The Wall: A Vintage Contemporary Romance

by Thea Harrison

  Sara got a sudden chill down her back at his words, and when he paused, she whispered through dry lips, “W-what do you mean, ‘saved’? What peculiar wording—were you in some physical danger, Greg?”

  “Not really. I was having a drink after Andrea had left the den, and when she screamed and fell down the stairs, Mrs. Owens, the housekeeper, and I both ran out into the downstairs hallway at the same time. Because of the floor plan of the house, there was no way that I could have pushed her down the stairs and have been back to the den in the few seconds it took us to react. To this day, I don’t know if Andrea, poor bitch, had deliberately fallen down the stairs for attention and miscalculated the distance, or if she really did slip and succumb to an impulse of malicious mischief afterwards. I don’t think she really thought she would die. She just opened up those big brown eyes and stared up at me, with everyone crowding around, and said, “Why did you do it, Greg? Why?” And then she conveniently and dramatically died. You look like you could use a drink.” This last was said dryly.

  Sara’s eyes were saucers at his extraordinary disclosures, and she whispered, “I think I could, please.” His mouth twisted, but he went to fix her one, pouring a stiff brandy for himself. Then he settled back on the couch, after giving her the glass.

  “Andrea’s father raised all hell. To make a long, sordid story as short as possible, the press treated the matter like bloodthirsty hounds, snapping up the tidbits that her father threw at them. The story was sensational news at the time. I don’t suppose you read about it?”

  She numbly shook her head. “I was in California. I might not have noticed, anyway, even if the story had been circulated out there, but I don’t think it would have got that far West.” He was telling her something devastatingly important, she knew that, but as yet she hadn’t grasped the implications of everything he was trying to say.

  “I lost my job with the law firm from the pressure Andrea’s father was exerting,” he said quietly. “I lost several ‘friends’ over the whole affair, and most important of all, I lost my privacy. I don’t want to tell you about that. I had to move in an effort to regain some measure of peace. Eventually, everything culminated into a trial. It was my first shot at both the defence and being the defendant, and it was a most illuminating experience. I never went back to prosecution again. I could never live with myself if, by any chance, I’d put an innocent person through that particular kind of hell.

  “Eventually I was acquitted through lack of evidence, which was quite relieving.” At that dry statement, Sara gripped her glass so hard, she feared it might break from the pressure. “Mrs. Owen’s testimony was my sole defence—that, and the fact that a few of the guests remembered me approaching her body from the downstairs hall, not from the top of the stairs. And of course, during the court proceedings, all the sordid details of her extra-marital flings were dragged out into the open and duly noted for the sensation-seeking public.” His succinct wording, coupled with the concerned look she threw him, revealed to her just how badly he was hurt by the whole nightmare. She had been right, after all. Greg had gone through hell, and he was still bleeding from the wounds. His supremely bitter glance glittered at her, and he asked her mockingly, “Does it bother you, Sara, to know that I might possibly be a murderer?”

  Her own eyes widened with shock at that, and she stared at him speechlessly a few moments before answering. He really was worried what she thought of him! That repelling look was back in his eyes, she saw, and a hard mask clamped down on his features, and she was suddenly sure that it was fear that made him look that way. She sipped from her glass and asked him, deliberately casual, “Greg, would you answer an irrelevant question for me?”

  “If I can.” His face never altered or softened, and his body was held tense as though he expected a blow.

  “Did you tell me a true story a few nights ago, about when you put putty in all of your neighbour’s locks?” She stared into the fire calmly as she waited for his reply, sensing the puzzled glance he threw at her.

  “Yes, I did.” He fell silent, waiting.

  She turned her head and smiled at him serenely. “You never killed your wife, Greg. Nobody with that fine a sense of conscience so young could. Were you really worried that I might think you did? Shame on you!”

