“What, ah,” Ellis said, putting his hand on David’s shoulder and steering him into a little secluded spot behind a bunch of enormous potted palms, “what’re you doing back here?”
David’s smile faded. Obviously he was being very rude, crashing Ellis’s important party like this and interrupting his dinner. “Sorry to show up out of the blue like this,” David said. “This is some party. It almost looks like someone’s getting mar—”
His gaze, which had been scanning the crowd, fell upon a sight so unbelievable, so horrific, that it should have blinded him forever. Maria—his precious Maria—sat in the middle of the head table some fifty feet away, looking a little thinner, but still like the princess he’d always known her to be. She had her hair up in an elaborate style and wore a satiny-pink gown with diamonds glittering at her throat and ears. She looked otherworldly, his beautiful, aloof angel, as untouchable and unreachable as the planet Neptune. She smiled coolly to the person sitting next to her, and then suddenly her arm came up.
Not wanting to see…praying he was wrong…David’s slow gaze followed the length of that toned brown arm to her delicate hand, which was held in a man’s larger hand…and then both hands lifted to a mouth and George Harper was kissing the backs of Maria’s fingers.
“Oh, my God,” David whispered, reaching blindly for the nearest chair and clutching it for support. Everything swam out of focus, becoming an obscene swirl of shapes and colors, none of which he wanted to see. For a second he thought he might pass out, actually hoped he would pass out so he wouldn’t have to deal with this, but then his vision cleared and Maria was still there and her hand was still in Harper’s.
“I know this is difficult.”
Through the deafening roar in his ears, David heard Ellis’s regretful voice, and tried to listen, hoping the man would say something that made sense.
“But Maria and George are getting married tomorrow—”
“Oh, God.”
“—and that’s the way it should be. He cut his business in Singapore short to come back and convince her to marry him. He couldn’t stay away from her, and I’m glad. I’ve always wanted Maria to marry George. I couldn’t ask for a better man for my daughter—”
David’s stomach heaved with a violent cramp.
“—and he’ll keep her in the style she deserves.” He paused, shooting his daughter a doting father-of-the-bride glance. “I don’t think she’s ever been happier.”
David saw Harper whisper something in Maria’s ear and her answering smile, saw the fat diamond ring the size of a goose egg on her finger, saw Harper lovingly stroke his fingers across Maria’s bare shoulder. Oh, he saw.
So there it was. The end of his happiness and all his foolish dreams with Maria at the center. Maria. The woman who’d obsessed him, who’d wrapped him around her little finger the second she laid eyes on him, who’d laughed with him and made such glorious love to him he doubted he’d ever be able to get it up for another woman, who’d claimed she loved him and cried when he left town four short months ago, was marrying wealthy George Harper tomorrow.
Either she’d never loved David in the first place or she’d made the calculated decision that she preferred the rich guy. Maybe David had only ever been her last fling as an unmarried woman. Whatever. It wasn’t like it mattered. The end result was the same: Maria Johnson—soon to be Maria Harper—was out of his life forever.
Peeling his gaze away from the sight of all that premarital bliss, he turned his back on her, knowing he’d never see her again. The knowledge settled over his soul like one of those lead body shields the dentist used for X-rays.
All of the soft feelings he’d ever had for Maria Johnson died, and fury was born.
Clammy sweat broke out all over his body and his stomach heaved. Only with supreme effort was he able to remain upright and not double over with pain.
“Will you be okay?” Ellis asked him.
David blinked.
“David? Are you okay?”
The scene swam again, but he forced himself to focus. Okay? No, he was not okay. Life as he’d known it, and as he’d wanted it to be, was over. He felt flattened, ruined. Less than dead. Maybe one day, in thirty years or so, he would recover from this blow, but he doubted it. Still, his pride and manhood were on the line here, and he would not crumble in front of his former boss.
“Yeah,” he said, pulling his lips back in what felt like a twisted smile. “I’m fine.”
There was a pause while Ellis studied him, then apparently chose to believe David’s obvious lie. “Good.”
“Don’t—” David swiped the back of his hand across his mouth, trying to block the nausea that kept rising into his throat “—don’t tell her I was here, okay?”
“I won’t.”
Nodding, David turned and left the tent, aware of Ellis’s gaze on his back. He walked by the house, back down the driveway and past the parked cars to the end of the street where the glow from the nearest gaslight couldn’t penetrate the night’s darkness.
There, he bent over, braced his hands on his thighs and dry heaved until his throat felt as if it’d been scorched with a blow torch.
“I blame myself.” Ellis put his drink on the table with the tinkle of ice and a gentle thunk.
The soft voice jarred David out of his dark memories. It took him a minute to remember that this was a different night, that he’d put that painful day behind him long ago, and that he’d sworn—sworn—he’d never let Maria hurt him like that again. Blinking, he forced his troubled mind to focus on the here and now.
“Blame yourself for what, Ellis?”
In the unforgiving late-afternoon shadows, Ellis suddenly looked old and gaunt. Deep, unhappy grooves ran down either side of his mouth, aging him, and he emitted a bitter, barking laugh. “For more things than I can count. For pushing Maria into her marriage the second you left town—”
“Don’t,”David said.
