All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) (71 page)

He lifted his hands briefly. “So we limped along for another year, and she grew increasingly impatient, and I grew increasingly tired of being on the defensive, and we enjoyed being together less and less. Then came the ultimatum, and I told her no. She went off with a girlfriend on a cruise, and when she came back, she told me it was over. She’d met someone else. She married him two months later.”

“Oh, Richard.” Her natural compassion bubbled up. No matter how glad she was that Jennifer was out of his life, she ached for him. “I am so glad she was there for you.”

He leaned back against the rough wall, and now his gaze was level upon her.

“Your turn, Laura. You have a decision to make. I’ve told you everything, I’ve told you things I planned to take to my grave with me – this is who I am now. Francie is part of my life, she is part of who I was and who I’ve become. I failed with her, she was a terrible mistake, but – strange to say, she ended up making me a better man. I cannot go back and undo the past, so – Laura—” And his voice was straight and uncompromising, and she could not look away from him.

“Yes?” Her voice was shaking.

“You have to decide if you can live with that. You have to decide if you can accept me for who and what I am, even though that includes Francie. You have to decide if you can forgive me for her.”

His gaze bored in on her.

“I am not going to put up with your jealousy. I can’t deal with you still mourning that she was there that night and you weren’t. If you are going to let Francie eat at you, then let’s call it quits right now and go our separate ways.” In her horror, she saw a muscle pull at his mouth. He said quietly, “I can’t deal with another scene like today. It’s up to you.”

She sat there rigid, unable to move, her heart beating painfully within her. He was watching her carefully, intensely, waiting for her answer; he was no longer the man whose eyes had glowed at the sight of her the night before. She had come up against a wall.

She had wrecked it all because she, not he, was still stuck in the past.

She had thought she would destroy the world for him, and instead, she had destroyed the promise that lay between them. It might not have been love – he might never have fallen in love with her – but, she thought numbly, he had seen in her his last best hope for the life he’d wanted and been denied.

She didn’t have to ask if he had ever told Jennifer about Francie. She knew he had remained silent. He had kept Francie between himself and God.

But, in one morning, he had laid himself right out for her. This man who kept his inner self private and isolated had trusted her enough to let her in.

And she was going to destroy it all because she still had Francie’s voice in her head.

“Well,” he said briskly, “I guess that’s that.” He started to rise. “Are you ready to go?”

Laura found her voice, shaking, rough. “Sit
down
, Richard, don’t – you – dare – move.”

He stilled and watched her warily.

She rose and crossed the pavilion, and sank to her knees before him. She took his hand, tightly clenched on the arm of the chair, she coaxed his fingers open so that they touched palm to palm, and she kissed his fingertips. The floor was brutal against her knees, every muscle was going to ache later, and she didn’t care. That didn’t matter.

She made herself meet his eyes, and maybe he saw the desperation in her face. She felt like a swimmer drowning, with no strength left, turning to try to make it to shore.

“I’m still seventeen inside,” she said. “I know that’s stupid, I know I’ve gone beyond that. But still – I feel like that girl. I know it’s a cliché, but that girl was always on the outside, looking in, pressing her nose against the bakery window, and honestly – I still feel like that.”

She looked down, and drew in a long painful breath.

“That’s how I felt about you and Francie. I was outside looking in at you both. For fourteen years, I’ve been that girl. I’ve been the loser. That’s how I always saw myself. The loser. I think – sometimes I think that I made up Cat Courtney because she was a winner like Francie, she had all Francie’s passion and fire, and at least when I was Cat, I could be that girl with you.”

She caught the bare shake of his head. “No,” he said. “I never saw Cat in Francie, not once.”

“You should have,” her voice was high-pitched and frightened. “You made love with Cat the last two nights. I faked it, Richard, I was a fraud. You thought you were with me – and you wanted to be, didn’t you, you said so – and instead,” her voice caught in a sob, “that was Cat – I was failing again, and Cat wouldn’t fail, she never fails, she wins, and I – I just stepped right out of myself and she took over.”

