A Love for All Time (20 page)

“Sorry to interrupt, Miss Wells, but I have news. Great news! The hijacker has been disarmed! I repeat. The hijacker has been disarmed! The door of the plane is open and the steps are being put in place. The suspense has been heavy, but it’s all over, now. The pilot has radioed that Dan Murdock was able to jerk the fuses from the dynamite after he overpowered the man, who was becoming increasingly agitated. It was feared he was merely waiting for the plane to be airborne before he exploded the bomb.”

Casey turned and leaned her head weakly against Fred’s shoulder, still unable to believe the nightmare was over.

“Oh, God! Oh, God! I was so scared!” Fred repeated the words over and over.

She clung to his hand. “It’s really over?” Her voice was shaky.

“It’s over!” Fred laughed with relief. “Will you be all right? I’ll go down and bring him up here when they release him. I imagine he’ll have some questions to answer.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Casey felt fatigue wash over her like a wave of cement. She stood slumped against the wall. Her eyes went back to the monitor and her ears picked up the newscaster’s voice.

“Dan Murdock is a member of the well-known Murdock family who have been prominent in the lumber business since their grandfather, Silas Murdock, started the mill back in the eighteen seventies. His brother was seen coming into the terminal earlier with a young woman who is presumably Dan Murdock’s fiancée.”

Suddenly Casey’s face appeared on the screen. She gasped and turned to see a portable TV camera moving in for a closeup. Her frantic eyes caught her image again. That couldn’t be her? Her hair was disheveled and pulled back. The side of her face with the horrible scar was on the screen! She looked ravaged!

“The young woman you see on the screen hasn’t identified herself, but she was the one who was seen coming into…”

“No! No!” Casey held her hand out as if to ward off a blow. When the camera kept coming toward her, she broke and ran, rushing by the cameraman
and almost upsetting him. The shock of seeing her scarred face on the screen put a knot in her chest and a lump in her throat. She couldn’t seem to move her feet fast enough to get away, so she concentrated on putting one before the other like a machine until she reached the drive and hailed a taxi.

Twelve

C
asey closed the
door to her apartment and leaned against it, distracted, for a moment, by the pain in her chest, the result of running up the stairway after she had shoved a large bill into the hands of the grateful cab driver.
Are you all right, lady? Are you all right, lady?
His words echoed in her head and now she answered them aloud.

“No, dammit! I’m not all right! I’ll never be all right again!”

With an effort she pushed herself away from the door and went into the bathroom. The face that looked back
at her from the mirror above the sink was as pale as the white wall behind her head. She wet a cloth, held it to her face, and breathed deeply. She didn’t want to be sick.

The shock of seeing herself on the TV screen had brought all her doubts and fears back into focus. Lost to her were the moments of relief and hope after Marge had told her about her mastectomy. Now she remembered that nothing had changed. To have waited in the lounge for Dan, further inhibited by the presence of Claudia Wells, would have been the ultimate humiliation.

Leaving her clothes in a pile on the bathroom floor, Casey stepped into the shower and turned the water on full force. Her knees were quivering and she held tightly to the faucets for support. She stood for a long while beneath the sharp spray, allowing the water to plaster her hair to her head, fill her eyes and her mouth, wash over her scarred body. Her head throbbed, her neck and shoulders ached. Voices, faces, the pandemonium at the airport, crowded into her head and panic tore at her heart in a way she found almost unbearable. When the water turned icy cold she turned it off and reached for the faded terry cloth robe that hung behind the door.

Common sense told her that the weakness in her knees was partly due to her empty stomach. She had eaten very little the night before and nothing at all today. With her hair hanging in strings and dripping wet, she went to the kitchen and opened
the refrigerator, looked inside, and closed it again. Was her mind going bad? She and Judy had cleaned it out before they went to the coast! In the cupboard she found a can of tuna fish, opened it, and stood with her back to the counter eating out of the can.

She felt a sudden pang of guilt for leaving Fred without a word after he had been so understanding and bringing her with him to Portland, but she wasn’t sorry she had left when she did. What had ever possessed her to go to the airport in the first place?

