Out of Bounds (12 page)

Anton bowed his head, sick with guilt. He’d
asked young Jack to clear it away, but there it had stayed. He’d
had too much else to do to insist on moving it.

After the brigade and concerned neighbors
departed, he stood with Jetta in the darkness and inspected her
wrecked and sodden room. She shivered fiercely now the adrenaline
rush had passed.

“I’m indecent,” she groaned, staring down at
her once-white broderie nightgown. It clung damply over her
breasts, and she folded her arms in a useless attempt to hide how
cold she was.

“They didn’t mind a bit.”

She managed a small brave smile at that.
“Hopefully they were too busy. Anyway, you’re not looking too smart
yourself.”

He knew that. His dark blue pajama pants
stuck wetly to his legs. Cinders and dirt striped his naked chest
and arms, even though he’d tried to swipe himself clean. Blood
seeped from a stinging graze on one shoulder. It ached like a bitch
from the repeated pounding it had taken against the door.

“Bedtime, babes—you’re shaking with shock and
cold.”

“I’ll make up a bed on the sofa.”

“You must be joking—I don’t think either of
us is on for that tonight,” he said, sweeping her into his arms,
heedless of his pain.

“Put me down, Anton!” she squeaked, face half
buried against him as he cradled her against his chest.

He strode along the hall towards his
room.

“Got you right where I want you now,” he
teased, adjusting his grip as she tried to struggle free.

“Let me go,” she screamed.

“Not a hope. You need a comfortable bed and a
warm man wrapped around you.”

“Nooooo!” she howled. “Put me down. Please,
Anton, please...”

She shook harder now if that was possible—a
trembling little wreck of a girl with tears running down her face
and dark eyes wide with terror. Obviously deeply in shock. He
couldn’t begin to imagine how bad it must have been for her,
trapped in that room.

“No!” she choked, struggling against him.

His arms wrapped around her more securely.
“You need to get warm,” he insisted.

“I need to get
down
.”

“Let me warm you up. You’re shivering enough
to shake apart.”

He turned and bumped his bedroom door open
with his hip, then carried her in, collapsed down onto the bed,
pulled her against him, and somehow got the duvet over them
both.

“Pleeeeeease!” she begged. And then she
started to scream as though the hounds of hell were after her.

“Shush,” he urged, trying to cover her mouth
to quieten her, but she snapped at his hand like a frenzied
animal.

She continued to wriggle and swear, and he
pinned her down by sliding his legs around hers in a scissors
action.

“Shhhhh...stay still, stay still,” he
groaned, one arm clamped around her waist, pulling her back against
the warmth of his chest, the other cradling her thrashing head and
wrapping around to confine her arm. “I’ve got you safe, Jetta. Calm
down.”

It was minutes before she gave in and stopped
struggling—long hellish minutes for his injured shoulder. She
continued to tremble. Should he call an ambulance and get her
properly checked over?

“Any better now?” he whispered, dropping a
soft kiss on her nape. He’d wanted to kiss that tender curve since
the moment he’d seen her—feisty, dusty, and no matter how bad an
idea it had been.

“Don’t, Uncle Graham,” she begged. “Don’t
make me.”

What was she talking about? Deep in shock and
half out of her mind by the sound of it. “Who’s Uncle Graham?” he
asked.

“Don’t make me do it.”

“Make you do what?”

“Let me go. I don’t want to do it.”

“You don’t have to do anything. What is it
you don’t want to do?

She dissolved into sobs again. “The trousers
thing,” she whispered in a broken voice.

Suspicion—hot and sick and horrible—flooded
through him. “Who’s Uncle Graham?” he demanded. “Jetta—it’s me,
Anton. I’ve got you safe. Who the hell is Uncle Graham?”

Some of that registered with her because the
trembling eased down a notch.

“Anton?” she asked in a voice filled with
wonder. She twisted in his arms and examined his face. Hers was
fright-white and tear stained, and now daubed with blood from the
graze on his shoulder.

“Me,” he said, loosening his death grip so he
could stroke her face and hair. “Only me. Only Anton. Making you
warm after you got so cold.”

He watched as she closed her eyes for a few
seconds like a trusting child. Her sooty lashes lay against
porcelain skin, but not for long. Her eyes shot wide open again,
full of queries.

