After Innocence (7 page)

Edward’s expression had not changed. “Broken ankles heal.”

Sofie flushed. “This one did not heal correctly. It was my own fault. I did not want to make Suzanne angry—she was already angry with my father, with me. I did not tell her I was hurt. I was a very foolish child.”

Edward stared at her, eyes wide, his expression drawn, pained. “Or a very brave one,” he finally said.

Sofie started.

“Why are you-crying?” he asked gently.

Sofie realized that tears were trickling down her cheeks. She was mortified. And she could not wipe them away, for he held her hands. She shook her head, unable to speak, having no intention of explaining the precise cause of her grief. In truth, she did not understand it herself.

“Is the pain in your leg so bad? Or is it something else?”

“You go too far!” she cried, panicked. “Now, if you would …” She rose, a mistake. She whimpered. And collapsed into Edward’s powerful arms.

For just an instant, as he had risen simultaneously with her, she was in his embrace, every inch of her body pressed against his, her cheek against his chest, her thighs glued to his. And he held her for a single heartbeat, and in that heartbeat, Sofie knew she would never be the same again.

So this was what it was like to be held by a man!

How right he felt
—
how strong
—
how right!

Sofie pulled away from him, and instantly Edward helped her back down into the chair. His gaze met hers and she could not look away, her body tingling from the heat and power of him, her heart dancing from the comfort he afforded her even now. “I have overdone it,” she whispered, an understatement.

“Yes, you have,” he agreed. He knelt before her, and his hands found her right foot.

Sofie cried out, not in pain, but horror. “What are you doing?”

His tone was spun silk. “When I found you out here, you were massaging your leg. My hands are much stronger than yours.” In the blink of an eye he unlaced her special shoe, as ugly as sin, slid it off her foot, and tossed it aside.

Sofie was aghast. “You must not.” Her protest died. She was achingly aware of his hands enclosing her small stockinged foot.

He looked up at her as he knelt in front of her. “Why not?” His grin flashed, boyish, playful, sexy.

She was frozen. He held the foot of her bad leg and already his thumbs moved, kneading the inner arch. All the pleasure she might have felt gave way to panic, to terror. But she must not let him even glimpse her twisted ankle. He would be repulsed—and now Sofie knew she must not repulse him; at all costs, she must not.

“Relax, Miss O’Neil,” he murmured. It was the exact tone of voice be had used while making love to Hilary. Sofie whimpered, this time real pleasure mingling with the desperation. “Please,” she whispered, aware of more stinging tears, threatening to fall, “please stop!”

He paused. “What are you afraid of?”

“This—is unseemly.”

He made a disparaging sound. “What are you really afraid of?”

She was too choked up to answer, not that she ever would.

His keenly intelligent eyes held hers, and she knew he understood. But suddenly his dimples deepened and then he winked. “All right,” he said, resuming the massage, which both soothed and distressed her at the same time, “I’ll admit it even at the price of shocking you, Miss O’Neil. I have seen more than a few female feet in my short lifetime; I’ve even held them in my hands. There, what do you think of that?”

Despite the cloying fear, Sofie did think him funny—but she could in no way laugh. Instead, she pursed her lips hard
together, trying to control her rioting emotions.

“Your foot feels no different from any other,” he continued, giving her a scandalously bold and sensual glance from under his lashes, which, she now realized, were longer than her own. “In fact, it feels exceedingly, boringly normal.”

Sofie whimpered. They both knew she was not normal. “Why are you doing this?” she whispered.

He paused, staring into her eyes. “I don’t like your demons.”

“I do not know what you speak of!” she cried.

“Don’t lie to me, Sofie.”

Sofie tried to jerk her foot free, but he would not let her. In fact, his hands closed around her ankle, and she froze, horrified. How could he do this? Why was he torturing her like this? Why?

Gravely he looked up at her. “Your ankle is swollen.”

“Please, do not do this.”

His jaw flexed. He would not let her gaze wander from his. Finally he said grimly, “Your ankle feels like any other, except for the fact that it is swollen.”

She whimpered. He was wrong, wrong, so very wrong.

