim smile. “I’ll find peace when Jenny gets her comeuppance.”

“
Mr. Lange, please. Try to understand the repercussions of what you’re saying. Come with me now and you’ll know Jenny’s punishment before she does. You’ll have the satisfaction you need to move on. Refuse to accompany me and even when she faces justice in the Afterlife, you’ll be stuck wandering here, an aimless spectator stuck between realms.”

“No.”

She sighed, exhaling all her frustration in that one burst of air. “Do you realize you’re giving up your future to secure revenge for your past? Doesn’t that seem silly to you?” Sensing he’d argue, she held up a hand. “I’m sorry. Let me rephrase that. I don’t mean to anger you. I simply want you to take a moment to really decide what you want for eternity. I’m offering you the chance to move on to a new life, a new world. I’m offering you an opportunity to pursue a new love and new happiness. You’re declining all that hope to hold on to a past you’re no longer part of. Now be honest. Does that make sense to you?”

For a long time, they stared at each other, neither moving nor blinking.

Finally, Mr. Lange gave up the ghost first. “No. I don’t suppose it makes much sense at all.”

One stubborn ass down. One to go.

~~~~

Before moving on to the true villain in his drama, Luc stayed immersed in Daphne’s memories a little longer.
Long enough to view his funeral, another duty she’d handled with class and affection. The heavy scent of carnations and lilies coated Luc’s tongue until every inhale drew the bitter floral aftertaste into his lungs. Still, if Daphne could bear the torture after all their animosity during their married years, he sure as hell could stand beside her—even if she never noticed his presence.

She sat in the high wingback widow’s chair staring
, yet never really seeing, the empty casket. Knowing Luc’s yen for freedom, she’d opted to have his body cremated. At different intervals during the coming weeks, his ashes would be scattered from a low-flying plane over the areas he’d loved to explore all his life: the mountains, the woods, and the ocean.

The
empty casket was a “loaner,” rented out by the funeral home for occasions when the masses needed something to view in order to gain their sense of closure. And quite a loaner it was—the Jaguar of rental caskets. If, Luc thought, there was such a thing.

High hats mounted onto a black bar traversing the room shined spots of white light in starbursts across the gleaming mahogany wood and brass fittings. On either side of the box, massive sprays of flowers stood sentry.
Scarlet ribbons declared, “I Love You,” “Beloved Husband,” and the obligatory, “Dearest Friend” in gold script. Matt, of course, had sent the largest spray. As the new sole owner of their lucrative fiscal management business, he could well afford the extravagance.

The bastard.

Atop the casket sat a framed 20 x 30-inch photograph of a smiling Luc, alive and in full earthly glory, wearing an open white shirt and lightweight tan pants rolled up above the ankle. He stood at the edge of the turquoise Caribbean Sea, bare feet awash in foamy water and crystalline sand. He recognized the scenery and the circumstances as if the photo had been snapped only an hour ago. Probably because he rarely sported such relaxed attire. Except on vacation. The snapshot came from a beach in Bermuda. Their first wedding anniversary. A surprise trip for Daphne. When he still thought they’d had a chance to make their marriage successful.

Their love might not have survived, but newfound respect flourished as Luc continued to watch
Daphne screw up her courage with each minute that elapsed. As pale and shaken as she was, no one saw her pain. In comparison, Luc’s mind turned to Jodie. She had that same brave face in adversity. And a boundless supply of empathy to go with it. Knowing now what he didn’t then, if he could’ve lived his life over, he’d choose Daphne for a friend, but Jodie for a wife.

Whoa. Why the hell would he even think like that?

Because, idiot, she’s everything you thought Daphne was and more. Exciting, challenging, funny, and clever all packaged in a body of womanly curves and soft emotions.

But his saner side reminded him that, had they lived, he and Jodie would have never met.

Worse, if they had somehow met, she probably would have learned the details of the hush money he spread around to hide the culprit behind all her pain. No way she’d forgive him. Hell, he couldn’t forgive himself. Isn’t that why he hadn’t confessed his culpability when she told him about that day in Castelan? Every time Luc saw her scars now, he’d remember how he’d nearly destroyed her. By protecting the villain responsible for the loss of her parents and the destruction of her entire childhood, he’d betrayed her.

Shame washed over him, polluted and clammy.
What a waste. To know a woman as unique as Jodie, to learn the truth and come to terms with his past mistakes, he’d had to die. Imagine. If he hadn’t gone climbing that day… If he’d never trusted Matt… If, if, if…

Enough.
He couldn’t change the past. Wasn’t that what Placide constantly harped about? Luc had taken this journey—far too late—to discover the reason behind his pain in the Afterlife. And clearly, Daphne was not the main cause of that pain. So where was the truly guilty party?

Senses alert, he studied the crowd and watched the events as
they unfolded in the mists of earthly time. Faces he’d forgotten since his death crammed inside the overly warm room, adding their own odors of sweat and misery. Each mourner who stopped to offer condolences to the widow, each handshake, each whispered expression of sorrow diminished her stature a little more until she resembled a child seated in a chair far too big for her delicate frame.

But then
Matt leaned over her, cupping her trembling hands. “I’m so sorry, Daphne,” he murmured in dulcet tones.

Her eyes flash
ing emerald fire, she shot to stiff posture while remaining seated, every inch the lady. But her voice carried a razor’s edge-sharpness. “
Are
you?”

For the briefest b
reath, his face registered surprise, but all too quickly reverted to his business mask. “Of course.” He patted her fingers. “You’re distressed and don’t know what you’re saying. Perfectly understandable in this situation. Would you like a Valium?”

Ripping her hands from his, she hissed, “You disgust me.”

Before the next person in line might notice anything amiss, Matt offered a terse nod and moved on toward the photo atop the casket. Only Luc heard Daphne’s thoughts as surely as if she shouted them.
I know you had something to do with his death, Matt Cooper. And I’ll make sure you pay. If it takes the rest of my life and every dime Luc left me…

Luc sucked in a breath. How had she known? Especially since he himself had never suspected the truth.

“Don’t worry, Daph,” he told her now. “
I’ll
make sure he pays.”

But of course, Daphne didn’t respond to his vow. For her, Luc As
ante was dead and gone. Nothing but painful suspicions lingered.