Almost Always: A Love Unexpected Novel (8 page)

We laughed at ourselves afterwards, and why not? I was learning that there were so many different ways to touch, to find satisfaction. There was gentle, rough, passionate, lusty, needy, and even something as almost comical as phone sex. Kason was a voyage of sensual discovery in so many ways. I found myself hoping the journey would never end.

Twelve

The next several weeks were a combination of torture and triumph. He stayed true to his conviction that our relationship should remain a secret. He had serious fears about the thugs connecting him to me and consequently to my parents at his home in Maine.

My father was recuperating nicely thanks to Mom's ministrations and the beautiful, carefree setting Kason had provided for them. Mom even hinted, as the time went by, that she was seeing something in my father that she hadn't seen in a very long time. I didn't ask. I didn't want to embarrass her. But I read between the lines and was happy for her.

It disturbed, but didn't surprise me, that no one in the theater group seemed to question that the 'couple' they had seen on that one night of Brian's party vanished as quickly as it had formed. Kason and I were amiable enough to one another and I suppose everyone assumed it was just another instance of 'adult playtime' in the world of the Mahkeenac Little Theater. Apparently every one of them had been with each other at one point or another and I was now just one of the bunch.

Having been initiated, so to speak, I was getting a lot more attention from the other actors. I suppose they thought I was fair game. I played along a bit, flirting here and there. Kason was not amused.

"I realize you're frustrated with our arrangement, Annalise," he told me one night. "But I find it deeply disturbing to watch you behave like some cheap tramp at the theater."

"Tramp?" I had responded, incredulous. "Aren't you overreacting a little? I'm just trying to fit in. Suze and Nicky certainly do their share of innocent flirtation."

"There's nothing innocent about their flirtations. And they are sluts, pure and simple."

"You don't seem to mind sluts." I
was
frustrated. And pissed off. "You've certainly been seen with plenty of them."

"Seen by whom?" he asked coldly. I couldn't admit to snooping around on the internet and studying his pictures.

"Never mind."

"I'll have you know that I have not had any kind of sexual relationship with anyone at that theater."

"But everyone . . . " I was shocked. He was either lying or the prevailing assumption was dead wrong.

"Everyone should mind their own business and stay out of mine."

I intended to spend some serious time rethinking how much stock to put into anything someone else told me they 'knew' about Kason Royce.

It wasn't all frustration. Kason took me in his arms more than once in the dark corners of the theater. He told me he missed me, needed the comfort of my touch, wanted the completion of our desire. I lived on those words.

As much as I wanted to secure my parents' safety, I came perilously close to throwing caution to the wind. Only Kason's conviction and control made it possible for me to keep from pushing him into something that could have blown up in my face.

I had to believe in him. He had brought considerable resources to bear on my father's predicament and he was convinced that the people harassing him were anything but amateurs. Kason seemed to have personal knowledge of how this sort of thing worked and I was completely naïve. Trusting him was my only choice. In the end, if we kept our distance from each other it would only make the reunion sweeter, or so I told myself.

There was another bonus. Every night, after the rehearsal was over and we were both tucked into our beds, Kason would call me and we would talk. We became experts at phone sex, but that can only go so far. Maybe it was because we weren't face to face, but laying in our separate beds in the dark that allowed him to let down his guard. He began to let me inside.

I learned that he was the only child of Maryann and Bradley Royce of Oak Park, Illinois. He grew up in the upscale suburb of Chicago, adored by his stay at home mother and well provided for by his father who worked at the Chicago Board of Trade. His father was distant, but Kason said he hardly noticed because his mother was his world and he was hers.

His mother made a rare trip into the Loop to do some Christmas shopping on a cold winter's day. Snow was expected in the evening and Maryann assured her then eleven-year-old son that she'd be back well before the storm hit. She dropped him off at his best friend's house and kissed him good-bye as she ruffled his hair and told him to be good. Kason never again saw his mother alive.

Her car hit an ice patch on the Eisenhower Expressway and was flattened by the semi it skidded into. He told me the next few days were a blur of shock and grief so deep and powerful that he was sure it was going to kill him, too. I wanted to crawl through the phone and take the little-boy Kason in my arms when he said that his father never once held him after Maryann died. He had wept his grief out into his pillow until there weren't any tears left to cry.

By the turn of the New Year, he had left behind the big comfortable home, still decorated for Christmas, and moved into a high rise on Lake Shore Drive. It was expensive, modern and absolutely nothing like what he had spent his entire life around. His friends, of course, were lost to him. His father installed him in the best private school money could buy and hired a professional housekeeper to run his life. At almost twelve he didn't really need a nanny and he certainly didn't get one. He remembered Mrs. Humbolt as being nearly as cold as his father, only present.

Even when his father was home, he wasn't. He'd lock himself away in his office and pretend to work until he was tired enough and had enough scotch in him to put him to sleep. Young Kason learned how to live alone.

"When high school finally and mercifully ended, I had my pick of any university. I had had the finest education and all the time in the world to devote to being a good student," he said one night. "I chose Wharton. In a rare conversation about my life, my father had said that he would like to see me go to Harvard or Princeton. Wharton wasn't mentioned."

I hated the tone that Kason's voice took on when he talked about his father. There was a brittle edge to it that did little to conceal how painful the relationship must have been.

"Is you father still alive?" I asked one night.

"I talk to him once or twice a year. He calls me on my birthday. Sometimes I call him on his."

