Private Entrance (The Butterfly Trilogy) (29 page)

C
OCO SITS IN HER FORTUNE TELLING TENT AT THE CHARITY FAIR,
waiting for the next customer. Finally, the curtain parts and sunlight delivers a dark stranger. He closes the curtain behind him so that the little tent is cozy and intimate, lit only by candlelight. He sits opposite Coco and waits expectantly. She is surprised. Men don't usually go to fortune tellers. She wonders why he is here.

     
He is Mediterranean-handsome. His name will be Carlo or Dimitrios, she decides. "Give me your hands," she says, already feeling herself turn on, just by his looks, his nearness, but now by his hands transmitting his heat to her and she senses a sudden, mutual attraction.

     
She tries to concentrate but the olive-skinned stranger is delving her with his Rudolf Valentino eyes.

     
"It is warm in here, is it not?" he asks in an accent.

     
"Yes," she whispers.

     
He removes his jacket to sit in an open-necked shirt, dark chest hair curled near the collar. So Coco sheds the gypsy shawl she wears for effect and feels his
eyes slide over her bare shoulders, down to her bosom. The elastic neckline of her peasant blouse is pulled down, and she realizes she has let too much cleavage show.

     
"You are a passionate man," she murmurs, receiving his masculine vibes loud and clear.

     
His eyes delve deep into her own, then they travel over her body, undressing her, seeing her naked, lingering here and there with such intensity that she can feel them on her.

     
"I must have you," he says abruptly.

     
He stands, filling the tent with his height and dominance. Coco trembles. She knows it will be a stunning conquest. But dare they? With all those people out there on the fairground, anyone walking in at any minute.

     
She doesn't care. She rises to meet his embrace, melts into his strong arms, presses her mouth to his. She tastes garlic and wine. He sweeps tarot cards and crystal from the table and settles Coco's butt on it, pushing up the gypsy skirt and forcing himself between her thighs.

     
"Wait," she says, embarrassed to realize she forgot to put panties on that morning.

     
He does not wait. Pulling down the elastic of her blouse, he exposes her breasts and helps himself to exploring, fondling, caressing them.

     
His kisses deepen. He is rock-hard against her. She is glad now she forgot the panties. Her fingers manage the zipper with a passion of their own. He springs out with impressive force.

     
With one hand he spreads her open and makes for the target. Coco clings to him with her arms around his neck. As they kiss, she opens her eyes.

     
His dark hair has turned to blond. His swarthy skin is now white.

     
Kenny!

     
And he says, "Someone's at the door."

     Coco opened her eyes.

     It was bad enough she had the hots for him, but did he have to intrude upon her private fantasies?

     Damn it, she had a man to find.

     That morning, after returning to her cottage from giving Sissy Whitboro a psychic reading, Coco had spent an hour with the crystal until it
had finally come through with new information on her soulmate. More fine tuning from the spirit world informed her that he wasn't specifically well-traveled or worldly. What he was, was
wise.

     It hadn't come to her as a word but as a
feeling
, as if Daisy had invited a wise old soul to visit Coco's brain and parade through it as if to say, "This is who you are looking for. Someone like me." She pictured Sean Connery, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein.

     But not Kenny.

     And yet, as she had prepared to put the crystal back in its case, she had slipped into her ongoing fantasy with him. Why couldn't her libido fall into step with the spirit world?

     The second time, she heard the knock that had startled her out of her trance.

     Probably the maid. Coco's room was a mess.

     It was Kenny, standing there in the noon sunshine in Bermuda shorts and a shirt covered in palm trees, and she was both thrilled and dismayed to see him. Could he tell she had just been entertaining naughty thoughts about him?

     "I want you to know something about me," he said solemnly. "Is there somewhere we can talk?"

     Coco was about to say no when she noticed the tiniest dribble of hardened egg yolk on his shirt, like a Christmas ornament on one of the palm trees. She wanted to weep with compassion. Kenny remembered every single fact known to humankind except where to put his napkin when he ate soft boiled eggs.

     The Village offered a delightful outdoor café where diners enjoyed omelets and croissants next to a trickling fountain.

     "Do you know who it is yet?" Kenny asked between bitefuls of avocado and bean sprouts sandwich.

     Coco wished she hadn't told Kenny about her search for her soulmate. In the bright sunlight, in the company of all these normal looking people, it seemed so ridiculous. "The crystal is never specific. I receive generalizations. More like feelings. But once in a while a detail sneaks through. My last case was a missing child. They gave me her teddy bear and I sensed right
away that she was in a dark place, and tied up. I almost missed the important clue because I tensed up. That's the important thing. To stay relaxed."

     "What was the clue?"

     "A sound. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, I'm clairaudient. I heard a factory whistle and the cops were able to locate it. They found the little girl, barely alive, but alive."

     Coco sipped her wine. "You said you wanted to tell me something." The sunlight did nice things to Kenny's hair, giving it little gold tips here and there. She wondered what it would feel like to rake her fingers through all that luscious blondness. She remembered the very realistic kiss in her fantasy, when he turned from Dimitrios to Kenny. Would it be as good in real life?

     Reaching into his pocket, he brought out a photograph and said, "I'm going to show you something I never show to anybody. I carry it as a reminder."

     Coco stared at the picture. It was a young man standing beside a San Francisco cable car. But the car seemed dwarfed next to him.

     "Who's this?" she asked.

     "Me, at three hundred and fifty pounds. That's what I looked like when Vanessa Nichols found me.

     Her eyebrows shot up. "This is
you?"

     "I was a sugar junkie. The guys at the water cooler making me perform, making bets on how much I could remember of something. I'd go home at night and console myself with candy bars."

