HiddenDepths

by Angela Claire

  He let her sleep through the day and into the night, as she seemed almost unconscious, so deep was her rest, sponging her off every few hours. She was quite a bit thinner than six months ago. So much so he wondered if she really had not had a good meal in a long time. Her ribs, covered only partially with the bandages, were right up against the skin, her tummy concave and her breasts not quite as lush as he had last seen, but smaller, though still high and firm.

  Not that he touched them, except with the cloth. The mixed messages that sent his long-celibate body were what had prompted him to pull a dress shirt out of his closet and button her into it, though he had no underwear he could put on her. Even as she snuggled up to him now, wrapping her arms around his as they clasped her narrow waist, the thought of the no-underwear thing gave him pangs.

  Was why he had been so indignant when she accused him of wanting sex from her? Because he did? Or because that wasn’t all he wanted. He sure as hell didn’t know. Her long dark braid teased his nose and he moved his head slightly.

  “Did you braid my hair?” she asked in a sleepy voice, proving she was not quite asleep.

  “Yes. It was getting matted as it dried, the way you were tossing around in bed.”

  “Where did you learn to do that?”

  “I had a little sister,” he said vaguely.

  Of course he never would have been permitted to touch Samantha’s hair, Daddy’s little princess having her own lady’s maid in addition to a governess from the time she could walk—before she started driving both of them away screaming.

  Evan wouldn’t have wanted to brush his little sister’s hair anyway. What guy would want to brush a girl’s hair? It was a ridiculous concept, but one that his first girl friend at prep school had harbored. Mary Lehmann. He still remembered her name. She was at the sister school to his own elite prep school and they would sneak away whenever they could, him to try to get in her pants—like all the boys were trying to do with their girlfriends at that age, and pretty successfully, times being what they were. But he had the bad luck to choose a romantic for a girlfriend. Pretty little Mary Lehmann wanted him to take her on picnics—which was okay as far as he was concerned since he was as romantic as the next guy and if he could score in a deserted meadow, fine with him—but once there, she somehow managed to get him to do any number of ridiculous things such as reciting poetry, singing love songs and, yes, brushing her hair. He went along, since at that age he would have tap-danced for a girl if it meant getting laid, but had always thought the whole thing pretty ridiculous. Last he had heard, Mary Lehmann had become a poetry professor specializing in Shelley and Byron. Big surprise. When he had finally gotten into her pants, he found she was a pretty uninspired lay anyway and he quickly moved on, pig that he was.

  But she had given him one useful skill he hadn’t known he would need until Miss Andrea Prentiss was passed out in his bed. Braiding hair. And he had found it surprisingly intimate, pleasurable.

  Once he had Andrea in the shirt, he had taken his brush and tugged slowly and carefully through the long, drying hair for quite some time before he pulled it back into a braid, the dog watching him, head cocked at an angle.

  “Yeah, I know,” Evan had said to him softly as he tied the end with a strip of cloth. “Next thing I know I’ll be having to brush you. Or tap-dancing,” he added with a mutter.

  But now that he and Andrea were in bed together for the first time, he wished he had unbraided her hair as well. Something about having her here was so right. With her dark brown hair falling down her back and gleaming in the firelight, his shirt in place of a proper white cotton nightgown, she could be the lighthouse keeper’s wife in some long-forgotten time. Except he was the lighthouse keeper now. And he was never getting married. His mother’s broken heart and his father’s relentless quest to replace his long-dead first wife had convinced Evan of that.

  Still, he would love to feel her long hair all around him, above him as she rode his cock.

  He involuntarily jerked at the thought, his whole body, not just his cock and felt her startle.

  “I’m sorry. Go to sleep. I’m going back to the guest room. I don’t want to hurt your stitches.” Or prove to be the mercenary she’d accused him of being. “I’ll bring the—er, Bingo, with me.”

  But she grabbed his arms and brought them tighter against her waist, below the bandage. “No. you’re not hurting me. Stay with me.”

