Naked Once More (32 page)

They were in the raspberry patch. Jacqueline arrived at this conclusion by a combination of deduction and direct experience. Mollie had mentioned the kitchen garden and the raspberries; the brambles that leapt out to claw Jacqueline’s groping hands could only belong to one of the more aggressive fruits.

She stood sucking her scratched fingers and straining her ears. There must be a cleared space in the center of the patch and a path leading into it—not even Casanova could have persuaded a love-crazed lady to lie down on a bed of brambles. However, she knew that in the dark she had no hope of finding a thorn-free path, and besides, it wasn’t necessary to go any farther. She was close to the scene of the action, and hearing, in this case, was a fairly good substitute for sight.

They certainly hadn’t wasted any time. It was impossible to recognize the woman’s voice. Her groans and gasps rose in pitch until they were suddenly muffled, by Tom’s hand or mouth, so that the climactic moment was marked by a strangled gargle. No wonder women read romances, mused the author of the same, as she waited impatiently. The reality is usually so much less exciting. No silken sheets or sensitive foreplay around here.… For God’s sake, get on with it, Tom, I haven’t got all night.

The grunts and rustles died into aching silence and were replaced by the sound of choked sobs. “God damn it,” Tom hissed. “Do you always have to bawl? If you hate this so much…”

Jacqueline could have written the dialogue—and written it better, she told herself, her lips shaping the words as they were uttered. “It’s wrong, you know it’s wrong.…” “Darling, how can anything so beautiful be wrong?” “If you really loved me, you’d tell her…” “I do love you. How can you doubt it, after…”

“We can’t go on meeting like this,” whispered the woman and Jacqueline in chorus. Jacqueline’s fingers tightened on the flashlight she had brought. She had carried it as a weapon rather than a source of illumination, but she was sorely tempted to switch it on and scare the bejesus out of the lovers. Discretion prevailed, however. She had learned what she wanted to know. The tenor of the voices changed again as Tom applied his most convincing arguments. Terms of endearment mingled with little love names, including true names. Jacqueline waited until the second round was underway and stole away. Tom’s lover was Kathleen’s sister Sherri.

Jacqueline enjoyed the peaceful slumber known only to innocent children and satisfied snoops. She woke the following morning pleased to find herself in a mood for work. She had every intention of dealing with Kathleen’s self-deluded little sister—and the other items on her private agenda—but they could wait for a few hours. The creative urge came too seldom to be pushed lightly aside.

Hair knotted tightly atop her head, glasses perched on the bridge of her nose, Jacqueline pounded out page after page of priceless prose until it finally dawned on her that the ringing in her ears was not the telephone but a signal of low blood sugar and high mental fatigue. A glance at the clock told her she had been working for five solid hours without a break, which was a record even for her. When she stood up, her knees buckled, and she had to lean on the desk. Whoever claimed writing wasn’t hard work ought to try it.

She turned on the printer and limped out to the kitchen. The leftovers from Mollie’s basket restored her; when she sat down with coffee and cigarettes and the pages she had written that morning she found that for once they read almost as well as she had hoped they would. Thirty-nine pages so far. Not enough; but another couple of days’ work should finish the job, assuming she could think of a smash ending. A confrontation between Ara and her rival, over the maimed yet desirable body of Hawkscliffe, was imminent. It would be the climax of the book, no question of that, but she had yet to work out the details. Was Hawkscliffe too mangled to participate? What part would Rogue play in the battle of the two women? The Dark Lady would survive, to fight again in Volume III; but how, and in what condition?

Jacqueline put that little problem on the back burner of her mind to simmer. A little—a very little—exercise might assist the process, and work the stiffness out of her joints. But there were a few problems about going out. For one thing, it was not a nice day for a walk. During the morning she had been vaguely aware of rain spatters hitting the window. The rain had stopped, but the skies glowered, and wind-tossed branches fumbled at the kitchen window like black claws. She was really not in the mood for exercise any more strenuous than walking upstairs to the bedroom for a nice long nap.

