Behind Closed Doors

Chapter 28

He ran the clip back, and played it again. It was from the Colbit that overlooked the floating dock at Stone Island. He'd sneaked out and collected this batch last night. Ninety-six hours of footage. He'd spliced all the pieces with Raine in them into a montage. This six-minute clip was his favorite bit.

She emerged from the trees and walked slowly down onto the dock. The bruises on her face were almost gone. Her hair flowed long and loose around her body. She was wearing a soft, clingy white shirt. No bra, he noticed. Her nipples jutted out. She needed a jacket. It bothered him that she didn't think to put one on. She never took care of herself. If he were with her, he would insist on a jacket.

A gust of wind blew her hair away from her face. She wrapped her arms around herself and stared out over the water, her face faraway. Like she was waiting for something. Or someone.

He heard a car coming up the driveway. He leaned out the open door of the Chevy and peered down the road It was Connor's car. He clicked away the video clip and snapped the laptop shut. Comments from Connor about his obsessive pastime were the last thing he needed.

Connor got out of his car and limped over to the Chevy. He leaned on his cane and nodded. “Hey.”

“What's up?” Seth was having a hard time feigning interest in the mopping-up details, but he tried, out of politeness.

“I just got a call from Nick, down at the Cave. Novak's going to make it. Sean's shot to the chest just hit Kevlar. Paranoid bastard. And your shot to the thigh barely missed the femoral artery. Bummer.”

Seth grunted in disgust. “I should have aimed for his head.”

“Console yourself with the fact that he lost a few more fingers on his left hand, thanks to you. That's going to piss him off no end, once he comes to his senses.”

How about Riggs?”

“In jail, licking his wounds. No bail.”

“And his daughter?”

Connor's face tightened. “Erin's fine. She hates my guts, of course, but that's to be expected. She told me that Georg never touched her, but I rearranged his nice and various other parts of his body anyhow, just for thinking about it. He'll be pissing blood for a while yet.” His lips curved in a small, grim smile. “The big house should be a lot of fun for a pretty yellow-haired boy like him.”

Seth took hold of Connor's cane, and jerked it out of his hand. “Do you use this thing for show, to get workman's comp, or do you just get off on carrying around an extra weapon?”

Connor yanked the cane back and twirled it with eye-blurring speed. “You can do a lot of damage with this baby if you're quick.”

A deer wandered through the meadow, about twenty yards away from them. They watched it stroll by, calm and unconcerned. The world went on. Jesse was still dead. Novak was still alive. The deer munched idly on the yellowed tips of the meadow grass.

The screen door slammed. The buck sprang up and bounded into the trees, swift and silent Sean sauntered over to the Chevy. “Hi, Connor. Yo, Seth, your buddy Kearns just called, for the sixth time. Call him back, for fuck's sake. He’s worried about you.”

“He'll live. Besides, I'm leaving. I'll talk to him when I get home.”

“Sure you will. You've been saying that for eight days. Not that it's a problem. Stay as long as you like.” Sean grinned and stuck his hands in his pockets. “As long as it takes to work up the nerve to go get her.”

Seth slanted him a stare that made most people start stammering and backing away. It had no effect upon Sean. He just flashed his dimples and waited.

“Mind your business, Sean,” Connor said.

“I've been minding my business all week. I'm bored,” Sean said cheerfully. “What's the hold-up? I'd be prostrated in front of that dynamite babe with my tongue rolled out like a red carpet if I were you.”

Seth thought of Raine's parting words. “She's Lazar's daughter.”

Sean cocked his head, looking baffled, and bounced up and down restlessly on the balls of his feet. “So? What of it? The guy's dead, right? He’s not going to bother you.”

Connor gave him a pained look. “Sean—”

“Our dad was completely bonkers, but nobody holds it against us,” Sean observed. “Or if they do, fuck 'em. Come to think of it, your own daddy wasn't much of a prize either. And we've established that she never screwed you over, right? So?”

There was no arguing with Sean's hammer-blunt logic. He did not feel like trying to explain the anger, the remote, glittering coldness he had seen in her eyes as she looked at him over her father's dead body.

He resorted to simple rudeness. “Piss off, Sean.” Sean's eyes narrowed. “You do still want her, right?”

