Chapter 7
Snowflakes began to fall as Kelly and Ron waved goodbye from the window of the white stretch limousine, a large “Just Married” banner hanging from its trunk.
Hank stood in the cold and watched the tail lights disappear into the night. Norah and Steve had headed home an hour earlier, anxious to get back to their lives in Boston.
That meant there was another bedroom available at the house, if he chose to use it. Hank suspected Julie would share his bed tonight if he asked her.
He knew it was wrong to sleep with someone he was protecting as an officer of the Navy, someone who might be involved in this case more than he would like. Hell, who was he kidding? She was definitely involved. It was just a matter of degree. Hank shivered in the cold and cursed the situation.
The church doors behind him opened and closed.
“Hi,” said Julie.
And he knew.
Julie Trueblood had gotten under his skin, maybe even into his heart. How the hell had that happened? Why did it have to be this woman who affected him so strongly?
He turned to see her standing on the steps of the church, her blue dress swirling in a light breeze, snowflakes twirling in the air between them.
“Merry Christmas, Hank,” she said, smiling lightly. “It’s just after midnight.”
He would remember this moment always—how she looked—how it tore him up inside. “Merry Christmas, Julie.”
“Are you ready?”
“Yeah.”
“Your mom needs some help loading up the car.” Julie opened the church door and waited for him to come inside. “Kelly and Ron get off okay?”
Hank nodded. “They said goodbye.”
“It was a good day,” she said, smiling at Hank and resting her hand on his back as they headed downstairs together. “You did good, Hank.”
“We all did.” They reached the bottom of the stairwell and Hank held the door for her.
An hour later, the group walked into Marianne’s kitchen. Julie slipped off her high heels and covered a yawn. “I’m exhausted.”
“Me too. Let’s go to bed,” said Hank.
Julie’s head snapped up at his suggestion. “I need a few minutes to unwind.”
Marianne opened a cupboard and withdrew a round bottle. “Nightcap, anyone?”
“Chambord,” said Gwen appreciatively as she pulled back a chair. “Absolutely.”
“Yes, please,” said Julie.
“Why not,” said Hank, closing his eyes.
“If you’re tired, you can go ahead,” said Julie.
“I got my second wind.”
Marianne stifled a laugh as she poured the drinks into cordial glasses. They were a heavy cut crystal in pale pink, each one shaped like a tiny vase.
“Marianne, these are precious,” said Gwen.
“They were my mother’s.”
“Just lovely. Really.”
Hank thought of the china cabinet in the dining room, chock full of crystal, and wondered how long the women were going to stay up.
Julie rubbed her neck with her hand, and Hank saw his opening, walking behind her to rub her shoulders. She made little sounds of pleasure as he worked her tired muscles, her skin warm and smooth beneath his strong hands.
“Sure you don’t want to go to bed?” he whispered in her ear.
Julie straightened her shoulders abruptly and lightly shook off his hands. He stepped away, his ego stinging from her response.
“It has been a long day. I think I am going to go to bed,” he said.
“Goodnight, Hank,” said Julie sweetly.
Once upstairs, he undressed in a huff. Hank had wrestled with his conscience and fully committed himself to breaking the rules, only to realize that Julie had no intention of coming to bed with him.
What kind of game was she playing? It seemed her affection was directly related to the size of their audience. He shouldn’t have listened to his mother. He had been right all along. Julie was playing the role he had asked her to play, and was not interested in a real relationship with him.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he said to himself as he stepped into the shower.
He let the hot water run over his head and flow down his face before he grabbed a bar of soap and worked up a heavy lather on his arms and chest. His mind replayed their kisses outside the reception hall and his body responded to the memory.
Was she really just pretending? Hadn’t she felt even a portion of what he felt?
The rest of his body got the same punishing treatment with the soap before he turned off the water and hastily dried his body.
He was a grown man, damn it, and these games were making him crazy.
Hank pulled on a clean pair of black briefs and considered grabbing a T-shirt and shorts out of deference to Julie.
She can close her damn eyes if she doesn’t like it.
