Authors: Blush
As she led Bridget off down the hall, Jack was aware that the little girl looked very young and not imperious at all. Like any kid, she wanted two loving parents and a stable life, he realized. She wanted her aunt Gus with a man.
"Night." Bridget glanced at Jack over her shoulder. Her feathered and sequined tail wagged good-bye to him as she trotted off, the tissue paper he'd seen flitting through the dark.
Before she turned away, he winked at her as if to say he would keep her secret if she'd keep his.
Chapter 20
It was the church he'd been married in.
It was the aisle his bride had walked down, clasping her delicate bouquet of blush roses and baby's breath in one hand, her father's arm with the other. Rain had pommeled the church's roof and flooded its basement that Saturday afternoon, beating away the sunshine and enveloping St. Andrew's in pervasive gloom. But she'd lit up the chapel with her love. He'd never seen such radiance before. Gentle and eager, worshipful of him, her husband-to-be, the love must have sung through her veins with the same warm intensity as her Irish blood.
Maggie Donovan, soon to be Maggie Culhane.
Jack hadn't understood the force of her adoration, or why she'd chosen him to bestow it upon. He'd done nothing to be worthy. But that day, as he watched her take what felt like a lifetime to come and stand at his side, he vowed that he would spend the rest of his days struggling to be worthy. He would live up to all her expectations. He would be the hero she believed he was.
But that was yesterday. Today the church was flooded with sunshine. The stained-glass windows, inset with winged angels, were golden and glorious. But Jack's heart was pierced with gloom. His footsteps dragged with the raw agony of his journey.
Today
he
was the one walking down the aisle. Awaiting him at the pulpit was an open casket of rich mahogany, wreathed in the blood of dark red roses and the silence of verdant green ferns. Kidnappers had taken his only child, Haley, his six-month-old baby girl. When he wouldn't submit to their demands, they'd carried out their threats and brutally killed her.
Maggie's family turned to look at him as he walked, their eyes full of naked pain and confusion. How could you let this happen? they seemed to be asking. Why didn't you do something? But his own family's censure was the whip that flayed him. The mother and father who'd never known quite what to think of him were now unequivocal in their reproach. He had gambled with his child's life and lost. They were ashamed of him, their misbegotten issue, unwilling even to look at him.
"No!" The word resounded like a thunderbreak.
Suddenly it was a different church and a different day and Jack was bursting through the doors, running down the center aisle, frantic. There was a casket at the end, but the body lying inside was not his baby daughter...
It was his wife, Maggie. Maggie!
Dressed all in white, she resembled a bloodstained angel. Her wrists were brutally slashed and oozing crimson life, an atonement for the unforgivable sins of mankind, for his sins as well as her own. For he and Maggie had a terrible secret, one he had never been able to bring himself to tell anyone, a secret only the kidnappers knew. And though his wife had taken her own life, Jack knew it was more than grief at losing her baby that had killed her.
"No!" he screamed.
Jack jerked awake with such force it brought him half out of the small bed. He was soaked in sweat, one foot on the floor, and clenching a wad of sheet in his hand when he realized someone was in the room with him. He glanced up groggily. Gus stood at the end of his bed, her fingers curled around the brass bars of the footrail, her face haunted with concern. She was wearing the boxers and tank top, only now, crowded by her arms, her breasts were full and bursting. Pink flesh and ruby nipples strained the thin material, making him wish that she was a dream, that he could wake up from her, too.
"What was it, a nightmare?" she asked.
He shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs. His skull was pounding. His heart was pounding, and she was the last thing he wanted to see right now. He was in no mood, no mood at all.
There was a light by the bed that could be turned on by a switch just inside the doorway. Apparently she'd done so when she'd entered, because the room glowed with her presence. He was also vaguely aware that he was naked beneath the sheet and that the half of him that had made contact with the floor was exposed.
"What are you doing here?" he asked her.
