Petals on the Pillow (10 page)

Now she moved. Her entire body snapped and jerked like a puppet on a string. Her head yanked around. Her back arched into an unnatural curve. The light grew brighter, stronger, flashing white now against the black water behind Kelly.

Then it was gone.

As suddenly as if it had been flicked off by a switch, it disappeared. Kelly stood suspended for a moment that stretched in time as Harrison raced toward her, and then she collapsed against the wood of the dock.

Harrison got there just in time to keep her from rolling off the edge and into the seething water and sharp rocks below.

She lay, ashen white, crumpled against the gray and peeling wood. Kneeling next to her, Harrison breathed a sigh of relief as his fingers felt for and found the sure and steady pulse beat of her heart at her neck.

“Kelly,” he called, slapping lightly at her cheeks. “Can you hear me?”

Her hands reached up and stilled his, holding them away from her face. Her eyelids flickered open. Harrison stared down into their bright green light.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Fine,” Kelly purred. “I am just fine now.”

Something about her voice was wrong, terribly wrong. “Kelly?” His own voice rose in a question.

Her hands left his to explore his face. She skimmed them lightly over his chest, finally settling on his shoulders. “Harrison.”

A low chuckle reverberated deep in her throat. The sound sent a shiver of recognition through Harrison even as her hands sent trails of sensation arcing after them. Then her palms were at his chest, shoving him away.

Harrison watched as she picked her way over the shadow-strewn lawn toward the Manor, her usual purposeful stride now an elegant swaying sashay. The moon bathed everything in its blue-white light, and cast elongated shadows. Shadow branches from shadow trees reached out menacingly for her, but she trod over it all, clearly unconcerned. He followed after her as she passed through the kitchen with hardly a glance around her. Her steps slowed as she passed through the dining room, gently caressing one of the carved wooden chair backs as she glided by. She glanced over her shoulder and her mouth curved in a slow, sensuous smile as she saw that Harrison was behind her, then she hurried on without an explanation.

She pushed through the doors into the drawing room and came to an abrupt stop. “Dear God, Harrison, who pulled these old relics out of the attic?” Her fingers toyed with an antimacassar on the back of stiff loveseat as she turned to pon
der the empty fireplace and mantel.

Harrison stared at her, unease creeping up his spine. “How did you know where these came from?”

She turned to face him again. “I can see, can’t I?” She chuckled again. The sound woke echoes in Harrison’s brain, ones he desperately wanted to still. Her fingers flew to her face, pressing lightly over her eyes. “Yes. I can see again. Finally. And you really ought to put all this stuff right back into the attic where your mother put it in the first place. It’s simply too awful to sit on. If you don’t want what I had in here before, you should at least put in something comfortable.”

“What do you mean ‘what I had in here’?” He moved clos
er to her, advancing on her with a caution he still didn’t understand. When she laughed again, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

She continued on as if he hadn’t spoken. “What really both
ers me, darling, is that you took my portrait down.” The wide and generous curves of her mouth thrust themselves into a little girl pout.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Blood pounded through Harrison’s temples. What was going on here?

“My portrait. Put my portrait back, Harrison. Please, darling? You can’t imagine how it pains me that it’s gone. Betsy barely remembers what I looked like.” She took an abrupt step toward him, her movements oddly jerky and uncoordinated now. Her eyes clouded and she shook her head as if trying desperately to keep them focused. “Tell me you’ll put it back.”

He stared at her, flames of anger licking in his eyes. “Is this some kind of joke? If it is, Kelly, I want you to know that I don’t find it in any way amusing.”

The mocking smile played over her lips again, but this time the effort to get it there was more evident. Her voice was a throaty whisper when she spoke. “A joke? Absolutely not, Harrison. No, my love, this is desperately serious. I want you to put my portrait back.” She sank down into the loveseat with slow deliberation. “And, by the way, please don’t call me Kelly.”

“Then what should I call you?”

“I thought you’d realized.” She shook her head, trembling fingers rose to touch her own face. “The way you looked at me out on the dock, I was sure you’d figured it out.”

