Midnight Masquerade

by Nancy Gideon

"From what I remember."

  But he hadn't followed her advice that first time, had he?

  Then he turned to roll over her, and she forgot about mothers and rubbers to concentrate on some serious play.

  He claimed her emotions with a deep, open-mouthed kiss, reaching down until a moan of need shuddered in her throat. Then, with one slow, measured movement, he claimed her body and soul. As damp as she was already, there was no friction, just a delicious, stretching sense of fullness as he pressed inside to stay for a long reacquainting moment. When his subtle strokes picked up the tempo of the song, Rae felt the music sing along her nerve endings. All the while he finessed her mouth with his tongue, he teased her passions with those controlled pulses until she writhed with impatience and anticipation. Her hands hooked on the backs of his thighs, directing a more forceful beat, one that got the bed rocking and her heart knocking and her breath pumping in time to the surging thrusts that crowded all the way to her womb. God, he is great.

  With that thought warbling harmony to her panting breaths, a hot, fierce crescendo built, shivering along her legs, tightening through her hips, clamping down around the insistent thickness of him to provoke a roaring finish, the type with cannon fire and cymbals crashing and the entire string section sawing like mad. His explosive groan provided a punctuating grand finale, then all was trembling stillness.

  And the Drifters crooned, “Save the last dance for me.” Oh, yeah.

  He stirred at last, spreading nibbling kisses along her neck and shoulders before gradually leaving her body. His absence left her all weak and weepy, and not wanting him to witness that vulnerability, she turned her head away. He wouldn't allow her that privacy. His fingertips grazed her flushed cheek, tipping her back so their gazes could meet and meld.

  "What is it, cher? This is no time for regrets."

  She burrowed into his shoulder as long restrained sobs quivered though her. He held her close, absorbing the tremors, soothing them with a slow caress and tender kisses.

  "Talk to me, Rae,” he whispered into the tousle of her hair. “Let me help you."

  The combination of fatigue and the exquisite way their coupling had stripped her emotions raw proved too much.

  "I killed them, Nick."

  "Who, cher? The Grovers? No."

  "The Grovers, my parents—everyone I've ever loved.” Her head came up, her incredibly green gaze fixed on his with a fierce intensity. “Leave, Nick. Run far, far away. I don't want to be responsible for you, too."

  For a moment, he missed the big picture as heart and mind seized on what she didn't say.

  Was she saying that she loved him?

  That would explain the hot/cold emotions, the way she pushed him from her life as if trading in an old car and yet still couldn't resist enjoying the ride whenever possible. He'd had a car like that. He loved that car, the gas-guzzling, oil-burning old wreck.

  The way Rae Borden loved him.

  Wonder and elation spread through him like a warm sunrise.

  But of course, now wasn't the time to call for a less cryptic declaration. She was hurting and scared, and dammit, he wanted to make those bad things go away.

  How could he, when he was one of those bad things?

  That he could change. Hugging her close, he vowed that he would change.

  So he held her, so whipped up inside with the unknowns of desire and devotion it was all he could do to listen to her when she finally began to talk. Until he heard what she was saying. Then he forgot all else.

  "My father came back from Viet Nam with Thomas Grover and that policeman we met in the hospital Palmer. Dad was a hero, with ribbons and commendations and my mom as his biggest cheerleader. She read me his letters as bedtime stories. At first, they were so romantic. She would never read the ones from his second tour. She never said so, but I suspect that was when he started to change."

  He stroked her hair back from her brow and placed a light kiss there. “Men don't go to war and come back unchanged. Seeing that much horror strips away all the innocence from life."

  "It stripped away more where my father was concerned. It stripped away the man who'd written those first letters, until he only lived in my mom's memories. That was the man I grew up admiring, the one who never came home. I sometimes wish he'd never come home. The memories would have been easier to live with."

  She fell silent and Nick didn't push. He figured it needed to be expressed gradually, like poisons from a long-festering wound.

