Bonkers

by Michelle Holman

  Lisa didn’t seem to notice. She shook her head wearily. ‘Nobody can help, Dan. Believe me when I say my situation is unique.’

  He frowned at her. ‘You keep on saying that. I know you might not believe me, but this has happened to other people and they have got their memories back, Lisa.’

  Lisa stared at her wine glass. ‘I keep telling you Dan, I haven’t lost my memory.’ Sensing his withdrawal, she felt the familiar feelings of hopelessness wash over her. ‘Leave this,’ she said abruptly, indicating their plates and cutlery. Bracing a hand on the breakfast bar, she turned towards him and began to slide from the tall chair. ‘I’ll clear it away in the morning.’

  Dan automatically reached out to help her. Their knees bumped. Lisa slipped and grabbed at his shoulder to stop herself from falling. Dan caught her about the ribs, his thumbs framing the swell of her breasts, one of his knees wedged between hers.

  They froze and stared at one another, their faces only inches apart.

  Lisa had landed astride one of his thighs. She felt heat explode in her groin at the hard muscle pressed so intimately against her. She hadn’t been touched by a man there in over three years and instinctively deepened the contact. She took a sudden, deep breath that lifted her breasts higher. Dan’s gaze dropped, his thumbs stroking slowly upwards towards her suddenly taut nipples. The pads of his thumbs paused just below their target, making her want to mewl with frustration. She remained motionless, her breathing unsteady, waiting for him to slide his thumbs higher—or worse, push her away.

  Dan told himself he should set her on her feet, that he should ignore the heat and softness beneath his hands. He tried to tell himself that this was Linda and she was poison. But she didn’t smell like Linda. She smelled like Lisa. She sounded like Lisa. Angling his head, he placed his lips against the soft skin at the side of her neck and tasted her with his tongue. At the same time, he braced his foot on the rung of her abandoned chair, wedging his leg more firmly between her thighs. The heat of her scalded him through his trousers.

  Her arm slid upwards to tighten around his neck, her palm flattening between his shoulder blades, her fingers spread wide across his back. Her head tipped sideways to give him better access to her throat and having gained a safe anchorage she raised the hand she had braced on the breakfast bar and pushed it through the softness of the dark hair at his nape.

  Dan made a hoarse sound deep in his throat, the stubble of his five o’clock shadow scraping the tender skin of her chin as he sought to find her lips in a hot, open-mouthed kiss that went straight to the good stuff, not wasting any time on nibbling or pussy-footing about.

  They went from zero to ninety in the space of a few seconds.

  She tasted of lamb and wine and her.

  He tasted of lamb and wine and man.

  He was vaguely aware she was tugging his shirt out of his trousers and growled in approval when her fingers slid up his chest to touch his nipples. A lot of women were unaware how sensitive that part of a man’s body was. Dan was surprised at how clumsy and untutored her caresses seemed to be. He muttered her name hoarsely and began tugging at the buttons between her breasts. When he reached her lacy shell-pink bra he lowered his head and, closing his lips around one peaked nipple, sucked her deep inside his mouth.

  Lisa gasped, fisting her hand in the hair on his head. Dan relinquished the swollen peak of her breast long enough to murmur roughly, ‘Take it easy, honey.’

  ‘Sorry!’ she exclaimed shakily, releasing him and cradling her hands above her pink, lacy breasts, his thigh as her only support.

  Dan looked from her breasts to her wide, flustered eyes and gave a smile calculated to send Lisa’s hormones into a full-out stampede. He kissed her lips softly and then more possessively, his tongue toying with her full lower lip before sliding inside her mouth. Lisa cradled the back of his head in her palms, lifting her breasts in blatant invitation and rubbing the hot, aching flesh between her legs against his thigh. Sliding up the hem of her skirt, Dan slipped his fingers inside her panties and almost disgraced himself in his underwear when he touched the hot, wet, quivering flesh hidden there. ‘Jeezuss,’ he mumbled, almost mindless with the need to find a place to lay her down and slide inside her.

  She gasped, thrusting herself urgently against his hand. While his fingers slipped back and forth, Dan held her right breast with his free hand and feasted on it like it was a banquet laid out just for him. He lifted his face to watch her when he felt her begin to climax and was stunned at how potently female and beautiful she looked, her head tilted back, her skin flushed, her eyes closed and her lips parted as she rocked herself against his fingers.

