Cast a Pale Shadow (32 page)

There was something so final in the words, goodbye and not good night, in the desperate sadness of his eyes that she could not let him go. "No," she said, clinging to his lapels, reaching up to lightly kiss his chin. "Come in and talk for awhile. I don't want to be alone." She stepped backward through the door, still holding him, and he came with her. She noticed again his stiff, labored limp. "You're hurting, aren't you? You need a long soak in a hot tub."

"I'll go back to my room, take a few aspirins, maybe a nap."

"But this is your room. The bed is much bigger and more comfortable. You probably miss it in that cramped little one down stairs."

"I've slept on far worse."

"I know what. I'll trade bedrooms with you, now that you're all the way up here anyway. Go ahead, relax. I'll get the aspirin." She nudged him toward the bed and pushed on his shoulders until he sat on the edge.

An idea tickled the back of her brain. She could try it, if she could trap him long enough. She hurried to the bathroom, turned on the faucet in the tub, and sprinkled in some spicy bath beads that May had given her for helping with the musicale decorations. "I'll be right out," she said cheerily, peeking at him through the crack of the door. She got the bottle of aspirin and a glass of water. He took the medicine from her gratefully and as he drank, she sat down beside him and bent over to tug at his shoestrings.

"What are you doing?"

"Well, you're not going to take a nap with your shoes on, are you?"

"I'm not going to take a nap in this bed at all."

"Good, because I really think the soak in the tub is a better idea. More relaxing. But you won't need your shoes for that, either." She managed to remove one shoe and sock by lifting his foot off the ground, throwing him off balance as he tried to keep the glass of water from spilling all over the bed.

"Okay, now the other." She yanked on his pants leg until he was forced to comply. This was the foot with the poor, missing toes. Cole shifted it to its side to hide the damage in the very same self-conscious movement that Nicholas had always used. Seeing that gave her a sudden surge of hope. She removed her own shoes and wriggled her toes, then collected the two pairs to place them side by side in the closet as Nicholas always did.

"Now your jacket, sir." When he stood stiffly to accommodate her demand, he groaned a bit. "You see, you really do need some tender, loving care." She pulled the suit coat off of him, then untied his tie, undid his cuff links, and took them all to the closet.

When she returned, he was still standing, looking somewhat bewildered. She shooed him toward the bathroom. "Go on, you're perfectly capable of undressing yourself. I'm not your maid, you know," she scolded. "What did you think? That I had ulterior motives for disrobing you? Relax. Get in that tub and soak. I have to get some towels."

She was pleased to see that he had obeyed her when she came back, so loaded with towels that she had to nest her chin in them to keep the pile from toppling and to elbow the bathroom door open. "Towels!" she announced blithely as she invaded his privacy.

He hunched quickly forward in the steaming tub and had a washcloth placed strategically for the sake of modesty. She hoped her rehearsed smile of maidenly shyness hid the hint of mischief she had planned. She plunked the pile of towels on the closed toilet lid and began shaking them out and ringing the floor around the edge of the tub with them. "For splashes," she answered before he had a chance to ask.

"Splashes?"

The steam had turned the hair that fringed his neck and brow to dark, damp ringlets, making the lighter curls on top seem to shine like gold. She tweaked a curl and let it spring back. "Yeah. Scoot forward, I'll rub your back."

"I don't think--"

She stuck her lower lip out in an exaggerated pout. "I bet you let that big, blond nurse who was always hanging around your room give you a back rub."

"Which big, blond nurse?"

"Ah hah! Just as I thought, there was more than one!" She feigned a snatch for the washcloth he was using as a breechcloth, and he was forced to draw his knees up to avoid her maneuver. The action moved him forward in the tub just as she wanted.

"I thought the idea was to allow me a long, relaxing soak."

"Oh? Am I disturbing you?" A just audible moan escaped him as he covered his face with his hands and shook his head. Swiftly, while his eyes were still covered, she discarded her own clothes and stepped into the tub behind him, one foot along each side of his hips.

"Trissa! What the...!"

