Shadows of the Past (13 page)

After he handed it back, he took her arm, tucking it through his. “The car’s this way.”

For about ten seconds, she thought of explaining why everything she carried in her purse was not only necessary but also absolutely essential. What was the point? He wouldn’t get it, her brothers didn’t and they’d been married for years.

“Why can’t you take the rest of the break off? I don’t like you being alone in that office all day.” Franc had been hammering at this argument for all of the ten minutes they’d sat waiting at traffic lights, queuing to get onto the Harbour Bridge.

“Someone has to be at the office in case of an emergency. I can’t let my boss down.”

He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. What if something happened when he wasn’t on hand to prevent it? His inquiries into Randy’s whereabouts had gone nowhere fast. He was out of town, or that was the story he’d been given by the few people Franc thought would know.

The biggest stumbling block came up when he’d asked, “Out of town, where?” No one knew.

He tried a new argument on Maria. “Maybe if you explained to your boss, he’d find someone to take your place.”

“Nooo,” she gasped, lacing the word with indignation. “Apart from myself, and presumably Randy, you’re the only one who knows what’s going on.” She crossed her arms and went on the defensive. “Instead of rattling on about what might happen, you should be pleased that I’ve had time to check out that polymer you’ve had designed to use as a conductive thread. Not a sniff of it anywhere on the Internet.”

Though the last bit of information was news he’d been waiting to hear,
that
was the future. He wanted to fix her life now.

He’d made great plans for this evening and he could be shooting them down in flames, but it was as if he couldn’t help showing that he was anxious about her. They’d gone all over the stuff about her parents practically hiding her away from anyone but family, as if they suspected everyone who saw her would want to abduct her. An exaggeration? Maybe, but viewed from this distance a slight one to be expected.

At the same time, taking her parents’ lead and locking her up in his apartment for the next eight days was starting to sound like the only solution to the problem.

Hell, if Brent could read his thoughts, he’d be telling him his attitude was set on overkill. But, he’d be hard pressed to tell his friend why it felt so necessary to him. Hell, he couldn’t explain it to himself, never mind a second party.

They’d barely scraped through the traffic lights, when Maria loosened the knot in her arms and deigned to talk to him again.

“Don’t think I haven’t thought about broadcasting the trouble I’m having among my friends. But do you know how quickly gossip spreads in this town? With my background, it would only take some journalist to get wind of it, and the whole shebang, including my past abduction, would be front-page news.”

She huffed loudly before continuing, a sign that he still wasn’t off the hook. “During the holiday season they’ll jump on anything more exciting than the latest seaside town to bring in a liquor ban for New Year’s.”

He got her point only too well. Now that the Santas and the little kids with giant teddies had passed their use-by date, there was a dearth of anything enthralling happening locally.

“I’d forgotten about that.”

“Well, that’s the difference between us. I can’t forget…I mean, I can’t remember the abduction, but I can’t forget it took place.”

The silence between them stretched out as if the past had built a brick wall through the middle of the vehicle. He took his eyes off the traffic ahead of them for less than a second to dart a glance her way. It was long enough to see her fingers twisting in her lap. He realized she was building up to something. The best he could do for the moment was give her time to come out with whatever she had on her mind. He just hadn’t expected it to slice through his gut like a ragged-edged blade.

“I dream about what happened, you know? But when I wake, however hard I try, I can’t remember the dre

He couldn’t find the words, so he reached over to clasp her hand. The knowledge that this was something he couldn’t fix pooled like molten lead in the pit of his stomach.

“Tomorrow, lock yourself in the office and don’t let anyone in unless it’s someone you know.”

“But I know Randy.”

He was glad to see the Stafford Road exit coming up, and for the need to concentrate as he changed lanes to slip into another stream. Once again Maria had robbed him of words, but he could think of much better ways to do that. Tonight, he’d keep them so busy Randy wouldn’t have a chance to cross either of their minds.