  ‘Dan!’ she moaned and clutched at his shoulders, her fingers digging into him.

  ‘Jesus,’ he whispered again hoarsely, clinging to his own self-control by a thread. ‘Just let it go, Linda.’

  She stiffened and began to convulse.

  Once.

  Twice.

  And again.

  She collapsed against him, her face buried in his shoulder, her arms scissored around his neck. Dan reached behind his neck to gently remove her arms; the headlock she had him in would have done a pro-wrestler proud. He continued to support her while they both got their breath back, shuddering when she slid a hand across his chest, letting it come to rest against his thudding heart.

  ‘You OK?’ he managed to say at last.

  She nodded against his shoulder. ‘But you didn’t…’ She slid her hand down the tight muscles in his abdomen towards the hard ridge of flesh at the front of his trousers.

  Dan grabbed her hand before she reached her destination. ‘Don’t,’ he said through gritted teeth, acutely aware of the fullness of her breasts flattened against his chest. ‘If you touch me I’ll probably embarrass myself.’

  Lisa felt turned on all over again by the ragged edge to his voice. She lifted her head to look at him. ‘But…it’s not fair.’

  Dan smiled at the telltale pink flush on her cheeks. ‘I enjoyed watching you.’

  She made a strangled noise and buried her face in his shoulder again.

  He laughed. And then he frowned. He had called her Linda as she came. She was Linda. How the hell had he let himself forget?

  Lisa looked up at him dazedly, sensing his withdrawal. Suddenly his face became unreadable. ‘Dan?’ she murmured, bewildered. What had she done wrong?

  He lifted her off his leg, averting his eyes from her breasts in the fine cobweb lace of the pink bra. ‘Where are your crutches?’ he asked abruptly.

  Lisa blinked and gestured vaguely to the opposite end of the breakfast bar.

  Reaching out one long arm, Dan lifted them over to her, keeping his eyes averted. ‘It’s late,’ he said abruptly. ‘You should go to bed. I’ll finish cleaning up out here.’

  Utterly stunned, Lisa remained frozen for several moments as she tried to figure out what had caused Dan to distance himself from her as if the intimacy of the last few minutes had never taken place. It was then she suddenly remembered he’d called her Linda. He’d been making love to his wife, not her.

  Determined not to cry, she pulled the front of her white shirt together, fumbling to get the buttons through the holes.

  Dan felt disgusted with himself as he watched her struggle to cover herself, her head bent like a flower on a broken stem.

  It took Lisa several attempts before she managed to make herself decent and thread her arms through the plastic cups of her crutches. How could she have been so stupid? It had taken just one kiss to fan the smouldering sexual tension between them into a raging inferno, but Dan clearly didn’t want to take it through to its natural conclusion. She fled from the kitchen as if she were running from the devil himself.

  Lisa lay in Dan’s old bed that night, longing for the touch of his hands and the demanding pressure of his mouth and tongue against hers, knowing that although he was sleeping just two rooms away he might as well have been on the moon. How was she going to face him in the mornin
g?

  Staring into the darkness, Lisa was forced to admit that the truth of the matter was that she couldn’t bear not to.

  15

  Sherry found out all about Brenda’s run-in with Linda Brogan from Brenda’s younger sister, Christine.

  The high school Christine spasmodically attended ran an education programme for problem kids, which was facilitated by the police. Christine Buckner definitely fell into the category of problem kid.

  Sherry thought that Christine was a pain. The only thing they agreed on was that Brenda was a pain as well.

  ‘Did you hear some woman had a go at Bren in the two-dollar shop on Monday?’ Christine demanded the moment she set eyes on Sherry in the school car park.

  ‘No,’ Sherry replied shortly as she locked the door of the squad car. She was in a foul mood because she hated doing these community projects and had only pulled it today because Dillon Taylor had to testify in court. Sherry wasn’t keen on kids. As far as she was concerned, all of them should be kept away from the public until they were at least eighteen. Like in a zoo.

