Scent of Roses & Season of Strangers Page 56
“It is the degree of emotion they experience, sir, that makes them so different. Where our spectrum of feelings might be likened to gently rising hills and shallow valleys, theirs would be more closely equated to towering peaks and nearly bottomless pits. They feel things with such intensity it colors every thought, every reaction, every response they make.”
“Even if emotion is the key,” said one of the female members of the council, “that still doesn’t tell us what sort of emotion accounts for the resistance presented by the Ferris female and others like her.”
“I suggest we bring the subject in for more testing,” the minister said to the group. “Every hour Commander Zarkazian remains on the surface heightens his element of risk. Unification is still in the experimental stages. We don’t know what side effects might occur once the commander is permanently back aboard. Testing the woman—”
“No!” The negative cracked across the table like a meteor hurling through space. Even Val was stunned by the force with which he had spoken. He was angry, he realized, knowing now what had caused the unexpected outburst. Anger had no place on the Ansor. It was an emotion that did not exist on Toril, hadn’t for ten thousand years. He couldn’t be angry, he told himself. Only Patrick Donovan could do that and Patrick wasn’t there.
Val forced himself under control and prayed his associates would not suspect what had just occurred.
“What I meant to say is that finding answers is never easy. It is bound to take some time. Every day I encounter vast amounts of useful information. In a few more Earth months—”
“Weeks, Commander.” Panidyne studied him with fathomless dark eyes. “This study was never designed to be a long-term project. We were hoping a brief interlude might help us resolve a problem that has arisen a number of times and assist in ending any further loss of life. However, if your observations cannot give us what we need, we shall be forced to resume our tests.”
Val’s mouth felt dry. The thought of Julie being returned to the Ansor, of her continued resistance and the near certainty of her death, was enough to make him sick.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he conceded, not meaning a word of it. “However, in the time remaining, I am convinced I’ll be able to find the answers we need. Assuming that is the case, there’ll be no need to subject the woman to further examination.”
Panidyne smiled blandly. “That would certainly be the preferable solution.”
Val forced himself to return the emotionless smile. “Then you may count on it, sir. Which means the sooner I’m back at my task, the better the odds for success. If the council has no more questions, perhaps I might be excused to return to my work.”
“Does anyone have anything else to add before we end our session?” Panidyne asked.
At the negative mumble from the group, Panidyne turned in his direction and excused Val from the meeting. Fifteen minutes later, he was gone from the Ansor and back in his penthouse apartment. He was exhausted, more so than he would have expected, and yet adrenaline pumped through his veins.
Since he was once again linked with Patrick, he told himself it was all right that he was still angry.
And that he was afraid.
* * *
Babs pounded with vigor on Julie’s office door, turned the knob without waiting for her petite friend to answer and walked in. As usual Julie was on the phone with a client, the receiver clamped between her ear and shoulder. Her cell phone was ringing in her purse.
Babs was undeterred. She was used to Julie’s backbreaking schedule. Taking a seat on the sofa, Babs crossed her legs, pulled a fingernail file from her newly purchased Dolce & Gabbana bag, and began a feverish attack on a rough-edged red polished nail.
Julie finished her second call, then with a glance at Babs, punched the intercom button and instructed Shirl to hold anything new coming in. She turned off her cell phone, as well.
“All right, I know that look, Babs. What’s going on?”
The look Julie referred to was one of exasperation tinged with an edge of alarm. “I came here to ask that same question of you, my impossible friend, but I’m afraid I already know the answer, which is the real reason I’m here.”
“What are you talking about?”
“In a word—or I should say two words—Patrick Donovan.”
A flush crept up Julie’s throat. “What about him?”
“You’re sleeping with him, aren’t you?”
The flush increased, fanned up into her cheeks and down into her breasts. “I’m not sleeping with him. I slept with him. Once. You’re always telling me a little casual sex would be good for me. You ought to be happy I took your advice.”
“Casual sex with Patrick Donovan? Come on, Julie, who are you kidding? It might have been casual for Patrick, but it certainly wasn’t for you.”
Julie straightened in her chair. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know very well what it means. You’ve always been physically attracted to Patrick, maybe even a little in love with the man you believed he could be. Until lately you’ve been smart enough to realize that Patrick isn’t going to change, that loving a guy like that can only lead to heartache. What I can’t figure out is why you’ve suddenly weakened. Just because the man had a heart attack—”
“That isn’t the reason.” Julie rolled back her chair and stood up. Rounding the desk, she walked over and sat down on the sofa. “Patrick has changed, Babs. Surely you’ve noticed the difference. In a lot of ways, he’s the same man he was, but in other, more important ways, he’s different. Patrick says I mean something to him, that he wants more from me than just sex. I have to find out if it’s true.”
Babs hardened her heart against the wistful, hopeful expression on her best friend’s face. “He was out with Felicia Salazar the other night—did he happened to mention that? I suppose he wants more than just sex from Felicia, too.”