It was dark in the apartment. They’d eaten hours ago then cuddled up on the settee, watching TV. When he’d left her alone a few minutes ago, he’d turned off the lights, teasing, “Wait here in the dark you’re so fond of. I’ve prepared a surprise.”

She didn’t hear Franc approach as she stood by the window watching the glow from the streetlights, but she sensed him, every hair on her body acted as an antenna when he was around.

A fancy sparked in her imagination as Franc led her through the darkened apartment, that she’d been lost, and he was taking her home.
Home.

“Welcome to my home,” he’d said the first day he’d brought her here. Christmas Eve. Yet her belongings were still in a room that wasn’t his. So much for the,
“You can choose any room as long it’s mine,”
when he’d asked where she wanted to sleep tonight.

And where was he taking her now? Guiding her past obstacles that loomed in the dark as if they didn’t exist. Eyes as yet unused to the black spaces of the interior hallway, she only knew they stood at a doorway when she heard a handle turn and the lock click open.

“Welcome to paradise, hon,” he whispered as he pulled her into his room. He’d lit the place with hundreds of candles of all shapes and sizes. Her attempt at adding a romantic ambience to the dinner table appeared halfhearted compared to this, though Franc had been pleased she’d thought of it.

“Great minds think alike,” he whispered now, breaking into her thoughts.

Maria culled the figure of hundreds of candles by more than half as her pupils adjusted to the soft wavering brilliance to discover that the reflected glory of the flames danced between both mirrors and glass in the floor-length windows, darkened on the outside by the night sky.

Franc’s chest was bare, likewise his feet. No wonder she hadn’t heard him cross the living room. She turned to him, finding his features softened by the candlelight and something more, something that whispered between them as tangible as another person in the room. “It’s beautiful. How did you manage all this in a few moments?”

“I’m good, hon, but not that good. I set all this up earlier. Why do you think I didn’t move your stuff into this room before you went to change? Believe me, It wasn’t because I didn’t want you sleeping in my arms tonight as I’d promised.”

He pulled her into the center of the room. “Look.” He turned her to the mirror opposite the foot of his large bed; the long narrow table below it was awash with candles, and their glow was more soft than bright. “Look in the mirror, you’re beautiful. And see here.”

On the bedside cabinets he’d placed tall columns of pale ivory-scented wax, held by two very modern candelabra either side of the mirror hanging over the bed. “All I’ve done is put you in the proper setting for romance.

“And look here.” Franc turned her this time toward the tall windows, stretching from floor to ceiling that led onto the balcony. “The whole world dims before your beauty.”

Maria saw herself, taller, slimmer, dressed in a mauve dress because he’d said the color made her eyes look like pansies. Her black hair gleamed in untidy curls atop her head, Franc’s arms held her. Her narrower shoulders sloped softly in front of Franc. Compared to the width of his chest, she was tiny.

But more, what called to her emotions was his gaze, on her, on her reflection, over and over again. And it was the look in his eyes that made her feel beautiful. Made her heart jolt wildly in her breast, as if it had been missing all the years since she was seventeen and had acknowledged that her life would never be ordinary, never be like other girls’, like her peers’, and at that moment she found it again.

“Don’t move. I’m not too good at this.” His hands went to her ears and she felt the cold weight of gold brush her neck. Earrings. “Merry belated Christmas, hon.”

She touched the long narrow gold and amethyst drops as she leaned back into his shoulder. Suddenly, wanting more than an image of the man behind her, she turned in his arms. “I’m lost for words, awed that you’d go to all this trouble for me. Thank you, Franc.”

The corners of his eyes creased as he sent her a wry smile. “No need for thanks. I did it to seduce you, and I think it worked.”

More than a pinch of self-deprecation laced Franc’s voice, evoking a questioning lift of her eyebrow. “Okay, you’ve got me. Sure, I want to seduce you, I’m no fool.” His head bent, closing the gap between their mouths. “I want…need to overlay the memories, hidden or not, with romance, with finesse. The initiation is over. This time we’re really going to make
love.
”

The last word dropped on her lips like an exclamation mark as she exhaled and was left breathless until Franc filled her with his own, kissing her deeply, tongue gliding against tongue, teeth leaving a tattoo on her lips that branded her as his.

