Biting the Bride

by Clare Willis

  He touched her chin, turning her so that she had to look at him. “Listen to me. I work for an organization that watches people, dangerous people, like Richard Lazarus.”

  “You’re with the CIA?”

  He shrugged. “Sort of. Our organization knows that Lazarus has identified you as a target, and they instructed me to …” he rubbed his chin briskly, “to encourage you to leave town. ”

  The driver slammed down hard on the brakes. Sunni was thrown out of her seat and started to fly toward the windshield. Jacob grabbed her out of the air and pulled her down, cradling her in his lap. His lips pressed against her hair and she felt his breath coming a little fast. She leaned her head back and they were nose to nose. Even his breath smelled like fresh snow.

  For a single, crazy moment she thought he was going to kiss her. She gazed into his fathomless eyes and knew that she would let him, that she would respond with all the wildness that was building up in her chest and all through her body. She swallowed hard, her heart pounding. She felt herself lifted up and placed firmly but gently back onto the seat.

  “We’re here,” he said.

  Jacob held Sunni against his chest and breathed deeply, pulling the sweet scent of her hair into his lungs. Desire clouded his reason as the delicate span of her rib cage expanded and contracted under his hands. Her heart was beating hard, and he felt heat rising from her skin, proving that she was moved by his proximity. Was she excited or frightened? The two emotions produced the same physiological response in humans. But this woman didn’t know what he was or what he was capable of. To her he was merely another human, and he had seen from the attack in the bathroom that Sunni Marquette was not easily cowed by humans. So that could mean only one thing. It wasn’t fear she was experiencing.

  He leaned back so that he could see her face. Her green eyes were open wide, the pupils dilated, and her glossy lips parted slightly to reveal pearly white teeth. She wanted him to kiss her, that was obvious. He moved closer, until their lips were inches apart.

  Suddenly he felt a pain as sharp as the lash of a whip, but the agony was in his heart, not his body. The desire he felt for Sunni tumbled him two hundred years into the past, out of a cab in modern-day San Francisco and into a candlelit drawing room in Providence, Rhode Island.

  It was the height of summer, and the windows were open to catch any breeze, but the air was still heavy and close, perfumed with the scents of beer, bacon, human sweat, and the clove-studded oranges the ladies carried to counteract more objectionable odors. He was sitting in a cane back chair in his father’s house, listening to the tinkling, slightly out-of-tune notes of the heat-swollen pianoforte. The woman playing was Jane Adderly, the love of his life. They had been courting for three months, and just the night before she had given him cause to believe that his suit might meet with success. His lips still tingled with the memory of her kiss.

  She finished the tune with a flourish, and everyone clapped politely. Jane was a fine player but not a virtuoso. The crowd began to swirl as everyone stood up and moved in different directions. He tried to go to Jane but she was surrounded by admirers, so he hung back, waiting for his chance to speak to her undisturbed. As he watched her, and listened to her infectious laugh, he felt hot breath on the back of his neck. Someone was standing uncomfortably close. There was only one other person in the room tall enough to match him, so he knew without looking who it was.

  “She is a fine-looking woman, is she not?” Richard Westerbridge said quietly.

  Anger flamed in his chest, but Jacob controlled himself. This was not the time or the place to confront the man.

  “I believe she is spoken for,” Jacob said, making his voice smooth and even. He glanced at Richard but saw that he, too, was turned toward Jane. The men stood shoulder to shoulder rather than face each other.

  “Is she now?” Richard chuckled. “By you, Jacob?”

  “Yes, by me. Does that surprise you?” Jacob’s control was gone, his voice had become ragged.

  “Yes, it surprises me, but I am delighted.”

  “Delighted? Why?”

  Richard leaned close again. Jacob felt moisture on his cheek from the young man’s breath. “Because it will make the conquest all the sweeter when I take her from you.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Jacob came back to the present with a shake of his head. He could not let the past repeat itself. Sunni Marquette was already in danger from Richard Lazarus, he could not endanger her further by loving her. He closed his eyes so that he couldn’t see the lovely woman lying in his arms, with her lips so tantalizingly parted. He took a deep breath, steeled himself, and pushed her gently but firmly away. Mercifully, the taxi arrived at that moment at the nightclub and Jacob was able to escape from their enforced proximity.

