Liar's Moon

by Heather Graham

  “Tracy, you’re setting yourself up for heartache! These musicians… Tracy, your father was a philanderer. He would have made your mother’s life a tragedy! Different cities, different women, night after night!”

  She didn’t tell her grandfather that she did consider her mother’s life a tragedy. “Grandpa, Leif doesn’t play any more. Not on the road.”

  “I’ve given you warning, Tracy. Now you think about it. Leave him or I cut you out without a cent.”

  Tracy sighed. “Grandpa—”

  “Don’t answer me. Just think about it.” He was silent for a minute. “It’s good to see you, Tracy. I worry about you. Christmas isn’t enough. I—I always thought that you’d come home.”

  Tracy stood again and smiled down at him. “I can’t live at home. I love you, but it’s true. You want to rule us all. Sometimes I think that you’re Henry the Eighth come back to life.”

  “Tracy Blare—”

  “Kuger, Grandpa. I use my father’s name.”

  He waved a hand impatiently in the air. “You use a dozen names—like a chameleon—just so that we can’t find you!”

  “Well, I’m here, and you’re here. We’re all here,” she murmured a little hysterically, and then she felt that she had to escape him, had to escape them all. She kissed his cheek hurriedly. “See you in the morning, huh, Grandpa?”

  She started off in the general direction of the house. She could see the lights, she could hear laughter and conversation. She wondered if they might be talking about Jesse, if enough time had passed for those who had loved him to laugh and talk with nostalgia and ease.

  One of them had probably hired his killer…

  No. Lauren wasn’t here yet, nor was Carol. One of his wives, yes. Her mother had never gotten to be his wife— just his lover.

  “Oh, God!” she whispered miserably out loud, and she knew that she couldn’t go back to the house. She veered around it, heading for the maze and the rose garden that flanked the left side of the pool.

  She hurried down the first path, blindly determined just to escape them all. It was amazing how easily she tread the path, though—without faltering. Straight through all the flowers and brush without a hitch, until she came panting to the center, where pines cast a natural arbor over a fountain of dancing nymphs.

  She gripped the fountain, staring up at the moon, breathing as deeply as she dared. The moon hung there alone now, a crescent shadowed and hazed. A liar’s moon. Leif’s term. They had laughed about it once, but then the lies had become very tangled webs, and the fact of it was no laughing matter anymore.

  “A shadowed crescent, Tracy. Beautiful, deceitful. Touching us all.”

  She almost screamed; she spun around instead, thinking that she should not be so surprised to see him here.

  From the heavy shade of a pine he walked toward her, eyes silver with the moon and the night, his height towering in the shadows. He came before her and took her cheeks between his palms, studying her eyes.

  She should have run then, but she didn’t.

  “Why didn’t you tell him the truth?” he demanded. “Arthur is a billionaire, and an infant you barely know will inherit it all.”

  “You’re horrid!” she said. “You were eavesdropping.”

  “It’s one way to learn things that I have to know.”

  “And what did you learn from that?”

  “That he doesn’t control you, Tracy. Not anymore.”

  “It’s really none of your concern.”

  “It’s a lot of money.”

  “I’m a very good songwriter,” she said coolly. “I earn my own way.”

  His palms, against her cheeks, moved slightly. Stroking her flesh, as he gazed down at her, silver brooding and perhaps bemusement marking his eyes, touching his slow smile.

  “You remembered the rose garden—and the maze. Step by step you came here—so directly. You had the path charted in your mind.”

  “I—uh—once you know it—”

  “I know. Once you know certain things, they are charted by heart.”

  She felt that the air had grown thin; that she could barely stand. She had been here before. In this very place. As lovers, they had stared up at the moon; in a fantasy world, they had absorbed the scent of roses and lain on a bed of pine.

  You can never go back, she had told him.

  You can try.

  Or perhaps you never really left.

