Private Entrance (The Butterfly Trilogy) (23 page)

     
He kneels in front of me with his eyes closed and tugs at the thong, pulling it up my thighs. He pauses. His hands abandon their task and swarm over my thighs and butt, as if he were reading Braille. I feel his breath on my groin. His fingers return to the thong, but instead of pulling it up, he draws it down. Now I close my eyes, as I stand before him, relishing his exploration of me. I know his eyes are open now, I feel the flutter of his eyelashes against my skin. I am very tender down there, the slightest touch ignites my inner fire.

     
I widen my stance to give him greater opportunity. He spreads me open and teases me with his tongue. I grow dizzy and drive my fingers through his
hair. I feel like a goddess and Kenny is kneeling at my altar. But his offering is driving me mad. One more touch and I will explode. I want him inside me. I want to be on my back, my legs as wide as they will go, Kenny heavily on top of me, thrusting, taking me to exquisite heights.

     
I fall to my knees. I engage his mouth, where I taste myself. I am salty and sweet. His arms encircling me, we slide to the carpet, thick and luxurious against my bare back, and Kenny's magnificent cock takes its rightful place. I want it to go on forever. His deep, slow thrusts send shockwaves of pleasure through my body.

     When Coco nearly knocked someone off the path, she was startled to realize she had no idea where she was. She had struck off from her bungalow for the aviary. Amazingly, she discovered she was in the right place.

     Kenny was up ahead, waiting.

     "Sorry I'm late," she said, adding that she couldn't stay long as she had a dinner date with Abby Tyler. He was wearing his tuxedo for the evening performance. It was on her lips to say, "You chose the pink shirt," when she realized that was only in her fantasy.

     They explored the aviary that rose in tiers and was landscaped like a jungle and smelled of loam and soil and primeval life. They didn't speak until they reached the end, where night hawks perched and Kenny suggested they go somewhere for a drink.

     They found the bar next to the largest swimming pool, where lights glowed brightly against the darkness and people laughed and swam and filled the air with party sounds. Kenny ordered two Chardonnays.

     As Coco sipped her wine, she watched Kenny. His mouth intrigued her. She was dying for him to kiss her. While he talked she watched his lips move and imagined them moving on her mouth and on the secret places of her body. She wondered if he would be anything like he was in her fantasy.

     "Ken, listen—"

     "Kenny, please. Ken is Barbie's boyfriend."

     "I came to this resort for a reason."

     She hadn't planned to tell him. Like her flashes, it just came out. But as she poured out the story of the crystal and Daisy and the promise that
she would find her soulmate here in the "setting sun," part of her hoped he would shout, "Yes! I've had a dream just like that! It's me you're looking for!" And part of her hoped he would say, "Well, it clearly isn't me, so I will leave you alone."

     He listened thoughtfully, then said, "How do you know it isn't me?"

     "Daisy insists he's worldly and well traveled."

     "Then let's fly to Paris."

     
Oh God I want to.

     "Coco, why can't you just let it happen naturally, like with other people?"

     "I've tried! Kenny, I long for the kind of relationship my parents have. The joys they have experienced together."

     "You and I can share that," Kenny said softly.

     "I've been in so many failed relationships—"

     "How do you know ours will fail when you won't even let it begin? Listen, I long for those things, too. A family. Loving parents. But not for the same reasons as you. Coco, I'm an orphan."

     She stared at him. She had never met an orphan before.

     "My birth mother couldn't keep me, and the people who adopted me changed their minds, so I was placed in foster care. I lived with a lot of different families after that, but never long enough to bond with them."

     Coco's throat closed up and she felt her emotions ride a Tilt-A-Whirl. For the first time in her life, she was speechless.

     "Ms. McCarthy?" Coco nearly jumped. It was Vanessa Nichols, looking knock-out in a vibrant blue caftan with stunning gold trim. "Sorry to interrupt. I've come to escort you to Ms. Tyler's residence."

     Coco had forgotten. Her dinner with their host. She said good-bye to Kenny and went off with Vanessa, to leave him sitting there, watching her disappear.

     Abby was nervous. After three decades of searching for her daughter, were they about to be reunited at last?

     Sissy had cancelled their dinner date. She sounded upset. Abby wanted to enquire but left it alone. And Ophelia had declined again, saying she had work to do. So it was just Coco.

     As she tried on one outfit after another, worried about making an impression,
she recalled the night her child was conceived. Abby might have lain with a stranger but the baby had been conceived in love. And now, after years of searching, of following false leads and running into dead ends, was she about to be reunited with her daughter at last?

     "Here we are," Vanessa said as they approached the private residence. She looked at Coco with shining eyes and wondered: Are you the little baby I carried out of the prison thirty-three years ago? "Good luck," she said, and knocked on the door.

     Coco was thinking those were odd words when Vanessa's caftan brushed against her and she received a flash. Something very strange about this woman. A feeling of transience, as if she weren't permanent, a soul on the move. Or ready to flee.

     Remembering that Vanessa was secretly in love with Zeb, the white hunter from Africa, it was on Coco's lips to tell her that she should let Zeb know her feelings before they became separated, because Coco knew for certain that Vanessa would not be in this place much longer, that a long flight lay ahead of her, and that if she did not declare her feelings to Zeb soon, she would lose him forever.

     But it was a habit Coco was trying to break, so she kept her silence. And her intrusion into Vanessa's personal life might not be welcome.

     Abby Tyler opened the door and greeted Coco with a warm smile.

     They shook hands and Coco couldn't help herself, the flash was so strong. "You're worried about something," she said.

     "Yes," Abby said guardedly, knowing about Coco's psychic abilities, wondering how strong they were. "Management problems."