But she had to go out—to dinner with Paul, at his isolated house on the lonely road near the clearing where Kathleen’s granite monument stood. I should leave one of those letters to be opened if I don’t come back, Jacqueline thought, lighting another cigarette. I doubt he has murder in mind, but one never knows; and if I say the wrong thing at the wrong time, which I am somewhat inclined to do, he might lose his temper. I could leave the note with Mollie.

She ought to go soon. She had told Paul she would be there at six, and she had to allow time to avoid snoopy reporters. And there was one other thing.… Jacqueline didn’t squirm, she only shifted position and told her conscience to stop bugging her.

She called Mollie, who told her one of the reporters had left but the other was still sitting in the lobby. Mollie was only too happy to comply with her suggestion. “Of course you can borrow my car. I’ll run out right now and leave the keys. Where are you… I mean, do you mind if I ask…”

“Not at all,” Jacqueline said sincerely, and proceeded to tell her. Somewhat to her surprise, Mollie did not protest, as she had so often done about Jacqueline’s projected expeditions. She must consider Paul Spencer harmless and trustworthy. That didn’t mean he was either of those things, but it was nevertheless a reassuring thought.

Jacqueline went upstairs. What does a lady wear to an assignation with a sexy man who may be a killer? The clothes she finally selected were a compromise between the practical and the becoming: brown flannel pants and a tailored silk shirt in the soft ivory shade that set off her hair, which she twisted into a soft knot at the nape of her neck. Jacqueline’s hair was luxuriant and the knot was large; the green silk scarf she tied around it further concealed the fact that two of the pins holding the coil in place were not conventional bobby pins. She then concealed her loveliness under a long raincoat and scarf, and went out.

It took her almost fifteen minutes to loosen two of the boards in the fence behind the cottage. She crawled through the gap, pulled her purse after her, and replaced the boards before she headed toward the side street.

Hands in her pockets and head bent, she walked boldly past the door of the inn and got into Mollie’s blue Toyota. The keys were on the seat—and bless Mollie’s heart, she had brought the mail. Jacqueline started the car and drove away.

In the middle of the next block, she pulled in to the curb, ignoring the “No Standing” sign, and looked back. There was no sign of pursuit, pedestrian or vehicular; satisfied, she proceeded for another block and found a semi-legal parking place in front of the bookstore. (The fire plug was a good six inches from the car’s bumper.) But her good intentions were of no avail; the door was locked, the windows were dark, and a hastily lettered sign announced that a sudden emergency had called the owner away for a few days.

Jacqueline knocked anyway. There was no answer, not even a meow from Lucifer. Jacqueline was nothing if not thorough; she got down on her hands and knees and pushed the cat door open. “I came to apologize, Jan,” she called through the opening. “Are you there?”

If Jan was there, she was in no mood for conversation or apologies. Jacqueline got up and dusted the knees of her pants. I tried, she told herself.

By the time she had stopped for gas and prowled the aisles of the supermarket keeping a weather eye out for people who weren’t interested in buying groceries, she decided she could safely proceed to the rendezvous. She had looked through the mail and found nothing of interest, not even another communication from Amicus Justitiae. Amicus, indeed. She would have been willing to bet that the proper form of the noun should have been Amica.

When she pushed her cart out of the market she stopped short with a catch of breath. The setting sun had broken through a low-lying bank of clouds, setting them ablaze like the reflection of a great fire burning along the mountaintops. Purple and indigo clouds fled before the rising wind.

As she drove west, into the ominous flare of light, the sun dropped below the mountains and night seized the road in long black fingers. Jacqueline rather wished Mother Nature had not chosen that particular evening to put on such a spectacular display. Her thumbs were already pricking.

The narrow side road was hedged with darkness, but a light signaled the entrance to Paul’s driveway. Long, flat and low, the house stretched out like a couchant beast; a chimney might have been a pricked ear, and the row of lighted windows gave an unpleasant suggestion of grinning teeth.

When she got out of the car, the front door opened. If it had been intended as a gesture of friendly greeting, the intent failed; the tall, broad-shouldered figure standing in the doorway, still as a black paper silhouette, appeared more menacing than welcoming. At close range she could see the house better. It was stark and modern, built of the local stone, its outlines unsoftened by flowers or shrubbery. Not much of an advertisement for his business. But maybe he got tired of planting things.

