“Cyrus?”
There he sat like a post, allowing her to swim in his silence. What kind of man did a thing like that?
“I’m sorry I’m quiet.” He looked into her eyes. When he thought of her face, her eyes were always bright with laughter. She wasn’t smiling tonight.
“We’re both quiet,” she told him. “We’ve never…This is a new place for us. It is, isn’t it, Cyrus? You do know what I want to talk about?” If he didn’t she would feel every kind of a fool.
He kept on staring at her. “I do know,” he said finally. “But I don’t know how you’ll…How will we talk about this?”
She couldn’t break eye contact with him. “I’m a coward so I want you to start.” Beard shadow darkened his jaw and sharpened the angles of his face. “No. No, I shouldn’t do this to you. Forget I started it. I’ll have a few sips of this wine—it’s good—and then I’ll go.”
“Love is the most precious gift we have,” Cyrus said. Please God, help me.
The wine, dry and smooth, slipped rapidly down Madge’s throat. Warmth rushed through her veins. Just like that, he said something she would never have been brave enough to put into words. Only he spoke of a very different kind of love and it wasn’t romantic love. She couldn’t speak.
Cyrus spread his long, blunt fingers on the tabletop. “I don’t have any notion how to say what I need to, but it’s my place to lay it out straight—for both of us.”
“It’s my job, too,” she told him. “I have to wait for the words to come. I feel like I’m choking. Everythin’s muddled up. No, it’s not, it’s clear, but I know I don’t have the right to talk about it.”
Trying to explain how he felt was almost beyond Cyrus. “I think we have the right to talk. I think that’s what we’re bein’ led to do, and I don’t say that to make excuses because I think I’m weak.”
Hopelessness brought stinging tears to Madge’s eyes. She had no right to give in to her need for him. Sure he was a man with a man’s strengths and foibles, even a man’s temper when he needed it, but he was taken. He already had a wife and lover and he would never betray her.
A song played in her head. “What do you need a girl to do? Can’t you see all she needs is you?” Silly love songs written for immature dreamers.
If that’s what she was, that’s what she would always be.
“Trust,” Cyrus murmured. This was one more test, not just for him but for her. Awkwardly, he reached across the table and rested his fingertips on the back of her hand. “We have to. You are my best friend. You are part of my heart and I mean that so much I shake inside. Just knowin’ you’re in this house feels right, Madge. I think it’s okay for me to tell you my truly happy times come when I feel you here, goin’ about your business, and here when I’m strugglin’ with somethin’. You’re a dreamer, but you’ve got common sense.”
She was part of his heart? He was breaking hers, with a happiness she’d never felt, never expected to feel.
Her face glowed. Cyrus covered her hand and tried to smile at her. Not a great attempt on his part, but she smiled back. “Still no words?” he asked.
“Thank you,” she said, and her eyes glistened, the corners of her mouth trembled.
“I’ve read so much lookin’ for answers,” Cyrus told her. “And I’ve talked to the special man who is my mentor. I find contradiction. But I also find reason. May I tell you what I believe, and what I think is meant for us?” He’d rehearsed this without ever intending to have the conversation.
“I will always listen to whatever you want to say,” Madge told him. He felt at least a measure of what she felt. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be struggling to make decisions. “Don’t think this is flip, but are your eyes green or blue?”
“You say the darnedest things,” he said. “I don’t know what color they are. Blue, maybe.”
“They are not, you silly. Green with a bit of blue, I think.”
“Well, there you are then. They’re pretty good eyes considerin’ the hours I spend readin’.”
He didn’t care about things like that. “Make sure you always have good light,” she told him.
“I do, Madge.”
“I want you to tell me what you believe—about our situation,” she said.
“Love isn’t love unless it’s selfless,” he said. “I think my faith is based on God’s passionate love for us, and human love is a passionate reflection of that.”
She started to cry and didn’t try to wipe the tears away.
Cyrus got up, all but knocking over his chair, and moved around the table to sit beside her. They didn’t touch, they didn’t need to.
