Sandra Brown

by The Witness [lit]

  Resolve quickened her footsteps. But they were instantly arrested when she rounded the bend and saw the car parked next to Mrs. Lynam's in front of the small, ramshackle house.

  What would Matt be doing here?

  Had he called her office, been told that she was on her way to Mrs. Lynam's house, and decided to meet her here to conduct the interview they had talked about last night?

  No, that couldn't be it. He hadn't yet given her the list of questions as he had promised. Surely he wasn't going behind her back and interviewing Mrs. Lynam before she had an opportunity to coach her.

  But if she didn't sense that his being here in the middle of the day wasn't somehow illicit, why wasn't she making her way to the door instead of ducking out of sight behind a hedge?

  Her mind hadn't yet fully formulated that question when Lottie and Matt appeared. Together they came through the front door and out onto the porch. His suit jacket was slung over one shoulder, hooked by his index finger. His other arm was curled around Lottie's waist.

  She was wearing only a full white slip, the old-fashioned kind with lace cups and a snug skirt that didn't quite reach her knees. One of the shoulder straps had slipped down, exposing the pale slope of her breast. Her head was resting on his chest, her body molded to his. It was impossible to tell who was supporting whom because one appeared as needful and miserable as the other.

  They got only as far as the first step when Lottie stopped and turned to him. She moved against him suggestively. He let go of his jacket and it fell unheeded to the unpainted porch floor.

  Her arms locked around his neck.

  His hands possessively clutched her buttocks and drew her up to him.

  She propped her thigh high on his hip.

  He ground his pelvis against hers.

  Her head fell back onto her shoulders.

  He moaned her name.

  Their lips sought, met, and clung with unbridled passion.

  Chapter 15

  "What the hell happened to your hair?"

  Stepping from the bathroom into the hallway, Kendall self consciously touched the back of her neck, now exposed after she had hacked off her hair. "It was hot, always sticking to the back of my neck. I couldn't live with it another day." She looked pointedly at the circular, semibald spot near his temple and said snidely, "Besides, you've got no room to talk about hair."

  He was right; hers looked atrocious. Taking scissors to it had been a drastic but necessary move after she'd seen her face on the front page of that Nashville newspaper. The photograph was probably being shown on television, too. She hoped that the haircut would serve as a disguise.

  "The baby's been crying," he said.

  She stepped around him and entered the small bedroom where Kevin slept. "What's the matter, Kevin? Hmm?"

  "Will he recognize you, looking like that?"

  "He recognizes my voice." She lifted the infant from the playpen and carried him to the bureau that she had converted into a changing table. "Are you wet? Is that the problem?"

  She heard the thump-thump of his crutches as he moved up behind her. Still smarting over his crack about her cropped hair, she ignored him and concentrated on diapering the baby.

  "He was circumcised," he remarked.

  "Uh-huh."

  "Religious reasons?"

  "Not particularly. That's just what we agreed on."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know," she replied impatiently.

  "Did I want him to be like me, or unlike me?"

  "What do you mean

  "Am I or aren't I?"

  She made a scoffing sound. "Don't you know?"

  "Yes, I know." He placed his finger beneath her chin and brought her head around. "Do you?"

  If she had been shot with a stun gun, she couldn't have been more dumbfounded. Finally, she gave a shaky little laugh. "What a ridiculous question." She tried to return to her task, but he encircled her wrist and held on until she relented and looked up at him again.

  "Which is it, Kendall?"

  "I resent being tested like this."

  "I resent being lied to. You claim to be my wife. If there's one thing a wife knows with certainty, it's whether or not her husband was circumcised."

  He spoke with such quiet intensity that the words were barely audible. His eyes probed hers while his thumb traced lazy patterns in her palm.

  "Well? Did we always make love with the lights out?"

  I, | "Of course not."

  "And we showered together?"

  She tried to turn away, but he gave her wrist a tug. She shot him a fierce look. "Sometimes."