  Sunni sensed, as they waited at the entrance to the Brazil Room, that Jacob was studiously avoiding looking in her direction. Fine, she thought, two can play at that game. She stared straight ahead, at a dragon tattoo that coiled around the shoulder blade of a young woman in a strapless dress standing in front of her. When they reached the head of the line the doorman, of course, checked Sunni’s ID. Jacob paid the twenty-dollar entry fee for each of them, waving Sunni off when she reached for her wallet.

  Stepping through a velvet curtain into the nightclub felt like entering a time warp to the 1960s. Smoke curled around the bopping heads of patrons of every age and race, dressed in suits and cocktail dresses, sipping cocktails out of heavy glasses. A jazz trio in shirtsleeves and porkpie hats played a riff that to Sunni was the melodic version of a dog chasing its tail.

  “Do you like jazz?” she yelled over the din of the music.

  He bent down and put his mouth against her ear. “You don’t have to yell, I can hear you very well,” he said. Then he straightened up and took a step away from her. “And I believe you can hear me.”

  It was true. His voice sounded as if they were alone in an empty room. He took her elbow and guided her to a stool at the bar. The bartender, a bald man with linebacker shoulders, placed a Brazil Room coaster in front of each of them. He poured her gin and tonic and Jacob’s whiskey in a few economical movements, but Sunni was ready with her wallet when he was done.

  “You’re not paying for everything,” she said decisively.

  Jacob nodded, an amused expression on his face.

  Sunni took a slug of her drink and then looked around the room for Richard and Isabel. They were seated at a round table near the band, their chairs and shoulders touching. She watched them in silence for a few minutes. At one point Richard leaned over and said something into Isabel’s ear. She laughed happily, swatting him on the shoulder as if they were in high school.

  “He doesn’t seem very dangerous,” Sunni said. “He also doesn’t seem very interested in me.”

  “His methods are not always obvious.” Jacob turned his gaze from Richard to Sunni. “You’re going to have to trust me, Sunni. You’ve got to leave San Francisco. It’s dangerous for you here.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, Jacob, and by the way, you’re starting to freak me out. You, not him. You said it’s coincidence that we’ve seen each other over the years, that you’re not watching out for me, but then you say I have to trust you and leave San Francisco with you.”

  His eyelids flickered. “The ‘with me’ part was perhaps a mistake. You should leave by yourself.”

  “Whatever. I’m not going anywhere. Except home.” She hopped off the bar stool. Jacob stood up but she stopped him with a hand on his chest. “Don’t follow me.”

  “All right.” He grabbed a coaster and made a signing gesture at the bartender. When the bartender handed him a pen he scrawled a phone number down. “Call me if you need me,” he said.

  Sunni paused, looking at Jacob, stunned by the contrast between her hopes for the night and how it had actually turned out. Then she tucked the coaster in her purse, turned on her heel and left.

  “Are you all right?” Carl cleared a space on Sunni’
s cluttered desk and put down a cinnamon roll and a grande caramel macchiato.

  “Yes, why?” Sunni popped open the lid and sucked the foam off the coffee.

  “You were working on that same bill of sale when I left.”

  She pushed herself away from the computer. “Just a little bit distracted, I guess.”

  Carl perched on the edge of Sunni’s desk. Today he was wearing a T-shirt that was lacy with bleach holes, under a 1960s suit jacket with lapels no wider than a ruler. The holes in his ears were still red and swollen. “By that man who came in on Sunday? He’s dreamy. He looks like Sean Connery in the James Bond movies, but he talks like Ian McKellan. Did you go out with him?”

  “Is it any of your business?” Sunni snapped. Then she sighed and rubbed her forehead. “I’m sorry, Carl. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  The phone rang. Carl bounced up from the desk. “No worries. I’ll just go answer that, shall I?”

  A moment later he poked his head around the partition that separated her desk from the rest of the gallery. “It’s Isabel,” he said.