Before Julie could reply, a sharp knock sounded, and Patrick walked in. Ignoring the women on the couch, he headed straight for Julie’s desk, laid a stack of files on top, then turned to Babs.
“Felicia was a mistake,” he told her bluntly.
“How did you—”
“I didn’t sleep with her and I don’t intend to, not her or anyone else.”
“You were listening,” Julie accused but there was no bite to the words.
“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I heard you through the door.” Patrick smiled at Julie. “How about dinner? I’m taking up cooking as a hobby. I’ll fix something special if you’ll come over after work.”
Julie’s smile turned radiant. “I won’t be done until eight. If you can wait until then I’d love to come.”
“Eight is perfect.” He looked at Babs, his expression surprisingly earnest. “I know we’ve have had our differences. I know you’re worried about Julie, but you don’t have to be. I’m not going to hurt her. As long as we’re together, Julie’s the only woman I have the slightest interest in.”
Babs said nothing, just sat there in shock. Perhaps Patrick had changed—a little. It was the “as long as” part that bothered her. Babs wondered if Patrick actually believed that when he stopped seeing Julie, she wasn’t going to be hurt.
* * *
After a supper of simply cooked vegetarian dishes and a magnificent several hours of lovemaking, Julie awoke in Patrick’s bed. Turning toward where Patrick should have been, she discovered the place beside her was empty. The bedroom door was closed but a sliver of light leaked in at the bottom. Padding naked to the closet, Julie grabbed one of Patrick’s half-dozen expensive designer robes, this one a thick blue terry, and pulled it on, made a pit stop in the bathroom, then followed the light to its source, Patrick’s office down the hall.
“Patrick?” She knocked lightly and tried the knob, was surprised to find it locked. She knocked a
gain, “Patrick are you in there?” She heard the sound of papers being shuffled, then footsteps approaching.
He smiled when he opened the door. “Sorry, love, I couldn’t sleep. Thought I might as well get some paperwork done.” His hair was slightly mused, several onyx strands curling over his forehead. Dressed in a burgundy silk dressing gown that hung open to his waist, he stepped into the hall, closed the door behind him, and eased her into his arms.
“Perhaps now that you’re also awake, we can find a way for both of us to get some rest.”
A long kiss followed, rousing her from the last remnants of slumber. She could feel his arousal beneath the robe, feel the heat of his hard, lean body, and desire rose sharply. She hadn’t come for this, but she liked the idea, tilting her head back, allowing his mouth to move unerringly to the sensitive spot behind her ear, along her neck and down her shoulders. Long fingers worked the sash on her robe. He lifted a breast into his palm and teased the nipple, then lowered his head and took the fullness into his mouth.
Julie moaned and arched toward him, heat sliding through her, dampness building between her legs. His hand moved over the flat spot below her navel, parted the folds of her sex and he began to stroke her. With expert skill, he worked the sensitive bud until she was moaning, pressing herself against him. She expected him to carry her back to the bed, to make slow languid love to her. Instead he opened his robe, lifted her up, and impaled her on his hardened length.
A hot, deep-tongued kiss, her legs wrapped around his lean waist, he surged into her, filling her completely. Julie clung to his broad shoulders, her nails digging in, her mouth finding his for another ravaging kiss. Heat and need washed over her in great numbing waves. She climaxed twice before Patrick allowed himself to follow. She clung to his neck until the tiny ripples of pleasure finally faded away.
Patrick kissed her softly, then let her slide down his body till her feet touched the floor. Chuckling softly, he carried her down the hall to his bedroom.
“What are you laughing about?” she asked as he settled her beneath the covers in his big bed, then slid in beside her. “It isn’t particularly reassuring, you know, to hear a man’s laughter just minutes after a round of wildly heated sex.”
“That’s what I was laughing about.”
“What? The fact that we had wildly heated sex?”
“No. The fact that having it at two o’clock in the morning, standing in the hall, seemed like such a good idea.”
Julie just smiled. No wonder women were so drawn to him. Patrick was an incredible lover, passionate, inventive, determined to give as well as take; his appetite for lovemaking seemed nearly insatiable. And after eight long years, this new, incredible Patrick was hers.
At least for the moment.
The thought drained the smile from her face.
* * *
Val faced Julie across the breakfast table in his apartment. It was a sunny room, done completely in white from the Formica countertops to the shiny white enamel appliances, efficient and state-of-the-art. In a white terry robe as snowy as the kitchen, Julie’s dark red hair looked appealingly tousled, her face still flushed from the lovemaking they had enjoyed just before they climbed out of bed.
It was amazing how easily he had slipped into Patrick’s routines. Well, his more pleasant routines at least. Val no longer felt threatened by the mating ritual Patrick valued so highly. He had, in fact, come to enjoy it a great deal himself.
And bonding with Julie was enormously enlightening, increasing his awareness of her, his understanding of her innermost feelings, wants and needs.
Val looked over the top of the calendar section of the L.A. Times he was reading to study Julie’s shiny head bent over the real estate section. Seeing her nearly enveloped in the folds of his robe, he couldn’t help smiling at the charming picture she made.