  "So surely you washed me. Caressed me." He raised her hand to his mouth and kissed the palm. His lips moved against it as he spoke. "I'll bet you knew how to touch me in ways that made my blood pressure rise."

  Kendall felt her stomach levitate, then drop weightlessly She tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry. Her ears echoed with the drumming of her heartbeat. "You never complained," she said faintly.

  "Then this shouldn't be a difficult question."

  "It's not."

  "So answer."

  "It's silly."

  "Indulge me."

  She knew her voice would be as arid and wispy as chaff, but he was waiting for an answer. It had to be the correct one.

  She swallowed dryly. "You are."

  He kept her suspended with a long, penetrating stare before finally releasing her wrist. She could have collapsed with relief.

  She was dizzy with it, giddy with the joy of being granted a reprieve.

  She picked up Kevin, gave him a good-night kiss, and returned him to the playpen. She had fed him before her bath, so he was ready to go to sleep now. She draped a light receiving blanket over him.

  When she straightened up and turned, he was standing alarmingly close. He took her shoulders between his hands.

  His eyes moved over her face, then up to her hair.

  "Why'd you do it?"

  "Is it so horrible?" she asked remorsefully.

  "Compared to how it was before, yeah, it's pretty awful.

  Why'd you do that to yourself?"

  "I told you"

  "You weren't telling the truth, Kendall. If your hair was hot on your neck, you could have worn it up. Instead you mutilated it. Why?" He gave her a hard, searching look. "You were going to leave today, weren't you?"

  "No!"

  "Stop.lying to me. If you can't tell me anything except another lie, don't tell me anything." He pulled her against him. Hard. "Because I'm beginning to wish your lies were true. I want you so goddamn much, I wish you were mine. I wish . . . Oh, hell." He kissed her, hotly, hungrily.

  Kendall let herself be kissed, let herself respond. Suddenly she acknowledged what her conscience had been dodging for days she wanted him as much as he seemed to want her.

  Initially, she had feared and despised everything he represented. Her aversion had blinded her to the man. But having lived with him, slept beside him, his attractiveness was impossible to ignore. She had believed herself immune to his sexuality, and even to her own, but she wasn't.

  And her desire wasn't strictly hormonal. Even as his injured body was healing, she had detected deep lacerations on his spirit that still needed tending. That need, which he probably wasn't even aware of or would never address, struck a chord within her. She wanted to see his eyes free of that haunted look.

  With each day, each hour, they'd been moving toward this moment. It had been inevitable from the beginning. Rather than fight it any longer, she gave herself over to it.

  Since his mobility was hampered, it was she who moved closer and arched into him. He groaned and pressed his hands against her breasts.

  "Let me touch you," he said, his voice raspy.

  He stroked her nipples and they became hard. His caresses caused damp spots to appear on her nightgown. He looked down at them, at his wet fingertips, and his features grew taut with passion.

  He cupped her head between his large hands.
His thumbs swept across her cheekbones, over her damp lips. He lowered his head for another kiss, but this one was surprisingly soft.

  His mouth barely glanced hers. Repeatedly. Each time their lips came together, they barely connected, yet the touch of his mouth against hers made Kendall hot enough to melt.

  Her anticipation was finally rewarded. He kissed her deeply, using his tongue erotically to plumb her mouth. The pressure IA her lower body was sweet. She felt herself swelling, throbbing, getting wet, and she couldn't remember the last time she had experienced that sensational phenomenon Her breasts became achy and tight, and she yearned to his hands, his mouth, on them. She wanted to be Close to him. Closer.

  "Kendall?"

  "Hmm?"

  "Let's go to bed.

  Bed. He wanted her in bed, where they would make love. He would expect her to respond as his wife.

  Unwelcome reason came crashing down on her. She could no more outrun it than she could have Outdistanced an avalanche. It enveloped her, smothered her. It was inescapably Was she mad? Had she, too, lost her memory? She Could do this!

