“I’m married?”
“Yes.”
“But you and I… We’ve been… You knew I was married, and you still…”
“Yes. I still.” He spoke roughly, all too aware that everything that mattered to him would be decided in the next few minutes. “I didn’t expect us to become lovers, but I don’t regret that we did. I love you. He doesn’t.”
He reached for her. She shook her head and took a quick step back.
“Married,” she said. “To a man whose name is enough to sicken me. And you knew. You knew!”
“I wanted to tell you, but how? Stafford warned me that bringing your memory back before you were ready could be dangerous. And I didn’t need a physician to tell me that handing you this kind of memory, that you were married to a man who wanted to hurt you, could do you irreparable damage.”
“So you told me nothing. You just took me to bed.”
His mouth thinned. “Goddammit, you know that’s not the way it was! Everything that’s happened between us is real. I didn’t plan on making love to you, and I sure as hell didn’t plan on falling in love with you.” He clasped her shoulders, felt the rigidity of her body. “I never believed in those things. Love. One man, one woman. Forever after. And then you came into my life and—and—”
“You should have told me.”
“Don’t you think I wanted to?”
“I don’t know. Did you?”
“Of course I did! But how was I supposed to do it? Was I supposed to say, here’s a cup of coffee, do you want it with cream and sugar and oh, by the way, you’re married to a son of a bitch who wants you dead?”
She stared at him.
“Ariel. I love you. I never wanted to hurt you. I love you with all my heart.”
Her expression softened. “I know you do.” She reached up and kissed him. “And I love you the same way. I’ve never loved anyone else. I know that. As for him…” She shuddered. “I don’t know why I married him. When I try to come up with a reason… It’s like peering into a dark, bottomless hole. I know I hated having him touch me. That I hated even being in the same room with him. Do you know why I married him? And why he wants to—to hurt me?”
Matteo stared at the woman he loved. The stricken expression on her face went straight to his heart. She was aching. How could he live with himself if he didn’t help her?
Slowly, gently, he tucked a strand of golden hair behind her ear.
“I don’t know why he wants to hurt you,” he said in a low voice.
“But you know why I married him. I know that you do.” Her voice broke. “Matteo. Please. You’re the only one I can turn to. I beg you. Help me.”
She had said those words to him before, and he had turned away from her. He had failed her, but he would not fail her again.
He looked at the fireplace. The flames were dying. The room was growing chilly. Was that a symbol? He didn’t believe in symbols. Still, the past was done. His love for Ariel, hers for him, was the future.
He touched her cheek. Her skin was cool. She was shivering.
“Come to bed,” he said. “Let my body warm yours. And I’ll tell you what I know.”
He took her upstairs, to their room. He sat her down on the bed, went to the fireplace and lit the kindling, fed wood to the flames that sprang up. Then he stripped off his clothes, undressed her, and slipped into the bed with her in his arms. He held her close to him, rocked her, stroked her hair until he felt the tension ebbing from her.
“Tell me,” she said softly. “Who is Anthony Pastore? When did I marry him? And why?”
He took a deep breath.
“You married him a year ago.”
“Because?”
“Ariel. This is going to be painful.”
“Not knowing is more painful. Why would I have married a man like him? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Your father—Pastore had some information about your father that could put him in jail.”
She was quiet for what seemed a long time. Then, she made a little sound of distress.
“My father’s a thief,” she whispered. “It’s coming back to me. He’s an investor. But he—he was stealing from his clients.”
“Yes.”
“And my mother was—she was—” Her voice broke. “She was sick. Terribly sick. And if she’d found out about my father…” She drew an anguished breath. “Anthony Pastore was one of my father’s clients. He found out what my father was doing. He said—he said he’d keep quiet, but for a price… Oh God,” she said softly. “I was that price.”
Matteo wrapped her even more tightly in his arms. She buried her face in his throat. He could feel her hot tears against his skin.
“My mother’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Honey. Maybe that’s enough for now.”