  Of course she’d never shared this thought with the panel at her interview when she’d applied to the police nor with her tutors at the police college nor with her superior officers once she’d graduated. But it was generally recognized that Sherry Jackson was not the first port of call when it came to community-policing projects.

  She much preferred the dirty work.

  Sherry began to walk towards the entrance of the administrative block, nodding at a couple of kids she knew. They flinched when they saw her; she’d arrested them both in the past.

  Christine tried to stroll nonchalantly along beside her, but her legs couldn’t keep up with Sherry’s mile-long ones so she was forced to trot instead, which she hated because she knew it made her look stupid. She thought that Sherry Jackson was cool for a cop.

  ‘She tried to pretend she wasn’t, but I think she was buying Ben’s birthday present,’ Christine panted and was relieved when Sherry stopped.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think Bren was buying Ben’s birthday present in the two-dollar shop.’

  Sherry’s eyes narrowed. ‘The slapper!’

  Christine nodded delightedly. ‘Yeah. Well, this woman bailed Brenda up in the middle of the shop and tore a strip off her as if she knew exactly what Bren was up to. It was so cool.’

  Sherry’s scowl faded. She stared at Christine for several moments in silence. ‘What did she look like?’

  ‘Who?’ Christine asked, puzzled by the strange expression on Sherry’s face.

  ‘The woman who shouted at Brenda, you gormless article!’ Sherry snapped.

  Several boys passing by gave them both a wide berth.

  Christine scowled. ‘I dunno. Old.’ She eyed Sherry viciously. ‘About your age, I guess.’

  Sherry scarcely noticed the insult. ‘What colour was her hair? What colour eyes did she have? Describe her to me.’

  ‘I dunno!’ Christine snapped, beginning to regret she’d brought it up. When Sherry went all slit-eyed again, she added hastily, ‘A bit like you. Black hair and blue eyes—big, blue eyes. Oh, and she had a broken leg.’

  Sherry swallowed audibly. Despite the warmth of the sunshine on her pale-blue shirt, she felt suddenly cold. ‘What…what else did she say?’

  Chris screwed up her face. ‘Something about telling Brenda last year that it wasn’t on buying Ben’s presents at the two-dollar shop.’ She looked puzzled. ‘But Bren didn’t seem to know her, which was weird.’

  Sherry felt sick. Lisa had caught Brenda in the shop last year and told her off about it. ‘Shit,’ she whispered.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Christine asked uncertainly, peering up into Sherry’s pale face. ‘You’re not going to faint or something, are you?’

  Sherry snapped out of her trance and glared at her. ‘You wish!’

  Christine felt offended. She didn’t actually. Sherry was her hero. Her role model. It was just a shame she was a cop, because Chris’s inclinations tended more towards the dark side of the force.

  Sherry made it through the morning. Just. She almost made one of the boys cry when the little arsehole persistently heckled her with smartarse comments from the back of the room. Eventually she lost her patience and snarled back.

  ‘When’s Dillon coming back?’ the teacher who helped run the project asked at the end of the session as they were putting the chairs away.

  Sherry thought if the teacher pursed her lips any more they’d disappear down the back of her throat. ‘Soon,’ she replied tersely. ‘ Very soon.’

  For the remainder of the day her mind was on what Christine had told her. She kept remembering the things Linda Brogan had shouted at her in the supermarket car park. The experience had shaken Sherry so badly that she had gone home and cried for only the third time since Lisa had died.

  Linda Brogan had freaked her out. She looked nothing like Lisa. She was tall and dark-haired and extremely beautiful, whereas Lisa had been tiny, fair-haired and cute.

  And Lisa was dead.

  So how did Linda Brogan know things only Lisa could have known? How did she know about Sherry’s fear of spiders, and how did she know the joke about the scarves?

  Sherry had been sleeping badly ever since. Several times she had dreamed of Linda Brogan’s desperate face as she struggled against the big American guy Sherry remembered seeing in the Emergency Department on the day Lisa had died. She kept hearing Lisa’s voice coming out of Linda Brogan’s mouth—maybe not exactly the same, but with a rhythm and inflection that sounded like Lisa. She kept hearing her frantic cries of, ‘Sherry, it’s me! It’s Lisa!’