His greeting was perfectly conventional. “It was good of you to come. I hope you didn’t have any trouble finding the place.”

“It’s the only house on the road,” Jacqueline said, preceding him inside.

“Well, what do you think? I built it myself.”

Jacqueline’s immediate impression was that no woman had had anything to do with the house. It was monastic in its simplicity—white walls, bare floors, no ornaments or pictures, and the barest necessity of furniture. The far wall was a single window. Only the last, tattered shreds of the sunset broke the square-framed dark. It looked southwest—toward the clearing, and the monument.

“It would be lovely if you had cushions, flowers, draperies, rugs—”

“I haven’t time for fripperies,” Paul said curtly. “And I don’t entertain much. Sit here, why don’t you?”

The couch he indicated was the only comfortable seat in the room, long and overstuffed, covered with handsome but practical brownish-gray tweed. He sat down beside her and reached for one of the bottles on the cocktail table. “You prefer vodka, I believe,” he said.

Jacqueline watched him pour a generous measure and add ice cubes. “Have you been talking to the boys at the Malamute Saloon?”

He acknowledged the reference with a quirk of his lips. “From what I hear, you can whoop it up with the best of them. Was that performance part of your master plan, or did it just come about naturally?”

“I had no master plan when I came here. Except to write an outline.”

“How is it coming?”

A drink in his hand, he turned toward her, smiling and relaxed. Okay, Jacqueline thought; you want to fence for a while before getting down to business, that’s fine with me. She leaned back against the arm of the couch. “It’s coming. Slow but sure.”

“That’s a good way to do… almost anything.” His eyes dropped from her face to the
V
of her shirt, and lingered. Jacqueline’s eyes dropped to the open neck of his… and lingered. His shift of position, fully facing her, with one arm placed casually along the back of the couch, widened the opening to expose an impressive stretch of hard muscle. He had not lost his summer tan.

Jacqueline frowned slightly. She had not expected this of Paul Spencer. An experienced man would loosen a lady with liquor before making his first move.

Paul’s narrow expressive lips parted. In a low throbbing voice he said earnestly, “What would you suggest—to give this room more warmth?”

Jacqueline didn’t miss a beat. “Plants come to mind, of course. Greenery, not flowers. It isn’t a woman’s room. What about some nice
Dieffenbachia
?”

They discussed the pros and cons of
Dieffenbachia
versus
Ficus benjamina,
and Jacqueline sipped genteelly of her vodka. There was still a considerable amount left when Paul said, “Let me freshen that for you.” He leaned forward, took the glass from her hand, and continued to lean forward.

“His lips knew the way to hers. Parting, they took into her very being the strong sweet essence of his desire. Against the softness of her breast his touch burned with an icy flame… and the throb of his—”

Jacqueline’s furious exclamation was muffled by the aforesaid strong, sweet essence. Would she never free her subconscious of throbbing manhood? Outraged literary taste conquered even the throb of her own rising sensations. It had been a long time, she thought, in her own defense. Twisting her fingers into the thick soft locks that crowned Paul’s bent head, she pulled with all her strength.

Their lips parted with a distinct popping sound. Paul was too short of breath to yell; before he quite finished inhaling, Jacqueline said, “… or a fire in the fireplace. Fires are sooo romantic, don’t you think?”

Their faces were only inches apart, and it took all her strength to hold his head back. Ignoring the pain, he pulled to free himself, and his face was worthy of Hawkscliffe—or possibly Rogue—at his most magnificently enraged: cheeks crimson under his heavy tan, eyes blazing with the berserker fury, lips drawn back to expose wolflike teeth. One arm under her shoulders crushed her against him and tilted her head back at the mercy of his questing desire.… “Shit,” said Jacqueline. She removed one hand from Paul’s hair and plunged it into her own. Her special hairpins, which had been cut down from old-fashioned steel hatpins, had carved ivory heads; they were easy to locate. Before she could complete the movement, Paul let her go and bounded to his feet.

“You have the worst mouth I’ve ever seen on a woman!” he shouted. “Are you out of your mind, needling me like that when I was… For all you knew I could have killed you!”