Father Fever. Muriel Jensen

I’ve been looking for you.”

      She felt a moment’s trepidation. Did he know her plan? He couldn’t possibly. “You have? Why?”

      He put a hand to the beaded headpiece that covered her hair and touched gently. “Because I need you,” he whispered, suddenly urgent, intense. “Where…have you been?”

      There was sincerity in what she could see of his eyes. Tenderness in his touch. Response rose in her, instinctive and as urgent as he sounded.

      She put her glass down and reminded herself sharply of why she was here. And that this could be the man who’d coerced her aunt out of her home, possibly even caused her death. At the very least, he was one of Hartford’s friends. She had to know more.

      She took a prawn from her plate and put it to his lips. “I think you need something to eat,” she said. “Come on. Take a bite.”

      He nipped the edge of the prawn with his teeth and drew it into his mouth. “I don’t remember these being this good,” he said, “until you touched them.”

      “You were going to tell me about the house.” She drank from her glass to encourage him to drink his, on the principle of in vino veritas.

      He obliged her. “It’s a place,” he said, his voice very quiet as he concentrated on her, “for lots of children. For visiting grandparents. For friends to sleep over and for club meetings and loud Christmas parties.”

      For a moment she couldn’t reply. She’d always thought that, too, but as long as she’d been coming here, it had housed only Aunt Sadie and a cook-housekeeper. She’d looked forward to herself and her sisters and their families giving it the bursting-at-the-seams hilarity it deserved.

      But did he own it? Was he Hartford? “Then, it’s your home?” she asked.

      He didn’t seem to have heard her.

      “I never had that,” he went on. He took her glass from her and put it with his on the table. He sloshed a little and she reached forward instinctively to mop up the liquid with a napkin, but he stopped her, catching her hand in his and leaning her back into his other arm.

      “My house was empty. Of everything. Three times bigger than this but…” He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. “No laughter. No music. No voices in the dark.”

      Athena was struck by that description. She could hear the silence he described. And for one surprisingly clear moment, could imagine a small boy alone in a big, dark house, surrounded by that silence.

      She could feel his loneliness.

      He tugged at her headpiece. “Can we take this off?” he asked.

      She forced her mind away from him and back to what she was trying to do here. She pulled off the headpiece and let her hair fall.

      “It’s…beautiful,” he said softly, pulling her into his arms and rubbing his cheek against it. She was beginning to lose her focus. She didn’t want to know that he’d had an empty, lonely childhood. She didn’t want to feel sympathy for this man.

      She wanted to know if he owned the house, and if so, how he’d gotten it and whether or not he’d had anything to do with the plane crash that killed Sadie.

      “D’Artagnan!” she said sharply, for want of his real name.

      “Here, Constance,” he said, falling onto his back and bringing her with him. “I’m yours.” He held her face in both his hands and kissed her.

      He smelled of toothpaste and champagne and an herbal aftershave. He was ardent and tender at the same time, and even in this slightly tipsy state, he was completely competent and masterful.

      Then, while she was distracted by her own loss of equilibrium even though she was the sober one, he slipped up her mask and smiled as he looked into her face.

      “I knew it,” he whispered. “Beautiful. Beautiful.” Then he winced, closed his eyes and muttered a quiet expletive.

      She pushed up against his shoulders. “What?” she asked in concern.

      He ran a hand over his face. “Allergy…medication,” he said, shaking his head as though trying to clear it. “Champagne. Bad.” He expelled a sigh as he held on to her with one hand, trying to sit up.

      She tried to help by pulling on his arm but didn’t have sufficient leverage. He caught a fistful of her slip, exposed by her awkward position, and tried to draw himself up with it, but the combination of medication and alcohol was too strong and he fell backward, ripping off a large piece of silk.

      Athena punched his shoulder once. “Wake up!” she demanded. “I want to talk to you!”

      His eyes opened languidly and he caught her fist and kissed it. Then he was out like a light.

      She could have wept with frustration.

      She reached for his mask, wanting at least to know what he looked like, sure that would help her somehow. But she heard voices on the other side of the door. And it wasn’t locked.

      She looked at the state of her costume, her host and the fact that she wasn’t even invited to this party, and decided that retreat was the wisest course of action.

      At a knock on the door and a questioning “Hello?” she bolted, heading for the French doors that she knew led out to a veranda with stairs down to the backyard. Thanks to the rainy February night, the party would not have spilled outside.

      She heard the sitting room door open when she was halfway down the stairs and ran through the darkness without looking back. She knew the way. She’d run down this road where she’d left the car a hundred times as a child.

      But never with a man’s kisses stinging her lips, and a piece of her slip still caught in his hand.

      Chapter Three

      September

      Where did he go from here?

      David reread the three paragraphs on his monitor for the sixth time.

      Jake stared moodily out the back window of the cab as it made the turn to Janie’s bungalow. He hadn’t had a letter in months, but then he hadn’t written her, either. Life had been too hard, too dark to chronicle it for her.

      The cab pulled up in front of 722 Bramble Lane. Jake paid the driver and stepped out.

      Janie was sitting on the front steps with a cup of coffee and a book. She looked up at the slam of the car door, froze for a moment, then dropped the book and the coffee.

      The cursor blinked at the indent on the next paragraph as he waited for inspiration.

      She ran into his arms?

      He ran into hers?

      She walked inside and slammed the door?

      Jake pounded on the door?

      David hadn’t a clue. He was writing the last chapter of his novel, trying to make his hero’s personal dreams come true after the hell he’d put him through in the previous three hundred pages.

      But David couldn’t guess how Janie would react after she’d been skillfully wooed, willingly seduced, then left to fend for herself while Jake answered the CIA’s call after assuring her he was through with the work.

      As he’d done at least once a day for months, he thought back to the costume party last February, and the woman who’d appeared in his living room like the realization of a dream.

      He remembered her smile, the shape of her chin, snippets of their conversation. There were gaps in his memories. The champagne, the antihistamine and only four hours of sleep the night before had combined to knock him on his butt, but he recalled one crystal clear glimpse of her.

      A heart-shaped face. Eyes the color of his favorite chambray shirt. A smile that tripped his pulse.