by YatesNZ, Jen
Arrested by the certainty in his voice, Georgina slumped back again and glared at him from beneath lowered brows.
‘I'd like to know how the hell you've worked that out,’ she demanded truculently, ‘when I haven't.’
‘You—haven't?’ Case looked genuinely bewildered. ‘Then this isn't what's bothering you?’
Georgina began twisting the hem of her cotton tee shirt around her fingers, opened her mouth to speak, closed it again and ground her teeth.
Case sighed.
‘Spit it out, George,’ he advised solemnly. ‘There's only you an' me an' this poor dumb tree to hear you. It doesn't matter how it sounds, how mixed up it comes out, just tell me what you're feeling, what you're thinking. I can't guarantee I'll have the answer for you but sometimes just talking about a problem helps you find the answer for yourself. D'you trust me, little sister?’
Georgina nodded. There was no one she trusted more.
He held her gaze and waited. When she still didn't speak, he added, ‘No matter how corny it sounds I promise not to laugh—’
‘It's not that,’ Georgina blurted at last. ‘It's—Case, how do you know I love Torr more than Gould?—No, no! That's not what I want to know. I want to know how you know when you're in love. I mean truly in love.’ She stopped for a moment and rubbed the palms of her hands down her thighs. Then with a hefty sigh and her eyes focused on the tips of her fingers, she continued, ‘I loved Alan. I love Gould. But look at us! Look at me.’ Suddenly she was staring at Case, self-consciousness forgotten in the intensity of her feelings. ‘Both times I was in love. I was truly happy. Then wham! A couple of years down the track I'm staring at the wreck of my life again. How do I know it won't be the same with Torr? What is it with me? Isn't one man enough? I might as well go and be a prostitute.’
With this last declaration she hunched back in her chair again, arms folded across her chest and cheeks flaming.
Case sat for a long moment considering the woman beside him. At last he said, ‘Thanks for honoring me with your true thoughts, George. Someone's done a real number on your self-esteem somewhere along the line, haven't they? Ever thought of doing some energy movement therapy? You're carrying a heap of emotional garbage.’
Georgina shook her head and chewed on her lip.
Case rose to stand before her and gripped the arms of her chair.
‘George, there's nothing wrong with you,’ he declared earnestly. ‘Many people have loved different partners at different times in their lives. It's not a question of being good or bad. I believe we come into each lifetime with a mandate to learn a certain lesson and the life situations keep being put before us until we learn it. At a guess, I'd say yours was something to do with speaking up for yourself, about knowing who you are. I can't answer your questions about love except with the old, corny ‘I just know’, which isn't much help to you. But I reckon, if you'd let yourself relax around Torr and talk to him like you have to me, you'd find your answers.’
As he spoke he sank slowly to his haunches before her, still gripping the arms of her chair. Georgina closed her eyes and squeezed them tight.
‘I can't,’ she whispered. ‘I've got to sort out my life with Gould first.’
‘Why?’ Case asked, genuinely perplexed.
Sucking in a deep breath, she whispered, ‘Because when I talk to Torr I want no ‘emotional garbage’ as you call it, between us. ‘Cos—when I talk to him—’
‘What?’
‘There won't be much talking going on,’ she whispered.
‘Ah.’ Case dropped back into his chair and gazed at his sister-in-law. ‘Don't like to be crude, little sister, but I don't believe either Fran or Gould had any such scruples.’
‘I'm not Fran or Gould.’
‘Nah. They understand life's for living; that it doesn't fit into neat little boxes. They probably discovered lifetimes ago that the harder you try to fit life into perfect little boxes the more difficult it gets. Go with the flow. Let go and let God. Bend a little, woman!’
‘Now you're getting on your soap box,’ Georgina muttered.
‘You betcha! George, I'm serious. You don't need to feel guilty. You don't need to feel inadequate and you do deserve to be happy.’
‘I was happy with Gould.’
