Holding the Cards

by Joey Hill

  Marcus's words immediately made sense upon entering the Salerno's large foyer. The interior of the house exploded with artwork. Original paintings, sculptures of all mediums, and pottery work lined the wide corridor. Lauren recognized some of the most well known names in the art world in the styles before her.

  Yet the art did not appear to be chosen solely for its market value. There was an underlying theme of unique character, of color and interest to the eye, and the way it blended into the country castle atmosphere. A castle crossed with bourgeois comfort, she amended to herself, as she moved into the sunken pit living area and saw that the center piece of this room was a top of the line La-z-boy recliner, complete with baseball arm cover for a remote and TV directory. There was a pair of worn fleece slippers parked at the base, as if the master of the house was just up getting a beer from the fridge.

  "We're going to go down and check the water heater," Marcus said, touching her elbow. "Feel free to wander about. It's a great place."

  Josh had already disappeared and Lauren lifted a brow. "He's avoiding me, isn't he?"

  Marcus inclined his head. "Regrouping. Trying to piece together those defenses you're systematically shattering. I suspect you won't give him time to do that."

  "You bet your ass." She said it with conviction, surprising herself with the depth of it. Marcus grinned and left her to her explorations.

  Lauren wandered to the wall of windows and admired the sweeping view of forest and ocean, much like Lisette's home provided.

  No, she wouldn't give him much time to regroup. She wanted to get down beneath those shields, find out what he was hiding there and maybe help him heal it.

  "Ah, God," she closed her eyes, pressed her temple to the cool glass. Nothing more pathetic than a woman trying to heal a brooding man. The cliché of practically every mainstream romance, and something every woman who reached thirty knew almost never happened. Still, those romances sold millions for a reason. There was a germ of hope in them, the hope that, if they did kiss the frog, he really would turn into a prince. You just had to believe, Tinkerbell.

  She left the living area and prowled the foyer some more. The Salernos obviously had money to spend on any type of art they wanted, and yet she saw no Van Gogh's or Picasso's. Everything she saw was an artist established in the past twenty-five years, talent poised on the brink of inevitable genius. On closer scrutiny, she detected another pattern in their choices. Love.

  Not in the romance sense, which would likely have been of little interest to Mr. Salerno. No, these pieces reflected the raw soul of love that persisted through every torture the human mind could devise. Lauren touched the sculpture before her with light fingertips. At a distance, it looked like the twisted trunk of a tree hit by lightning, a few jagged edged branches gnarled and jutting from its sides. But when the observer was close like she was, and could study its features, she discovered a sculpture of a man and woman intertwined. They could have been embracing or fighting; it depended on the angle at which one stood, but the overwhelming message was passionate devotion. There was nothing pretty about love, it seemed to scream, but there was nothing more necessary. There was nothing more vital than fighting your way into the soul of another and claiming it for your own.

  Lauren smiled at her thought. The catch was, in order for you to claim the soul of another and be happy with the prize, you had to lay yourself just as bare to them. Her touch lingered on the rough-hewn part that was the shoulder of the woman figure, and then slipped away as she turned to wander further down the hall.

  At the end, she had the choice of staircases, one going up, and one going down. The latter was where she presumed Marcus and Josh had gone. To her right was a pair of double doors of carved teakwood, rounded at the top to accommodate an elaborately molded archway. Lauren hesitated, then shrugged, turned the polished pewter handles and pushed the unlocked doors inward.

  For a moment, she felt just like Julie Andrews.

  It was a ballroom, the walls lined with tall arched windows providing a view out to the surrounding forest on two sides, the now turbulent ocean on the third. On the wall space between the openings were gilt paintings in Baroque style, biblical figures, angels in swirling robes, women and men in shimmering dress.

  Three glass chandeliers hung from the domed ceiling, each probably weighing more than her Lexus. The floor was polished oak, inlaid with darker pieces to form a starburst design at the center. Chairs lined the wall; brocade and velvet cushioned of course, antiques with carved mahogany backs.