“—for not giving her an out, for not letting her know it would be okay if she called it off.” He sighed harshly, his eyes full of regret. “For thinking you were a last fling she needed to get out of her system, and not realizing she only agreed to marry George because she was on the rebound from you. For caring more about throwing the wedding of the year than I did about my own daughter’s happiness. For not encouraging you to talk to her. For not telling her you came that night. For telling her you’d forgotten all about her already and she needed to move on with her life.”
Ellis’s voice, always so firm and strong, broke at the end. Obviously embarrassed, he dropped his head and wiped the corner of his eye with a weathered hand. By reflex, David reached to pat him on the shoulder, to comfort him in his pain, but his own anger stopped him. Dropping his hand, he clenched his fist in his lap and seethed.
How differently would David’s life have turned out if Ellis had been a better father? If he’d played a different role at such a crucial juncture of his daughter’s life?
Most importantly, how long would David allow his anger with Maria rule his life?
Questions piled upon questions, demanding answers David couldn’t give.
At ten-thirty that night, Maria crept down to the kitchen for a meat loaf sandwich. Having been unwilling to subject herself to more humiliation just to have a little sustenance, she’d elected to bide her time alone in her room where she was safe from David, her father and anyone else with a Y chromosome who might happen by. But by ten she was starving, so she decided to risk it. By ten-thirty, the house was entirely quiet and she snuck downstairs.
The gourmet kitchen gleamed clean and bright, just like always. Maria made her sandwich, being careful to precisely replace the cheddar cheese and mayo inside the enormous stainless-steel fridge lest she risk the wrath of Miss Beverly. She poured a glass of chardonnay, found the classified ads from today’s paper, and settled onto a stool at the granite counter.
Cars. She needed to find a car. One of her last spousal support checks from George had, t
hankfully, arrived today. Miss Beverly, bless her heart, had brought it up to her room earlier, and never in Maria’s life had she been happier to see a piece of mail. She’d use the money for a down payment—assuming, of course, that she’d even qualify for a loan or lease. If worse came to worst, she’d have to go to one of those no job, no credit, no problemoutfits, an idea that made her shudder. Tony Soprano and his boys no doubt had lower interest rates than those places. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, though, and she needed a car. Whatever it took, she’d have another car by this time tomorrow. After that, she’d have to think about how she’d get by for the rest of the month on her piddling salary as an account slave. She’d really been counting on that quarterly check from the trust, but it wasn’t coming and there was no use whining over it.
Was this how people did it?she wondered as she studied the paper. Checking the Want Ads? Having never bought a car before, she didn’t know, but this was as good a place as any to start. Later she would run a search online.
She ate and flipped pages, highlighting deals here and there, unpleasantly surprised by how expensive everything—even the raggediest junker—was. A new Jag like the one she’d had, she discovered, was seventy-five-thousand dollars. Unbelievable. She’d had no idea. On her current salary, she’d have to work another eighty years or so to be able to afford another one.
By the time she’d finished her sandwich, her thoughts had drifted, as they always did these days, back to David. Alone, late at night like this, with a glass of wine under her belt, all her defenses deserted her and the memories came back.
She didn’t want them. Didn’t need them. She’d strapped them down and roped them off years ago, throwing them into a dark, unused corner of her mind where they couldn’t taunt or bother her in any way. But now David was back and he’d unleashed them all. They ran free, tormenting her.
One by one, they paraded through her mind’s eye, each one a special torture. That first lunch together. The first movie, the first morning she’d awoken in his arms. And there were other, more precious memories, the thoughts of which overwhelmed her weak body. The first touch in his office, the first kiss, the first time they made love and he moved inside her, stroking and filling her with such intense pleasure that she hadn’t yet recovered from it. Against her will, delicious heat began in her belly and radiated out, collecting in her swollen breasts and aching sex, and she collapsed her head in her hands and moaned.
Why had he come back? Why?How much agony could she take at the hands of this one man?
She would be okay, though. She had to be okay. She could get through this, and she would not fall under his spell again. She had to get over him—what other choice did she have? Hadn’t he made it excruciatingly clear back then that he didn’t love her and had only wanted a summer fling? The pain of that realization would have killed a lesser woman, but she’d somehow survived, and she’d survive again.
Shoring up her vast reserves of anger against him seemed like a good idea right about now; maybe it would help her build another layer of protective armor around her heart. This one time, she opened the door and invited the painful memory out, so she’d remember. She had to remember, and never repeat.
It was late one morning in the middle of August, and David would go back to school tomorrow. A terrible feeling was growing in the pit of her belly, getting stronger as the moments of his last twenty-four hours in town ticked past. This time tomorrow, he’d be gone. And he’d be taking her heart with him.
She didn’t think he’d be leaving his with her.
For the past week he’d been growing more aloof, each day withdrawing a little bit more from her. His cool brown eyes looked through and around her, but no longer at her. When he talked—he hardly talked at all anymore—it was in grunts and half-syllables, if that. They hadn’t made love in days.