“Hone-e-y,” he groaned, grazing her temple with the soft slide of stubble. His fingers put a flurry in her nerve endings from wrist to shoulder that spiked in her womb, releasing moist heat inside her panties.

Pressing openmouthed kisses on the curve of her shoulder, he nibbled at the cord of her neck. “I’m glad I didn’t mark your skin yesterday. I worried about that.”

“Makeup. Concealer,” she murmured, sinking back into him, the still-fresh memory lighting a fire inside her, burning strong, burning true, a fitting rival for the heat in Franc’s eyes. If he only knew, she would have worn the mark proudly if she hadn’t thought it might embarrass him.

Her zipper slid down quicker than his Porsche could go from zero to sixty. Franc nudged her cheek with his chin until she faced straight ahead. “I want you to watch this.”

She shivered; more from the way his voice played on her senses than the cooler air striking her breasts as mauve georgette gave way to pale gold skin and black lace. Sliding lower, the curve of her waist, lower, a matching high-cut thong that hid more than one secret. With Franc’s guiding hands easing her dress’s descent, she watched it fall in a dark puddle at her feet.

As dark as the world she saw outside the window.

Though the lighting was soft, she tensed slightly, worrying about his reaction when her scars were uncovered. Surely, if there was one person she could reveal them to, it was Franc.

Sliding a finger under her bra strap, he ran it up and down. “The black lace can stay on…for a little while.”

He cupped her palm in his and placed his lips at its center, making her breath quicken, her body quicken, and her concerns fade away. He sought and found new hollows, the inside of her elbows, the ridge of her collarbone and filled them with kisses.

His bedroom was a place out of time filled with ancient magic and the dancing light of flickering candles, where his hands held her mesmerized. Touch built on touch. Smooth feminine curves, hers, surrendered to hard hands, his, and she watched it all played out as though it were two other people. Two lovers dancing an erotic ballet choreographed in the land of the Kama Sutra. Honey-colored hands caressed bronzed flanks, and tanned fingers splayed like stars across black lace as if they were both figures carved into the walls of an Indian temple, floating high above a secret jungle.

Her heart bounded as he released her bra, but holding his gaze with hers in the dark-mirrored window provided a reprieve, and soon his hands closed over the pale-silvered remnants of a past she couldn’t recall yet wished she could forget.

With a snap, the narrow waist of her thong gave way to his strength, laying her almost completely bare to his eyes, balancing on sandals with straps so fine they looked as if they’d been drawn in henna on her feet.

His hands moved lower, across her belly, below her navel. She held her breath as she sensed his hesitation, like an exclamation in the sensual force he’d built around them.

Her sigh, as his hands moved on, recognized she’d been correct in her perception of the man holding her. He could be trusted, was a much bigger man than the pervert who’d cut her.

Desire weighed heavily on her limbs. Franc became her sole support. Her eyelids drooped as his fingers took up the rhythm of the dance at the heart of her and ripped restless sighs from her throat.

“No, don’t close your eyes. I want you to see…look at your reflection in the window.”

She wanted to let go, to drift away on a flood of pleasure like nothing she’d known before, but the rough urgent voice in her ear persisted, insisted.

“Look. I want you to see what I see when you shatter.”

Francong fingers slipped inside her; cold heat in a roaring furnace. His thumb rotated and Maria shattered. Saw what he saw, and didn’t recognize the sensual being she’d become under his hands.

S
ome candles burned faster than others while their slow sensual lovemaking played out on the large bed. Eventually, the smell of gutteri
ng candlewicks drove a reluctant Franc out of Maria’s arms. In the end, he snuffed out every candle but the two branches of aromatic columns beside the bed.

His movements stirred the air, tossing lazy flickers of gold candlelight over the covers to kiss the swell of Maria’s breasts as he’d looked down on her. Her eyes were closed, but she wasn’t asleep, just avoiding the next hesitant step in their relationship.

