Behind the Curtain

by BETH KERY

  His father looked like he’d just been stabbed, but stood proud and tall. Of course.

  “If you think that you’re gaining control of your trust fund and then moving off to London to work for my rival, you’re sadly mistaken. That trust represents generations of hard work by Gaites-Granvilles. It’s meant for a man who appreciates all the blood, sweat and tears that went before him. It’s meant for a man who will add to it for future generations. A man, Asher. Not a spoiled brat who only thinks about himself.”

  “Someone like Eric?” Asher asked bitterly, referring to his cousin.

  His father merely stared at him, his mouth clamped tight.

  “I’m glad you brought up the trust,” Asher said, matching his father’s mood and donning the well-used cloak of cool indifference he often wore in his parents’ presence. It was the only manner of communicating that they acknowledged. And to think, his parents always claimed he’d never internalized anything they’d taught him. “Because I meant to tell you: I don’t want it. I never wanted it. Keep your money, and all the strings attached to it. Eric is the perfect person to get the trust. Personally, I’m surprised you haven’t transferred it to him before now. It’s your prerogative. But me?” He tossed the napkin he’d been fisting onto the table. “I’m done with that damn trust and everything it represents. I’ll be in the city for another week or so, if you ever decide you’d like to see me for reasons besides arguing over money.”

  He walked out of the dining room, feeling like his brain was boiling inside his skull.

  Unfortunately, his fury hadn’t been enough to cancel out the heart-piercing sound of his mother’s single choked sob behind him as he cleared the doorway.

  God, he was a heel.

  No, his father had been the royal jerk, threatening Asher’s job. Would he really call in some marker with Brannigan over at Mandor, and have Asher fired from his position at the Gazette even before he reported for his first day? It was a possibility, Asher acknowledged grimly as he took the ramp into the city. He knew and respected Dick Brannigan a lot, and thought the feeling was mutual. Brannigan was a fierce individualist who came from a long line of tough, in-the-trenches reporters. A dying breed.

  Brannigan wouldn’t be intimidated by his father easily. But who knew what bit of knowledge his father might hold over the Mandor CEO’s head?

  Why was it such a complete impossibility to be civil to them? He didn’t want to disrespect his parents, but it was as if the die had been cast. They would never see eye to eye and he would forever disappoint them.

  He would always play the role of the ungrateful, insensitive son.

  • • •

  By the time he entered his condo, he was exhausted all the way to his bones. He still hadn’t acclimated to the time zone. But his intense fatigue was far more than jet lag, he acknowledged as he stripped off all his clothes and fell into bed. He felt pummeled by that meeting. He was asleep within a minute, craving the blank numbness of unconsciousness.

  His brain seemed to have other plans for him, though. Because his dreams were far from detached . . .

  He walked along a familiar wooded path, his steps fast and eager. He listened with strained expectation . . . but for what?

  For her.

  She was nearby. So close. Every time he approached the secret lake and the minutes slowly ticked away to their meeting, his body grew tight with anticipation. It was as if being away from her, even for a night, made him doubt the miracle of her existence, question the very reality of something so amazing. He resented anything that kept her from him.

  His hands itched to touch her. She was just ahead in the clearing, near their silent, secret inland lake. He escalated to a jog on the wooded trail, muscles straining, his teeth clenched in mounting arousal and need.

  Then he heard it, the sound of her voice . . . her sweet, addictive siren song.

  Yesenia? That singer from the club who held him fast in her spell? What was she doing here? In Crescent Bay?

  Just as he had the confusing thoughts, the setting of his dream faded and altered. But his target somehow remained the same: that beautiful, soulful woman, that elusive creature he needed to touch. To possess.

  He now rushed down a shadowed tunnel with closed doors to the right and left, his target somewhere ahead of him. Where was she? The same target—the same pull—he’d experienced in the woods, he felt again. But this time, he couldn’t hear her voice. Only a thick silence—the unbearable absence of her—pulsed in his ears.