  "I'm sorry. I can't."

  She pulled away from him so abruptly that both of them almost lost their balance. She braced herself against the bureau and held out her arm to stave him off. 'Please, don't touch me like that again."

  His face was dark and filled with arousal. He cursed her in a raw, ragged voice. This doesn't make any sense, Kendall. Why can't you?"

  "Plainly and simply, I said no. That puts an end to it." "Not from my side, it doesn't. I'm entitled to an explanation."

  "I've already explained it."

  In riddles that would stump a wizard." He shouted, which caused Kevin to mew disapproval. Once the baby had resettled into slumber, he pressed his temples with the heels of his hands and expelled a deep breath. "I don't get it. If we, husband and wife as you claim, if we both avant It I no longer want it. I haven't for a long time.

  "Why not?"

  "Because of the pain."

  "Pain?" His face went pale. "I hurt you?"

  She shook her head. "Not physically. Emotionally." Tears filled her eyes. "I remember it all too well, and it still hurts."

  All the pain and betrayal she had experienced that afternoon at Lottie Lynam's house surged to the front of her consciousness. She crossed her arms over her middle as though her insides were twisting in agony.

  "Oh, shit." His lips, which moments before had been so erotically insistent against hers, turned thin with bitterness and regret. "It was another woman, wasn't it?"

  Chapter 16

  Seated in the Adirondack chair on the porch, Kendall stared sightlessly into near space. She was unaware of the squirrels that chased one another from tree to tree, although she usually enjoyed watching their antics. She didn't hear the grating drone of the chainsaw that a distant neighbor was using, or the scolding she received from a territorial bluejay.

  Her senses had gone numb when she saw her husband making love to Lottie Lynam with more passion than he had ever brought to their marriage bed.

  Kendall berated herself for not confronting them. She had caught them in the act. They couldn't have denied it. Why hadn't she admonished them with the contempt they well deserved?

  Because at the time, she hadn't had the wherewithal to do anything except slink away to lick her wounds. For several moments after she first saw them, she had stared in utter disbelief, halfway expecting them to turn to her, laughing and saying, "Gotcha!" making her the butt of a cruel practical joke.

  But it hadn't been a joke. It had been tragically real. She had watched the entwined lovers with fascinated horror.

  When she couldn't take any more, she had retreated unseen down the dusty road. Before reaching her car, she had been seized with an attack of nausea and had vomited into the grapevines that grew in the ditch. Somehow she had managed to drive herself home, although she didn't remember the trip.

  Several hours had elapsed since then. Anger had elbowed its way in and blunted some of the pain. She was now ready to confront her husband with his betrayal, although she was uncertain what approach to take. This wasn't something that could be planned or rehearsed.

  In any event, she was out of time. He was home.

  She watched his car turn off the main road and enter their long driveway. He honked the horn twice when he saw her sitting on the porch. He got out, smiling and happy to see her.

  "Hi! I called your office, but your secretary said you'd left early. Where'd you go?"

  "I had some errands to run."

  He jogged up the steps, set his briefcase on the porch, draped his jacket over the arm of the chair, and bent down to kiss her forehead. It took every ounce of self-control she possessed not to turn away from him. At least he hadn't kissed her on the lips. She couldn't have stood that.

  He noticed her lack of enthusiasm and asked sympathetically, "Hard day?"

  "Average."

  Average? On the contrary, it couldn't have been much more tumultuous. She had been betrayed by her life partner and a client whose future rested with her.

  Matt loosened his necktie and sat in the chair next to hers.

  "I spent most of the day on the phone, trying to get somebody in the capitol building to talk to a lowly newspaperman like me about the new public school budget. Everybody in Columbia is too busy for an interview unless you're from a big city newspaper."

  He had removed his shoes and socks. With one ankle propped on his opposite knee, he was giving himself a foot rub. "Did you talk to Dad today?"

  "No."

  "I didn't hear from him either. Wonder what he's up to.