Yeah, a relationship. That’s what they had going.

When had it morphed from a lighthearted fling for the summer break he’d intended? Become more than an escape from the boredom he’d seen stretching ahead of him. He’d worked nonstop for almost a year on a project on the viability of weaving communications modules into fabric for use on the sleeves or collar of a jacket, but the calls to return to his undertaking grew fainter when he was with Maria.

But right now, as he perused her breasts, thoughts, deep and unpleasant, gnawed on the explanation Maria had given him for her modesty the first night they’d made love.

Hell, he’d bathed her scars in damp kisses, given the succor of his lips to each scar by turns; though it had been much too late to kiss them better. Too late to wonder if he should have gone about Maria’s seduction in some other manner, but in the aftermath of pleasure, there was no way he could go on ignoring his discovery.

The sooner the questions were asked and done with, the better.

In an ironic twist, sharing a trouble might half it, but a secret kept too long increased exponentially. The idea crossed his mind that some of his own secrets might benefit from an airing now that his sister had begun her crusade to discover the truth of Milo Jellic’s life, and death.

What had happened, only three weeks after he turned thirteen, had shaped the rest of his life. How could he expect Maria to bare her soul, her hurts, while he left his own skeletons moldering in the closet as if he was ashamed of all he stood for?

He grabbed a couple of pillows that had taken a nosedive off the bed and plunked them under the headboard. “C’mon, Maria, I know you’re not asleep, you can’t fool me.”

She opened one eye. “Brute. I’d like to be asleep.”

“Too bad.” He slipped the other two pillows from under her neck and piled them on top of the others, then pulled back the covers and slid in beside her, resting his shoulders on the stack of silky cushioned percale.

Tapping her on the tip of her cute nose, he said, “Come up here beside me. It’s time we got naked with something other than our skin.” Her eyes snapped open, the pretense of being sleepy over and donth. “I’m talking about the truth.”

Maria sat up, the covers collapsing in a ruche of silver-gray and terra-cotta that skimmed her lower hips and left most of her belly and its scar available to his gaze.

Her stare challenged his right to know the truth. A challenge that the image of pert breasts with tight, crested nipples negated.

Laying an arm along the top of the stack of pillows, his voice soft, satiny, persuasive, threaded with a kindness he hadn’t known existed inside him, he whispered, “C’mon, hon, I want you up here next to me so we can hug. It won’t be all that bad, we just need to get this over with and move on. Kinda like, you show me your scars and I’ll show you mine.”

Her nose and chin lifted a fraction as if she wanted him to understand she was giving in under protest. “All right, if you insist.”

A moment later, she snuggled against his side and let him wrap his arm around her, let him hug her against his ribs. But for all that, the tension in her muscles didn’t subside, it grew stronger.

“Mmm,” she sighed, lying. “I feel better already.”

“Good try, hon, but not good enough. Though, if it makes it easier on you, I’ll start.” The suggestion was all she needed to relax more, and she rested her head on his shoulder so that fine strands of black hair waved like seaweed caught in the ebb and flow of his breath.

“My father, Milo Jellic, was a cop. When I was thirteen he drove his car over the edge of the cliffs at Torbay and took his own life. Suicide. Later it came out, courtesy of his best friend and partner, that my father had been dealing in drugs, and when he thought his superiors were on to him, he’d taken the easy way out.

“So, not only was he a crooked cop who committed suicide, he didn’t have the guts to face the music for his sins and left his family behind to face the shame in his place.”

“Oh, Franc, I’m sorry. You must…” He laid a finger over her lips; he didn’t want her sympathy, just her.

“Shh, don’t stop me, I’m on a roll. It’s not a pretty story, but that’s the legacy my father left the five of us, my three brothers, my sister, Jo, and me. Out of us all, Jo, the youngest, never believed it. ‘All lies’ she’d say, and no one could convince her otherwise, not even our grandmother, Grandma Glamuzina, who was left to finish dragging us up the best way she knew how. Strictly, the way they had in the old country where she was born. What else could she do with four teenage boys and a half-grown girl who challenged her at every turn? In the end, Jo went to Saint Margaret’s to be taught by the nuns. That’s where she and Maggie Kovacs, or should I say, Strachan, from Pigeon Hill Winery, met.”