  “Once you know certain things…” he murmured again, and a tender smile just slightly curled his lips as he leaned downward, bringing his mouth just a breath away from hers. Warmth welled and flared within her until she quivered with the memory, hot from some inner well, aching for his touch. In harmony with her desires, his palms left her cheek and his arms swept around her, bearing her down beside him on a bed of pine.

  “Without a falter or a lapse, I remember you, Tracy. I remember the night you first came to me. The way you looked, shedding your clothing, clad in moonlight, rhythmic, slow, and so sensual. I nearly died a thousand deaths waiting for you to reach me. I remember the fullness of your breasts, the curve of your spine, the way your hair looked, dark and splayed across my pillow. Just like the maze, Tracy. I could touch you again and know exactly where I was going.”

  She stared up at him, unable to refute him, disbelieving that they could be in the rose garden together again, a bed of pines beneath him, his hands upon her, firm and secure and tantalizing, his mouth… brushing hers, at long last.

  She curled her arms around his neck, felt his tongue part her lips and then her teeth, then create a cascade of shivering heat inside of her as it filled her mouth, stroking and playing, and drawing her into a heated return of the fevered hunger. She clung to him, eager to touch the hair at his nape, know his shoulders again with her fingers, press against him and feel the pliable steel of his chest, hard against her. The touch of his hands, in her hair, on her cheeks, stroking her throat, cradling her breasts…

  The soft scent of the roses haunted her, the all-male scent of his body came to her in subtle wonderment, and she could have stayed there forever, just knowing his touch—a touch that remembered her, and charted her form as surely as she had charted the maze.

  He drew his lips from hers and lay beside her, smiling as he stroked her hair, breathing a little too heavily and staring at her with a desire barely held in check. He opened the buttons on her blouse one by one; she felt his hands on her bare breasts and she gasped suddenly, remembering where she was…

  And who she was with.

  “Leif—we’re—we’re—out in the open.”

  “We’re in a maze,” he told her dryly.

  “But—but—my grandfather—your son—all of them—”

  His lashes were lowered; she saw a tick in his cheek, but he spoke with no vehemence, rather too casually. “You’re twenty-five years old now, Tracy. This is between you and me and no one else. If your grandfather were to have a problem now, he knows damned well I’d throw him out of my house.”

  She inhaled and exhaled, staring at him.

  “I really was more than a little bit in love with you, Tracy.”

  “Celia—”

  “I loved Celia, too, that’s true. I can’t deny it. And I suffered the agony of the damned—feeling that I had seduced not only my best friend’s daughter, but a minor at that. You were too young and it was wrong. You’re an adult now, Tracy. The decisions are all yours.”

  She could only stare at him, longing to touch him, afraid to do so. She smiled ruefully, staring into the smoky gray depths of eyes that were wise and wary, and sometimes charcoal with anger, sometimes silver with laughter, always deep with a fascination she could never deny.

  “I’d wondered if things might have changed—if you mightn’t have grown obese and ugly. There were times I nearly prayed that I could see you so and forget you. I still want you, Tracy, in that same way.”

  She was ready to touch him, ready to fall into the wonderful heat and passion of his
arms and pretend that the liar’s moon had forever glowed above them.

  But he closed the buttons on her shirt, smiled and stood, and reached a hand down to her. He drew her close to him and gave her a wicked smile as he pulled her taut against his chest once again, stroking the lower crescent of her breast.

  “My room, Tracy? Have you got the courage? Have you really got enough courage to give us a chance again?”

  He released her and left her alone in the center of the maze with the roses and the fountain and the nymphs and the…

  Liar’s moon. Shadowed and glowing—and frightening, because there was some truth that he sought that she didn’t understand.

  Run! Leave! she warned herself.

  But she stared at the moon again and knew that she would go to him. There was one truth that she knew— she wanted him now, with all the hunger, all the need…

  All the love and desire that she had learned before. As thoroughly charted against her heart as the maze was against her mind.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  There was a deck that led from Leif’s second-story room out over the patio; and there were steps that led from the far right of the pool to that deck.

