The Arrangement (19 page)

He drank the water and crushed the cup. “You need to be more assertive, Reb.”

The wall behind him was floor-to-ceiling mirrors, which seemed to accentuate his height and his leanness. If anything, he might be too lean, in her opinion, but the width of his shoulders saved him from skinniness. They made his torso a lovely elongated triangle.

Of course, the mirrors did the opposite with her body. She could see every flaw—her love handles and her double chin, and now they were glistening with sweat. Ugh.

It took courage, but she got herself a fresh towel from the linen cabinet that she kept stocked, and walked over to her machine, which was next to the water cooler.

“Excuse me,” she said, waiting for him to get out of the way. Her heart was pounding so hard she could feel the tick of blood through the veins in her throat.

His smile was sexy, mocking. “That’s not assertive.”

He meandered over. She thought about standing her ground, but that didn’t last when he moved into her space, her breathing space. She was still panting from her workout, and she could feel the heat emanating off her body. He must be able to feel it, too. She was burning up.

She took a half step back.

“You shouldn’t let anybody push you around,” he said.

He reached out and touched her mouth, fondling her lower lip. For some reason, she didn’t move as he trailed his thumb over its fullness. The unwelcome caress ignited a shower of sparks in the depths of her belly.

“Did I ever tell you how much I like your lips?”

“Probably.”

He smiled. “If you were more assertive, you wouldn’t let me be doing things like this…kissing you when you don’t want to be kissed.”

She reached up to knock his hand away, but he hooked her wrist and pulled her close. “Kissing the shit out of you,” he said, as his mouth came down on hers.

Rebecca’s head was thrown so far back she couldn’t get her balance. She flailed and grabbed him by the hair. The point was to yank it, and she thought that’s what she was doing, but his moans told her that she was encouraging him. And then, suddenly, she
was
encouraging him.

She gripped his head with her clawing fingers, prolonging the kiss. She was moaning, too, and panting, and grabbing at him with her other hand. His back, his hip, his butt. She squeezed his cheek and he nearly crushed her in his excitement. His hips banged into hers, grinding and sliding, and his penis got harder with every rotation.

It all got wild and confusing after that, except that it was perfectly clear they were going to do it. He tore at her bicycle shorts and she tried to help him. Nothing else mattered except getting their pants off, and when that was done, he backed her to the wall and entered her.

Two hard thrusts and she was screaming for more. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, struggling to move with him. But he couldn’t hold her, and they slid down the wall and hit the hardwood floor with a bump. Fortunately, she had some padding.

“Mmm, Reb, I love pushing you around,” he said, as he rolled her onto her back and entered her again.

“Ouch.” Her backbone was trying to saw its way through the floor as he rocked her back and forth. “This isn’t working.”

He pulled out abruptly and hoisted her to her knees. “I’ve got a great idea,” he said as he tipped her over the nearest workout bench. Before she could get her balance, he was behind her, inside her and thrusting again, thrusting wildly.

“Oh, baby, I love fucking you,” he gasped. “Why did we ever stop?”

He barely got the words out before he convulsed in spasms of pleasure. She clung to the bench, trying to catch her breath as he fell on her and embraced her passionately. He seemed happy, but it really hadn’t worked all that well for her. It never did.

There was no postcoital cuddling. Bret possessed just enough chivalry to help her off the bench, and that was it. He bent to his ankles and yanked up his shorts. Rebecca still had one leg in hers, but couldn’t move quickly. She had spandex and sweaty flesh to deal with.

When she looked up he was zipped up and done. You’d never know he’d just been humping like a hound dog. He’d barely broken a sweat. That made her hate him more. That and the fact that he was watching her struggle to get her damn bicycle shorts back on.

She would have turned away, but that view wasn’t any better. She hated those disgusting mirrors. They were a cruel joke of the fitness industry, designed to promote self-loathing and keep people using their equipment. Julia probably loved them, the skinny bitch. Skinny
old
bitch. She kept her age a deep dark secret, but she had to be at least fifty.

“Don’t let my mother bust your chops about being fat,” he said. “It’s none of her business.”

“So, you think I’m fat,
too?
”

He shrugged. “I didn’t say that. You could lose a couple pounds. Who couldn’t?”