     He picked up a bean sprout and popped it between his lips.

     "And then one day Mr. Memory was born. I quit my software engineering job and became a lounge act. My size wasn't a detriment to my show since I was a freak anyway. So I earned good money and channeled it all into food. One night Vanessa Nichols caught my act in San Francisco. We talked, and she offered me a job here. She said The Grove would help me get off the sugar." He squinted into the sunlight. "I didn't think anything could help. But this place gets to you." He brought his gaze back to her, two brown eyes filled with sunshine. "It's like there's some kind of magic in the air, or in the water. The first few weeks I was here I recognized my self-destructive behavior and did something about it. That was three years ago."

     Coco watched the nicely formed fingers pick up the rest of the bean
sprouts and deliver them to Kenny's nicely formed lips. "My God, you look great."

     "It's still a struggle. I get cravings." He gave Coco a long look, turned his fork over and over, moved his iced tea glass, cleared his throat. "The fact is, I'm a coward. I'm just hiding here, I'm not really living. I'm afraid to go back out into the world, afraid I'll return to the sugar addiction."

     He reached across the table and rested his hand on Coco's. She caught her breath. Emotions washed over her—Kenny's emotions and her own, colliding, swirling. But she didn't draw her hand away.

     "I told you I spent time at the Carl Jung Institute in Switzerland. They keep writing to me. They want me to help them. They think my unique brain might hold a clue to the causes and cures for diseases involving memory, such as Alzheimer's. I want to help them, Coco, but I'm afraid that if I leave this place I'll be three hundred pounds again."

     Coco was so rocked with emotion that she couldn't speak. Her chest tightened, her throat closed up. As she opened her heart to him and engulfed him with compassion, something dawned on her that gave her such a shock she nearly jumped out of her chair. She wasn't just attracted to Kenny, she was falling in love with him.

     "Mr. Memory!"

     They both jumped, and a shadow blotted out the sun. Coco looked up to see two young women standing over them, giggling, eyes bright. "We caught your act last night!" they both exclaimed, crowding around Kenny as if Coco weren't there. They were twentyish and deeply tanned in bikini tops and shorts. "You were fan
ta
stic! How do you
do
it? Let us buy you a drink!"

     They actually pulled up chairs and enthused all over Kenny with such heat that Coco thought they were going to assault him right there. "Ladies—" he said, flustered and embarrassed. The taller one pressed her large breasts against him and breathed, "You are
so
smart!" Coco recognized the signs. She saw it in the groupies who hung around cop bars, looking to get laid. She decided to made a quick exit, shoving her chair back and muttering, "Thanks for the lunch," before Kenny could stop her, and as she fled, she looked back and saw him autographing a napkin while one of the girls whispered in his ear.

J
ACK HAD NEVER KNOWN SUCH PAIN.

     Not even at Nina's funeral. Since the morning of her death, he had worked hard to suppress his emotions, and although they surfaced at night in bad dreams, during the day he was able to keep himself in control.

     Until Abby Tyler came along.
His arms around her as he helps her to draw back the bowstring.
She affected him in a way no woman had. There was a strength to her, and a vulnerability. But he also sensed a deep well of compassion, as though you could tell her anything and she would not judge. You knew you could rest your head in her lap and pour out your pain and she would take it into herself and give you peace.

     He wished he could do that. His sister brutally murder, raped and made to look like a junkie. He could not take it in—not now, maybe never. The only way to survive was to bury the emotions as deeply as possible and live a surface life. But there was something about Abby that exhumed his whole bundle of emotions. He had to get out of his room, out of the resort. Find control in the bow and arrow.

     Zeb was just returning from a desert run with a carload of guests. When Jack asked if any of the vehicles was available, Zeb consulted his watch and said, "We do not like guests to go driving out by themselves. It is too dangerous. However, I will be happy to take you, sir. Where would you like me to drive you?"

     "As far out as we can go," Jack said, stowing his archery gear in the back of the Jeep.

     Resting his arm on the rolled down window, he closed his eyes and felt the warm, dry breeze on his face. Once he had her fingerprints, Jack had wanted to leave the resort. But all flights out that day were full, no one was leaving by car, and there were no private planes to be hired. He could call for a limousine from Palm Springs, Guest Services had said. And then it occurred to him that Abby's prints might not even be on file anywhere, so he had called the County Hall of Records for the name of the Grove's property owner prior to Tyler. Abby said she had inherited the property from her deceased husband, so the former title deed would give Jack the name of the man she married. After that it would be a simple call to the marriage license bureau and he should have everything he needed to gain access to Abby Tyler's carefully hidden past.

     In the meantime, the pain was insupportable and the only thing that would help him fight it down was to shoot targets until he was exhausted.

     As they raced across the trackless desert, Jack saw nothing for miles around but dunes, cacti, Joshua trees and the occasional desert tortoise. "Not like Africa, I'll bet," he said to his companion.

     "Not the part of Africa I'm from," Zeb replied. As his eyes swept the desert ahead, with its painted rocks and azure sky, into his mind walked the only person in the whole world who seemed to understand him when he talked about the ivory poaching and the doomed elephant. Vanessa Nichols. Who visited him in restless dreams and sleepless nights.

     That morning in the aviary, he had glimpsed her hurrying away. Had she seen the blonde kissing him? He hoped not. But if she had, he prayed she had heard him say to the blonde, "Last night was a pleasant interlude, love. Why don't we keep it that way?" Zeb wasn't looking for a relationship.
It was only ever an in-the-moment thing for him, the sort that happened at resorts and on cruise ships.