“That's not the problem!”

Sean snorted. “Nah. The problem is that you're a gutless wuss with shriveled little balls the size of peach pits.”

Connor turned away, making a choking sound.

Sean flashed his Wonder Boy grin. “Too much woman for you, huh? Great news. Maybe I can catch her on the rebound. Mend her broken heart. I'll put my all into it, know what I mean?”

Suddenly he was holding a fistful of Sean's faded Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, dangling him six inches off the ground. “Don't even think about her that way,” he hissed. “Or I will take you apart. Got it?”

Sean grabbed Seth's fist and hauled himself up so that he could breathe. “Baiting you is so satisfying,” he croaked. “Davy and Connor are so jaded, they don't react at all, but you, whoa. You're a sure thing.”

Seth flung him away. Sean rolled smoothly up onto his feet and brushed the pine needles off his jeans, unperturbed. A good sport. He had to be, with Davy and Connor for brothers. Something cramped inside him, hard and painful, at the thought. He'd been hard on Jesse, too. Jesse had been a damn good sport Jesse had forgiven him, even when he didn't deserve it. He turned his back on them and struck out into the meadow. “If Kearns calls, tell him I'm driving back today,”

“Chickenshit,” he heard Sean mutter.

He didn't turn around. He couldn't handle brotherly banter. He'd rather stare at rocks or trees. After ten months without Jesse, he was out of practice at being nagged and teased. He pushed through the fir trees, cursing as they slapped at him. Goddamn nature. He'd never figured out why people went out and wallowed in it voluntarily. Jesse had tried to get him to go hiking, but Seth had resisted to the bitter end.

The way he resisted everything. Always.

That thought stopped him cold, right in the middle of a clump of baby trees. Their pointy tops were about as high as his heart. They trembled in the breeze. He stared at them, wondering why he'd pushed away Jesse's efforts to help him. Just like he pushed away the McClouds. He pushed away the whole damn world. He beat the world to it, every time, before it had a chance to give him the old heave-ho.

The same way he'd pushed away Raine.

A strong gust from the snowy peaks swept through the grove, setting the baby trees swaying. They sprang back upright, soft and flexible. He shivered without his jacket, but he couldn't go back for it, and face the bright, probing eyes of the McCloud brothers. Not yet.

The van was packed and ready to go. His business needed him, after all those months of neglect. The routine of his life was waiting for him, safe and predictable.

But day followed day, and he kept replaying the same footage in his mind. Every single time he'd made love to Raine was imprinted on his memory. Every word, every scent and sigh. Her textures and colors, her tenderness and courage. The woman was incredible. She deserved better than an evil-tempered, foul-mouthed son-of-a-bitch like him.

Amazing. He was having a pity party. He could hear Jesse sniggering in the back of his mind, telling him to stop jerking off. Stop paying those old negative tapes, that was how Jesse had put it when he was in psychobabble mode. God, how that had annoyed him.

Seth stepped out of the trees and found himself on a wide, grassy shelf. It dropped abruptly into a canyon where a waterfall leaped and gurgled. It wasn't a tall, impressive waterfall, but still he stared at it, startled. Almost hypnotized by the milky cascades of foam that spilled down on either side of mossy green fingers of rock. The water tumbled into a churning pool below, where it glowed a deep, transparent green.

For the first time, he got a glimmering of a clue as to why people went out, braving bug bites and boredom, to look at stuff like this. It really was pretty. Spectacular, even.

He wandered closer and stared at it for a long time. The constant rushing, pounding sound of the water created space and quiet in his mind. Enough space to watch a new idea unfurl without flinching from it.

He pushed Raine away because some part of him was sure that she would end up pushing him, sooner or later. He couldn't risk the abandonment, the bewilderment. He would rather skip that part, and cut directly to the frozen solitude phase.

A flash of movement caught his eye. The buck had stepped out of the forest. The two of them looked at each other, a long, cool moment of mutual distrust. The buck melted discreetly back into the trees, drawing Seth's attention to a square, gleaming stone set in the meadow grass. He walked up to the spot. It was a gravestone, set flush to the ground. The grass was cut short around it, and it was scrubbed severely clean of the lichen and moss that decorated the other rocks. He squatted down and brushed away the leaves and pine needles.

