She shivered, and pulled the robe more tightly about her. She stood up and walked to the fire and warmed her hands before it. Then she walked over to the mirror and stared at her reflection. Gray eyes framed by black lashes, and a lean face framed by thick dark hair. There wasn’t a speck of makeup on that face.
She didn’t begin to compare with Myra Breckenridge.
“Oh!” She gasped out loud, realizing that she was jealous of a ghost.
Ripples of restlessness tore up and down her spine. She started to pace the room.
Why was she here?
Maybe she was afraid. Now that she knew who he was, was she afraid of him? How was he going to feel when he found out the truth about her?
He had to come to trust her as a person. Then maybe she could make him understand.
“Kristin!”
The bedroom door was suddenly flung open. Justin’s fingers were wound into fists at his sides. His tension was visible in the strain that knotted his muscles and corded his neck.
“Kristin!” he said again, more softly this time.
She stared across the room at him, then she suddenly ran to him, pitching herself into his arms.
I love you.…
The words were right on the tip of her tongue as she clung to him, delighting in the feel of his body against hers. But she couldn’t say words like that. It could still be argued that she barely knew him.
His arms clasped her warmly. He lifted her from the floor and held her tightly. Then he let her slowly slip back to her feet.
“If you’re afraid of me, if you’re ever afraid of me, I’ll leave you alone,” he swore raggedly.
“I’m not afraid.”
“Then why—”
“I did rather pour out my whole life to you,” she told him. “And you made light of it.”
He smiled ruefully. “I didn’t say that your life wasn’t every bit as important as mine. But confessing to a failed marriage is not exactly on a par with murder.”
“You didn’t confess to murder,” she told him.
“You believe that I didn’t murder her?”
She smiled. “I know that.”
“How do you know that?”
“I trust you.”
“You’re right. I didn’t murder her. Do you want to hear about it?”
“Only if you want to tell me?”
“I think that I do,” he said softly. “Kristin—I can’t help it, I’m sorry. I really do hate reporters, all reporters. And until you mentioned Roger… Well, I don’t really know how to trust anyone on instinct. I’ve never been able to do so before. I thought you were that little witch on the phone who had been so determined to see me.
“Kristin, when I was first acquitted, I was besieged here by the press. I had given up my apartment in Manhattan and moved out here full-time, and so they all followed me to the country. And one damned man—from a highly respected paper!—was in such a hurry to beat someone else to me that he ran over my dog. The whole crop of locusts took off then, but it was too late for poor Jugs.” His eyes were like steel, but Kristin could see pain in their depths. “So you see, I’m afraid that I’m not very reasonable.”
Her mouth had formed into an O.
She should have told him, but now she wondered if she ever could.… Guilt ripped through her.
“Let’s go back downstairs,” Justin said softly.
Tell him.
Are you crazy? Not now!
She had to make him believe in her!
He caught her fingers and entwined them in his own. She followed him silently downstairs to the living room, where the fire was burning the most brightly. She found herself sitting again and him pacing again.
“Were you in love with her? Terribly in love with her?” Kristin asked.
He cast her a quick glance, then gazed at the fire and shook his head.
“Once… I suppose. I was taken in by her beauty. But that was when we first met. I was several years younger than she was, and I think that fascinated her. She was thirty then, and I have never seen anyone in my life so obsessed with age. Maybe she had depended on that beauty of hers too much. Maybe she never enjoyed it, really, because she was always so certain that it would fade.” He shrugged and gazed around the living room.
“She never liked this place. She came out twice while it was being built and promised me that she would never tuck herself away in the country—in the boondocks, the sticks!—like this. I’d never asked her to tuck herself away, I just loved the countryside, and I loved this area. I loved the forests and the quiet. It was a wonderful place to write.”
Roger had said much of the same thing to her when he and Sue moved out here. Kristin could understand it herself from the few times she had been able to drive out to visit him and Sue. The countryside was beautiful. In fall, with its profusion of colors. In winter, with a sparkling coat of snow. And in summer, with an endless canopy of green. An ever-changing land. Kristin loved it herself.
Myra Breckenridge had not.
And she had died here.
“But you were married—”
“Not happily. Not from the moment we said our vows. I’m not sure that she really intended to do it. Nor that I did, not really. We met at the opening of Promises to Keep. She’d asked a mutual friend to introduce us. She’d been out in Hollywood before that, but her last movie had been a hopeless flop. We met. We were with a group and we wound up at Sardi’s, and the entire party drank too much. She was vivid, colorful. I’d been working too hard. She was a breath of fresh air. The next week, we planned a trip to Las Vegas. Just to gamble, see the shows, have some playtime. And we were having fun. Myra could charm when she wanted to. We began to talk about the way our lives coincided, and then we were talking about marriage, and the excitement of it seemed overwhelming. And there we were in Vegas. Marriage was as easy as taking in a show. Not that I didn’t know what I was doing. I did. I was in love with one of the most beautiful women in the world. And I think she was in love with me, too, then. As much as Myra was capable of being in love.”
“Then what happened?” Kristin asked softly.