“And I’m in your bed?”

“You’re in my bed. Safe and warm. Relax and
get some sleep—you’ll need it for tomorrow’s cleanup.”

“I can’t stay in bed with you!” She began to
struggle again, and he dragged her back against his chest and
wrapped his arms around her. He hurt, he shook with exhaustion, and
the rush of the fire had deserted him, leaving him short on
patience and desperate for rest.

“Of course you can stay in bed with me,” he
snapped. “Where else are you going to sleep? I’m not bloody Uncle
Graham, whoever he might be. Tell me who he is and what he did, and
maybe we can sort this out.”

She stayed silent for a very long time, and
finally sighed—a long soft resigned exhalation that almost broke
his heart. “He was my Dad’s brother,” she said in a cracked
whisper. “My Daddy’s only brother.”

She seemed disinclined to say more, but Anton
sensed she was still wide awake and sorely troubled.

He buried his face in her hair, barely
smelling the smoke because he was awash with it too. “Tell me,” he
murmured against her ear.

“I can’t. I really can’t. It was a long time
ago...”

“And it’s not going away, is it? He’s still
got you spooked. Tell me, and maybe we can make him go.”

He waited, teeth clenched to stop them
chattering together, and finally she relaxed against him by the
tiniest fraction. Even that miniscule movement had him mentally
cheering.

“Your Dad’s only brother,” he prompted
softly.

“Younger than Daddy. A lot younger. Eighteen
I think.”

She clammed up again, and Anton waited,
suspicious of what would follow, and hoping beyond hope he was
wrong. “So he was just a teenager, really?”

“A big
boy
,” she said with sudden
fierce derision. “Always eating takeaways. A fat big boy whose
breath stank like onions from the burgers.”

“And he came to visit your Dad?”

A tremor rippled right through her and he
cuddled her closer. “It’s okay—he’s not here,” he soothed, laying
his lips against her damp temple, wanting to kiss the hurt away,
and knowing that was the least likely solution to her problem.

“He’s in Canada.”

“A long way from New Zealand then.”

“They made him go far away, after what he
did. ‘Right on the other side of the world’, Daddy said.”

“And he’s still there?”

She froze in his embrace, and he cursed his
stupidity. If her comfort was in having the bastard half a world
away, then that’s where she needed to think he was.

“I don’t know. I thought so. He never came
back to our house.”

“So he’s in Canada.” He put finality and
confirmation into the words and she sighed in a sort of acceptance.
Anton breathed out slowly.

“When I was nine,” she suddenly began
matter-of-factly, “My parents used to go to ballroom dancing every
week.”

To Anton, this had the flavor of a prepared
speech. Had she been coached to say those words—for a court
statement perhaps? He closed his eyes at that thought.

“And Uncle Graham looked after me,” she
continued.

“Did he live with you?”

“No—he lived with Nanny Rivers. She was old.”
She huffed out an indignant breath. “He was supposed to look after
me,” she amended. “And in the beginning it was okay. We played
poker.”

Anton’s eyes shot open. “At
nine
?”

“He taught me. I could do it. I used to win
money off him.”

She began to tremble again, violent shivers
that had him wrapping his arms even tighter. “One night instead of
winning money he started taking our clothes off instead.”

“Strip poker.”

“And when I didn’t want to take my panties
off, he said I could keep them on but he had to put his hand inside
them.”

“Bastard!” Anton hissed, having no trouble
imagining the scene. Jetta at nine would have been tiny. The uncle
at eighteen, a fearsome slob.

“When he was supposed to take his off,” she
continued, still in that strangely automatic tone, “he said he
didn’t want to either, and I had to put my hands inside them.”

She fell silent for several minutes.

“And rub him,” she eventually added. A
shudder of revulsion rippled through her.

Anton closed his eyes again, trying not to
see it, but powerless to keep the disgusting image out of his
brain.

“How long did this go on for?” he
whispered.

Her only answer was a shrug, her shoulder
smooth against his chest.

He had to ask; had to know. “Did he do worse
than touch you?”

“Only with his fingers,” Jetta said,
surprising him by burrowing back against him, her warm curvy butt
in danger of making contact right where neither he nor she needed
it.