He felt Maria’s lips touch where his neck met his shoulder. “Your grandmother did a great job with you. I never thought I’d meet a guy who wouldn’t turn away in disgust at my disfigurement.”

Tightening his arm, he pulled her closer into a bear hug, then forking his fingers through her hair, gently massaged her scalp, the way he knew she liked it. He reassured her, “I think the passage of time since you were seventeen has made you believe the scars are worse than they are. Tell me, would you feel differently about me if I’d had surgical scars?”

“Of course not. But the last ten years have been weird. For most of those years my family have treated me like spun glass, as if I’d break if a guy even looked at me.”

She picked up his hand lying on the covers, lifted it over her breast, pressing it against her nipple. The point stabbed the center of his palm like a burning lance, yet as his hand contracted around her firm flesh, it was the rush of her heartbeat that said it all. How could he applaud her family’s stance without her telling him once more that he was her lover not her mother?

He compromised. “Doesn’t feel like you’d break to me, not even if I squeezed harder, like this.”

Air hissed between her teeth as he suited action to words. “I’ll give you a million dollars not to stop what you’re doing. I love the feel of your hands on me,” she told him, and he marveled silently at the difference a day made.

She would never have expressed her need to be touched in a certain way when they first met, although, there had been the continuing episodes with her feet. He smiled at the memory and drawled a silent “Oh, yeah.” What had started as piece of fun had gotten away from them.

He didn’t know what brought his brother-in-law to mind, but he realized telling her about Rowan and Jo might not help, but it couldn’t hurt. “Did I tell you that my boss, Rowan McQuaid Stanhope, saved my sister’s life? He took a bullet from a rifle in the thigh as he pushed Jo out of the way. But in the way that no good deed ever goes unpunished, it cost Rowan his career and left horrific scars where the shot cost him muscle, as well as bone.” He traced the shape of the cross on one of her breasts and Maria stilled as if she hardly dared breathe. “If Jo could live with that, there’s no way a little-bitty mark like this is going to stop me being with you.”

“You have a way with words, Franc Jellic, and I’m thankful for it. Suddenly my angst over the marks on my body seems almost too precious.”

“God, I didn’t mean it like that, hon. The scars are real, they’re war wounds. I just don’t want you to be too ashamed to reveal a part of your history that wasn’t of your own making. Hell, you didn’t ask for this. You were seventeen. I looked at the photo of you at that age and saw nothing but innocence shining out of it. The fault was his, not yours.”

He’d be lying if he said he expected the next question she came out with. “Could you tell if I was truly a virgin the first time we made love?”

Stunned, he floundered, scrabbling for the right words. “You were extremely tight, but did I deflower you? I wouldn’t know. In my life there has been a shortage of virgins. How many before you? None that I can recall. So how’s a guy to get the hang of what exactly makes a difference…”

The meaning of her question finally sank into his thick skull. And he cursed beneath his breath. Damn Rosa Costello for not setting her straight. He knew Maria had no memory of the trauma, but her mother, her sister, someone in her family should be the one to clear up her suspicions, to reassure her.

“Maria, I’m sure your mother would have told you if you’d been…”e cleared his throat to help him spit out the word.

“Raped.” He ground it out, hating the image that sprang to life by saying her name and that
damn
word in the same sentence.

“Don’t torture yourself over it. I was so caught up in making sure I didn’t spoil your first experience, I don’t remember anything except the pleasure of being inside you. And I have to tell you, hon, the satisfaction gets better every time.”

He tilted her head up from his shoulder and pressed a kiss on her forehead. “Promise you’ll put the idea out of your mind and not let it spoil the rest of our time together, or, the rest of your life.”
After he was gone.
“It’s not important to me.”

Coward!

His fingers contracted against her scalp, an automatic reflex from sinews desperate to form a fist to shake in anger.

