Reprisal

  She pushed the thought away but stayed close to Rafe. The contact was too enjoyable. He was holding her tight against him. She became aware of the sensation of her breasts rubbing against his chest; their two bodies seemed joined at the pelvis.

  Warm. Very warm where they met. And the warmth was spreading. She found her body pressing itself more firmly against his, as if it had a mind of its own. Well, not a mind, perhaps, but most definitely an agenda of its own.

  It wanted him.

  Rafe leaned back from Lisl and looked at her.

  "Let's go to my place," he whispered.

  Her mouth was dry. "Why your place?"

  "It's closer."

  The logic of that simple statement struck her as utterly flawless. Lisl nodded.

  It wasn't far from the tavern to Parkview, the upscale development where Rafe owned a condo. They walked quickly, in silence. Lisl was afraid to speak, afraid it would shatter the mood and taint the delicious excitement coursing through her. The last thing she wanted or needed now was to stop and think about this. No common sense, no cold hard facts, no prudence, no worries, no doubts or second guesses. None of that. The excitement was too wonderful. So long since she had felt anything like this. Like a teenager. She didn't want to let it go. And she wouldn't. She'd flow with it, let it take her where it was going, do something impulsive for once in her life.

  But she had to hurry before she changed her mind.

  The brisk walking pace graduated into a jog, which evolved into a gallop. When they reached the door to Rafe's condo, they were both breathing hard, perhaps not wholly from the exertion. Lisl leaned against the railing while he fumbled with his keys. Then the door was open. They ducked inside, slammed it shut, and then they were in each other's arms. Rafe's lips found hers. Lisl's arms went around him as his fingers slipped lightly up the sides of her face and ran through her hair, down to her shoulders, coming to rest at the top button of her blouse. He unbuttoned it and moved to the second.

  Lisl experienced an instant of panic. Too fast! This is happening too fast ! Then his tongue probed hers and her apprehensions melted away.

  When he had her blouse open, he slipped it off her shoulders, then reached around and unfastened her bra. As that fell away, he pulled his lips from hers and ran them down her neck to her breasts, his silky mustache tickling her along the way. She groaned and leaned back against the door as his tongue found a nipple.

  "Oh, God, that feels good."

  Rafe said nothing. His hands never stopped moving. While his lips and tongue pleasured her breasts, his fingers caressed her back, her abdomen, and then they were working on her belt, the buttons to her slacks, pulling them open, pushing them and her panties down until they sank to her ankles.

  And then Rafe, too, began to sink. He drew his tongue between her breasts, down her abdomen to her navel, circled it, then continued downward. His lips slid into her hair down there, his tongue probed toward the swelling heart of all her sensation but didn't reach it. Lisl spread her legs. She felt wanton, she felt wonderful. She entwined her fingers in the silky black waves atop his head and pushed his face more tightly against her. So close now he had to reach it. Rafe gripped her right leg behind the thigh and lifted it so that it rested on his left shoulder. It felt fat and heavy there. She was glad the lights were out, she wished she were slimmer, she wished

  "Ahhh!"

  He'd found it! Bolts of white-hot pleasure shot down her legs and up through the rest of her body. She shuddered with delight, not wanting it to stop, not wanting it ever to stop.

  Too fast ! she thought again as her breath hissed in and out through her teeth at a steadily increasing rate. It's going way too fast !

  But the night was only beginning.

  THE BOY at five years

  February 12,1974

  "You've been neglecting my money," Jimmy said at breakfast one day.

  " Your money?" Carol said. "I didn't know you had any."

  She and Jimmy had reached a sort of equilibrium. She had grown used to his almost unearthly precocity and adapted to it. Adapted as well as one could to a forty-inch child whose brain seemed to hold the accumulated wisdom of the ages. Five years of daily life with him had closed off areas of feeling; and questions she'd asked had gone unanswered so long her mind had stopped asking them. He was imperious, intolerant, inconsiderate, insufferable at times, but he could be charming when he wished. There were times when she almost liked him.

