Deceit

by Fayrene Preston

  “Why not? You live In France, don’t you?”

  “That’s right. In the country. ”

  “A chateau?”

  “Not even close.” Still smiling, she nodded toward an outcropping of boulders. “Let’s sit for a while.” With lithe grace, he levered himself to the highest point, where erosion and nature had joined forces to make a natural seating area, then he bent, clasped his hands around her waist, and easily lifted her to join him.

  “All right,” he said, after they were settled onto the sun-warmed rock, “tell me about your home.” She stretched out her legs in front of her and leaned back on her hands. “My house is very small, very old, and quite simple. But it has a great deal of charm and character, and I love it. ”

  "But you have other homes, right? This country place isn’t your only home.”

  She almost laughed, because he looked so puzzled. “I only need one home. When I’m on assignment, my contract stipulates that a place to stay be provided for me.” He was silent for so long, she added, “The difference between the perception of my life and the reality is a chasm as large as the Grand Canyon. ”

  Her remark drew his gaze, and his eyes were so clear, she felt she should be able to see all the way to his soul. But the clarity was deceptive, and unseen barriers blocked her way. “You don’t believe me?” she asked, her tone deliberately light.

  “I don’t have any reason not to. ” He reached out and brushed back a wind-tossed strand of hair that had fallen across one ivory cheek. “You’ve changed my mind. I’ll buy you jewelry. Maybe aquamarines, or even sapphires, whichever I can find that would come close to the color of your eyes.” She laughed. “Why do you have to buy me anything?”

  “I don’t have to. I want to.”

  Her laughter faded. “You don’t owe me a payment of any type, Richard.”

  “No, you’re right, I don’t. But you wanted a souvenir, and I’m trying to think of something you’d like.”

  “I told you what I want. I want a seashell. ”

  “Then I guess I’ll have to help you find one.”

  A feeling warm as the sunshine that surrounded them slowly grew within her. “That would be nice. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” His brow suddenly knit. “Now that I think about it, I can’t remember ever seeing you wear any jewelry, either here or in photographs. Is there any particular reason why?”

  “No, except again, jewelry doesn’t really fit in with my lifestyle.” She paused. “I own only one piece of jewelry, and I cherish it. ”

  “Did Savion give it to you?”

  The sudden tension in his voice cut into the tranquillity they had been sharing like a piece of jagged glass. She rushed to repair their peace. "Jean-Paul has never given me any jewelry.”

  “Then who?”

  “An elderly lady I met in Paris about ten years ago. She was my next-door neighbor in the building where I took my first flat. She was bedridden and had a full-time nurse living with her, but from the moment I met her, we were friends. ” “What did she give you?”

  “A brooch in the shape of a lily. In fact, I’ve worn it since I’ve been here. ”

  He nodded. “That’s right, I remember now.”

  “Leonora—’’

  “Leonora?”

  “That was her name. We got along wonderfully. I visited with her several times a week. My visits seemed to cheer her up. I don’t think she had anyone else, but she told me stories of the man she had loved and their life together.” Her eyes narrowed against the light dancing on the water. “She gave up everything for his love.”

  “Then she was a fool. There is no such thing as love.”

  She turned her head and met his gaze. “She thought differently. She told me she didn’t mind dying, because she had known true happiness and love. Once she mentioned a regret, a major one apparently, but she never explained. She gave me the brooch right before she died.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” She didn’t want to tell him that Leonora had often said how much the sadness she saw in Liana reminded her of herself as a young woman. And of course she wouldn’t tell him how Leonora had told her that one day she, too, would find true love. He would scoff, and she didn’t blame him. Love was a subject better left undiscussed between them.

  He threaded his fingers through her hair and tilted her head toward him. Then he kissed her, quite softly, quite gently.

  “Would you settle for a piece of driftwood?” he murmured.

  Bemused by the tenderness of his kiss, she wasn’t sure she had heard him correctly. “What?”

  “Driftwood. That is, if we can’t find a suitable shell.”

  She smiled. “A piece of driftwood would be nice.”

  They scoured the beach, and in the end, chose a piece of driftwood for him and a seashell for her. Later, as Liana showered and changed for dinner, she reflected that the afternoon had been a truly happy time, a time she would remember in the years to come as vividly as she recalled the nights of ecstasy they had spent here.

  She met Richard downstairs in the dining room, where they enjoyed a long, leisurely dinner. He seemed totally relaxed, and she soaked up his attention. Every time he smiled at her or they shared a laugh, a secret sensation of pleasure tingled through her. But her happiness was moderated by what she knew was to come later—the story she had to tell him. As much as she hated to jar their current harmony in any way, that was just what she had to do.

  When they returned to her room, Richard undressed, leaving on only his trousers, and stretched out on the bed. She undressed, too, and put on her robe, but she delayed going to bed. Instead, she wandered around the room, picking up something in one place, putting it down in another, trying to decide how she should begin. She wasn’t aware that Richard was watching her until he spoke.

  “What’s wrong, Liana?”

  She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Nothing.”