  There was a silence to the room, a hush that she could close her eyes and easily imagine filled with the rustle of skirts, men's voices, the light chime of glasses, and a waltz playing in the background. Now that silence was punctuated by the strike of the rain against the windows.

  Lauren moved to the center of the starburst and turned slowly, looking at every painting. She tilted her head to discover the ceiling that held those chandeliers was also painted with an array of angels and romantic figures.

  When she lowered her eyes, her neck screaming, her gaze landed on one other piece of furniture. Its face had been painted with a cadre of cherubs and positioned between two windows, camouflaged. A smile tugged at her lips and she went to it, pulling open the doors of the tall cabinet.

  No need to import the orchestra when you had a state of the art surround sound system. She glanced around and up, but it took a few moments to locate the speakers. The ceiling and wall murals had been painted over their wire mesh faces, screening them so well that the Salernos probably had to keep a location diagram somewhere in case the stereo guys ever had to come in and work on one.

  The entire room was a work of art. Lauren had no doubt that masters of the craft had created this fantasy. It was a room that begged for dancing, for music that would flood the room and transport the dancers to whatever mood or mode they chose to embrace. The room's style suggested a sweeping Wagner piece, a light Chopin waltz, or an elaborate Fred and Ginger number, but that wasn't really her style. She wondered what Josh's style would be. At the thought, her lip curved. Lord in Heaven, she was gone over the man.

  She squatted in front of the CD player, and looked through the selections in the partition below it. Her finger alighted on a favorite, and a smile crept across her features. She decided she liked the Salernos. She opened the player; laid her choice in it, and then keyed up the track she wanted, setting it for random choice after that. Then she turned up the volume.

  The first hard guitar licks vibrated through the room up through the soles of her feet. She turned from the player as John Cougar Mellencamp began to expostulate about his days as a young boy.

  She wasn't surprised to find him there, watching her from the arched doorway. Josh leaned against the frame, his arms crossed over his bare chest, his eye glinting with amusement. She twirled, shimmied toward him and back, put in a couple hip-hop moves, flashed a daring smile at him.

  The beat picked up and offered the chance to be with a girl just like her.

  She worked her way over to him and extended a hand. She wondered if he was one of those men who steadfastly avoided the dance floor, or who had learned just enough to clumsily guide a date through a few obligatory steps and increase his chances of getting laid. She got a quick answer.

  He took her offered hand and yanked, spinning her in a tight turn that brought her up hard against him. Before she could get a breath, or her fill of the way his body felt against hers, he twirled her back out again, moving them both into a smooth shag step. She missed her cue on the first round, but when he cycled back to the beginning, she was ready for him. She slid under his arm and flowed along his touch on her neck, as she turned outward, then came back to him again, so that both hands were clasped in his.

  It might have been falling in lust up to this point, but at that moment her heart took a tumble in a little more serious direction. She felt the fall, the vertigo. The grin on his face, the sheer enjoyment of playing off each other, the ease with whi
ch they moved together. He moved into a Latin step and she was turned so her back was brought up against his front, her hips tucked into the angle of his. His palm pressed into her stomach, and her arm curled around his neck as he rocked and twisted them down and then back up again. She pressed her nose briefly against the warmth of his throat as Mellencamp invited her to sink her teeth in.

  She spun out again, laughing, and then he had her by the waist facing him, revolving them around the room in an impromptu Fred and Ginger waltz at a beat that the couple themselves would have enjoyed if they had had Mellencamp's talent at their fingertips. She caught hold of his bicep for balance, and he gathered her closer, his hand dipping low on her back so she was firmly against him.

  Lauren looked up into his face. His grin had faded at the corners, the curve of his mouth now more tense, underscored by something in his eyes that stopped her breath and elevated her heart higher than was warranted, even for such stimulating aerobic exercise.