  But she was here. Somehow, he knew it, despite the fact that he couldn’t see or hear the proof of her.

  His nerves prickled with anxious arousal. Something was about to happen. Something explosive.

  Amazing.

  There. Through that door.

  He pushed the partially opened door wider and entered the room behind it. It was like an electric lash stung him, momentarily freezing his heart and stinging the blood in his veins.

  She stood with her back to him in the corner of the dimly lit, featureless room, her graceful spine slightly bowed, her head lowered in a poignant pose. He couldn’t see her face. Her body was draped in a thin, transparent veil. He could see her naked, feminine curves beneath the thin boundary. Her name burned his lips, but for some reason, he couldn’t voice it.

  He came up behind her, grasping her hips, the sensation of her curves and softness, of her lush body rushing him. She remained nameless in his mind, but he’d never known a woman more completely. He dipped his knees and pushed her bottom against his cock, and God it felt good: round and firm. Sweet. Her head fell back, her long, dark, fragrant hair a decadent, sensual blessing spilling across his cheek and lips. She sighed his name, her smooth, resonant voice amplifying his lust. His hands moved across her taut belly, ribs and full, thrusting breasts. Her magnificence overwhelmed him.

  He found her throat with his mouth and pulled her against him rhythmically, absorbing her soft moans. He felt his senses opening like a thousand floodgates. His lips traced a graceful shoulder. The thin veil chafed his sensitive skin and hungry mouth, but it didn’t matter. Beneath it, he felt the heat of the woman, the lissome arch of her back and the firm, soft globes of her ass. He raged for her, the sensation of her naked body covered by the veil striking him as painfully erotic. He had to fuse with this woman, to know what it was to burn at the core of her.

  The wave that joined them as they pulsed together rhythmically swelled, and his need became reality. His clothing and the veil disappeared, evaporated by pure lust. He sank into her snug, warm flesh—the sensation almost excruciating, it was so sweet. She quaked around him. He grasped a high, firm breast. His world pulsed in a red haze for a desperate moment. He thrust deeper into her, grinding his teeth together in agonized bliss.

  “I know your name,” he seethed next to her ear before he bit at the delicate shell and felt her exquisite shudder. “And it isn’t Yesenia.”

  He awoke with a start. Sweat slicked his naked body. His cock felt like a huge, heavy ache. For panicked seconds, he didn’t know where he was. The luxurious, mussed bedclothes and the dim room were completely unfamiliar to him, so different from the seven-story walk-up apartment where he’d been living for his last assignment in Cairo. His sex throbbed in agony. He fisted himself, wincing. The tugging sensation of his pumping hand brought back the dream. Even before he understood where he was fully, she took over his brain.

  He groaned, thick and harsh, and began to jack himself rigorously. The memory of her had attacked his brain, a forbiddingly sweet, unbearable remembrance. Because with memory of her had come the cruel knowledge that his arms were empty.

  He climaxed in a desperate frenzy.

  He lay on his side on the bed panting, his large, rigid body releasing the tension packed into his muscles only gradually.

  What was this? Why the dream? Why the desperation? Was it some kind of bizarr
e reaction to returning to Chicago? Not only soldiers had trouble assimilating when they returned home to the States. Reporters were known to struggle too.

  Or perhaps his odd emotional state related solely to that ugly meeting across the splendidly laid dining room table?

  To the fact that he’d disappointed and hurt his parents yet again?

  No. It was all about her, plain and simple.

  How could that be?

  I know your name.

  His sweat-slicked skin roughened at the evocative memory from his dream.

  He realized he was staring at the bedside clock but hadn’t been really taking in the time. He blinked, propping himself up on his elbow. The clock read five minutes past eight. No light filtered in around the drawn curtains. It was dark out. Amazingly, he’d slept solid for over eight hours.

