Secrets Of Bella Terra (19 page)

“I’ll take your opinion under advisement.” Ebrillwen’s tone made it clear she considered his advice an impertinence. “I will, of course, be responsible for my employee’s continued presence on the premises.”

Brooke stood. She scrutinized Ebrillwen, then spoke quietly to Madelyn, who wiped her face on the hem of her own shirt and nodded.

Ebrillwen pointed to Madelyn, then indicated the gate.

Madelyn walked through it, and the two women disappeared down the path.

“I don’t know why Brooke wants to employ that woman. She’s the most frightening piece of work I’ve ever seen,” Noah said.

“I guess.” Rafe looked toward the spot where the head of housekeeping and her employee had disappeared, then back at Brooke.

Madelyn had been protective of Brooke, and in equal measure, Brooke had been protective of Madelyn. Yet she’d let Madelyn go to an apparent reprimand and possible dismissal without argument. Which meant she knew something not immediately apparent to DuPey, Noah, and Rafe; Ebrillwen was in fact rescuing Madelyn from continued interrogation.

Ebrillwen was right: Madelyn had been through enough.

So had Brooke.

From within the Dumpster, the coroner called, “I’ve found him!”

Brooke flinched at the reminder of what was in the Dumpster.

“I’m taking Brooke away. Give me your cart key,” Rafe said to Noah.

Noah delivered at once.

“And make sure we can get into her cottage.”

Noah got out his cell phone and made the call.

Going to Brooke’s side, Rafe wrapped his arm around her and told DuPey, “I’m taking Brooke home now. If you have any more questions, she’ll be available tomorrow.”

Obviously torn, DuPey looked between Brooke and the Dumpster.

The coroner called again.

“All right, later,” DuPey said, and, grabbing the digital camera, he headed up the ladder.

Noah walked with Rafe and Brooke through the gate, past the police officers, past the gawking gardeners and the spa employees and the maids and the tourists. While Rafe climbed behind the wheel of the golf cart, Noah helped Brooke into the seat. After a glance at her frozen expression, Noah turned to the crowd and shouted, “Any of my employees who don’t have anything to do except stand around are going to find themselves looking for jobs.”

Rafe recognized some of the ones who left: Jenna Campbell; Zachary Adams; the barkeep, Tom Chan; and Trent, the handsome young waiter. He recognized the ones who stayed, too: Victor Ruíz, who pushed forward to speak to Noah, gesturing toward Brooke with frowning concern, and a glamorous redhead disguised with large sunglasses and a scarf tied over her hair.

All of them were suspects now.

Although he supposed he couldn’t in all good sense suspect his own mother.

He started the golf cart up the path, maneuvered his way through the guests who lingered and gossiped; then, as the way cleared, he sped up. As they drove past the pool area, they met Josh Hoffman carrying a white plastic garbage bag.

Rafe slowed. “Where are you going?”

The young gardener indicated the bag. “I’ve got a bunch more gopher bodies to dump.”

Brooke whimpered and put her head down on her knees.

“What’s going on?” Josh looked between the two of them.

“If you’re going to the Dumpster, you’ll find out soon enough.” Rafe stabilized Brooke with his hand on her back, then zipped past Josh and brought the cart up to full speed. As they turned onto the path that led to Brooke’s cottage, he told her, “The air will make you feel better.”

“Right.” She eased herself up again, but kept her eyes closed.

As they neared her cottage, they met a beautiful, curvaceous blonde running up the path. As soon as she saw Brooke, she called, “You’re so wonderful! So wonderful. You told me to look where I hadn’t thought of!”

Brooke opened her eyes. She gestured to Rafe.

He stopped the cart.

Impervious to their tension, the blonde bubbled over with joy. “In my evening purse, the one I didn’t carry last night. When I got back to the room, I must have stuck it in there to keep it safe. Look, Brooke, look.” She waved a sparkling piece of jewelry. “I found my ring!”

R
afe stopped in front of Brooke’s cottage. “Stay there,” he told her.

She made no objection, didn’t suggest she could take care of herself or that what had happened today didn’t matter.

