Wildest Dreams (The Contemporary Collection) (23 page)

The sun was setting in rose-and-lavender luminescence when Rone and Joletta came finally to the covered footbridge. It snaked across the River Reuss at the point just before it flowed into Lake Lucerne. Appearing narrow only because of its long length, it was only partially closed in on the sides yet massively built, so much so that it made the covered bridges of New England seem puny by comparison.

Joletta and Rone craned their necks to look at the scenes from the history of the town that were painted on the roof-support sections in rich colors touched with gilt. It was a progression of events beginning in the Middle Ages, one they followed as they walked along with their own echoing footsteps and the whisper and gurgle of the clear, green-tinted river in their ears.

“Look, swans,” Joletta said as they stopped to lean on the bridge railing near the water tower that loomed near the middle of the span.

“A mated pair.” Rone followed the progress of the big white birds as they glided, touching their long graceful necks together, with their feathers tinted pink by the afterglow.

The water smelled a little of fish and cold-weather algae and melted snow. To their left lay the picturesque green onion domes of some church, while the mountain peaks lay in the distance behind them. They could just hear the brass band from a restaurant in the town. Lights were beginning to come on as the dusk deepened, small, glowing points of brightness that were reflected in the water at the river’s edge.

The evening breeze blowing over the river was cool. Joletta pulled her cardigan of cream cotton closer around her. As she gazed at the lights along the riverbank and the organized patchwork of rooftops that made up the town, she wondered if Violet had stood here, had seen this view.

Thoughts of Violet had been easing in and out of her mind since the day before; she had even dreamed of her again while dozing on the bus. Joletta was beginning to admire the way her ancestress had dared to go after what she wanted. Violet had accepted the fear, the guilt, and the dangers, and acted anyway. That was not the kind of behavior one might expect of so thoroughly Victorian a woman. Or was Violet that Victorian? Had New Orleans been as affected by the prudish precepts taught during that era as had the more northeastern portion of the United States, where puritanism had its sway?

Thinking of herself and her long engagement to Charles, Joletta suspected that she had not been as deeply involved in that relationship as she had believed. It had never occurred to her to go after him, to risk rejection and humiliation for what she wanted. Though she had never quite admitted it to herself before, she had felt a quick, hastily suppressed relief when she knew Charles was gone forever from her life.

Given another chance, what would she do now? She wished she knew. She wished, in fact, there was some way to tell just how much of Violet’s blood flowed in her own veins, how much of her spirit had been transmitted with Violet’s genes.

“Tell me something,” Joletta said into the long quiet that had fallen. “Do you think that history repeats itself?”

“You mean in the sense of people making the same mistakes others did before them?” Rone asked.

“I was thinking more along the lines of — not reincarnation exactly, but of events taking place in a later generation in much the same way they happened in an earlier one.”

He gave her a quizzical look, his gaze resting on the sunset flush on her face. “I think you’ll have to be more particular if you want an answer out of me.”

“Never mind,” she said with a smile that did not quite reach her eyes. “It was a crazy idea, anyway.”

He watched her for the space of time it took a frown to come and go between his eyes. He ventured a reply of sorts anyway, then. “Strange things happen all the time, I suppose. As for reincarnation, there’s a good portion of the world’s population that considers it a perfectly reasonable idea.”

“But not you?”

“I don’t intend to rush into anything until they prove it.”

“Which may be too late,” she suggested.

His lips curved in a wry smile. “That’s the trouble with most beliefs.”

The pair of swans floated toward them, delicately courting with rhythmic twining of their long necks. They drifted under the bridge and out of sight. Joletta turned her head to look at Rone. He was watching her, his gray gaze dark and unreadable in the dimness. He straightened slowly, turning toward her. She came erect also. Her senses tingled with alertness as she sensed some change in him.

He reached for her with slow deliberation, closing his hands on her upper arms as if touching her was a pleasure to be savored. He met her gaze without evasion, the expression in his own open, yet somber, almost driven. She met his eyes, her will suspended and uncertain. As he moved closer she lowered her lashes, resting her gaze on the sculpted curves and smooth surfaces of his lips.

Her breath was suspended in her chest. She could hear the accelerating strokes of her heartbeat whispering in her ears. The scent of him, compounded of fresh air, clean clothing, warm skin, and sandalwood, drifted around her. The radiating warmth of his body was enveloping; it destroyed thought, annihilated will. Her eyelids fluttered down as she lifted her face ever so slightly in consent, in expectation.

His mouth was firm and gentle, the pressure inviting. She spread her hands over his chest under the lightweight canvas windbreaker he wore, sliding them upward to trail her fingers through the silky thickness of the hair growing low on the back of his neck. The surfaces of her own lips tingled with heated sensitivity as she allowed them to part in invitation.

It was a delicate exploration of will, a blind revel of the senses, a gentle prelude. Unhurried, they tested the physical bonding of the kiss, feeling its swelling power, and its promise.

Heat gathered under Joletta’s skin, so she ceased to feel the evening coolness. His tongue touched hers. She met it with her own, enticed by its gentle probing. With a soft sound in her throat, she joined the sensual discovery of tender inner surfaces and the glazed-smooth edges of teeth. His hand at her back, smoothing the taut muscles, drawing her closer, was an incitement to surrender.