“Can we—can I learn to understand what you mean?” Madge asked. “I don’t know what you mean, Cyrus, not about the way it works for us.”
She put the edge of her hand against his.
He frowned toward the blackness outside. “Love doesn’t mean a desire to possess as much as it means a desire to be possessed.”
“Yes,” Madge said. She pushed her fingers gently beneath his palm and he took hold of her hand. “I understand that. I believe it.”
“There are ways.” A flush stole along his cheekbones. He stood and pulled her with him, held her elbows, seemed to look inside her. “I want to offer you…a pure but passionate affair.”
Pure but passionate? “We could have passionate feelings, even speak of them, but never…touch?” An outlandish thought stunned her. For her, this was an agreement to love him forever. For him, he had offered her as much as he could. What he had to give, he would give, and he would never betray her. “Yes, Cyrus, I accept.” She would take whatever he could offer.
“We can touch,” he told her gently. “We are only human and we need to touch. We will find warmth and companionship—and passion, chaste pleasure.”
“Yes,” she said. “I feel…new.” And she must be careful to tread slowly until he taught her all the rules of this chaste, passionate affair.
“We are new,” Cyrus told her. He smoothed her cheek and gently put his arms around her. He eased her face against his shoulder, the shoulder of his black, short-sleeved shirt. She saw his white collar through misted eyes.
“From this night on,” he told her, his thighs shaking, his whole body trembling deep inside. “From this night on I give you my heart. It’s the heart of a faithful friend. Whatever you need or want, and whenever, I want to be the one you come to.” The little deaths he would have to die. He had felt them too often already. “But, my friend, if someone else comes into your life, remember I would never try to bind you to me or stand in your way. I would welcome him because you wanted him.”
Cyrus’s mouth on her brow opened her up. His firm embrace spoke of what he’d said, a desire to be possessed, and a desire to give—chastely. For some it could never be enough. For Madge it was everything because it must be. And she would learn how to be there for him, without testing him or demanding more of him than he could give.
“From this night on, I give you my heart,” Madge said, and she framed his roughened jaw with her hands. “It is the heart of a faithful friend. Whatever you need or want, and whenever, I want to be the one you come to. I only have one heart and I’ve given it to you, forever.”
14
The wind almost took the outer door from Joe’s hands. He grabbed the edge and held it, motioned Ellie outside.
With Zipper wrapped in a towel and complaining under one arm and holding Daisy’s leash in the other hand, she hurried out. A blast of gritty air took her breath away.
Joe’s closed expression showed he was an unhappy man. He didn’t want her to go home and be alone. The idea didn’t appeal to Ellie, either, but if they spent the night together, anywhere, they were likely to end up in the same bed. He had already said he wanted to make love to her.
She would feel she had invited him to have sex with her.
They walked down the lane to the gate into Ellie’s big garden. Joe let them in and put an arm around her shoulders. “Are you ever going
to rent the guest house out again?” he asked.
Ellie glanced at the little house in one corner of the property. “Eventually,” she said. She’d had bad luck with renters in the past. On the other hand, she needed to put both the guest house and spare apartment to work.
Joe moved his hand to her waist. “I don’t feel good about leaving you on your own,” he said.
“I know you don’t.” She liked the warmth of his hand. “I’m not thrilled to be alone, either, but I have to carry on, Joe. I’ve got a business to run. It’s a good business, but it won’t be if I neglect it.”
“I’m not suggestin’ you neglect the shop,” he said. “I’m glad Wazoo’s goin’ to be around to help you. You’ve needed someone for a long time.”
Ellie disliked the idea. “That’s a temporary arrangement. I don’t see how she fits in at all.”
“She’ll take some of the load and give you more time to watch your surroundings carefully.” His grip on her waist tightened. “Most of the day I’m in my office—unless I’m in court—but that’s not the same as bein’ with you. Wazoo plays a believable village idiot but she’s got a good mind. She’ll react if she has to.”
Ellie didn’t feel so hot. Every reminder of her predicament freshened the fear.
