Across the River of Yesterday

  He cradled her cheek against his shoulder, his palm cupping the back of her head. Thank heaven, she had come to him. She was very close to breaking, and she mustn’t be alone when it happened. “Now, we’re going to talk a little. Is that all right with you?”

  “Yes.” The assent was muffled against his shoulder.

  “I think it’s time we got to know each other. I was born on a little ranch in Texas and spent most of my childhood there. We lost the ranch when I was thirteen, and my parents died that same year. I was in an orphanage until I was sixteen and then wandered around the country, taking any job that came along.” His fingers were soothingly rubbing her temple. “Then Vietnam and some more wandering. Recently I decided it would be better to be rich than to be poor, so I guess I’ll have to settle down for a while. Ross will be very relieved. He has a taste for the good things of life. There. Now you know all about Gideon Brandt, Esquire.” He looked down at her. “Have I talked you to sleep?”

  “No.”

  “Are you an only child?”

  “No, I have a younger brother. I don’t see much of him. He attends school in England. My stepfather was awarded custody of—” She broke off and he felt her stiffen against him. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “You don’t have to talk about it, you don’t have to talk about anything.” His voice was very soft. “But it’s time we shot those bushwhackers out of the saddle and there’s only one way to do it, Serena.”

  “Gideon, I—”

  “Shhh. You’ve got to invite them in and let them take their shot at you. You’ve got to remember. Then you’ll be in control again.”

  She could feel the panic rising within her. “No!”

  “Yes.” His voice was totally certain and she suddenly remembered that Ross had called him relentless. “It’s time to face it. Then it will be all over and you can start to heal. You’re not alone. I’m here. I’m holding you. Now, remember, Serena.”

  She began to shake as if in the throes of malaria. “Gideon …”

  “Don’t talk about it, unless you want to, but admit to yourself that it happened. It did happen.”

  “No!” The word was uttered through clenched teeth. “Don’t make me!”

  “You were in your nightgown, and your feet were bare.”

  And she remembered.

  The tears were suddenly raining down her cheeks and harsh sobs were wracking her body. “Ugly. Oh, God, so much ugliness. Gideon …”

  “It’s all right, baby.” His voice was a low croon in her ear. “It’s all over, it’s gone now.”

  “It will never be gone. I’ll always see …”

  “No, you’ll always remember, but after a while you won’t see it anymore. There are so many beautiful things in the world, and I’ll show them all to you. Whenever you start to remember, I’ll pull another one out of the hat and then it will fade away again.” His voice was a level above a whisper as his hand stroked her hair. “Do you believe me, Serena?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t …” The sobs were no longer tearing at her body, but she couldn’t seem to stop the tears from flowing. “I can’t think.”

  “Then I’ll quit my jawing and let you rest.” His lips touched the top of her head. “I’m not going to hassle you, baby. Relax now. You can think about what I said later. Right now, we’ll talk about something else. What do you want to do?”

  The sudden switch of subjects bewildered her. “Do?”

  “You know, do you want to swim the English Channel or be a clown in a circus or be the first lady to go to Mars?”

  “Oh.” She wiped her wet cheeks with the back of her hand. “I’ve always wanted to be an artist. I love to paint. My mother took me to the Louvre once when I was a little girl and someday I’m …” She trailed off, floundering. She was actually thinking about the future, she realized with astonishment.

  “See?” Gideon said softly. “There is a tomorrow. Now that you’ve faced the past, you can go on. One of these days you’ll be as famous as Titian or Da Vinci or Rubinoff. Will you paint me a picture?”

  Her arms tightened around him. “I’ll paint you a mural,” she said with passionate intensity. “I’ll paint you your own Sistine Chapel, if you like.”

  He chuckled. “I appreciate the gesture, but a painting will do. A Serena original.”

  The tears had stopped. The wound was still throbbing, but it was already beginning to heal. “You’ll have it,” she whispered. She wanted to give him the moon, gift-wrapped. He had given her so much. “Anything you want.”