  A feeling of urgency tore through him. He rolled over and picked up his phone off the bedside table. He was supposed to meet Rudy tonight for dinner. He texted a quick excuse, saying he was jet-lagged and not feeling that well. Could they get together for lunch tomorrow, instead?

  He lunged off the bed. Until that very moment, he hadn’t been conscious that he’d planned to do it all along.

  If he showered quickly and hurried, he could still make her performance at the State Room.

  No, he didn’t really believe in his vague, increasingly uneasy suspicion that he knew that singer. But he was irrevocably drawn to her as if he really did recognize her.

  Laila.

  The forbidden name rolled through him, making his lungs freeze.

  Just hearing the word echo in his head made him ache all over again.

  • • •

  It was Friday, and the club was even more packed than it had been last night. The pretty, model-thin hostess had just walked away with four patrons. A dark, sleek-looking guy approached him, smiling. Asher shook his hand and asked for a prime table. He included two one-hundred-dollar bills inside his palm with the handshake. The tall man’s smile widened, even though he never once glanced at the denomination of the bills he’d just nonchalantly slid into his pocket. Asher found himself seated at a reserved table, just feet away from the stage. How well would she be disguised, from this vantage point? Would he be able to recognize her?

  There’s nothing to recognize.

  You’re losing it. Do you honestly believe that that beautiful, shy girl would put on such a sexy, compelling show for a roomful of strangers?

  Then the curtain parted. Soulful, plaintive piano and saxophone notes filled the small theatre. The drums joined in, and he saw her shadow appear as if out of a mist, her hips pulsing to the beat. All his ruminations and doubts faded in the face of fascination. She glided toward the veil. She began to sing.

  Her pure, yet powerful voice poured into all the empty voids inside him.

  And Asher knew it didn’t matter if she was a stranger or a girl who had haunted his dreams for years.

  He had to look upon the naked face of the woman behind the curtain.

  • • •

  After Yesenia’s performance that night, Asher didn’t wait in the dark alley. Instead, he stood behind a two-foot-thick, peeling, white-painted cement column in Chicago’s vast underground subway network, counting the seconds by the throb of his pulse at his throat.

  Even though he hadn’t allowed himself to dwell on it, he’d first had the suspicion last night while standing in that alley. The idea originated from Grandpop’s stories and their tour of the State Theatre when he was eight years old. The State was hooked into Chicago’s subterranean world, a network of tunnels, many of which were still in use today, that incorporated dozens of newer and older buildings, multilevel underground streets and of course, the subway and train stations. Many of them had been established during Prohibition to lead to speakeasies or for illegal alcohol transport. It had occurred to him as he watched Yesenia hypnotize the audience so completely that this was how she was making her escape night after night from rabid fans, hungry reporters and determined entertainment photographers, like Rudy.

  She was accessing the old tunnels.

  He recalled from his times with Grandpop that a stretch of tunnel led from the old State Theatre to an underground delivery road for some of the older Chicago skyscrapers. Rumor had it that Al Capone had even used it. Nowadays, the stretch of tunnel led to the Red Line of the subway.

  He felt even more stupid than he had last night, slinking around in the alley. Clearly, Yesenia didn’t want to be seen. If it was true she was scarred, wasn’t this beyond intrusive of him? Wasn’t it cruel? Plus, he’d probably frighten her, a man stalking a woman in this dim, mostly unused portion of the tunnel . . .

  . . . A woman who nightly made a bold statement that she didn’t want to be seen up close.

  He knew his behavior was odd and obsessive, but he also knew one thing: he wasn’t going to rest until he gazed directly on her face, until he could silence this weird suspicion that it was her.

  It couldn’t be her. She’d walked away from him so long ago because her family found him appallingly ill-suited. Everything he stood for was a threat, and in direct contrast to what they’d hoped for their beautiful young daughter. They believed he’d sullied her, that he’d come this close to shaming the entire family.

  He’d come more than close, though. Her parents would have gone apoplectic on the spot if they’d ever known what had transpired between him and their precious girl in the private world they’d made together.