  “Then why are you way on the other side of the room? Why aren’t you over here with me?”

  She smiled briefly, thinking how much easier it would be to go to him, crawl into bed beside him, and give herself up to his incredible lovemaking. She actually took several steps toward him before she could stop herself.

  She shook her head. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  “Later.”

  “I have a feeling that if I don’t tell you now, I never will, and this is something you should hear.” His facial expression went from relaxed to tense in less than a second. “If it’s about Savion, I don’t want to know.”

  She walked to the end of the bed and wrapped an arm around one of the sea-green draped posters. “Actually this is about me and what a stupid, naive young woman I was at one time.”

  He shifted impatiently. “I don’t see the point in rehashing the past, Liana. ”

  “This isn’t a rehashing, Richard. This will be information that is entirely new to you. ”

  He rubbed his forehead. “I’ve lived all these years without knowing. I don’t see why it’s so important now.”

  An odd thought floated through her mind: he sounded as if he were afraid he would be hurt by what she wanted to tell him. “It’s important to me, Richard,” she said quietly.

  He made a sound of exasperation. “All right, I give up. Let’s get this over, whatever it is. Say what you have to say.”

  This wasn’t beginning well, she reflected nervously, but then she hadn’t really expected anything else. She ran the tip of her tongue over her lips. Both her throat and her lips felt dry. “I guess I should start with my father. ”

  “Your father?” he said, surprised.

  She nodded. “His name was Donald Gordon, and he owned a small textile business that he’d inherited. The name of that business was Gordon and Sons. The Gordon in the title was my grandfather, who founded the company, the Sons was my father. ”

  She waited for Richard to show some sign of recognition, but all he said was, “Why
was your father’s name different from yours?”

  Her fingers fiddled with the diaphanous material that draped the bedpost. “I decided to take my mother’s maiden name for professional purposes.” “So your real name is Liana Gordon?”

  “That's right.” She pushed away from the bed and slipped her hands into the pockets of her robe. “At any rate, apparently my father wasn’t much of a businessman, although I didn’t find that out until later. I was finishing high school about the time the business began to fail. Things went from bad to worse until it reached the point where everything rested on the company getting one contract.” She paused. “Unfortunately for him, you were going after the same contract and you won.”

  Richard bolted straight up in bed. “What?”

  She nodded. “It was the Rhiman Industries contract.”

  “I remember.” He frowned. “That must have been about twelve years ago.”

  “That’s right. My father told me you were young and hungry and had underbid him.” Her throat tightened. "He also told me you were unscrupulous.” “What else did he tell you?” he asked in a soft, ominous voice.

  “That the only reason you won was because you had cheated to get the contract. Then in the next breath, he told me that he had lost everything. Not too many days later he tried to commit suicide.”

  He came off the bed and strode to her side. “Good Lord, Liana, suicide?”

  Her lips formed a sad smile. “Oh, he didn’t succeed. He botched the job, and he was left an invalid.” She tried to laugh but it ended up a sob.

  “So there I was, just out of high school, no real job skills and a mountain of medical bills that grew bigger every day. I had one thing going for me.”

  “Your face.”

  “Yes.”

  He didn't move, but it seemed to her that he had physically withdrawn from her. “You already told me how you got to the Paris designers."

  “And thank goodness that happened.” She drew a deep breath. “I finished one job and started looking for another. I had made quite a few contacts while I was there, and I thought my chances would be better in Paris than back in the States. Then one day quite by accident, I read in the paper about a young American businessman who was brash enough to come to Paris and try to sell textiles to the French.”

  His grim expression told her he knew what was coming next, and this time he did move a few steps away from her.

  She made a helpless gesture with her hands. “It was pure impulse on my part. To my everlasting regret, I didn’t even stop to think things through. I went to your hotel and flirted with one of the young men who worked behind the desk until he found out your schedule for me. Then I arranged to be in the same place at the same time.”

  “Tell me something, Liana.” His tone held a quiet, deadly quality. “How did you know? How did you know that I would take one look at you and fall like a ton of bricks for you?”

  “I didn’t. It’s just that making you fall in love with me was the only way I could think of to hurt you. I had no money, I had no power—”

  “You only had your beauty,” he finished for her. “Your face, your body, your eyes, the way your skin smelled and tasted—” He broke off and turned away. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

  She put her hand on his arm and tried to make him look at her. He wouldn’t budge, and she had to circle him until she was in front of him.

  “You have to listen to me.”

  “I don’t have to do anything. ”

  Tears sprang into her eyes. “Please. Please, Richard. Just listen for a few more minutes.”

  “Damn you, Liana!”

  She lay her palms flat on his chest, feeling as though the contact would somehow help her get through to him. “I fell in love with you.”

  He gazed down at her, his expression blatantly incredulous. “How can you even say that?”

  Tears slipped from her eyes and ran freely down her cheeks. “Because I did fall in love with you, although that obviously wasn’t the plan. But, think about it, Richard. We couldn’t have had the incredible two weeks we had if—”

  He tore away from her. “What the hell difference does it all make now. Liana? That was a long time ago. It’s over.”

