From the Torrid Past

by Ann Cristy

  D'Arcy felt every drop of blood in her body sink to her toes. She reeled from the ferocity in his face. "We are to be married tonight?"

  "Tomorrow, but we fly there tonight. It is all arranged by now, I'm sure." His smile looked nailed to his face.

  He hates me. she thought, trying not to let him see how that knowledge buckled her.

  "Do you agree, my dove?"

  "Don't call me that," she flung at him, wishing she could grab the napping Sean and flee. There was no place to run. There was no move to make, no hole to hide in, no final card to play. "Yes, I will marry you tomorrow." Her lips seemed to crack on the words.

  "Good. Pack your things. There's an airfield not far from here. I've arranged for a helicopter to pick us up. We'll be leaving as soon as Adelaide and Henry arrive."

  "I should explain to Sean."

  "What should you explain?" he snarled. "That it has taken you five years to inform his father that he was alive and well and living on Long Island. No, my dove, there is nothing you must tell him that Henry and Adelaide can't if they choose. He will be happy as long as someone familiar is close by and as long as he has his horse. Gregor will see to everything."

  He turned on his heel as though he couldn't face her any longer without doing her some harm, D'Arcy thought. The slam of his bedroom door reverberated through the house. D'Arcy waited for the sound of Sean's cry signaling that he had wakened, but it never came.

  She wandered out the front door of the bungalow and over to a maple tree already turning the russet and gold color of autumn.

  "There you are, little one." Gregor's voice was low but still D'Arcy jumped. "Now, now, there is nothing to fear from me, little lady. Keele Andreas has been storming at you, huh?"

  D'Arcy tried to smile when she nodded.

  "He is hurt. Like all Greeks when they are hurt, they lash out. Not to worry. I know him. He is like a son to me." Gregor sighed. "At one time I hoped that my Elena would have him, but no, I could see that there had been someone who had torn his heart from him and he could not give it to Elena." Gregor stared at her. "Do you not love this son of mine?"

  D'Arcy wanted to tell him to mind his own business but the words stuck. "Yes."

  The big head almost quivered. "I knew that. And I also know that you are the one who tore his heart from him. I watched him when you were on Keros... that first time when you interviewed Anna. I saw how his eyes ate you up, just like Andreas-used to do with Katherine. He wanted you then. He had made up his mind and not all the scheming of Anna and my daughter would change his mind. I knew that. You think I do not know my son? I tell you that he loves you, D'Arcy Kincaid, and that is why he will marry you. All his anger will not change that." Gregor frowned for a moment. "And I tell you that your son will be my grandson. He is good and strong and Greek."

  D'Arcy nodded, afraid to believe but wanting it so much that she trembled, knowing now that she would marry Keele if she had to walk across the Atlantic to do it. Hope was filling her body, her mind, her spirit. "I would be honored if you would be the grandfather of my son and more honored to be your daughter-in-law." She leaned up to kiss the grizzled cheek, chuckling when he blushed. "I didn't think Greeks blushed."

  "They don't." He bellowed. "I have high blood pressure." Then he enveloped her in a bear hug.

  "What's this?" The velvet voice behind them cloaked steel.

  Gregor looked over D'Arcy's shoulder at Keele, his own eyes narrowing on the man he called his son. "So? You don't like that I embrace your woman? You wish to fight me on this?"

  "Maybe."

  D'Arcy looked at him, anger parting her lips. "Don't be more of an ass than you can help," her voice snapped, the zinging in her veins making her brave. Gregor had said he loved her. Was Keele jealous?

  "Don't speak to me like that," Keele roared, his head swinging on his neck like a pendulum.

  D'Arcy planted a hand on each hip and started for him. She heard Gregor laugh and Sean call to her at the same time.

  "What is it, Mommy?" Sean rubbed his eyes and yawned, standing in the doorway of the bungalow. "Why is Keele yelling at you?"

  D'Arcy glared at the glowering Keele and moved toward her son. "He isn't yelling, darling. We were just discussing Adelaide and Henry's arrival here."

  Sean beamed and demanded to know when they would be there. Gregor lifted the boy into his arms. "You will be staying here with them so that you can ride Jockey."