Suddenly he smiled, very gently moving his thumb across her ankle, the massage turning into a caress. “All right. I’ll admit the entire truth at the risk of shocking you senseless. I lied. I am the horrible cad everyone accuses me of being. There is nothing under your skirts, I’m certain, that I haven’t seen before.”

Sofie sputtered, truly shocked.

Edward grinned, looking anything but repentant—looking exactly like a devilishly handsome and self-satisfied rogue.

“I can’t deny it. I’ve seen more than my share of ankles. Fat ones, skinny ones, young ones, old ones, white ones—yes, don’t be shocked—even brown ones and black ones.”

Sofie stared. She did not know whether to laugh or cry. She heard herself say, “Black ones?”

He winked. “There are a lot of black ankles in Africa. Hell, that was nothing. I’ve even seen red and purple ones—at the Carnivale, of course.”

She made a strange hiccuping sound. He smiled and stroked her again.

Sofie swiped at the tears, which just kept flowing. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I haven’t seen you laugh yet.”

Finally the smallest, strangest sound sputtered from her pursed lips. It was unquestionably hysterical, but it might have qualified as laughter, too.

Edward smiled at her, a smile so warm, it went arrow-straight to the center of her heart, and he placed her foot on his hard thigh, covering it with one palm. “I know when to declare victory—even if it’s a toss-up.”

Sofie had stopped crying. She looked from his handsome, smiling face, from his blue, tender eyes, to his lap, where her foot nestled not far from his groin. He looked, too. In that instant, everything changed. He was no longer smiling. The light in his eyes became brighter, his expression grew strained. When his thumb paused over her instep, she felt it all the way up to her loins.

But all he said, his tone suddenly raw, was, “Miss O’Neil …”

Sofie said nothing. She did not know what to say. He had held her foot, had touched it, and now the atmosphere was so charged around them that Sofie felt the heat and thought she was about to explode.

“Sofie, dear, don’t you think you have caused enough talk tonight?” Suzanne said.

Sofie jerked her foot off his lap at the exact instant she realized her mother stood behind Edward on the veranda. She flushed, sitting up straighter, gripping the thick arms of the chair. Her mother’s expression was carefully controlled. Edward slowly rose to his full height, as graceful and sleek as an oversized panther, and before he turned to face Suzanne, he gave Sofie a smile that might have been meant as encouragement, but that was so warm, it would have melted a frozen stick of butter. Sofie’s heart beat double time.

Sofie closed her eyes in despair, praying for guidance, praying for help before it was too late—before she took an irrevocable plunge into the deep, still waters of love.

“Sofie, put your shoe on,” Suzanne said.

Sofie did not move. Her shoe was out of reach.

Edward moved with the speed of a striking cobra, retrieving the unfashionable shoe and sliding it onto her foot. Sofie glimpsed his face, which had tightened with anger. As he laced it up, she dared to look at her mother, who was just as displeased.

“Mr. Delanza, would you excuse us?” Suzanne asked, her tone clipped.

Edward placed himself squarely between mother and daughter. “Your daughter, Mrs. Ralston, is in some pain. I would like to help her upstairs.” His tone was cool. “With your permission, of course.”

Suzanne’s voice was sugar-coated. “That will not be necessary, sir. I shall have one of the servants aid her. However, might I have a word with you on the morrow—say, after breakfast?” She smiled with vinegary sweetness.

He bowed. “Of course. Good night, madam.” He turned, giving Sofie a look filled with dark concern, and with something more, something conspiratorial and intimate that made Sofie’s pulse race. “Good night. Miss O’Neil.”

She managed a wan smile. Edward left. Suzanne stared after him, waiting until he was gone. Then she turned to her daughter. Her hand swung out. Sofie cried out in surprise and pain as Suzanne’s palm cracked across her face. It had been many years since her mother had slapped her. She drew back against the chair, holding her stinging cheek, stunned.

“I told you to stay way from him!” Suzanne cried. “Don’t you understand? He is exactly like your father, your goddamned, rotten father, that miserable Irish bastard—and he’ll use you just like your father did me!”

Sofie did not sleep. She did not dare think, either, or try to analyze what had happened. She would never be able to understand the events that had passed this day.