“You.” She looked him over and sniffed. “You’re too skinny.”

“Hey, I’m in great shape. Check it out.”

He bounded over to a wide pull-down machine, straddled the seat and grabbed the handles above him, but could barely budge them. Rebecca hooted. “I used that machine earlier, and that’s the weight
I
lifted.”

“I don’t need no fucking
masheeen,
” he said, letting the weights clang down. He dropped to the floor and assumed the push-up position, starting with the standard two-arm and then switching to one. She had to admit he was good. She couldn’t compete with that.

But as she watched him, she realized that he hadn’t paid enough attention to where he’d decided to show off his form. He was doing his macho one-arm push-ups directly below a rack of dumbbells.

“You’re the man, Bret,” she said.

“You damn right.”

Sweat was pouring off him, and he’d begun to strain as she strolled over and looked down at him. She moved around him, as if to better admire him, and then ever so casually, she reached up and tipped the rack just enough that the smallest dumbbell rolled off and landed on his head.

Kathunk.
She winced at the sound.

Bret hit the hardwood floor facedown. He groaned and passed out cold. He’d been on his twentieth push-up. Hopefully she hadn’t killed him.

She spoke softly to his prone form. “Assertive enough for you, Bret?”

M
arnie scrubbed the penny ring with a toothbrush until it shone. She’d used a tiny bit of toothpaste, an old trick of her grandmother’s, and it seemed to be working. When she was done scrubbing, she rinsed the copper thoroughly in warm water, blotted it dry with a soft towel and put it back on the chain her grandmother had given her.

The feel of it and the deep golden glow gave her a sense of comfort as she fastened it around her neck. Maybe at one time it had even made her feel safe, but right now her concern for her grandmother was too great. Somehow Marnie had to find out what had happened.

She didn’t have access to a computer, but she’d spent the evening going through the phone book calling hospitals and nursing homes and asking for Josephine Hazelton’s room. Most refused to give out the information because of the new privacy regulations. Marnie got around that by calling back and asking to discuss Josephine Hazelton’s overdue account. They were quick to check on that, but none of them had any record of such an account. And, of course, they couldn’t reveal whether a Josephine Hazelton had been there in the last month.

Finally, Andrew had made her stop. While she’d been calling, he’d used his cell phone’s wireless Internet connection to check the obits in the county papers, going back to when her grandmother had last been seen in the area. But he’d found nothing himself, and he’d insisted that was good news. Josephine Hazelton wasn’t dead or hospitalized, so it was just a matter of tracking her down. He’d promised again to do that. He would even hire a detective if he couldn’t find her on his own—but only if Marnie would come to bed.

And now that she had washed her face, changed the bandage on her temple, brushed her teeth, dabbed some cream that smelled of lilies around her eyes,
and
cleaned her good luck charm with the spare toothbrush she’d found in the medicine cabinet, there was nothing else to do except that. Go to bed.

Her cool, black satin nightgown hung on the door hook. She shed her clothes and slipped it on, glancing at her reflection in the mirrored door. She’d received lots of compliments the night of the reception, and she was beginning to see what other people saw, the strange beauty, the wariness. They hadn’t used those words, but she could be objective because she still didn’t see the exquisite face in the mirror as her own.

It was Alison Fairmont Villard’s features she saw, but that was starting to change. The more Marnie looked at herself, the more intrigued she became. She could see glimmers of herself everywhere, in the blue eye color that she shared with the real Alison, and in the questioning arch of her brow. But she also found herself wondering who Alison really was. It didn’t seem possible that one woman could be as evil and conniving as Andrew and Bret saw her, or as ideal and perfect as Julia did.

But Marnie had idealized her once, too. Almost everyone in Mirage Bay had. Could they all be wrong?

She touched the ring that rested above her breasts, glad to have it back on the chain and not to have to wear the bracelet anymore. But even the bracelet had once seemed like a magical gift, and possibly a sign.

“Bedtime,” she told herself. Andrew was already there, and she’d run out of stalling tactics.

She turned off the bathroom light before she opened the door to the bedroom’s darkness. In a moment her eyes would adjust and there would be enough moonlight to get to the bed. Sometimes it felt as if she were nocturnal, anyway. Her favorite thing had been floating in the tidal pool on summer evenings. The important thing now was not to wake Andrew. What he’d done today—and what he promised to do—had actually meant something to her. She felt grateful, open, and that was a dangerous place to be.