“Figured what out?” His voice was icy with controlled anger. “Stop playing games.”

The woman on the couch looked up at him with weary eyes that now glowed a faint, but still definite green. “Figured out who I am, of course, Harrison. It’s me. Elizabeth.”

Chapter Six

“Cut it out, Kelly.” A muscle flicked in Harrison’s tensed jaw. A vein throbbed in his forehead. Blood pounded in his head, its maddening drumbeat a stark contrast to the stillness of the woman who stared at him from the couch.

“But I can’t, Harrison.” She leaned her head back on the loveseat, her face pinched and pale. “Believe me, I would if I could. You’ve no idea how tired I am. Please, if you can’t bring yourself to speak my name at least don’t use any name at all.” “You actually expect me to call you Elizabeth? You must be insane,” he lashed out, his voice curt with contempt.

Her own reply was infinitely weary. “I’m sure it must seem so.” She dragged herself upward out of the loveseat and across the room to him with a slowness that spoke of great effort. “But ask yourself these questions.”

She was up against him now. He could feel how cold she was, how chilled her flesh felt. Her head lolled against Harrison’s shoulder as her hand trailed down his chest, leaving behind it a trail of gooseflesh caused by both horror and excitement. She let her hand rest intimately against his hip.

“Who exactly would know about the birthmark you have right here?” Her fingers traced along the bone, teasing and caressing. “Would Kelly know about that? Would she know about that little mark? The one that’s shaped just like a whale? Surely your relationship hasn’t progressed to that point already. She’s only been here a few days.”

She giggled. The sound set Harrison’s teeth on edge.

He grabbed her hand and removed it from his hip, but her other hand snaked up his chest and then to his face. Dear God, forgive him, but it felt good.

“Who are you?” he whispered, his voice ragged and harsh. “Who sent you? Who told you about my birthmark?”

“Some things never change, Harrison. Nobody told me anything. I just know. I’m your wife after all,” she whispered back on a sigh. “I always had to show you everything.”

She pressed her body to his, the softness of her breasts and the instant firmness of her nipples sending electric currents coursing through his chest. Her hands caressed the tensed tendons in the back of his neck as she pulled his face down to hers. Her lips parted with a sigh as she ground herself against him.

Harrison knew the evidence of his desire would be impos
sible to miss. He was on fire. Mad molten desire flowed through his veins as if his very blood had spontaneously combusted. He wanted her. Wanted her so badly that for a moment he couldn’t care less who she was, but only that she was warm and soft and willing. And she was. She was all those things and more.

His mouth covered hers and took her lips with the hunger of man who had been denied for far too long. Her tongue flick
ered against his, teasing and probing, urging him on. His own hands settled on her hips, pulling them to him, grinding her against the length of him again. She shuddered with pleasure as he plundered her mouth with his tongue, leaning back into the angle he most wanted with the practice of an old lover.

It was that very movement that set the alarm bells off in the back of his head, but it took a while before it penetrated the sensuous fog that surrounded his brain. By that time, his hand had snaked its way beneath the loose hemline of her tank top. Gliding across the petal softness of her stomach, it found the generous globe of her breast. The nipple, already peaked, quiv
ered as his thumb raked across it. She arched into it, her body responding to his with a naturalness born of familiarity.

There they were again. Those alarm bells. He raised his head from hers, looking down into a pair of sea-green eyes half
-glazed with hunger. Harrison froze. Was this the same woman he had kissed in the hallway this morning? It was, beyond a doubt, the same body, the same stubborn chin, the same sweet soft curves and warm swelling breasts. But that kiss? He remembered the way their mouths had entwined in that slow sensuous age-old dance evocative of so much more than the meeting of lips. And this kiss? The light and teasing touch of her tongue to his, the confidence in her movements, the practiced way in which she aroused him all shook him to his core. And her eyes? How could her eyes have changed like that?

He grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her away with a violence that sent her reeling back to the loveseat. A person’s kiss is as individual and unique as their handwriting. Kisses and signatures can be faked and forged, but false ones never hold up under the scrutiny of someone who really knows. And Harrison really knew. He knew that kiss all too well.

“Elizabeth?” He couldn’t believe what he was saying, couldn’t understand how it could be, but he also couldn’t accept that anyone except himself could know her kiss quite that well.

The woman on the couch smiled weakly at him, her eyes ringed with shadows. She straightened her top. She managed a sly wink, but her voice was hollow when she spoke. “I guess there’s some things a girl just can’t fake.”

“No. No. I suppose there’s not.” Harrison ran his fingers across his mouth with wonder. Had he really felt what he thought he had?

He knelt before her. “What is this? What’s happening?”

Her shoulders lifted in a weary shrug. “It’s so hard to explain, Harrison, and there’s no more time now. I’m so tired. I had no idea it would be such an effort. You have to ... know

... have ... to ... see ” Her voice drifted away to a whisper

as her body collapsed further into the couch.

Her face shone, pale and translucent as alabaster. Her eye
lids drifted shut and her whole body went limp. Harrison watched, the taste of panic rising in his throat as bitter as a penny. He grabbed her wrist. “Elizabeth?” he called. “Kelly?”

Then he was flying backward. He landed hard on the floor. His whole arm tingled as if he’d received some kind of power
ful electric shock. He pulled himself into a sitting position.

Kelly’s body stiffened. She arched backward on the couch, glassy eyes open and staring, limbs jerking and convulsing. A faint light glimmered and hummed around her, blue and puls
ing in time to her body’s uncontrolled movements. Harrison reached his hand toward it and was thrown backward again, nearly striking his head on the coffee table behind him. He watched, helpless, while Kelly continued to twitch inside the glow.

Harrison cast about for something, anything, he could do to make the light let her go. “Leave her,” he shouted, his voice hoarse with emotion. “Can’t you see you’re hurting her? Let her go! She’s nothing to do with this. Let her be.” The light con
tinued to pulse despite his plea and Kelly’s body kept jumping to its rhythm. His own inadequacy hit him in the chest like a blow from a two by four, keeping him literally on his knees. Then, just as it had done on the dock, the light suddenly switched off, releasing Kelly into a helpless puddle on the couch.

He watched as color returned to her skin, changing it from milky white to Kelly’s normal honey-brown tones. The rise and fall of her chest slowed to a more even pace and finally her eye
lids began to flicker. Her arm rose and she rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand, moaning slightly as she finally raised her eyelids.

***

Awareness and recognition returned slowly to Kelly’s fogged brain. Her head swam so dizzily that it took several moments for her to even recognize she was in the drawing room at Hawk Manor. She fought through the cobwebs that seemed to have dulled her senses and the vertigo that made the room spin. Images swam before her, refusing to settle into static shapes. Suddenly, out of the miasma, Harrison’s face loomed over hers.

“Are you all right? Do you want me to call a doctor?” he asked.

Kelly shrieked and scrambled back into the corner of the loveseat, hugging her knees to her chest. He had appeared, it seemed, out of nowhere, materializing full force from out of the whirling impressions of furniture and space. “Christ on a crutch. You people should wear bells around your neck.”

“Bells?” Harrison glowered at her from under his black brows, sinking down on the loveseat next to her. “Oh. I see. Like a cat.”

“Yes. To warn all of us unsuspecting little mice that you’re sneaking up on us,” Kelly snapped as the room slowly stopped its kaleidoscope spin. She was cold. Nearly freezing. Her teeth started to chatter. She rubbed her arms up and down in an attempt to warm them as she watched Harrison for some clue as to how she’d gotten here and what he was doing here with her as well.

“You don’t seem like much of a mouse. At least you squeak a hell of a lot louder than the ones we normally have around here.” The beginning of a smile creased Harrison’s face.

“I suppose. I guess I’m more one that roars.” Kelly smiled uncertainly, but felt it fade off her face as she looked around herself again.

