Kat Martin - Season Of Strangers

He spotted it clinging to the side of a cliff, a two-car garage on the bottom, forming a two-story structure, the walls of the house draped with shocking-pink azaleas. If he hadn’t been so worried, he might have smiled.

Instead he parked the car in the driveway, knocked on the door, and a few minutes later, Julie Ferris let him in.

“This is silly, Patrick. You shouldn’t have come.”

But she looked so pale he was glad he had. He felt responsible for what was happening to her. Was responsible. There was just no way around it. Still, science was all-important. The Ansor’s mission was all-important.

And yet when he looked at Julie, he wished there could have been some other way.

“Why don’t you lie down on the couch?” he said gently. “I give a great massage. Why don’t we see if it will help?”

“I don’t know, Patrick….”

“Come on, Julie, please. Do it for me?”

A hint of uncertainty appeared in her face. She had always been wary of Patrick and yet they were friends of a sort. “All right. What have I got to lose?”

A few minutes later, she was lying on her stomach on the sofa, her pale blue terry-cloth robe covering her primly from neck to ankle. Val knelt beside her, began to massage her shoulders.

“I must be crazy,” she mumbled when his hands moved a little bit lower, kneading the muscles across her back. “If you try anything, Patrick, I swear I’ll never forgive you.”

He flushed a little at that. Partly because he had begun to like the feel of her small woman’s body beneath his hands and partly because the heavy male part of his anatomy was coming to life again.

Val swore something Patrick would have said. “I promise my intentions are completely aboveboard.”

“They’d better be.”

He continued his deep massage, working upward again, toward the muscles in her neck, reaching the area at the base of her skull that had been his objective from the start. His fingers sifted through her hair. He couldn’t believe how soft and silky it felt, while at the same time it was bouncy and vibrant, shimmering with life and substance.

Her skin was soft and smooth to the touch. When he had seen her that night onboard the ship, he had never noticed the satiny texture. But Patrick must have noticed it at least a hundred times, and because he had, now, so did he.

His hand shook, felt a little unsteady. The blood pumping through him seemed to thicken, pool low in his belly. He forced himself to ignore it.

Beneath his hands, a tiny vessel throbbed under an obscure layer of flesh. He searched it out, applied a gentle pressure, and felt the tension begin to ebb from Julie’s body.

“Better?” he asked, feeling a little more in control.

She made a purring sound and nodded. “I can’t believe how much.”

He continued to work on the vessel, knowing exactly how much blood to let flow and when to cut back.

Julie’s body relaxed even more. “How on Earth did you learn to do that?”

It wasn’t on Earth, he thought. But he just smiled and didn’t say it. “I’m just glad it’s working.”

“Uhmmm, it’s working, all right. My headache is almost gone.” She yawned hugely and her eyes drifted closed. Her breathing smoothed out, grew deeper. A few minutes later, she was asleep.

Val eased away from her, oddly reluctant to leave. He crossed the room to a serape-draped chair several paces away and sat down to watch her, taking advantage of the chance to study her unobserved. He made mental notes of her posture, the way she curled up in the robe like some small warm-blooded animal. He studied her breathing, watched the way it caused a strand of dark red hair to float beside her ear.

He assessed her small feet and hands, the soft pink polish on her fingernails and toes. He knew what she looked like beneath the robe, but he tried very hard not to think of it. When he did, his stomach muscles tightened and he started to grow hard again. Eventually he drew out the journal, began to use Patrick’s words as well as his own impressions to describe what he’d learned—and how watching her sleep made him feel.

He wasn’t at all happy with that discovery. He felt warm all over, somewhat sexually aroused, and precariously close to losing some of his precious control. Since control was the thing he needed most, he vowed to be more careful in the future.

In the end, he left Julie a note on the rough-hewn bleached pine coffee table in front of the sofa, then let himself out, pushing the button on the doorknob to lock it behind him. All the way home he wondered if his reactions to Julie belonged wholly to Patrick—or if some part of them could have belonged to him.

Brian Heraldson, Doctor of Psychiatry, sat behind the desk in his walnut-paneled, book-lined office on Galey Avenue in Westwood. He leaned back in his chair, his long fingers steepled in front of him, his thick brown eyebrows drawn together in a frown. Brian was thirty-five years old, divorced three years ago, over it now but wary of relationships that involved any form of commitment. His practice was everything—employer, friend, mistress—and he was good at what he did.

He was open, objective and concerned. To him psychiatry wasn’t just a job. It was a guideline of how to live and a deep responsibility. And so he pondered his newest patient, Laura Maxine Ferris. The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

He was uncomfortable thinking of that. It was highly unethical to become involved with a patient. And he staunchly believed in those ethics. He wouldn’t allow the physical attraction he felt for Laura to stop him from giving her the help she so desperately needed.

Unconsciously, Brian stroked his neatly trimmed beard. He had grown it ten years ago, when he had first gone into practice. It had made him look older, more mature, gave his patients more confidence in his ability to help them. Since that time, he had grown so used to his bearded appearance, he couldn’t imagine how he would look without it. He wondered if Laura Ferris was attracted to men who wore beards, then prayed most sincerely that she wasn’t.

Leaning forward, he pressed the button on the small, digital tape recorder sitting on his desk and Laura’s soft feminine voice floated out through the speakers in the compact machine.

She was telling him about her childhood, describing the day her father had left them, how terribly sad they all had been. “Mama cried the most,” she said. “I held onto Daddy’s leg when he opened the door and begged him not to leave. I said, ‘Don’t go Daddy, please,’ but he only shook his head. I remember the way his hand stroked through my hair. It was exactly the same light blond as his and his eyes were brown like mine. I started to cry and he looked like he might cry, too.”

“What about your sister? What did she do?”

“Julie just stood there and watched him pack his things. She was leaning against the wall in the corner, staring at Mama and me. She saw us crying and for some reason it made her really mad. She started shouting at Mama and me, telling us to let him leave. She said, ‘Let him go! He doesn’t want us anymore—let him leave!’ She ran over to Daddy and told him to go away. She said she didn’t care if he ever came back. I don’t think Mama ever forgave her for that.”

The chair squeaked as Brian sat up straighter. “Your mother thought it was Julie’s fault your father left you?”

A sad look crossed her face. “Not really. She just wanted someone besides herself to blame for driving him away.”

“What about you? Did you blame your sister?”

Laura smiled faintly. “No. I knew Julie loved Daddy more than any of us. That was the reason she didn’t cry. She was afraid if she started, she’d never be able to stop.”