It did matter. A man she had known and liked was dead. She’d lifted him out of the garbage. She’d stared him in the eyes. She’d stepped into his decaying body . . . and nothing she ever did would erase that memory.

Now all she wanted was to get into her cottage and be alone to curl into the fetal position and try to forget.

Gathering her willpower, she prepared to move . . . and Rafe stepped up to her side, reached into the cart, lifted and carried her to her front door. “It’s open,” he said.

She looked at him in disbelief.

“I spoke to Noah. Just turn the handle and we’re in.”

She did it. She turned the handle.

He carried her over the threshold, through the front room, and into the bathroom. He put her down, stripped her out of the spa robe. Reaching into the gray tiled shower, he turned on the faucet. As soon as the water started steaming, he pushed her in and shut the door after her.

She stood there in her shirt and bra and panties, alone and desolate, happy to be in the warm water, yet knowing she had never been so isolated in her life.

People had stared at her. The guests. Zachary and his gardeners. Jenna and her manicurists and her masseuses. Brooke was a freak, a woman who had raised the dead.

Wrapping her arms around her waist, she let the shower massager pound the tense muscles of her shoulders and her neck. Her legs trembled; she could have sat on the blue tile seat, probably should have, but she didn’t have the strength or the will to move.

Then the door opened.

Rafe stepped into the shower, big, naked, intent—but not aroused. That was all too obvious.

She shouldn’t have cared. After what had happened, it shouldn’t have been a matter of importance that this man who had always desired her now did not. Yet that meant nothing; she did care, and Rafe’s physical indifference to her raised her misery to a new level.

He unbuttoned her shirt, slid it off, and tossed it over the glass door. It made a soppy
thwap
as it hit the tile floor. He reached for her shoulders, turned her back to him, unsnapped her bra, and slid her panties down her legs.

Now she was naked, too.

Still nothing sexual in his touch.

Of course not. Who would want her now? She’d brought a dead man up out of the garbage. She’d stepped into his rotting body.

But right from the first time she’d seen him, Rafe had been her friend. He proved it now, staying with her, turning her to face him, taking the soap in his hands and creating a lather, then washing her face and turning her into the downpour to wash it off. He scrubbed her neck and ears, her shoulders and arms, her hands. Taking the handheld down, he turned the dial to “pulse” and rinsed her with a spray so vigorous it felt as if he were peeling her skin off.

Gradually, she relaxed.

This was exactly what she needed.

Taking her nail brush, he cleaned her right hand again, lightly on the skin, then briskly under her fingernails.

He used the massage spray once more.

He washed her chest, her breasts, her belly. He turned her and soaped her back, between her legs, down to her feet. Then again he used the brush on her foot, scrubbing her, rinsing her with the handheld, and washing her again.

Funny. She would have thought nothing could ever make her clean again, and yet . . . Rafe understood how she felt. He knew what to do. She didn’t think there was another man who would come into the shower and help her without flinching in revulsion.

He knelt at her feet. Looked up at her. “Better?” he asked.

She looked down at the suds swirling around the drain. Disappearing. She gazed at her hand, at her foot, the skin pink from a thorough scrubbing.

Fragments of thought drifted her way.

So many times on the news the reporters spoke of the discovery of a body. The story always spoke of the one who was fallen, of the deceased’s family, of the manner and motive of the death. On the TV shows, the story was always about solving the crime. No one ever spoke of the shock and terror of the one who found the corpse. “Is everyone traumatized by the sight of death, or am I overreacting?” She looked down at Rafe, his blue eyes kind, his hair glistening and curly, his skin so beautifully tanned, the water dampening it to a warm sheen. . . .

“No,” he said. “You’re not overreacting.”

“How do you stand it?” Her voice rasped as if the tears waited just beyond reach. “How do you bear the memories of people you’ve seen die? Of people who are rotting in their graves? Do you see them every time you close your eyes?”

“Sometimes I see them. The people I’ve killed.” He stroked her hip and her thigh, not sexually, but tenderly, reassuring her that she was not alone. “More often, I see my friends who have died at my side. They haunt me. Sometimes in my mind, I hear the whisper of their voices. Sometimes at night, I can’t sleep for recalling the good times . . . and the bad. Sometimes in a flash I see my friends as they were in death—and you know the kind of deaths I mean. I told you once.”

