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Haines’s murderous face was replaced by bright
lights popping behind her eyeballs.
Then, as suddenly as they appeared, the lights
faded. The pressure on her windpipe eased, then
lifted completely. Audra coughed, dragging in air
like a drowning woman, blinking fast, trying to fo-
cus her mind, focus her thoughts enough to under-
stand what was happening now.
“Stupid bitch!” she heard Haines’s screaming.
“Fat, skinny, bright, dark—you still ain’t nothing
but a stupid, stupid—”
“Enough!” Bradshaw roared, and Audra could
finally see him, towering over Haines, who lay face-
down on the floor while two other officers hand-
cuffed him. Art held Audra’s service revolver in his
hand and his walkie-talkie in the other. He gave a
quick “all clear,” indicated that Haines would be
transferred to a holding cell in Solitary, then signed
off, looking at Audra, concern writ in capitals on his
face.
“You all right, Marks?” he asked almost gently.
A smart remark, that’s what the situation de-
manded. Something funny that would diffuse the
tension of violence circling the room like a buzzard
waiting for the kill. Audra knew the words were in-
side her somewhere, the perfect quip that would
make this another one of the stories COs swapped
around locker rooms and at shift change. Something
movie-star clever . . . something . . .
But the words wouldn’t come: not with Art Brad-
shaw looking at her with that mix of concern and
care. Not when all she wanted was to run into his
arms and tell him about Laine and her mother, and
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apologize and beg to be forgiven until she could stay
enclosed in those arms forever . . .
Audra rubbed her throat, which felt like it had
been caught in a vise, swallowed once and felt a
fresh pain twist her face into a wince. Tears sprang
to her eyes.
“No,” she whispered, shaking her head while
Art’s deep amber eyes bored into hers. “No . . . I’m
not all right . . .”
“I was afraid something like this might happen,” he
muttered in his low voice.
He had insisted on seeing her home, but she
wasn’t ready to face Edith. So he offered his place,
after the appropriate paperwork was filed. The su-
pervising sergeant placed Audra on administrative
leave until the whole encounter could be investi-
gated and dealt with, warning her with the words,
“I’d expect a call from Woodburn—and maybe even
the Warden—tomorrow.” They stopped once, for
breakfast from a nearby deli, but didn’t speak be-
yond the necessaries. The process of filing the inci-
dent report and realizing how close she’d come to
being a participant in a serious attempted prison
break had dried her tears. But now, sitting here in
his apartment, they were right beneath the surface
again.
“I screwed up,” Audra said as Art pulled their
eggs and toast out of the paper bag and settled their
Styrofoam containers on the coffee table in front
of her.
“Big time. You know the protocol. You’re sup-
posed to have backup, no matter what.”
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“I’m not talking about Haines,” Audra said
slowly. “I’m talking about with you.”
Art joined her on the couch, his eyes on the Styro-
foam. “With me?” he rumbled slowly. “What makes
you say that?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Audra said with barely con-
cealed sarcasm. “You haven’t said a word to me
since the Reveal. Hiding out and changing your
shifts around and generally acting like I’ve got the
plague or something! It’s still me, Art. I’ve just got
long hair, a smaller nose and I’ve lost some weight—
and yes, I’m a little lighter—”
“A little lighter!” Art exclaimed, his voice a rum-
ble of distress. “Audra, you’re a completely different
woman!”
“So what? I didn’t exactly see you chasing after
the old Audra. You couldn’t even look me in the
face.” She shrugged. “Not that much has changed.
You can’t look me in the face now, either. Look if
you’re not interested, you’re not interested, but if
this is just because you don’t like my skin tone—”
“You look just like Esmeralda,” he muttered, turn-
ing away from her. “What did you do? Take a snap-
shot of her with you?”
“And if I did, so what?” Audra challenged. “What
if I deliberately set out to make myself over in the
form your ex-wife, a woman you pursued and sacri-
ficed for, a woman who you still follow with your
eyes when she leaves a room—”
“Only to make sure she’s not leaving with my
wallet.”
“That’s bull. You found her beautiful and you still
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do—admit it! And what’s so wrong with me want-
ing you to find me beautiful, too?”
“I did! I do!” he roared.
“You couldn’t even look me in the face—”
“Because of your eyes!” he shouted.
“My eyes?” Audra repeated, dumbfounded.