Throwing back the covers on the bed, he dropped onto the cold sheets and waited for her to come in. It was nearly an hour before she did—time that did nothing to improve Hank’s mood. He watched as she closed the door as quietly as possible and tiptoed into the room.
“I was starting to think you were sleeping on the couch.”
In the darkness he saw her straighten to her full height. “I was talking with your mom and Gwen.”
“You were avoiding coming to bed with me.”
She didn’t answer him.
“Why, Julie?” His eyes were adjusted to the dim light of the room, and he saw her cross her arms over her chest as he waited for a response. When none came, he asked again, “Why are you avoiding me?”
She snapped at him. “Because you don’t really like me anyway, and I don’t want to sleep with someone who…”
“Whoa, wait a minute. I don’t really like you anyway? What are you talking about?” Hank swung his legs out of bed and walked toward her.
She stepped backwards and bumped into a dresser. “This whole charade. You pretending to like me.”
“I do like you, Julie.”
“No, not like that. Like a man likes a woman.”
“I do like you like a man likes a woman.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not being very clear.”
Hank reached out and stroked his hand down her arm.
“Please don’t touch me,” she said, recoiling. “I’m trying to make you understand.”
“I understand. You think I don’t like you like a man likes a woman, but you’re wrong.”
“I know you’re attracted to me, Hank, and I’m attracted to you, too. That’s not what I’m talking about.”
Now he was confused. He furrowed his brow. “Go ahead.”
“You want to have sex with me, but you don’t really care about me.”
Silence filled the room.
Julie let out a huff and moved to step around him.
His hand on her arm stopped her. “Wait.” His fingers trailed slowly down her arm. “I do care about you.” He stepped closer, his scent invading her senses. “Enough to get involved when every rule the Navy has, and every rule I have for myself, tells me not to.”
His words lulled her closer, tempting her with their promise. Her shaking fingers skimmed his chest, reaching higher until her hand curved around his broad shoulder. With the lightest pressure she pulled him to her, his mouth finding hers with unerring accuracy in the darkness.
She tasted like berries and spicy mint, and Hank leaned into her.
He thought he could remain unaffected, aloof, enjoying her body and the pleasure she offered without involving his heart.
She brought him to a place he had never been before, where bodies melded and feelings entwined, inseparable from one another.
They met on a battlefield, a firestorm of emotional victory and defeat, where he fought for self preservation and was beaten down, rising stronger, more powerful, having opened his heart to love.
Gwen snuggled into the velvet wingback chair and sipped at her drink. Marianne was the last to go to bed nearly an hour before, but Gwen was reluctant to let go of the night and the dark house she had all to herself.
It was magical, seeing two people in love begin their life together, and in that moment Gwen felt terribly old.
“You’re not old at all.”
She gasped and sat up with a shot. The voice was David’s, the words spoken aloud as if he was seated beside her. The darkened study was just as it had been when she walked into it, still and unoccupied.
He’d come to her like this once before, just a few weeks after he’d passed. She’d been laying in the hammock in the backyard of their house, unaware as day turned into dusk and the warmth of the late summer day gave way to the chill of evening.
He’d told her he was happy. That he wanted her to go on without him.
It was the last time they’d spoken.
“I miss you,” she whispered. There was no answer, and she felt the hollowness inside her echo with the sentiment.
Perhaps she wouldn’t get the chance to him this night after all, as if the words had been some figment of her imagination.
Could you conjure the voices of the dead if you needed them here badly enough?
I’m doing okay.
She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. She was filling her life with the riches of other people’s company, with her art, and collecting experiences. It was more than she’d hoped to be able to do the last time she’d seen her husband.
She could fall asleep right in this chair.
“I wanted to give you all of this,” David said, and Gwen smiled wide, opening her eyes slowly.
There at the mantle stood her husband.
He fingered wooden picture frames with his long, graceful fingers before turning to give her a lopsided grin. “Babies. Memories. I wanted you to have these things.”
Her heart was overflowing with gratitude at seeing him like this, the sight of him filling her with joy. “I have wonderful memories,” she said. “Being with you. Loving you. You were everything to me.”
“You can still have a family, Gwen. Your body is young.”
She laughed. “But my spirit is old, and I only ever wanted a family with you.”
“That’s not true.”