"Shhh," she hissed as she settled herself in the hot water. "This is a Japanese style back rub. We saw it in that movie, remember? Oh, no, I guess that was Nicholas. It's an extremely ancient, quite reputable tradition. Very therapeutic. Just relax."

"I'm getting to be very wary of that word," he said. But even he could not remain aloof to her very gentle strokes from his neck, down his spine, and feathering out to his ribs. His bruises were dark and ugly around his lower back, and she was extra careful there. She hummed under her breath as she felt his tension drain out through her fingertips.

"What are you singing?"

"'Pretend you're happy when you're blue, it isn't very hard to do,'"
she sang. "Our song, remember?"

"No."

She did not let his terse answer discourage her. He would remember, eventually. She continued singing and massaging. And when the bar of soap slipped by, she caught it and sudsed up Cole's back, edging herself ever closer, so that only a whisper separated them.

Finally, when it seemed that his muscles had turned to butter with her touch, she grasped his shoulders and leaned back taking him with her. His skin was so slippery with the soap and the bath oil, and he offered so little resistance that when she tilted him and jostled him left, he tipped and they slithered together like playful seals.

Giggling and giddy with her easy triumph, she let her hands slide off his shoulders and she dipped beneath the water under him. He grabbed for her and she came up sputtering and gasping, savoring the silken slide of his skin against hers.

"Now what?" he grumbled, his voice tight and rasping.

She struggled to catch her breath before she answered, a project complicated by her determination to place a string of kisses around his neck and end at his heart. "Well, I don't want you to drown me, so what else do you suppose we could do in this position?"

"What you don't understand is that I can't," he said gruffly. "There have been other opportunities. With other women, some bought, some offered freely. But it is impossible."

"I know different."

"That was Nicholas. Not me."

"You
are
Nicholas. The same face, the same body, the same heart. And if I was promised to be loved with all of this heart, then it's still mine, and I will have it." Her confidence grew with every pulse of his heart, for he did not move away. He held himself so close and so still against her that it seemed the world had ceased turning and waited, waited. And she held her breath and waited too.

His eyes burned into hers, glinting bronze ingots. "I don't want to love you, Trissa," he groaned.

"Oh yes, you do. You're lying." She traced the clenched line of his jaw and the deep furrow of his brow with her fingertip, then she pressed it to his chin. "Let me see your tongue."

"My tongue..." Cole began, but as soon as he opened his mouth, he was lost. She invaded him with a kiss that sent them both plummeting. He braced their bodies against the side of the huge, old tub, and the water, like a warm caress, sloshed around them. Her legs lightly twined with his, and her body moved against his as gently as tropical waves lap the shore.

"Don't, Trissa. I won't," he protested as she ended the kiss, as if he did not know that his fingertips ardently grazed her aroused nipple, as if he did not notice the evidence of his own arousal.

"Don't lie to me. I can taste your lies. I can feel them. Here." She brushed the tip of her tongue against his lips, as her fingers massaged tender, lazy circles down his chest and stomach. "And here." His denial and resolve shattered with her intimate touch and they both sighed with sudden, wild contentment as she guided him home within her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and whispered in his ear. "Don't worry about the splashes. That's what the towels were for."

But Cole had no space in his mind for worry. It was caught up in the web of pure pleasure that she spun from the core of her to gather him in. If this was a dream and the water that enveloped them but the mist of sleep.... If this were Nicholas reaching out from his soul to take her, if this was madness to relinquish his will to the sweet power of Trissa's love, he did not want to know. The water cascaded between them as he lifted from her then sluiced away as they surged together again.

"Cole," she whispered against his neck and he loved her all the more for saying that name and not the other. "I love you, Cole."

Trissa felt a ravenous joy rising within her, devouring all her fear and worry, bobbing and dipping toward the brink like a barrel on the Niagara. "Trissa!" he cried out as they plunged together, and she could not care that it was Cole and not Nicholas. They were one.

All three, one.

It was a long while before they trusted their jellied bones and melted muscles enough to chance standing. It was only when he heard Trissa's teeth chattering though he held her as close as it was possible to hold her. The sound of them startled her as well and she giggled shakily. "Maybe your big, blond nurse would have stayed warm longer."