Dan is the hero of the day, she thought with pride. He will be interviewed and photographed. His face will be on every newscast, she thought miserably. I won’t dare watch! I can’t watch him with Claudia Wells beside him. She set the partially eaten can of tuna on the counter because she knew she’d be unable to get another bite of food down her throat. Misery, loneliness, jealousy washed over her.

The rasp of the key in the apartment door startled her and brought her to full awareness, causing her heart to shift into high gear. She stood on stiffened legs in the middle of the room and watched with fascination as the chain on the nightlock stretched taut. She heard a muffled curse.

Dan!

“Open this damned door, Casey!”

Dan! He was very angry!
Feeling more panic stricken than she ever had in her life, and almost
completely breathless, she scraped up enough courage to say: “I don’t want to see you. Go away and leave me alone.”

“Are you going to open the door or am I going to break it down?” The tone of his voice savaged her, sending a shiver of dread down her spine. “Answer me, damn you!” He jerked out the words in a voice she had never heard before. “I don’t want to cause a scene, but I will if you don’t open the door.”

Casey stood glued to the floor, incapable of replying. There was silence on the other side of the door.
Was he leaving?
She believed he was when the pressure of the chain relaxed.

Bang!
He had kicked the door! The wood holding the chain splintered, but held. Oh, my God! She screamed silently. Someone will call the police! She had time for only that one thought before the second blow ripped the chain from the door and sent it crashing back against the wall.

Dan stood glaring at her. His bulk filled the doorway, his face rigid with anger. His hands clenched and unclenched as if he wanted to hit her. He looked like a caged tiger, ready to spring.

“What in the hell are you trying to do to me?” He dropped the words into the quiet like a bomb. He waited a moment and when Casey didn’t answer, he slammed the door shut. “Damn you! You’ve turned my life upside down!” He looked as if he hated her.

Casey couldn’t think, couldn’t feel, couldn’t
move. Her words when they came were wooden and the voice didn’t sound like her voice. “I don’t want you here.”

“I don’t give a damn what you want!” he shouted and moved into the room to glare down at her. “I won’t be treated like some adolescent who has a puppy love crush on you. I’ve been patient, knowing the accident was a shock to your nervous system, but you can no longer use that as an excuse for your indecisive behavior toward me!” His rage increased with every word. “Running away from Fred at the airport was thoughtless and inconsiderate. You scared the hell out of both of us. If I hadn’t been sure you would come here I’d have called the police. I’ve had one hell of a day, lady. You running off in a snit was not the least of it!” There was a kind of desperation in the jerky way he spoke.

“I wasn’t…”

“Don’t give me any of your half-ass excuses,” he snarled.

She stared at him. His angry dark eyes held hers like a magnet.

“I don’t have to give you any excuses at all.” Her own anger flared. “You don’t own me. This isn’t the Dark Ages, Sir Lancelot!” Her eyes flashed into his.

“It’s a good thing for you,
m’lady
, that it isn’t.” There was cold sarcasm in his tone.

She moved, heading for the bedroom. He stepped in front of her. “Get out of my apartment, Dan,” she said coolly.

“This is my apartment. I paid the rent,” he said, cruelly.

“Then I’ll leave.”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind. You’ll stay right here.” His voice was as quiet and as solid as steel.

“I don’t have to!” She was shouting at him now. “I don’t have to stay here. I just want to be left alone.”

“So you can wallow in self-pity? You’re the only beautiful woman in the world who is scarred! Oh, poor Casey!”

“Shut up! Shut up!” she shrieked. Tears were running down her face, but she didn’t know it. “Do you want to take my pride and trample it? Is that what you want?” Her eyes were bright as stars and her mouth quivered as she spoke. “I can turn you off damn quick. I can send you running out of here like a scared rabbit.” She looked at him with disappointment and pain in her eyes and in every line of her face. Frantic fingers worked at the belt at her waist. She flung the robe open, shoved it back and let it fall to the floor. She stood naked before him. Her hands went to her wet hair and she gathered it in a tight bunch at the top of her head, exposing the ugliness of her scarred face and ear.