  Coming from the maze, Tracy noted that her grandfather had gone in, and she smiled a little bitterly, knowing that it wouldn’t have mattered to her if he had still been there or not. She passed the tiled pool area and climbed the steps to the deck.

  The doors were open. The breeze caught the drapes, billowing them about in the moonlight. Tracy came to the doors and paused, remembering a long ago time when she stood here, frightened, unsure, yet determined and moving by instinct alone.

  Leif was not in the room. She didn’t need light to know that he was not here yet. He was a father, she reminded herself, of a six-year-old. He might well be putting his son to bed. He was also the host this evening. He might be seeing to the welfare of his guests. He might be doing one of half a dozen things.

  But he would come back here. And he would wonder if she would come to him or not.

  She came in, noting that little had changed. The doors opened into an antechamber. Victorian furniture created a beautiful little nook—a loveseat and matching chairs, a tea cart, and bookcases. To the right against the wall was a grand piano, to the left a stereo setup.

  Straight ahead was an archway that opened into the bedroom.

  Tracy moved silently over the carpet, pausing there again. Nothing had changed. His bed was framed by an antique headboard and footboard in golden oak—an English set that he had picked up at a Paris flea market years and years ago. She knew he had refinished it himself, that he liked to work with his hands on wood, returning it to luster himself.

  Nothing had changed.

  But everything had. He’d been married; he’d lost a wife. Celia had lived here, had slept in this bed. She felt so distant to Tracy, though. She had never known her.

  Tracy closed her eyes for a minute, dizzy.

  Jesse, too, was lost to them all. Jesse, who had raged in here—furious with Leif, furious with himself. He’d fought Leif, knowing sickly all the while that he’d been at fault himself.

  “Ah, Dad!” Tracy murmured out loud, wincing. Careless, insensitive—for so much of his life! But age had brought him wisdom. In those final years he’d admitted so much to her! How he was horrified by his own treatment of his children. How he was grateful that they could still love him. How he had been blessed with special friends. How life was all so much a greater thing once a man learned to care.

  He had told her that Leif often plagued him about her; she had told him that surely he understood—she didn’t want Leif to know anything about her at all. She didn’t really want to ever hear his name again.

  Jesse, it seemed, had respected her wishes.

  But he’d once told her that she shouldn’t be so hard.

  “I think he might have been the only one who really cared about you that night. Cared about your feelings. Oh, he was mad—shocked, humiliated, and betrayed. But he was still trying to understand, to protect you. I was busy hating myself for not even knowing you—so I had to blame you, and Leif. Your grandfather was horrified about the scandal and he’d never forgive me. I think your mother saw only her own lost youth. You, grown and beautiful and more sultry and sweetly beautiful than she had ever been herself.”

  Tracy’s fingers curled around the molding. She couldn’t think about her father. It would either make her cry or go mad, because he shouldn’t have lost life just when he had really gained it.

  She didn’t want to cry or bewail the past. Or even think about the future. She was older now. Seasons had come and turned and changed, and it was all up to her. Leif wanted her still.

  And she…

  Wanted Leif. It was her choice; no one could stop her now.

  She smiled, surveying the room again. She remembered them together—the silent way he could move about the room; his silhouette in the moonlight; the hard, sleek lines of his body, beautiful in nakedness, easy, natural, strong and proud.

  Tracy took a breath, then hurried across the room. The bathroom was to the far rear, with a wonderful dressing room just before it, complete with two gorgeous skylights.

  She hurried through the dressing room, though, hastily shedding her clothes, rushing into the shower. She curled her hair high above her hair to keep it dry and met the pulse of the jet spray with a growing beat in her heart.

  Her fingers curled around the soap—his soap. It gave her a sense not so much of coming home, but of being exactly where she belonged.

  Seconds later, she stepped out and toweled herself dry, acutely aware then even of the feel of the terry towel. She wrapped it about herself, then let it fall to the floor. She stepped out of the bathroom and walked deliberately to his bed, pulling down the comforter and sheets and crawling beneath them.