     Coco gave her an odd look. That wasn't the flash she had gotten. Abby Tyler was worried about a child.

     Cold seafood salads were already set out, chilled wine, fresh bread and sweet butter. Light from the chandelier glittered on china and crystal, and the sliding glass doors stood open to admit the perfumed evening.

     "So tell me about this contest," Coco said, reaching for her wine. "I never enter contests. How did I manage to win this fabulous vacation?"

     "The man whose land this once was wanted to create a sanctuary for people seeking peace. But he was a philanthropist and it troubled him that
The Grove would be available only to people with money. So he established a kind of random lottery."

     Abby was trying not to stare at her guest. Were Coco's eyes her own, had she gotten her nose and chin from the drifter? Beneath the burgundy dye, what was the true color of her hair?

     
Shouldn't a mother instinctively know her own child?

     And how on earth was she going to broach the subject of parenthood and adoption? Did Coco even know she was adopted?

     Abby asked if she was enjoying her stay and Coco mentioned Kenny.

     "Yes, he's very talented," Abby said, adding nothing more because that was up to Kenny. Abby had found him during one of her adoption searches. The private investigator had been following a lead on orphans that had taken him to San Francisco. Although Abby knew her child was a girl, her heart went out to Kenny all the same because he, too, had been a stolen baby. Abby had subsequently learned of the rejection by the adoptive parents and the string of foster homes and she wanted to do something for him. Especially when she saw how he was suffering from his secret addiction. He needed to heal and so, by way of Vanessa, she had invited him to work at The Grove.

     Abby casually asked questions of Coco without appearing to pry. But she had to know. For thirty-three years she had celebrated every birthday, had thought of her child's first tooth, her first step, her first word. Imagining her daughter's first day in school, picturing herself doing things with her little girl, things that had become the privilege of another woman.

     "I accepted the contest prize as a birthday present to myself," Coco said. "I have a birthday coming up."

     "Oh?"

     "May 17. I was born in Fresno."

     In the private investigator's report:
Baby girl, born Amarillo, Texas, May 17, sold to McCarthy family in Fresno, California.

     "Is anyone else in your family psychic?"

     "No. I was different from the start. From the minute I was born."

     Abby was suddenly alert. "How so?"

     "I was born with polydactyly." Coco held up her hands and wiggled her fingers, pointing out tiny scars on the sides. "Six fingers on each hand. They
were removed when I was little. Imagine what a pianist I could have been!"

     Abby heard Mercy's words:
"A perfect baby, ten fingers, ten toes. We counted."

     Coco McCarthy was not her daughter.

T
HE DESERT NIGHT WAS FILLED WITH THE HOWLS OF
coyotes.

     As Jack stood at the open door to his patio, he thought the wild creatures sounded close to the resort. They also sounded hungry and agitated.

     Turning away, he went back inside, to stay focused on his work.

     Jack was good at what he did. Investigating and solving cases. He had won a commendation or two, a handshake from the Mayor. Fellow detectives came to him when they were stumped. Except that this time, Jack was the one who was stumped.

     Nina's notes baffled him. She seemed to think a vital element to her search lay in this resort. Yet he was unable to find it. Perhaps the key was Ophelia Kaplan. He needed an excuse to knock on her door, and as luck would have it, the resort's small bookstore was open at this late hour, so he left the coyotes to howl beyond his patio and struck out into the starry night.

     His luck held as he browsed the shelves and found Dr. Kaplan's diet book, the one that Nina had raved about, that had helped her to shed thirty
pounds and keep them off, and feel healthier and more energetic, too. It gave him the opening he needed.

     He was about to dial the cell number of Elias Salazar, the head of security, to request Dr. Kaplan's room number, when he saw Dr. Kaplan emerge from the main building looking distraught.

     As he approached her, his detective's eyes sized her up: wearing drawstring pants and a tank top, this woman clearly practiced what she preached. Healthy, in peak athletic form. Ophelia Kaplan could skin a mammoth with her bare teeth.

     Mentally, however, she seemed troubled. Something on her mind. Abby Tyler and the adoption issue? He was tempted to inquire but didn't want to expose his hand. He thought of the data Nina had uncovered on this woman. Was Ophelia Kaplan aware of her unusual origins?

     "Pardon me," he said, catching her attention. "I'm sorry to bother you and I know you must get this all the time, but would you autograph your book for me? I mean, my book?" he added with a self-effacing smile.

     She turned, startled, as if so preoccupied that she had forgotten that other people existed on the planet. "Sure," she said, "no problem," and took the book from him.

     "I saw you on Jay Leno. You handled him brilliantly."

     "That makes you and my mother who thought so." Ophelia would never forget that night, in front of millions of TV viewers, explaining the rationale behind her thesis: "Bread only came on the scene ten thousand years ago, Jay. Our bodies can't possibly be adapted to consuming it. Let's say something brand new to our physiologies is invented today, something that doesn't occur in nature, that our bodies are not used to metabolizing, that in fact wreaks havoc with our digestive systems and causes all sorts of physical and metabolic ailments, yet we start eating it by the ton and it becomes a daily staple in our diet. Do you think that in a mere ten thousand years this will become a health food?"

     Jay Leno had leaned forward and said, "Dr. Kaplan, are you talking about Twinkies?"

     She opened the cover of the book and poised her pen on the title page. "Who should I make it out to?"

     He faltered. Did one sign books to dead people?

     But if she were alive, Nina would be thrilled to have it. "To Nina," he said softly, "the greatest adopted sister a brother ever had."

     A question stood briefly in Ophelia's eyes, then she wrote and signed her name and handed him the book.