“She is. I know she is. But I kept her from knowing the truth about my father. From the disgrace of it.”
“You did a wonderful thing, cara.”
“Marrying that man…” She shuddered. “It’s all coming back to me. The wedding. Telling him, after it was over, that I would never let him touch me…” She looked up at Matteo. “Is that why he wants to get rid of me now? Because I wouldn’t sleep with him?”
“I don’t know, cara. I wish I did.”
“And what about us? You and me. How did we meet?”
“Let the rest wait until tomorrow.”
“I want to know now. This is like a—a giant jigsaw puzzle. I have some of the pieces, but I need the others. If have them, everything will fall into place.”
Everything, Matteo thought including how he had turned his back on her when she’d needed him.
“We met over drinks,” he said slowly. “Pastore, you, and me.”
“Why?”
“Pastore wanted me to see you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He wanted me to see that you were—that you weren’t well.”
She gave a forlorn little laugh. “This isn’t a jigsaw puzzle, it’s a movie. I’m watching it, but I don’t understand the plot. Why did he want you to see that I wasn’t well? And what does that mean? Was I sick?”
“You were—upset.”
“You’re leaving things out. I know you are.”
“Ariel. Please. Let’s not do this all at once.”
”Did we talk? What did we say to each other? How did I get your card?”
There was no way out. He’d known that, all along. It was time to stop being a coward and tell her the truth.
“I gave it to you.”
“Because?”
“Because—because you were so beautiful. And so sad.” He paused. “And because you asked me to help you.”
She rose up on her elbow and looked down at him. The light from the fire illuminated her face.
“My knight,” she said softly.
“No. Not that. You asked for help and I said—”
“He said,” a voice snarled, “fuck that!”
The lights blazed on. Ariel screamed. Matteo shot upright against the pillows.
A man stood near the light switch. He was big and bald, and he had what Matteo figured was a .375 Magnum in his hand.
At the foot of the bed stood Tony Pastore. He was holding the same kind of gun.
It was pointed at Ariel.
Pastore grinned. “Surprise! Bet you didn’t expect visitors tonight.”
Matteo started to pull back the blankets.
Pastore’s grin vanished. “Don’t move, you piece of shit, or so help me, I’ll blow my beloved wife’s head off right now.”
Matteo touched Ariel’s leg under the blanket. It was a warning, as much as he could give her, to stay quiet and let him handle this.
“Hello, Tony,” Matteo said calmly. “How’d you get in?”
“What, you think only the good guys know how to work computers?” He grinned. “You made a bad mistake, lawyer-man. You figured that was just a power-down and that it took a while for the backup generat
or—yeah, we knew there was a generator— to kick in. It was a power-down, all right, but the storm didn’t have a thing to do with it. Jimmy here has talents you wouldn’t think a guy like him has. Right, Jimmy?”
Jimmy’s grin showed a mouthful of yellowed teeth.
“You want me to pop them, boss?”
“No way. This is personal. I’ll take care of them both.”
“Tony,” Matteo said quietly, “let Ariel go.”
“You got to be kidding. Why would I do that? My cheating, adulterous wife’s got the same fucking morals as her old man. “
“I’m the one you want. I took her away from you.”
“The hell you did. You took what I discarded. She’s nothing but a burned out, brain-dead leftover.”
“And that’s why you can let her go. She can’t hurt you. Whatever it is you think she knows about you is lost inside her head.”
“Hey, lawyer-man, you’re not as dumb as I thought. Figured that out, did you?”
It had been a guess, but a good one. What else could make Pastore want to get rid of his wife except something she’d seen or overheard?
“I’m not,” Ariel said. “Burned out or brain-dead.”
Matteo pinched her leg under the blanket.
“She is,” he said. “There are times she can’t remember her name from one minute to the next. She’s useless.”
Pastore laughed. “Not quite useless, counselor, as you damn well know.”