Case looked stumped for a moment, then said carefully, ‘There are many degrees of happiness. Had Torr never come on the scene you might've gone on for years being happy with Gould—up to a point. Didn't you tell us Gynevra was happy with Gotham at first? I suspect the happiness you could know with Torr might make your relationship with Gould look like a—Sunday School picnic.’
Georgina choked.
‘A Sunday School picnic! My mother would never have let me to go to one if it was anything like my relationship with Gould!’ She laughed a little shakily with Case then asked, ‘What was it you wanted to tell me that got blown away by pink turtles?’
‘I've decided to go home. Soon as I can get a flight. I've been away from my family long enough.’
‘You can't!’ Georgina jerked forward in her chair, her response so reflexive she couldn't check it even though she knew it was totally unfair. She stared at him for a long moment, her eyes wide and filling with tears, her bottom lip clamped between her teeth.
‘It's time, George,’ he averred softly. ‘Fran and Gould are over the worst. The doctors believe their mental health will gradually revert to normal and plastic surgeons can totally rebuild faces these days. It's just a long, slow recuperation process now. Torr says he's not going anywhere until you do. He's here for the duration. He's gone to hire himself a car today. I've given him my tickets and he's booking my flight for the day after tomorrow, I hope.’
Georgina swallowed.
‘You're leaving me alone with him!’
‘I'm going home to my woman. D'you realize this is the first time we've been apart since we began living together?’
Georgina shook her head and swiped at her eyes.
‘Well, it is and it's been damnably hard, George. I don't mind admitting that, but it's been a damned sight harder on Merryn with the shop and the clinic to run and wee Jordie as well. I know I'm leaving you in good hands. You know that as well. In fact, you've known that for thousands of years.’
Case knelt before her again, gripping her hands.
‘Don't you?’ he persisted.
Georgina sniffed.
‘You've already proved you're strong enough to handle anything life throws at you. D'you think maybe it's time to take control of what happens to you instead of trying to dodge around the missiles? Hurl a few of your own even?’
Georgina slipped her hands from his grasp and wiped her face.
‘I know you're right. I'm sorry I cracked up. It's just—I hadn't thought of you going and it took me by surprise. Of course you must go—and of course you're right about everything else! When aren't you? It's about as predictable as the fact you'll be demanding to be fed any minute now.’
Case grinned with relief and leapt to his feet.
‘That's my girl! I thought we might ask Harmony if tomorrow she'd take us down to that Caribbean Market she was talking about in Miami. I need to find some stuff to take home with me. Merryn would strip my hide and tan it for a wall-hanging if I came home with nothing to show for my travelling. Will you come?’
Smiling a little wanly, Georgina teased, ‘Your hide would make a beautiful wall-hanging.’ Then she said, ‘It'd be a shame not to see something of this place before you go home. The Caribbean Market sounds like a great idea.’
‘Mmm. So it's a plan. Now speaking of food,’ Case said, grinning and pushing lazily to his feet, ‘d'you fancy a wander down to that hot-dog stand on the beach?’
Case turned to wave before disappearing down the airport corridor. Numb with panic, Georgina stared at the spot where he'd vanished, willing his lanky form to reappear.
‘Now there's just you and me.’
The words, slow and deep from just behind her sh
oulder, so exactly mirrored her thoughts she wasn't sure they’d been spoken.
Georgina turned sharply to stare at the man at her side. The mercenary was back. She'd seen so many sides to Torr Montgomery in the last few days. Dedicated and focused on learning the techniques of a healer; lightning fast and strong to restrain a patient who'd threatened to jump off the balcony; quick and droll in dealing with late night cabbies; boyishly delighted with the ex-army jeep he'd hired; and expert at cooking clams on Harmony's barbecue. She'd almost forgotten the mercenary. With thumbs hooked in his trouser pockets, jaw jutting with just a hint of belligerence, and serpentine eyes watching her from beneath scowling brows, she was tempted to ask him where he'd left his guns.
‘You should take more care of your thoughts. I'd be delighted to show you.’