"I couldn't sleep, either. Guess it's catching. I thought you might still be awake, too, and we could... talk. But then I heard you sh-shouting—"
He caught the hesitancy in her voice and honed in on her face, her lips, her breathy struggle. There was a vulnerability in her expression he wasn't used to seeing. Apparently she'd been frightened for him and let down her guard. Gus Featherstone to the rescue. His chest tightened at the irony.
"Go away, " he said abruptly.
Her chin lifted as if she'd been tagged, and it surprised him how little he cared, what a rage of guilt and grief he was in, and how much he wanted to lash out. "Get out of here, " he said again, harsher this time, glaring at her.
The stricken look in her eyes had nothing to do with him, he told himself. She carried a chip on her shoulder that dared people to reject her. When she turned on the "brat" persona, it was to test and torment people, to see how much of her shit they'd tolerate. Jack had no idea what it took to pass her test, nor did he care. She was too fucking complicated for him. He wasn't here to forge a relationship with her. He was here to find the bastards who destroyed his family. He was here to wash the blood from his hands and to cauterize the wound. Guilt had carved him up, it had torn his heart into bloody chunks!
"You're sure?" Her voice dropped, even softer and more hesitant than before. "I could... stay, we could t-talk. Whatever it is, talking might help—"
He was amazed that she had the guts to try again. He must look like a bloody wreck to have elicited this much concern from her. She wasn't the type to extend herself emotionally, except perhaps to Bridget. Down deep she expected rejection, so she rejected first. She inflicted the hurt, thinking it would spare her from being hurt.
Not this time, he thought. Whatever he felt for her at this moment, it wasn't empathy. Quite the opposite. There was a part of him that wanted to hurt her. And if that's what it took to get her out of his room, so be it. If he let her stay she would ask questions and probe into the pain. Women were never satisfied until they had you bleeding all over the place.
"Talk to you?" he said contemptuously. "The magazine mogul? The bitch-goddess of the catwalk? That would be a little like a fly confessing to a black widow, wouldn't it?"
She stared at her hands as if determined to hang on to her composure. He could see her cheek muscle flex and her throat tighten as she swallowed. It took her a moment to summon whatever it was she needed, but when she lifted her head again, she was proud and wary. Her guard was up, but it didn't quite hide the wounds.
His fist tightened on the wadded sheets, soaking them in cold, angry sweat. He was pleased that he'd hit his mark. The sharp taste of triumph sweetened his victory, because for an instant the hurt in her eyes had distracted him from his own.
She had looked at him as if he were a traitor, as if he had just shattered her one last pathetic illusion and thereby validated all the rotten things she had ever believed about mankind. That's me, he thought. Jack the Ripper. Bring me your tired, your hungry, your homeless, and I'll tear the last bit of hope from their hearts....
He didn't watch her leave, but he heard the door shut, and on the heels of that sad, desolate sound came an emptiness unlike anything he'd ever experienced before. It made no sense to him that his reaction could be this profound, but he'd never felt so alone, not even after losing everything he loved. Then he'd had all those black emotions to sustain him, all that rage to fuel him. Now he had nothing. Now, in this one crazy, spinning moment, he was lost.
He swung off the bed, disgusted at himself and dragging the sheet along with him to cover himself. Lost? Christ! He barely knew the woman. What the hell was happening to him? It wasn't possible that he could feel anything real for a self-absorbed creature like Gus Featherstone. She was one of the enemy. Not only had she tried to kill him off to further her cause, but she was the exact opposite of the woman he'd been married to. Maggie was selfless and generous. It made no sense that he was obsessing over a homicidal fashion model, after someone like her. It made no sense that he was obsessing over any woman.
The satinwood carving of Gus that he'd started the night before was lying on the woven carpet where he'd left it. He gripped the sheet around him and picked up the figure gingerly, not wanting to have any contact with the parts that had felt so alive. But the breath curled tightly in his throat as he held her in his palm, and then his fingers did the same, curling over her curves as if he'd lost control of his reflexes. For several moments he couldn't do anything but watch himself touch her, and feel the desire rising in his groin like a flood.
