Carla Neggers - Cut and Run

Matthew let his gaze fall on Juliana and saw the wild, scared, determined look in her dark eyes, and he felt his heart leap as he thought, this lady’s getting to me. “So you ran into Bloch,” he said.

“Yes. A charming individual. His man Peters flattened me, but that’s okay because he didn’t hurt my hands. When I was in junior high and high school, I’d go to fine arts camp, and the keyboard people would all be on the same volleyball team. We consistently had the worst record because we were all so terrified of hurting our hands. We’d hit the ball with our forearms, elbows, shoulders, heads-anything but our hands. This was probably about the same time you were trying to stay alive in Vietnam. Silly, isn’t it?”

“Jesus Christ,” Matthew said, and couldn’t help himself. He was envisioning a bunch of piano players on a volleyball team, and it was so damn crazy, so ridiculous, that he started to laugh, Bloch or no Bloch.

“Damn you-”

Juliana reared back to smack him one, and he caught her hands and pulled her to her feet. Then she was in his arms and he stopped laughing and his mouth was on hers. They just couldn’t stop. She had on a gray turtleneck sweater that had come untucked from her pants, and she reveled in the feel of his hands on its softness, her softness. She slid her arms around him and brought him even closer.

“I’m becoming very attached to you, you know,” she whispered, her mouth close to his, and she wondered if she’d started this or if he had, but she didn’t care.

“Feeling’s mutual, although if anybody had told me a month ago I’d be in Vermont kissing a crazy, internationally famous pianist and chasing the world’s largest uncut diamond…” He grimaced at the thought. “Jesus.”

He let her go and watched her stumble back on the couch, and suddenly in the firelight he could see the swelling along the side of her neck, below her jaw. Bloch’s handiwork. Matthew felt a hollowness inside him-and a seething anger. “Tell me what happened.”

At first she said nothing.

“Juliana.” He spoke her name softly. “Talk to me now or I’ll leave you here and go find Bloch my own way.”

“You’d do that, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn’t blame you,” she said. “I’m not trying to be an ass-but it’s difficult to talk…My mother…”

“Tell me, Juliana.”

It wasn’t a command, but more of a plea, not to tell but to share, not to throw the burden onto him but to transfer some of the weight of it to him. Juliana nodded, and in a surprisingly clinical manner recounted what had happened in Catharina’s Bake Shop. She held together because she had to. If she was going to help her mother, there was no choice. She couldn’t fall apart.

Matthew stood through the whole thing, pacing in front of the fire. When she’d finished, he said, “That’s not everything.”

Her ice-emerald eyes widened as she glanced up at him. “What do you mean?”

“The Minstrel’s Rough,” he said. “You have it, don’t you? That’s why you came here.”

“Is that why you did?”

His eyes held hers. “No. I came because of you.”

Looking into his face, reading what perhaps no one else could see, she believed him. “What about Aunt Willie? What have the two of you been up to?”

Matthew dropped the topic of the Minstrel for the moment and without preamble or sugarcoating told her. “We should give her a call,” he said.

“Can’t. I don’t have a telephone here.”

“Charming, but I doubt it’d make any difference. She feels a responsibility toward your mother, I gather, and if it comes to it, she’ll go with Bloch.”

“Are you going to tell me about him?”

“Are you going to tell me about the Minstrel?”

She jumped up, going into the doorway to the bedroom. They were at an impasse, she thought. Up against a brick wall. She wasn’t sure she was ready to tell him about the Minstrel. Four hundred years of tradition were at stake. She tucked in her sweater, wincing at the sudden stab of pain down her neck and into her shoulders. She felt woozy and confused, fleetingly guilty. She didn’t like stonewalling Matthew, didn’t like his black gaze on her like that, searching, wanting. It’d help, she thought, if he took off that damn leather coat.

“There’s a bed upstairs,” she said. “The room’s unfinished, but you’ll survive. It’s ridiculous to think either of us will be able to accomplish anything tonight.” Her entire body felt as if it were ready to turn to liquid and seep into the cracks in the floor. “Good night, Matthew.”

She went into the bedroom and, although she never did when she was alone, shut the door behind her.

The fire had died, and she hadn’t turned up the thermostat. It was chilly in the house as she padded upstairs in her bare feet, guided only by the starlight and the reflection of the night sky off the snow outside her windows. The stairs were as old as the house, and they creaked. Her parents didn’t like her coming here alone. If she didn’t have a husband, they thought she ought at least to have a dog.

She came to the upstairs landing. The ceilings were low, lending to the cozy atmosphere. On stormy days, she liked to flop in the bed up here and curl up under the quilts and read while listening to the pitter-pat of the rain on the roof. Sometimes she just liked to lie and daydream about not always being so alone. And yet she didn’t mind solitude. At least, not always.

There was no door to the small bedroom on the right. The old plaster walls had crumbled, and the floors were covered with layers of ugly linoleum, and there were no curtains on the one small window. Restoring the room was in her “one of these days” plans; it wasn’t something she worried about. She’d picked up an iron bed at a flea market, several quilts, and a big old trunk, and that was the furnishings.

She could see only the foot of the bed from the door, a darker outline against the general darkness. Holding her breath, she took a step into the room.

An iron shaft clamped down around her middle and catapulted her across the room onto the bed. The old springs creaked madly, and she bounced hard, the wind knocked completely out of her. Adrenaline flooded into her bloodstream in such a rush it hurt, and she gulped for air as the weight came off her, slowly, as if not quite sure it was the proper thing to do.

The dark, male silhouette stood upright. “Hell of a time to be sneaking into a man’s room,” Matthew said.

She sat up halfway, leaning back on her elbows. “I thought you might be awake.”

“I was.”

“What the devil did you think I was?”

“Act first. Then find out.”

As her eyes adjusted further to the darkness of the room, she realized he was in nature’s best. Quite nude. And magnificently so. “I didn’t expect…I thought you’d be…”

“Didn’t think to pack my jammies,” he said sarcastically, making no attempt to cover himself.

She herself was clad chin-to-toe in an L.L. Bean flannel nightgown. “Well, you could have worn something.”

“I wasn’t expecting company.”

“I guess I get what I deserve.”

“I guess you do.”

“Matthew, I-” She stopped herself. “I can’t very well talk with you standing there like that. Aren’t you cold?”

He grinned. “Freezing.”

There were no heat vents upstairs, and it was even colder than downstairs. Even with her flannel nightie, she was chilly herself. But instead of putting on his clothes, Matthew pulled back the covers and climbed into bed. He stretched out, forcing her to sit up straight, but even so she could feel his calves through the quilts, touching her behind.

“Not what you imagined?” he asked at her stricken look.