“You aren’t responsible for me,” she told him.
“I want to be.”
Heat flashed through her blood. What she felt, what she wanted, her sexual response to him amazed Ellie. A long time ago she’d made up her mind that she would never risk rejection by a man she cared for.
Joe didn’t know half of the baggage she carried. She didn’t even know how she would react if they got really close.
He took her key and unlocked the door from the garden to the hallway at the foot of the stairs. Ellie let Zipper scramble free and shoot upstairs.
“I’ll be fine now,” she said. “I’ll lock up behind you.”
“Please stay right here while I check the place out.”
“Joe, you don’t need—”
“Yes, I do.” He faced her. “Independence is a good thing, unless it ends up getting you killed.”
“Shock tactics?” she said, determined to cover any signs that he’d succeeded. “You’re a good man, Joe. I’d like it if you took a look around.”
“You don’t seem as edgy as you were earlier.”
“I know,” she said, very aware of the two of them close together in a small space. “I am scared. I won’t pretend about that, but I’ve got a feeling Penn may have moved on. Look how much attention he’s stirred up around here. Nobody in their right mind would stay.”
Joe’s raised brow and narrowed eyes said it all. They weren’t dealing with someone who had a normal mind.
“Do you have any of the Garvey Jump mysteries in stock? I read a Sonja Elliot book some time back but I didn’t pick up another one.”
She gave him a guilty look. “We’re running on the same track. I plan to check what I’ve got.”
“When?”
Ellie wet her lips. “Once I’m on my own. You need to get some sleep, Joe.” In truth she absolutely did not want him to leave, or rather she didn’t want to be without him.
“Stand there while I check upstairs.” His tone suggested he didn’t expect an argument.
He jogged up the stairs, a lithe, physically fit man who showed no sign of hesitation. Ellie shifted her attention from his back to Daisy, who still behaved like a clingy kid when it suited her. She leaned against Ellie’s legs and sighed from time to time.
Overhead, Joe trod, none too quietly, from room to room. First through the spare apartment, then through Ellie’s. She liked listening to him. If she tried to hang on to the idea that their interest in each other was new, she’d be fibbing. The feelings had been there, not as strong but growing, for a long time.
She pulled off the jacket Joe had loaned her and put it on top of an oversize box of gift items for the shop.
Joe’s feet, then his legs came into sight. Ellie watched the man until she saw all of him. She had never allowed herself to think of Joe as a potential lover—until the past few days. Now she didn’t just think about the possibility, she visualized and felt them together and that shook her. In this light his dark blue eyes looked black. He didn’t look away from her face.
A couple of steps from the bottom of the stairs, he stopped and held the banisters, stiffening his arms.
“No one hiding under the bed?” she said with a smile.
He shook his head.
“Thank you, anyway, Joe.” She grimaced. “But you be careful going home, too.”
“I will be. I’ll take a look in the shop first.”
He hopped down the last two steps and walked toward the shop, keeping her in sight. “Hey,” he said, and offered her a hand. Ellie smiled a little. She slipped her fingers around his warm palm and the squeeze he gave comforted her even if it did feel foreign.
The dark shapes of the bookshelves loomed in the shop. One of the overhead fans whirred. Ellie put on a light at the back of the shop and started forward.
“There’s no one here, but I’d rather go first,” Joe said.
He released her hand and took a quick tour. As he had said, the place was empty.
“Do you want to look at the Sonja Elliot titles?” she asked, heading for the right section.
Joe met her there and ran his fingers along spines until he stopped at Murder in the Market, by Sonja Elliot.
“That’s a different series.” She ground her teeth together. “Here. Death at Mardis Gras. I did have Death in Diamonds but they sold through. I’m getting more of them.”
The book cover showed Mardi Gras Krewe members doing what looked like a jungle-pole dance over the bleeding body of a woman. Feathered headdresses in violent shades tangled while the faces grinned, oblivious. That or they didn’t give a damn.