  "But you will not ride alone. Is that clear?" Keele barked, turning the boy's head toward him.

  Sean looked at him for a long moment, his lips pushed out. Then he nodded.

  "Your mother and I will be back in a few days to fetch you," Keele told him. "And you can begin calling me Daddy now."

  "Are you my daddy now?" Sean asked, interest in his voice.

  "Yes." Keele reached for him, his arms holding Sean close. "Yes, I'm your daddy."

  "Good." Sean patted his cheek, then looked at Gregor. "Can I see Jockey now?"

  Henry and Adelaide arrived in short order and were shown to the bungalow.

  D'Arcy was aware of the concerned looks thrown her way but decided to tell them of what had occurred when they were alone.

  "D'Arcy and I are flying to Nevada to be married tomorrow." Keele took the decision right out of her hands.

  "Good God, he knows." Adelaide sank into a lounge chair, her company smile slipping from her face.

  "Yes, I know," Keele grated out. "It explains all the looks of horror I received from you two when we first met."

  "Don't blame them," D'Arcy hissed at him. "I never told them who Sean's father was. They assumed that it hadn't been Rudy because of Sean's looks, but they didn't know who it was until the day they met you." She cleared her throat, finding it hard to look at him. "The strangest thing was that you didn't see it yourself. I was sure that you would see that Sean is the image of you."

  Keele's black brows rose. "Don't hedge. You know the boy is like you. His expressions are just like you, his hand movements. I'm not a fool, D'Arcy."

  "You are if you don't see that the boy is your miniature," Henry said gruffly. "That's what threw me when I first met you—the fact that you were sure to notice just as Adelaide and I did,"

  "But you didn't," Adelaide moaned. "And it just got worse and worse. Every place we went I expected people to see what we did. That Sunday at church I was sure I was going to die every time someone spoke to me."

  Keele shook his head, looking from one to the other. "I never saw it. I felt something for him but I never saw the resemblance."

  "Elena and Anna did," D'Arcy said, then stepped back at the reaction.

  "Yes, damn you, they saw something that you should have told me long ago."

  "Oh, Henry, he is going to kill her," Adelaide wailed.

  Keele pulled back, shaking his head. "I'm not going to do anything but marry the mother of my son and give my son his lawful name, Sean Henry Kincaid Petrakis."

  Chapter 8

  The flight to Nevada would have been most enjoyable for D'Arcy under normal circumstances. She had never been to the western part of the country and she was able to see a lot because they seemed to fly just ahead of the darkness all the way. But if it hadn't been for the captain announcing cities and landmarks, she would never have known some of the places. Keele was silent. D'Arcy was grateful for the stewardess's queries on "coffee, tea, or..." They were the only spoken words she had until it was time for them to deplane. Keele worked out of his briefcase.

  The heat of early evening in Las Vegas was strong but not unpleasant to D'Arcy.

  The accommodations at Caesar's Palace Hotel were luxurious, but she didn't comment to Keele, who left her at her door and went to this own suite.

  D'Arcy prowled the cream and brown rooms while the maid unpacked her things. She took one look at the sauna and stripped the clothes from her body. Maybe ten minutes of intense heat would take away the coldness that had seeped into her bones. Gregor was wrong. Keele didn't love her. H
e hated her. It was to be a slow lingering death for her either way. If she didn't marry Keele, her life was ashes; if she did marry him it would be a dull endless pain. She had chosen the pain.

  Stepping into the cubicle with just a towel wrapped around her, she reclined on the top bench, one hand covering her eyes, trying to fight the thoughts that were surfacing in her mind. Keele would take Sean away from her if she didn't marry him! But what if he took him away? What if he maneuvered her out of Sean's life anyway?

  Her head rolled on the slats, the wood pressing into her skull. She hardly noticed the ache of it. She swiped at the tears that slid from the corners of her eyes. In black amusement, she became aware that since Keele had come back into her life, crying had become almost common. She had not cried since Rudy, then that had all changed again.

  She sighed, turning on her side, her face toward the wooden wall.

  She came awake to someone shaking her.

  "D'Arcy, for God's sake, how long have you been in here? Are you trying to kill yourself?" Keele snarled.