Maria winced.

He pasted an apologetic smile on his lips, hoping she couldn’t read the thoughts behind his eyes. Hoping she couldn’t see his imagination squeeze its hands round the throat of the bastard who had done this to her.

Maria turned in his arms, pressed her breasts against his chest, and the image disappeared as fast as the notion had jumped into his mind. The sway she had over his libido erased everything from his mind but her and the way she made him feel.

She traced the shape of his ear with a fingertip, blowing into the whorls and hollows with a husky purring sound.

He was being softened up for something. It might not be something he’d care for, but while the fingers of her other hand explored his chest, he didn’t let her effort and attention to detail go unanswered and did some hands-on research of his own.

“It occurred…to me.” She drew the words out with breathless hesitations. “That since you think being inside me…just gets better each time…maybe we should try breaking the record and find out just…how…good it can get.”

The last came out in a warm damp rush against his ear, making his gut contract on a spasm of lust. He’d been hard since the moment he hit the sheets again and pulled her, soft and warm and smelling of sex, against his side. Now he was a dead ringer for the title Man of Steel.

“You’re on, hon” was forced past his strangled larynx.

Relief came to his rescue as Maria actually giggled, a delightful sound that he’d felt in danger of never hearing again.

With her hands on his shoulders, she forced him back against the pillows. “Darn straight, I’m on, big guy. This time, I get to be on top.”

Maria couldn’t understand why she wasn’t tired. After the night she and Franc had put in, she ought to be glad to be at work. Glad to have a whole day to daydream of Franc.

Yet all she could think of as—per his orders—she locked the glass entrance doors to Tech-Re-Search with her inside, was how soon could she do it all over again.

Athe assignment she was working on was for Stanhope Electronics and through them, indirectly for Franc. His brilliant idea of weaving two-way transmitters into the fabric of a jacket was ahead of its time, and soon he’d informed her, she’d have to begin research on visuals that would be as good, if not better, than the latest cell phones. She couldn’t wait to start on another project that would stretch her mind.

She was up to her elbows in research printouts off the World Wide Web, when the doorbell rang. Someone had followed the instructions she’d taped to the inside of the glass door.

She looked around her untidy desk, searching for her glasses. They were nowhere to be seen. Probably hiding under the masses of paper her research had generated. That was the trouble with being short-sighted, she had to keep taking them off. No matter, she wouldn’t need them simply to answer the door.

Yet, her spine tensed as she pulled open one of the doors on the office side of the lobby, wishing her boss had installed some kind of security camera she could check,
without
revealing her presence to the person on the other end of the bell push.

Her internal alarm stopped ringing when she recognized the chaplain six feet away, waving a piece of paper at her through the plate glass.

She hadn’t realized he knew where she worked, but then he’d probably seen her leaving yesterday evening, the way she’d caught glimpses of him around the area without taking any particular notice until she bumped into him.

The stiffness in her spine eased as he smiled. “I’ve brought you a receipt for the donation you gave me. If you’d rather, I can slip it through this gap between the doors.”

She had the key in the lock as she spoke, “That’s okay. I would have left the doors open, but Franc—you met him yesterday—insisted I lock myself inside.”

The chaplain nodded in understanding as she swung one side of the doors ajar. “I gather you’re working alone at the moment.” He kept nodding, taking her confirmation for granted. “Well, I don’t blame him, a young girl like you, so…so pretty, you can’t be too careful.”

He raised his hat, holding it above his fair, receding hair in a courtly gesture. Old-fashioned manners, no doubt learned as part of his seminary training.

Someone ought to tell him he looked younger with his hat on. Maria smiled up at him; his eyes were an unusual light gray that looked out at her as if they’d seen sights that had aged them. Maybe working with the poor had done that. And it was an effect that made the dark rings circling his irises appear black against the whites. The deep lines in the corners of his eyes made her wonder if he’d worked as a missionary, maybe in a hot climate where the glare of the sun made it impossible not to squint through your eyelashes.