“You look at it.” Ellie stuffed the book into Joe’s hands. The picture might seem bizarre, but it was too close to the scene she’d witnessed not to upset her.
Joe said, “Hoo mama, I wouldn’t want to look at this if I were you.”
She took it back from him and flipped through the pages. Never having read the story she didn’t know just what she hoped to find.
There it was—in the first chapter. Bourbon Street. Confusion, loud music and screaming—the press of the crowd.
That’s the one, the blond woman. She’ll wish she hadn’t come here today, only she’ll die before she has time to think about it.
Shit, I’ve got to stay close. Right at her back. The pick gets slippery in my hand. Come on, come on, gimme the moment.
Oh, yeah. All the gleaming bodies. All the fabulous feathers. She’s pushing forward. They’re all pushing, bending me over her back. I can’t fall with her.
The lovely noise. Mouths open wide but in a single scream of laughter. Huge laughter.
Now.
The pick punctures the skin at the base of her skull and I drive the blade in, deeper, harder. Down she goes. As good as dead already. Not even putting out her arms to break her fall.
Yank the pick back. Into the folds of my cloak it goes and I dance and grin with the rest.
Force myself backward.
Keep pressing myself away.
They haven’t as much as noticed they hold a dead woman between their flailing legs.
Ellie slapped the book shut. “Take it with you if you like.” She heard her own voice shake. “Come on, Daisy, upstairs with you.” She removed the dog’s leash and Daisy took off for a race around the shop.
With the book open again, Joe found the place and scanned lines rapidly. He looked up at Ellie. “Is this the way it was?”
“I think so.” In her mind she saw the colors. Her heart pounded. “I don’t know why I saw her go down, but I did. And she was sort of held off the ground by the crush for a bit. I saw her feet. One shoe was off.” And the man who held his arms at his sides and walked backward in the throng before he turned and… A
thunderous pulse beat at her ears.
“What else?” Joe said quietly.
“Nothing.” She shouldn’t shout at him. She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Nothing else. I don’t want there to be anything else. Every hour, every day—Ellie rubbed her mouth, struggling against tears yet again. “Can’t you see how it is? Questions, questions, and people always looking at me as if there could just be something horrible about me. I’ve got to deal with it. That means I’m alone with it. No one can really help me.” She hurried to turn off the light and go through to the hall.
“Just go,” he said when he arrived at her side. “Is that what you want to tell me, Ellie?”
No it wasn’t, but she wouldn’t tell him so. She raised her chin, praying the tears she felt would go away.
Joe crossed his arms and leaned on a wall. “I’m not leaving till you tell me to.”
“That’s not fair.” But what did fair mean, anyway?
“The last thing I want is to be unfair to you,” Joe said. “If you can’t believe that, I can’t make you.”
Control had escaped Ellie. She covered her face.
“What we feel about each other needs some serious thought—together, alone,” Joe said. “Wanting you didn’t just happen. All this, all this madness may have given me the kick I needed to quit tiptoeing around for fear you’d reject me. But don’t tell me you’ve never noticed…Haven’t you ever looked at me and thought I might be thinking of more than your great conversation?”
She rubbed her hands together, tried to smile at him but failed. He thought he knew everything about her but he did not. The worst part she’d kept hidden. The rest of what she’d endured could well mean she’d freak if he touched her, really touched her.
“Answer me, Ellie. Tell me you’ve never thought I might be romantically interested in you.”
She started to speak, only to stumble, several times. “I’m embarrassed,” she managed to say at last. “I have thought you might like being around me, but…I don’t know what else to say, except I thought I was just dreaming.”
Without warning, Joe shot an arm around her. He didn’t leave his spot against the wall but pulled her against him and kissed her so hard he forced her head back. She heard him moan and saw how his face darkened and drew tight. Kissing him back, kissing him and feeling his equal, an equal part of his passion, sucked out all the energy she had. She strained against him, accommodated each position of his mouth, and accepted the almost violent way he took that kiss. Her heart tripped, ran away in frighteningly rapid rushes.
Now You See Him Page 11