Georgina felt her eyes widen and her cheeks flush. Turning about as if jolted by an electric shock, she raced through the airport, acutely conscious he strode a grim breath behind her left shoulder—and the moment for decisions loomed as close.
At the jeep she silently berated herself for not having the presence of mind to get a taxi back to the hospital. The chance she might ever have presence of mind in the vicinity of Torr Montgomery was a slim one, she decided acidly as she fastened her seatbelt. Staring straight ahead at the rows of cars in the car park, she waited for the engine to start.
‘The Hyatt or the Hilton?’
The words were so clear in her mind he could've spoken them aloud. He couldn't have shocked her more if he'd stabbed her with a knife. Her head swung of its own accord and their eyes met and held.
‘Finally,’ he murmured with a steely satisfaction.
Jaw clenched, nostrils flared, his eyes threatened to blaze into emerald fire at a word.
Pinned to that threat like an opossum to a flashlight, Georgina whispered, ‘What?’
‘You're looking at me.’
Abruptly she stared straight ahead out the window again.
‘The Hyatt or the Hilton?’
‘Will you stop doing that?’
‘What am I doing,’ he drawled, ‘other than waiting for you to speak to me?’
‘You—You—’. She turned to face him again. ‘You're projecting thoughts into my mind!’
‘What thoughts?’ he asked, affecting innocence.
Her cheeks were hot, her eyes burned, and her hands itched to slap him!
‘You know what thought,’ she snapped and turned back to the windscreen.
‘The Hyatt or the Hilton?’ he asked, enunciating each word carefully. ‘Gina, for two people with the intimate memories you and I share this is a ridiculous conversation. I have a startlingly clear memory of the first time we made love in Ist's Grotto under the Great Causeway. You blew my mind and sexually speaking it should've been bullet proof.’
‘We didn't have bullets then,’ Georgina muttered, her cheeks feeling as if they'd burst into flame.
Hands curling into fists around the steering wheel, he ignored her comment and went on, ‘I also vividly recall the last time. Your body was rosy and flushed with sleep and there were tears on your cheeks because you knew you would leave me. I was very angry for day by day, I felt you slipping from me, no matter how secure I made the walls of your prison. I knew fate and time were against us—and I was filled with terror for I knew I couldn't live my life without you. I took you that last morning in the heat of my anger and fear, for you would've refused me. I hurt you that day. I now understand we've carried the pain of those last days in our souls through all the millennia since. Gina—Gynevra, I beg your forgiveness and ask you to place your hand in mine and let me take you where I can love you as I would've chosen to do had I not been so afraid of losing you.—The Hyatt or the Hilton?’
Hands clenched on the wheel belied the casualness with which he leaned against the door waiting for her answer. The images he'd invoked forged in stereo color across the screen of her mind. Her body was rigid with the pain of it, the need, the longing. Had she known what to say, she couldn't have uttered a single word.
Torr continued.
‘I don't wish the first time I make love to you in this millennium to be in a single bed while listening with one ear for Harmony to come home.’
Tears slipped beneath Georgina's lids to course down her cheeks as she stared helplessly and unseeingly through the jeep windscreen. Her heart felt as bruised and torn as Gynevra's had that last morning, her mind as confused, as desperate. Notwithstanding the enigma of her own desires and uncertainties there were, now as then, others whose claim to her loyalty must come first.
Love? He spoke of love as if he had no doubts. What of Fran? The diamond pendant her fingers so constantly fondled? What of Gould, who'd taught her of love—so she'd thought. What was love anyway? Was it that orgasmic coming together of two bodies which harmonized with one another as perfectly as well-tuned violins? Or was it something else? Something she'd never really understood?
Though there was one thing she knew. If one loved, in any way at all, one suffered.
‘Gina?’
‘No,’ she grated, eyes closed, hands fisted in her lap.
‘Why not?’
Dragging in a deep, calming breath, she said, ‘I need to talk to Gould.’
In silence he observed her for a moment, then one dark eyebrow hooked in derision. Voice rough with incredulity, he asked, ‘You intend to ask his permission?’