  She felt his body relax slightly, but not totally, and she suddenly knew that everything was not over yet. “I thought perhaps you might,” he admitted carefully, “but that wasn’t all I was worried about.” He paused slightly, and she knew an inexplicable fear. “I hope to God,” he finished quietly, “that I never see another reporter again in my life.”

  The words were a physical blow to her. She had just begun to see all of what Greg was trying to say to her, but she still didn’t guess it all. She still wasn’t quite to the whole truth.

  “Greg,” she whispered, through stiff lips. It was time to tell him who she really was. He had the right to know, after all he had just confessed to her. “Greg, I have something I need to confess, too, and—and I don’t know how to say it.” She stopped and looked at him, her mouth dry, lips shaking. She couldn’t go on. He would hate her for not telling him before. He would hate what she was.

  He sat there, passively waiting. His face was gravely attentive, but his eyes were raw. “The best way to say it is the simplest, Sara.”

  “Oh, Greg!” she said, and it was a cry of pain. “My professional name is Sara Bertelli, and I’m as public as you can get, I’m in the news, I’m always under exposure, I—I sign autographs, dammit, and…”

  “I know,” he said quietly.

  Of all the terrible revelations that night, this one hit her the hardest. She closed her eyes tight and doubled up, whispering, “Oh, my God! When did you figure it out?”

  Greg brooded into his brandy glass before answering. “I couldn’t figure out why you looked so familiar to me at first. When I saw the piano in your house and noticed how peculiarly cautious you were being, it all clicked into place. I have most of your records, and your face is on the majority of the covers.”

  He had known. That was why he had acted so strangely that night; he had known all along. Her knees were raised, and she leaned her forehead on them so that he couldn’t see the tears sliding down her cheeks. “I tried to tell you several times, but the longer I didn’t, the harder it was to confess. I—wanted you not to know, Greg, I’m sorry. I thought you hadn’t recognised me.”

  “Oh, Sara, you dear little fool,” he sighed, stroking her hair. “How could I not, with that face and body? You underrate yourself, my dear. I would have seen it sooner or later. In fact, I was determined not to see you again, but I had to come back that night, and the fact that I couldn’t stay away made me deeply angry, and I ended up taking it out on you. I went home cursing myself, sure that the next time I saw you I would tell you goodbye, and there you were, sobbing on my doorstep, so small and frightened and vulnerable. I couldn’t walk away!”

  “I love you,” she choked out desperately. “I love you!”

  “And I you,” he responded immediately, roughly, laying his head down on her shoulder. “You gave me more in that one night of loving than Andrea did in three long years. Sara, I won’t face the cheap publicity and invasion of my privacy again. Not after what had happened five years ago.”

  She began to realise the direction his speech was taking, for the first time that night picking up the implications of what Greg was communicating, and she tried frantically to hide from the rest of his words by covering up her ears with her hands. But he was relentless, and he came down to kneel beside her, forcing down her hands so that she had to hear what he was saying.

  “I love you, Sara, and it’s really love for the first time in my life. You mean so much to me; you’re so many different things rolled up into one delightful person! You’re beautiful, and you’re funny, and deeply thoughtful. You’re sensitive and fragile, and frighteningly vulnerable. You’re kind, and compassionate, and you’re a terrible invalid, but I love
even that aspect of you! I want to marry you,” he said harshly, pain etched in every feature. “I want that wild vitality that you pour into your music, I want your body beside me every night. I can’t live your kind of life, Sara!”

  She was shaking her head from side to side, in protest at what he was saying to her, and his hands tightened on her shoulders with the urgency of his speech, shaking her to make her acknowledge what she was hearing. “No!” she cried. “There can be compromises, Greg, and things worked out—”

  He went right on speaking, over her protests, as if he didn’t hear a word of what she was saying to him. “You’re going to have to make a choice! You can’t have both me and your career.”

  “Don’t say it, Greg!” she sobbed, struggling to get out of his hold and away from his terrible ultimatum. “For God’s sake, don’t ask it of me! I can’t take this, damn you—”

  He shook her harder. “You’ve got to listen, Sara! You’ve got to pick one or the other, there’s no other way. I’m sorry.” Then he let her go, as if he had only just realised what he had been doing to her, and she stumbled to her feet.

