Dean Koontz - Your Heart Belongs To Me

By Friday, he was prepared to share his dire news with Samantha. He called her to say that he was home from Denver, and that he hoped to see her for dinner.

“What if we try that new restaurant you were so hot about last week,” she suggested.

“These have been a busy few days, Sam. I’d rather we had a quiet evening, just us. Is your place okay?”

“I’m all cooked out, Dotcom. You bring deli, and it’s a deal.”

“See you at five-thirty,” he said, and hung up.

He considered bringing as well the death photo of Teresa, in case the evening took a turn that required cold questions and hard answers.

After looking once more at the dead woman’s portrait, Ryan decided that even if reason arose to be more suspicious of Samantha than he had yet allowed himself to be, using this picture to shake her confidence would constitute a cruelty of which he was not capable.

He returned the photo to the envelope, which he stowed in a desk drawer.

In silk slippers and a blue-and-gold kimono, Samantha was so much lovelier than Ryan remembered her that he felt at once disarmed, and knifed by desire.

He had recently spent so much time staring at her lost twin, whose looks were weathered by suffering, that his memory of her exceptional face had been clouded.

As soon as Ryan put the deli bags on the kitchen counter, Sam came into his arms. She would have kissed him straightaway into the bedroom; and he almost allowed himself to be led there.

Crazily, in memory, he heard the voice of the young woman who spoke for the navigation system in the Cadillac Escalade, leading him back to his Denver hotel and away from the park full of aspens. This bizarre association lowered the flame of his desire, and he regained control of himself.

“I’m starving,” he said.

“You’re kidding.”

“Totally starving.”

“You must be.”

“Look,” he said, “corned beef sandwiches.”

“I really thought this kimono made me irresistible.”

“With that cheese you like and the special mustard.”

“Next time I’ll wear corned beef and cheese.”

“And the special mustard,” he said.

“With pickles for earrings.”

“That’s one fashion risk too many. Look, pepper slaw and potato salad and that three-bean-and-peppers-and-celery dish, whatever they call it.”

“Pepper slaw would have been enough. What’s this-custard cake?”

“And then, here, those fabulous cookies.”

“What’re you fattening me up for?”

“I just can’t control myself in that deli. I shouldn’t be allowed to go in there without a chaperone.”

They transferred everything from bags and plastic containers to dishes and bowls, and then carried the feast to the table on the deck.

“I’m surprised you didn’t bring a keg of beer,” she said.

“You don’t drink beer.”

“I don’t eat eight pounds of deli at one sitting, either, but that didn’t stop you.”

“I brought wine,” he said, pointing to the bottle that he had left on the table on arrival, before he’d gone into the kitchen. “An excellent Meritage.”

“I’ll get glasses.”

After he poured, before they sat at the table, they clinked wine-glasses, and a note as sweet as that from a silver bell rang through the surrounding pepper tree.

They sipped, they kissed, they sat, and Ryan was so instantly comfortable with her that he knew, whether this Sam was a lie or not, he loved her, and he would continue to love her even if there was another Sam who was a conniving bitch.

“It’s been a whole week,” she said.

If it turned out that he had been diagnosed with a bad ticker and this night discovered he was in love with Ms. Jekyll in spite of Ms. Hyde, it would perhaps be the most eventful week of his life.

A web of shadows and late sunshine seemed not to overlay them but instead to entwine them, as if they were embedded in it and it in them, a matrix of light and dark, known and unknown, a warp and woof of mystery from which their future would take shape.

“Why did we let a whole week go by?” she wondered.

He said, “The novel’s going especially well, isn’t it?”

“Good. I’ve had several good days in a row. How did you know?”

Ryan had no intention of telling her that when she was swept up in her writing, she thought less about his proposal of marriage, and that when marriage was not on her mind, she was less chaste than when it was.

Instead, he said, “Your eyes are shining with excitement, and your voice is full of delight.”

“Maybe that’s because you’re here.”

“No. If you were that glad to see me, you’d be wearing corned beef and cheese.”

“Okay, the book. Hard to explain. But text and subtext are coming together in ways I never could have anticipated.”

“That is exciting.”

“Well, it is for me.”

“How are you doing with the past participles?”

“I’ve got them under control.”

“And the semicolons, the gerunds, the whole who-whom thing?”

“If this wine weren’t so good, I’d pour it over your head.”

“Which is why I buy only the best. Self-defense.”

Quick footsteps ascended the stairs from the courtyard.

Ryan turned in time to see the ice-crown of white hair that, in the moonlight one week previous, had identified the tall man in the yard, conferring with Samantha, as Spencer Barghest.

Without the moon, the identification did not hold. This man was Barghest’s body type, but he was a decade younger than Dr. Death, in his forties, and he lacked the rubbery facial features of a stand-up comic behind which Barghest hid.

“Oh,” he said upon seeing them at the table, halting one step below the deck. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to interrupt.”

“Kevin,” she said, “please join us. I’ll get another glass.”

“No, no. Really. I only have a moment anyway. I’ve got to be off to the hospital, evening visiting hours.”

As Ryan rose from his chair, Samantha said, “Have you guys met?”

When Ryan regretted that they had not, Samantha introduced him to Kevin Spurlock, the son of Miriam Spurlock, who owned the house that came with the garage above which Sam lived.

“How is your mom?” Samantha asked.

“She’s doing well. Really well.”

For Ryan’s benefit, Samantha said, “Miriam had a very bad attack of angina a week ago-in fact a week ago this evening.”

“She was in a restaurant,” Kevin said. “Paramedics rushed her to a hospital. The worst for her was making a scene in a public place. She was mortified.”

“Heart attack?” Ryan asked.

“No, thank God. But tests revealed blocked arteries.”

“Critically blocked,” Samantha said. “The next morning, she had a quadruple bypass.”

“She loved your flowers,” Kevin told Samantha. “Calla lilies-they’re her favorite.”

“I’ll fill her bedroom with them when she gets home.”

After Kevin had gone, Samantha told a few stories about Miriam, one of which Ryan had heard before. The landlady was something of an eccentric, although unfailingly sweet and kind.

A week earlier, when Ryan thought he’d caught Samantha in a furtive conversation with Spencer Barghest, she evidently had been receiving the news about Miriam Spurlock’s hospitalization.

Seeing a light in the apartment, Kevin must have come to the door. The knock failed to stir Ryan from a postcoital nap. To avoid waking him, Sam had gone outside to talk with her landlady’s son.

Inspired by a paranoid interpretation of this innocent meeting, Ryan had flown to Las Vegas the following morning, seeking proof of a nonexistent conspiracy.

Now Rebecca Reach’s get-rich-quick books seemed to be evidence of nothing worse than her gullibility and wishful thinking.