Iris Johansen - Across the River of Yesterday

She sat on the beach at his feet, her bare toes digging in the sand. "I'd like to tell you all about it." She smiled crookedly. "I know it's a little late. Do you still want to hear it?"

"I want to hear it," he murmured. "I think it's important I know."

"I think so too." She picked up a handful of sand and let it sift slowly through her fingers. "For one thing, it will illustrate how wrong you were to think you had anything to learn from my friends or family, any polish to acquire from them. You're so far ahead they'd never catch up in a hundred years." She paused. "I guess I should start with my mother. There's no real harm in her. She's just weak and selfish and can only see as far as her checkbook. I think she may even have loved my father; she always spoke of him as if she did. He was a race car driver and after he died…" She trailed off. "She likes money. She needs money to complete herself. Edwin Marlbrent had a great deal of money and he wanted an heir. She married him and Dane was born eighteen months later. He divorced her less than six months after that." Her lips twisted. "Oh, don't make any mistake about it. My mother was perfectly willing to give him the divorce. It was a very amicable arrangement. My stepfather gave her a generous allowance for life, and she gave him custody of Dane. As she wasn't exactly the maternal type, the terms were exactly to her liking. A year later, she married someone else who suited her much better. Her French count had a lovely chateau in the wine country and no money so they dovetailed beautifully. The marriage suited my stepfather too. As long as she needed his money, he maintained full control over her and Dane." She paused. "And me."

"What were you doing while all this was going on?" Gideon asked. "Were you fond of Marlbrent while you were growing up?"

She shook her head. "He could be very charming, but he didn't waste it on me. I was away at school during their short marriage, and only saw them on those few holidays during that brief time." Her face softened. "But I was wild with joy when Dane was born. I'd always been a lonely child and I thought at last I'd have someone of my own to love. Of course, it didn't work out that way." Her face clouded. "No, I don't think my stepfather knew I existed as a human being." She paused. "Until he decided he could make use of me."

Gideon reached down and took her hand, holding it without speaking.

"I was seventeen and attending a convent school in Switzerland. I was very naive, incredibly so." She laughed mirthlessly. "You can't imagine how stupid I was. My stepfather appeared at the convent one day and whisked me away on a holiday to Italy. I was thrilled and happy and-I told you how charming he could be. I thought he actually liked me. I told myself that it was only children he had no use for, and now that I was almost grown up, he wanted to be my friend. He introduced me to Antonio del Montaldo in Florence, and Antonio traveled with us while we toured northern Italy. Antonio was handsome, charming, and a prince, and my stepfather heartily approved of him." She laughed again. "How could I resist? It was a damn fairy tale. We were married in Rome two weeks after my stepfather had taken me away from the convent. He even took his yacht out of dry dock and treated the newlyweds to a honeymoon trip to the Caribbean. " Her lips curved in an ironic smile. "Just the three of us. I didn't think it unusual. I was floating-no, drowning-in charm. They were both being so wonderfully kind and affectionate and I gobbled it up like a hungry orphan. Antonio wasn't exactly passionate, but since I'd never had a lover, I didn't realize… I was living in a dream world." She closed her eyes. "Until that night we docked at Mariba. I woke up and Antonio wasn't in the cabin. I got out of bed and went looking for him," She stopped and was silent a moment. "I found him. He was in my stepfather's bed. My stepfather was making love to him." She could feel Gideon's hand tighten on her own, but she didn't open her eyes. "I was stunned and almost hysterical. I can remember screaming at them, and the two of them looking at me as if I were a mosquito that had caused them a minor annoyance. " She ran her tongue over her lips to moisten them. "Then my stepfather sat up in bed and began to speak to me. His voice was very cold and reasonable. He was in love with Antonio, and in his position any rumor of homosexuality was out of the question. It would have seriously compromised his social and business status in London. There had already been a few suspicions voiced regarding his lack of female companionship since the divorce from my mother. The sensible thing to do was to bring Antonio into the family." Her lips curled bitterly. "That's the very word he used. Sensible. Our marriage tie would throw a cloak of respectability on his association with Antonio. Now all I had to do was to be a good little girl and keep my mouth shut while they used me." Her eyes opened to reveal eyes glittering with remembered pain. "I think that's what threw me into a tail- spin. Neither one of them had ever cared about me. They were only using me. I guess I went a little crazy. I ran out of the cabin, and down the gangplank. I didn't know where I was running, or-"

"You were running to me." Gideon's voice was velvet with tenderness. "It was the time for us to come together."

She met his eyes. "I believe that now, but that night I was confused and upset. I had suffered a shock that had shaken me to the foundations and sent me in a daze wandering through Mariba. I don't even know how I got into that bar where you found me. Oh, I was brimful of a convent idea of sin. I'd taken a marriage vow and, even if I'd been duped, I couldn't reconcile myself to the idea of breaking that vow." She shook her head in wonder as she looked back on that bewildered child. "Perhaps my stepfather even relied on that convent training. It wouldn't surprise me."

"You shouldn't have left me. We could have worked everything out if we'd been together."

"He would have destroyed you," she said simply. "I didn't dare even mention you. I told you, what he couldn't control, he destroyed. He was a very powerful man and you were just getting started. That night I lay awake and tried to think of a way out, but I knew there was only one solution. I had to let them use me, until I could gather the strength to break free." She determinedly blinked back the tears. "That first year was bad. I wanted to run back to you a hundred times a day."

"But you didn't."

"No, I started to close you out instead." She lifted his palm and cradled it against her cheek. "Remember when I told you that everything I love becomes an obsession with me? When I came to you, I was starved for affection and you gave me everything I'd ever dreamed about. I had been alone and suddenly you held out the promise that I'd never be alone again. I loved you so much it nearly killed me. The only way I could survive was to shut you out entirely. If I couldn't have all of you, I didn't want memories. I painted the mental picture I wanted to see and put you in the past where you couldn't hurt me."

"You managed very well." Gideon's voice held a thread of pain.

She shook her head. "I thought I had, but it all fell apart when I saw you. Though I still had a king-size hang-up from repressing what I felt for you all those years. I think that was why I had trouble making a commitment." Her lips lovingly brushed his palm. "I finished my education and then made a deal with my stepfather. I would stay married to Antonio on two conditions-that I didn't have to live with them and that he would give me custody of Dane."

"He went along with it?"

"He loved Antonio. I think perhaps Antonio was the only person he ever really did love." Her lips curled. "And Dane was no personal loss to him. He'd been shipped away to schools since he was practically an infant. My stepfather probably thought I'd come crawling back to him when I found myself facing the world without a dime in my pocket."