Cast a Pale Shadow(49)

"I thought... I saw you get in the car. I thought you were going with her. I thought you were leaving me."

"No! Oh, no, I wouldn't. I promised I wouldn't, remember?"

Fitapaldi lumbered closer, smiling, with Trissa's hat in his hand. Cole stiffened and she let him go. "Still, it would be best if you did. I'm insane, you know."

He would ask Fitapaldi tomorrow to cure him or destroy him. All his blind fear of madness and psychiatry and winding up in a room next to his father was nothing compared to the fear of losing her. Or hurting her. But he had to come to her whole and healthy. Or not at all.

She did not respond to his declaration of insanity, but turned to smile back at Fitapaldi. "Are you hungry? How about Rigazzi's for lunch?"

"Aah, sounds like my kind of place. If more people knew of the curative powers of pasta, doctors like me would be put out of business."

Cole limped stiffly ahead of them back to the car. "Cole, would you rather go home and rest?" Trissa asked when he settled into the front seat next to her.

"No, I'd better get me some of that pasta. I need all the help I can get," he said grimly.



*****



By the time they got home late that afternoon, Trissa had spent the last of her tears over a heaping plate of toasted ravioli. No one looked when Fitapaldi slipped her his glass for a few sips of wine after she told them what her mother had said when she got in the car. Blinking like owls in the dim light of the limousine, her aunt and cousins had looked on while her mother called her an ungrateful little slut who deserved nothing from her and would get nothing. Trissa had replied with all the dignity she could gather that she had expected nothing more from her than she had given in the past, not even love. It was obviously something she was incapable of giving.

They told sparse details of the funeral to Augusta and the others of their housemates who waited anxiously for them, then Cole offered to take Trissa to her room. Before they left the kitchen, Fitapaldi took her aside to whisper in her ear. "He loves you, Trissa, I can see it. He's just afraid to admit it yet." With a puckish wink, he added, "Be gentle with him."

Cole accompanied her to the door of their room, then hugged her briefly, like a distant relative at a family reunion. "I'm sorry I deserted you this morning. Goodbye, Trissa."

There was something so final in the words, goodbye and not good night, in the desperate sadness of his eyes that she could not let him go. "No," she said, clinging to his lapels, reaching up to lightly kiss his chin. "Come in and talk for awhile. I don't want to be alone." She stepped backward through the door, still holding him, and he came with her. She noticed again his stiff, labored limp. "You're hurting, aren't you? You need a long soak in a hot tub."

"I'll go back to my room, take a few aspirins, maybe a nap."

"But this is your room. The bed is much bigger and more comfortable. You probably miss it in that cramped little one down stairs."

"I've slept on far worse."

"I know what. I'll trade bedrooms with you, now that you're all the way up here anyway. Go ahead, relax. I'll get the aspirin." She nudged him toward the bed and pushed on his shoulders until he sat on the edge.

An idea tickled the back of her brain. She could try it, if she could trap him long enough. She hurried to the bathroom, turned on the faucet in the tub, and sprinkled in some spicy bath beads that May had given her for helping with the musicale decorations. "I'll be right out," she said cheerily, peeking at him through the crack of the door. She got the bottle of aspirin and a glass of water. He took the medicine from her gratefully and as he drank, she sat down beside him and bent over to tug at his shoestrings.

"What are you doing?"

"Well, you're not going to take a nap with your shoes on, are you?"

"I'm not going to take a nap in this bed at all."

"Good, because I really think the soak in the tub is a better idea. More relaxing. But you won't need your shoes for that, either." She managed to remove one shoe and sock by lifting his foot off the ground, throwing him off balance as he tried to keep the glass of water from spilling all over the bed.

"Okay, now the other." She yanked on his pants leg until he was forced to comply. This was the foot with the poor, missing toes. Cole shifted it to its side to hide the damage in the very same self-conscious movement that Nicholas had always used. Seeing that gave her a sudden surge of hope. She removed her own shoes and wriggled her toes, then collected the two pairs to place them side by side in the closet as Nicholas always did.