  “I can’t take any more tonight, I just can’t!” she said brokenly, backing sharply away from him as he stood to tower above her. “Don’t touch me! I don’t want you to get near me, do you hear? I—oh, hell, I have to get out of here!” And with that, she grabbed the afghan off the back of the couch and dashed for the back door.

  He came after her. “Please don’t go out there—it’s cold, and you’ve been sick. Will you just listen to me a minute, Sara? Don’t—”

  She slammed the door on his words and ran out into the night. A chill wind touched her exposed neck, and she shivered violently, wrapping the afghan around her tightly for warmth. Then she headed down the path to the beach, unhappiness dogging her footsteps and confusion preying on her mind.

  The feeling that she was being torn in two came back to her, stronger and more anguishing than before. She must have had a premonition, that night in California. She must have suspected something of this nature happening.

  She felt like she was in shock, deadened throughout her limbs. She had sustained too many blows that night, had absorbed too much vital information. Her emotions were tangled and raw, and her thoughts too agitated. Greg had offered her something she had thought she wanted more than anything else in the world, but at such a painful price. She couldn’t think about it.

  The night was illuminated with a pale moonlight glow that was at once subtle and yet piercing clean, keenly cutting through the senses. Sara could see quite clearly. The shadows were bigger at night and more black, and the colouring was very surrealistic. Everything ranged from a pearly shade of ivory to dark violets and midnight blue. She picked her way delicately down to the beach and looked out on the shimmery sands in the pale light. The water was fairly calm, lapping gently against the shore. It looked peaceful. Just letting her gaze wander out over the huge lake induced a feeling of calm and peace. It was what she had needed so badly. It was a refuge, for a while.

  She huddled into the blanket and settled herself on the sand, staring blindly out. The entire conversation from that evening was played and replayed in her mind, like a broken recording and a repetitive, jumping phonograph needle.

  Everything made sense now; every inexplicable response of Greg’s, every puzzling inflection in his voice, every hidden motive. Of course he was wary of strangers! Who wouldn’t be, after what he had been through? The wonder of it was that he had allowed himself to get close to her in the first place.

  That was the one thing that she had sensed in Greg, that he had in common with herself: loneliness. He had been just as compelled towards her as she had been to him. Isolated so completely like he had been, it was only natural, a totally human response. Two lonely people finding kindred spirits in each other, but was it really love that he felt for her? Could he just be reacting against all the self-imposed isolation of the last five years? She couldn’t know for sure.

  She felt such racking torment, two such completely opposite desires. One half of her wanted to reach out with both hands and grasp at whatever Greg was willing to give her, and the other half yearned for the life that she had so briefly left. She could never go back to the crippling ambition in her previous life, but could she give up something that was so tied to the essence of her personality? How could she give it up?

  The minutes slowly trickled into hours, and the hours slowly washed away the night. Sara never moved. She was never aware of the dark shadow that came periodically to the edge of the beach to stand silently, tensely, watchful and unobtrusive. She had almost forgotten Greg, incredible as it seemed later to her. She was wrapped up totally in her self.

  It was the hardest and longest night of her life. Not even the eve of her mother’s death had been as bad as this was to her. Eternity weighed on her like a stifling burden. Time meant nothing to her, and the passage of the night was merely an unimportant occurrence. She was, however, genuinely shocked when she looked out over the quiet water and found that she was able to see the far-off lake horizon. She turned exhausted, sleep-blurred eyes in astonishment to the east, and found the grey lightening of the pre-dawn creeping over the dark treeline. A sense of panic invaded her. She had pleaded for time from Greg, and he had let her go.

  She had been on the beach all night.