  Sunni lifted the phone and said hello.

  “Sunni, I don’t know how to say this, so I’ll just spit it out, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Richard asked me out again.”

  Sunni took a cautious sip of her drink before she answered. “How do you feel about that?”

  “Great, but how do you feel about it? ”

  That was a very good question. She felt so many things that it was impossible to put them into words, even if she wanted Isabel to know all of it, which she didn’t. The real issue right now was whether to tell Isabel what Jacob had said, that Richard was dangerous. Isabel would immediately think that Sunni was jealous, which she was, and would probably not believe her, which was reasonable. Isabel deserved romance, she deserved to be happy, and it was too soon to burst anyone’s bubble. Until Sunni got more information, it was probably better to keep her own counsel.

  “I’m fine with it, Izzy. We said that we’d see who got the rose. I guess it was you.”

  “Speaking of roses, what happened with Jacob?”

  He’s in the CIA. We followed you to the Brazil Room, and he told me that I had to get out of town, because Richard is dangerous and he’s targeted me.

  “He gave me his phone number.”

  “That’s great! Do you like him?”

  Another great question. Sunni scraped the icing off her cinnamon roll and took a bite. She had gotten very little sleep the night before as her tormented mind sifted through the disparate and often conflicting tidbits of information she’d gotten from Jacob. She wanted to believe him, because that meant she could trust him, but some of the things he had said were absurd, such as the idea that she needed to leave town immediately because of Richard. Other statements, such as his claim that he hadn’t been following her, were logical, but in her heart she didn’t believe him. He had been following her, she was sure of it, she just didn’t know why. However, Isabel hadn’t asked whether she trusted him.

  “Yes, I like him.”

  “Are you going to call him? We could double date. After all, they know each other already.” Isabel sounded as bubbly as a freshly poured 7-Up.

  “Yeah, I’ll call him, soon. When are you going on your date?”

  “Tonight. Will you come over and help me find something to wear?”

  “Yeah, sure. Listen, I’ve got a client here, I’ve got to go,” Sunni lied.

  “Okay, come over at seven,” Isabel said.

  After she hung up Sunni spent a long minute with her eyes closed, trying to massage away an impending doozy of a headache. Then she straightened up, washed down the rest of the cinnamon roll with a few swigs of sweet coffee, and turned her attention back to the computer. She had just managed to lose herself in the minutiae of art valuations when the phone rang again. She grabbed the receiver and pressed the intercom.

  “Carl, I’m trying to concentrate here, just hold my calls for now,” she snapped.

  “Okay, but it’s Richard Lazarus.”

  She sighed heavily. “Put him through.”

  “Good morning, Sunni. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

  What a lovely voice he had, Sunni thought. How could someone as evil as Jacob portrayed him have a voice that soothing? “No, not at all. What can I do for you, Richard? Are you still looking for pieces for your collection?”

  “Of course, but that’s not why I’m calling. It’s a beautiful day and I’m wondering what you’re doing for lunch.”

  So he wanted to date both Sunni and Isabel, it appeared. Sunni let the seconds tick past as she considered her answer. She liked Richard. She was angry with Jacob, and hurt by what seemed like his rejection of her. She didn’t believe a word of what he had said about Richard.

  “Sure, I’m free for lunch,” she said. “Is one o’clock okay?”

  At 12:58 a Lincoln Town Car with tinted windows pulled into the no-parking zone in front of the gallery. Sunni excused herself from the visitor she’d been talking to and scurried to the back to grab her purse. Then she waved to Carl and walked out to the street. Immediately the passenger door opened and Richard emerged. He was wearing what probably passed for casual clothes in his wardrobe: woolen trousers, a button down shirt with a sweater vest over it, and one of the those Irish Donegal tweed caps worn by men on PBS mystery shows.

  He took Sunni’s elbow, helping her across the sidewalk and into the car like a Boy Scout aiding an old lady. The driver glanced at her in the rearview mirror and nodded silently. Richard followed her into the car and gave her a radiant smile.

  “So, Sunni, this has turned into a lovely day, don’t you think? I thought maybe we could have a picnic.”

