Danger Zone (14 page)

Colter moved his lips across her cheek and then bent his head, mouthing her breasts through her blouse. She felt the heat of his lips through two layers of clothing as if she were naked. She moaned helplessly and he tightened his grip, trapping her between his lower body and the wall. She felt him hard against her, full and ready. She surged against him, unable to control her primitive response, and he almost lifted her off the floor. His strength was amazing, his injury forgotten, and Karen thought wildly that he might take her right then, right there.

Karen’s head dropped to his shoulder, and the scent of him, hospital soap combined with the sweat of desire and heated male flesh, overwhelmed her. Impatient with their clothes, he pushed at her skirt, trying to raise it above her thighs. She melted into him, slipping her hands inside the waistband of his pants, and he gasped, turning his head to seek her mouth with his again.

“I’ll be right back, Mr. Murphy,” the nurse said in the hall. “I’ll get that for you right away.”

Her voice was so loud that it sounded as if it might be in the same room with them.

They sprang apart guiltily and Colter fell back against the wall. His deep flush spread from his face down his neck and across his chest, and his torso heaved with the force of his breathing. He closed his eyes and Karen watched his right hand clench into a tight fist.

“Best to think about getting back to bed, Mr. Colter,” the nurse said, sticking her head into the room. “You’ve been up long enough—don’t want to tire yourself out.”

Colter turned his head and stared at her as if she were mad.

The nurse took one look at him, and then at Karen immobilized in the center of the room, and bustled to her patient’s side.

“Good heavens, Mr. Colter, you’re all flushed and your heart is beating like a coinin’s. I told you not to overdo and you just turned a deaf ear by the look of you.” She seized Colter and ushered him back to the bed while Karen hovered in the background, wondering if she’d caused a relapse.

“Now stay just as you are while I go fetch a thermometer,” the nurse instructed, heading for the door. “I’m talking to myself around here, and no mistake,” she added under her breath as she scuttled into the hall. They listened to the starched whisper of her uniform fade into the distance.

“That can’t happen again,” Colter finally said, not looking at Karen.

She didn’t answer, unable to think of an appropriate response.

“Did you hear me?” he asked, turning toward her.

“I heard you.”

“And you have nothing to say?”

“You seem to be making the rules,” Karen said wearily.

“Do you realize how close I...we...” He stopped, stymied.

“I realize it. Do we have to talk about it?”

“Yes, we have to talk about it!” he replied vehemently.

The nurse entered, shaking down a silver and white thermometer. She swabbed the tip of it with a cotton ball and jammed it firmly between Colter’s teeth.

“That will be all for you today, my man,” she instructed Colter. “This young lady will have to leave and you’re not to move from that bed until you’re told otherwise.”

Colter tried to speak around the object in his mouth and the nurse shushed him.

“I can’t imagine what Miss Mandeville will say if she comes on duty this evening and finds you in this condition.”

Colter rolled his eyes expressively.

“You may well make faces,” the woman said. “Ten year olds can take direction better, and you at death’s door only days ago. I never saw the like of it in my life.”

Her commentary didn’t improve Karen’s already shaky state of mind. A few minutes earlier she had been climbing all over a hospital case and she was thoroughly ashamed of herself. By the time the nurse finally took Colter’s temperature and left, Karen could barely meet his eyes.

“I’ll go and get your things,” she said quietly.

Colter, who did indeed look tired, evidently decided not to pursue the conversation the nurse had interrupted.

“Be careful down there,” he said.

“I will,” Karen said and fled. She didn’t stop walking until she reached the third floor lounge, a few paces past the nurses’ station, and there she sank into a chair.

She hadn’t realized until that very afternoon that she was in love with Colter. Before then she had used other terms for it in her mind: she was concerned about him; he was alone and needed a friend; she was attracted to him; he was hurt and couldn’t be abandoned. But there was no denying the violent rush of feeling that had coursed through her body during the few brief seconds when he’d made love to her in his room. She told herself that it was crazy and she hardly knew him and all the sensible things that a woman in her position should tell herself, but the bare fact remained unchanged. She was as in love with him as it was possible to be, and she was terrified.

