Forbidden Dreams (18 page)

“And you show me,” he said in that special low growl of his that told her he was deeply aroused. “Show me the way to heaven.”

She did.

An hour later Shell stretched again, languidly, and smiled at him. “I believe you.”

He followed the curve of her hipbone with a finger, then traced a long, circuitous route to the point of her jaw. “About what?”

“That you love me.”

His nose wrinkled. “Oh, that.” He shrugged, then bent to kiss the last place his finger had touched.

“Shell?” He sat back and looked at her, his face too serious.

“Yes?”

“That’s what I want to say.”

She blinked. “What do you want to say?”

“Yes.”

“Jase?” She shook her head, searching his eyes for any glint of humor that might be lurking there. There was none that she could see. “Is this conversation supposed to make sense?”

“Yes.”

“You already said that.”

A tiny smile played at the corners of his mouth. “Then you’re supposed to say ‘Thank you.’ ”

“Oh. Thank you.” Quiet, sweet, precious moments passed. “What am I thanking you for?”

“For saying yes.”

She was silent for a minute. “I seem to have forgotten the question.”

“No wonder. You asked it so long ago. Twenty-three-and-a-half years ago, to be exact.”

She went very still, then hitched herself up against the headboard and folded her arms on her knees. “What question, to be exact?”

“Well, maybe it was more of a statement than a question. You said, ‘When we’re all grown up, we’ll get married, and you can kiss me, and we’ll have lots of babies.’ I’m simply agreeing with your suggestion. A little late, maybe, but very, very sincerely.”

She drew in a breath, but it didn’t help. She still felt light-headed, floating. She let it out and tried another one. Maybe the first one had missed the oxygen somehow. It hadn’t. Maybe there was no more oxygen in the room. “Jase?”

“Marry me, Shell. Have my babies. Make a home for me. With me.”

She wanted to weep, but she wouldn’t. She wanted to believe him, believe he’d still feel this way a week from now, a month, a year, but she couldn’t. “You’re feeling sentimental, that’s all,” she said gently, sadly. “Christmas trees, prettily wrapped presents, your stocking.”

Lil had filled a stocking for him, and he’d been more than slightly touched by the kindness. He hadn’t had a Christmas stocking since he was five years old, he’d told them. Lil and Shell had both cried over that. Even Kathleen’s nose had turned red, and she’d rushed to the kitchen to do something to the turkey.

“New Year’s Eve makes people mourn the passing of the season,” Shell said, after Jase had shaken his head to each of her suggestions.

“This,” he reminded her, “is New Year’s Day.”

“But …” She searched his eyes. “Those fatherless children you don’t want weeping over your grave. What about them, Jase?”

He brushed her hair back from her face. “I want to see them grow up. A tall, thin blond boy who’ll look like your father. A little girl who’ll look just like you. Maybe two or three of those. And another, who looks like me. A boy who might resemble your mother, but in a masculine way. Maybe a couple who’d have your grandmother’s courage, or one or two with the characteristics of—”

“Exactly how many do you want hanging over your grave? That sounds like about a dozen to me.”

“Oh. Too many? But we’d have so much fun making them. And as for the grave scene, I’ve scratched it. Like I said, I want to watch our children grow up. I can make my leave of absence permanent, Shell.”

She stared at him. “And do what? Write nasty little stories for a nasty little newspaper, so that nasty, small-minded people can get their jollies reading them?” She heard the shrillness in her tone and hated it, but she hated more the idea of his doing that. He had to know. If he really wanted to marry her, he had to know how she felt about that.

Oh, dear God. He would also have to know why. She clamped a hand over her mouth.

“I’ll only write nasty stories about nasty people, never about nice ones.” His smile told her he was teasing. He nuzzled her hand away from her mouth with his chin and planted a loud, wet kiss on her lips. “Please, Shell. What I do and where I do it is immaterial as long as I can have you in my life.”

“Your column, though. It may have started out as a cover for your other activities, but you’ve made a success out of it, haven’t you? You won’t want to give it up, not if you give up the FBI too.”

He sat back from her. “I’m telling you,” he said with exaggerated patience, “it doesn’t matter what I do. I can wash cars, or wait tables, or dung out chicken coops. I don’t have to work for a newspaper if it bothers you. I love you. I want to grow old beside you. I want those babies you promised me all those years ago. And I want you. Not just for a long time. I’m looking for something pretty damned close to forever. I’m saying yes, Shell. Now, please, please, say what you have to say.”