  She dashed at the tears with a shaking hand. “Maybe it doesn’t make a difference, but I want you to know the whole story. ”

  “Why? To soothe your conscience? To absolve you of guilt?” His voice and hand sliced through the air like a knife. “Forget it, Liana. It’s not my job to give absolution.”

  She couldn't stop her tears, nor could she stop before she’d told him everything. “Try to see it from my point of view. I had fallen in love with the man I believed had destroyed my father. To make matters worse, I had become involved with that man for the sole purpose of destroying him. ”

  “By making me fall in love with you,” he said with a flat sarcasm.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, honey, you sure as hell made me fall in something with you, but it was more than likely lust, and you didn’t come near destroying me.”

  “I’m glad.”

  He uttered a disgusted sound and dropped back onto the bed.

  “Richard, I had to leave you.”

  “Right. And before you left, you just had to tell me that you didn’t love me, in fact had never loved me.”

  “I told you that so you wouldn’t try to stop me. Don’t you see? I couldn’t bring myself to tell you the truth. I felt trapped and needed to get out quickly. I couldn’t go on living with the man who had destroyed my father, nor could I live with the idea of destroying you. But, Richard, don't doubt that I loved you.”

  “Love.” He sneered as he infused the word love with contempt. “And of course, your love for me is why you went to Savion. Because you loved me. It all makes perfect sense, Liana.” He crossed his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling.

  Bands of pain were binding her chest, drawing tighter and tighter, but she went on. “I was hurting, because of what I had done and because of what I thought you had done. I could see no resolution. Jean-Paul provided me with a safe haven. He expected nothing of me—”

  His harsh laugh interrupted her.

  What was the use, she thought in despair. He didn’t want to hear any of this, and now she was sorry she had forced him to listen. She had opened sealed-over wounds and destroyed whatever tenuous relationship they had managed to achieve here at SwanSea.

  “Are you finally through?” he asked.

  “No,” she said slowly. “There’s one more thing. Six years ago, my father died, but right before he did, he confessed to me that he had used you as a scapegoat, as a cover for his own incompetence.” She laced her fingers together and stared down at them. “You see, he couldn’t accept the responsibility for his failure, and he couldn’t bear for me to know that he had lost the company that he considered my birthright.” For once, Richard didn’t say anything; he was staring at the ceiling again. “As soon after the funeral as possible, I caught a plane to New York. I planned to tell you everything and beg your forgiveness. But when I called your office from the airport, I found that you were on your honeymoon. The news, coming right on the heels of my father’s death, was devastating to me.” Completely miserable, she shrugged. “That’s it. You finally know everything. ”

  She waited for a reaction, expecting an explosion of some sort, but his silence continued, stretching, growing, like an impenetrable wall. “Richard?”

  “Come to bed, Liana.”

  The quiet resignation she heard from him shocked her. “Is that all you have to say?”

  He slowly moved his head on the pillow until he could see her, but his eyes appeared dead, without expression. “I’ll admit that when you left me eleven years ago it seemed like a big deal. I took it hard. But looking back on that day, it was only my pride that was hurt, nothing more. ”

  “But—”

  “There is no love, Liana. Love is only a word people use as a ration
alization for passion.”

  She couldn’t think of a thing to say; she felt as if she’d been hit in the stomach.

  “Come to bed,” he said again.

  The room began to spin, the floor tilted precariously. Somehow she made her way to the bed without falling and managed to lie down.

  He didn’t touch her. She didn’t touch him.

  She stared unseeingly into the darkness, listening to the quiet, even pattern of Richard’s breathing, and the ear-piercing screams in her head.

  And when she awoke, she was alone. Again.

  The cloud-shrouded night provided little illumination. Richard used the beam of the borrowed flashlight to light his way along unfamiliar paths as he ran. And ran. And ran.

  Damn Liana!

  What had she expected? That she could tell him that incredibly stupid story and the past eleven years would be erased? The emptiness. The loneliness. The pain.

  Or was telling him her way of inflicting even more pain?

  Bitterness choked him until he thought he wouldn’t be able to go on. But he continued running, through woods, across meadows, trying to exorcise the demon that tormented his soul—the woman who had somehow imbedded herself so deep inside him, he feared for his sanity.

  Even if the first part of the story were true, even if she had set out to hurt him by making him fall in love with her because she thought he had cheated her father, why had she left him?

  She said that she had fallen in love with him. He didn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe it. The hateful words she had uttered right before she had walked out the door were forever carved into his brain. “I don’t love you,” she had said. “I’ve only been playing with you.” And then she had gone straight into the arms of Jean-Paul Savion.

  Damn her straight to hell.

  He ran, and he ran, and he ran.

  And when he found himself in front of her door, he opened it, and went to her.Through the gray light of dawn, he saw that she was awake.

  “I think I hate you,” he said quietly as he shoved his sweatpants down and thrust desperately into her.

  She arched up to receive him, and his mind went blank, as a dark, burning desire took over.