She still had more money than she knew what to do with, but for once in her life she felt free. Gloriously unencumbered by inherited money that she didn't deserve, by guilt that she might have deserved. She drank champagne, kicked off her shoes and danced around her apartment. And when she finally fell into bed, she dreamed once more of Michael Dowd.
Chapter 10
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Francey looked up into his eyes. Eyes she knew well, warm, loving blue eyes, open and honest, gentle and caring. And yet they weren't the same eyes. The warm blue was icy now, with tiny pinpoints of rage in the dark center. There was no affable grin on his face. No crinkling smile, no tenderness. She was looking up into the face of a dangerous man. One with a hard mouth, shuttered eyes and a face that was narrow and still. This was no schoolteacher recuperating. This was someone as fully dangerous as Patrick Dugan had ever been.
He was lying stretched out on top of her, and yet she felt only the weight of his eyes staring into hers. And the weight of his mouth settling on hers, draining her soul, taking everything from her until she herself was weightless, floating, lost in some feathery dream world where nothing existed but the warmth of his flesh and hers, touching, heating, igniting, flaming into a flashpoint of brilliant light…
She awoke with a start, a scream of some lost emotion still rattling in her lungs. She was covered with sweat in her air-conditioned apartment, lying sideways across her double bed, and the pillows and covers were strewn around the room. Then she heard it again, the shrill ring of her telephone.
Her digital clock said 3:47. People didn't call at 3:47 a.m. unless it was to announce a disaster. She lay very still, feeling her heart pound against her chest, letting the panic dance over her skin. She didn't want to hear bad news. Her answering machine was still on; it would pick up after the fourth ring. The question was, would the next ring be the fourth?
The phone rang again, and there was no answering click from her machine. Must have been ring number three. If she could just control herself, let it ring one more time, the machine would take care of the problem, and she wouldn't have to deal with it until she was ready.
The wait seemed endless. Francey was fully awake by now, sitting cross-legged on her mattress, her arms wrapped tightly around her chemise-clad body, rocking back and forth, and for a moment she was terrified that whoever had called her had given up, hung up, leaving her forever in limbo.
The apartment was filled with the noisy buzz of silence. She could hear her air conditioner laboring away in the living room, the busy hum of her refrigerator, the ever-present noise from the street below. And then the phone rang again.
She dived for it, knocking it off the nightstand onto the floor and the pillows beside the bed, following it down with a thud, cursing beneath her breath as she first brought the receiver to her face. "Hullo?" Her voice was hoarse, strained, a desperate whisper as she waited for the voice of doom.
"Francey." One word, one voice. It was all she needed.
She started to cry. Tears were pouring down her face, and the more she tried to speak, the faster they flowed, choking her.
From miles, oceans, away, Michael's voice came back to her. "Francey?" he said again, his voice alarmed. "Are you all right?"
By sheer force of will she pulled herself together, wiping the tears from her face as she huddled on the floor in the darkness. "Michael," she said, and her voice was only faintly tremulous. "I'm fine. I just didn't expect to hear from you."
"Lord, what time is it? I woke you up, didn't I? I didn't think. Let me call you back…"
"Don't hang up! Please, Michael…"
"I won't." He sounded so calm, so sure, so safe, on the other end of the line. She closed her eyes, wishing she could touch him.
She shuddered, so alone, and then sat up a little straighter, leaning against the side of the bed. "Tell me about your life," she said, back in control. "You must be out of the hospital—you couldn't sound so healthy otherwise."
"I was in and out in a matter of days. It was a simple matter for them to patch me up. Then I went up to Whipdale House for a stay with my mother and sisters, and I've been back at school for the summer session for the past three weeks. We just won our first soccer match. We were out celebrating at the local pub, and I suddenly needed to hear your voice."
"It sounds as if your life is back to normal."
There was a certain wryness in his words. "As normal as it ever gets, given my life-style. What about yours?"
She remembered the darkness of the night on Baby Jerome, how her bedtime story with its horrors differed from the middle-class English comfort of his, and she wished for a moment that she'd never told him. That she'd kept up with the pretense that she was just a young woman at loose ends, spending time at her cousin's Caribbean estate, not someone running away from pain, from terror, from life.