Delicious Torment

by Linsey Lanier

  “What kind of relationship?” The doctor’s voice was so quiet, it was almost as if her words came from Miranda’s own head. Pretty good shrink trick.

  “That’s what I’m here to figure out.”

  “I see.” She sat forward.

  Miranda smirked. Why speak in cloaked terms? “I guess you know who I’m talking about.”

  She smiled compassionately. “Wade Parker.”

  Pretty straightforward for a therapist. She rubbed her forehead.

  “Nothing you say will go outside this room, Ms. Steele.” she said in a sweet, reassuring tone. “Patient confidentiality is something I hold very highly.”

  Miranda folded her hands, unfolded them again. “I wasn’t worried about that.”

  “Good.” She sat back. “What are your feelings about this relationship you mentioned?”

  “My feelings?” Her mouth opened, then shut.

  The doctor waited.

  She rubbed her nose. “The sex is pretty good.”

  “That’s encouraging.”

  “I guess.” Or it would be, if it were a serious relationship. They couldn’t keep on being just fuck buddies.

  “Have you considered why the sex is so great?”

  She laughed. “It’s Wade Parker.”

  The doctor smiled. “Yes.”

  The most desirable man in town. But that didn’t really explain it. Miranda didn’t care about his money or his status. Was it his skill, his essential, core sexiness? That didn’t account for it all, either. It must be his tenderness, the care she could feel in his every touch, whether gentle or rough. And how much he wanted her. And the feelings he aroused in her. For him.

  Dr. Wingate spread her hands. “Do you love him?”

  Miranda blinked in surprise. This shrink shot straight from the hip, didn’t she? She ran her tongue over her teeth.

  Were those feelings…love? Was it love that made the sex so fantastic? If that were so, then she’d loved him weeks ago. That couldn’t be right. She shook her head. “I can’t say.”

  “Does he love you?”

  Of course he did. He showed her in a thousand ways, though he’d never said it. Not since the time she went into orbit at those three little words and walked out on him. He was too smart to make the same mistake again.

  She shrugged. “He seems to.”

  “And?”

  “And?” Miranda echoed. She blew out a breath.

  Love. That was the problem. She understood fear, despair, disappointment and pain. She didn’t know what to do with love. “He gave me his mother’s ring.”

  “Oh.” Dr. Wingate sat up. “What do you think he meant by that gesture?”

  Miranda smirked. “What else? Commitment. Permanence. Forever after.”

  “And?”

  “And I froze. I have no idea what to do. What to tell him.”

  Dr. Wingate’s face grew serious and thoughtful as she nodded. Leaning forward, she spoke in that gentle voice again. “It’s hard to trust after what you’ve been through.”

  From her visit to the hospital, the newspapers, and the short discussion they’d had at the beginning of this session, Dr. Wingate had the gist of her past.

  Miranda didn’t know what had possessed her to mention the time Leon went after her with a coat hanger when she’d forgotten to iron his favorite shirt, on the preliminary forms she had filled out in the reception room. Or the time Leon called her a filthy whore and threw her out of the house. That was after she’d been raped by a stranger.

  She stared blankly at the wall where Dr. Wingate’s diplomas hung. “I’ve got so much anger stored up inside me, there’s no room for love.”

  The doctor was silent for a long moment, taking in her words. “And yet, you feel something for Wade.”

  Miranda winced. Wade. She lived in his house, worked in his company, ate the meals he had prepared for her, slept in his bed. And yet she couldn’t even bring herself to call him by his first name.

  “That’s just it. I think I feel something, but I can’t connect with it. It’s like something’s dead inside me.”

  “We talked about that when I came to see you in the hospital.”

  Miranda nodded. That cold deadness she felt after her fight with Leon. Dr. Wingate had said it would pass.

  “Has it gotten any better?”

  Miranda thought a minute. “I’ve been working a case. I feel normal when I’m doing that. Excited. Alive.”

  “Sounds like a good career choice for you.”

  Miranda stared at her. It was, wasn’t it?

