Delicious Torment

by Linsey Lanier

  “What do you want, Delta?” Usher said as he stepped into the room.

  This time, Miranda switched to the other camera and focused on Delta.

  As if she didn’t hear him, Delta moved to the bookcase. She ran her gloved hand over a set of books, a tender look in her eyes. She removed one from the shelf, opened it, and smiling, put a hand over her mouth. It was a sentimental smile, full of tender emotion. She closed the book and put it back, then turned toward Usher.

  Miranda hit the Pause button. What was that about?

  She rose and went down the hall to the library. It didn’t take long to find the spot where Delta had been standing. There on the shelf, just at eye-level were Parker’s yearbooks from Westminster High School. One of them stuck out farther than the others. Delta hadn’t lined them up evenly.

  Miranda pulled it out and turned to the “Ps.” Her heart skipped a beat. There was Parker at age eighteen. Young, full of life and vigor. So handsome, every girl in the school must have walked the halls with her tongue out. The same knockout that had grown into a mature man.

  Across the page were the “Ls.” In the upper left corner was a picture of Delta. She was no slouch, either. Gorgeous face. Thick, gold-red curls, big, bright green cat-like eyes. There was a look of longing in them.

  She’d signed the book across the bottom of her photo. Slowly, Miranda ran her hand over the words written decades ago.

  To Wade, Thou art to me a delicious torment.

  Delicious torment? A shudder went through her. My God. Delta Langford had been in love with Parker. Really in love. “Unpleasant history,” her ass. She tucked the yearbook under her arm and headed for the master bedroom.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “Okay, Parker. What the hell is this ‘delicious torment’ crap?” Miranda shoved the upstairs door open.

  The room was dark. She plodded to the side of the bed. Parker was already under the covers, his eyes closed, his bare chest rising and falling under the satin sheets.

  His masculine scent teased at her nose and her heart melted. He was exhausted. Okay, she’d talk about the yearbook tomorrow. She turned around to head for the closet, felt a tug on her skirt. She turned back. Parker’s fist clung to the hem he’d snatched.

  “Don’t go,” he said gently.

  Her heart was in her mouth. “You were asleep.”

  “Not really.” He pulled her to him, and as she leaned against his hard body, took her mouth in a fierce, sensuous kiss.

  Welcome home, she thought giddily.

  He reached around her, aiming for her breast and found the book under her arm. “What’s this?”

  She pulled back to regain her balance and got to her feet. Jealousy flooded her when she thought of that school photo of Delta Langford. It was a silly reaction. Childish. But she couldn’t help it.

  Okay. He’d asked. She turned on the light on the nightstand and flipped through the book till she found the right page. “What does this mean?”

  Raising himself on one elbow, Parker squinted down at the book, a wisp of hair falling sexily over his forehead. She watched the lines in his face as memories registered. “Delicious Torment. It’s a quote from an essay by Emerson.”

  She grimaced. “I wasn’t checking for plagiarism.”

  He looked up at her. “What do you want to know, Miranda?”

  “I want to know just what this ‘unpleasant history’ is between you and Delta Langford.”

  He exhaled heavily. This wasn’t what he’d expected after being away a week. Memories of the past tore at his heart. Delta. His father. Laura.

  Impatient, Miranda snatched the book out of his hand and laid it on the nightstand. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. It’s none of my business, anyway.” She walked away, started to pull off her party dress.

  With a grunt, Parker sat up and ran his hands through his hair. He watched her hang up the dress, move to the dresser and wrestle herself into the gray T-shirt and the bikini-cut cotton panties she liked to wear to bed. She didn’t flinch changing in front of him, now that they had been living together for over a week, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t irritated. Though she was blithely ignorant of the power her body held over him.

  He wanted to ignore her question and simply take her in his arms and make love to her. But that wouldn’t be fair. He glanced at the chairs that sat in the corner of the room.

  It wasn’t so long ago that she’d bared her soul to him in that very corner. How could she truly belong to him, if he were unwilling to share his own secrets with her?