She pulled in a tremulous breath, hesitated, then said, “Thank you.”

Jase let out a whoop that made Skeena bark excitedly right outside the door, then he hauled Shell back down flat on the bed.

“Jase, don’t,” she said. “There’s so much we have to talk about.”

He grinned. “Oh, right! There is one very important thing. I will never, ever, as long as I live, agree to eat a spaghetti-sauce sandwich.”

She pretended a huff. “Sorry. You’ll learn to like them or it’s no deal.”

He laughed and kissed her with dizzying intensity.

“Jase, please, wait. We have to be serious. We need to talk.”

“I don’t want to wait. And I’m very serious. It’s just that I don’t want to talk. We can spend our golden years doing that, and watching Wheel of Fortune if you like, but right now what we have to do is make love. Make babies.”

She laughed and clung to him. He was right. Now was not the time for talk. Now was the time for love. Details could be sorted out later.

“You look pretty busy, Madame Proprietor,” Jase said, leaning in the doorway of Shell’s back room. She looked up from the box of books she was unpacking and tried to leap to her feet and fly into his arms. Just seeing him after a three-day separation, though, turned her weak and limp with need, a need that couldn’t be assuaged there in her store.

She remained crouched where she was, knowing her face was a complete giveaway of her feelings anyhow. Jase had told her repeatedly over the past three weeks that she couldn’t hide her love. She didn’t see any reason to try.

“How’s Grandma?” she asked, when the strength finally returned to her legs and she could stand. She lifted the box to a table and stood looking at the man she loved. The smile she couldn’t contain beamed forth. “Oh, Jase, I’m so glad to see you! I wasn’t expecting you until the five-thirty ferry.”

“I missed you so bad I caught the three-thirty, and Grandma’s fine.” He came fully into the room and shut the door, then perched one hip on the corner of her desk. His smile faded.

‘We got a tape of Sterling discussing his ‘case’ with Evelyn. Shell, she’s a phenomenal actress. No one would ever guess that she knew he was up to no good, or that she wasn’t just as enamored of him as she was before Christmas. She gave him those phony bearer bonds your dad prepared—worth several million. As soon as he tries to leave the country with them, or cash them in, we’ll have him dead to rights. Your dad has customs officers watching for him at every border point Sterling could conceivably use, and every major financial institution in both countries is on the alert.”

“Good.” Her voice shook with passion. “I want to see him go to jail for the rest of his natural life.”

Jase smiled crookedly. “Your grandmother and I have agreed that hanging would be appropriate.”

“Yes, well, we have to take what the law provides.”

He nodded, but not happily. “You and Evelyn were right, you know. It was a good move to bring Elwin in on this. He and Sondra are being wonderfully supportive of her.”

“Oh, Jase, I should be there too. Are you sure she’s all right?”

“She’s more angry than sad now, Shell. And she’s one very tough lady. You know that. I’ve promised her that we’ll come and visit her in a few weeks, after she goes back to Palm Springs. Call her, why don’t you? Talk to her for a minute or two, put your mind at rest.”

“But … what if Sterling’s there? It might be hard for her to talk normally.”

“Yeah. That’s true. And speaking of hard …” He grinned. “Can we get out of here soon and go home?”

Shell’s insides rippled, and she glanced at her watch. “Soon. It’s almost closing time. I just want to finish unpacking this box and getting the books onto the shelves.” As she spoke, she continued to take books out. She glanced at their jackets, dusted them off, and set them on the cart beside her. “It’s an order that should have been here before Christmas but got held up somewhere,” she said as she found the invoice and began checking off titles.

“It’s really frustrating when that happens,” she went on, “because sales are never as brisk in January and Februa—” She broke off and stared at the back cover of a book as she lifted it from the box. Then she looked up at Jase, her face drained of color, her lips parted on the word she hadn’t completed.

“Jase …?” She glanced down at the jacket photo, back at him, and repeated his name. “Jase.”

He knew heart-break when he saw it happening right before him.”