  “But you can’t let yourself feel ‘normal’ about Wade Parker?”

  She squirmed in her chair. “Parker’s a good man. Even a great man. But he’s not perfect.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “For one thing, he’s demanding. And overprotective.”

  The doctor nodded.

  “And he pampers me too much. I don’t want to be dependent on a man.”

  The doctor sat quietly.

  No, that wasn’t it. Those were things they could work out. Parker would listen if she told him how she felt. He’d understand. He was so damned understanding.

  Miranda stood up. She couldn’t sit in that chair another minute. “And he’s bossy,” she said, dragging a hand through her hair. She thought of those stupid stipulations of his. “He doesn’t treat me like an equal. Like he’d treat my peers.” She felt like a whiny little kid.

  Again the doctor nodded.

  Miranda stomped to the tall window. Hugging herself, she stared out of it. Down below a willow tree bowed its branches low to the ground. A rose bush climbed a nearby white fence.

  That wasn’t true. Parker had lavished her with so much special treatment, Becker and Holloway were purple with envy. She knew Parker’s “stipulations” were just his way of protecting her after what she’d been through. After what he’d been through with his first love, Laura.

  From across the room, the quiet voice spoke again. “Are you afraid he’ll hurt you? Physically?”

  She sucked in a shallow breath. Was that what she was really afraid of? “I can’t imagine Parker doing that,” she heard herself say.

  Another pause. “So there’s some level of trust.” She sounded pretty sure of that.

  That was right, Dr. Wingate knew Parker intimately. She’d been his therapist, too. The doctor knew she couldn’t make a case for thinking he’d get violent in a relationship.

  There was another pause, then the doctor spoke, sounding like the voice in her head again. “So what are you afraid of, Miranda?”

  She stared out the window. She stood so close, her breath formed a film on the pane. She traced the outline of the willow tree on the glass as her mind slowly cleared, and the aching reality emerged from the fog. “Sooner or later, Parker will get sick of my problems.”

  That was it. The truth. She closed her eyes as the waves of pain tremored through her. “I have so much rage inside me. So much hurt. I’ll lash out at him. I’ll find a way to punish him for what others have done to me. I won’t be able to stop myself. Sooner or later,” she forced down a gasp, slapped herself on the chest. “Sooner or later, I’ll become the abuser. And Parker won’t take that. He’ll get fed up.”

  Dr. Wingate watched her for several long moments. “And leave?”

  “Or tell me to.” What if Parker threw her out of his house the way Leon had done years ago? “I don’t think I could handle that.” Her voice cracked.

  She turned away from the window, went back to the chair, held her head in her hands. It was pounding. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to let it all out. All of it. But her eyes were dry. She raised her head and peered at Dr. Wingate. “So it’s best not to get started, isn’t it?” But it was already beyond that point.

  The doctor studied her carefully a moment. “Your past haunts you, doesn’t it?”

  Miranda looked down at the floor and nodded. The woman could read her soul.

  �
�You’ve made progress, but I don’t think you can have a healthy relationship until you heal more.”

  “That’s my problem, Doctor.” She blinked in surprise as the tears finally formed in her eyes. “It’s been thirteen years. I’ve been to therapists, tried all sorts of things, but I can’t get over—”

  “What?”

  “This rage. This anger inside. It eats away at me. Drives me away—”

  “From people?”

  The tears rolled down her cheeks. She covered her face with her hands and sniffed.

  Dr. Wingate rose and came to her side, handed her a tissue. Gently she touched her back. “Your problem is that you let what happened long ago drive you away from the present. You have to learn to distinguish past from present. You have to stand your ground. Face your fears. Defeat them instead of letting them defeat you.”

  She looked into that wise, pretty face. “How?”

  “One step at a time.” Dr. Wingate looked at the clock. “We’re past our hour. Would you like to make another appointment for next week?”

  Miranda wiped her eyes with the tissue. “Yeah,” she said absently. “Next week is good.”

  But for now, she had something more immediate in mind.