Kevin Seamus McCloud

January 10, 1971-August 18, 1992.

Beloved Brother.

A buried memory stirred in the back of his mind. Jesse had mentioned his partner having lost a brother some years back, but the information had been of no interest to him at the time.

Sean was thirty-one, just like this Kevin would have been. He must have lost his twin ten years ago, when he was only twenty-one.

This time, when the ache started up, he didn't try any of his usual tricks to distract himself. Seth just gritted his teeth, and breathed and waited. The decade-old marble slab told a mute, painful story, with the blunt simplicity of stone. He squatted there and quietly listened to it.

It hurt. It shook him. His jaw ached, and his throat ached, and his legs fell asleep. The cold wind swept around and through him. He just kept brushing away the dead leaves and pine needles that blew across the marble and endured the tumult inside him without trying to understand or control it.

When he finally got onto his feet, he stood for a long time until the pins and needles faded. He used the time to scan the meadow grass around him for some color. If there had been any wildflowers around, he would've picked some and left them on Kevin's grave, since nobody was watching. He couldn't follow up on the weird impulse, though, because there were no wildflowers to be found. Just frostbitten grass, red-brown needles, fir cones and dead leaves.

When he could finally put weight on his feet again, the wind was up. It tossed the trees and made the forest rustle and creak. Something had changed. The wind, the weather, the landscape in his mind.

He was going to stop pushing the world away. That would be his tribute to Jesse's memory. And he would start with the McClouds. He owed them, big time. He could never have gotten Raine out of there alive without their help. He would swallow all the irritating, brotherly bullshit they dished out, and be grateful for it. And if he needed them more than they needed him, well, tough shit. That was nothing to be ashamed of.

And Raine. Oh, God, Raine.

Wind swept through the trees with nail-biting, knuckle-gnawing urgency, in the hospital, when she was zonked out on Demerol, she'd told him that she loved him. She had ordered him not to die. That was promising, but he hadn't grown up with a junkie mother without learning Rule Number One. Things people said when they were stoned did not count Ever.

She might very well push him away. It would be no more than he deserved, after all the shit he had pulled. Spying on her, seducing her, lying to her, manipulating her. And after all that, accusing her of betrayal. The thought made him cringe.

He had to risk it anyway. He would prostrate himself. Grovel and beg until she gave in from sheer exhaustion. She was too sweet and forgiving for her own good, just like Jesse. That might work in his favor, just this one last time, and then he would never take advantage of it ever again.

Nor would he let anyone else do so. He would be her dragon and her white knight, rolled into one. He would spend the rest of his life protecting her, cherishing her. Treating her like the red-hot, gorgeous, adorable love goddess that she was.

Raine was a thousand times too good for him, but what the fuck. He might get lucky. He moved faster and faster through the forest. By the time he burst through the trees into the meadow, he was running like a racehorse.

“The nerve of the man, to make you change your name back to Lazar. Insufferable, arrogant bastard. Condition of your inheritance, indeed. Pah. Pure, vintage Victor. Ever the manipulator.”

“I don't really mind,” Raine said patiently. “The name seems more mine than Hugh's name ever was.”

Alix spun around from the closet she was rifling through, and frowned at her daughter. “You've changed, Lorraine. I don't know where this uppity, know-it-all attitude of yours comes from, but I for one do not like the change one bit.”

Raine tugged her comb carefully through the tangled lock of hair. “I'm sorry it bothers you. I'm afraid it's here to stay.”

“See? There you go again. Another sassy, uppity remark. I swear, I'm losing my patience.” Alix shook her perfectly coiffed blond head and dove back into the closet, pulling out another garment with a gasp. “Oh, my God. Look at the cut of this gorgeous thing. Dior, of course. A fortune's worth of clothes that murdering bastard bought, and they're wasted on you. Just wasted. Pity they're so small.” Alix shot herself an admiring glance in the full length mirror, smoothing her hands over her trim figure. “Two sizes up, and they would be perfect for me.”

“Terrible shame” Raine murmured, with a completely straight face. She fished out another tangle to work on. She had been wearing her hair down since she'd come back from the hospital. It hurt too much to raise her elbows high enough to braid or coil it, but when she left it down, the wind whipped the curls into a hopeless tangle.