  A picnic? That didn’t seem like Richard’s style. A picnic was the sort of date offered by a “poor but creative” man, who then took you to Shakespeare in the park, the museum on free-Wednesday, bowling on two-for-one Tuesday. Sunni had dated men like that, and none of them remotely resembled Richard.

  But she smiled and nodded. “A picnic would be lovely. ”

  The chauffeur drove them all the way up Market Street, from the flat Financial District through the hilly Castro Street neighborhood, flying its distinctive rainbow flags and even farther up, to Twin Peaks, where half of the city could be seen below them. They cut over Seventeenth Street, down through the Haight Ashbury district, where the 1960s hippies had been replaced on the historic sidewalks by thugs and homeless teenagers with mean-looking dogs.

  The head shops and pizza parlors of Haight Street gave way to the green swaths of Golden Gate Park. The park had seen better days, probably in the nineteenth century. Its current skeleton crew of gardeners was barely able to keep the jungle at bay in most areas, but it retained a lush beauty that still brought the nature-starved citizens of San Francisco flocking in droves. They passed the Conservatory of Flowers, a beaux arts marvel of architecture that looked like an upside-down ship made of frosted glass. The car turned left at the lawn bowling courts, where elderly ladies and gentlemen dressed in white shorts rolled balls over the manicured grass, and drove toward the ocean.

  The park ended at Highway One, and on the other side of the road were Ocean Beach and the Pacific Ocean. Marking each corner of the park at that end was an old windmill. One of them had been restored and one was a complete wreck. As the driver approached the restored one Richard asked Sunni to close her eyes. The car parked, Richard slipped out one door and opened the other one for her. As she emerged from the car Sunni couldn’t suppress a gasp of astonishment.

  On the green lawn in front of the windmill, flanked by hundreds of red, purple, and white impatiens, was a gazebo that had been newly erected for the occasion of their picnic. Inside was a table covered with a white cloth, laid with china and crystal for two. A uniformed waiter stood behind one chair, holding a bottle of champagne.

  “Richard, I don’t know what to say. This is beautiful.” Sunni was whispering, although she
didn’t know why.

  “I’m glad you like it.” Richard held out an arm and Sunni slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow. He escorted her to the gazebo, where the waiter handed each of them a glass of champagne. Richard lifted his in a toast.

  “To new beginnings,” he said.

  Sunni blushed and looked away, unable to counter the boldness in his gaze.

  They sat on opposite sides of the table and the waiter began serving. The dishes appeared in gourmet profusion: imported cheeses, caviar, melon wrapped in prosciutto, grilled and marinated vegetables, and perfect strawberries dipped in chocolate.

  “How did you know these are all my favorite foods?” Sunni asked, topping a tiny triangular piece of toast with a dab of caviar.

  Richard turned his champagne flute this way and that, causing the bubbles to float to the top and pop. “You are a woman of refined and delicate tastes,” he said. “So I simply extrapolated from that.”

  Two hours later Sunni was lying on her back on a plaid blanket, staring at the shifting patterns of light formed by the branches of the towering eucalyptus tree above her. Richard sat somewhat stiffly at her side with his legs straight out. He had frowned slightly when Sunni found the blanket, but he had followed her gamely. The hulls from the chocolate strawberries lay in a pile next to Sunni’s hand. The waiter was quietly packing the remains of lunch into the back of a van parked unobtrusively across the street. Sunni was feeling comfortably full and just a bit tipsy.

  Wisps of fog were starting to drift in from the ocean, bearing the smell of brine. The wind blew Sunni’s black hair over her eyes. Richard leaned over to tuck the hair gently behind her ear.

  “Your hair is beautiful,” Richard murmured. “Black as a raven’s wing. It’s rare to see this color occur naturally.”

  Their faces were very close together. Sunni looked at Richard’s extraordinarily pale complexion. Normally a person with skin of that hue would have freckles, sunburn, or broken capillaries, but Richard was like a marble statue. Impulsively she reached up and touched his cheek. His skin was cold to the touch, but soft and smooth as silk.