Liar's Moon (19 page)

“Why am I being cruel?” he was shouting. She didn’t care.

“I don’t ever want to go back—”

“Why not?”

“I hate you!”

“Tell me the truth, Tracy!”

“I hate you! I despise you!”

“The truth! We can end it all now!”

“No—”

“Then I have to prove the truth to you, Tracy. Cruel and brutal as you seem to think it is.”

“What—”

“Tell me!”

She couldn’t tell him anything else. The sweet, pleasant, overwhelmingly urge to drift from the present overwhelmed her.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
hey were somewhere far over the Atlantic when she awoke.

Curiously, her first sensation was one of mild interest —or perhaps it was merely that she awoke still feeling exhausted and too lethargic to give way to her growing sense of resentment and fury.

And so, awakening slowly, it was with interest that she looked around herself. She knew where she was—she’d heard about the groups’ various jaunts and tours on the plane. She’d never been on it, though, and despite everything else, she was intrigued.

She was on one of two very plush recliners that lay against either side of the renovated plane. A table sat between them. There was a bar just beyond the sofas, and beyond that was a large round table surrounded by captain’s chairs. It was fantastic, Tracy thought, that an airplane could so resemble a living room.

And then she remembered why she was on the plane.

Abruptly, she sat up, pausing to grip her temples as it seemed that bells went off in her head. A moment’s panic seized her as she realized that she was alone, and the fantasy living room high in the air seemed like a corridor in the Twilight Zone. With a swift movement she turned
to the windows, sliding open the slim plastic cover with a vengeance.

They were in the clouds. High, high above the earth, moving with a quiet hum through some strange eternity.

Switzerland…

Switzerland was their destination.
He knew.

She shivered suddenly, then forced herself to swallow back an irrational fear. He knew.

So what!

He knew that she’d had a child; that the child was long dead and buried. What was his point? He was taking her back to prove it, but to what end, she wondered in anguish.

It just all seemed to be the height of cruelty; to prove that she had been nothing short of a fool to stay anywhere near Leif Johnston. Once burned
…
but she had come back anyway. She’d come back in memory of her father, but she’d been compelled to relive another memory, and she’d even begun to believe that memory could become truth—that he loved her.

She should have known. She should have been forewarned. She knew him well enough to be certain that his tenderness could be hypnotic—but that his temper was ruthless, and little ever stood in his way once he was determined.

The door to the cockpit suddenly opened. Leif stood there, quietly closing it in his wake, looking at her pensively, but saying nothing. Tracy returned his stare with cold reproach. There was nowhere that she could go—no way to avoid him. He walked down the length of the plane to the bar. The distance seemed very long, yet he filled that distance with his strides, with his silent presence. He slipped behind the bar and spoke to her.

“Can I get you something?”

“No.”

“We’ve still got several hours in the air.”

She gave him no reply. He poured himself a drink of something amber and came back around, sitting on the sofa opposite her. Idly he crossed an ankle over his knee and sipped his drink, but his eyes didn’t waver from hers. “You still don’t feel talkative?” he inquired softly.

“No.”

He lit a cigarette, inhaled and exhaled. “Tracy—”

“I haven’t anything to say to you. You are cruel and obnoxious and totally without principle.”

“
I
am cruel?” he inquired with a sardonic smile curling his lip.

Tracy clenched her teeth tightly together. How could he possibly switch the tables at a time like this? And yet that bitterness in his voice proclaimed him the one wronged, and it cast her into a pool of confusion, where she felt near tears again.

“How do you intend to manage the rest of this, Leif?” she asked him smoothly. She would not cry, she would not break, she would not give him the least satisfaction. If she closed within herself, if she could talk, walk, and feel with cold disdain, she would make it.

“Have you got more pills up your sleeve, Mr. Johnston? Unless you’re planning on murdering me, I’ll exit the plane sooner or later. And when I do, I plan to charge you with abduction.”

“Do you really?” he replied as coolly.

“Of course.”

“You’re not afraid of what I might decide to do?”

“What can you do?” she demanded heatedly, then warned herself that she was not maintaining calm. But it was difficult; it was nearly impossible. The plane, which
had seemed so huge for two people, seemed ridiculously small. He was so close.

The same man who had taught her from the very beginning what love could be. Who had come to her in her dreams. Who had spoken so recently in a haunting voice that tore at her heart ab
out the caring he had felt…
the caring that had lingered.

Lies. It did not seem that he cared about anything.

The same man who had held her yesterday. Made love to her; filled her and touched her—and left her lost and confused. He’d been planning this. All along. But for the love of God—
why?

Tracy lowered her eyes. She couldn’t look into the smoldering gray eyes that could hold love and passion and then hide away all emotion. She couldn’t look at his strong body, handsomely encased in his suit, somehow more distant because of the formal attire. His hands, long and powerful, capable of gentleness, capable of force.

Capable of touching her
…
and God help her, she still wanted this all to be only a nightmare. She wanted to be able to fly across the distance between them and curl into his arms.
She wanted to smooth
the lines of severity away from his lean cheeks, run her fingers over the grim line of his mouth and watch it ease into a lazy, crooked half-smile, full of sensuality and laughter.

The distance grew between them. She couldn’t touch him. She could never go near him again. Not after this.

He was frowning at her, slowly arching a brow. “What can I do?” It seemed that it was a whispered query, full of outrage and incredulity. He stood, and she braced herself, because she wasn’t going to back away, but neither was she going to let him come near her.

He didn’t. He walked around the bar, restless, filled with tension and a chilling energy barely held in check.

Then he laughed dryly and she couldn’t tell which of them he mocked.

