by J. R. Ward
Mad rubbed her eyes until they burned and thought of the other two times she’d been in this nightmare. Both of the other men Amelia had taken from her had come back with apologies—after they’d been summarily dumped. So the fact that Spike had returned and tried to explain himself followed the pattern.
She’d done this all before.
Without warning, a bolt of lightning flashed right outside the B and B, bright as a bomb detonation. The cracking sound of a tree trunk being split was instantaneous and she jumped, clutching the lapels of the robe to her throat.
Damn it, were these storms going to last forever?
A half hour later, Mad was pacing. And not just because of the argument with Spike. The furious weather was unrelenting, obviously a chain of T-cells linked together, flowing up the coast.
She stopped next to the bed and looked at her cell phone. When she picked the thing up, she dialed Sean’s cell number.
“O’Banyon,” he said when he answered. In the background she could hear voices as if he were at a party.
“Sean?”
“Mad! Is that you? Hey, you’ll never believe who I’m here with.”
“Who?”
“Your good buddy, Mick. He and I are out on the town tonight. The two of us decided we needed some time off.”
“That’s great…” God, now she felt awful for interrupting him.
“You okay, Mad?” Before she could answer, he said, “Here, hold on a minute.” There was a rustling sound, then his voice was muffled as if he had his hand over the receiver. There were more noises and then when he came back on, the din had faded. “What’s wrong?”
She blew out her breath, wishing a whole lot of things were going better. “Spike was here in Newport after I docked, but I think you already know that. Because you told him I was coming in, didn’t you?”
There was a curse, then, “Yeah, I did. He said he positively needed to see you face to face and he asked me to keep quiet because he was afraid you’d bolt if you knew he was coming. I’m sorry, Mad. I felt like hell about it, I really did. But he sounded so—”
“It’s okay.” And she didn’t really fault Sean, especially not with all that regret in his voice. “But can you do me a favor?”
“Anything. My conscience is dying for redemption.”
“Can you call Spike and see if he’s okay?”
“Did it go that badly between you two?”
Yes. “No, it’s because of the storms. Spike left in them.”
“Oh, yeah, we’re getting hit here in Manhattan, too. Rotten weather tonight. But don’t worry, he’s a good driver.”
“He came on his bike, Sean.”
There was a tight silence. “I’m calling that idiot right now.”
“Will you let me know if he’s okay?”
“Absolutely. That damn fool idiot—”
As the connection cut off, Mad curled her phone up into her hand. And then realized she hadn’t given Sean her cell number. But no matter, she thought, it was no doubt logged in his caller ID.
Her phone rang right away and she answered it. Sean’s voice was sharp.
“Mad, I’m getting voice mail. I’m going to keep trying until I get through to him. I’ll call you as soon as I finish yelling at him to get off the damn road. Unless…you want me to have him call you?”
“No.”
Sean’s inhale was long; his exhale short and hard. “I had hoped things would work out for you two.”
“Thanks. But don’t tell him about this phone tree we’ve got going on, will you?”
“Mad—”
“I mean, all of this is a little high school, I realize. I just…yeah, I’d rather talk to you.” Before he could reply, she said, “Oh, and I guess I have two favors. The board meeting is the day after tomorrow. Do you think I could come stay with you? I was going to drive down to the city as soon as morning comes.”
“Sure. I’ll be at work, but you have a key. And listen, if you need help with the board materials, I’ll come home early.”
“That would be great.”
“Mad?”
“Yes?”
“Am I honestly forgiven for telling him how to find you?”
“Yes, Sean.” She smiled a little as she hung up.
It was awhile before she could get back on the bed and try to go through the board books. And even as she returned to the reading, a big part of her brain was focused on her cell phone. Which didn’t ring.
The night wore on and so did the storms. She must have fallen into a hazy half sleep because when her phone finally went off, she jerked awake and scrambled for the thing.
“Sean?” she said.
“He’s home safe. He called me back as soon as he got the first of my eight pissed-off messages. He was exhausted, said he was soaking wet and going straight to bed. But he’s fine.”
Thank God. “I really appreciate you doing this.”
“Yeah, well, I’m going to break one of his legs when I see him next, just so you know. Now go back to sleep.”
“Good night, Sean.”
She hung up and looked at the clock. Two forty-eight in the morning.
He’d ridden all the way back. In the rain. With his forearm in rough shape.
Her instincts vibrated. No man put himself through a trip like that casually.
Something was missing in this picture, she thought, closing the books and turning off the light.
She just didn’t know what it was.
* * *
An hour or so after he got home, Spike rolled over in sheets that were tangled in his legs. He suspected he was awake, but as he opened his eyes, he wasn’t so sure.
He was…lying in a bed that was not his own. Except…wait, he’d been in this bed and in this room before, had seen the lace at the windows and the rose glow of the walls…he just couldn’t remember when or why—
Mad’s bedroom. Yes, this was where it had happened for them for the first time. Where he had gone to her and kissed her and taken her…
Images of them making love had his naked, aroused body twisting on the bed. He could feel her underneath him, giving way as he pressed inside of her. The rhythm…yes, the rhythm of the sex and the heat of her. She was here now with him and they were moving together, locked at the hips, with him about to—
Except then he was alone.