  Hearing that from this woman, who had so coldly pushed him away the last time he had seen her, was incredibly satisfying.

  And who was he to refuse? For the first time in a long time, since well before she had gotten here, he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  Hours later, his cock woke him up, jamming determinedly through his sweats against her silky bottom, bared by the shirt that in her sleep had hiked up. He froze, but she seemed to be asleep. Tempted to groan in frustration, he settled for extricating himself from the same spooning position they apparently were in all night and getting up. It was dawn anyway—his usual time to rise on the island, although he’d never had a gorgeous woman here to stay in bed with. Standing by the window, hands on hips, he tried to calm the damn erection down—comical as it almost was sticking straight out like that—by looking out at the view. The morning air was grayish mist and the rest of the tableau just the darker blue of the ocean waves beyond. Like every morning, it was beautiful and humbling and mesmerizing.

  He glanced down. His cock was not appeased. He better just hit to the shower and jerk off to the view in his mind’s eye if not in the corner of it if he turned just a bit. Andrea all bottomless and sleepy, ready for him to slip between her legs.

  “Oh.”

  He turned automatically and Andrea was sitting up slowly, staring right at his erection. He wished he had a folder or a tea tray or something in a thousand other comedies the protagonist would use to shield his enthusiasm. But with nothing, there was no use trying to pretend it wasn’t there. Better to try to minimize it, if not physically, at least conceptually.

  He pointed to his cock, as if he was in one of those comedies. “No big deal. Happens every morning.” Especially if there was a bare female ass snuggled up to it. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Her hand went to her hair, pulling back the strands that had come loose in the night, and she looked away. “I’m not worried.”

  She did get out of bed, though, the sight of her long bare legs not helping much. “Where did Bingo go?”

  He concentrated on the mist outside the window in an effort to forget the no-panties thing as she came to stand next to him. He shrugged. “The dog has the run of the place. He’s probably up in the lighthouse room.”

  “You’re all alone on the island?”

  He glanced at her, surprised that she hadn’t known that since she had apparently chosen it as her sanctuary from whatever she was running from. “Yes. It was uninhabited before I bought it.”

  “You don’t get spooked all alone here so far from another living being?”

  “No, I’ve never been spooked.” Except when she showed up at his sliding-glass door, of course. He had never been lonely either, not until lately, that is. “Why? Are you afraid of ghosts?”

  “Not afraid of them so much as cognizant of them, I guess.”

  He snorted, but declined further comment. “How do you feel?”

  She put her hand to the spot in the shirt where the wound was, gauging. “It’s going to be sensitive for a while, but I’m okay. I’ve had worse.”

  “Worse than taking a knife in the ribs?”

  He saw immediately that she regretted letting that slip. So he changed the subject. “You must be starving. Let me get you something to eat.”

  That seemed to relax her, although she said, “I’m not hungry.”

  “Come on. Don’t be ridiculous. You’re skin and bones.”

  “Kitten? Work? Skin and bones? I’m sure you’re certainly pleased I showed up here.”

  She sounded so much like th
e old Miss Prentiss he was cheered. “Actually, I kind of am, Andrea. Now come on, I’m sure I have some sweats you can put on and roll up. Take your pick while I cook us some breakfast.”

  * * * * *

  She was a little slow at eating, but after some concerted effort, she got one entire pancake, dripping in syrup, down before she pushed the plate away. He, in the meantime, managed to eat two stacks.

  “Very good,” she said as he leaned back to watch her.

  “So if you can’t tell me the whole story, can you at least tell me where you’ve been?”

  Her lashes dipped down. “I guess that couldn’t hurt. I won’t be going back there after all.” She looked up. “I was in a little town in Maine. Not far from where you dock when you go inland, as a matter of fact.”

  “In my own backyard, eh? That’s a coincidence.”

  She said nothing.

  “Who stabbed you?”

  When she didn’t respond, he prompted, “How about do you think whoever it was followed you?”

  “No,” she said immediately.

  Okay. That was definitive, which kind of gave him the willies.