The warm feeling that had wrapped itself around her with the alcohol and the fuzzy chair was instantly transformed into something cold and prickly. “What?”
“He still has feelings for you, Gwen.”
“This is ridiculous.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t want to hear this.”
“Colin can give you things I didn’t have the chance to give you. Children. Someone to grow old with. He’s a good man. Go to him, Gwen.”
Guilt, old and poignant, stung her eyes and throat. “No.” She never should have had feelings for Colin, never should have betrayed David, even in her mind. “I don’t want to!”
David came closer to her, close enough that she could see his eyes, as real as any man’s before him.
“You are not an old woman, my love. You are young and vibrant and alive.” He touched her cheek, and she gloried in the sensation of his fingers on her skin.
“Lightning does strike the same place twice, as long as you believe it can happen. I’ve seen it, Gwen. I’ve seen it.”
His head bent closer to hers, and she closed her eyes and lifted her face for a kiss. When none came, she opened her eyes. She was alone in the study, rain falling outside and thunder rolling in the distance.
Julie hummed to herself as she poured a cup of coffee.
She had woken up in Hank’s arms, the sunlight streaming in from the window, feeling content and happy.
Carefully lifting his arm, she slipped out of bed and lowered the blinds so Hank could continue to sleep, then dressed and headed downstairs to see what the day held in store.
She had always been a morning person, enjoying the feeling of the entire day laid out before her.
On the rare occasion she slept in, she usually felt sluggish and off her game.
This morning, the house was deserted, and Julie didn’t know if Gwen and Marianne were still sleeping or if they were doing other things.
Gwen had little respect for time in general, and could be found sleeping or awake when least expected, so Julie had learned not to assume anything.
An unopened box of chocolate-covered doughnuts beckoned her, and she thought about helping herself to one or two.
She was starving, and wondered if a night of passionate lovemaking was to blame for her terrific appetite.
Her manners wouldn’t allow her to open the doughnuts, so she rummaged through the cupboards until she found an already opened box of Lucky Charms.
She had loved that cereal since she was a little girl, though she only ever ate the marshmallows. Reaching for the box, a memory flashed through her mind.
Her mother was leaning over, a golden locket dangling from her neck to Julie’s young face. “It’s my good luck charm,” she said.
“Why is it good luck?”
“When I was fourteen, I fell in love with your father. He was eighteen, and my mother wouldn’t let me see him because he was so much older.”
“He enlisted in the Navy, and he asked my parents if he could send me letters. He didn’t want my mother to know what he was saying, so he wrote in code. Your father always loved codes,” she laughed, fingering the locket.
“He used numbers to stand for letters in the alphabet, then he made pictures around the outside of the paper with dots. The number of dots in each line stood for that letter of the alphabet.”
“That’s so cool.”
“Yes. My mother thought he was quite an artist, all those decorative lines around the page. Only I knew the truth. He hid his love for me in the designs on the page.”
Julie fingered the locket, for the first time noticing the dimpled dots that comprised its decoration. “Is this a code?” she asked, mesmerized.
“It is.”
“What does it say?”
“It says, ‘Beautiful’.” Her mother smiled and Julie thought she was indeed the most beautiful woman in the world.
Frantic now, Julie put down the box of cereal and searched the room for a piece of paper. She saw a magnetic notepad on the refrigerator and hastily reached for it.
Down the left-hand side she wrote out the letters of the alphabet; next to them she numbered one through twenty-six.
Across the bottom she wrote BEAUTIFUL, then she wrote the corresponding number below each letter.
Some of them were two digits. In the end, she was staring at thirteen individual numbers.
“Oh, my God, Oh, my God, Oh, my God,” she whispered to herself, staring at what she knew was the key to deciphering the code from the safe deposit box.
She needed to tell Hank. She turned to head for the bedroom when a cell phone on the counter in front of her began to vibrate. She glanced at the screen.
ADMIRAL BARSTOW
Time stood still. Julie was paralyzed, betrayal surrounding her like a thick smoke. The phone continued to vibrate as panic rose up like bile. Barstow was calling Hank, and there could only be one reason for that.
He really was an errand boy for the devil.