  It was time to go back, and time to decide. She couldn’t waste any more time prolonging the inevitable. She had known her own response to Greg’s ultimatum when he had issued it, had known and had run away from the pain of the choice, and had stayed away the entire night. She couldn’t let him go through any more pain, couldn’t put him through the agony of the wait any longer.

  Feeling a hundred years old, she rose stiffly to her feet and shook out the sandy blanket, slowly making her way back to the house. It was a long, lonely journey all by herself, just as the passage of the night had been. She was so tired, the battle with her emotions taking her past the point of exhaustion. All she wanted to do was to go and lay her head on Greg’s strong, broad shoulder and cry out her uncertainties and weaknesses and let his strength carry the burden of her choice.

  She reached the door and put out a shaking hand to grasp the knob. It turned easily, and she pushed it open and went in.

  Chapter Ten

  Greg was leaning against the counter, his shoulders hunched over a stale cup of coffee, and he was staring down into it, his hair tousled and his face grey and haggard. The quiet torment in his eyes as he turned to look at her made her nearly cry out. His night had been a slow torture too, and from the looks of things, he hadn’t slept a wink.

  There was coffee made, and things strewn about the counter, the coffee can open. It looked as if it was one of several pots made, and Sara dropped the blanket to go over and pour herself some. The liquid tasted much too strong, and was very hot, and she sipped it gratefully. The warmth seeped slowly through her insides.

  She turned and found Greg watching her silently. Her slight smile was involuntary and sympathetic. “It’s hell, isn’t it?” she murmured, her tired eyes staring down into the warm black depths of her own mug. “Letting down your guard to finally care for someone—it’s hell! Greg, I shouldn’t have run out on you last night like I did, and put you through all of this worry and waiting. I’m sorry. I knew when I went out that door what my answer had to be to your ultimatum, but I just didn’t have the courage to face it.”

  He put down his cup slowly, his dark gaze on her face. She couldn’t meet his eyes, but she knew he was looking at her anyway. The intensity of it burned her like fire.

  “Do you know why I flew back to California?” she asked him, laughing a little shakily at the irony of life. He shook his head, his silence prompting her answer. “I went to sign a new contract to do a prime time television special. Isn’t that rich? The coverage and the publicity would be tremendous. I could get out of the contract. It would just about break me financially—and I do have quite a bit of money, y
ou know, plus the future royalties from the album that’s to be released in a month’s time. It would just about take everything in a lawsuit, and it would ruin my reputation as a professional, to break that contract. I could do it, though. It would be a clean, irrevocable break, because no one would come near me with anything remotely resembling a business contract again. It would be just like you want, I’m sure.” Her eyes finally lifted to meet his, and they were so stony; so full of hurt and bitterness, that he flinched from the sight.

  “You know, don’t you?” she continued, in that deadly quiet voice. “You knew from the beginning that I couldn’t do it, you knew when you laid down those terms. Is that why you made such a demand, Greg? Is that why you put me through so much pain? You made your demands so completely impossible for me, so that the responsibility for us breaking up would be wholly mine, didn’t you?”

  “No!” he bit out harshly, his face so lined with pain that she nearly broke down at the sight of it. “I am what I am, Sara. You can’t change what I am, even if you’d like to! It was a choice that you had to make—between me and your career!”

  “That’s a damned lie!” she burst out raggedly. “Will you just listen to yourself a minute? Did you really hear what you just said? You’ve got it all backwards, mister. You haven’t always been this way. You’ve let yourself become so embittered by your bad experiences, you’ve let this great big wall grow up around you. It’s got so big, you can’t even get close to anyone any more! You’ve made this whole relationship so impossible because of it, you—Greg, didn’t we have something good? Couldn’t you like what we had? We—we shared.” Tears blurred her vision, and she turned away from him abruptly so that he wouldn’t see, but of course he did, and with an animalistic sound of pain he jerked forward to pull her into his arms. She turned and clung to him for a moment, and their lips met in a fierce, intense, despairing way, then she was struggling to get out of his arms as though he was about to choke her to death.