Alix slanted her a suspicious look. “Don't you get smart with me.”

Raine smiled at her. “I'm not, Mother.”

For the first time ever, Alix did not protest the title. Her mouth tightened, and she threw the plastic-wrapped jacket she had been admiring onto the bed. “None of this is my fault, you know.”

“I know that,” Raine soothed.

“No, you don't. I know what you think of me. I know what Victor probably told you. I can't change the past. I made mistakes, as we all do. Maybe I was cold and selfish. Maybe I was a terrible mother, but I did try to do the right thing, Lorraine. I didn't want you to get hurt.”

“I got hurt anyway” Raine said. “But I appreciate the effort.”

“Well. That’s something, I guess.” Alix sat down on the bed, kicked off her shoes and scooted behind Raine. “Give me that comb “

Raine hesitated before she handed it over. Hair-combing had never been Alix's forte, and Raine had learned early to brush and braid her own hair. But Alix's hands were gentle, starting from the bottom and working carefully up. “Tell me what happened,” Raine asked her.

The comb stopped. “You know most of it by now, I'm sure.”

“Not from your point of view” Raine said.

Alix resumed combing. “Well. Victor was making money hand over fist the summer of '85 “ she began slowly. “I didn't know how, and I didn't want to know, but we were living in very high style, and I liked it.”

She paused, working on a stubborn tangle. When the comb eased through it, she began again. “Peter got very depressed that summer. He said it was all blood money. That the three of us should run away and grow carrots and onions in a hut somewhere. Melodramatic nonsense. I tried to convince him to let Victor deal with the rough side of things. But once Peter got an idea in his mind... well, he was like you, that way. Then he told me he was going to put a stop to it, once and for all. Ed Riggs had promised him immunity if he testified against Victor.”

“And you tried to stop him?”

“I got an idea,” Alix said, her voice uncertain. “I knew that Ed was attracted to me, so I decided to ... take advantage of that tact.”

“You told Victor what Peter was up to. And you seduced Ed.”

“Don't judge me.” Alix's voice shook. “I thought Victor would bring Peter to his senses. He'd always been able to manipulate him before. I never dreamed that anyone would get hurt. I just wanted for things to stay the way they were.”

“I understand that,” Raine said. “Please go on”

The strokes of the comb became smoother as the tangles gave way. “You know the rest,” Alix said. “I had no idea what Ed was capable of. He became obsessed. He wanted to leave his wife and kids, and run away with me. And then—”

The comb dropped. Raine waited. “Yes?” she prompted gently.

“Then there was that day I came out of the house and saw him chasing you. I knew, somehow. What must have happened. What you must have seen. I saw his face. He was crazy. He could have killed you.”

“Yes, I remember” Raine whispered. “I think he almost did”

“I don't even remember what I said to him. I played dumb, of course. I've always been good at that. I made it seem that you were hysterical and overimaginative. That neither one of us was the least threat to him.” Alix sniffed. “The only thing I could think of to do was to get you as far away from the whole mess as possible.”

“And to make me forget?”

Alix garnered Raine's hair into her hand and combed it from below. “And make you forget.” she confirmed She scrambled around on the bed until she was looking into Raine's eyes. “I never thought that Victor would hurt Peter. Believe me, honey. Victor treated Peter more like a spoiled son than a brother. He loved him.”

“So much so that he seduced his brother's wife?”

Alix recoiled. “Raine!”

“It's true, isn't it?”

“It's hardly relevant” Alix snapped. “Or appropriate!”

“Bear with me, Mother” Raine said stubbornly. “Who was my real father? Victor, or Peter?”

“Does it matter now?”

Raine gave her a steely glare. “Indulge me.”

Alix sighed and looked down at the comb in her hand. For a moment, she suddenly looked her age. “I don't know,” she said wearily. “Go to a genetics lab if you're so curious. It was a very wild time in my life. There are big chunks of it that I don't remember at all.”

Raine listened with all the senses that had been honed and heightened in the past weeks. She recognized the ring of sincerity in her mother's voice. That alone was a miracle, and something to be thankful for. She scooted closer, trying not to jolt her sore ribs. She took a deep breath, and a big risk. She laid her head on Alix's shoulder.