  He patted the mattress bedside him. “Sit down.”

  Miranda turned around. Parker sat on the side of the bed, wearing only his underwear and his classic look of patience. Her body cried out with desire for him, but if he was ready to talk, she wanted to hear it. Holding her breath, she crossed the room and sat down gingerly next to him.

  She waited.

  He studied the carpet. “I was sixteen when my mother died. I had pneumonia that winter. She contracted it from me. She had a weak constitution.”

  “That’s terrible. I’m so sorry,” she said in a whisper, wondering if he blamed himself for her death.

  He stared off into the distance, consumed by the painful memory. “My father and I had never gotten along, but her passing made things worse between us. I often wondered if he blamed me for her loss.”

  Mr. P? That was even worse than blaming yourself. So that was the heart of the rift between them. She’d never have guessed. “How awful,” she murmured, not knowing what else to say.

  “My older sister was already a freshman in college. My father said he didn’t know how to raise a teenage son.”

  She blinked. “You have a sister?” He had never mentioned her.

  He nodded. “Evelyn. She ended up helping my father run his real estate business, since I never wanted to. We don’t see each other much. My reluctance to follow in my father’s footsteps was usually at the center of our arguments.”

  Not the happy family she’d pictured. “Go on.”

  He let out a measured breath. “Two years later, my senior year at Westminster, I met a girl named Laura Turner. She was seventeen. I was eighteen. She went to a different school.”

  He eyes grew wistful. “There was a district Science Fair we both attended. She had a project comparing the vitamin content of various brands of grape juice.” He smiled tenderly. “She wanted to be a nutritionist. I invited her to a school dance. We started dating.”

  Miranda’s stomach twitched.

  “Laura was young, sweet, pretty. Dark hair cut to her shoulders, intoxicating brown eyes. She was the oldest in her family. Both her parents worked and she took care of her two younger brothers. Her father was a painter. He worked irregularly, had a problem with alcohol. He was an angry, violent man.”

  “Did he…?” her voice trailed off.

  Parker turned to her. “Beat her?” His face grew grim. “I suspected it, but Laura would never admit it.”

  Miranda clenched her teeth. “Did he do…anything else?”

  “I don’t think so. I believe she would have told me that.” Memories of Laura’s bright eyes and infectious smile invaded his mind. She was always happy, despite her family problems. So long ago.

  Miranda squeezed Parker’s hand, knowing that what he’d said so far wasn’t the worst of it. “Go on.”

  “I gave her my class ring. We called it going steady, but it was much more serious. I started driving Laura home from school every day. But it wasn’t easy for us.”

  “Why?”

  “My father, for one thing.”

  “Mr. P?”

  He nodded. “He didn’t like it a bit that I was dating a girl from the ‘other side of the tracks,’ as he called it. We fought bitterly over it. I always thought that if my mother had been alive, she could have made him understand. But she wasn’t there. When I told my father I was in love with Laura and wanted to marry her, he said I couldn’t see her a
gain.”

  “No.” It was hard to imagine Mr. P being so mean. He really must have mellowed over the years. It sounded like a different person from the one Miranda knew.

  “So I started sneaking out to see her. My father didn’t keep close tabs on me, so it wasn’t very hard. He was absorbed in his business and starting to date himself about that time. Laura and I saw each other as much as we could. Our plan was to marry right after I finished high school. I wanted to get her out of her house.” He paused at the memory of the tiny yellow clapboard home on Millege Road.

  Miranda’s heart ached. Parker’s need to protect had surfaced early. She waited, glanced over at the yearbook on the nightstand. “What’s all this got to do with Delta Langford?”

  “Delta and I both attended Westminster. The Langfords had a home in Buckhead before Eli moved out to Aquitaine Farms. We were both seniors that year and had several classes together.”

  It was hard to picture the younger versions of Parker and Delta sitting at desks in a classroom. “And?”