“She’s good for sex,” Matteo said. “That’s it. But whatever you think she knows…”
“Oh, she knows, all right. She had a front row seat when I killed a guy. Sol Rabinowitz. Remember that, baby? Until then, she was worth keeping around. She looked good. Smelled good. Impressed the crap out of bankers and politicians and all the people I needed to get where I wanted to go. Then she walked into a room when she shouldn’t have and, pow, it all changed.”
“Tony. I’m telling you, she has no mem—”
“Maybe not, but that’s a risk I can’t afford. I admit, I didn’t plan on ending it like this. It was gonna be simpler. She’s nuts, I arrange to have her committed, no big shock when she offs herself with too many pills, but never mind. It can happen a different way. There’s a hundred places in these mountains where nobody will ever find her. Or you, either. So romantic. Romeo and Juliet, goin’ down together.”
“You don’t want to do this.”
“Of course I do.” Pastore grinned. “Besides, why should you care? Even if I let the two of you live—which I’m not stupid enough to do—she’d never let you screw her again.” A sly look came over his face. “What’d I hear her call you? Her knight? Yeah. Right. Some knight you were, but I bet she doesn’t know about that.”
“Listen, man—”
“I heard that story you told her. Mighty convenient, how you left out the real reasons the three of us had a little drink together.”
Matteo inched toward the edge of the bed. The Sig Sauer. He’d put it on the nightstand…
“Move another inch and she’s dead. And I’d hate that to happen before wifey hears the whole story. Ariel? You want to hear it? The true shit about your knight?”
Ariel sat up against the pillows, holding the blankets to her chin.
“Yes.”
Matthew reached for her leg. She’d moved just far enough away on the oversized bed that his fingers only brushed her skin.
“Ariel. Honey. Whatever he says—”
She glared at Matteo. “I heard what you said about me being only good for sex.”
“No. Honey…”
She looked at Pastore. “What were you going to tell me?”
“Well, it all started after you saw what I did to that idiot who’d tried to double cross me. You went whacko. Not out-of-your-head whacko. Good citizen whacko, is what I mean. You tried to call 911. Of course, I couldn’t let that happen. I tried to calm you down.”
Ariel took a long breath, then slowly expelled it.
“I remember,” she said softly. “You hit me.”
“What else are you supposed to do with a hysterical woman? But you were still yelling and screaming, so I had one of my people put you in your room.” His mouth twisted. “It was your room, all right. We got married and you insisted on your own room and, goddammit, you kept your door locked against me.”
“I remember that, too.”
“I told you I’d let you out once you calmed down, but you wouldn’t. So I helped you.”
“You started giving me pills,” Ariel said. Her voice trembled. “Drugs.”
“Calmed you down, didn’t it? Enough so I could begin havin’ a little fun with you.”
“Fun,” she said, and Matteo knotted his hands into fists.
God, he thought, God, just let me get to him. I don’t care what happens to me. Just let me tear out his throat…
“Maybe I overdid it. After a couple of months, I had to get you a nurse. Well, a nurse who understood how I wanted things done.” He laughed. “Then I got an offer I couldn’t refuse. Some people said they wanted me to run for Congress. The problem was, there was no way to keep you around, if I did that. So… Pay attention, baby, ’cause here’s the shit your boyfriend left out. I decided to pretend I wanted to divorce you. Went to our man here for advice. Sure, he said, I’ll handle the divorce.”
“Ariel. That’s not what—”
“He was hot to do it ’cause I said I’d pay him a lot of money to set things up as, what do you call it, an amicable divorce. One attorney for the two of us.”
“That’s a lie.”
“And one fat fee, just for him.” Pastore shook his head. “Thing was, I didn’t really want a divorce. What good would it have done me? You’d have been a loose cannon, just waitin’ to go boom.” Pastore chuckled. “But your boy didn’t know that. And that was how I liked it. I wanted him to think a divorce was on the agenda until he saw you. Then he’d know you were crazy, and when I asked him to draw up commitment papers, he’d jump at the chance.”