  His grip was gentle, but strong enough to tell her he had her captured if he was of a mind to hold her. They were still moving together over the dance floor, the line of his thigh insinuated between both of hers as he switched back into the sensuous steps of the Latin dance, to the mean tempo that called for recklessness and sexual heat. To lyrics that insisted love could hurt in a way that would make you welcome the pain and ask for more.

  The kiss was easy, a slight movement to put his lips on hers, but the fire swept through her like the churn of the electric guitars. Somehow, he kept moving, and the sinuous roll of his body against hers, the turn, the steady cradle of his palm against the side of her neck and back of her head, made her totally his for a moment, incapable of balance without him.

  The song ended, and the patter of the rain returned. He eased her down and in a finish turn that left some unwanted space between them, but he kept hold of her hand, caressing her fingers and gazing into her confused face. As if on cue, John Cougar eased into the poignant Ain't Even Done With The Night.

  Josh drew her closer, and she took the step, staring up into his face, aware of only him.

  "Joshua?"

  Marcus's voice wafted up from somewhere beneath them, calling from within the house.

  Josh cleared his throat. "Yeah?"

  "Come here a minute. There's a vibration that feels a bit off."

  Nothing off about what was vibrating between the two of them, but it was certainly unsettling. Josh gave her a crooked smile as if he heard her thought. He squeezed her hand and left her, his steps light and lithe, slapping across the hall and toward the basement area.

  Lauren wrapped her arms around herself, feeling a bit lost, left with the company of Mellencamp's wistful voice and without Josh's heartbeat against hers.

  Lord, what was she doing, getting all gooey over this guy she barely knew? It wasn't rebound; she was way too far past Jonathan for that. The terror she had felt on the beach returned, thinking about how instantaneous her feelings were for Josh, just as they had been with Jonathan. But maybe that was the way she fell in love. It was her, not the man. This was a different guy, totally different. She wasn't going to wallow into some psychoanalytical bullshit that suggested she kept choosing the same guy. Josh had shown more emotional reaction to her in thirty-six hours than Jonathan had in nine months.

  Mellencamp was crooning that she'd met the boy who would be the answer to all of her dreams. Jeez, Louise, it was just sex games, just fun stuff. She was exploring, dipping her toe back in, just as Maria had told her she needed to do. The island was a safe place to play, because it wasn't reality, it wasn't home.

  But it was home for Josh.

  What was it Marcus had said? Remember how children played, for fun and for the fate of the Universe at the same time. Maybe this was a game that was always played best or worst when the heart was involved. Everything in between was just candy, where you had to be careful how much you indulged, or it became the desolate vapidity of a one night stand with a faceless stranger picked up out of a smoky bar.

  She opened her eyes and found Marcus standing in the doorway. Apparently, they were tag teaming her.

  "So have you played much since Jonathan, or is this your first time since then?" he asked, without preamble.

  Lauren lifted a shoulder, turned away to cut off the music before Mellencamp drove her to tears. Marcus didn't fill in the gap of silence, except with the pressure of waiting for an answer. She didn't have to give him anything, anything at all. It was her choice. Her choice. She took a deep breath, turned back to face him.

  "No. It's been difficult, since Jonathan, even without the guilt. I've been struggling with it. Maria says I've been going through the skydiver process."

  "The skydiver process? That's a new term on me."

  "No term," she managed a chuckle. "Just a reference point. There was this documentary about a woman sky diver. One day she jumped out, and something went wrong with her chute. It didn't open."

  Marcus winced. "Ouch."

  "In spades." Lauren came to stand before him. "She didn't die. She was paralyzed, though, and they didn't think she'd walk again. She did, with several years of torture in rehab. For seven years after that she didn't sky dive. You'd think she'd have nightmares about that jump, and she did, sometimes. But most of the times, she said she dreamed about what it was to jump out of a plane and fly, float on the air, and it just be you and whatever amazing Power it is that creates everything. She realized she missed it, too much to stay away from it anymore. So she went up, and started jumping again."

  "Incredibly brave or incredibly stupid, depending on your perspective," Marcus observed.