She slipped into bed and pulled the sheet over her. It was too warm for the comforter, and if she’d been alone there would have been nothing but cool air on her body. She missed sleeping naked. She missed her world.

“Are you okay?”

Andrew’s question came to her in the darkness. She couldn’t tell if it was emotion making his voice husky, or if she’d awakened him.

“I’m fine,” she said.

She heard a click and soft light flooded his corner of the bed. He sat up and looked at her lying next to him, and the light made her acutely aware of his shoulders and the curve of his spine. Possibly because he wasn’t wearing a pajama top. He rarely ever wore them, but she’d tried hard not to notice.

“Are you sure?” he said. “You were in there a long time.”

“I was avoiding you.”

She could see his surprise. Something had welled up inside her, possibly the need to tell the truth for once.

He took in her black satin gown and the good luck charm and everything else that wasn’t covered by the sheet. “Avoiding me? Why?”

“Because it’s so odd to be in bed with you. Don’t you feel it, how difficult this is?”

“I feel it. I’ve been trying to remember when I last slept.” He rolled his neck and gave a small purring groan.

Marnie felt a tug in the depths of her stomach as she watched him rub his thigh through the flimsy cotton of his drawstring pajama bottoms. Her thoughts flew helplessly to other parts of his anatomy. The thin material played with her imagination, seeming to reveal the way his hip curved into his leg and on down his thigh. Of course the fly had bubbled open. Didn’t they always?

Not that she’d had much experience with men’s flies. She’d only had real sex twice, and it had been with a sweet, overweight boy with badly pocked skin, who was even shyer than she was. They were both sixteen, but he’d seemed to understand about disfiguration and had needed acceptance as much as she had. They’d been inseparable until Butch and his gang caught up with them. Butch had humiliated the boy in front of everyone and forced him to call Marnie names. Terrified, he’d thrown up all over Marnie, much to Butch and his friends’ glee.

Her first and last boyfriend. His parents had been summer renters, and she’d known he would be leaving, but the way he’d shunned her afterward had hurt the most. Maybe, stupidly, she’d wanted him to stand up for her, but she had understood his fear—Butch and his friends were terrorists. And she’d always known he wasn’t the one.

The man who had embodied all of her teenage yearnings and dreams was sitting next to her now. And the great irony was that he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—touch her, either. She was as much a pariah now as she had been back then. Nothing had changed, really.

She watched him massage his neck and imagined what it would be like to give him a neck rub. Her fingers tingled. But she sensed that even a touch would breach the electrical field that separated them—and probably short-circuit the entire house. The tension in the room was thick, charged. It felt like physical weight.

He angled his head around, as though he could feel her interest. “Sure you’re okay?”

She nodded, but his gaze had already drifted from her face to her chest. “What are you looking at?” she asked.

“Your good luck charm. What did you do to it?” He leaned over and took the ring in his fingers for a closer look. His skin brushed hers, and Marnie’s heart hesitated. Her throat burned with feelings she didn’t understand. The anticipation, yes, but the fear?

“I shined it up a bit,” she said.

“You smell like lilies.”

He seemed to be lingering, drinking her in, and that set off a crazy tug-of-war inside her. She wanted him to stop, but she wanted something else much more. And she had wanted it for so long that the pull was nearly irresistible. She wasn’t going to be able to let this go. It was like holding a kite string in a high wind. She’d done that as a kid, and it had felt as if the kite would lift her right off her feet.

Remembering that sensation, the thrill of it, made her ache.

Andrew’s leg brushed hers, leaving no doubt that an electrical field existed. Pleasure sprayed like jets from a fountain. When the contact was gone, she noticed the loss of it instantly. Was he feeling any of this? Did he even know what was going on?

Despite her fear of rejection, Marnie touched his hand, sliding her fingers over his. She could hardly breathe, waiting for his reaction. Even that light contact was amazing. It felt as if there were sparks coming off her fingertips. How could he not react?

When he did nothing, it made her deeply curious. What would it take to make this man respond?