“Look at me! Look … at … me!” She shouted the words and spaced them to give them emphasis. She turned her body from side to side to give him a full view of her distorted breast and the scars that crisscrossed her body. Her feverish, tear-filled eyes clung to his, her face was rigid with anguish.
“Look! You wanted to see me when we made love. Now’s your chance. Look! Look!” Words popped out of her mouth as if she had no control over them. “Now … aren’t you glad I made you wait to see the sideshow in broad daylight?” Her voice had risen to a hysterical pitch even though sobs constricted her throat. The words came out jerkily and her voice dripped with desperation.

Dan had been stunned into silence. Now he exploded into action. “Sweetheart … why are you doing this to yourself?” He tried to reach out for her, but she knocked his hands away.

“Here I am in living color! What you see is what you get, folks!” She pivoted on her toes. “Wouldn’t you rather have this beside you on the TV screen than … Miss Claudia Wells?” she taunted. She was beginning to feel lightheaded.

“Casey! Stop it!” Dan’s eyes glinted like dark fire and the strength of his fingers brought physical pain when he gripped her shoulders.

Suddenly the anger that had kept her going left her. Her knees began to buckle and her mouth crumbled. Her voice choked on a sob and great gulps of tears tore up from her throat and shuddered through her. With a soft groan Dan pulled her into his arms.

“Let it out, sweetheart. Let it all out,” he said against the top of her head. “Cry, my Guinevere. Cry and then we’ll talk.” He held her close, waiting for the storm of tears to spend themselves.

She was exhausted and did nothing to resist him
when he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the couch and sat down with her on his lap.

“Sweetheart, I didn’t realize how deeply you were hurt. Is this what you’ve been afraid of? Did you think my love so shallow it would wash away when I saw the scars on your body? I knew they were there, darling. I’ve seen them. I’ve touched them. I lay on the table beside you and blood from my body poured into yours while they were sewing you up.” His mouth nuzzled at her wet cheek. “The scars on your body aren’t important to me. You are! You’re all the sweetness and love I’ve ever wanted. I wanted so much to touch your breast and to let you know that it didn’t matter to me that it wasn’t perfect like your other one. Sshhh … don’t cry, my Clementine.”

But she did. She cried with her mouth open against his soft shirt. He smoothed her hair, crooned to her, and traced his mouth along the side of her scarred face.

“Don’t grieve, dear love. This will be gone in a few months and there will be no one to see the rest of you, but me.” He rocked her in his arms. “Now that I know what’s bothering you, we can work it out.”

“But … there’s more! The accident wasn’t your fault.” She gulped back the sobs and kept her face hidden against his shirt. “You don’t have to feel guilty.”

“Guilty?” he repeated against her ear. “Who in the hell says I feel guilty?” Casey didn’t answer, as
fresh sobs shook her. “I don’t feel guilty because I ran into the back of your car. It was an unfortunate accident. One that could have been avoided if you’d had taillights on your car. I had your car towed to the nearest service station and the man told me he had taken out the fuse because the lights didn’t work. He didn’t have one to replace it and you decided to risk going home without rear lights. I don’t feel guilty about the accident, except the part about being glad it happened. I can’t help being glad, because it brought you into my life. We were destined to meet, my darling, in just that way.”

“You knew I had no taillights that night? Why didn’t you say something?”

He cradled her naked body in his arms and tilted her chin so he could place soft kisses on her tear-wet face. “It wasn’t important.” There was more love welling up in his eyes than she had ever seen, and she felt her heart lift on a cloud of happiness. She wrapped her arms about him. “I love you,” he said the words simply and looked deeply into her eyes.

“I love you, too.” Her voice was strained and she clung to him. “You’re sure?” She still was hesitant to believe. “You’re sure that my scars…”

“Hush, sweetheart. I wish I had insisted we leave the light on that first night. I thought you were shy with me.” He buried his face in the curve of her neck and covered her breast with the palm of his hand. “I want to make love to m’lady, but I need a shower and her hair is wet.”

Casey cupped his face with her hands and moved her mouth over his with incredible lightness. “Clementine didn’t mind in the least when you made love to her in the back of the wagon, and you hadn’t had a bath since we crossed the last river.” She nibbled at his lips, felt the trembling in him, and marveled at it. “I love you.” Her fingers worked at the buttons on his shirt.