  "The inheritance. The eight million dollars' worth of assets my father inherited from Dr. Hanley."

  "So Jim's 'my father' now, is he? I thought he was 'merely the vessel.'"

  "Whatever. The fact remains that my birthright has been lying around, moldering, static, when it could have been growing all these five years. I want you to rectify that immediately."

  "Oh, you do, do you?"

  He was in his insufferable mode but Carol found him amusing nonetheless. Despite everything, he was still her son. And Jim's.

  "I want you to go back to New York and start converting every-thingthe mansion, everything to cash. I will then advise you on how it shall be invested."

  Carol smiled. "How good of you. The Bernard Baruch of Sesame Street ."

  His dark eyes blazed. "Don't make fun of me. I know what I'm doing."

  Carol realized her remark had been gratuitous. But understandable in light of their ongoing battle of wills.

  "I'm sure you do."

  "One thing, though," he said, his voice soft, almost hesitant. "When you get to New York"

  "I didn't say I was going."

  "But you will. It's your money too."

  "I know. But we can't spend the interest we get on the bonds and C.D.s we already have. Why fool with it?"

  He favored her with one of his rare smiles. "Because it will amuse me to see how fast I can multiply it." Then the smile faded. "But when you get to New York be careful."

  "Of course I'll"

  "No. I mean, be wary. Beware of anyone who asks about your child. Tell them you miscarried. No one must know I exist, especially"

  There was something in Jimmy's eyes. Something Carol had never seen before.

  "Especially who?"

  Jimmy's tone was grave. "Be alert for a man in his mid-thirties with red hair."

  "I'm sure there'll be a fair number of those in Manhattan."

  "Not like this one. His skin will have an olive cast and his eyes will be blue. There is only one like him. He will be looking for me. If such a man approaches you, or tries to speak to you, or even if you merely see someone like him, call me immediately."

  Carol realized that Jimmy was afraid.

  "Call you? Why? What will you do?"

  He turned and stared out the window.

  "Hide."

  NOVEMBER

  SIX

  Lisl glanced at her desk clock as she finished grading the last calculus test. Noon. Perfect timing. She was starved. She pulled on her jacket, picked up her cushion, and stepped out into the hall.

  Al Torres, a tenured associate, was passing by, shrugging into a light sports coat as he headed for the stairs.

  "Going to the caf, Leese?"

  "Brown-bagging it today, Al."

  "Again?"

  "The diet. Can't make it work if I go to the grease pit."

  He laughed. "You're really sticking to this one. And it's working. Good girl!"

  Lisl was tempted to call him on that "good girl" businessshe was thirty-two, for God's sakebut knew his heart was in the right place. He had two young daughters and probably used the phrase a lot.

  She pulled her lunch bag from the department's ancient refrigerator and looked inside: four ounces of cottage cheese mixed with pineapple chunks, two carrots, two celery stalks, and a diet Dr Pepper. She stuck out her tongue.

  Yummy-yummy. I can hardly wait.

  But it was working. With a three-mile jog every morning and a strict diet the rest of the day, she'd dropped fifteen pounds in just six weeks. She was fe
eling more fit now than at any time in her life.

  She headed for the elm tree. Will was there ahead of her, sitting on the newly fallen leaves, unwrapping a huge sandwich. Her mouth watered at the sight of the inch-high stack of corned beef between the thick slices of rye.

  "You buy those things just to torture me, don't you?"

  "No. I buy them to torture myself . You southerners don't have the faintest idea of the proper curing of corned beef. This thing may look good, but taste-wise it's a pallid reflection of the kind of sandwich people eat every day in New York. What I wouldn't give for a hot pastrami from the Carnegie Deli."

  "So go back and get one."

  Will looked away for a moment. "Some day I just might."

  "You sound like a born-and-bred New Yorker. I thought you grew up in Vermont."

  "I lived all over the Northeast before moving south." He suddenly leaned forward and stared between her breasts. "A new necklace?"

  Don't think I don't know when you're changing the subject away from your past, she thought as she smiled and lifted the shell hanging from the fine gold chain.