  Lauren nodded. "The reporter asked her what she said to her friends and family, anyone who told her she was crazy for going back to something that had almost destroyed her."

  Lauren recalled the firm, gentle touch Maria had placed on her face, that confident caress of a Dom as she spoke the woman's words. "'Fate caused the accident, not skydiving itself. I'm not going to shut out the joy because of fear. If I do that, sky diving won't be the end of it. Next thing I know, I'll be afraid of planes, or going out in crowds, or dogs. The fear will take over and I won't be living.'"

  "Extraordinary," Marcus murmured. "And this applies to you…how?"

  Lauren's lips curved at the glint in his beautiful eyes. "A smart man like yourself could put it together. I've been at the dreaming point. I want to be back in it again, but I haven't been ready. I've been able to watch, but not to play. Now I'm here, and all of a sudden," she thought about Josh, his eyes, his body, the soul that inhabited them, "taking him over seems the most natural thing in the world. God," she laughed, "Maybe we all need to be in therapy. Maybe we're all sick."

  "Hardly." Marcus straightened from the doorframe and took her hand. "Since you've got your parachute on, I want to show you something."

  "What? Where - "

  He raised her brow by putting a quiet finger to his lips, the glint in his eyes turning devilish. She followed him back through the foyer, and he took her out the front door and down a set of winding stone steps from the front gallery. At the bottom, she was enchanted to find herself in a knot garden of dwarf shrubs, complete with a comfortable bench by a gazing pool for contemplation.

  A quick glance at his face showed her that this was not what he intended to show her. He pulled her onward, behind the sculpted topiaries flanking the steps, and stopped before a carved wooden door with a weight and style suggesting that it must have graced a medieval fortress in truth. On the protruding claw of a sly looking stone gargoyle mounted next to the door was a ring of iron skeleton keys, as ancient looking as the door.

  Marcus directed Lauren's enthralled attention to the carved plaque above the door.

  Here there be dragons of the most delightful sort.

  She slanted him a glance. He fitted one of the keys and pushed the door open for her.

  The door opened into a hall designed like an open courtyard. Skylights and prisms on either side
and over the door directed the beams of outside light onto the cobblestone floor. The smell of fresh water focused her attention on a large fountain in the center of the cobblestone mosaic. Her breath drew in, and for an instant, she was unaware of anything but what lay in the center of the courtyard.

  It wasn't the fountain itself, though it was beautiful. Dozens of smooth, colored stones formed a mountain down which the water splashed. The pool, with a diameter of at least twenty feet, was filled with more stones and, charmingly, a wealth of new shiny copper pennies that reflected the lights at the base of the pool. There were lily pads in bloom, full white flowers gliding lazily with the disturbance of the water, and the gleaming scales of gold and silver coy sparkled as they swam beneath the surface. Water jetted up from the rim of the stone fountain and curved over, forming rainbows around the central statuary.

  It was that statuary that commanded her attention. The bronze sculpture depicted a man and a woman. The woman wore a lovely evening gown, draped low in the back. The dip in her spine and the dimples over her buttocks were defined. The dress was slit up to the hipbone, and as she was in forward motion, one long slim leg in a stiletto heel was visible, the fragile musculature etched out in metal, with the muted sheen of silken skin. Her upper body was turned toward the man. He stood before her, towered over her actually, because she was small, perhaps just over five feet, but he did not look clumsy. In fact, he was elegant and magnetic in a tuxedo with the tie undone; the shirt carelessly worked open several studs. The intensity of the look between the two caught Lauren's breath, as did the riding crop in the woman's delicate hands. The man's hands had been manacled behind him, and those chains, as well as those attached to the cuffs on his ankles, ran to a circle bolt in the base of the statue, which was braced on a platform atop of the mountain of stones. Lauren could almost feel the sexual heat in the gaze the man rested upon his captor. Her gaze slid over the fall of hair over his forehead, the delicate working of the metal that had even accomplished the impression of a five o'clock shadow, lending the captive a dangerous, predatory look.