Alix froze for a moment, and then reached up and stroked Raine's hair with a tentative hand. “It doesn't matter anymore, which of them it was.” She sounded as if she were trying to convince herself.

“No, not to me,” Raine agreed. “I've lost two fathers now.”

Alix petted her again, her hand stiff and awkward. “Well, you still have a mother,” she said crisply. “Such as she is.”

An embarrassed cough sounded from the doorway of the room. The little moment of grace was over.

Clayborne fidgeted in the doorway. “Excuse me, Ms. Lazar, but there's something I have to make you aware of,” he said nervously. Raine brushed the tears away from her eyes. “Can't it wait?”

“Ah... it won't take long. Mr. Lazar had made very specific instructions as to how to dispose of his worldly remains after the cremation, but two days before the events that led to his death, he changed those instructions.”

Raine and Alix looked at each other. Raine looked back at Clayborne. “Yes?” she prompted.

“He requested that you make all the decisions.”

Raine blinked at him. “Me?”

Clayborne's shoulders lifted in a helpless shrug. “I'm afraid it's another one of the terms of the will”

The boat rocked gently on the rippling water. She had asked Charlie to take her to the place she remembered seeing Peter's boat seventeen years before. Charlie was respectfully silent as she stared into the water, holding the white box of Victor's ashes in her lap. She was grateful that Victor's staff had taken it upon themselves to look out for her. All except for Mara, who had left immediately. Mara had been inconsolable at the news of Victor's death.

Raine squeezed her eyes shut at the heavy, dull throb of pain in her chest. For some reason, her mind turned to Seth.

He had made it clear that he could never trust her, and her kinship to Victor had sealed his judgment. He would never accept that she had loved Victor, too. But she wasn’t ashamed of loving Victor. If she'd learned anything in the past weeks, it was that there was enough to be ashamed of in the course of a messy human life without being ashamed of loving someone. However unwisely.

She had two fathers now. Both flawed, both doomed, but each had given her priceless gifts. She looked into the cold depths that had taken Peter, and silently asked the water, with all its power to cleanse and renew, to accept her other fattier, too.

The contents of the box were coarser than she had expected, like sand. She took a handful, and cast it on the water.

It was all right. It was appropriate. Peter approved, the whole universe approved. She upended the box, and shook it until the plastic bag inside was empty. The ashes sank. Ripples surged and heaved. She set the box down and turned to Charlie. “Let's go home.”

She kept her face to the wind as Charlie revved the motor. The boat leaped and bumped over the choppy water, jolting her sore chest and back, but the pain was a welcome distraction. It made it easier not to think about Seth. Easier to ignore the dark knot of pain in her chest.

She would get through this, she told herself. She wasn't the one who had turned her back on love. She would eventually heal, but he would just fester. And that thought brought her no comfort at all.

The wind was whipping tears into her eyes. She squeezed the tears out and wiped them resolutely away.

“Company,” the laconic Charlie said.

She stared at the boat that bobbed by the dock, the hairs rising on her neck. Chest swelling, breath shallow and blocked. Butterflies whirling and spinning. It could just be a similar boat. A neighbor. Someone selling fresh fish. She shouldn't get all wound up when she was sure to be dashed against the rocks again.

It was Seth. A dark, motionless figure against the gnarled tree roots of the shore. His face looked thinner than she remembered. His grim, dark eyes sought hers across the water. They pulled at her, like a rope in the old spell she had dreamed up as a child. The spell that never worked. The spell to make love stay.

Neither of them called out a greeting. Charlie tied up the boat. He gave Seth an unfriendly once-over and shot Raine a questioning glance.

“It's all right, Charlie. Thank you,” she said.

Charlie clumped away, shaking his head. "I see Victor's staff has adopted you,” Seth commented.

She couldn't interpret his tone, so she braced herself for anything. 'They've taken good care of me,” she said. “It's been a tough week.”

“Are you OK?”

"I'll be OK. I'm still stiff, but it gets better every day.”

“I don't mean just physically,”

She tore her gaze away from his penetrating eyes. “How about you? Did your wound heal all right?”

He frowned. “Don't change the subject”

“Why not?” she asked. “There’s nothing more to say.”

Seth dug his hands into his pockets. “Isn't there?”