  He sat back against the pillows and raised his palms. “Delta ‘claimed’ me, for lack of a better word.”

  Miranda twisted to look him in the eye. “‘Claimed’ you?”

  “Even then, she had emotional problems. She was obsessive.” He looked away again with a scowl. “Somehow, she got it into her head that we were meant to be together. Our fathers were in the same business. It was almost as if we were related, she said. She decided that I belonged to her.”

  “And you knew this because…”

  “She told her closest girlfriends, who told their boyfriends, who told me.” He sighed in near disgust. “And then there was the time she caught me alone in an empty classroom and kissed me and tore at my clothes until I forced her to stop.”

  Sweet God. “She fell in love with you hard.”

  He nodded slowly.

  “But you weren’t in love with her.”

  “No. She never appealed to me.”

  A sudden wave of relief hit her at that news. “So…?”

  “She became…obsessed.”

  “Obsessed?”

  “She told me she couldn’t live without me. That she loved me desperately. She followed me. Left love notes in my locker. Called me at home.”

  “She stalked you.”

  “You might call it that.”

  Miranda tried to imagine the young Delta pining over Parker. Somehow, it seemed to fit with the little she knew of the woman. She’d always appeared emotionally distraught, but Miranda had assumed that was because of what had happened to her sister. “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t want to hurt Delta, but I had to tell her the truth. I arranged to see her. I told her I was in love with someone else who went to another school. She insisted on knowing who it was. I never should have told her.”

  She almost didn’t dare to ask. “Why not?”

  He took a breath as if it were painful to inhale. “There was a tall oak tree outside Laura’s school building. It had a small hollow spot, where we would leave notes to each other. When I could get away, I’d leave her a note telling her when and where to meet me. Laura was driving by then and I chose various spots where no one would think to look for us. Where we could get away and be together, talk about the future. One time, Delta followed me and found out about the notes and our secret meetings.”

  “Did she tell your father?”

  “No, I wish she had.”

  Again Miranda waited, almost not wanting to hear the rest of it.

  “It was the last week of school. I was studying hard for exams and I told Laura I couldn’t see her until they were over. Delta knew that. She wrote a note to Laura pretending it was from me and hid it in the tree. She told Laura to meet me at Wisteria Park at ten o’clock that night. Even back then, it wasn’t a safe place to go at night.” He put his head in his hands.

  “Did she go? Didn’t she realize the note wasn’t from you?”

  “She might have. She should have known I would never ask her to meet me in a deserted spot like that. But she went anyway. She was trusting. She didn’t know about Delta’s obsession. I never told her. That was another mistake.”

  The silence hung in the air like a death knell. Miranda held her breath.

  Parker lifted his head and continued. “It was the next day that my father came to me and told me Laura was missing. He’d heard it on the news. I hunted for her. The police hunted for her. But there was no trace of her anywhere.” He ran his hand over his eyes. “A week later, they found her body in Peachtree Creek. She had been raped and stabbed to death.”

  Because she’d gone alone to a park at night. Like Miranda had gone to a bad part of town years ago. Her hand trembled, went to her mouth. “My God. Someone raped and killed her? Who?”

  “No one knew. I went to the police and demanded answers. They said they were working on it and if I really wanted to help, I’d join the force. There was an intense recruiting program going on at the time. As soon as I graduated, I did.”

  Miranda blinked, remembering he’d told her about this incident in cloaked terms before. This was his first case. The one that started his career. “And you found the killer.”

  He nodded. “A few years later, after I’d been promoted to detective and assigned to Homicide, I resurrected the case. The perpetrator turned out to be a sex offender who had been roaming the area looking for vulnerable prey. He killed a few other young girls as well around the time.”

  Miranda shuddered, her heart aching for the tragedy he’d been through. “And Delta?”

  “After Laura’s funeral, she confessed to me what she had done and said she was sorry. She never meant any harm to come to Laura. She just wanted to break us up.” He smirked bitterly.

  “Oh, my God.”