  Her heart began to pulse and beat like a lark’s as she waited. Waited and waited, and began to doubt her sanity.

  She wondered how long it would take her to leap from the bed, dash back to the bathroom, and retrieve her clothes…

  It was then he came.

  Like Tracy, he entered by the deck. He had been outside, perhaps feeling the night breeze, perhaps watching the moon with its haze and its shadows.

  He came to the doorway and stood still, framed by the floating curtains, blocking the moon. She saw his form only at first, tall, hands upon his hips, legs spread slightly, feet firmly upon the ground.

  He stood there a long time. She knew that he stared in at her, that he saw her past the loveseat and the archway, that he knew she was curled in his bed.

  He came through at last, walking slowly, silently.

  He paused at the archway, dropping his shoes.

  Then he moved, still slowly, fluidly, to the bed. He was dressed in jeans and a blue plaid flannel shirt; he didn’t disrobe, but swept down beside her suddenly, encompassing sheet, comforter, and all into his arms.

  His mouth burned atop hers. His kiss stole her breath, ground against her, went deeper than the ocean, lasted hot and wet and hungry for eons and eons, until hers came around in return, until she feathered his dark hair through her fingers, clenching, unclenching.

  He drew from her and ripped the covers away. And stared. Against the liar’s moon she saw the handsome contours of his face—hard, granite, somewhat savage with desire… and memory. She lay still, unflinching, feeling the heartbeats of time that passed between them.

  He savored the memory and the reality. Her breasts rose and fell with the rush of her breath, and they were fuller, the nipples darker, dusky rose and taut, than they had been. With his eyes, he devoured those gold and satin breasts, gazed down to the slim line of her ribs and torso, to the delicate molding of her belly. His gaze traveled farther to the haunting crevices of her beautiful feminity, and her hips and thighs and legs that stretched forever in shapely beauty.

  And her eyes rested upon him, blue and questioning, innocent and sultry.

  He tou
ched her at last; his fingers against her abdomen. A shudder shook him, a groan that was an echoing thunder of his heart, of the pulse of his desire. His hand, his fingers, splayed, encompassing more of her bare flesh, stroking with fascination, knowing again the feel of her breasts, the quiver of her thighs when he touched her.

  “Leif—”

  He curled his frame against her, pressing his lips against her throat, the hollow of her shoulder, the valley of her breasts. He took a nipple carefully into his mouth, then sucked hard on it, then swept the tender flesh with the gentle balm of his tongue and filled his mouth again.

  He rose above her, seeing her eyes. Huge and dark and everlastingly blue, still a torment that beguiled and enchanted a man and sent bursting through him a shaft of desire that burned and demanded.

  He rolled from her and stood and shed his shirt in the moonlight. She loved his shoulders, touched by that glow, hard and lean and sinewed. The color of him was gold; the sight of him cast her into a wonder that she knew could never go away. His chest was richly touched with short dark hair. She ached to feel the coarse and fascinating curls in her fingers, rough and arousing against her flesh. But as he stood before her she could only look and note how his sensuous chest hair angled and narrowed and became a thin line at his belt.

  Then he shed his jeans and stood naked in the moonlight, all masculine beauty and ever golden still.

  He came down beside her again. She cried out something inarticulate and curved around to him, burying her face against his chest, feeling the hair play against her cheek and nose and lips. She rubbed her mouth there, loving the feel of him, loving the beat of his heart, the ragged sound of his breath, his touch, his fingers through her hair, at her nape…

  He set her from him. She felt the hardness of his body, taut, rigid, strained. He seemed to thirst for the touch of her, her movement, her scent. She felt his mouth against her flesh, his teeth, his tongue. The length of his body. The roughness of his palm sliding against her, the deliberate exploration of his fingers, intimate between her thighs, causing her to shudder and ache, and throb ever more greatly with the heated rush of desire.