  Sherry knew that Dillon was going to interview Linda Brogan this week to get her statement about the accident. Because there had been a fatality, it would be going to the coroner’s court. Linda Brogan would probably get community service and a hefty fine.

  Sherry burned with the injustice of it: Lisa’s life paid for by a few measly hours at some community project and a tiny dent in the Brogans’ bank balance.

  She hadn’t told anybody what had happened in the car park, not even Ben.

  Especially not Ben. He kept on warning her to stay away from Linda Brogan. ‘Mum and Dad have had enough grief. They don’t need you to give them any more.’

  Much to Sherry’s horror, Ben had suddenly set a date for his wedding to Brenda, and it was only a couple of months away. She and Lisa had stopped worrying ages ago about Brenda actually ever getting Ben to the altar. They’d been engaged for three years, and Brenda seemed to have accepted this state of affairs to concentrate instead on saving for the deposit to build a house. But every now and then she spat the dummy and made noises about wanting to get married sooner.

  ‘I pray every night that the price of land keeps on going up on the North Shore,’ Lisa had regularly confessed to Sherry.

  ‘Yeah,’ Sherry would agree. ‘And that Brenda can’t find enough of that avocado satin material to make the bridesmaids’ dresses.’ Sherry, Lisa and Christine had been given the dubious honour of following Brenda up the aisle.

  ‘We’re such cows,’ Lisa would sigh. She’d always been the kinder of the two of them.

  ‘Long live the cows, I say,’ Sherry always retorted. She knew she was a cow. ‘And down with herbos.’

  Sherry was certain that Ben had decided to get married sooner just to give their parents something to take their minds off Lisa’s death. He’d denied this when she tackled him about it, however.

  ‘Brenda and I have been planning to get married for ages, Sherry,’ he insisted.

  ‘That’s right,’ Sherry nodded. ‘So why don’t you just keep on planning?’

  Ben frowned. ‘I know Brenda’s not your favourite person—’

  ‘She’s nobody’s favourite person, Ben!’ Sherry interrupted, glaring at him. ‘If you were honest for once you’d admit she’s not even yours.’

  He flushed. ‘Butt out, Sherry. You’re out of line.’

&nbs
p; ‘Better than being out of my mind!’ she yelled back.

  They hadn’t spoken to each other in over a week.

  And now it seemed that Brenda was up to her old habits, shopping for Ben’s birthday present in bargain shops. Sherry was so rattled by her conversation with Christine that she dropped in at the plant shop to see her father after she’d finished her shift.

  Brian was unloading a delivery of citrus-fruit trees at the back of the outdoor display area when Sherry found him. He smiled when he saw her, pausing to wipe his brow with his sleeve. ‘Hello, love. Just finished work?’

  Sherry kissed his cheek, feeling saddened by the new lines that seemed to accumulate on his lean, weather-beaten face every time she saw him. He carried his sadness about him like a cloak.

  ‘Where’s Rambo Ray?’ she asked. ‘Why isn’t he helping you?’

  Brian frowned and shook his head. ‘Leave it, Sherry.’

  Sherry began to help shift the trees.

  ‘Leave it,’ Brian repeated. ‘You don’t have to do that.’

  She smiled. Her father was about the only man she knew who treated her like she was made of spun glass.

  Although Sherry was tall and not blessed with the most sensitive of natures, she was finely built and extremely attractive. She’d lost count of the number of times people had asked her if she’d ever thought of becoming a model. The thought of so many eyes focussed on her body made her skin crawl. People were always shocked when she told them she was a cop. She never wore makeup when she was on duty, and with her bone structure and vivid colouring she didn’t need it anyway. But off-duty Sherry indulged her love of beautiful, feminine clothes and makeup to the max. She had two distinct personas—her cop one and her private one. Her fellow cops were shocked when they saw how she looked out of uniform.

  It was as she was shifting the last of the trees that she saw Linda Brogan standing on the far side of the concreted area that housed the outdoor plant display. She was staring at Sherry and Brian intently, her plaster cast propped on the ground before her and a plastic bag with what looked like a plant dangling from one of her hands. Sherry immediately recognized the black, draped skirt she was wearing as a Lisa Ho design. A fine white, scoop-neck T-shirt and a blue denim jacket topped it off; Linda’s black hair was pulled haphazardly onto the top of her head.