“What about my—”
“You’ve got the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever
seen,” he grumbled as though the admission was
hurting him. “It’s like you’re really seeing me. See-
ing through to the heart of me. It’s unnerving and
wonderful and . . .” He paced away from her. “Every
since that day in the day room, when your pants
ripped and the inmates were laughing . . .” His am-
ber eyes found hers. “You handled that with such
grace, and then when I saw your eyes and saw the
hurt”—he sighed—“I lost part of my heart then and
there. I knew I had to keep my head down or you’d
know . . . and I wasn’t ready for that. I had too much
other stuff to get rid of, to sort out . . .”
“Like Esmeralda?” Audra prompted.
“We’ll never be completely rid of her,” he mut-
tered. “But yeah, it had to be sorted out. She was liv-
ing with me at the time and I knew . . . I knew I’d
lose you forever if you found that out. And Penny
had to be prepped. When a child’s been used to the
sole attention of a parent, introducing someone new
can be tough. I wanted you to talk to Penny . . . get
to know her apart from being her dad’s girlfriend,
but that didn’t go right, did it?”
“No,” Audra agreed. “She thought you wanted
me to meet her to give her an ugly duckling pep
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talk,” Audra said. “And after seeing Esmeralda, so
did I.”
“This is just one miscommunic
ation after an-
other,” he said ruefully. “Because by the time
Esmeralda left us, you were gone. Or at least you’d
made the decision to go. Off to California to be
made over. I wanted to stop you . . . but I thought it
was being selfish, so . . .” He trailed off. “But it
turned out to be a good thing. It was so much easier
then, because I could talk to you without having to
worry about those eyes of yours.”
“But when I came back . . .”
“When you came back and I saw those eyes I
loved in a face so like my ex-wife’s . . . a face I’ve
grown to hate”—he shook his head—“I’ve got to tell
you, it really freaked me out. That, and . . .” His am-
ber eyes pierced her face. “Why didn’t you tell me,
Audra? Why didn’t you tell me about the skin-tone
stuff? All the talking we’ve done over the past few
months . . . I can’t understand how you could keep
something so important from me.”
“I’m sorry,” Audra said. “I knew I should tell
you . . . but I was afraid.”
“Afraid? Of me?”
“A little,” Audra admitted. “Not because I was
trying to look like Esmeralda—I wasn’t. I just
wanted to look like the women in my family: Petra,
my mother. Only now I’ve met the other women in
my family, too . . .” She struggled to regain her fo-
cus. “I didn’t want you to think I was so shallow. I
didn’t want you to think I was some self-hating
black woman whose ideal of beauty was a skinny,
white girl. That’s not me. I may be a silly, self-hating
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black woman”—Audra’s eyes filled with unex-
pected tears—“but my ideal of beauty is my sister
Petra . . . and it always has been. I wish she were
here,” she whispered. “I really, really do.”
She felt Art Bradshaw’s arms encircle her, just as
the first tear slid down her cheeks.
“I know,” he murmured into the side of her neck.
“I’ve just got to get used to seeing those eyes in
that face. You’re a beautiful woman now, Audra. I
came out there—to California—ready to profess my
undying love like the hero in a classic Hollywood
drama.” He gave her a sad smile. “And then I real-
ized how unfair that was. I’ve got to get used to see-
ing how other men look at you. I’ve got to deal with
the fact that you’re a beautiful woman. And one day
you might decide you can do better than a guy like
me—”
Audra spun around to face him. “Never. I knew
from the very beginning you were my soul mate.
When you knew the difference between Casablanca
and Double Indemnity.”
Art’s eyes twinkled.
“All we need now,” he purred in his sexiest voice.
“Is an anklet.”
Audra’s mouth went dry, her heart got loud. She
closed her eyes, knowing what he’d say next . . .
“Don’t you get it, Audra?” He shook her shoul-
ders gently. “It doesn’t matter to me what you look
like: light, dark, fat, thin. If you wear sweats or de-
signer clothes—I could care less. Women are so hard
on themselves about the way they look. I’ll be happy
as long as you’re still the woman who makes me
laugh. Who can be tough and tender at the same
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time. Who’s smart and loyal and full—just full to her
eyebrows with passion for everything she does—”
He stopped short. “Look, I know I’m not what
you’re looking for, so I guess there’s no real point to
this, but—”
“Oh, Art . . .” Audra said realizing in an instant
what had been right in front of her face all along.
“Yeah, I’m in love with you, Audra,” he gave a
hopeless little smile. “Have been from the day you
flipped Haines over your shoulder and threw him
against the wall.”
Audra lifted her hands to his face. “There’s a
speed limit in this state. Forty-five miles an hour.”