  "That would certainly settle your problem, wouldn't it?" She staggered from the cubicle, Keele's arm supporting her.

  "Now who's being an ass?" he growled at her, leading her to the shower and stripping the towel from her body. He watched her lean against the shower wall, sliding a bit, as he fumbled with the shower head. Then he gave an irritated mutter and stripped his own clothes from his body. "You can't even stand straight. Dammit, woman, have you no sense?"

  "No. If I had I wouldn't be marrying you," she snapped at him, feeling groggy but still aware of the muscular, bronzed body hip-to-hip with her in the enclosed cubicle. "I don't need you to take a shower ... owwww, that's cold. No, I hate cold showers. Turn... turn that off," D'Arcy sputtered at him, putting her hands in front of her in an attempt to shield herself from the needle cold spray.

  Keele's laugh was harsh. "That's just what you do need, a very cold shower. Maybe now you'll have an inkling of what I've gone through since I met you. You're like one long cold shower to me, D'Arcy. Turn around."

  "Why should I?" D'Arcy tried to glare up at him but was choked by the water. His laugh angered her and she pushed him, touching his stomach. Even over the water, she heard his indrawn breath. Her pleasure was short-lived.

  "Want to play do you? All right," Keele said through his teeth, grasping her around the waist and doubling her over.

  The pats on her bottom surprised her for a moment, then she squealed in rage. "How dare you, Keele Petrakis?" She wriggled, only managing to bang her head on the wall of the shower. "Ouch. Let me go. If I were a man..."

  "If you were a man, my dove, we wouldn't be here." He laughed, and D'Arcy heard the deeper note in it.

  She struggled in earnest. She was not going to let him think she was available for him whenever he recovered from a fit of pique. Damn the man! "Don't do that," D'Arcy gasped.

  "Do what, my dove?" Keele's breath was ragged as with one hand he stroked from nipple to navel and back again. "I do love your body, D'Arcy.

  Then love all of me, she screamed at him in her mind as she slid down his water slick body, before he lifted her out of the shower and wrapped her in a fluffy bath sheet. "The maid is in my room," D'Arcy mumbled, cocooned in his arms, her pulse out of control.

  "No," Keele said. "She left before I found you in the sauna. I sent her away." He lowered her onto the silky coverlet. Then slowly he peeled the bath sheet back from her body. "Beautiful, and it's mine," he muttered before reaching down and taking one nipple between his teeth and worrying it to pebble hardness.

  "No, it's mine." D'Arcy gasped, holding his head between her hands. The moans that escaped her as his mouth lowered on her body shocked her, but she had no control over them. With a life of their own, her hands began to caress him and it was heady justice that her touches were loosening him from the firm grip he had on himself.

  "D'Arcy, for God's sake, don't stop," he mumbled into her neck.

  His breath moved hotly over her body, the uneven urgent cadence melting her. One by one, his fingers stroked her breast, as though the tactile sensation was too potent for his entire hand to have. His mouth followed his fingers, the gentle pulling of his lips making the hairs on her body stand straight out. His tongue slipped down her body branding every pore.

  D'Arcy felt her body jerk and arch as Keele's love-making entered her blood like a new pulse beat. Her open mouth fastened to his shoulder as he came up her body again. They could not get enough of each other nor close enough. D'Arcy had the feeling that she was back in London with him again. Any thought she might have had of denying him was being burned to death in the heat they were generating from each other.

  Their coming together was a crash of force fields. D'Arcy had the sure feeling that she understood what the French meant by "Le petit mort," the little death. She had died to everything and everyone but Keele and she knew as sure as sunrise that she would never feel anything else for that man.

  When she would have clung closer to him and nuzzled him, he rolled free of her body and to his feet.

  "We have a reservation for dinner at eight. No doubt you'll want to rest first. We'll go over to the restaurant at seven for drinks." Without looking at her, like a nude Apollo, he strode from the room.