  * * *

  Tapping her foot on the worn, sterilized carpet, Miranda rode the creaky elevator to the third floor of Brandywine-Summit Memorial Hospital. She had gone straight back to the mansion after her session with Dr. Wingate this afternoon, stopping only long enough to call the office and give the receptionist an excuse about car trouble for not coming back to work.

  Finding nothing in her closet, she’d gone on a quick, impulsive shopping spree. Now she scratched at the itchy elastic waistband of the draped teal blue dress she’d selected at Belk’s for this mission. She’d tucked her dark hair under a broad-rimmed straw hat with a matching ribbon that she’d found, and had donned a pair of silver earrings and leopard heels that were on the bargain table.

  A pair of dark sunglasses completed the outfit. At first glance, Parker himself might not have recognized her.

  At the reception desk, she passed herself off as the patient’s sister, Emily, from out of town. He’d had a sister Emily who’d died at birth. She was banking on the overworked staff being unaware of that fact. They were, and she got the room number.

  Two sixty-one.

  When the elevator doors opened to the Trauma Center, she sidled past the nurses’ station, hoping no one would spot her. Fortunately, the workers were too busy tending to the injured patients.

  She followed a sign pointing to room two sixty-one around a corner and saw a policeman stationed at the door about halfway down the hall.

  She stopped and ducked behind a wall. She waited, then peeped out from her spot. The guard didn’t see her. After a moment, he settled down into a metal chair next to the door and crossed his arms. She waited longer.

  Five minutes later, his chin was on his chest, and Miranda could hear steady puffs of air coming from between his lips.

  Keeping watch over a near corpse for days on end must get pretty boring.

  Noiselessly, she emerged from her hiding place, shimmied down the hall, quietly turned the doorknob to two sixty-one and stepped inside.

  * * *

  The room was silent except for the measured beep-beep of the heart monitor and the steady pump of the breathing machine. The dry, stuffy air had that inconsistent hospital smell of medicine and bodily odors.

  Slowly, she moved to the side of the bed. Face your fears, Dr. Wingate had said. No other reason to be here.

  With a shudder, she forced herself to look down at the patient.

  Leon lay motionless, except for the strained, regular movement of his chest up and down. His face was pale, cold. His hands lay still over his chest. For a long while, she simply stood there, listening to the rhythm of the machines, as though in a trance.

  He was here because of her. She’d put him in this bed, in this condition, and she wasn’t sorry. She stared down at his large, knobby hands.

  She felt sick.

  He had been in a coma for over a month now. And yet, standing here, she was afraid of him. Terrified. As if he might open his eyes at any moment and reach up with one of those thick hands and grab her throat.

  She remembered the night he’d done just that after they’d been married a few months. It was the first time he’d attacked her. She’d thought he was going to kill her then. And several times after that.

  She’d married him to get away from her mother. The dark, lean stranger in a black leather jacket and jeans who’d hung around the high school was the James Dean type. Dangerous. Exciting. Her mother had hated him. Miranda hadn’t cared. He was her way out of the dreary, monotonous life she had at home. A life with no promise of anything. No future, but scrubbing floors and toilets, like her mother did.

  It wasn’t long after she’d married Leon that she’d begun to think the floors and toilets might have been the better alternative.

  She thought of the time he didn’t like the tuna fish casserole she’d made for dinner. He’d picked the bowl up with one of those big, gnarled hands and hurled it against the dining room wall. Noodles and mushroom soup and broken glass everywhere. Then he’d made her clean it up.

  He’d apologized afterward. He always apologized. But he’d always do it again. Each time a little worse.

  And then she was raped when he sent her out to a bad part of town late at night. And she got pregnant. And all he felt for her after that was hate. A murderous hate that had followed her for thirteen years. Haunted her. Driven her from place to place, as though he were stalking her. It hadn’t been until a month ago that she’d learned he had been stalking her.

  Face your fears.

  “You can’t hurt me anymore, Leon,” she whispered to the comatose body. “You can’t control my life.” But her words were hollow.