Charming and vivacious and so full of life. Just looking at her made him feel alive in a way he had never felt before. He thought of the mate he would eventually take back home. She would stir him no more than a friend or a sister. Not like here. Here people lived, people died, they mated, they bore children, but they rarely remained unmoved by anything that occurred.
His mind returned to his meeting aboard the Ansor, to the facts he had presented, and he knew that he had failed to make them see. Panidyne wanted more testing. Julie was in danger.
I won’t let them touch her, he vowed. I won’t let them hurt her. Yet he knew if his mission failed, there would be nothing he could do.
“My sister called the house this morning,” she said, breaking into his thoughts. “She left a message on my answering machine.”
He lowered the paper. “I hope she’s all right.”
“She sounded all right. Sometimes it’s hard to tell with Laura.” She folded her section of the paper with a snap and laid it on the table. “She bought a gun, Patrick. She says it makes her feel safer.”
“Where the hell did she get it?”
“I’m not sure. Somebody she knows knew somebody who had one for sale.”
“Does she even know how to use it?”
“I guess she’s taking some sort of class. With Laura’s psychiatric problems, I certainly don’t approve, but the truth is I own one myself, so what can I say?”
Val didn’t answer. Finally he sighed. “In this town, maybe you need a gun.”
“I took a class way back when. I go in for recertification once a year.”
He nodded. Antique weapons like guns didn’t exist on Toril. There was simply no need for them.
“Laura’s abduction group is meeting again tonight at the Stringer house,” Julie continued. “Laura wants me to go with her.”
“Are you going?”
“Yes. Whatever the truth is, whatever might have happened to her, my sister needs all the support she can get.”
“Then I’d like to go with you.”
She cocked an eyebrow in his direction. “Why?”
“I told you why. Because I want to help her. You said yourself, she needs all the support she can get.” Of course that was only partly the truth. He wanted to study Laura, determine the extent of trauma she and the others in the group had experienced as a result of the Ansor’s testing. Living as Patrick, he was beginning to understand as he hadn’t before the magnitude of what they were doing to the people they brought aboard the ship.
Julie shook her head. “I don’t know. This whole thing is pretty far out. I have a hard time believing you’ll keep an open mind.”
That was the second reason he wanted to go. To discourage the sisters’ belief in Laura’s tale. Fostering the public’s growing concern about UFOs only made the Ansor’s mission more difficult.
He gave her one of Patrick’s winsome smiles. “I promise you I’ll listen as objectively as I can. I really would like to go with you.”
Julie smiled. “All right. We’ll go together. I could use a bit of support myself.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The meeting was almost ready to begin when Julie and Patrick arrived. Laura, who had mended fences with Brian Heraldson and agreed to his plea to let him join her, was already seated next to him on the sofa in the living room, a white-carpeted, silk-draped area that looked out over the channel.
Julie introduced Patrick as a friend of hers and Laura’s then, at Dr. Winters’s urging, they went in and sat down with the others.
“It’s good you all could make it.” Dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved white shirt, the doctor surveyed the room full of familiar faces. “I hope no one had an exceptionally difficult week.”
The gardening expert, Willis Small, shifted a bit in his chair. “I’m afraid mine hasn’t been all that pleasant. I’ve had several disturbing dreams this week, Dr. Winters.”
“Dreams that involved the Visitors?” he asked.
Willis Small nodded. “I don’t remember too much. I dreamed I was taken aboard one of their ships. They did some testing. I dreamed they took a semen sample and I remember seeing several woman they’d brought aboard. I think the women were pregnant. They were begging the Visitors not to take their unborn babies.”
Leslie Williams, the tall willowy black woman from San Diego, leaned forward. “Are you certain, Mr. Small, that you were dreaming? Are you sure what you’re telling us didn’t really happen?” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “That is exactly what happened to me.”
Willis fidgeted nervously. “It must have been a dream. At one point, I remember waking up and walking downstairs to get a glass of water. Then the dream picked up again when I went back to sleep.”
“The part about going downstairs could have been a screen memory,” Robert Stringer put in. “For years after my abduction, I thought my son and I had stopped for several hours at an inn for dinner on the way back from our fishing trip. It used to bother me, since we had gone fishing in the first place because we wanted to cook fresh trout for supper. Why would we go to a restaurant when we had exactly what we wanted to eat in the trunk of the car? Then I started to remember.”
Laura inched up her hand.
Dr. Winters nodded in her direction. “Go ahead, Laura. You don’t have to be shy. You can say whatever you wish.”
Laura fiddled with a strand of her long blond hair. “I—I may have had a screen memory. Under hypnosis, I told Dr. Heraldson that I had been taken to a hospital on the afternoon of my abduction. It wasn’t the truth. I haven’t been in a hospital in years.”
“It could have been any number of things,” Brian Heraldson quickly put in. “Trauma, perhaps, over problems in your youth.”
He was alluding to Laura’s abortion, Julie knew. It was a plausible explanation. She wondered if the theory might not be correct.