Kathleen Creighton - Never Trust A Lady

“Children,” said Tom, after she’d given up hope of an answer. “We decided, since we both wanted kids, we should get married first.”

“You have children?”

Unable to trust his voice, Hawk only nodded, knowing she’d misunderstand.

It had been a long time since he’d hurt this bad, not since those first terrible weeks and months, after the shock had worn off and before he’d learned other ways to numb the pain. Part of him wanted to hate the woman beside him, this woman whose gentle insistence was like a dentist’s probe on an exposed nerve. But he couldn’t. He knew he could have put an end to her probing, could have cut her down as he’d cut down so many before her, coldly, cleanly, bloodlessly as a surgeon’s scalpel. But he didn’t.

And when she fell silent for a time, he was bewildered to find that there was a part of him that was sorry.

They’d come back to the highway, the lights of the motel he’d telephoned from the ferry terminal visible up ahead of them, before she spoke again. It was late and cold; few people were still out and about She was hugging herself, and he imagined she must be shivering. So he was surprised by the softness, the easiness of her voice when she said, “You must have lovely memories of this place.”

Memories? Memories weren’t lovely, they were his enemies. But…yes, he remembered the little house they’d rented, he and Jen. They’d spent the weekend walking hand in hand on the beach, looking for shells, strolling the unpaved street under the great old oaks, looking at gravestones in the family cemeteries. They’d been like children playing house. They’d fought some and laughed some and made love in the quiet afternoons.

He reached for his cigarettes instead of answering.

“You should treasure them,” she went on, her voice sighing gently across his auditory nerves. “I always think that good memories are like beloved keepsakes. You put them away and keep them safe-but not buried so deeply you can’t get at them when you need them. They don’t cause you pain, they bring you pleasure. Sometimes a little sadness, too, when you bring them out and look at them. But you’d never want to lose them, and you wouldn’t trade them for gold or diamonds.”

He could only nod, his jaw clenched so tightly it hurt. Unable to look at the woman beside him, he plunged ahead of her, across the street and into the brightly lit motel lobby.

Jane insisted on registering separately, paying with her own credit card, though he’d offered to put it on his expense voucher. They had adjoining rooms on the second floor, his smoking, hers non. They smiled through the formalities, chatting with the desk clerk but not with each other.

They climbed the stairs together in silence, Hawk once again carrying the tote bag. He waited while she unlocked her door and turned on a light, then stuck his head in for a cursory check of the room before he handed over her bag.

She thanked him in a polite, expressionless murmur, then cleared her throat and said, “Um, what time do I need to be ready in the morning?”

“Plane should be ready to go at eight.” His voice was like a cement mixer full of rocks. “I’ll knock on your door at seven-we can go get a bite first, if you want to. Need a wake-up call?”

She shook her head and held up her bag. “I have my little travel alarm.”

Absolutely devoid of makeup, her mouth looked vulnerable as a child’s. Looking at her. Hawk felt something inside him begin to loosen, to ease and soften, like a balloon that had been filled to the danger point slowly deflating. He had a sudden urge to touch her. And then he did, even though he knew it wasn’t wise.

When he touched the side of her cheek with his fingertips, he felt her tremble. “Get some sleep,” he said softly, and letting his hand drop to his side, stepped back out of her doorway. “Good night.”

“Good night,” she whispered as he turned away. But she hadn’t closed her door yet when he suddenly turned back, his heart beating hard and fast.

“Her name was Jennifer,” he said. “My wife. She and our son, Jason, died when a terrorist’s bomb went off on a meny-go-round in Marseilles. In April. Seven years ago next month.”

For the second day in a row, Jane found herself bone-tired and unable to sleep. After delivering his terrible revelation, Tom had gone into his room and shut the door, leaving her standing in her own doorway, appalled and trembling, icy with shock. Inside her room now, she paced, thoroughly rattled and furious, too. And frustrated. Furious with him for doing such a cruel thing to her, and frustrated because how, after all, could she be angry with someone who’d suffered so devastating a loss?

The cold inside her would not go away. A nice hot soak in the tub seemed the most sensible remedy, but first she had to compose herself enough to try calling the girls again. She sat on the edge of the bed and counted seconds up to sixty, then picked up the phone and dialed. The machine answered on the third ring. She was almost glad, and left the same message she’d left earlier. “Hi, this is Mom, I’ll try again in the morning, Love you, Bye.”

She did not leave the number where she could be reached, because she couldn’t think how to explain what she was doing on an island in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, when she was supposed to be in Washington, D.C. She wasn’t accustomed to lying to her children, but how could she tell them about any of this?

Perhaps, she thought, there were just some things about their parents children were better off not knowing. And vice versa.

While the tub was filling, she emptied the contents of her tote bag onto the bed. The painting and Roy Rogers six-shooter she set aside in their jumbled brown paper, to be rewrapped later. She checked the batteries in the flashlight, made a mental note to put in new ones as soon as she got home, and threw the cookie and peanut wrappers in the trash. Everything else went back into the bag except for her hairbrush, toothpaste and toothbrush, and the little zippered pouch in which she carried tiny sample bottles of deodorant and hand lotion, and the packets of shampoo and conditioner she’d taken from the hotel in Arlington. Had it only been this morning? It seemed a lifetime ago.