"Now your jacket, sir." When he stood stiffly to accommodate her demand, he groaned a bit. "You see, you really do need some tender, loving care." She pulled the suit coat off of him, then untied his tie, undid his cuff links, and took them all to the closet.

When she returned, he was still standing, looking somewhat bewildered. She shooed him toward the bathroom. "Go on, you're perfectly capable of undressing yourself. I'm not your maid, you know," she scolded. "What did you think? That I had ulterior motives for disrobing you? Relax. Get in that tub and soak. I have to get some towels."

She was pleased to see that he had obeyed her when she came back, so loaded with towels that she had to nest her chin in them to keep the pile from toppling and to elbow the bathroom door open. "Towels!" she announced blithely as she invaded his privacy.

He hunched quickly forward in the steaming tub and had a washcloth placed strategically for the sake of modesty. She hoped her rehearsed smile of maidenly shyness hid the hint of mischief she had planned. She plunked the pile of towels on the closed toilet lid and began shaking them out and ringing the floor around the edge of the tub with them. "For splashes," she answered before he had a chance to ask.

"Splashes?"

The steam had turned the hair that fringed his neck and brow to dark, damp ringlets, making the lighter curls on top seem to shine like gold. She tweaked a curl and let it spring back. "Yeah. Scoot forward, I'll rub your back."

"I don't think--"

She stuck her lower lip out in an exaggerated pout. "I bet you let that big, blond nurse who was always hanging around your room give you a back rub."

"Which big, blond nurse?"

"Ah hah! Just as I thought, there was more than one!" She feigned a snatch for the washcloth he was using as a breechcloth, and he was forced to draw his knees up to avoid her maneuver. The action moved him forward in the tub just as she wanted.

"I thought the idea was to allow me a long, relaxing soak."

"Oh? Am I disturbing you?" A just audible moan escaped him as he covered his face with his hands and shook his head. Swiftly, while his eyes were still covered, she discarded her own clothes and stepped into the tub behind him, one foot along each side of his hips.

"Trissa! What the...!"

"Shhh," she hissed as she settled herself in the hot water. "This is a Japanese style back rub. We saw it in that movie, remember? Oh, no, I guess that was Nicholas. It's an extremely ancient, quite reputable tradition. Very therapeutic. Just relax."

"I'm getting to be very wary of that word," he said. But even he could not remain aloof to her very gentle strokes from his neck, down his spine, and feathering out to his ribs. His bruises were dark and ugly around his lower back, and she was extra careful there. She hummed under her breath as she felt his tension drain out through her fingertips.

"What are you singing?"

"'Pretend you're happy when you're blue, it isn't very hard to do,'" she sang. "Our song, remember?"

"No."

She did not let his terse answer discourage her. He would remember, eventually. She continued singing and massaging. And when the bar of soap slipped by, she caught it and sudsed up Cole's back, edging herself ever closer, so that only a whisper separated them.

Finally, when it seemed that his muscles had turned to butter with her touch, she grasped his shoulders and leaned back taking him with her. His skin was so slippery with the soap and the bath oil, and he offered so little resistance that when she tilted him and jostled him left, he tipped and they slithered together like playful seals.

Giggling and giddy with her easy triumph, she let her hands slide off his shoulders and she dipped beneath the water under him. He grabbed for her and she came up sputtering and gasping, savoring the silken slide of his skin against hers.

"Now what?" he grumbled, his voice tight and rasping.

She struggled to catch her breath before she answered, a project complicated by her determination to place a string of kisses around his neck and end at his heart. "Well, I don't want you to drown me, so what else do you suppose we could do in this position?"

"What you don't understand is that I can't," he said gruffly. "There have been other opportunities. With other women, some bought, some offered freely. But it is impossible."