As he looked around, feeling cheated, Mad came in through a door.
Even though it was dark and she was only a shadow, he knew she was gloriously unclothed and looking at him. When she didn’t come closer, he tried to call out her name, but for some reason, he couldn’t speak. Desperate to communicate, he used his muscles and bones to talk for him. He arched his back and swiveled his hips, offering himself to her and not just his body, either.
She stepped up to the bed and a light suddenly flared.
She had clothes on now, a whole lot of them. In fact, she was wearing a ski jacket and snow pants.
As he lay naked on the bed, Mad stared down at him as if considering his invitation to have him. Then she shook her head and zipped up the parka even higher on her neck. I’m sorry, she said. You leave me cold.
Spike bolted upright, not so much waking up as being ejected out of the dream.
He cursed and rubbed his hair.
Well, wasn’t that symbolism apt. Her covered in Gore-Tex and goose down. Him naked and aching. Couldn’t his subconscious be a little more original?
He groaned as he shifted his legs off the bed and got to his feet, so aroused his whole body felt stiff. Disgusted with himself, he went to the bathroom and splashed cold water in his face until he was calmer. Then he checked the clock. 4:00 a.m.
As he’d fallen into his bed around 2:45 a.m., by all that was reasonable, he should be heading back for more shut-eye. But even after that endless, miserable motorcycle ride through the storms he knew he wasn’t getting any more sleep tonight.
The apartment was hot as hell and he needed some air, so he put a pair of bo
xers on and wandered out of his room, being as quiet as possible. On the way to the little porch in the front, he paused beside Jaynie’s partially closed door. Her light was off and for once, it appeared she wasn’t awake.
When he’d come home unexpectedly, she’d been surprised to see him, but she hadn’t asked questions. For which he’d been grateful.
He left his sister sleeping and went across the living room. He was about to open the porch’s screen door when he stopped. Up on the wall, there was a calendar of dogs, one that Jaynie had hung. July featured a border collie leaping into the air to catch a Frisbee.
When Spike looked at the date, he felt a twisting sense of vertigo.
Two days before the anniversary of him killing Jaynie’s abuser.
Good Lord.
Over the last couple of years, he hadn’t thought of the past very much. Not the specifics of it, at any rate. But all the stuff with Mad had dusted off the memories and now, with that number on the calendar so close, everything came back even harder.
Man, did he need some air.
Unlatching the screen, he stepped onto the shallow porch. The night smelled of pine and summer warmth, a thick, woodsy aroma that under different circumstances would have eased him.
Not tonight.
And not for a long time, he feared. There would be no easing him for a very long time.
Chapter Fourteen
Two days later, Mad sat in Sean’s kitchen, surveying the mess of papers on his glass table. It looked as if a snow cloud had opened up and dumped a load in his breakfast alcove.
Around eleven o’clock last night, she and Sean had ended up dismantling the three board books; it was either that or risk tearing pages from all the flipping back and forth among the sections. And that wasn’t the worst of it. A legal-size pad had been used down to its cardboard back, its scattered innards marked with her handwriting and Sean’s diagrams.
She was amazed at how far she’d come.
Well…how far she had come in regards to the board meeting.
There had been no progress with the situation involving Spike; she was still a mess on that front. But at least in the midst of that, she’d truly come to understand Value Shop’s business basics. And she knew what was going to happen at the board meeting—especially when it came to Richard’s acquisition proposal.
Sean had been incredible. They’d stayed up half the night with him patiently answering her questions and explaining things. When he’d said he was impressed by how quickly she was catching on, she’d been so overwhelmed she’d burst into tears, shocking them both.
She wasn’t a candidate for an MBA, not by a long shot. And she wasn’t angling for Richard’s job or anything like that. But she did feel she had enough of a grasp on the fundamentals to have one very strong, very important opinion about the company’s future.
When the doorbell went off, the surprise of the noise brought her back into focus. Stretching, she put down her pen and padded in her bare feet across the penthouse’s floors. The marble and hardwood were cool under her feet; the Orientals warm and a little furry.
“Did you forget your key, Sean?” she said as she opened the door. “And weren’t we going to meet after the meeting—”
Amelia was standing on the penthouse’s threshold, looking like a St. John ad.
“Hello, Madeline,” the woman said quietly. “I was hoping you would be here, but I wasn’t sure.”
Forty-eight hours ago, Mad’s response would have been to slam the door. But now all she thought about was that look on Spike’s face after their argument at the B and B.
Maybe her half sister showing up was fate. Or maybe Mad was just opening the door to get hurt worse.
Ah, but this was not part of the pattern, was it? Before, the men had come back. Never Amelia.
“Madeline, may I please come in? I’ve wanted to talk to you since Memorial Day. Actually, before that, too. I had hoped, while we were in Greenwich…” Amelia drifted off into silence awkwardly. “I’m babbling.”
Mad felt like she was jumping into the ocean without a life jacket, but she stepped aside and motioned with her arm. It would never have dawned on her to go looking for the woman, but since she was here, it seemed worthwhile to hear her out.