He was still bent over her, holding her good luck charm, and she could feel the pulse beat in his fingers and the breath coming hot from his lungs. Whether he intended it to or not, the back of his hand rested on her breast, making her acutely aware of her own heartbeat.

She stroked his forearm, smoothing his dark hair and savoring the firmness of his muscles. Her nails lightly rode the distended veins and cords.

Had he made a sound? She stole a glance at him and saw a muscle twitch in his cheek. His jaw was tight, locked. He had to be feeling something. His face was beautifully contorted.

She slipped the charm from his hand, and his fingers brushed her skin, setting her afire. It was all she could do not to moan.

“Touch me here,” she whispered suddenly, guiding his hand to her breast.

She saw him flinch and couldn’t tell if he was pleased or repulsed.
Surprised,
she told herself.
Maybe it was just surprise.
But his breathing was harsh, and his hand dropped away as soon as she removed hers.

He heaved himself up, leaving her there.

“Is something wrong?” she asked him.

“I forgot to take a shower.”

Stricken, she nodded. Of course, a shower. She had never felt dirtier.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, rolling out of the bed.

“Take your time.” Her voice had enough edge to cut metal, but she got no response.

He actually turned off the light as he left, which she took as a signal that he hoped she’d be asleep by the time he got back. Not a chance. She lay there, smoldering. Was she really that disgusting that he had to wash away all trace of her? Or was this about him? Was something wrong with him?

Furious, and feeling as if she could bleed to death from so many puncture wounds, she realized how ridiculous their conspiracy of silence was. He might have a need for secrecy, even between them, but she did not.

She threw off the sheet, and a moment later, she was out of bed and following him into the bathroom. She could hear the shower going and see the steam rolling over the top of the stall, but she didn’t care. Fuck his privacy, fuck his secrecy, fuck him.

She opened the door and there he was, totally naked. The blue-and-white tiles brought into sharp contrast his dark hair and bronzed skin. His height, his breadth, the darkness that hung between his legs, all of it was beautiful beyond anything she could have imagined. He quite literally took her breath away.

“Marnie?” He reached to turn off the shower.

“Who is it you despise?” she asked him, speaking over the noise of the water. “Alison? Or me? It’s all right if it’s me. I’ve been despised all my life, but I didn’t expect it from you…and I don’t understand.”

He looked confused, as if she’d blindsided him. Probably she had, but she didn’t care about that, either. She had been shunned and shunted aside too many times, and this man held her future—and possibly her life—in his hands. There wasn’t going to be any more silence, not between them.

“It’s never been you,” he said. “Alison was empty inside, a lovely void. Dead, even when she was alive.”

Marnie had never asked him, but she had to now. “Is that why you killed her? Because I’m living in fear that you did.”

“I didn’t kill her. I don’t know what happened. That’s why I’m here, Marnie.”

He’d had no reaction to her question. She’d seen no flashes of guilt, anger or contrition. He was unequivocal. “Okay,” she said, nodding.

“She was the exact opposite of you,” he said.

“And what am I?”

“A hot spark. A life force.”

“Then why won’t you touch me?”

He flinched again, only this time it wasn’t in disgust. It was something else, something hot and anguished. His jaw tightened as he stared at her in the black satin gown that had once been Alison’s. Water still poured from the showerhead, flooding him and the stall. He couldn’t seem to get it turned off, maybe because he wasn’t really paying attention. He couldn’t tear his eyes off her. And she saw nothing resembling revulsion in those eyes. It was all lust and desire and potent male need.

“Take that thing off,” he said.

His meaning was clear, but he didn’t give her time to get out of the gown before he pulled her into the shower with him. Steam roiled around her as she fell into the inferno. Marnie let out a tight little croak of joy as the drenched gown slid to her feet. She flung herself at him, hitting him so hard that they fell against the shower wall together, and then she began to laugh. It was just all so crazy it didn’t seem real.

“Jesus,” he whispered. He probably thought he’d gotten himself tangled up with a wild creature, something straight from the dark heart of the jungle. And he had. He didn’t know how long she’d wanted this. How long she’d had to hold these feelings in check.

She gazed up at him, her head thrown back, her throat exposed and utterly vulnerable. She could hear his low growls of desire, and shuddered as he bent to kiss her mouth. Who was the animal now? she thought, laughing. She couldn’t seem to stop.