  He became very still. “Lord, I wish you hadn’t said that. I’m trying to remember what a youngster you are.” His hand resumed its gentle stroking. “Listen, before you came I was lying here thinking about you, about us. When I was over in the Far East I picked up a lot of kind of strange ideas and one of them is about destiny. I believe some things are meant to be. Some people are meant to be together.” He paused. “I think we’re meant to be together, Serena. I know it sounds crazy, but almost from the first I realized we were right for each other. Can’t you feel it? We’re meant to love each other, to pleasure each other and help each other to be everything we can be. Why else were we both in that bar tonight? I think it must have been because we’ve been heading for each other all our lives and the time has come for us to be together. Now you’re going to belong to me and I’m going to belong to you.”

  Serena felt a wild surge of joy. To belong to Gideon would be to belong to gentleness, laughter and beauty. Then her spirits plummeted. It wasn’t possible. Sin. She couldn’t take any more than she already had from Gideon. “No, I can’t …”

  “Hush.” He placed two fingers over her lips to silence her. “I know you’re not ready to think about any of this yet, but I wanted you to know how I felt. I’m not going to push you. You’ve still got some growing up to do, and I have to make enough money to keep us comfortable. But after all that’s taken care of, we’ll be together. It’s important we both know that’s going to happen.”

  Serena felt her throat tighten painfully. In a way this pain was worse than what she had undergone before. “Gideon, there’s no way.”

  “There’s always a way. We’ll just have to find it.” His fingers moved from her lips to cover her eyes. “I’ll start working on it in the morning. Go to sleep now.”

  He wouldn’t listen. He was already assuming control with the loveable autocracy she was beginning to recognize as a primary element of his character.

  He never stops. Not ever. Ross’s word came back to her and she felt a wild surge of regret and despair. He would face that ugliness and try to conquer it, but she couldn’t stand that to happen.

  “You’re worrying again.”

  She shook her head. “No, not really.”

  “Then what are you thinking about?”

  “Your Hopi Indian friends.” Now. Snatch joy and safety now, for it might be a long time before she felt this happy again. “Tell me how you came to know them. Tell me all the places you’ve been and the people you’ve met and … oh, everything.”

  “Bedtime stories?” He laughed softly. “Okay. I guess I can think of some that aren’t X-rated. I’ve done most everything at one time or another, from riding the rodeo circuit to roughing it on an oil rig. I never finished high school so I had to stick to what I knew. Once when I was about your age I got a job on a freighter to the South Seas and …” His voice murmured on, spinning stories, sharing experiences, giving her glimpses into a life rich with color and the sheer joy of living.

  He finally stopped and she could sense him looking down at her. She knew he thought she had fallen asleep. He carefully settled her closer against him and she felt again the gossamer touch of his lips against her forehead. She didn’t move and kept her eyes firmly closed. Soon she felt his long, lean body relax and the sound of his breathing. He was asleep.

  Serena’s eyes opened and she stared unseeingly into the darkness.

  The rain had stopped by the
time the gray of predawn touched the horizon. Serena paused in the doorway to look back at Gideon still asleep in the big double bed. His tawny hair was rumpled on the pillow and he was sprawled like a weary little boy tucked into bed after a long day at play. She experienced a moment of maternal tenderness before she forced herself to turn and walk quickly across the hall. She hurriedly slipped on Ross’s khaki shorts, but left on the blue shirt in which she had slept. It belonged to Gideon and surely it wouldn’t hurt to keep a remembrance.

  She had to try two doors along the corridor before she found Ross’s room. She moved quietly across the shadowy room to stand beside his bed. “Ross?”

  The figure beneath the sheets growled, mumbled and then raised himself on one elbow. “Serena?”

  “I want you to take me back to the waterfront,” Serena said quietly. “Now.”

  “The hell you do.” He sat up and the sheet fell to his waist to reveal a brawny hair-roughened chest. “Gideon would cut my throat if I took you back to that bar.”