  But her parents had never fully learned that secret, thank God. She and Asher had successfully created their own world—or so they’d thought—a place of mystery and wonder, intense desire and vibrant beauty. A place they’d both belonged.

  Until she’d made her choice, forsaken it all and walked away, that is. Until she’d smashed their private little paradise to smithereens one day. Yes, it had been his asshole cousin Eric who had first betrayed them; her furious father, uncles and cousin who had separated them; and her hurt and shamed mother who had solidified that rift.

  But in the end, it had been her choice, hadn’t it? A choice that she’d continued to make for eight years.

  Laila.

  This time the forbidden name brought a wave of distilled fury and hurt along with the longing. He wouldn’t have guessed that so much anger still existed inside him.

  He shifted his booted feet restlessly. Only the sound of water trickling sluggishly from a metal pipe and the muted voices on the distant train platform entered his hearing. No one seemed aware of this portion of the tunnel.

  Just when he was about to give up on his irrational—no, ludicrous—mission of pouncing upon an unsuspecting, extremely private stranger, he heard it: a light, rapid tread approaching his location. He eased around the column and started back abruptly, holding his breath.

  A hooded figure walked rapidly in his direction, the closeness of it surprising him. He stayed concealed, watching as the figure passed. Only the lights from the platform ahead and an old, dust-encrusted exit light permeated the gloom. It was enough for him to make out that the person wore loose-fitting cargo pants, running shoes, a backpack and sweatshirt with the hood up. Her form was slight and graceful. Despite the baggy clothing, he made out the curve of feminine hips and the hint of a round bottom.

  It’s her.

  He never told himself to do it, but suddenly, he was following her. She clearly didn’t want to be noticed. Everything about her slightly hunched posture, her haste and her hands in her pockets shouted unapproachability. But there was something else about her, the gliding gait and the delicate, graceful arch of her spine. She called out to some nameless thing rushing in his blood.

  What the hell are you going to say? She was going to be scared, being accosted here by a stranger.

  Why didn’t you shave your damn beard?

  At six foot three and a hundred ei
ghty-five pounds, he was intimidating enough to a solitary female without the dark, thick facial hair adding to the scenario.

  Her pace suddenly increased. He kept up. Had she heard him behind her? The sound of an approaching train in the distance reached his ears. No, she’d heard her train and was hurrying to catch it.

  The name burned on his tongue, but he couldn’t bring himself to shout it. Anger and shame and disbelief at his unexpected need prevented it. What if it was her? What if she was scarred, and the last thing she wanted was to be seen?

  What if she didn’t even remember him?

  The anxious questions hammered in his head, blending with the inevitable roar of the approaching train. Suddenly she started to jog. So did he. They entered the station at the same moment as the thundering train.

  “Wait. Stop.”

  The train screeched to a halt, the racket obliterating his call. The doors jerked open, and she was getting on. For a split second, he paused in his pursuit, uncertain. Was he wrong? Was he crazy, chasing after a stranger because of a vague suspicion, an intensely erotic dream . . . an unexpected, bittersweet memory of an infatuation that he would have sworn he’d abandoned years ago?

  A slender hand grasped at the metal rail just inside the doors. His heart slammed against his breastbone in recognition.

  “Laila.”

  Her head snapped around at his call.

  He stared into a pair of startled-looking, almond-shaped green eyes. He lunged toward the entrance, shock vibrating in his flesh. The train doors slammed shut between them.

  “No,” he bit out, furious. Desperate. She stepped closer, her eyes wide. For a charged moment, they stared at one another through the glass. Asher soaked in every detail like a parched sponge would water. He saw shocked recognition on her face, and that made desperation redouble inside him. He slammed his palm against the glass.

  “Laila,” he repeated, his fingers clawing at the rubber-lined seal between the doors. The train began to move. He saw her mouth form his name, and she was sliding away from him.