"Maybe, but I doubt that the tub would have held her and me both."

"Oh, you thug, you do remember her," she scolded, and she cuffed his shoulder as he sat up and strained to reach a dry towel to wrap her in.

"With fleeting fondness," he admitted. They depended on each other's support and their tenacious grip on the rim of the tub to get over the edge. Trissa squealed as her toes squished into a soggy towel on the floor. "We will have a lot to explain if it starts to rain on the dinner crowd," Cole said, grabbing the terry robe she'd brought him from its hook on the wall. "My guess is this tub is situated directly above Hattie's place at the table."

"Oh, God, what if they heard us?" Trissa's eyes sparkled blue as a starlit sky against the flush on her face from her chagrin and the heat of their bath. She huddled in her large, plush towel like a blanket.

 "We'll just tell them that it's an extremely ancient, quite reputable tradition. Very therapeutic." To Cole's astonishment, he could not resist gathering her in his arms and kissing her again with a fervent passion. She had burned through the frigid soul of him he had guarded so well for so long. The thought alarmed him. He broke the kiss and gently but firmly put her at arm's length. "You'd better get dressed. I'll clean up here."

"But your sore back..."

"We seem to have worked the kinks out," he said dryly, and gave her a little nudge out the door.

Later when the floor and tub were dry and shining, he emerged to find the bedroom silent and deserted. He went to the closet and searched for some clothes he recognized. In the eight or so months Nicholas had been in charge, he had apparently discarded some of Cole's old favorites. Eventually he found a comfortable pair of khaki pants and a hunter green pullover, not his, but they'd do. He collected a few more articles to move to his room downstairs. If his time with Fitapaldi went badly tomorrow, he wanted the things he'd need handy to be packed. He did not know whether he would be around to do the packing or even be coherent enough to give instruction.

A shiver of the old, cold loneliness attacked as he put the clothes over his arm, and he stood still bracing for the worst of it. How curious that it should feel so foreign so quickly. But he guessed he had better get reacquainted. It had been foolish for him and cruel to the girl to pretend it could go away for long. Pretend you're happy when you're blue. He heard the whispered melody flutter through his mind. It was just a song, worse than a wish for breaking the heart.

A muffled thud thumped against the door. "Cole, open up." Trissa called, sounding a bit frantic and breathless. He yanked the door open to find her loaded down with a tray full of food and with the newspaper and her folktale book tucked under her arm.

"Augusta sent sandwiches. She said she thought we might need fortifying." As he took the tray from her, her face wrinkled in a bemused frown. "I hope she meant from the strain of the funeral."

"I'm sure she did."

She puttered around arranging the sandwiches and fruit salad cups on the coffee table. "Roger's heart tests went well, though he is disappointed that they refused to let him go back to limited duty. It looks like his retirement will be made final. Otherwise, they said if he takes it easy there is nothing -- Cole, where are you going with those clothes?"

"I thought I'd move them downstairs."

"But I brought the paper. Don't you want to hear the baseball scores? And I promised to read
Finn MacCoul
and the
Fenians of Erin
, remember?"

"Trissa, I can't stay here tonight."

"Oh."

"You do understand, don't you?"

"No."

"I can't let myself get too attached."

"Oh."

Her clipped, hurt words were like pricks to the heart with a tiny dagger. His will seeped away through the wounds. "But, I guess, there's no harm in reading. This room's the same as any other for reading."

She put one hand over the folktale book and the other at shoulder height, palm forward. "I solemnly swear to read and only read."

She did not keep her pledge. She never had any intention to keep it. And in the end, he had to admit, even to himself, he was very glad of that.

Chapter Nineteen

There had been no difficulty engaging the treatment room. As a staff psychiatrist with an affiliated hospital in Michigan, Fitapaldi had been accorded all courtesies and facilities to treat his patient here in St. Louis. Every step had been smoothly and efficiently handled, and he had let the ease and convenience of the arrangements lull him into burying his initial doubts.