After about ten minutes of reflection she got up and headed for the elevator, starting out for Water Street.

Chapter 5

Karen found Sailor’s Haven with little trouble. The cabbie knew where it was, and though he expressed some surprise at Karen’s wish to go there he didn’t offer any further comment until they had pulled up in front of the bar.

It was a ramshackle, weathered two story structure hugging the edge of the wharf. It seemed to be listing to one side and looked about ready to pitch into the sea at any moment. The sign out front hung from a metal crossbar and swung in the ocean breeze, creaking as it moved. It depicted a thirsty sailor downing a pint of “stout,” or ale, and the painted logo beneath the picture had been so beaten by the elements that it was now almost illegible. Electric signs advertising Guinness beer and Silk Cut cigarettes flashed on and off in the streaked windows, and the front door hung askew on its hinges, its brass work tarnished green by the salt spray. Karen and her driver stared at it in silence until the man said, “Are you certain this is the place you wanted, miss?”

“Yes, I think so,” Karen said, with more assurance than she felt.

“I don’t know as I’d go in there alone, miss,” the cabbie said, understandably concerned.

“I’ll be all right. I’m just running an errand for a friend. After all, it’s only eleven o’clock in the morning.”

“They’re drinking in there all day long, miss, and don’t take no notice of the time,” the driver said.

“Oh. Don’t the bars stay closed until four in the afternoon or something like that?”

“Not in Belfast,” he said dryly. “Do you want me to wait for you?”

“Yes, thank you. I’ll just see if the person I’m looking for is there,” Karen said, opening the rear door.

“If it’s one of the girls you’d best give a loud knock; she might be sleeping,” he said wisely. “They work late, you know.”

Karen nodded, getting out of the car. Her nerve almost failed her as she neared the door, but she squared her shoulders, determined to find out what she could about Colter’s life.

The interior was a cavern of darkness and Karen blinked rapidly, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. It was several seconds before she could make out the figures sitting on the stools to her left, a group of customers, all of them hunched over a shot glass or a pint of beer. Behind the bar a big bear of a man in a stained apron was wiping glasses. At his back a huge fly-spotted mirror reflected the whole room, and shelves of multicolored bottles climbed almost to the ceiling on either side of it.

Everyone in the place was staring at her.

Karen crossed the aged warped floorboards in her low- heeled sensible shoes, feeling as out of place as a Junior Leaguer at a strip show. The bartender eyed her as she approached him and he put down his rag, leaning on his meaty forearms when she stopped in front of him.

“What can I do for you, miss?” he asked in a pronounced cockney accent.

“Do you know where Mary Lafferty is?” Karen replied.

“Who wants to see her?” he asked. His crafty brown eyes surveyed her as he asked the question, and he lifted one hand to stroke his wild sandy beard, the same color as his wild sandy hair.

“Steve Colter sent me,” Karen said, thinking that his name would have more impact than hers.

She was right.

“Colter? That the Yank, big blond bloke, drifts in a couple times a year on a job?”

“That’s him,” Karen replied, nodding vigorously. “He left his things with Mary and I’ve come to get them.”

“She know you?” the bartender asked warily.

“No, we’ve never met. Colter just asked me to come here and see her.”

The bartender glanced at his companions with a “this ought to be good” expression, then gestured to a flight of stairs at the rear of the room.

“Second floor at the back, the door on your left,” he said. “She wakes up cranky so watch yourself.”

Karen followed his direction, and she heard the group of men burst into laughter as she climbed the rickety stairwell into the dusty crib at the top of it. She could well imagine that she presented an amusing picture, but was too intent on her mission to mind what they were saying about her.

The second floor was nothing more than a large windowless attic divided into four rooms by rudely constructed walls, with an alley of a hallway down the middle. She picked her way past a single electric bulb left burning in the ceiling and knocked at the indicated door.

She heard nothing but silence until the third knock.

“What is it?” The voice was muffled, querulous, and very young.

“My name is Karen Walsh. I’d like to speak to you about Steve Colter,” Karen answered.