“You tell me, Seth.” She tried to copy his trick, the eyes that took in everything but reflected nothing.

Then something happened that shocked her. He looked down, breaking eye contact. He shifted from foot to foot. He swallowed, visibly.

He was nervous. She had made Seth Mackey nervous.

“I think...” He scowled past her at the water. “There’s a lot to say. So much that, uh, it might take the rest of my life to say it all.”

Raine wanted to scream with joy, but she kept her face composed, as if her whole heart wasn't hanging on what he said in the next few seconds. “You told me you didn't have a romantic, lyrical side.”

Somehow, amazingly, her voice came out cool and steady.

His eyes flicked up. “That was before I started hanging out with you.”

“Oh,” she whispered.

He smiled cautiously. “Hanging out with a pirate queen is bound to shock a guy's latent romantic creativity to life.”

He stood there, looking expectant. Waiting for her to make the next move. He didn't dare to show his hand, any more than she did.

Well. If that was the best he could do, he could suffer to the bitter end.

“I have a proposition for you,” she said. “A business proposition.”

His eyes narrowed. “Let's hear it.”

“I want to hire your firm to do Lazar Import & Export's corporate security. But only part time.”

“Part time?” He frowned.

“That's to leave you free for your real job. Full-time love slave.”

He blinked, and looked away with a muffled snort of laughter.

“Kind of like the setup you suggested after Victor's party,” she continued. “Clueless muscle-bound stud brought to island hideaway to fulfill my every erotic whim. We never did explore all the possibilities of that scenario. We got distracted by the pirate queen and her insatiable appetites. And other things. Murder, revenge, betrayal and whatnot.”

She waited to see if he would ignore the mockery in her tone—or echo it.

“Interesting,” he said slowly.

“I thought you might think so,” she said.

“I have a counteroffer. I'll tell you the job description I really want.”

Raine's throat tightened in frustration. If he was going to keep it on this level, it was up to her to force them to the next one. As always.

Seth looked down at his feet. She saw his Adam's apple bob, once. Twice. He met her eyes, with the look of a man who was facing the firing squad. “Full-time lover,” he said hoarsely. “Father of your children. Companion in adventure, champion, guardian, protector, helpmeet, mate. Love of your life. Forever.”

Her heart eyes stung and burned with tears. Her heart thudded against her sore ribs, and her throat shook. “Oh. But I'm afraid, urn, the love slave clause is non-negotiable,” she whispered.

“Fine. I'll be your love slave, I'll be your white knight, I'll be your sailor stud, I'll be your frog prince, I'll be whatever the hell you want. Just tell me you still want me. Tell me quick, Raine. You're killing me.”

She finally understood the trick of the eye spell. It had to be mutual to work. It pulled her like a rope, until she was wrapped around him, pressing her face against his chest. “God, yes, I want you. And I need you. I missed you so much,” she said.

He stroked her back as if she were made of glass and buried his face against her hair. “Me, too,” he said roughly. “I'm sorry I made you wait. I was embarrassed. It was stupid. So, uh, about my offer. It's official, then? I can relax? Done deal?”

She pulled her wet face away and stared searchingly into his eyes. “You're sure?”

“I love you. Why wouldn't I be?”

Her eyes flew to the place on the water where the white moth had drowned, where Victor's ashes had mingled with it. “Because of who I am. I’ll never turn my back on it. I'm a Lazar, Seth.”

He took her face in his hands. “I love who you are,” he said, dropping soft, reverent kisses, on her cheek, her forehead, her jaw, her lips. “I want to celebrate it, and protect you and adore you. What you are is beautiful, Raine. There's no one else like you in the whole world.”

The world softened and widened as she gazed into his eyes. The final glow of sunset rippled over the surface of the water. A golden eagle swooped over their heads. Then another, a mated pair. The muted whoosh, the shadow of their vast wingspans was a solemn benediction. Another moment of grace. Life had more of them than she had thought. They would spend the rest of their lives making those moments together, and rejoicing in them.

Seth's eyes were full of love and cautious hope. There was a fine tremor in the big, strong hands that cupped her face so tenderly. “So? he asked. “Will you marry me?”

She wrapped her arms around his neck, her heart bursting with a joy too big to contain. “In a heartbeat,” she whispered.