Cast a Pale Shadow(50)

"I know different."

"That was Nicholas. Not me."

"You are Nicholas. The same face, the same body, the same heart. And if I was promised to be loved with all of this heart, then it's still mine, and I will have it." Her confidence grew with every pulse of his heart, for he did not move away. He held himself so close and so still against her that it seemed the world had ceased turning and waited, waited. And she held her breath and waited too.

His eyes burned into hers, glinting bronze ingots. "I don't want to love you, Trissa," he groaned.

"Oh yes, you do. You're lying." She traced the clenched line of his jaw and the deep furrow of his brow with her fingertip, then she pressed it to his chin. "Let me see your tongue."

"My tongue..." Cole began, but as soon as he opened his mouth, he was lost. She invaded him with a kiss that sent them both plummeting. He braced their bodies against the side of the huge, old tub, and the water, like a warm caress, sloshed around them. Her legs lightly twined with his, and her body moved against his as gently as tropical waves lap the shore.

"Don't, Trissa. I won't," he protested as she ended the kiss, as if he did not know that his fingertips ardently grazed her aroused nipple, as if he did not notice the evidence of his own arousal.

"Don't lie to me. I can taste your lies. I can feel them. Here." She brushed the tip of her tongue against his lips, as her fingers massaged tender, lazy circles down his chest and stomach. "And here." His denial and resolve shattered with her intimate touch and they both sighed with sudden, wild contentment as she guided him home within her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and whispered in his ear. "Don't worry about the splashes. That's what the towels were for."

But Cole had no space in his mind for worry. It was caught up in the web of pure pleasure that she spun from the core of her to gather him in. If this was a dream and the water that enveloped them but the mist of sleep.... If this were Nicholas reaching out from his soul to take her, if this was madness to relinquish his will to the sweet power of Trissa's love, he did not want to know. The water cascaded between them as he lifted from her then sluiced away as they surged together again.

"Cole," she whispered against his neck and he loved her all the more for saying that name and not the other. "I love you, Cole."

Trissa felt a ravenous joy rising within her, devouring all her fear and worry, bobbing and dipping toward the brink like a barrel on the Niagara. "Trissa!" he cried out as they plunged together, and she could not care that it was Cole and not Nicholas. They were one.

All three, one.

It was a long while before they trusted their jellied bones and melted muscles enough to chance standing. It was only when he heard Trissa's teeth chattering though he held her as close as it was possible to hold her. The sound of them startled her as well and she giggled shakily. "Maybe your big, blond nurse would have stayed warm longer."

"Maybe, but I doubt that the tub would have held her and me both."

"Oh, you thug, you do remember her," she scolded, and she cuffed his shoulder as he sat up and strained to reach a dry towel to wrap her in.

"With fleeting fondness," he admitted. They depended on each other's support and their tenacious grip on the rim of the tub to get over the edge. Trissa squealed as her toes squished into a soggy towel on the floor. "We will have a lot to explain if it starts to rain on the dinner crowd," Cole said, grabbing the terry robe she'd brought him from its hook on the wall. "My guess is this tub is situated directly above Hattie's place at the table."

"Oh, God, what if they heard us?" Trissa's eyes sparkled blue as a starlit sky against the flush on her face from her chagrin and the heat of their bath. She huddled in her large, plush towel like a blanket.

"We'll just tell them that it's an extremely ancient, quite reputable tradition. Very therapeutic." To Cole's astonishment, he could not resist gathering her in his arms and kissing her again with a fervent passion. She had burned through the frigid soul of him he had guarded so well for so long. The thought alarmed him. He broke the kiss and gently but firmly put her at arm's length. "You'd better get dressed. I'll clean up here."

"But your sore back..."

"We seem to have worked the kinks out," he said dryly, and gave her a little nudge out the door.

Later when the floor and tub were dry and shining, he emerged to find the bedroom silent and deserted. He went to the closet and searched for some clothes he recognized. In the eight or so months Nicholas had been in charge, he had apparently discarded some of Cole's old favorites. Eventually he found a comfortable pair of khaki pants and a hunter green pullover, not his, but they'd do. He collected a few more articles to move to his room downstairs. If his time with Fitapaldi went badly tomorrow, he wanted the things he'd need handy to be packed. He did not know whether he would be around to do the packing or even be coherent enough to give instruction.

A shiver of the old, cold loneliness attacked as he put the clothes over his arm, and he stood still bracing for the worst of it. How curious that it should feel so foreign so quickly. But he guessed he had better get reacquainted. It had been foolish for him and cruel to the girl to pretend it could go away for long. Pretend you're happy when you're blue. He heard the whispered melody flutter through his mind. It was just a song, worse than a wish for breaking the heart.

A muffled thud thumped against the door. "Cole, open up." Trissa called, sounding a bit frantic and breathless. He yanked the door open to find her loaded down with a tray full of food and with the newspaper and her folktale book tucked under her arm.

"Augusta sent sandwiches. She said she thought we might need fortifying." As he took the tray from her, her face wrinkled in a bemused frown. "I hope she meant from the strain of the funeral."

"I'm sure she did."

She puttered around arranging the sandwiches and fruit salad cups on the coffee table. "Roger's heart tests went well, though he is disappointed that they refused to let him go back to limited duty. It looks like his retirement will be made final. Otherwise, they said if he takes it easy there is nothing -- Cole, where are you going with those clothes?"

"I thought I'd move them downstairs."

"But I brought the paper. Don't you want to hear the baseball scores? And I promised to read Finn MacCoul and the Fenians of Erin, remember?"

"Trissa, I can't stay here tonight."

"Oh."

"You do understand, don't you?"

"No."

"I can't let myself get too attached."

"Oh."

Her clipped, hurt words were like pricks to the heart with a tiny dagger. His will seeped away through the wounds. "But, I guess, there's no harm in reading. This room's the same as any other for reading."

She put one hand over the folktale book and the other at shoulder height, palm forward. "I solemnly swear to read and only read."

She did not keep her pledge. She never had any intention to keep it. And in the end, he had to admit, even to himself, he was very glad of that.





Chapter Nineteen





There had been no difficulty engaging the treatment room. As a staff psychiatrist with an affiliated hospital in Michigan, Fitapaldi had been accorded all courtesies and facilities to treat his patient here in St. Louis. Every step had been smoothly and efficiently handled, and he had let the ease and convenience of the arrangements lull him into burying his initial doubts.

It had only been when he drove around the circle drive to the front of this St. Vincent's, an almost identical twin to his hospital up north, that the misgivings overwhelmed him. The same black and white tiles paved the floor, the same green walls and over-waxed wood trim lined their path, the same marble statues with the same insipid smiles served as markers along the way. If Cole had not been so adamant and unyielding in his decision, he might have sensed Fitapaldi's foreboding or felt the same himself. How Fitapaldi regretted he hadn't followed his instincts and canceled the session.

It should have been so simple. He had used narcotherapy with dozens of patients, victims of traumatic neuroses, whose anxieties were lifted and who had experienced an almost immediate abatement of their symptoms. A slow injection of two to five tenths gram of sodium pentathol in a five to ten percent solution should have induced in Cole, as it had in those others he'd treated, the state of relaxation and serenity needed to bring to the surface his repressed memories and conflicts.

In this session, he had planned only to question Cole about his meeting with Bob Kirk, and he was so sure that Cole was not at fault in Kirk's subsequent death that he knew the facts uncovered would ease his anxieties about the matter. With that out of the way, there would be nothing to stop Trissa's effective, loving therapy from proceeding. He believed Trissa alone had the power to lead Cole out of the darkness and back into life. Fitapaldi had only to clear the path.