Over and over again she told herself he was only behaving that way as a defense mechanism, because he was so upset to be leaving her and didn’t quite know how to express his feelings. Maybe she was only fooling herself. If she was in denial about the writing on the wall, she prayed she would stay there for a while because the pain of discovering David didn’t think they had a future—if that’s what he really thought—would kill her.
Maria…I hope you’re not, you know…I’m not at a point where I can…
Every now and then, his half-spoken early warning scrolled through her brain, quadrupling her fears. Whenever she heard his gentle, hesitant voice, she ruthlessly cut it off with the precision of a surgeon excising a malignancy. That was months—months!—ago. Before they’d gotten to know each other, before they’d laughed together, before he’d ever made love to her. He’d changed his mind since then. No, he hadn’t actuallysaid he’d changed his mind, but some things didn’t need to be said. That he loved her was one of them. It didn’t need to be said. She knew it anyway.
She prayed that all the gaps between them would be bridged tonight, their last night together. No, not their last night—why would she think that? Not the last night. The last night for a while. He’d made reservations at The Precinct, so they’d go, have a romantic dinner and eat delicious steaks, and then they’d go back to his apartment and make love until the sun came up. He’d finally tell her he loved her, and they’d figure out how to make a long-distance relationship work until he finished school. In a week or two, she would fly up to Philly and visit him, and he could come back to Cincinnati a week or two after that. It’d be difficult, of course, but they’d manage because the alternative was not being together, and that prospect was intolerable.
Tonight, on their glorious last night together, they’d discuss their future and settle everything. Maybe he’d even propose.
She’d just gotten home to the empty house from picking up her dry cleaning when the doorbell rang. Peeking out the window, she saw David’s car, and her heart soared wild and free, like a hawk circling high above the trees. He couldn’t wait until tonight to see her, and she’d been foolish to be so scared when he loved her and she was the luckiest woman in the world. But then she opened the door and saw his dark, unhappy face, and she knew.
It was over. Their relationship, her dreams, and her innocent, unbroken heart were all history.
Absolute shock and misery clamped tight around her throat, choking off her breath and blocking any words she might have said. Blinking back her sudden tears, she couldn’t even invite him in.
“Maria.”
The distress in his voice was a small comfort, but only amounted to a teardrop next to her pain, which felt as bottomless as Loch Ness. Edging past her—she’d been too paralyzed to even widen the door and step back so he could come in—he shut the door and took both of her icy hands in his.
“Don’t do this,” she whispered, knowing he’d do it no matter what she said or how she begged.
Clearing his throat, he stared off over her shoulder. “I changed my flight. It’s in two hours.”
. horrible, uncontrollable hiccupping sob came out of her mouth, and she choked it off. She would not cry…she would not cry…she would not—
“It’s easier this way.”
“You mean easier for you,” she said, trying to pull free.
His grip tightened and he jerked her hands once. “Does thislook easy to me?”
Their gazes locked and she saw the strain on his face and the suffering in his eyes. No matter how much she wanted to hate him in this moment, to write him off, to forget about him forever, she couldn’t. She was devastated, but so was he.
Stepping forward, into his arms, she put her hands on his cheeks, felt his jaw throb with tension and saw him blink furiously. “I love you,” she whispered.
“Maria—”
“I do.” Saying it aloud for the first time was thrilling and terrifying, but she had to do it. “I know I’m not supposed to throw myself at you like this, but Ido. I love you. I’ll always love you.”
His face twisted. “Maria, please—”
“Love you,”
she insisted, cutting him off lest he think he could talk her out of it. Pulling his face down, she skimmed her lips across his, absorbing his gasp into her mouth.“Love you.”
Something broke free inside him. She felt the sudden surge of power in his trembling arms as they twined around her, lashing her to him. His hard, hot mouth came down on hers and he kissed her as he’d never kissed her before, with a desperate, violent hunger that bruised her lips and drove her to madness. Those strong hands roved over her, sifting through her hair, caressing her face and rubbing over her breasts, butt and hips with such urgency that she thought—hoped—that he’d take her right there, right then, up against the wall in her father’s foyer.
Abruptly he let her go, thrusting her away, and she knew he’d only been imprinting her in his mind and body, and he still meant to leave and not take her with him and not look back.
“Maria,” he said, holding her hands again, a high, desperate note in his hoarse voice, “I have to go back to school, and I have to work and focus, and I can’t…I’m not at a place in my life where I can—”
She’d had enough. Pulling free, she backed up a couple of steps, out of his reach, and felt a detached, cold calm come over her. So that was it, then. They were over and he was a little sad about it and couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud, but they were over nonetheless because he didn’t love her and wasn’t willing to even try to maintain their relationship. After calling George a fool for leaving her for Singapore, David was now doing something even worse—throwing her away with both hands. At least George had loved her. At least George had wanted to marry her.
Glaring at David, she silently cursed the day she’d ever laid eyes on him. Hatred, virulent and overwhelming, pumped through her veins, chilling and infecting her. Never before had she wished anyone ill, but she wished it of him. She wished him misery, loneliness and a long, regretful life without her. When she was finished with that wish, she wished—prayed—he’d leave so she never had to speak to him or lay eyes on him again in this lifetime.
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