  Think I'll go in and call him."

  She stopped him before he reached the door. "Matt, when can I expect that list of questions?"

  "What list of questions?"

  "For the interview with Mrs. Lynam."

  He snapped his fingers. "Oh, right. Then you agree to the idea? Do I get a green light?"

  "To interview her or to fuck her?"

  It wasn't exactly a graceful segue, but it packed a punch and it certainly sewed its purpose. His expression went perfectly blank.

  In a voice much calmer that she could have hoped for, she said, "Don't embarrass yourself or insult me by playing dumb.

  This isn't a nasty rumor I picked up in the hair salon. I went out to the Lynam house this afternoon and saw you together in broad daylight. There was only one conclusion to draw.

  Nothing was left to speculation."

  He moved to the porch railing and gazed out over the yard, his back to her. With shrinking patience, Kendall waited for him to respond. She was on the brink of verbally lashing out at him when he finally turned to face her. Casually he folded his arms across his chest.

  "What you saw has nothing to do with you."

  The statement was spoken rationally and calmly. Conversely, it rocked Kendall with the force of a tidal wave.

  "Nothing to do with me!" she cried. "Nothing to do with me? I'm your wife!"

  "Exactly, Kendall. I love you for my wife."

  "And Lottie Lynam for your lover!"

  "That's right. Years ago. Before I ever heard of you."

  "Years ago?"

  He turned his back to her again, but she vaulted from the chair, closed the distance between them, caught hold of his sleeve, and forced him around. "How long have you been sleeping with her, Matt? I want to know."

  His temper snapped, and he slung off her grip. "Since I was fourteen."

  Aghast, Kendall fell back a step.

  "There. Are you better off knowing that, Kendall? Does it make you feel better? Of course not. You should have left it alone."

  He didn't, however. He didn't stop with that startling piece of information. Now that the affair had been exposed, he held nothing back.

  "From the time we were curious kids, there was something between Lottie and me," he began. "Chemistry, karma, what ever you want to call it. I was always attracted to her and she to me. When we were fo
urteen, we satisfied our curiosity.

  That's how it started."

  Kendall pressed her fingers against her lips to keep them from trembling. The situation was worse than she had thought.

  Much worse. This wasn't a casual fling, an error in judgment that he would correct and then look back on with remorse and regret. He and Lottie Lynam had more than an affair together.

  They had a relationship that had lasted longer than most marriages.

  Kendall had prepared herself for a fight. She had anticipated hearing first a denial, then a confession, followed by a plea for understanding and forgiveness. She wasn't prepared for this.

  "After that first time, Lottie and I met in secret every chance we got. I dated other girls. She went out with other boys.

  But that was only so nobody would suspect what we had going.

  Lottie bought the rubbers so the druggist wouldn't tell Dad how many I was using. As a result, Lottie earned a reputation for being promiscuous. Nobody realized she only had one lover.

  "Of course, it eventually got out that we were seeing each other on the sly. Dad got wind of it. He asked me if the rumor was true; I denied it. Then he left me alone for a weekend, ostensibly to attend a sporting goods trade show in Memphis. Lottie was in bed with me when he barged in on us.

  He called her daddy to come get her. Dad gave me a thrashing and a lecture on feminine wiles, on how girls of Lottie s rank trapped boys like me. Then he gave me the name and address of a madam over in Georgia. He said that whenever I needed to be with a woman, he'd gladly pay for it But I was to Stay away from trash like Lottie. Nothing good could come Of messing with her, he said.

  For a while, I was afraid to see her, afraid he'd find out.

  Then I went away to college. Years passed, and the memory of her faded. I graduated, came back to Prosper, and started putting together the deal to buy the newspaper. Once it was mine. I went into the insurance office to check on insuring the building and equipment. There sat Lottie."

  He was quiet for a moment, as though envisioning her sitting at her desk in the insurance office.

  A look passed between us. That's all it took. We picked up where we left off. For a few years everything was great.