Georgina's chin lifted and she brushed clumsily at the tears on her cheeks. She could almost hear Case telling her to talk to Torr, to tell him of her feelings. How could she talk about something she scarcely understood herself? All she knew was she owed Gould so much she could never walk away if he still needed her. Some would say she was a masochist when it was fairly obvious he'd been unfaithful to her—with her twin sister. The purist within her would point out she herself had been unfaithful first, albeit only in her mind. Who could say which was the more damning? Amid the welter of her thoughts this one was crystal clear. She couldn't allow herself to discover the reality of her feelings for this man beside her in this present millennium, at the expense of others. Gynevra suffered still from believing she'd done that.
‘I'd be grateful if you'd drive me to the hospital,’ she said frostily, her gaze fixed once more on the rows of cars in the parking lot, ‘unless you prefer I take a taxi.’
After a brief, fraught silence Torr ignited the engine and swerved grimly out of the parking lot. Driving north from Miami Airport, the sun hot on their faces and the wind tearing at their hair, they arrived at the hospital just after one o'clock.
‘I'll be back to pick you up about four.’
The ice in his voice almost took the tips off her ears.
‘Fine. Thank you.’
Slamming the door, she set off across the road to the hospital entrance, conscious of walking as stiffly as if her spine also had been frozen rigid. She'd thought he would come in with her as he'd done every day since they'd rescued the yacht. A small part of her was deeply relieved to be alone but a much larger part of her was totally bereft. Torr Montgomery stirred such a plethora of emotions within her there was little wonder she was incapable of dealing with it.
Their souls communicated on a level at once intensely exciting yet deeply jarring to one whose privacy of inner self had become sacrosanct. Her need of him tore at the fabric of the protective covering she'd woven so carefully about her heart and the harshly learned precepts by which she'd determined to live her life. It made her perception of Gynevra's pain the more acute for having betrayed Alan with his son.
Never again would she allow a man to attract her loyalty in any shape or form when it had been pledged to another. She simply couldn't live with the sense of guilt engendered by her own perception of having played false with another human being's expectations of her.
Beyond the anonymity of the tinted glass doors she went straight to the ladies rest room to tidy her hair and to try to draw together the tatters of her self-possession. A sense
of self was something she lost around Torr Montgomery for she found herself constantly battling the need to be to him all that Gynevra had been to Taur of Nyalda. She lost herself in an overpowering need to be his woman, his lover,—his beloved. Even now she could hear his voice asking, ‘The Hyatt or the Hilton?’ and feel the terrible enervating longing to lose herself in his arms, in his body, in the memories and let precepts and principles go to hell. Even now she longed to run after him, call him back, be with him, anywhere.
Damn!
Damn, damn, damn! She couldn't face either Fran or Gould in this fractured state, nor was she fit to do any healing. What on earth was she supposed to do now she was here? Aghast at the hungry glitter she recognized in the depths of the eyes looking back at her from the washroom mirror, she hurried out into the hospital foyer. Sinking onto a conveniently placed bench she tried to calm her mind by reading the inventory of departments and their relevant floors beside the lifts.
Cafeteria. Coffee! Leaping to her feet she entered an empty lift and punched a button. It was ludicrous how much better she felt already just because she knew exactly what to do with the next half hour. Come to that, she could actually stay in the cafeteria until four o'clock!
Inwardly mocking her cowardice, Georgina entered the hospital restaurant, purchased a large cup of coffee and a succulent looking apple and cinnamon muffin and seated herself at a window table with a view over the distant ocean. Her hands busy with cream and sugar she let her mind go blessedly blank, stirred absently at the coffee, and watched a tanker cruise slowly by on the far horizon.
Case is right. You have to start talking.
Damn! Her mind was off again. There was no getting away from it. If she couldn't talk with Torr until she'd settled with Gould—and Fran—then it was time to start that process else some part of her was going to disintegrate. Gould couldn't talk much because his mouth and throat was still very painful but his mind was generally settled.