She lowered one hand, letting it drift down over the planes of his chest and under the edge of his windbreaker to the trimness of his waist. The leather of his belt was smooth, and cool in contrast to the wafting heat of his body. She followed its circular path to the center of his back, where the ridged muscles left a slight hollow that seemed a perfect opening for her fingers. She tucked them inside, pressing with her palm to hold him firmly against her.

His indrawn breath was soft, yet deep. He shifted slightly, cupping her face in his hand. With the side of his thumb, he traced the turn of her jaw, the delicate softness of her earlobe. Trailing his fingers lower, he brushed the slender turn of her neck, outlined the fragility of her collarbone, then slowly, gently, closed his hand upon the globe of her breast.

Anticipation burgeoned inside her, a steady, heated promise that spread in waves, until her skin tingled and the blood ran fast and warm in her veins. She shivered in instant reaction as his thumb smoothed across the exquisitely tender crest of her nipple. Her grasp tightened in a slow contraction of muscles as she pressed closer. She could feel the firmness of his lower body against the yielding softness of her own.

Footsteps clattered in approach. Voices murmured. They were no longer alone on the bridge.

Joletta went still, then began to withdraw by slow degrees. Rone’s chest rose and fell in a silent sigh as he let her go just as slowly. He kept his arm at her waist as they glanced at the three Swiss students, two boys and a girl with waist-length blond hair, who tramped past them.

The young trio did not even look in their direction.

A rueful smile curved Joletta’s lips. How American of her to be concerned over being seen kissing a man. There had been couples embracing with varying degrees of intimacy everywhere she had been so far, from Hyde Park to the top of Mt Rigi.

She looked up at Rone, but the light had grown so dim that she could not make out his expression there under the roof of the bridge. It appeared grim, but it might have been only the deepening purple gray of the twilight slanting across his face, for a moment later he gave a rough-edged laugh and swung with her to walk on toward the bridge’s end. Turning at that far side of the river, they retraced their footsteps back toward the hotel once more.

Most of the rooms of the tour group were on the same floor; Rone’s was located near the staircase, a few doors away from Joletta’s. He did not stop there, however, but walked on down the narrow hall with her. Joletta glanced at the room key she had picked up at the desk, trying to see it in the dim light given off by a wall sconce left over from the twenties.

Abruptly, Rone clamped a hand on her wrist, bringing her to a halt. As she looked up at him he put a finger to his lips for silence, then nodded toward her door.

“Did you leave the light on in your room?” he asked, his voice pitched just above a whisper.

“I don’t think so,” she said with a slow shake of her head.

Taking the key from her hand, he eased to the door and inserted it in the lock. Joletta started forward, but he indicated with a quick one-handed gesture that he wanted her to stay back.

The light went off inside the room.

Rone immediately shoved the door open. He swung back for a cautious instant, then, a fraction of a moment later, plunged around the door frame and dived into the room. There came a hard grunt, followed by the shuddering thud of bodies slamming into a wall. A chair overturned with a skidding thump. Feet scuffled. Voices cursed in breathless strain.

Joletta ran forward. Just inside the room, she paused. There was the acrid lime harshness of an unfamiliar aftershave on the cool mountain air coming through the open window with its raised blind. In the light coming from the street, she saw two figures like dark, struggling shadows.

Her reaction was instinctive. She reached for the overhead light switch.

Brightness exploded in the room. A man in black with a ski mask over his head swung his head toward Joletta. He growled, then wrenched violently away from Rone and leaped toward the window. He sprang to the sill, hovered a split second on one knee, then jumped.

Rone sprinted to the casement, leaning to look out. Joletta ran to join him. All she saw was a dangling rope that still swayed against the brown plaster of the outside wall. It came from the roof two stories up, and ended near the ground that was two stories below.

“Gone,” Rone said.

There was disgust and anger in his voice. Joletta sent him a brief glance before she looked back at the rope. “A cat burglar,” she said in hollow tones. “I can’t believe it.”

He spun around, his gaze moving swiftly over the room. Folding his arms, he said, “Try harder.”

She turned slowly. The room was a shambles, with drawers pulled out, the contents of her suitcase dumped on the floor and its lining ripped out, mattresses off the beds and springs hanging from the frames, the duvets torn open. Down stuffing covered everything with its feathery softness, blowing, rolling into gentle drifts in the cool draft from the window.

“Dear God,” she whispered, her arm closing protectively around the heavy purse hanging from her shoulder, the purse that contained the journal.

“Right,” Rone said in agreement, his eyes narrowing as he watched her. “Now, tell me one more time about your terrible luck?”

THE HOTEL MANAGER, VIEWING THE
destruction of Joletta’s room, was aghast, apologetic, and affronted. Such a thing had never happened before in any hotel he had managed. Theft, yes, but not this wanton violence. He could not imagine why it should have occurred now; such a thing was foreign to the nature of his countrymen. The young lady was not, of course, Swiss. Was it possible that she had angered someone from her own tour group?

The manager’s attitude did nothing to help Joletta’s feelings. Her experience so far on this trip made her reluctant to report the incident, especially since she had no intention of going into details concerning the journal or her family. Rone had insisted, however, and there was the damage to hotel property to be considered.

The police, when they arrived, were efficient and not unsympathetic. They wrote a thorough report of the damage, took down the description of the intruder, and promised an exacting search. They were unable to hold out much hope for capturing the man, however; the random nature of most hotel break-ins made them difficult to trace.