My body settled into a dreamy, relaxed after glow. Even if I was willing to give Chance what he’d given me in such abundance, I was too tired. Part of me felt like such a depraved pig for so greedily enjoying myself. It was this that prompted me to ask despite my reservation, “Would you like me to do you?”
Chance started laughing. He came toward me bringing the smell of my body with him. He kissed me and I tasted my juices on his lips.
“Dimi, the look on your face tells me you’d rather suck on a stick of dynamite or take a lethal dose of poison.”
He continued laughing, his head landing with a thud on the pillow behind him. He pulled me close, his arms wrapped around me.
“Baby, this one was for you. You don’t have to ever do anything with me that you’re uncomfortable with.”
I made a weak attempt at moving, not wanting to sever the connection of extreme peace. I had been truly made love to and I didn’t want to do anything, not even make love to him in return, not then. The moment was too blissful to end.
So I took the time for myself, for Chance, the husband I’d left behind in another life. I practically lived with Chance while Larry was gone. I went home only to change clothes. I avoided looking at any of the dozens of pictures of the occupants of the house. I couldn’t allow myself to be pulled into their world.
I would get the mail like a robot and toss it on the kitchen counter. It was all addressed to either Michelle or Larry Powers. I was sure one of them would take care of it. I was Dimitra.
“I’ve got a surprise for you.”
Chance was grinning at me as I lay in bed contented. I stretched lazily, feeling like a hungry cat. I liked this woman Dimitra. She was comfortable in her body and she was happy to have the man who’d given her this freedom grinning down at her.
“What’s your surprise?” I looked up at him, not caring that my time of being Dimitra was drawing to a close.
“There’s a big seminar tonight in Elk Grove. They have this medium there, Blaine MaDia. I’m not familiar with the name, but I hear he’s pretty good.
“He’s rumored to talk to the dead. Tonight I hear he’s going to do something different. He’s going to delve into reincarnation.”
My skin started to burn. I looked down to find the source. I ran my left hand over my right arm and pulled back from the heat coursing through me. I was afraid and my fear had come alive, burning my very flesh.
“Chance…,” I began. “I don’t know.”
“Why not? He might be able to tell you what you were doing when you had your accident. What if he’s the key to this prison you’ve put yourself in?”
I began to shiver. Everything in me was telling me to avoid this Blaine character like the plague. When I Looked at Chance, his eyes held such a mixture of love and worry that it began to melt my resolve.
Of course I knew what he was hoping for, some way to prove to me that this life he so vehemently insisted we’d shared was real.
“What if-”
“What if you find out I’ve been telling you the truth? Is that what frightens you so much? Are you worried that you’re going to be forced into making a decision?”
“Chance, I only want to remember what I was doing before I hit Viola. It’s hard enough living this life. I don’t have time to worry about what I did or didn’t do in another one.”
I fell back on the pillows, flinging my arms over my face, trying to shut out Chance’s penetrating glance. As always, he had known what I was thinking.
I felt him take my arm in his hand and massage the spot that was burning. A ripple of pleasure went all the way through me. “How do you always know what I need?”
“I listen,” he answered me, “to your voice, your eyes, to your body.”
“What if I tell you that I don’t want to go, that I’m not ready?”
“Then we don’t go. It’s as simple as that.”
He lowered his body until he was inches from me. I felt the warmth of his breath on my cheeks. His eyes bore into me. He had the most unusual expression on his face.
“Why are you so worried about my reactions? Is this the way you’ve lived this lifetime, worrying about someone else’s feelings, ignoring your own?”
I looked away from him, from the eyes that gave me no concealment. I closed my eyes, ignoring him and his questions. The kisses on the back of my neck made me smile.
“You want to eat in?” he asked.
I could see the hunger in his eyes. His hunger was for me. I looked at him marveling at how easily he’d shoved his plans aside. He was so different from Larry. Larry would have harped on the subject until I gave in.
“You’re too good to be true, Chance. There has to be some chink in your armor. I think you’re humoring me.”
I looked down my nose at him, the way I had at my children when they were small and I was grilling them. “Is this how you get what you want from me, Chance, by pretending you’re happy with whatever I want?”
He laughed out loud, the sound sending warmth to my heart. I didn’t join in. I was curious, wondering if perhaps this time I’d struck a nerve. Was laughter his cover? Why didn’t I know him as well as he seemed to know me?
“Michelle, you’re so damn suspicious,” he laughed. “Why don’t I try and find my ex-wife’s address. She hates me for divorcing her, for what she said was an idiotic reason. But I do believe she’ll tell you that I don’t play games.
“I’m not trying to manipulate you. I got the tickets to the thing because I thought you might want to go. I made a mistake. I should have asked you first.”
Oh my God. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. A man admitting he’d made a mistake. “What time is this thing?”
“Eight.”
I looked at the clock. It was early, just a couple of minutes after six. There was plenty of time if we wanted to go, yet I had to test Chance, see if he meant it didn’t matter.