  “Are you related to Angelica Stavros somehow?” He had kept the name in the back of his mind, certain it couldn’t be a coincidence.

  “In some ways, you’re just a more annoying version of your brother.”

  He laughed. “Michael and I are nothing alike.”

  “How about I promise to tell you as much as I can before I leave? How’s that?”

  “You’re in trouble and I could help you.”

  “You are helping me. By bandaging me up. By letting me stay here until I’m up on my feet again.”

  He played with the salt shaker. “I usually don’t trade on the Reynolds name, or the Evans name for that matter, but both families could be pretty powerful allies if you’d let them.”

  “The only ally I need right now is in the room with me.”

  He nodded, unreasonably pleased that she needed him and not just what he stood for. “If you say so.”

  * * * * *

  Francesca Stavros watched her husband descend into one of his inevitable rages. An expensive vase was always the first thing to go. The Baccarat crystal shattered into a million diamond-like shards against the silk wallpaper. The leg of the Hepplewhite table she’d just purchased was the next casualty as he kicked it with a force he usually reserved for human beings but had to make do with on inanimate objects when necessary. But that could be repaired. He made his way with his solid-gold letter opener toward the painting above the fireplace and she cautioned softly, “Your mother won’t be pleased, Fredrico.”

  He glanced at her with the loathing that always warmed her heart, but left the portrait of his mother alone. Fredrico Stavros hurt things he claimed to love, but anything he hated was not worth his effort.

  She stood up and smoothed her evening skirt, absently noting the six carats on her ring finger. She really should get something bigger since that bitch Gloria Almeida had a gaudy ten carats on practically every one of her fat fingers. “So shall we be going to the opera or are you not finished here?”

  Glaring at her, Freddie sputtered, “I don’t see why you’re not more upset, Frannie. You know what this means. Athena,” he gasped.

  Athena Stavros had always spelled trouble. Freddie’s beautiful, brown-haired, willowy little niece had been fifteen years old when her mother Angelica married the fabulously rich and aristocratic Fredrico Stavros, who in satisfyingly Greek tragedy fashion was her dead husband’s brother. So smart she had breezed through every advanced course her exclusive private school had to offer, Athena had also benefitted from the early education that only a diplomat’s daughter can get, having traveled with her parents to countries all over Europe and Asia before her father died in a plane crash. Angelica and her husband, an attaché, had been so awfully proud of their daughter’s early and seemingly effortless grasp of languages. But the girl was like that in a lot of things, numbers as well, as Francesca learned when she became stepmother to the girl after marrying Freddie a scant few months after Angelica’s death.

  Frannie, in love with the older man and his mistress already for a number of years, had never asked about that death, just as she had never asked about so many things in those early days.

  And Fredrico had bragged about Athena too. How his lovely little niece had such a keen mind. Her spirit he wasn’t so fond of. Nor the fact that once her mother died, she inherited the other half of the Stavros fortune.

  “She’s not dead! The girl’s not dead! Do you fail to understand that, you stupid bitch?”

  “Tottingham is a senile old fool. Why you paid him any heed is beyond me.”

  “It was true. Who else could this be? He said she was the spitting image of Angelica. And of all things, she was working for Damien Reynolds. I don’t know what that means, but it has to mean something.”

  “You don’t even know it was her. They barely had a clear picture of the girl. I couldn’t say it was her and neither could you.”

  “It was her. Of course it was her. Why else would she have disappeared right after Tottingham saw her?”

  Frannie shrugged. “Athena always was a mystery. I don’t know why she committed suicide either,” she lied.

  “She didn’t commit suicide, you worthless cow! You know she didn’t.”

  “Calm down, Freddie. You’ll have another heart attack,” she said deadpan, as if it wasn’t in fact her fondest wish.

  “It was her working for Reynolds and it was her in that dinky town in Montana when we finally found her—”

  “Maine, Freddie. You never were very clear on American geography.”

  “Wherever! She left my man dead!”