He shrugged. “Playtime ended. I’m a writer. It’s not just what I do, it’s part of being me. I hate the spotlight—Myra loved it. No, she needed it. She couldn’t live without it. We were barely together before we drifted apart. Myra was a real party person. She’d travel somewhere, ostensibly on business, and I’d hear tales about her that would make your toes curl.
“I flew out to Hollywood to see her when she was supposed to be working. I didn’t catch her in the act of anything, but I knew what she’d been up to. I do have some pretty good friends in this business. They managed, one way or another, to keep me up-to-date. They didn’t want me hurt. But by then I didn’t love her enough to be hurt. So I saw Myra. I told her it was over. She cried—she was the ultimate actress. But I went back to New York and she stayed in Hollywood—and she made another bomb of a movie.”
“I remember it,” Kristin murmured. “The comedy. It really was terrible.”
“Her agent told her to go back to Broadway. But she was getting older, so she couldn’t play an ingenue anymore, and there just didn’t seem to be anything for her to sink her teeth into.”
He exhaled, and Kristin felt a touch of the sorrow he had felt for Myra Breckenridge. He might have fallen out of love with her, but he had never ceased to care for her.
“She came to me. Her life was in a shambles. I suggested that she might try to cut down on some of the drinking and the drugs. She told me that she needed them to get by, and I told her that she didn’t. If she would just come out here to the country with me, I could guarantee that I could clean her up out here. But she refused. She wanted a play, but not badly enough to stay out here. I wanted to help her. She was still my wife, even if there was nothing left between us.
“So I wrote Snowfire. We had our big opening, and the play was such a success that it was a phenomenon. Myra was so thrilled that she asked ever
yone to a party on the dark day. A party here—in the sticks. She looked well, she was feeling wonderful, and she was even off a lot of the booze and the pills. She chartered a plane, and we all flew out here. We had the food catered and the place festooned with banners. There had been a blizzard a few weeks before, and the snow was beautiful here, really beautiful, white, just touched with ice. The type of snow that glitters all kinds of colors in sunlight and moonlight. Dazzling. Snowfire. And Myra died in it.”
“Why did they accuse you? You weren’t alone out here!” Kristin said indignantly.
He laughed softly. “My defense lawyers weren’t so enthusiastic! I thank you. I suppose the police always look to the husband. Everyone knew we were at odds with each other.”
“But you’d written a play for her!”
He nodded. “Yes, well, I wasn’t on trial for first-degree murder. They didn’t think I’d planned it ahead of time, just that I’d done it in a jealous rage.” He hesitated a moment. “And we had a monstrous fight that night. I told her I was moving out here for good. She made a dramatic statement in front of the whole party about me wanting to kill her. And she kicked Jugs. I grabbed her and told her I would kill her if she kept it up.”
“Oh.” Kristin murmured. Her mind was working. She shook her head, staring at the fire herself. “If you didn’t kill her, Justin, then someone did.”
“Yes, I pointed that out to the authorities when I was acquitted. They didn’t pursue it.”
“Why?”
Again he hesitated. Then he sighed. “Kristin, they acquitted me because of lack of evidence. But I don’t think the police ever once thought I was innocent. Obviously, they still think I did it.”
“What about you?”
He shrugged. “What is there to pursue? Don’t you see, there isn’t any hard evidence. Someone here that night killed her, but I’ll be damned if I know who it was,” he said, tension and anger rife in his voice.
“Who was here?” Kristin interrupted.
He shrugged. “The four cast members—that would be Myra, Roxanne Baynes the ingenue, Jack Jones the male lead, Harry Johnston the character actor. Let me see, Artie Fein, Myra’s agent was here. And Christina Anderson, my agent. The maid who had been hired to cater the party. And Joseph Banks, the film critic, and his wife. But the two of them never left the sofa you’re sitting on, I’d swear it. The others … well, we were all wandering around the house. Myra just wandered outside sometime during the evening. I was already outside, down by the road. We had just quarreled, and I had wanted to be alone. It was when I was coming back to the house that I found her. In the snow. And then everyone found me there with her.”
“Then what?”
“Well, I called the sheriff, of course. And he came out, and Myra was taken into the next town, we don’t have a morgue here. They questioned all of us. Everyone was hysterical, but they all agreed that I’d threatened Myra. I was arrested. They let me out on bond—there were people who thought that Myra deserved to be strangled. The play closed, of course, and the press was all over me. I came to trial, but I was acquitted. So I moved back here, and eventually people forgot and the press left me alone. Then what?
“I felt sorry for myself for at least two years. Then I started writing again. Two years ago an old business associate came to me and told me he wanted to produce the new play I had finally finished, but first he wanted to reopen Snowfire. It was a good play, the law had said I was innocent, and holing myself up in the country was insane. He’d always been a good friend. I finally agreed.” He hesitated strangely.
“And then…?”
“And then I began to be hounded by all sorts of media people again. Like the woman who called the other morning insisting that she was coming out. The one I told not to come here.”
“The one you were convinced was me?” Kristin asked softly.
He waved a hand in the air. “She was some kind of a free-lance reporter.”
A brick seemed to land in the pit of Kristin’s stomach.