  "He drank,” she said at last. “A lot. And when he drank, he got angry—at his boss, at the government, at life, at the boy who delivered our paper a few minutes late on Sunday. But mostly, he got mad at my mom for still loving the man he wasn't anymore. And when he drank and got mad, he'd hit her."

  She said it so matter-of-factly, the shock value increased tenfold.

  "And you? Did he hit you, too?” He couldn't keep the timbre of his own anger from shaking through his voice.

  "No. He never put a hand on me. He didn't need to. I felt every slap, every kick he gave my mom. When I was old enough to understand what was going on, I begged my mom to get him into some kind of program, but he was too proud to ask for help, she told me. Too proud to admit he had a problem, but not too proud to expect his wife and daughter to lie at the emergency room about her falling down some stairs. It was our family secret."

  She closed her eyes, and he could imagine the nightmare of it playing out within the privacy of her mind. And he hated that he couldn't take that horror away.

  "She wouldn't leave him, Nick. When I asked her why, she said it was because he needed her. That's when I got angry and decided if I didn't do something he was going to kill her."

  "So,” he asked softly, “what did you do?"

  "I went to the police and I filed a report. I was thirteen but, bless those guys, they took me seriously. They came out to our house, and what do you think they found? The picture of domestic bliss and tranquility. My dad told them that I was a troubled teen and that they were getting me into therapy. My mom stood there right beside him and backed every word he said. What could the officers do? They knew my parents were lying. I could see it in their faces that they believed me. But they couldn't do anything if my mom didn't press charges or even admit that there was abuse. When those officers left, her last chance to escape went with them. And she yelled at me, and she slapped me for trying to ruin everything. Do you believe it?” Her voice caught on a sob, and Nick tucked her in tighter.

  "She loved him more than she was afraid of him,” he intuited. “She probably never gave up the hope that she could make him back into the man he'd once been."

  "She was a fool."

  The harshness of her claim stunned him but not so much as the rest of her story.

  "I came home from school the next day to find them in the kitchen. My mom was so proud of her new ceramic tile floor. Dad had laid it for her. She pretended not to notice how uneven the rows got the more he drank. I found her on the middle of those uneven rows. He'd taken his commando knife and butchered her there in the kitchen and then sat down at the table with a cold one to wait for me to come home from the bus. Do you know what he said to me?"

  "No.” No, he didn't know. No, he didn't want to know.

  "He said, ‘Look what you made me do.’ And then he shot himself, the coward. He was afraid to stick around and let anyone tell him he was at fault."

  "Son of a bitch,” was the only comment he could think to make regarding the story and the man. In a final act of meanness and control, he'd left his daughter behind to suffer the weight of blame, ruining her life just as surely as if he'd killed her, too.

  "That's when the Grovers came in. Ginny was my best friend the way Tom had once been my father's. He'd been trying to get my dad to get help since they'd gotten back, but Dad wouldn't listen to him. Because he couldn't help my dad and my mother refused to help herself, they took me in as often as they could just to get me out of the house. And after my parents were .
.. gone, they took me in permanently."

  "He was a good man, Tom Grover.” As he said it, Nick could see Kaz Zanlos signing that good man's name with his dead hand.

  "So, for a while, I got to live with a real family. It was wonderful, Nick. You can't imagine."

  No, he couldn't. But he smiled, grateful that she'd had that opportunity.

  "Ginny and I had a falling out over her fiancé. I didn't trust him. He was too smooth, too polite. But Ginny wouldn't listen. She was in love, and she told me I was just jealous. So when she showed up with a swollen lip and a story about them horsing around, I decided to prove that I was right. I dug into Mr. Too-Good-To-Be-True's past and found out that he had a criminal record for assault and battery. He had a temper that got him into trouble with the law and an ex-girlfriend who swore out a warrant when he nearly broke her jaw. I didn't tell Ginny privately. I knew she wouldn't want to hear the truth, just like my mother would never admit to it. So I announced it to everyone at her engagement party to prove that Mr. Right was Mr. Dead Wrong. And Ginny never forgave me for it. She told me he'd confessed everything to her when they started dating, that he'd had counseling and anger management, that he wanted to start over with a clean slate, and she gave him the benefit of the doubt. But I couldn't, Nick. I couldn't risk him hitting her. I got my way, though. He was so humiliated for both himself and for Ginny, that we never heard from him again. And Ginny never spoke to me again. I got a job out of state, moved away and pretended that she'd thank me for it someday. That someday never came."