“Why don’t we order dinner and eat in?” I watched as a smile curled his lips and the hunger came back in his eyes. He was telling the truth, I thought to myself. He wasn’t trying to get me to go. It doesn’t matter to him if I go or not.
By eight-thirty we’d taken care of all our appetites. I lay in Chance’s arm, satisfied. “Why don’t we take a quick shower and catch the last part of that medium’s act?” I intentionally said medium sarcastically.
He looked at me. “We don’t have to do that,” he muttered into my mouth. “In fact, I’m happy just where I am.”
I gave him a quick kiss, then pushed him away and bounded out of the bed. “No, I want to go,” I answered him, realizing I meant it. I really did want to go. Whatever the reason I was afraid to go it was the same reason propelling me to go. Strange but true.
“It’s late. It will probably be over by the time we get there,” Chance answered me.
“And if it is, it wasn’t meant to be.” I bent to give him a hasty kiss on the lips.
Damn, where is she? Larry had not expected Mick to be anywhere but home. If he’d had to bet money on it, he would have sworn she would call him back.
He knew his wife. She hated it when anyone was mad at her. She couldn’t stand the silence. He knew she went crazy with boredom when he wasn’t home.
That’s what the old Michelle did. Larry wondered where those thoughts kept coming from. The old and the new Michelle. What the hell was that all about? There was only one.
Granted, she had become unpredictable. When he got home the first thing he was going to do was drag her to the doctor, kicking and screaming if he had to. He was going to get her started on hormones. That was what she needed. And if that didn’t work? He hesitated, hoping to never have to deal with the possibility of the hormones not helping.
Larry tightened his grip on the phone. The damn thing had been ringing for ten minutes straight. Where the hell could she be? He’d been calling constantly since five A.M. It was now after eight P.M. Chicago time.
He knew for damn sure it wasn’t that she
was sleeping or showering. Mick could hear a phone ring in her sleep or when she had the shower going full blast.
Where could she be? He thought to call the cops and have them check out his home, but he stopped short of doing that. If his wife was in trouble he would surely sense it.
He didn’t want to, but he could not help remembering what she’d said about having an affair. Larry smiled nervously to himself.
That had been a joke, something he’d planted in her head. She was probably sitting there looking at the caller ID and refusing to answer. That would explain it. It would also explain why she didn’t have the answering machine on. As soon as he returned home he was getting voice mail and cell phones for them both.
Larry hung the phone up at last. Calling his wife every half hour wasn’t doing him any good. He paced the rooms of his daughter’s home feeling the dread build. He wanted to be home. For a moment he thought of waking his grandchildren and taking them home with him. To hell with Mick’s demands that they not come.
When his eyes landed on his daughter’s collection, an icy chill wrapped around his heart and traveled throughout his body until he was shivering from it. He could only pray that he’d not waited too long to open his eyes.
Chapter Six
I sat next to Chance in a jam-packed room twice the size of any banquet room I’d ever been in. We sat near the front, grateful for two seats together. I glanced around the room at the rapt expressions on the faces of the audience. Looking at them, a person would think that the Messiah had come again.
I focused my attention on the speaker. He was tall, at least six feet, maybe more, and he was pale. There was something eerily translucent about his skin. It almost appeared to glow. That had to be my imagination. I was not as enthralled with him as the rest of his audience seemed to be.
I looked around the room for the source of the light that had to be shining on his body. No one, but no one, had skin that glowed. My body began to tingle as I saw a current of electricity arc from the speaker’s body. It rose high into the air. I watched as the current hit Chance, then me.
I fell back against my chair. Chance’s arm was there. I could feel him rubbing my back as I fought for breath. What the heck had just happened? I sucked in the now electrified air and brought my head back up in time to see the electrical current retreat into the speaker’s body.
I watched as he stumbled and fell halfway to the floor, bent over, writhing as though in pain. He lifted his face and looked around the immense room. I saw the same look of fear reflected in his eyes that was radiating through my bones.
“Chance, what was that?” I whispered hoarsely, feeling an unknown panic building within me. I wanted to run from the room, but this mysterious voice inside my head urged me to stay, to listen.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Chance whispered back. His eyes had darkened to a stormy blue with concern. “Are you all right? Do you want to leave?” he asked.
“Did you see the current, did you feel it? You had to, it hit you first.” I could tell he had no idea what I was talking about.
I looked around the room. The only two people who seemed to be aware that something out of the ordinary had happened were the speaker and me.
The speaker was standing upright now. He scanned the room quickly, muttered an apology, stating he needed a drink of water, and left the stage.
If I wanted to leave, now was the time. I was holding Chance’s hand so tightly that when I loosened my grip I saw the print of my sharp nails in his flesh. “I’m sorry,” I offered.
He kissed my hand. “What got you spooked? What happened?”
“I’m not sure. There was this energy that came from the speaker. It looked sort of like lightning. It hit you, then me.”
I put my hand out to show him how it had moved, and my hand hit an invisible force field. I touched the seemingly empty air, feeling a strange yet intense energy.