  She looked at him in surprise. “Why would I want to go back there? I wandered in there by mistake and …” She made an impatient gesture with her hand. “I just want you to take me to the waterfront and drop me off. I’d walk, but I don’t have any shoes and I’m not sure of the way.”

  “Just drop you off.” Ross’s lips twisted. “Drop you on the streets of one of the wickedest cities in the Caribbean, barefoot and with no place to go.”

  “I have a place to go.”

  “Then wake up Gideon and tell him about it.”

  “I can’t.” She moistened her lower lip with her tongue. “You remember what you said about Gideon not having made up his mind about me yet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I think he’s made it up now.”

  Ross’s dark eyes narrowed on her face. “So?”

  “It’s impossible.”

  “Gideon doesn’t understand the meaning of the word.”

  “Ross.” She swallowed and then drew a deep breath, “I’m married.”

  He went still. Then he gave a long, low whistle. “Trouble.”

  She shook her head, blinking rapidly to keep back the tears. “Please, I don’t want to hurt Gideon. I’m all right now. It will be perfectly safe to take me back.”

  “To your husband?”

  She closed her eyes for a fraction of a moment and then opened them again. They held only sadness and determination. “To my husband.”

  He hesitated. “You’re sure this is what you want?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Then I’ll take you. Go on downstairs and wait in the jeep while I get dressed.”

  She turned away.

  “You know this probably won’t do you a damn bit of good. Gideon’s not going to give up.”

  “He’ll give up.” Serena started for the door.

  She heard a sharp bark of laughter behind her. “You don’t know him at all if you think that.” His voice was soft and slightly amused. “Tell me, Serena, did you ever drink the rest of the orange juice?”

  She paused, her hand closing on the door knob. “That was different.”

  “Was it?” The amusement deepened. “I’ll do what you ask, but don’t think running away will do you any good if Gideon decides he wants to find you.”

  She drew a shaky breath and opened the door. “Please hurry. I want to be gone before Gideon wakes up.” She closed the door behind her and walked quickly down the hall toward the curving staircase.

  One

  “Now, don’t get excited.” Dane’s voice was soothing. “It’s not as bad as it sounds.”

  Serena Spaulding counted to five. “What do you mean, it’s not as bad as it sounds?” She pronounced every word distinctly into the telephone receiver. “How could it be worse? You tell me you’ve been flung into a Latin American jail on a drug charge, and that they’re threatening to throw away the key and forget you ever existed. Sounds fairly serious to me.”

  “But it’s all a mistake. You know I’m not into drugs. I think they even know it’s a mistake, but they want to save face by putting on a big show of authority. All you have to do is come down and vouch for my character and they’ll release me into your custody.”

  “Dane, they don’t put people into jail and then release them so easily. I’d better call the American Consulate.”

  “No!” Dane’s voice was suddenly sharp. “You know the first thing they’ll do is call Mother and she’ll call—” He broke off. “Look, it’s very simple. I’ll be off this island within a day, if you’ll just come down and sign their damn papers. I tell you, they know they’re in the wrong. I’m not even in a regular jail. They’ve put me up in a fancy hotel and they’re wining and dining me as if I were a VIP. They even sent me a call girl last night. Does that sound like you’re going to run into any trouble?”

  “No.” Serena wearily rubbed her temple. It sounded absolutely crazy, but what else could she expect from her brother? He had fallen into one brouhaha after another from the day he had discovered how amusing life could be if you didn’t conform to any of the rules. And she had found it amusing, too, she admitted to herself. Involving herself in Dane’s occasional adventures lent a badly needed touch of color to her life, to the regime of hard work and self-discipline she imposed upon herself. There was no question that Dane provided plenty of that color. However, he had never been thrown into prison before. She had a sudden memory of a horrifying film she had seen on television about a young man who had been arrested in Turkey on a drug charge. But this wasn’t Turkey, she assured herself quickly, this was … Lord, she didn’t even know where he was. “Dane, where the devil are you?”