  "And what happened to Mr. Wrong?"

  "He married someone else, and they had the three kids Ginny always wanted. He's a bank vice-president and funds an abuse center. I really pegged him, didn't I?"

  "You thought you were doing the right thing. You did it out of love for your friend."

  "But I never once thought about what was best for Ginny. I never gave her credit for making her own choices."

  "Are you saying she killed herself over some unrequited love how many years ago?"

  "No. I'm saying I never should have walked away from those people who were like my family. I let my pride force me to leave rather than admit that I was wrong. Kind of a family pattern, don't you see?"

  "No, Rae. I don't see it that way at all.” He hesitated a moment but had to ask. “Is that why you do what you do?"

  "What?” She stared at him blankly for a long beat.

  "Because you're afraid to make the wrong choice again? Because you still think all men are pigs who beat the women who love them if they get the chance?"

  "No,” she said too quickly. “I don't think that."

  "And that's why you picked a profession that glorifies a stable relationship, right?"

  Her genuine confusion finally lifted. Her expression closed down, and he knew he'd said the wrong thing.

  "A little Psychology 101, Mr. Flynn?"

  "Am I wrong?"

  "Probably not, but that doesn't mean I have to like hearing it."

  "Rae, you're not responsible for the choices those other people made for their own reasons, right or wrong."

  "But I could have stopped them, Nick."

  "How, cher?"

  "By listening to them, by trying to understand what they needed instead being so sure I knew what was best for them. If I had been here for Ginny, she wouldn't have died."

  "It was an accident, Rae.” He said that with all the conviction he could muster.

  "No, it wasn't. No more than Tom and Bette were accidents.” She stared up at him unflinchingly to demand, “And you know it, don't you, Nick?"

  Chapter

  Sixteen

  "Don't you, Nick?"

  He didn't dare move, afraid if he did she would see every guilty sin parade across his face in damning Technicolor. This was his opportunity, his chance to come clean with everything, to expunge the lies and the culpability and beg to start over.

  But he didn't. He'd been a creature driven by self-preservation for too long. He couldn't trust her to accept the truth and him with it. Not yet. Not when his promises were backed by empty deeds. Not when talk was cheap, and she was used to cash in advance.

  "I don't know, Rae.” He picked his words carefully. “I didn't know Ginny or Bette Grover, and I only met Tom that one time at the house."

  "But you know there's something wrong with the way they died, don't you?"

  "There's nothing right about it. They were your friends, your family."

  "I've seen them, Nick."

  She said it so quietly he was sure he must be mistaken. “What do you mean? In dreams?"

  "Last night. At the war memorials. They spoke to me, warned me away."

  He betrayed none of his alarm at what he was hearing. “It was your subconscious, Rae, telling you what you know to be true."

  "My subconscious wasn't wearing a dress covered in my mother's blood!"

  She was startled by the vehemence of her own claim, and it took her aback. She rubbed an unsteady hand across her eyes. “I know it sounds crazy. I don't expect you to believe me. I know it's not every day that you have dead people speaking to you, even if the movies have made it politically correct to see them. I'm not crazy, Nick."

  "I know. I've seen things, heard things myself that others would say...” He shook his head as if he could scatter those remembrances. “Never mind. But I'm the last one to call you crazy. Be careful, Rae. Where I come from, the dead, they don't rest easy.” His gaze softened as he stroked back her hair. “But you need to, at least for this morning."

  When she looked as though she might protest, he kissed her lightly, fighting the want to linger there on her warm lips. He held her close until he felt the tension ebb from her limbs and her breathing quiet. Until he knew it was safe to leave her alone.