She heard a thud, muttered oaths, and then the door swung inward. She could see one large green eye streaked with the previous night’s mascara and a shock of black hair.

“What’s that about Steve?” the girl asked.

“He sent me to pick up his clothes,” Karen explained.

She could see the green eye roving over her, taking in the navy skirt, crisp striped blouse and conservative shoes.

“Who are you?” the girl asked.

“A friend of his.”

“You don’t look like no friend of his to me,” the girl observed adroitly.

“Look, have I come to the right door?” Karen asked. “Are you Mary Lafferty?”

“Yeah, that’s me. How do you know Steve?”

“Well, we met a little over a month ago and he’s in the hospital here in Belfast.”

“The hospital!” Mary said, alarmed. She yanked open the door to reveal a tiny room crammed with every kind of clothing draped on doorknobs, bedposts, and window frames, and an assortment of mismatched furniture.

“You’d best come in and tell me,” she added, stepping aside.

Karen entered the apartment, making her way through the clutter to an overstuffed armchair in the comer. Mary swept a pile of gossamer underwear off the back of it and said, “Sit yourself down. Would you like a cup of tea?”

Karen saw that she was indicating a hot plate on a counter and nodded mutely. She got her first good look at Mary as the girl bustled to fill a kettle at a cracked porcelain sink affixed to the same wall.

She was all of about twenty, and would have been beautiful with her face washed clean of the excess of makeup disfiguring it. Tall, slim and barefoot, she was wearing a flowered cotton robe belted at the waist with a man’s necktie. Her black hair hung down her back past her shoulder blades and fell into her eyes as she moved. She kept pushing it back behind her ears impatiently while she talked.

“What’s up with Colter, then?” she said to Karen, turning to face her. “Is he ill?” She yawned, then covered her mouth contritely.

“He was shot recently and he’s recovering at Mercy Hospital.”

“Is he going to be all right?”

“Yes, I think so. He’ll be discharged soon.”

Mary nodded. “And how do you figure in all of this?” 

“He asked for me when he was brought to the emergency room and the hospital administrator called me.”

“He asked for you?” Mary said, arching her brows.

“Yes.”

“And you came all the way from the States?”

Karen nodded.

“But you’ve not known him long?”

“Not very long, no.”

Mary folded her arms. “Then I’d say he must have changed. The Colter I know would take on the devil with his own pitchfork and never look behind him.”

Karen wasn’t sure of the exact meaning of that statement, but understood that Mary was surprised Colter had asked for anybody, much less the prim specimen she saw before her.

“He was hurt badly,” Karen said quietly. “I don’t think he wanted to be alone.”

Mary digested that for a moment, then said, “He got shot up in the trouble?”

“Yes.”

“That post office job?”

Karen nodded.

Mary sighed. “They couldn’t pay me enough to get involved with those hooligans, but you know Steve.” She shook her head.

“How do you know him?” Karen asked pointedly.

Mary stared at her for a second and then laughed lightly. “Oh, you’re not thinking there was anything between Steve and me?” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “No fear, no fear. Not that I would have turned him away, mind you, but Steve is real picky that way. Particular, you might say. Never saw him with any woman, and I thought for a while he might be kinda funny, you know. Some of those real good looking ones are.” She eyed Karen shrewdly. “I’ll warrant you know better.”

“I can vouch for the fact that he’s straight,” Karen said, blushing. 

“I wasn’t worried,” Mary said, laughing again. “But I figured out right quick I wasn’t to his taste. He slept here on that couch,” she added, pointing to a sofa obscured by several pounds of laundry, “for three nights running and never touched me.” She leaned in closer to Karen confidentially. “Not even when I let him know I was interested, if you take my meaning.”

“He told me that you got him out of a tight spot once,” Karen said, diverting the conversation to less sensitive territory.

The water began to boil, and Mary went to unplug the hot plate. “Oh, that,” she said. “Not much at all to tell. There was a fight in the bar, and I took Steve and one of those soldier friends of his up here to give the slip to the coppers.” Mary looked back at her. “That’s how I met him. He reminded me of a boy I knew back in Antrim.”