  There was a crackling on the line and then Dane’s voice came clearly. “Just contact Colonel Pedro Mendino when you arrive. They have me quartered at the Hotel Cartagena.”

  “All right, I’ll come right away, but where are you, dammit?”

  “I told you. I’m in Mariba, Castellano. I have to hang up now. See you soon.”

  Mariba. Serena slowly replaced the receiver. The shock that had rippled through her was totally irrational. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t heard the name many times in the last ten years. Castellano was a hotbed of drug-running and smuggling and lately had been in the news constantly because of a revolutionary group challenging the military junta that governed the island.

  She had simply grown accustomed to thinking of Mariba through a kind of dreamlike haze, which had nothing to do with her present existence. Now, abruptly, it was no longer far away. Her brother was imprisoned under wildly improbable circumstances, and she was going to return there after ten years.

  She closed her eyes and drew a long quivering breath. Why was that night in Mariba suddenly so alive for her again? There had been months when she had forgotten about it entirely, and when she did remember, it was as if she were watching a film starring another woman entirely. The woman she was now bore no resemblance to the frightened girl who had clung to a stranger all through a long, stormy night. Ghosts. The girl she had been was a phantom, and so were Gideon Brandt and Ross Anders and the ramshackle ruin of a house on the outskirts of Mariba. None of it existed for her any longer. There was only the hard-won reality of the life she had created for herself. Was Gideon still there? The chances were very slim; he had been a wanderer and Castellano was not a place where anyone stayed for long. He probably was somewhere on the other side of the world, regarding the memory of their night together with the same remoteness she did. If he remembered her at all.

  She turned briskly away from the phone. She’d have to close up the cottage and pack tonight. Tomorrow on the way to the airport she would stop at the bank and take out a sizeable amount of money and put it into traveler’s checks. The situation in Mariba sounded weird in the extreme. Those papers Dane’s jailers wanted her to sign very likely would have a high price tag, if everything she had heard about the government of Castellano were true.

  “I think we’re going in the wrong d
irection,” Serena repeated, leaning forward to tap the taxi driver on the shoulder. “Perhaps you didn’t understand me, it’s the Cartagena Hotel and I’m sure we passed it five minutes ago. I saw a sign—”

  “Si, the Hotel Cartagena.” The driver smiled over his shoulder, his white teeth gleaming below his wide black mustache. “We are going in the right direction. You will see.” The cab suddenly leaped forward as he pressed the accelerator. “I will get you there pretty damn quick.”

  “Not too quick,” Serena said dryly as she leaned back in the seat. “I’d prefer to get there in one piece.” Maybe there were two Hotel Cartagenas. It didn’t seem likely in a town the size of Mariba, but the driver seemed very sure there was no mistake.

  She opened her soft leather bag, took out a linen handkerchief and dabbed at her forehead. Heavens, it was hot. She would have to pick a taxi with no air conditioning. Not that she’d had much choice. There had only been two taxis available at the taxi stand at the airport, and she supposed she should be grateful to get transportation at all. Castellano’s raffish reputation didn’t foster it as a tourist spot, and she had seen larger private airports in the States.

  Maybe she had been the one making the mistake. She had seen Mariba only at night and the town seemed totally unfamiliar to her in daylight, and there was no question she had been tense and on edge since the moment the small propeller plane had landed. It was idiotic to be so nervous, she assured herself. She would sign the papers, pay the bribe, and she and Dane would be off this island tomorrow.

  “Right ahead,” the driver said cheerfully. “I told you it would be pretty damn …” He trailed off as he stopped before a wrought-iron gate and blew the horn. The gates began to swing open slowly. “Electric. Pretty damn neat, huh?”

  “Very neat.” Serena’s lips curved in amusement. Modern technology had evidently come even to Castellano. In this case, efficiency had not been allowed to interfere with the exquisite workmanship of the gates. They closed behind them with a quiet swoosh and the taxi started up the tree-lined drive.