It was completely surrounding the two chairs where Chance and I sat. That much I knew. I got up and walked around first to the back, then to the front, putting my hand out along the way feeling for this energy.
Chance was watching me, a worried expression on his face. The other people in the room smiled at my odd behavior, making me wonder if we’d all been hypnotized. I went back to my seat beside Chance. “Pinch me,” I begged.
“What?”
“Pinch me, damn it, pinch me now!” My voice was loud, too loud, people were starting to turn and stare at me. I didn’t care. This was the moment I had known my entire life would one day come. I had gone completely insane.
“Pinch me, Chance.”
He did, so gently that it wasn’t giving me what I needed to awake.
“Pinch me harder,” I demanded in a harsh voice.
He pinched me harder. I felt it. I put my hand in front of me, praying that the force field had moved away. It hadn’t. I felt the tears coursing down my cheeks. I took Chance’s hand in mine and placed it at the barrier.
“Don’t you feel that?” I cried. “You have to feel it.”
He was rising to leave. “Michelle, let’s go. I don’t know what happened, but I think we should leave.”
“We can’t,” I said, convinced now that I had to stay. Oh Lord, what has happened to my reasoning? All these people only minutes before I had written off as being insane, thinking they would make the perfect cult followers, and now here I was acting the craziest of all.
The speaker came back out after a few minutes. I watched as he looked out into the audience. I knew he was searching for me. He closed his eyes, shook his head and began again going from person to person telling each about their deceased loved one.
I could feel the rapid pounding of my heart slow with each tale he wove. I now felt safe. This was hooey. I didn’t know what had happened before, but I was no longer buying his act.
One after the other, the audience members cried out as he told them snippets of information. Nothing important, I thought. I would want to know where the treasure is buried, what the winning number to the million dollar lottery is, something that could help me.
I breathed a sigh of relief before turning to Chance. “It’s okay, it must have been my imagination. This guy’s a fake,” I whispered in his ear.
Blaine MaDia turned from the person he was talking to and glared directly at me.
“Do you really believe that?”
Oh God, they must have hidden microphones all over the place. That had to be it. That’s how he knew.
“There are no hidden microphones.”
Blaine was answering a question I had not asked. I clutched Chance’s hand tightly. “Let’s go,” I cried out, ignoring the voices telling me to stay. The speaker was now walking toward me.
“I wasn’t going to do this,” Blaine said. “Not like this. You forced me.”
When he was directly in front of me, he reached his hand out to touch me and immediately fell away, bending down once again.
“It is you. You’re the one.”
“No, I’m not.” I cried out my lie. “Chance, don’t let him touch me.”
The place became filled with noise as the audience attempted to adjust to what was happening. Chance was attempting to place his body between Blaine and me, trying to block off his contact with me, when he was thrown back by an unknown force.
“What the…” He looked at me, puzzled.
I looked at Blaine. My head was hurting from a fierce banging inside. I was about to lose consciousness. I could feel it.
“Mommy, don’t go, don’t leave me again,” Blaine wailed in the voice of a child as tears fell from his eyes.
“Don’t call me that.” He gripped my arm as we both fell to our knees. I leaned into him for support. He opened his hand to me and I clasped it, not wanting to.
Immediately I was thrust into another realm. I was lying on the floor, my body covered in rags. I saw blood, bright red as it poured from my body. My hands were covered in it. I grimaced at the sticky f
eel of it on my thighs as it pooled around me. A burst of pain shot through my abdomen, then traveled the length of my spine, going to the top of my head and reversing until it went all the way to the tips of my toes.
I was reaching a bloody hand for more rags, shoving them between my legs. I could barely mutter the words, “Jeremy, save the baby.”
It was only then that I noticed a man working frantically over my body. His sobs were so loud I don’t know how I had missed him. “I want to save you,” he moaned over and over, lifting my legs slightly, rubbing them. He was screaming for someone to get the mystic.
“It’s too late for the healer,” I wanted to tell him. “It’s no longer any use.” I could feel my spirit preparing to leave my body.
Jeremy was shaking me, only it was Chance’s face I saw. I was confused. This man was known as Jeremy to me. He was my husband. He was shaking me, trying by the sheer force of his will to get me to stay.
“Dimitra, don’t leave me, don’t leave, oh dear God! I can’t live without you. Please don’t leave me. I love you.”
“Hush, my love,” I whispered to him, not able to speak more loudly. “What God has joined together, death will not put asunder. I’ll wait for you in the next life. I promise.”
“I don’t want to find you in the next life. I want you here with me now. Don’t leave me, Dimitra.”
“Jeremy, I have no choice. Take care of our son.”
“I can’t, Dimi. How can I look at him? How can I love him? It’s his fault that you’re dying.” He looked down at his bloody hands. “Oh my God, it’s my fault that you’re dying.”
“Jeremy, don’t blame yourself, I wanted with all my heart to give you a son and I have. Don’t blame the baby. Promise me you won’t blame the baby, promise me you’ll love and take care of him until we’re together again.”
THE AFFAIR Page 9