  Control her life? Leon Groth had ruined her life, dominated it, even when he wasn’t there. No matter how hard she’d tried to escape him.

  She fingered Parker’s ring in her pocket. Before she’d gone shopping for her disguise, she’d picked it up off the nightstand where it had sat since the night Parker gave it to her. She squeezed her eyes shut as regret washed over her.

  She had found a man who truly loved her. A man who treated her with tenderness and kindness and respect. Wade Parker was the best thing that had ever happened to her. But Leon would ruin that, too.

  She loathed him for it.

  She loathed him for all of it. He’d taken her daughter. He’d taken her soul. He’d taken everything.

  Why wouldn’t he die?

  She glared at the ventilator, the thick blue tubes coming out of it. There was a round white connector that joined the main tube to the machine. She could loosen it. Just a turn or two and the machine would malfunction. She could stand right here and watch the life seep out of him, just as he’d made any hope for happiness seep out of her. Would it be worth it to go to prison for the rest of her days? For an instant, she thought it might be.

  Hesitating, she stared at the machine. Her heart beat in her ears. From the corner of her eye, she watched those hands of his. Suddenly, one of them moved.

  God. Her hand went over her mouth, her heart jack hammering. Was she going crazy?

  Across the room, the door opened. Slowly, a nurse entered. “Excuse me.” She stared at Miranda with a disapproving frown.

  “How is he?” she asked, trying to sound concerned.

  The nurse moved to the bed, efficiently checking the tubes and the IV. “Not well.” Her voice was a sharp whisper.

  “How long…has he got?” It would help to know that.

  “The doctors don’t know. The coma could be indefinite.”

  “Indefinite,” Miranda echoed in a hollow murmur.

  The nurse finished with the IV and shot Miranda another scowl. “I didn’t know this patient was allowed visitors. How did you get in here?”

  “I’m his sister.” May
be she could stir up some compassion.

  Her look remained cold. “Leave your personal information at the front desk.”

  “Sure. I was just going, anyway.” Miranda brushed past her and out the door.

  It hadn’t worked. Dr. Wingate meant well, but facing her fears hadn’t done a thing. How could it? She’d never get beyond the horrors of her past.

  But her visit to the therapist had made her see the truth at last. The history of abuse ran through her veins just as strong and sure as Parker’s vaunted lineage ran through his. Sooner or later, she’d betray him. Sooner or later, she’d turn on him like a rabid dog. No man, not even a saint like Parker would put up with that. She’d been right all along.

  They never had a future.

  As she pushed open the revolving doors of the hospital and headed for her car, all she could think of was that she wanted to get drunk. Maybe she could talk Fanuzzi into going slumming.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Fanuzzi was prickly as a rabid porcupine in heat when Miranda called. But after a half hour of empathy over the agonies of the single life and the road crew job, Miranda had her eating out of the palm of her hand. Or least softened up enough to have a drink on the Buckhead strip.

  It was around nine o’clock when they sat down at a table in a noisy, upscale yuppie bar on Peachtree Road. Miranda was delighted when Fanuzzi ordered a dollar Bud. None of that fancy Russian Stout crap.

  “Nothing drowns your sorrows better than cheap beer,” she said.

  Fanuzzi nodded. “Got that right.”

  After a couple more bottles, they decided to make the rounds.

  Heading south down Peachtree, they hit Bliss, Uranus, Tongue and Groove, the World Bar. The gaudy neon lights glimmered happily along the vibrantly painted buildings, and with each stop, life seemed a little brighter.

  By the time they slid into a booth at Locos, they were both pretty sloshed. Miranda tapped her hands on the thick wooden table, in time to the loud seventies music a DJ was playing. He wore a big, blond Afro, a tie-dyed T-shirt, and a smile like a Jack-o-lantern. On a stand, he’d suspended one of those old-fashioned reflecting disco balls, and with his hands raised in the air, he cast weird shadows on the walls as he danced along to his own tunes.