Nora Roberts - Dance Upon the Air

His doctor prescribed medication and rest. His friends encircled him with sympathy.

He began to enjoy it.

Within a month, he'd forgotten he had insisted that Helen make the trip to Big Sur that day. In his mind, in the cradle of his memory, he saw himself entreating her not to attend, to stay home and rest until she was well again.

Of course, she hadn't listened. She had never listened.

Grief turned to fury, a raging flood of anger that he drowned with liquor and solitude. She'd betrayed him, going out against his wishes, insisting on attending some frivolous party rather than respecting her husband's request.

She had left him unforgivably alone.

But even rage passes. The hole it left in him he filled with a fantasy of her, of their marriage, even of himself. He heard people speak of them as a perfect couple, cruelly parted by tragedy.

He read it, thought it. Believed it.

He wore one of her earrings on a chain next to his heart and let the affectation leak to a suitable media source. It was said Gable did the same when he'd lost Lombard.

He kept her clothes in her closets, her books on the shelves, her perfumes in their bottles. He had an angel of white marble erected for her in the cemetery where no body lay. Every week, a dozen red roses were placed at its feet.

To keep himself sane, he threw himself into his work. He began to sleep again, without so many dreams in which Helen came to him. Gradually, at the urging of friends, he began to go out again socially.

But the women eager to comfort the widower didn't interest him. He dated only because it kept him in the press. He bedded a few of the women only because there would be talk otherwise, of an unflattering sort.

Sex had never driven him. Control had.

He had no wish ever to marry again. There would never be another Helen. They had been destined for each other. She'd been meant for him, meant to be molded and formed by him. If he'd had to punish her occasionally-well, discipline was part of the formation. He'd had to teach her.

Finally, in their last few weeks together, he had believed she had learned. It had been a rare thing for her to make a mistake, in public or private. She'd deferred to him as a wife was meant to defer to a husband, and had made certain that he was pleased with her.

He remembered, or convinced himself that he remembered, that he'd been about to reward her with a trip to Antigua. She had been fascinated by the ocean, his Helen. And had told him, during those first heady weeks of love and discovery, how she sometimes dreamed of living on an island.

In the end, the sea had taken her.

Because he could feel the depression rolling into him like a fog, he poured a glass of mineral water and took one of his pills.

No, he wouldn't sell the house, he decided in one of his lightning mood changes. He would open it. He would give one of the lavish, A-list parties, the kind he and Helen had hosted so often and so successfully.

It would feel as if she were there beside him, as she was meant to be.

When the phone rang, he ignored it and continued to stand, gently rubbing an etched gold hoop earring through the fine linen of his shirt.

"Sir? Ms. Reece is on the phone. She'd like to speak with you if you're available."

Saying nothing, Evan held out a hand for the portable phone. He never glanced at the uniformed maid who gave it to him, but slid open the terrace door and stepped outside in the balm of breeze to speak to his sister.

"Yes, Barbara?"

"Evan, I'm glad you were in. Deke and I were hoping you'd join us at the club this afternoon. We can have a set of tennis, lunch by the pool. I hardly see my baby brother these days."

He started to refuse. His sister's country club circle held little interest for him. But he reconsidered quickly, knowing how well Barbara planned entertainment. And how much of the annoyance of the details she would willingly take from his hands.

"I'd like that. I want to speak to you anyway." He glanced at his Rolex. "Why don't I meet you there. Eleven-thirty?"

"Absolutely perfect. Prepare yourself. I've been working on my backhand."

His tennis game was off. Barbara had broken his serve yet again and was prancing around like a fool in her designer tennis skirt. Of course, she had time to fritter around any fucking day of the week, making time with some slick-fingered tennis pro while her asshole husband practiced his putting.

He, on the other hand, was a busy man, with a demanding business and high-powered clients who whined like babies if he didn't give them his full attention.

He didn't have time for goddamn games.

He bulleted one over the net, gritted his teeth audibly when Barbara hustled and returned it. Sweat dampened his face, ran down his back. And his mouth peeled back in a snarl as he raced over the court.

It was a look Nell would have recognized. One she would have feared.

Barbara recognized it as well and instinctively bungled a return. "You're killing me," she called out, and shook her head as she took her time going back to position.

Evan had always been temperamental, she thought. It was hard for him not to win, not to get his way. It always had been. As a child his retribution had come in one of two forms. Icy silence that could bore holes in steel. Or quick, hot violence.

You're older, her mother had said, always. Be a good girl, be a good sister. Let the baby win.

It was such an old and ingrained habit, she barely registered her decision to blow the next return as well. And after all, the afternoon would be so much more pleasant if he won the match. Why cause contention over a tennis game?

So, burying her own competitive spirit, she took a dive, surrendering the game.

His expression changed almost instantly.

"Good game, Evan. I never could keep up with you."

She sent him an indulgent smile as they positioned themselves for the next. Boys hate to lose to girls, she thought. It was another of her mother's homilies.

And what were men but big boys?

By the time it was over and he'd won the match, he was in a fine mood. He felt loose and limber and affectionate. He swung an arm over Barbara's shoulders, bussed her cheek. "Your backhand still needs some work."

There was a little bubble of annoyance in her throat, automatically swallowed. "Yours is lethal." She picked up her bag. "And since you humiliated me, you get to buy lunch. I'll meet you on the lounge terrace. Thirty minutes."

She kept him waiting, always a minor irritation. But it pleased him to see how attractive she was, how well presented. He detested sloppy attire or unkempt hair on a woman, and Barbara never disappointed him.

She was four years his senior, but could have passed for thirty-five. Her skin was pampered and taut, her hair sleek and glossy, and her figure trim.

She joined him under the shade of the umbrella, smelling subtly of her favored White Diamonds.

"I'm going to console myself with a champagne cocktail." She crossed legs garbed in thin raw silk. "Between that and sitting with the most handsome man in the club, my mood should immediately improve."

"And I was just thinking what a beautiful woman I have for a sister."

Her face lit up. "You always say the sweetest things."

It was true, she thought. He did. When he won. It made her all the more pleased that she'd tanked the match.

"Let's not wait for Deke," she said, still beaming at him. "Lord knows when he'll finish his game."

She ordered her cocktail and a Cobb salad, moaning dramatically when Evan selected shrimp scampi. "Oh, I hate you for your metabolism. You never gain an ounce. I'm going to have a bite of yours, then curse you when I'm tortured tomorrow by my personal trainer."