It was too horrible a thought to contemplate, but she couldn’t help remembering the excitement she had heard in his voice when he ‘d told her of the substantial contract, the despondency he had conveyed when he’d asked her to reconsider the offer.
And now, driving from the Houston airport back to Galveston, those questions were still haunting Rana. To add to her misery, rain was pelting the highway. It was a dark, ponderous, dismal rain that matched her mood perfectly.
Her future stretched out in front of her like the fiat coastal highway. Unrelieved. Monotonous. Dreary. She could see no light in that future. How could she ever be happy and carefree with the indelible stain of Morey’s suicide on her conscience?
The house was dark. She noticed that Trent ’s car was gone. He and Ruby must have gone out together. Picking up her suitcase, she ran through the driving rain to the back door.
Leaving her suitcase on the sleeping porch, she took off her hat and shook the rain from it. She slipped out of her jacket and spread it over a chair to dry. Her shoes came off next, and with them her stockings.
Barefoot, she padded into the kitchen. It was uncharacteristically gloomy. Even the crisply starched ruff1ed curtains at the windows looked sad and limp against the bleak landscape beyond them. She got a drink of tepid water from the tap in the sink, but after taking two swallows, she left the glass on the drainboard. She was disconsolate that every movement was a chore. Her limbs felt leaden, and it took a supreme effort to move them blackest depression weighed her down.
She had been a baby when her father had died, so she didn’t remember. Now, for the first time in her life, she had suffered the death of someone she really cared about. How did anyone survive the loss of a beloved spouse, a child? The finality of death was dreadful.
Without turning on any lights, she went through the shadowed dining room into the central hall. Raintrickled down the tall, narrow windows on either side of the front door. It looked mournful, silvery, cold. It looked like tears. Rana stared up the dark staircase and wondered where she would get the energy to climb those steps to he room.
Listlessly, she dropped onto the deacon’s bench beneath the stairs. Propping her elbows on her knees, she laid her head in her hands and began to cry. She had pt quietly, politely, at the funeral, but she hadn’t lifted the floodgate of her grief.
Now tears, scalding and bitter, fell from her eyes with the same incessant pattern as the rain falling outside. They ran down her cheeks and into her mouth. They dripped from her chin. Her shoulders shook with racking sobs.
She sensed he was there only a second before she felt his hand on her shoulder. She raised her head. He was standing in front of her, looming as tall as a pillar. The gray light was dim in the hallway, particularly beneath the stairs. She could barely distinguish his features, but she could tell that his dark brows were drawn together with worry.
Her mother had offered her no words of consolation. Rana had been a stranger to the others attending the funeral. She needed comfort, craved some token of reassurance. She reached toward the only available source. Mindlessly, she clutched his arms.
Instantly responsive, Trent sat down on the hard deacon’s bench beside her and wrapped his arms around her. He said nothing, only pressed his face against her damp hair. He cupped the back of her head and forced her face down into the hollow between his shoulder and neck. She burrowed there, letting the soft cloth of his shirt absorb the torrent of relentless, salty tears.
His fingers stirred in her hair, and he was amazed to find it so thick and lush, and so soft to his touch. When his fingers settled on her scalp, he massaged it tenderly. His lips touched her ear.
“I’ve been so worried about you.”
As though grasping his concern as something rare and precious, Rana’s fingers curled into the front of his shirt. Through it she could feel the warmth of his skin, the shape of his hard muscles, the crinkly texture of his chest hair.
“Where did you go, Ana?”
The pseudonym was foreign to her, and for a moment she couldn’t imagine why he was calling her by the wrong name. Then she remembered. The name was a lie. It was as phony as the rest of her. Her whole life had been a string of fakeries, a tapestry of superficiality. At that moment she longed for nothing more than to hear her name, Rana, from Trent ’s lips. She wanted to feel his breath as he spoke her name against her ear. She wanted to see her name forming on his lips.
“Why are you crying? Where have you been?”
“Don’t ask me, Trent.”
“I find you crying alone in the dark. How can you expect me to ignore that? Tell me what’s wrong. Can I help? Where have you been and why did you go without saying good-bye to me?”
She pushed herself away from him and sniffed. Unabashedly she wiped her face with the backs of her hands. Suddenly she realized she wasn’t wearing her glasses. But he wouldn’t recognize her tear-bloated eyes in the darkness.
“I had to go out of town to a friend’s funeral.”
He waited a moment, then laid his arm across her shoulders. He ran the back of his index finger down her cheek, picking up tears that her fists had left behind. “I’m sorry. Was it a close friend?”
“Very.”
“A sudden death?”
She covered her face with her hands again. “Yes, yes.” She moaned. “A suicide.”
Trent hissed a curse, and the hand resting on her shoulder tensed. He tucked her head beneath his chin again. “That’s tough. I know. Before I played for the Mustangs, I had a buddy on another team. His knees got so banged up, they finally told him he couldn’t play ball anymore. He shot himself. I know just how you feel.”
“No, you don’t,” she cried angrily, shoving herself out of his arms and standing abruptly. “You weren’t to blame for your friend’s death.” She tried to make it to the stairs, but he caught up with her and, grabbing her arm, spun her around.
“Are you saying you were to blame for this suicide?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe that,” he said firmly, shaking her slightly. “You can’t take responsibility for someone else’s life. No one can.”
“Oh, Trent, tell me that until I believe it.” Her hands folded around his steely biceps, and she gazed up at him imploringly. “Repeat it a thousand times if that’s what it takes to convince me.”
He wrapped his arms around her and drew her close, holding her against him tightly. “It’s true. Believe me. If this friend was inclined toward self-destruction, there was little you could have done except possibly delay it.”
“I let him down when he needed me. ”
“Most people learn to cope with disappointments. You’re not to blame that your friend didn’t.”
He closed his arms around her and held her for a long time, rocking her slightly back and forth. “Better now?” he asked softly.
“Yes. The hurt is still there, but it isn’t so sharp.”
He had turned them so that her back was to the wall. She leaned against it, but left her arms resting lightly on Trent ‘s shoulders. He pressed his lips to her neck.
“I’m only sorry that you had to suffer over this.”
Unconsciously she let her head tip backward. “Thank you. I haven’t been able to talk to anyone about it. I needed this… needed you.”
“Then I’m glad I was here.”
His caresses had gone beyond consolation and were now of another nature entirely. “So am I. ”
“Ana?”
“Hm?”
He gazed down at her, his expression filled with wonder. “Ana?”
Then his mouth was on hers, hot and hard and urgent. Imprisoning her face between his hands, he slanted his lips across hers. He made a low, growling, hungry sound deep in his throat.
Rana’s hands clenched on his shoulders, taking up handfuls of fabric. She turned her head away and gasped, “No.”