“Did you ever think that it might be a good thing to reopen it all, hash it all out?” Kristin asked him.
“Not that way,” he told her.
“No, no, listen to me,” she persisted. “If you spoke to someone, if you told it all to them, like you just told me, it might make the police get serious about investigating the case again. Maybe they’d find the real murderer.”
“How are you planning on having them manage that now?”
“Well, there must be something to follow—”
“She was strangled with her own long red scarf. That’s what killed her. There were no fingerprints that weren’t already everywhere. The killer was wearing gloves—everyone was wearing gloves, it was winter.”
“But who wanted to kill her?”
“Me—according to everybody, including the police,” Justin said.
“Don’t you want to find out!” Kristin cried in frustration.
“Yes, I want to find out,” Justin said with a sigh. “But it would have been impossible. Everybody was all over the place. It was a party, Kristin. People weren’t staring at one another all the time. And Myra could be a wicked, wicked witch when she wanted, so anyone could have wanted to kill her. I think all of us had probably quarreled with her at one time or another. I did think of Artie—but she made big money for him. She might have been slipping, but even for a bomb of a movie, her name could bring in some big money. I wondered about her leading man Jack Jones—”
“There! That’s it. They were having an affair!”
“An affair is hardly enough for murder—”
“If she exposed him?”
“Who would care?”
“Then what about the other man?”
“Harry Johnston. He’d worked with Myra before. They were casual friends. She made him look very good onstage. He liked her.”
“The girl?”
“Roxanne? Why would she want to kill Myra? The play was her big break.”
“Oh, I don’t know!” Kristin said with frustration. She cast him a quick glance. “You keep telling me why they wouldn’t want to kill her. But there is a reason out there, Justin, that someone did want to kill her.”
“Not me?” he asked with a soft smile.
She shook her head. “Not you.”
He left the fireplace and came toward her, catching her hands, pulling her up into his arms. “You’re really beautiful, do you know that?”
“Thanks,” she said softly. “Not exactly Myra Breckenridge—”
“She couldn’t hold a candle to you,” he said softly, touching her cheek. “Myra needed paints and lights to become beautiful. She needed the sound of applause. And when you stripped her down, she was just a shallow child. A lost one. I pitied her. But you, Ms. Kristin Kennedy, you’re really beautiful. From those dusky gray eyes of yours to the heart and the soul, you’re beautiful.” He brushed her lips with a light kiss, and met her eyes again. “We’ve had enough of true confessions for the moment, don’t you think?”
Now it was her turn to make a confession. She needed to tell him that she was a reporter. Not the reporter, but a reporter.
She felt so damned guilty! And she wasn’t guilty of anything! It’s just that…
It was just that she was a reporter. She couldn’t tell him now. Not now. It wasn’t the right time. She had to tell him soon.
Before the snow stopped flying.
But she had come to trust him, and she wanted him to trust her, too. She wanted him to keep his arms around her as he was doing now. She wanted to feel his eyes upon her as they were now, endlessly blue, and tender.
He wasn’t really waiting for an answer from her. “Ever been swimming in the snow?” he asked her.
“Swimming in the snow?” she repeated.
“Well, not swimming in the snow,” he said with a laugh. “Swimming in water, while it’s snowing.”
She shook her head. He caught her hand and drew her across the room to the handsome glass do
ors that led out to the enclosed patio and pool. He pulled them open, and ushered her out to the white brick patio. The pool was tiled in shades of turquoise. The whirlpool at the end danced and cascaded and created a fall that rushed into the full body of the water.
Behind her he stripped off his jeans. Then his hands were on her shoulders, slipping off the terry robe. It fell sensually to her feet.
But he didn’t touch her again. He walked on by her to the water. Naked and sleek, he dived in. She watched his bronze body cut across the water. He surfaced and looked back to her.
“It’s warm as toast,” he promised.
Kristin felt a soft current of air sweep by her. Warm. Or maybe the current was within her. She’d never stood on a patio like this … naked.
She’d never been skinny-dipping.
With him, it seemed right. And even knowing that they wouldn’t end it with skinny-dipping seemed right, too. She’d never felt so comfortable, so at ease.
Nor so very warmed, by such very simple things.
He was watching her, his eyes touching hers, then slipping down her body.
With a soft little cry she ran across the brick and leaped from it, making a clear clean dive into the water. She swam across the width of the pool until she reached him where he rested his head upon the ledge. His arms closed around her. The stroking of his hands combined with the whisper of the water, sleek and sexy. Her legs tangled with his. She felt the roughness of the hair on his.
And her eyes widened as she felt the size of his sex between.
He grinned lazily, and pulled her against him. He wasn’t in any hurry. He pointed up at the glass enclosure that shielded them from the outside. The snow was still falling. Landing upon that glass roof, then sliding down the slopes of it.
And outside, the snow was piled high. High and white. Steam rose off the water, a steam that gave credence to its warmth.
Nothing like the warmth of being in his arms.
“Like it?”
“Umm,” she murmured. But then she shot away from him, enjoying the water. She swam the length of the pool, and waited for him in the shallows.
She’d come to him.
It was his turn to come to her.
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