He lowered his lips toward hers. “How fast was I
going, Officer?”
“About ninety . . .” Audra murmured as their lips
met, the violins swelled and at long last, Art Brad-
shaw was in her arms, where he belonged.
It was hard to tell which of them was hungrier: Au-
dra wrapped her fingers around the man’s face,
pulling his lips closer to her own. She felt Art’s hands
encircle her waist, then slide to her hips, then lift her
off her feet, all the while his mouth demanding more
and more and more from hers.
“I’ve been dreaming nasty, nasty dreams about
you, boy,” Audra murmured when he broke the kiss
long enough for her to speak. “For months and
months . . .”
Art grinned. “Oh yeah?”
“So unless skinny girls totally turn you off so bad
you can’t get it up—”
“They don’t . . . or least not when their name is
Audra Marks.”
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“You mind if things get . . . a little . . . freaky?”
Now Art’s features relaxed again. “I knew you
were the woman for me, Audra Marks.”
Now it was Audra’s turn to grin. “Then do me,
baby. Do me, good.”
“Consider yourself done,” Art replied.
There wasn’t the slightest bit of awkwardness be-
tween them, as though they’d been together a thou-
sand times before and knew each other body and
soul.
“Strip!” Audra commanded, laughing.
“I will, if you will,” he said already rolling down
the waist of her slacks.
“Hey.” Audra smacked him lightly on his broad
cheek. “I didn’t say strip me!
“Well, ’scuse me,” he teased back and grabbed at
his own trousers, which immediately puddled
around his ankles. “Better now?”
Audra had barely removed her blouse when he
stood naked and proud before her, posing and
preening like a gigolo earning a paycheck. At Au-
dra’s applause, he grabbed her hands and sat her
down, a naked audience at the edge of the bed, and
adopted a runway strut that seemed incongruent
with his impassive exterior but totally in keeping
with the man she knew in her heart. He struck pose
after pose, some coy, some racy—all showing his to-
tal confidence in his large, masculine body—until
tears of laughter rolled down Audra’s face.
“Your turn,” he growled into her ear.
“Oh please, I’ve had enough runways to last a
lifetime,” Audra protested, but he was already
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pulling her up off the bed. He pushed her toward
the mirror and stood behind her, his skin dark
against her bright skin. Scars, in various stages of
healing, crisscrossed her naked body. Audra averted
; her eyes, the playfulness disappearing from the mo-
ment. “Art . . . don’t . . .”
“Look,” he urged gently.
“I don’t want to—”
“Don’t tell me you’ve gone to all the trouble to re-
make yourself, and you can’t even stand to look at
yourself.”
“Not exactly, it’s just—”
“Then look!”
Audra sighed and dragged her eyes to the mirror.
“What do you see?” Art whispered, planting a
kiss along the side of her neck.
“I don’t know . . .” Audra sighed. “I don’t wear
Petra as well as she does. And after finally getting
the truth from my mother, I can’t help but wonder if
I’ve made a mistake.”
“Forget that stuff. Find you, Audra. Find some-
thing beautiful.”
Audra stared at herself. Without elaborate
makeup—just a little mascara and lip gloss—she
saw the face of a pretty-enough woman, but one she
still barely recognized with her fair skin and long
hair. But the eyes . . . the lips . . . those were her own.
“My eyes . . .” she said softly.
Art’s arms tightened around her as he turned her
slightly and kissed both of her eyelids in a way that
made warmth stir from Audra’s ears to her crotch.
“What else?” he murmured, his breath a hot rush
of desire.
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“My . . . lips . . .”
And immediately he caught them with his own,
pulling a feeling out of her that left Audra breath-
less. But when she leaned into him for more, he
turned her back to the mirror and continued in a
ragged voice, “Go on.”
But now that she knew that every part she named
would be due for treatment from Art’s lips and
tongue, she closed her eyes and murmured, “My
breasts.”
To her surprise, Art brought her own hands up to
her nipples, guiding her fingers around the curves
of flesh. “Love them,” he told her in that same sexy
whisper that sent another thrill of desire through
her, as he encouraged her timid fingers to stroke the
buds hard while his own hands slid down to her
belly and hips. “What else?” he murmured roughly,
planting kisses along her derriere. “Here?” His big
hands parted her legs, kissing the insides of her
thighs. “Here?” Then his tongue found the softness
of her female center, and with a single flick of it, he
set her completely afire. “Here?” he asked.
Diary of an Ugly Duckling Page 31