“I remember.” She remembered, too, feeling sympathy for his pain. But never had she imagined she would experience those emotions firsthand.

She didn’t want to experience those emotions firsthand.

She wanted time to reverse. She wanted to be the woman she had been this morning when the worst of her concerns were a missing diamond and an annoying and too attractive ex-boyfriend.

She gave a single sob, loud and unrestrained.

But the tears weren’t here yet. It was still all horror and fear and disbelief and sorrow.

He continued to kneel, continued to speak. “The nightmares come and go, but they never completely vanish. Still, I ask myself—would I want them to? Would I want to be so inured to ugly death that I no longer shudder in fear and unwilling sympathy? I’ve met people who no longer notice death, who no longer grieve their friends and their families, and to reach that place, they live in the lowest circles of hell.” In a slow, deep, familiar voice, Rafe was informing her of matters she had never comprehended. “Thank God for the nightmares, Brooke, and know that tomorrow you’ll feel the sunshine on your skin.”

The warm water misted her face, wet her hair, sluiced down her naked body. The moist, bitter-orange-soap-scented air filled her lungs.

Rafe was right. She was alive—but still grieving. Still chased by relentless memories. Still seeing Luis and his eyes, so wide and reproachful in death . . .

Something had to be done.

And she knew only one guaranteed solution.

She was an adult. She full well understood the consequences when she asked, “Can you make me forget?”

“O
h, yes. I can do that.” Rafe looked up at Brooke, his eyes serious and intent, his erection stirring.

Reassuring to know she could still move this man to passion.

Pushing his fingers into the small ruffle of hair over her nether lips, he wordlessly sought permission to touch, to taste. “If you’re sure that’s what you want.”

“Forgetfulness is exactly what I want.” Arms straight, palms flat, she leaned back against the cool tile and let it support her. Sliding her legs apart, she braced herself and waited . . . waited for the oblivion she knew he could give her.

Leaning into her, he took a long, hedonistic breath. “The scent of you . . . You are pure woman, seductive, generous, a nurturing earth mother and a cruel seductress all at the same time.”

It was a sorcerer’s trick to make her sound so desirable . . . but it was a trick she could live with.

His tongue flicked out. He struck like a snake, getting his first sample of the world between her legs. “I love to taste you.” His whisper was hoarse, low, warm, secretive, taking her away, back to another time when he first taught her how a skilled man could make a woman sing out her pleasure. “When you come, it’s like honey on my tongue.”

“I can’t come. Not yet. If I let myself go—”

“You’ll scream. You’ll cry. You’ll curse the fate that brought you to that Dumpster at that moment. I know. So let me enjoy myself and you can simply stand there and endure.” His tongue rasped against her again. “You can do that, can’t you?”

“You’re so full of shit,” she muttered. And he was, because he knew perfectly well she would do more than endure.

As he licked her, sucked her, used his tongue and lips and teeth to explore her, her mind emptied, her thoughts vanished, and she was all sensation and growing lust. Her knees trembled under his assault; she wondered if she would ignominiously collapse onto the floor of the shower and sprawl there with her legs apart while he had his way with her.

At this moment, that sounded good.

But he pulled away, a move that made her whimper in distress. With his hands on her hips, he moved her to the tile seat. “Here.” He stood, helped her sit; then, with one knee beside her hip, he leaned over. Their lips met. He opened her mouth and with his tongue, that talented, versatile tongue, he kissed her.

That kiss was a blatant imitation of intercourse; he thrust in and out, heating her from the inside out. The friction was good. The taste of him was better. When he wrapped his hands around her neck and fed her memories of their first kiss, she discovered she harbored no thought at all.

He sank into the kiss as if that encounter expressed his every wish for the two of them. . . .

It did not express her every wish. She leaned back, braced one foot against the tile wall, and lifted her hips, wantonly offering herself to him.

He seemed oblivious, using his fingers to massage the tight muscles behind her neck until she groaned with the delight of relaxation . . . and need.

Tilting her head back, he used his teeth against her throat, nipping in short, almost painful bites that made her jump and open her eyes.