  "Damn," D'Arcy mumbled into her pillow, pressing her lips together. For a moment she relived in her mind the lovemaking they had just shared. He didn't love her, but that hadn't made it any less beautiful. "How could it be so wonderful if he doesn't love me?" She shrugged into her pillow. "That's all you're going to share with him, D'Arcy my girl, that and Sean." She wriggled on the bed, feeling comforted. "But that's only until one of those gorgeous creatures gets hold of him. Then you'll be out in the cold again," the inner voice informed her. D'Arcy raised her head from the pillow, looking at the scrolled headboard with the radio and light switches cleverly affixed to the scrolls. "Then I'll just have to stop looking into the future," D'Arcy argued with her other self. "Have you no pride?" the voice persisted. "Yes, I have pride and maybe I wouldn't do this if it didn't involve Sean, but there's no use thinking about that. Sean is involved. Besides I love his father." The voice had the last word. "Then you're a fool."

  She slept until the phone rang in her ear. She spent wasted moments hunting for the phone until she spied it sitting on a shelf at the bedboard. "Yes," she cotton-mouthed into the receiver.

  "It's six thirty. Get your rear in gear, little dove." Keele's velvet harshness grated on her nerves.

  "I'll be ready at seven," she said shortly.

  The phone rang again before she could roll off the bed. "Wear some of the new things in the closet. Madame La Rue sent many of your things along," Keele whispered into her ear quickly before hanging up without waiting for her to comment.

  She rolled back the wall length closet and gaped at the contents. "You would think I was staying a month," she muttered as she fingered and lifted soft wools, sheer chiffons, sensual silks.

  She settled on a figure-hugging silk in shades of green, from deep hunter at the ankle-swishing hem washing to the palest sea green in the bodice. The sari-like garment emphasized her swelling breasts, slim waist and hips, her long legs. Her sandals were hunter green leather and she had a green sequined coin bag hanging over her arm. Her one bare shoulder gleamed a pearl image of her face. She wore the lightest makeup with the faintest blush and strokes of green eyeshadow. Her only jewelry was her engagement ring and the drop emerald earrings Keele had given her just before the plane landed.

  "I had intended to give these to you as a wedding present," he had announced curtly. "You may as well have them now." He had then turned back to the papers he had been perusing.

  She looked in the mirror at the soignée woman whose red hair swung on her shoulders, and frowned at her. "This is just a facade. The real you is Sean's mother." "And Keele Petrakis's anything," the inner voice said. D'Arcy poked her tongue at the mirror image.

  It was ten after seven when she sau
ntered from her room. Keele wasn't there so she decided to meander toward the restaurant, assuming that he had become tired of waiting for her. She was almost to the lobby of the gaming rooms when a man stopped her.

  "Hello. I didn't know you at first, D'Arcy. How are you?"

  D'Arcy stared at the smiling man with the receding hairline for a moment, then her smile started. "Jim? Jim Dern. From Hofstra." D'Arcy put out her hand but the laughing man gathered her in a hug.

  "What are you doing here? No, don't answer me until I get both of us a drink."

  D'Arcy tried to interrupt and tell Jim that she was waiting for someone but he held up a hand to forestall her, then took her elbow and led her to a table on a narrow dais that ran round the gaming area. He helped her into a chair then gestured to a miniskirted waitress who took their drink order.

  Jim couldn't wait to take out his pictures of his children and show her. It took D'Arcy long moments to picture his wife, Annette, in her mind, even when he showed her a picture of the smiling, dark haired woman.

  "Yes." D'Arcy nodded, shaking the picture in her hand. "Now I remember her."

  She was grateful that Jim was so full of his own family that he never asked her about Rudy, but then Jim had been in her classes, Rudy had not. She had met him at a fraternity party. She shook her head to chase the unpleasant memories away.

  "So here you are," Keele said in soft tones, standing next to her chair. "I was looking for you." His inquiring nod toward Jim had a cold hauteur that made D'Arcy uneasy. She felt as though someone had sprayed liquid nitrogen into the air. Frost was everywhere.

  "Jim and I went to university together." D'Arcy watched him. "He was showing me pictures of his children. I also went to school with his wife."

  "Nice." Keele's voice was neutral as he helped her from her chair and shook Jim Dern's hand.

  D'Arcy couldn't help but notice the puzzled look on Jim's face as Keele all but hauled her away. "Would you release me please?" she asked through her teeth. "I feel like cargo."