Her eyes burned into his. “Jason Calhoun,” she said. “
When Angels Fall
.” She read aloud the copy above his picture. “Shocking expose by FBI agent. A must-read for anyone who wants the down-and-dirty on our corrupt court system. Calhoun judges the judges; finds more wrongdoing in court than out.” She stared at him. “Jase! You wrote this—this trash? This slime?” He reached for her as her face crumpled, but she shoved him away with furious strength.

“That picture!” She slapped her hand over it, hiding it from her sight. “That was it! That was why I associated your face with a camera, but it was a promotional photograph I remembered, not you, not the boy I knew. The jacket picture—God! Do you think I’d have ordered this book for general sale? To put on my shelves? It’s a special order for a customer. I had no idea what it was all about or what kind of tripe that customer wants to read. I’ll tell him to get it elsewh—”

“Shell, listen to me!”

“No!” she shouted. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say! You’re a liar, Jase! A cheat! You know how I feel about this kind of muck! Of course that’s why you didn’t tell me. Oh, sure you don’t mind quitting the FBI. You can always find something else to do. I don’t like your column? You’ll quit that too? No problem, right?”

She ran an agitated hand through her hair and sobbed once, harshly. “Why would there be a problem when you have something so much better to turn to, some way to earn so much more money with your poison, your filth, your lies?”

She slammed the book down hard on the table. “This way you can destroy lives and reputations on a much bigger scale! Right, Jase? Right? Eat people for breakfast wholesale! Run their lives through the wringer of your printing presses, squeezing out every little detail that might titillate the jaded interest of every small-minded, sleaze-loving cretin in the Free World! Why limit your audience to southern California? Go national! International! Make a really big splash in the sewer! Right?”

Suddenly, he was as angry as she was. “No, dammit, wrong! I don’t destroy lives. I write only the truth! That book evolved out of my columns, was requested by the publisher because he saw value in what I wrote.”

“Value?” She picked up the book again and read aloud. “ ‘The down-and-dirty’? There’s value in that?”

“I’m not responsible for the damned jacket copy. I’m not responsible for lurid reviewers’ quotes. I’m only responsible for what’s between the covers, and that I can vouch for. Every word I wrote is true, and the people I wrote about are the ones who destroy lives, not me. Why shouldn’t the world know? It may protect the innocent in the future!”

“Bull!” She flung the book at him, and it skipped across the top of the desk, bounced off the wall, and landed face up on the floor. “That’s what you all say, you manure peddlers! You cite the public’s right to know as if it were some kind of mantra. What about the rights of the innocent? What about the rights of people who don’t want to see their dirty linen spread out for everyone to view? What about the rights of the families of those men you attack? Don’t they have the right not to be hurt, not to be smeared, not to see their loved ones destroyed by your poison?

“Get out, Jason O’Keefe, or Calhoun, or whatever the hell your name really is. Get out of my store and out of my life. I never want to see you again!”

“Oh, you’ve got it, lady. No problem! I’m outta here. And I’ll take my offenses with me.”

He picked up the book, took a handful of cash from his pocket and tossed it to the floor where the book had lain, then turned on his heel and left, slamming the door behind him.

“Shirl, darling, you have to stop crying sometime, you know. You’ve been at it for nearly three weeks.”

Shell wiped her eyes and sat up, dredging up a smile for her mother. “That’s not true. I don’t cry all the time, Lil. I haven’t cried for days. Until this afternoon.” She’d come home from work an hour earlier and succumbed to the tears she’d been fighting all day. PMS, she’d told herself, but she knew that wasn’t true. She’d had her period a week earlier. She’d have no little child to weep over her grave, and she’d cried about that for the better part of a night. “And I never cry at work.”

“Well, you certainly do a lot of it at home,” Lil said briskly, “and I’m getting weary of it. Are you ready to tell me what went wrong?”

Shell straightened the book catalogs on her desk, squaring them with the corner. “It simply wasn’t meant to be.” Stubbornly, she clung to the phrase she’d used since the day she’d thrown Jase out.

“Would it have something to do with this?” Lil pulled a tabloid from the folds of the blanket covering her knees.

LILIANNE MURDERED
, the headline screamed. Then:

“Twenty years after the disappearance of the most beautiful woman in the world, her former lover finally admits to the slaying. ‘I killed her,’ says the ghost of Maximillian Elkford, confessing from beyond the grave through channeler Andrea Kiminski, a Santa Monica housewife and medium. Elkford, who died of AIDS three years ago (see p. 3: Lilianne)”