“So that’s it.” She heard an element of interest in his voice, but she couldn’t see him. Her eyes were awash with unspilled tears.

“And you know why?” she demanded. “It’s because I’m still
seventeen!
I’m still trying to get your attention from when I was
seventeen!
I’m still trying to win that boy you used to be. And that’s so stupid, I’m so stupid, I’m a grown woman, and I don’t even
like
boys anymore. That girl and that boy – and Francie – they don’t matter, they no longer exist.”

She looked at him, and now she felt no fear. She was rolling the dice, and maybe she was going to lose everything. Maybe he was going to walk away from her, and this time he would not come back. She trusted herself. She had never done anything so right in her life.

“I’m a woman now. I’m not a girl,” she said clearly, “and I don’t want that boy. He is not enough for me anymore. I want – I want
you
, Richard, I want the man you are now, nicks on his soul, banged-up heart, and all. I want the man who can admit he was dead wrong. I want the man who’s failed and fallen and screwed up, who knows how to pick up again and go on living, because he can forgive me if I fail and fall and screw up. And if Francie helped make you that way, well, then,” her voice shook with tears, “I guess I am in her debt.”

She scrambled to her feet and looked down at him. “Back there at the house,” she said, “I saw those silly girls making up to you, and I saw myself trying to get your attention all over again and failing, and I saw Francie again, winning. I was irritated with the others talking to you, and that was selfish, I know, but the girls – they got to me. They got to that girl who’s still inside me. So I did just what you said I did, I flattened them, and it wasn’t a fair fight.”

“Not even close. They were outclassed, and you let everyone know it.”

“And if Francie had been there, hanging all over you,” Laura said, “you know what?” She stared down at him, her breath rising and falling hard. “I would have flattened her too.”

He looked at her silently for a long moment, and then he rose, and his arms went around her very gently. “Francie,” he said, “wouldn’t have known what hit her.”

She breathed a sigh of relief, tension spilling from her, and her arms went around his waist, but her voice was fierce. “You’re mine,” she said. “Don’t you forget it, Richard Ashmore. Diana may have been dumb enough to blow it with you, and Jennifer settled for second best, and Francie gave up without a fight, but I won’t. I am serving notice on you and any woman who looks at you and thinks, ‘Hmmm, I’d like that’ – I will sweep her out of the way, I will fight for you, I will not let you go,
I will not lose
.”

He framed her face in his hands, his long fingers warm against her temples, and he kissed her then, and this was not the lover’s kiss of the night before. His kiss did not seduce, did not explore. He kissed her, fellow survivor of a life-and-death battle, he kissed her, banged-up heart to banged-up heart, and she kissed him right back.

When they parted, they stared at each other for a long time. Her face was heated, she could feel it, and her heart beat so hard so that she was sure he could hear it. Underneath his tan, she saw a flush on his cheekbones, and he was breathing as hard as she was.

She saw in him the same recognition she felt, that they had breached a point of no return. There was no going back now.

“My God – you have the heart of a warrior,” and his eyes were alight. “If we had a door—”

“I don’t mind,” said Laura immediately, before her nerve started to fade. “No one’s around.”

“Three people came by a while ago and left when they saw us in here. Besides, that’s a hard floor, and you bruise too easily.” He leaned against the wall, and pulled her close against him. “Come here, my lady. We need to cool down. I can’t go out in public right now.”

She laughed up at him, giddy with relief. “And standing like this is going to help?”

“No, but it doesn’t hurt either.” He looked down at her. “How, Laura, how did you ever hide this from us – this lioness?”

“No one looked.”

“I never saw,” he said, almost to himself. “All those years – I never saw. I will not make that mistake with you ever again.” He looked out at the fields for a moment and then back at her. “We’re well and truly caught. You know that, don’t you?”

She nodded and whispered, “What – what do we do?”

“I don’t know,” Richard said. “This is a royal mess. I have no idea what we do or where we go from here. But –” he lifted her chin to look at her squarely – “whatever happens, we stand together.”