He eased himself away with caution—covering
his movement with a yawn and a stretch.

“Boring you, am I?” she queried in a voice
much closer to her own.

“You poor kid.”

“Damaged goods. Had counseling of course. Did
the self defense thing and read the books they gave me once I was a
bit older.”

“And it hasn’t quite done the trick.”

“You could say that.”

He swallowed, and wondered if any sort of
apology would ever be adequate. “Sorry I manhandled you earlier.
Didn’t know. Couldn’t know, I suppose. You’re such a feisty little
spitfire I didn’t suspect anything like this.”

She laughed against his shoulder. “So I’m
getting away with it, am I?”

“Fooled me. I had you down for a confident,
street-savvy party girl.”

That seemed to please her quite a lot because
this time her chuckle was audible.

“So how did it end?” he couldn’t help
asking.

“Hmmm,” she muttered—and said no more until
he’d almost given up hope of a reply.

“When you’re a kid, you don’t know anything,”
she finally murmured. “And I had no brothers, so I knew even less.
I knew the theory of what boys had down there, but I hadn’t seen
one since I was maybe five, and I certainly hadn’t seen the grown
up version.”

Another big shudder shook her small body.
Anton expected she’d keep him waiting again, but she continued
almost immediately.

“Dad didn’t amble around the place without
his clothes. As I said, Granny Rivers was quite old, so I guess she
brought him up to keep his gear on. Shame she didn’t do as well
with Graham.”

“We’re all different,” Anton said. “When I
was a kid I loved skinny-dipping, but that didn’t last. Well—I
still enjoyed it, but not in company.”

“
Shy
, Anton?” she needled. “I don’t
believe it.”

“Not these days,” he said, grinning in the
dark. “But when I hit my teens, yes. You know—body going
haywire.”

“Oh, don’t I just. My body was...thoroughly
confused. Still is.”

She sighed again. Her breath wafted warmly
across his arm, raising the hairs in a tickling caress. Then, as
embarrassment got the better of her, she ducked her face down under
the duvet as though the shelter might give her the courage to
continue, and said in a muffled woebegone voice, “The end was…a
total farce. Utterly terrifying. Very noisy. Mom forgot to swap her
glasses for her contacts and they came back for them. They walked
right in on us through the open French doors.”

She began to sob again. “It was awful,” she
gasped. “Graham somehow shot his load right at that instant. God
knows how he managed to. He sounded like he was in agony. Dad
yelled obscenities I’d never heard before. Mom screamed her head
off.”

Anton let loose a splutter of laughter at the
imagined scene, and Jetta popped her head up again. “No, don’t—it
was terrible,” she said, giggling through her tears. “I was so, so
frightened. Mostly because I thought I’d hurt him. I could feel all
this runny blood...”

“Ah. Not blood?”

“Not blood. But I didn’t know that at the
time, so I started to howl, thinking it was all my fault. He’d
always finished himself off, so I’d been spared that at least.”

Anton held her close as she sobbed and
laughed in a small frenzy of hysteria. Minutes later, she fell
quiet. “The story of my life,” she murmured. “More than you
bargained for, I expect. Got anything to beat it?”

He grimaced, thinking about what she’d
bravely confessed to him.

She’s still joking about it. Still putting on
a front. Maybe I haven’t helped her at all? Maybe I’ve just made
things worse?

“Nothing along those lines. I shouldn’t have
forced you to tell me.”

“You didn’t know what to expect. And maybe
you were right about getting it out in the open. I was far too
young to deal with it at nine. And then I lost Mom and Dad, so I
had other stuff to cope with at fifteen.”

“And after that?”

“Huh!” She gave a short, mirthless laugh.

Anton pressed his lips together, wondering
how to translate that. Not with a full recovery, by the sound of
things. But the intimacy of their situation, in the near darkness,
skin against skin, made confessions easier.

Jetta sucked in a deep, deep breath and blew
it out again. “I may as well tell you the last bit and get it all
over with,” she said in a very small voice. “I was always petrified
of boys. You find ways to not be alone with them, and not feel
threatened. I got by. But as soon as I went flatting I really,
really wanted to get my life together. Reclaim my female mojo,” she
added, bitterness still very evident.