  "Yes and no. The chain's been in my jewelry box for years and I've had the shell forever. I just decided one day to put them together."

  "What's the shell? It's a beauty."

  "It's called a cowrie. The South Seas natives actually use them for money."

  This was her Rafe shell. A few weeks ago she'd dug into her shoe box and pulled it out. A glossy cowrie with an intricate speckled pattern on its back. Beautifuljust like Rafe. She'd had a jeweler drill a hole and voila, she had a necklace. Only Lisl knew who it represented.

  A moment later Will was staring again, this time at the impoverished contents of her lunch bag as she laid them out on a paper napkin.

  "Still hanging in with that diet, I see."

  "Hanging is rightby my fingernails. Six weeks of gerbil food. I just love it. I jump out of bed every morning looking forward to the myriad gustatory delights that await me."

  "You're getting results. I mean I can really see the difference. Maybe you've lost enough to merit a treat once in a while."

  "Not till I've reached my target weight."

  "And what's that?"

  "One-thirty. Fifteen pounds to go."

  Whoops. She just gave her weight away. Not that it would matter with Will. She had a feeling that he was something of a sphinx when he wasn't with her. But it was not a number she wanted to slip out too often.

  "I think you're fine the way you are now."

  "So do the actuarial tables. According to them, a five-five, medium-frame female like me should weigh one-forty stripped. Maybe that's optimal for maximum life span, but it's not right for the clothes I want to wear."

  "You still look fine to me."

  "Thanks." But she knew her looks didn't really matter to Will. "I'll tell you one thing, though. Besides freeing me of some excess baggage, all this dieting has given me some real empathy for those people with lifelong weight problems. I can't imagine fighting the pounds year in and year out. It's so depressing !"

  Will shrugged and took another bite of his sandwich.

  "Just self-discipline," he said around the mouthful. He swallowed. "You set yourself a goal and you go after it. Along the way you make choices. The choices you make are determined by what you value more. In the dieter's case it comes down to choosing between a full belly or a trim figure."

  Strange. He almost sounded like Rafe.

  "It's not that easy," she told him. "Especially not when there's people aroundlike you, for instancewho seem to be able to manage both a full belly and a trim figure. When have you ever had to make a sacrifice hour by hour, day by day, week after week, month after month?"

  Will stared at her, and for a moment something flashed in his eyes, then he looked away. His gaze found the horizon and rested there. Again, the question flashed through her mind: What have you seen, what have you done ?

  "Don't"Lisl's voice faltered. "Don't brush it off until you've had to do it."

  "I wouldn't think of it," he said.

  They ate in silence for a while. Lisl finished her cottage cheese and veggies and was still hungryas usual. She nursed her diet Dr Pepper.

  "Didn't you tell me this was your first diet?" Will said.

  "Yes. Rafe says it will be my last. I hope he's right."

  "Is this Rafe fellow pushing you to lose weight?"

  "Not in the least. As a matter of fact, he wishes I'd ease off because we don't go out to eat anywhere near as often as we used to. He says he liked me just the way I was when he met me."

  She felt a little smile flicker across her lips as she remembered Rafe telling her how his taste in the female figure tended to run on a line with Reubens's. But that hadn't stopped her from starting her get-in-shape program.

  Will grunted.

  "What's that for?" Lisl said.

  "It means that he doesn't strike me as the type who leaves well enough alone."

  "How can you say that? You don't know him."

  "Just an impression. Maybe because he's too good-looking and appears to have had too much money for too long. Those kind tend to think the rest of the world exists for their exclusive use."

  "Well, you know the old saying about books and covers. Look at yourself. Who'd believe you've done the kind of reading you have?"

  "Touche."

  "Rafe is very deep for his age. You'd like him if you got to know him."

  "I'm hardly in his league. He drives a brand-new Maserati; I drive a Chevy that's almost as old as he is. He doesn't seem the sort who likes to hang out with groundskeepers."

  Lisl hid her growing annoyance with Will's attitude.