  "Go to sleep. I have some errands to run, then I'll be back. Do you mind if I grab a shower here?"

  "Help yourself, Nick. To anything."

  That last was murmured as her eyes were closing but the connotation was hard to walk away from. Anything. He smiled to himself, his gaze adoring the lines of her face as they relaxed into a pose of irresistible innocence ... and fatigue. That gave him the strength of will to ease from her bed, to gather his scattered clothing then close the blinds so that the morning light would be kinder to her exhausted state. Then, because he couldn't resist the sight of her curled upon the rumpled sheets, her hair a wild tangle across the pillows they had yet to share in a night's slumber, he bent and touched his lips to her brow, whispering words he knew she was too far gone to hear.

  "I love you, cher."

  Rae struggled to open her eyes. Had he really said that? She wanted to ask. But the pull of sleep overcame the need to know. At least for the moment. On a vague and far-distant periphery, she heard the water running. Nick in her shower. A smile bowed her mouth as she nestled deeper into a healing slumber.

  I love you, cher.

  She hadn't believed those words would ever hold the power to move her so. Or that she'd ever feel compelled to respond in kind. But just as she eased over the edge of dreamless rest, she answered.

  "I love you, too, Nick Flynn."

  * * * *

  He stopped long enough on his return to work to make a complete copy of all the documents pertaining to Thomas Grover. He had the copies notarized as genuine duplications then bought a post office box at that same copy center and stuffed his evidence inside. He did all this with a single driving purpose, keeping his thoughts narrowed to the task at hand. Nothing else could matter now except the new future he saw for himself—the future he'd share with Rae Borden.

  Naomi wasn't at her desk. Her computer was off, and the lights on her phone system blinked unattended. Perhaps she'd taken his advice and gone home sick.

  At least he hoped that was the reason for her absence. A chill swept through him as he recalled her somber words. He won't let me go.

  Determinedly, he marched past her empty desk and straight into Kaz Zanlos's office. His em
ployer looked up from the spread of documents, not at all surprised by the intrusion.

  "Nick, I've been waiting for you. Come in. Close the door."

  Without complying, Nick strode directly to his desk to demand, “Did you have Bette Grover run off the road? Was that before or after you choked the booze and pills down her to make it look like an accident?"

  Zanlos leaned back in his chair with his flat, humorless smile. “Why, Nick, I'm shocked at your suggestion. What you describe would be—"

  "Business as usual, I'm finding out.” He slapped the files down on the immaculate desktop. Zanlos never gave them a glance.

  "You've been a busy boy, Nick."

  "I'm not your boy, Zanlos, and I don't like what you do here. I haven't liked myself much since I let myself become a part of it."

  "And what kind of business is it that you object to so strongly, Nick?"

  "Extortion, smuggling, fraud—my guess is drug running and probably murder."

  Zanlos shrugged eloquently. “Nobody's perfect, Nick, and that's why we picked you. Did you ever ask yourself why a firm like ours would be interested in a small town, small time ambulance chaser like you? Yes? No? It's not because you'd be a brilliant asset. It's because you're not perfect, either, are you, Nick? You and I are alike in that we'll deal with the devil to get what we want, and what we want are these nice clothes, these expensive offices and the power to make annoying legalities go away."

  "We're not alike, Zanlos. I don't set people up for blackmail then bleed them dry for cash and favors like you and your partner, Anna Murray."

  He didn't even try to deny it. “A brilliant scheme, really. I can't take the credit. Anna came up with it. It's not exactly original, but it's worked quite nicely."

  "What about Grover? Couldn't coax him into your little den of thieves?"

  "Grover was a fool."

  "So you killed his daughter and now you'll murder his wife as well."

  "No, Nick. That would be wasteful. I don't need her dead, just incapacitated until I make certain arrangements for import licensing into New Orleans."

  "Importing what? Coke, guns, illegal aliens?"