Remembrance (The Mediator #7)(94)
My pulse gave an unsteady lurch.
“What I prescribe is that we both go back to the Crossing tonight,” I said, my voice suddenly a little hoarse, “and split a bottle of wine, and discuss how disappointing I’ve been, in great detail, in your bedroom. For therapeutic purposes I think we should do this unclothed.”
His response was the lopsided grin that I’d missed so much—no trace of cynicism in it this time.
“We could try that,” he said, ducking his head to press a kiss along my throat. “Or we could discuss some of your less disappointing qualities.”
I feigned shock. “Wait . . . I have some?”
“I can think of a few.” One of his hands had risen from my waist to linger dangerously close to my left breast.
“Name one. Let’s see what it unleashes.”
“Hmmm. Strong-willed?”
“Not very flattering. Try again.”
“Witty.”
“Oh, good.” The hand drifted closer to my breast as his lips traveled closer to my mouth. “How about another?”
“Beautiful.”
“I like it. What else?”
He said something unintelligible. As he’d continued to kiss me—one kiss for each word—I’d felt something through the front of his suit trousers that proved at least one part of him was decidedly not disappointed in me.
“We could discuss those things, too,” I said as both his hands now cupped my breasts, and his lips pressed hungrily against mine. “I’m open to winging it.”
“Susannah, Susannah, Susannah,” he whispered after a little while. “Te amo.”
“Me, too,” I whispered back, slipping my arms around his neck. The best part of fighting was always the making up afterward. “Back at you.”
He’d just given me one of those long, simmering kisses that, in my experience with him, generally led to even more long, simmering kisses, when the sound of someone clapping caused us both to start and turn around.
There was no telling how long he’d been standing there beneath the porte cochere, silently eavesdropping. The wind from the ocean was blowing the smoke from the cigar he was smoking in the opposite direction, which was why I hadn’t noticed it. I’m usually more sensitive to those kinds of things.
“Brilliant,” Paul said, still applauding, the cigar clenched between his teeth. “A stunning tour de force. I haven’t seen a performance that entertaining since . . . well, the porn in my room upstairs.”
I felt every one of Jesse’s muscles tense. I grasped the shoulders of his jacket beneath my fingers, knowing exactly what was about to happen.
“Jesse, don’t,” I warned, fear clenching my stomach. “He’s not worth—”
But it was too late.
He was on Paul in three strides. The sound of bone thudding against bone was sickening, almost the same sound the rifle butt had made as it connected with Delgado’s skull.
It’s odd what your consciousness focuses on in moments like that. Mine was seized by the cigar as it went flying from Paul’s mouth into the night air—sending a shower of red sparks after it—only to land on the concrete at my high-heeled feet, followed, a few seconds later, by Paul’s face, in a shower of equally red blood droplets.
“I warned you,” Jesse said to Paul, breathing heavily as he stepped over his inert body to take me by the arm and steer me away from the carnage. “But you wouldn’t listen.”
Paul’s only response was a groan as he struggled to sit up.
“Jesse.” I was completely shocked by the violence of what I’d just witnessed, and I’d witnessed quite a lot of violence that evening. It wasn’t hard for me to believe, in that moment, that Jesse did have a demon within him. He’d just unleashed it on the person he hated most, instead of those he loved. “You didn’t have to—”
“Yes,” he said in a voice that chilled me with its iciness. “I did.”
Then he pressed something into my hand. When I looked down to see what it was, I was surprised, in some dim part of my brain, to see the keys to the BMW.
“Go home.” Jesse was holding on to my shoulders and giving me careful verbal instructions. “Your home. Hurry. It will be better if you leave now.”
“Why?” I asked stupidly. “Where are you going?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right. I’ll call you when I can.”
“Call me? I don’t understand. Where are you going?”
But then I saw the valets come bursting out from the lobby, speaking rapidly and excitedly to Jesse in Spanish, and I heard the siren in the distance, and I saw the slow, evil smile on Paul’s face through all the blood as he sat up.
Suddenly I understood exactly why Jesse had given me his keys, and knew precisely where he was going.
All I could do was get into his car and drive home.
treinta y uno
David wouldn’t stop apologizing. He sounded like he was crying, practically, over the phone.
And I was making things worse by saying all the wrong things.
“Well, it’s true Jesse probably never would have gotten arrested for assaulting Paul Slater if it weren’t for you spilling the beans about the curse to him,” I said. “Which just goes to show some things really are better kept secret.”