“Goddammit, that isn’t…”
“Don’t interrupt me again, Bellini,” Pastore said coldly, “or I’ll do her first and let you watch. Capisce?”
Matteo fell silent. What else could he do, except stall for time? Pastore’s gun was still pointed straight at Ariel’s head.
“And he did. He said you were nuttier than a fruitcake. In fact, he was in the middle of drawin’ up those papers when you made like a rabbit and took off. So I went to lawyer-man Bellini’s office and asked him to find you. Promised him half a million bucks to do it.” Pastore grinned. “He found you, all right, but then he realized what a great piece of ass you were and all bets were off. Well, for a while, anyway. I figure he’d have returned you to me after he got tired of fucking you.” His voice turned cold. Vicious. “Only one problem. I wasn’t gonna stand around with my thumb up my ass and wait.”
“Ariel,” Matteo said, “he’s lying.”
Ariel ignored him.
“Thank you for telling me all this,” she said to Pastore.
“My pleasure, baby.”
“Because…” Slowly, she began pushing the blankets aside. “Because it’s helped in ways you can’t imagine.”“Honey,” Matteo said. “What are you doing?”
Stupid question. He could see what she was doing. So could Pastore and his henchman. She was emerging from under the blankets, baring her shoulders. Her breasts. Her belly.
“The thing is, Anthony, I really don’t want to die.”
“No.” Pastore’s eyes were all over her. His voice was hoarse. “I bet you don’t.”
“I remember everything now.” Her voice was soft and honeyed, as was her smile. “And, who knows? The doctor said people all react differently to concussion. Well, especially to amnesia.” She slid one long leg out from under the blanket. “Or maybe it’s these days I’ve spent with your lawyer.” She laughed. “Are all lawyers so dull, I wonder?”
Pastore laughed, too. The sound was rough. Raw.
“I’ve missed you, Anthony.”
“Bull.”
“I’ve missed you terribly.”
“You think I’m gonna fall for that crap?”
“Your big mistake was drugging me.”
“Drugging you was the smartest thing I ever did. Well, the smartest thing next to threatening to bring your old man’s Ponzi scheme down if he didn’t play ball.”
“You’re wrong. It scrambled my thinking. If you’d left me alone, I’d have come around.”
Matteo watched her in horrified fascination. Was this an act, or had the return of her memory actually distorted Ariel’s mind? She was right about one thing. Anything was possible, when it came to the human brain.
“Or maybe not.” She gave a little shrug. It made her breasts lift. “All I know for sure is that I’m still your wife. You can still have me, if you want. The way we lived? The stuff you bought me, the diamonds, the furs, the clothes?” She tossed back her head and a torrent of gold waves tumbled down her back. “I know I said I hated all of it. But I didn’t. I liked it. My father had a lot of money, but he was stingy. He never bought me any of those things.”
She pushed the blankets completely away. Pastore swallowed. Matteo could hear the sound in the stillness of the room.
“As for this man. Your lawyer.” She sighed. “I’m sorry about that, Anthony. I’ll just have to find a way to make it up to you.” Her smile was totally, dangerously female. “But I’ll think of something.”
“Ariel,” Matteo said. “Wait. Don’t do this. Please. Whatever you’re thinking…”
Ariel reached for her robe. “I’m thinking that I want my husband back.” Slowly, provocatively, she drew the robe to her. “But I’m cold. And I don’t want you looking at me anymore. Neither does my husband. Isn’t that right, Anthony?”
“Jesus, Ariel, are you crazy? You can’t even get that robe on by yourself.”
She laughed. “I don’t have to get it on. All I have to do is hold it against me. Anthony will help me with the rest. Won’t you, Anthony?”
The gun in Pastore’s hand trembled. The one in Jimmy’s hand did the same.
“Ariel,” Matteo said urgently, “he lied to you. About me. About us. Think about what you’re doing.”
Passion: In Wilde Country: Book Two Page 21