  "If you had something interesting or intelligent to say, as you usually do, he wouldn't care what you did for a living."

  Will shrugged again. "If you say so."

  Lisl wondered at Will's hostility toward Rafe, a man he'd never met, and then she realized: He feels threatened !

  That had to be it. Lisl was probably the only person in Will's small world with whom he could communicate on his own level. And now he saw Rafe as a rival for her attention, someone who might take her from him altogether.

  Poor Will. She searched for a way to reassure him that she'd always be his friend and be here for him, a way that wouldn't let on that she knew what was eating him.

  "I'm pfenning a Christmas party," she said.

  "It's not even Thanksgiving yet."

  "Thanksgiving's only days away. And besides, everybody starts planning Christmas around Thanksgiving time."

  "If you say so."

  "I say so. And I also say that you're invited."

  She sensed rather than saw Will stiffen.

  "Sorry."

  "Come on, Will. I'm inviting people I consider my friends, and you're at the top of the list. You'll finally get to know Rafe. I really think you two will hit it off. He's a lot like you. You're both deeper than you seem."

  "Lisl"

  She played her ace: "I'll be very hurt if you don't deign to make an appearance."

  "Come on, Lisl"

  "I'm serious. I've never thrown a party before and I want you to be there."

  There followed a long pause, with Will staring into the distance.

  "Okay," he said with obvious reluctance. "I'll try to make it."

  "'Try' isn't good enough. You were going to 'try' to make it to Metropolis last month. I don't need that kind of try. I need a promise."

  Lisl caught a trace of hurt in his eyes that contrasted sharply with his smile.

  "I can't promise. Please don't ask me for something I can't deliver on."

  "Okay," Lisl said softly, hiding her own hurt. "I won't."

  As they finished what was left of their lunches in uncharacteristic silence, Will thought about Losmara. A strange character. A loner. Didn't seem to have any friends but Lisl.

  Like me.

  He'd seen him from a distance and hadn't been impressed. His recurring nightmare
was that the close-up Rafe would be a limp-wristed, foppish Latin-lover type with a pencil-line mustache, reed thin, draped with half a dozen gold chains, wearing a blousey, open-necked, lacy-cuffed white shirt.

  Lisl deserved a Clint Eastwood; Will was afraid she'd wound up with Prince.

  And if she had, so what? As long as he made her happy, as long as he wasn't taking advantage of her vulnerability.

  And she was so very vulnerable. He'd sensed that the first day he'd met her. Like a gentle forest creature who'd been cruelly treated, she'd drawn her defenses tight around her and tried to seal herself off from further hurt. But her defenses were thin. Behind her buzz of constant activity, Will saw a lonely woman, aching to love and to be loved. An oblique approach, clothed in gentle words telling her what she wanted to hear, and Will knew she would respond. Treated with a modicum of warmth and tenderness, she would open like a flower to the morning sun.

  Love was what she needed most. Romantic, sexual love. And that was the one thing Will could not offer her. He could work at opening her mind, but not her heart. He could offer her anything but that kind of love.

  Not that the idea hadn't occurred to him more than once. Many times, in fact. Though he was almost two decades older, there had been a phase during his relationship with Lisl when he had sensed that the time was ripe for a joining of more than minds. But that was not the way for him to go. He was gearing for other things, slowly retooling himself to return to the life he had left behind. There was no place for a woman in that life.

  So Will was glad that someone had found the key to Lisl's heart. He fervently hoped it was the right someone. Lisl was very special. She deserved the best. He did not believe in meddling in other people's lives, but if it became evident that this Rafe Losmara was taking advantage of her vulnerability, of her trusting nature, he would have to step in.

  He could not allow anyone to hurt Lisl.

  Will was startled by the thought.

  Me. Protector of the defenseless. I can hardly take care of myself!

  Yet why shouldn't he have strong protective feelings toward Lisl? She had grown to be an enormously important part of his life over the past couple of years, his only friend in the worldat least the only one he could talk to. In his own way he loved Lisl. What she possessed was rare and precious, and demanded protection. Will would do his best to provide that protection.