  “More likely some coked-up whore he picked up stabbed him to death.” She took a deep breath. “Just leave it, Freddie.” She didn’t quite understand why he wouldn’t. “Let Athena rest in peace.”

  “I’m sending somebody back in. Now. Right away. I don’t care how many of my men that bitch gets away from. I’ll have a hundred more coming after her.”

  “Well, you certainly do pay them cheaply, so I guess you can afford it.”

  “You’re cold, Frannie.”

  He used to call that self-possessed. Both she and his stepdaughter were calm and cool. And it drove Freddie wild in a way that was not good.

  When Freddie first began to beat her, on their honeymoon as a matter of fact though they had been lovers for long before that, Frannie had been stunned, not only at the savage fury but also at the calculated almost professionalism of it. He could have her writhing in pain without leaving a single mark on her. She thought that made it better, because no one would know, but in fact it made it so very much worse.

  Because while he was busy not marking her, he was also not marking Athena. Frannie had thought the girl was safe away at a Swiss boarding school, but she hadn’t realized that Freddie on his so-called business trips had been visiting Athena—and meting out the same “appropriate” disciplinary measures he was meting out to his new wife. He started by taking her out of school for weekend trips and then worked up to taking her out of school for a whole semester, keeping her on one of his private Greek estates on the sea, under lock and key with armed guards. For him. For his sick pleasure. It was then that Athena supposedly committed suicide. Walked into the water and didn’t come out. And it was then that Frannie realized her husband was an even bigger monster than she had imagined.

  She grieved at the time. For Athena. For herself. But some small part of her had always suspected the girl wasn’t dead. Athena was a survivor and smarter than her mother or Frannie herself had ever hoped to be. When an email came one day, years ago, informing her that a set amount had been deposited in a Swiss bank account for her and that she should leave Freddie, she knew then that Athena was alive.

  It was sweet of the girl. Really it was. But she’d made her bed and she would lie in it.

  The fury that rose up in Frannie now at
that thought put the portrait of Fredrico’s mother—the old bitch who thought her son could do no wrong—very much in jeopardy, not to mention Fredrico himself. For the hundredth time, she thought of how fine it would feel to bury his own letter opener in his neck.

  “So, what shall it be, Freddie? More tantrums or a nice night out?”

  “You inconceivable bitch. I don’t know why I don’t just divorce you.”

  Frannie shrugged. She had long since made her deal with the devil.

  “So, the opera then, dear?” she asked.

  * * * * *

  She dreamt about it now, whenever she fell asleep. The dark, empty, dreamless sleep of her first days here had faded away and now she dreamt about it. Not about her years back with Uncle Freddie. No, that life was locked far, far away. But her more recent nightmares, not sufficiently under wraps in her psyche as yet, came out to play when she fell asleep. She saw the small apartment she’d hidden in for those few months, with its linoleum floors and tiny windows, where she had come to think herself safe after a while. And she heard the creaking of the floor that one evening signaled how wrong she had been. And then the sharp knife she used to cut a loaf of fresh bread every morning became something else…

  “Hey. Hey.”

  She bolted upright, feeling her stitches pull. Evan was frowning down at her as he stood over the sofa in what he called his lighthouse room. “Don’t do that,” he said vaguely, reaching a hand down under her braid to massage her neck.

  “Do what?”

  He sat down beside her, extending his massage from her neck to the shoulders she could feel were taut with the remnants of her dream. “Snap awake like that.”

  Her eyes slid closed as his talented hands worked out the tension. “I didn’t mean to,” she mumbled.

  “You keep doing it.”

  It was her third day here. Or rather the third day after she had finally become conscious again. And Evan had pampered her and fed her and tended to her as if she was his own little patient, asking for nothing in return, sleeping beside her at night as she healed. Though she was just now becoming strong enough to take short walks, on his arm anyway, he left several times a day to “work out”, Bingo running beside him. That was where he had said he was going when she had fallen asleep on the couch, drowsy even as she watched his figure become smaller and farther away on the beach below the window, the dog’s bark lost to the insulation of this fascinating structure that Evan had created for himself.