As Amelia came in, so did her perfume. The scent around her was light and lemony, perfect for her navy-blue and white clothes, completing a carefully constructed look. Except it was funny. The clothes and the hair and the makeup and the jewelry all coalesced into a gorgeous statement of wealth and ease, but it was Amelia herself who didn’t fit the picture. She looked…worn out. Ground down.
Mad shut the door. “Amelia—”
“The day you left Greenwich, Richard told me it was because you thought I’d been with Spike. I wasn’t. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
Mad opened her mouth to point out that the woman had twice before. But then she changed the direction of her words. “I saw you coming out of his room. Why were you there if you hadn’t spent the night?”
“I’d gone to ask him if he would talk to you for me. I’ve wanted to apologize to you for a while now, but you’ve always been away. And I thought there was a good chance you wouldn’t listen.”
This was definitely not part of the pattern, Mad thought. Everything was off here. Gone was Amelia’s iron-clad confidence, her nose-up disdain, her sharp smile and sharper calculation. In their place? A ruined woman.
With a chill, and because she wasn’t sure she could trust anything she was hearing, Mad asked, “What…has happened to you?”
“I miscarried seven months ago.”
Mad felt her eyes pop as she brought her hand to her throat. “Amelia…”
“It was unplanned, but that didn’t matter to me. It still doesn’t. I am…devastated.” The woman took a deep breath. “And my lover is married now, his wife pregnant with twins. I never told him about the baby…at least not until the weekend you and I were both in Greenwich. When I finally explained to him what had happened, he didn’t believe me. Accused me of creating the story to engender sympathy. Oh, Madeline, I lost the love of my life because of my arrogance and now I suffer alone.”
Tears welled in Amelia’s eyes and they were not of the crocodile variety. Her face had gone blotchy and a red flush had crept up her neck. She seemed barely able to hold it together.
“My baby would have been born this week.” Amelia cleared her throat. “I wanted to tell you these things because if I didn’t, you would never believe me when I told you I was sorry for what happened in the past. For what I did to you with those two boyfriends of yours. And you also wouldn’t believe me when I told you that whatever you saw in Spike’s doorway, he and I were never together. Never. I wouldn’t do that to you now and it was clear that morning that he never would have.”
Oh, God, Mad thought. Spike…Spike hadn’t lied.
Panic and a choking sense of urgency flooded her chest. She had to go see him. Immediately—Oh, hell…the board meeting was in two hours.
Right afterward. She would drive up to Saranac Lake and see him in person right afterward.
Amelia wiped beneath her eyes. Once, twice. “I was so evil. And I’m so very sorry.”
Mad refocused on her half sister and her heart stilled as she thought of what Amelia appeared to have been through. But then she had to ask, “What I never understood is why. Why did you do it? I was never any threat to you. I was the ugly tomboy.”
Amelia wrapped her slender arms around herself, her Hermès bag falling in front of her hip. “Do you know what Papa told me when I turned eighteen? He told me that I was lucky I was beautiful as the rest of me was unredeemably unattractive. All along, he told me that my looks were the only thing I had to leverage in the world and because I believed him, I used them…I used them for fun and out of desperation and because I was bored. I used them because I actually liked the men or maybe I wanted something. And sometimes…sometimes I used them to hurt people.”
Mad measured Amelia,
looking at a woman she’d always assumed was unbreakable. Her half sister didn’t seem that way now; she looked as though she was going to shatter apart. The difference was so astonishing…the revelations so unexpected, Mad didn’t know what to do.
“That’s all I came to say.” Amelia glanced around the penthouse, then met Mad’s eyes. “I understand if we can’t have a relationship because of all those years. I can’t imagine trusting someone like me would be easy. I just…couldn’t live with this hanging over me anymore. I can’t fix what happened to my baby or the man I loved. But this, with you…This was something I could do something about.”
Amelia walked over to the door. Then she paused. “You should know that Richard called me and invited me out to Greenwich that weekend. He’s never done that in the four years since Father died and I believe he wanted me to come because you were there. You and a man you liked. Be careful of Richard, Mad. He’s very smart and he gets what he wants. I don’t know why he needs to have you and Spike apart, but for some reason he thinks he does.”
As Amelia stepped into the hall, Mad called out, “Wait.”
Her half sister glanced over her shoulder.
Mad found it hard to let go of a lifetime of bad memories of the woman. But she was willing to…to do what? It would take time to trust. A lot of time. Did they have enough of that in front of them?
Mad found herself hoping so. But that wasn’t why she stopped Amelia. “Are you going to the board meeting this afternoon?”
Her half sister frowned. “I never go to them. Richard votes my shares because I gave him a durable power of attorney. Why?”
“Before you leave, I want you to see something.”
Chapter Fifteen
Jaynie Moriarty came into the kitchen through the apartment’s back door, put her bags of groceries on the counter and looked out toward the living room.
Yup. Through the little porch’s screen door she could see Spike’s big shoulders overflowing one of the white plastic chairs. He was out there again. Had been out there for two days straight, staring at the mountains and the lake in the distance and no doubt seeing nothing at all.