Something hot cut into him. It stabbed low and deep, as violent as a bullet slicing through his flesh. He dropped the figure on the dresser, wondering if he was going crazy. He didn't even
like
the woman. The attraction was about sex— fucking—nothing more, and he'd long ago cut himself off from the dangers and pleasures of that distraction.
Never let personal feelings contaminate the work.
Jesus, he thought, wanting to laugh, wanting to shout. He'd gotten so caught up with Gus and the kid he'd almost forgotten what the work was. He was lying to himself. Sex was only part of the attraction. He
was
involved with her, with both of them. And now that he'd made that terrible mistake, now that he'd stolen fire, he would have to pay for it. There was no room for feelings in what he had to do. He couldn't afford to care about people who he might have to hurt, and in order not to care, he would have to hurt himself. He would have to cut the feelings out as if with a knife.
He lifted the pillow on his bed, exposing the gleaming lethal weapon he'd stashed there. He scooped it up, his hand closing over the ivory handle. The stainless steel blade glittered in the low light.
Cut clean, he thought. Cut strong.
The first sensation he felt upon awakening the next morning was paralysis. He couldn't move. Some weight was holding him down. He was still lying facedown and hungover from emotion, but as he tried to turn over, he realized the heaviness was down around his feet.
His normal reaction would have been laserlike. Had he been anywhere else he would have had a weapon at the intruder's throat by now. He wasn't sure why he was hesitating this time. Someone had had him under surveillance, and there'd been several attempts on his life, most, if not all, of them by his wife. His guard had been dangerously down ever since he'd met Gus Featherstone, yet some instinct other than self-preservation was telling him to cool it. Whatever was anchoring his ankles was too heavy for an animal and too light for a person, which made him more than a little curious.
He ducked his head around and got a glimpse of a feathery white tail. He'd been wrong. It was an animal... a swan.
"Did you sleep in that thing?" he asked, craning to look at the rest of her.
Bridget's slow headshake said, "Course not, silly you. "
He propped himself up on his elbows and gazed at her askance. She'd straddled his ankles as if she were riding a pony: her knees were tucked beneath her and her little jaws were working furiously on what must have been a very large piece of gum.
"That would wreck the tail, " she explained. "I mostly sleep in leotards. I have several pair. "
"I'm relieved to hear it. Now if you'll remove yourself from my feet, I'd like to turn over. "
"Oh, sorry. This bed is kind of small, and I got tired of waiting for you to wake up. " She scooted off him and tucked herself, tail and all, into the corner where the brass footrail abutted the wall.
As she waited patiently for him to get his act together, she blew a huge pink bubble, then whipped it back into her mouth with a curl of her tongue. She was wearing the same white net tutu and satin slippers, but now there was an added flourish—a little headdress of white feathers to match her tail.
Sunlight poured through the window behind the bed, saturating the room with enough brightness to make him wince with pain. His neck felt as if it had been caught in a vise-grip, but he was more concerned that the sheet didn't drift off his butt and give his five-year-old niece-in-law a crash course in adult male anatomy. He made the transition gingerly—and only half successfully—but whatever she saw, it didn't seem to have done her any permanent damage.
Once he was on his back, he wrestled the rest of the sheet out from under him and propped the pillows behind his shoulders. "To what do I owe the honor?" he asked, wondering if she'd pick up on his sardonicism.
Her wrinkled nose told him she hadn't. Thank God there were still some things five-year-olds didn't "get."
"Why are you here?" he asked, rephrasing.
"Oh, I just wanted to interview you."
"For the
LA Times?"
"No," she said, perfectly serious, "for my diary. I was wondering about the spelling of your name, and... some other stuff. "
Why wasn't he surprised? She had many things in common with her aunt, including a morbid curiosity about him. "What other stuff?"
Seeming pleased that he was going along with her plan, she snuggled into her corner and blew another bubble as if this were just what she had in mind—a long, cozy talk. "Well, I'm really curious about this one thing. It's personal but... ummm... how did you and Gus fall in love?"
The muscles in his jaw seemed to have become snarled. They ached fiercely when he spoke. "That's quite a story."