She sketched. Sofie preferred color, oils being her favorite medium, but she knew that her mother would have never allowed her to bring her paints to Newport for the weekend.
and in truth, a short trip hardly justified lugging all of her equipment such a distance. And she had come to the beach house with the honorable intention of being sociable, which was not possible if she locked herself in her room painting all day, nor was it easily accomplished if she spent all night with her work, either. But she was helpless to fight the urge to draw, an urge she had fought all day, and now she gave in with single-minded frenzy. Sleep was the very last thing on her mind.

She drew with abandon. Her strokes were mostly hard and bold. One sketch rapidly followed another. The subject never changed. The portraits were all of the same man; only the poses were different. They were all of Edward Delanza.

She drew Edward kneeling, standing, silting, sauntering, she drew him holding her ugly shoe. In every portrait she drew him fully clothed but in his shirtsleeves, so she could hint at the powerful musculature she had felt against her body but had not seen. How she wished she had seen him fully unclothed—for then she would draw him nude.

His body, she defined in a few powerful, simple strokes, unable to do more. But in every portrait she detailed his face with great care. In every portrait, his expression was the same. As she had last seen it, tender, concerned, yet somehow wicked with promise, too.

S
uzanne paced. She had spent a sleepless night. And of course, when Benjamin had asked her what was wrong, she could not tell him.

She was in the music room, alone. She paused to look in the Venetian minor on the wall above a small marble-topped Louis XIV table. She wore her dark, shoulder-length hair swept up loosely, for it was the perfect foil for her flawless ivory complexion and her classic features. Her morning dress was simple, a fine peach-hued cotton with a deeply veed neckline and a fitted bodice despite the fact that fashion tended towards high necklines and loose, billowy tops. Suzanne knew her figure was superb, and since her remarriage, she had always flaunted it. Now, selfconsciously, she smoothed down her skirt, which clung to her hips before flaring out in the customary trumpet shape. She could find no flaw with her appearance, except for the faint circles beneath her eyes.

She was sorry about last night. God, she was. But she had told her daughter to stay away from Edward Delanza, and Sofie had not listened. If only she hadn’t lost her temper. But perhaps Sofie had learned her lesson.

If only he did not remind her so damn much of Jake.

Suzanne inhaled hard. Jake had died eleven years ago, and she still felt that horrible gut-wrenching emptiness whenever she thought of him—which was often. Yes, she missed the miserable bastard, she always would—but she also hated him. He had come so close to destroying her!

Suzanne just could not forgive Jake any of it, not his taking her away from society, from her possessions and her wealth, not the other women, not his intention to separate
from her when she flatly denied him a divorce. And when Jake had been forced to flee the country, she had been branded the wife of a murderer, of a traitor. Had Benjamin Ralston not married her upon Jake’s death, giving her back her place in society and her respectability, she would still carry Jake’s heinous brands.

Most important of all, she could not forgive Jake for leaving his entire estate—comprised of a million dollars in assets and cash—to their daughter. That had been the greatest blow of all. Sofie would receive it immediately should she marry, or begin receiving installments at twenty-one, the final sum to be received on her twenty-fifth birthday if she was still unwed. After all Suzanne had suffered, after all she had endured and given up, he had not left her a single red Cent. Not one.

She knew that it was his way of getting back at her as he had threatened to do the last time they had seen each other, even though he had been behind bars then. Neither one of them had ever thought he would be dead two years later, and Suzanne had also thought the threat idle, for how could he strike at her while incarcerated? But it had not been idle. Despite his incarceration, despite his death, Jake had carried out his threat—even now, he was carrying on their passionate love-and-hate war from the very grave.

But it was Suzanne’s turn to hold the upper hand. Seven years ago the executor of Jake’s estate had died, and Suzanne had been appointed executrix of Sofie’s trust. Suzanne imagined that Jake was spinning in his grave right now, for Suzanne was administering the trust in a manner that benefited not just her daughter, but herself.

Abruptly, despite the fact that she was expecting Edward Delanza at any moment and was prepared to do battle with him over her daughter if she must, Suzanne sank down into a plush brocade chair, stabbed with sudden anguish. It wasn’t fair. Not any of it. Not his death, and not the fact that, when it had all begun, she had been far too young and too spoiled to appreciate what they had had—and what could have been theirs if only they had tried.