She nodded again, and he pulled her tight against him, and she pulled him tight against her, and they kissed each other. Not a kiss of passion, she scrambled to think, with the small part of her mind that even
could
think, but a pledge, a promise, a vow. A seal to a covenant, truer than those vows they’d each made, long ago, to other people.

They ran out of breath, and he settled her back against him, his hand against her back.

We stand together.
She was not alone anymore. And he no longer stood alone, as he had for so many years, fighting his way through the consequences of his disastrous marriage. He had been in exile for even longer than she had – a silent, self-imposed exile, but no less solitary. But no more. Their cold years of exile had come to an end in this quiet pavilion.

She pressed her cheek to his shoulder.

“Listen, Laura, about what you said.” She looked up. “About faking it.”

So much for her high. She slid right back down to earth.

“Now don’t start apologizing,” he said. “It took a lot of courage to admit that.” He brushed her hair from her face. “I knew something was wrong Friday night. You were there with me – then you weren’t. I know women can fake it to get it over with, and we men don’t always see it – you have the advantage of us there. Did I pressure you, Laura? Did you feel you had to pretend to satisfy me?”

She bit her lip. She couldn’t tell him the truth, that she, not Francie, had pushed him off his moral high plane on the island. He’d made it clear that he thought he’d been with Francie that day. How could she explain what had happened to her when he had moved inside her and it had all come back?

I put a bullet in you.

No. New reality. Francie did.

She made herself look at him. “I was having trouble – you know, getting to—”

“Did you have problems with your husband? Did you feel you had to please him?”

She wasn’t sure of the protocol, discussing one lover’s performance with another. “Not after a while, after we got used to each other. It took a few months before – well, I got into the swing of things.”

“That makes sense.” He sounded matter-of-fact.

It seemed very strange to be talking like this, when he was leaning against the wall and she was practically lying on top of him. “What does?”

He lifted her chin with his hand. “Good sex takes time. You’ve had – what, I’m guessing the one sexual partner before this? And you were very young when you married. There’s a learning curve. We have to learn each other, see what we enjoy together, find our own rhythm. But that’s not going to happen if you think you have to pretend in order to please me.”

She felt herself turning bright red. “Friday – it wasn’t going to happen for me. I tried to concentrate, I really did, but – I just lost it.”

“Not surprising, after the traumatic day you had – Lord, you scared me when I saw you lying on the floor. It would have been a miracle if you’d been able to relax.” He brushed her mouth lightly. “Lighten up, Laura. It’s supposed to be fun. The only one you have to please is yourself. And if I’m not doing something you want me to do, tell me. I’m not a mind reader.”

She kissed the shoulder she had wounded. “Okay. I’ll tell you what to do every minute.”

He laughed. “Thanks,
Lucy
. Now – last night – I have to say it wasn’t obvious. You seemed very much with me. What happened?”

She stared at his shirt. “I froze at the last moment. It was easier to let Cat take over.” She winced. “Boy, that sounds crazy, doesn’t it? It was easier to put on the Cat mindset.”

“Don’t,” and she heard the firm note in his voice. “You’re cheating us both if you do. I told you, I don’t want Cat between us. She is smoke and illusion, and I want—” He grinned down at her. “I want my mistress.”

She glanced up at him through her lashes. “You’re not going to let me forget that, are you?”

“Hell, no. I’m going to hold it over your head for the next fifty years.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“Mistresses,” Richard said, “have one well-defined duty. If you’re going to talk the talk—”

Laura kissed him, loving the touch of him, the taste of him, the feel of him against her body. She felt ready to slay dragons. “Take me home.”

~•~

They talked about it halfway down the mountain. They talked about it in the car in the parking lot. They talked about it in the plane. They eyed his car on the ground, but they were so close. They could wait another few minutes.

They made it as far as the drawing room at Edwards Lake. And the only cat present waited patiently, meowed once at his oblivious owner sprawled in exhaustion across her equally exhausted lover, and went off in search of his food bowl.

Chapter 23: Diana, Smashing