I couldn't imagine such a thing. My family life was so different. My father was the warmest, most comforting human being I could imagine. To talk to him just once or twice a year would be unthinkable.

Kason's narrative went on for many nights and I began to be able to piece together the complex puzzle of the man I was falling harder and faster for every day.

He said he had thrived in college. The academic world was comfortable and comforting to him. Studying was all he really knew. I could relate.

"So, after I graduated, I came to New York. The rest, as they say, is history." This was the wrap up he gave one night just before he told me good night. The following evening, when he picked up the thread again he was speaking in the present tense, telling me about what his firm did and how it worked.

Wait!
I wanted to say.
What about Elsa? What about the girl you were going to marry? The one who was killed?
Something stopped me. I knew if he wanted to tell me, he would. I knew if I asked, he'd stonewall. Satisfying my curiosity had to wait. I couldn't risk spooking him.

***

Dress rehearsal was finally upon us. I got to see Kason in the painstaking make-up that our resident genius had applied to a handsome young face to make it old, washed out and tired. The make-up guy had done an amazing job. Even though the audience would never see some of the details—like the tiny spider veins on Kason's nose and cheeks—it had its value for the guys on stage.

Tom and a few of the set construction crew were the only people in the audience. I was backstage checking and rechecking props, curtain cues, light cues and every small detail I could think of. If the worst happened and someone dropped a line, I had my script in hand to prompt him.

The men did a brilliant job. It was going to be a helluva play. Kason was on stage for almost the entire action. There were only three instances that he stepped out of the limelight and behind the curtain where I stood. When he came to stand beside me the first time he reached around and gave me a squeeze. The second time he slid his hand around my waist and caressed me. The last time he whispered in my ear "when this play is over next weekend, it's going to be our time. I can't wait any longer." Then he was back on stage for the final scene.

"Great job everyone," Tom announced when dress was over. "Opening tomorrow night should be a winner. Break a leg and I'll see you tomorrow at seven sharp. Don't any of you give me a heart attack and come late."

The theater was packed for Thursday's opening night. The play was a big hit. I suddenly understood why Tom had rehearsed the play backwards. It was a brilliant move on his part. Because the actors knew how dark and horrifying the ending was, they failed to recognize the humor that infused the opening half of the play. But the audience didn't know. The audience thought the first act was hilarious. So, the actors on stage never knew to 'play for laughs' as they might have. The result was a completely natural delivery.

When Kason came backstage for the first intermission, he and the guys were all flabbergasted at the uproarious response they were getting.

"Tom's a real cagey one. I would never have imagined we'd be so funny," Brian chuckled.

"It was a stroke of genius that's for sure," Kason agreed. "Did you realize how funny the first act is, Annalise?"

"I was as in the dark as the rest of you."

After the bows had all been taken, it was off to Suze's house for the first of the nightly cast parties that Jenn told me were the real highlight of the Little Theater's productions. Every party giver tried to have the most lavish feast, the best liquor and the liveliest music.

Suze had a gorgeous house just outside of town. The entire lawn had been transformed into a fairy-lit park and a jazz trio played discreetly on a small stage.

Kason pulled me into the shadows at the first opportunity.

"I don't know how much more of this I can take. I need to have you, Annalise."

"And I you."

"I am aching for you. My mouth waters every time you're near me."

His words made my insides do a little happy dance. "Mom and Dad are going to come back to New York next weekend, Kason. So what's the point of hiding our relationship? If the thugs want to find them in New York that's easy enough. The connection to your house in Maine becomes moot."

"I still worry about
your
safety, though."

"Being with you doesn't make me any less safe. It may make me more so."

He pulled me against him and held me in a fierce embrace. "When the play closes, let's go away. Let's have a week or two just for ourselves."

"Kason, I told you the other night I have three interviews scheduled for the week after the play closes.
I
have to get a job."

"You were serious about that?"

"Why would I kid about job interviews? I haven't exactly built up a vast fortune this summer."

"I assumed you were just baiting me. Surely you know I'm not going to let you take some menial job that is going to run your life and take up all your time."

"What do you mean 'you're not going to let me'?"

"Just that. For god's sake, Annalise, do you think I'm going to just allow you to float away from me?'

I was caught between the urge to slap his face for assuming he could dictate my life to me and the desire to have him tell me how he intended to keep me from 'floating away'.

"What do you
suggest
I do?"

He brought his hand under my chin and lifted my face to his. "I
suggest
that after our final Saturday night performance, we skip the godawful cast party and get on my plane head . . . I don't know yet, but somewhere spectacular. After we are punch drunk and senseless at the brink of a passion induced coma, I
suggest
that we put our heads together and figure out something you'd like to do with yourself when your legs aren't wrapped around some part of my anatomy."

When I didn't answer immediately he went on.

"I assume you won't allow me to just 'keep' you." I shook my head. "I thought not. Marjorie and Donald would disapprove at any rate and that won't do. So that leaves a number of options. You could work for me . . . "

"Doing what?" I shook my head again. "I don't think that's a very good option."

"How about a business? Or a consultancy? Or freelance writing—I'll buy whatever you produce! Or websites. There are endless possibilities."

"You make it sound easy."

"It
is
easy. We'll sort it out on our vacation."

"You certainly manage to take plenty of vacations."

"I'm filthy rich and self employed. It's a beautiful thing."

"Modest, too."

"Modesty is overrated." He burst into a big grin. "Ah-ha! I've just hit on where we're going to go on vacation."