  “Then she suggested that now Laura was gone, there was hope for us. I told her I never wanted to see her again.”

  Miranda stared at him, rubbing her arms. What a horrible thing for a young man of eighteen to go through. “No wonder you don’t care for Delta Langford.”

  “That,” he said with a twisted smile that wasn’t a smile, “is an understatement. For a long time, I blamed her for what happened to Laura. I blamed my father. I blamed myself. But the years passed, and the pain lessened.”

  Unless someone reminded him of it. “I wish I’d never asked you to take on Desirée Langford’s case.”

  “A professional puts his or her own feelings aside.”

  He’d done that for her, just so she could get her feet wet being the lead on a case. Why was he so good to her? She glanced at the yearbook sitting on the nightstand where she’d shoved it. “Sorry I reacted so…ridiculously.”

  He grinned, but there was still sadness in his eyes. “If the past weren’t so painful, I’d have rather enjoyed that part.”

  Guess she’d admitted with her actions that she cared for him.

  Tenderly, he reached for her hair, took a strand in his fingers and studied it. “Old memories. Old loves. I’d rather live in the present. You’re the one I care about now, Miranda.”

  His fingers glided through her hair, moved to the back of her head to pull her close. He pressed his mouth to hers, laying her back on the bed. His lips tore into her, greedily, lovingly, savagely, as if his could push the past away by force. He lifted her T-shirt, cradled her breasts, lingered a moment, then slid down and clutched at her panties until they were gone.

  He didn’t wait. He plunged into her, frenzied, furious, as if he was trying to drive both of their demons away with the strength of his body.

  Her hands slid over the hair in the middle of his chest, felt the smooth, muscular skin just over it. Reaching around him, she traced the impression of the scar on his shoulder and met him with her hips, just as full of need as he was, of fierce desire to think only of this instant. To feel only this moment. Only the two of them. Only now.

  They came, fast and hard and together.

  Parker buried his face in her h
air as the throbbing subsided, his heavy breath beating against her ear, her neck. They lay there together, arms and legs entwined, and suddenly she wished she could hold onto the moment forever.

  Parker’s breath slowed. Kissing her, he murmured against her neck. “Be mine, Miranda.”

  Her throat tightened. His? What did he mean by that? She escaped from his arms, scooted up on the bed, heading for her pillow.

  She ran her hand along his cheek in a conciliatory gesture. “It’s late, Parker. I’m drained and I know you are, too. Let’s talk tomorrow.” She straightened the pillow and laid her head down. There was something hard underneath it. She frowned “What’s under here?”

  “I can’t imagine.” Parker raised himself on one elbow, studied her with a strange look in his eye.

  Sitting up, she reached beneath the pillow and pulled out a small box. It looked suspiciously like a jewelry box. Ring size. Her mouth went dry. “Parker?”

  He pulled himself nearer to her and smiled, traces of sadness reappearing around his eyes. “Perhaps the Tooth Fairy left it.”

  Her lips tightened. “I haven’t been in any fights and lost a tooth lately.”

  “Open it.”

  Did she dare? Did she have a choice? Holding her breath, slowly, carefully, she lifted the lid. Her heart did a flip. Not a heady pulse of romantic thrill. This flip was fear. Pure dread.

  Sure enough, inside the box was a ring. A gorgeous ring with an old-fashioned design. A center diamond, surrounded by alternating bands of smaller gems and blue stones. Probably sapphires.

  She forced out a weak laugh. “I guess the Tooth Fairy has the hots for me.”

  “It belonged to my mother,” he said quietly, watching her in that intent way of his.

  Oh, God. She swallowed. This ring belonged to the mother Parker had lost at sixteen? Did he mean—? Was this—? No, not now. They were both dead tired. “Why do you want me to have this?” The innocent note in her voice quivered with deceit.

  His hard gaze roamed to the tall windows a moment, then shot back at her with the force of a pistol. He edged closer to her on the bed. “Why do you think I want you to have it?”