“What can I do? Maybe nothing—since apparently you didn’t care to begin with. And the last few days didn’t make any difference.”

What was he talking about? she wondered. She shook her head, easing somewhat, but lacing her fingers together tightly as she looked down at them.

“How could I care when you behave like this?”

“What the hell does my behavior have to do with it?” he exploded suddenly.

And then she tensed all over, because he moved again, a swift stride that brought him instantly to her, on one knee, wrenching her hands into his, bringing her startled eyes to meet his glare, silver now with a burning intensity.

“Why did you come back?” he demanded fiercely.

She tried to wrench her hands away. She could not. With a little cry she fought him wildly, wrenching and pulling, succeeding only in finding herself on her back— with his legs straddled over her and he showing no apology at all for his crude behavior.

“I did not come back!” she spat out, furious. “I came to find my brother! Because of my father! You had nothing to do with it! You should have never had anything to do with it!”

“Is that the truth?” he whispered so softly that she barely heard him, but the skepticism in his voice was like a shout. “You didn’t come back to take something from me?”

“No!” she screamed. “There is nothing that you’ve got that I want, Leif Johnston! Nothing! Get off of me!”

To her surprise, he inhaled deeply—then abruptly released her. “Well,” he murmured, pouring himself another drink at the bar and lifting his glass to her, “that is a relief. Or it should be. Actually, I’m even more disappointed.”

Tracy leapt to her feet, not about to be cornered again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I think you’re mad!”

He studied her over the rim of his glass, then lowered it back to the bar. “Oh, yeah, Tracy. Sure.”

He left the bar and she moved out of his way. He paused, watching that movement of hers with high amusement. “Don’t worry, Tracy. I promise—no more violence. My apologies for that last disgraceful episode. I just keep thinking that I can get the truth out of you one way or another.”

She closed her eyes, exhaling raggedly, clenching her fingers into tight fists at her sides.

“What truth! What do you want me to say? What are you getting at? Yes, I had a child! It lived for eight hours! That’s where we’re going, isn’t it?” she inquired coldly. “Zurich. A cemetery. Who are we proving this to—you or me?”

He stared at her, a shocked look on his face. They stood so rigid; both of them, she realized. Rigid and apart, burning with heat and fever. Longing to tear in
to one another, longing to…

Let the fire burn, and see what remained in the ashes.

No. There would be nothing but those ashes. Loss and bitterness and all the things that had come between them. All the things that they had been; a child, learning that love was a greater thing than vengeance, learning it too late.

And a man—betrayed. In so many ways.

She felt the horrible urge to cry again. Tears that loomed in anguish and bitterness, pressing like a flow of
lava against her eyes. For her mother and her father, for herself and Leif. For the infant who lay beneath a little stone in a cold cemetery where perhaps even the little headstone would be under a layer of snow.

For the young girl she had been; seeing that child buried after holding it only once—then turning her back on all that her life had been in the hopes of finding a life of her own.

She should have never returned. Nothing could bring her father back. Jesse was
as cold and dead as that long-
dead child, and there would probably never be any way to prove that his murder had been conspiracy. Judgment would have to lie in some greater court than any on earth.

She lowered her head, moistening her lips slightly. “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me, Leif. I really thought that if what you felt wasn’t eternal love and devotion, you at least—you at least cared.”

He was very, very still for a moment. He moved toward her then, and though she stiffened, she didn’t resist. He raised her chin, and when she looked at him then her heart leapt, for oddly, in the silver-and-gray depths of his eyes, she could have sworn that he was as to
rn
as she, that he felt an anguish greater than her own.

“I couldn’t believe what you did to me, Tracy,” he said quietly. “I—”

He broke off and shook his head. Then he released her abruptly and his long strides took him away, toward the cockpit once again. He paused there with his back to her.

“Tracy, we’re going through with this. I can’t tell you exactly why right now, but I’ll do whatever it takes to see that it happens.”

“I don’t know what—”

“We have to refuel in London, then we’ll be in Zurich. You are coming with me. One way or the other.”

“Bast—”

“One way or the other,” he repeated. Then he returned to the cockpit.

Tracy fell back to the couch, shivering, exhausted, horribly spent. She closed her eyes tightly, wondering what she would do. If she screamed and fought, they’d have to help her in London. And she should charge him with kidnapping and assault.

She found the brandy and poured herself a large snifter. It burned its way through her and she shuddered again. Her stomach felt like an empty pit. The brandy didn’t help—it made her feel more wretched.

She slowly walked back to the couch and sat, and then even more slowly stretched out again, resting her head against the throw pillow, delighting in the coolness against her hot cheeks.

Suddenly she closed her eyes again because the pain that streaked through was like the tearing blow of a red-hot poker. How cruel in the scheme of things that memory could be so clear and vivid! But it was abruptly there, with her, as it hadn’t been in years. A picture painted across her mind in bright and crystal colors. The little house in the mountains, her room, all in white and softest mauves. The snow beyond the windowsills; the flowers her mother had flo
wn in every day from Italy…

The doctor who came. The hours in which she struggled, and he assured her in his guttural German that she was doing fine. And then being in that beautiful white room with the cool snow outside, but drenched in sweat and laughing, and excitedly holding the tiny, tiny newborn life that had been her son, her very own son. It hadn’t mattered that Leif was married to Celia; it hadn’t
mattered at all. She had been in love with the baby, and so triumphant and pleased and cocooned in the wonder of that love.

But not even that was to be hers. She’d fallen asleep in blissful dreams and awakened to a nightmare. Her grandfather, sitting beside her, holding her hand. Telling her in the kindest fashion that it was just one of those things, and that maybe it was for the best—she could start her life over.