She undressed and hung her clothes neatly on the motel hangers, except for her knee-high nylons and bra and panties, which she was determined to wash, even if it meant she had to put them on wet tomorrow. She brushed her teeth, unable to avoid her reflection in the mirror and vaguely disheartened by it, having reached an age where it was sometimes a shock to see herself, especially like this, tired and without makeup. She’d already made the discovery everyone makes, sooner or later, which was that the human heart is ageless; on the inside she still felt exactly the same as she’d felt when she was eighteen. So how is it, she wondered as she contemplated her tired-looking eyes and the parentheses of lines at the corners of her mouth, that I have this middle-aged face?

She lowered herself into the tub slowly, her body shuddering and cringing with delight at the heat, and as she closed her eyes and lay back in the warm water’s embrace, something inside her gave in and let go, and tears began to seep between her lashes.

She knew it was silly, even shameful that she should feel so bad about such a thing, but that knowledge didn’t change the fact that she did, not one bit. The truth was, Tom Hawkins had touched her, and it had felt wonderful. And every nerve and cell in her body waited, ached, begged and screamed for him to do it again.

How did this happen? she wondered. How could I have gotten so desperately hungry, and not have known it?

Sex had been one of the few things about her marriage that had seemed to work, until the last few years, anyway. David had prided himself on being a vigorous and imaginative lover; it was part of his self-image. Satisfying his wife in bed had been important to him, and over the years he’d learned just which of her buttons to push in order to elicit the physical response he desired. Emotional response wasn’t something he required, or understood, and if Jane had often found their lovemaking lacking in tenderness, or joy, and if she’d ever tried to tell him so, he wouldn’t have known what on earth she was talking about.

Oh, but how was it that those few kisses of Tom’s in the back of a moving truck, and now just the touch of his hand on her cheek, for God’s sake, could have elicited from her more emotion, more tenderness, more joy, more anguish, than twenty-one years of regular and abundant sex with David ever had?

Having admitted to herself that she wanted Tom Hawkins, she tortured herself further by allowing herself to think about him that way, to imagine his body, for instance, to wonder what it would look like without clothes. He was tall and lean, that much she knew, and she rather imagined his build would be wiry, his proportions naturally pleasing, not artificially pumped up and filled out from lifting weights, or some such narcissistic pursuit. He didn’t have the stiff, straight, almost militaristic posture she associated with most of the law enforcement people she knew, seeming much more casual in his bearing, with a slight stoop to his shoulders, as if he’d spent a lifetime listening carefully to people who were shorter than he was. And he moved, even with the smallest of motions, like opening a menu, or holding a door, or lifting her tote bag onto his shoulder, with the completely unselfconscious grace of a cat.

She realized suddenly that her tears had stopped, and that she was smiling, her body relaxed and languid, steeped in sensual pleasure. Thinking about Tom, envisioning him naked, was a joy, it seemed, not a torment. The torture, the terrible drumming of her pulse, the pressure, the ache and the fire, only began when she recalled the way he’d touched her body. When she felt again his body’s heat against hers, the brush of his fingers across her skin. When she remembered how she’d tasted his mouth, breathed his breath, and finally surrendered to the mastery of his tongue.

And then…when she saw in her memory’s eye that same mouth tilt sideways in that poignant remnant of a smile, and, glimpsed almost by accident, the unimaginable pain in his eyes, the ache inside her became like a knife twisting in her heart.

Oh, God, help me, she thought, gasping with the pain. What am I going to do?

Hawk put through a call to Interpol headquarters, and while he waited for someone to locate Devore at such an hour on a Saturday night, opened the fresh pack of cigarettes he’d bought at the ferry terminal, tapped one out and lit it. After the first puff, he looked at the lighted end with disgust and thought he really ought to do something about the damn things.

He’d actually given up smoking once, before Jason was born, mainly because it made Jen sick. He’d taken it up again after they’d died, and until this moment hadn’t given even the smallest thought to quitting. He wondered why he should think of it now.

Devore came on the line, sounding far away and annoyed. “About time you called. Why the devil did it take you so long to get settled in? I thought that was a very small island.”

“It is, and there are no superhighways on it, either,” Hawk said in a surly growl. “And we stopped for dinner. Anyway, I’m here now, and I’m tired as hell. What have you got for me?”

“I’ve got someone tracking down the auction company’s records. We should have the names and addresses of the buyers of the other paintings by tomorrow morning. Oh-and Fritz will be there for you at eight-be ready. How soon can you get here?”

“One stop.” said Hawk, squinting through smoke. “Probably Greenville. Got to drop Mrs. Carlysle where she can catch a shuttle or something to Raleigh-Durham. Then I’ll be on my way.” Something he’d detected in the bureau chief’s tone made him ask with quickening pulse, “Why, what’s up? You got something?”

“We’ve heard from Lyons-just about an hour ago, right after you called, as a matter of fact. It seems Loizeau’s body has yielded some interesting bits, in spite of your mucking about. Quite a number of fibers. Most of them appear to be from those little blankets airlines provide.”

“Which only tells us our shooter might have recently taken a flight, probably of long duration,” Hawk observed. “Which doesn’t narrow it down much.”

“True. But a few of the others might be a bit more significant, I think. Merino wool, which I believe is a component of better-quality outer garments.”

“Sweaters,” muttered Hawk. “Topcoat, maybe?”

“I doubt it,” said Devore dryly. “These happen to be pink.”

“pink?”