The feeling of disassociation left her prickly and uncom
fortable and not a little afraid. Her head started to throb and she rubbed the vestiges of the knot her collision with the pillar had left. Could that be what was causing this feeling? Dr. McIntyre hadn’t mentioned memory loss as a possible symptom, but how much could you trust a doctor who looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy in a Dockers ad?

“Would you mind telling me how I got here?” she asked, a little more testily than she’d meant.

Harrison passed a hand wearily over his face, his own smile gone in an instant. “I’m not quite sure how to answer that.”

“You mean you don’t know? Did you just find me here?”

“Not exactly.” Harrison slouched further into the couch, eyeing her with a wariness that she didn’t understand.

Kelly felt irritation snap inside her. “Could we stop playing games here and cut to the chase?”

“Funny, I asked you almost the exact same thing just a few moments ago.” Harrison’s face was still now and nearly as chilly as the empty stone fireplace.

“You did?” Kelly hugged herself tighter. The damp seemed to have seeped right into her bones. She clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering. Unfortunately, that only made her headache worse. “When? I don’t remember.”

Harrison leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. The muscles of his powerful back still bunched with tension. “Why don’t you just tell me what the last thing you remember is and I’ll see if I can pick it up from there?”

“Last thing I remember?” She caught her lower lip between her teeth and chewed, pensive and thoughtful. “I remember going to get ready for bed.”

“I guess that’s a start.”

Kelly didn’t miss the sarcasm in Harrison’s tone, but she chose not to respond as memory returned layer by layer, like lacy threads piling on top of one another to create a pattern.

She felt almost dizzy as she forced herself to recall. “I remember finding the petals and then the lights going out in my room. I felt so strange.”

“How so?”

“It’s hard to explain. Like something was watching me or waiting for me.” Kelly shook her head as if she could tumble her thoughts into better form. They remained vague and shapeless, however. She fought to make them solidify. Her head throbbed.

“Then what happened?” Harrison’s voice was low now, throaty and tense. He waited for her to continue.

“I went to the doors. I remember thinking that I’d closed them, but they were open again.” Kelly picked at a thread in her jeans. “I must not have latched them all the way. With all the humidity here, they haven’t closed properly in years.”

“What?” Harrison asked sharply. He sat up and stared directly at her. “What did you say?”

Kelly looked up and met his eyes. She hesitated, blinking. His stare was disconcerting, but her own sensations of knowing and not knowing were more so. Not quite able to understand her own strange answers, she said, “The French doors. The ones to my room. The humidity probably makes them swell so they don’t shut tightly.”

Harrison nodded slowly, his intense gaze piercing into her. “Do you remember anything after that?”

She folded her hands in her lap and looked at her bitten nails. It was all rushing back to her now. The light in the darkness. Her annoyance at being manipulated. Going out to the dock. In a very quiet voice, she said, “I remember seeing a light down on the dock.”

“And...?”

Kelly couldn’t look at him now, but felt the way he stared at her. Her answer tumbled out quickly. “And I went out to see what it was.”

“What was it, Kelly?” Harrison’s throaty whisper hung on the air in the room. “What was that light?”

She leapt up from the couch, pacing the room. “I don’t know,” she cried. “I don’t know what it was. I don’t have any words to describe it. All I know is that I went down there and touched it and then I was there, but not there. Watching myself like I was somebody else, but still was myself, too. And then I was here with you looming over me like some great bloody vulture ready to snap me up!”

Harrison looked up sharply at that, but then turned away. “That’s all you remember, then? Nothing more?”

Kelly shook her head. “That’s it. Do you want to tell me about the rest?” She stopped w
alking and watched him carefull
y.

Harrison shook his head. “Not really.”

Kelly’s jaw gaped. “Not really? Gosh. Ever so sorry to inconvenience you, Mr. St. John, but I’m not exactly used to blackouts. That’s usually the province of other members of my family. So would you please tell me how I got in here?” Kelly gestured around herself to the drawing room.