“How?” she finally whispers.
That’s when he moves. Making his way toward her, he notices she’s cautiously monitoring his every step. He wonders about what she’s thinking.Does she want to run? Is she scared?
How ironic that the last woman he brought down here was completely at ease with him. She trusted him with her very life and trusted him not to fail. And yet fail her he did.
However, right now, standing before him is a woman who let him inside of her body and trusted him with her care, yet she looks like she’s ready to bolt at the first wrong move he makes.
Walking around her, he notices she does everything but physically dig her heels into the grass to keep from moving. When he stops behind her, he places his palms on her shoulders, feeling her stiffen.
“I thought you knew how, Gemma,” he rasps into her ear. “You read the papers. You watch the television. What do they say happened?”
I take a deep breath as I focus on the water moving at a startling pace before me. It’s only a few feet from us, but as he firmly holds my shoulders, I can’t help but think he can easily make me?—
No, that’s ridiculous.I remind myself.
This man has held me, touched me, and been inside my body. He would never do something like that, yet that is exactly what everyone is determined to sell to the world. Could this man really have done what the stories claim?
I’m so busy thinking about all the frightening and very real possibilities behind the statements I have read regarding this man that I don’t realize his mouth is by my ear again.
“What do they say happened, Gemma?”
I don’t want to answer. I don’t want to voice the terrible things I have read, and somewhere in the fearful part of my mind, maybe I don’t want to give him ideas.
“Tell me,” he demands, more forceful this time.
“They say you were involved,” I reply, shying away from the details.
“Gemma, Gemma,Gemma,” he admonishes me. “That’s not all they say. You know it, and I know it.”
Tightly gripping my own waist, I tell him the truth he is tenaciously searching for. It’s ugly when it slips past my lips. “They say you brought her down here. They say it was your fault.”
His fingers tense on my shoulders, and on an anguished rush of air, he answers, “They were right.”
“Phillipe! Really? Here?”
Chantel giggled as he started to undo the buttons on her shirt.
“Why not here? It’s quiet and peaceful. You’re here. I’m here.”
“Kiss me.”
Laughing, she grasped his hands, tugging him closer.
Lowering his head, he pressed his mouth to hers. “Always.”
Phillipe turns his nose into Gemma’s hair and takes a deep breath. She smells sweet and spicy. As he grips her shoulders, listening to her breathing accelerate, he knows she is scared.
He isn’t sure what she’s scared of, but he knows fear is starting to trickle through her veins, making its way up her spine.
“Nothing is as beautiful or peaceful as watching the purity of an untainted soul leave the world,” he murmurs. “She looked right at me,rightat me. Do you know what she told me?”
“No.”
“She told me she saw lights.” He closes his eyes, releasing Gemma’s shoulders. “She was blind, and evenshewas seeing the fucking lights. I told her not to look at them,” he explains, feeling the desperation behind every word leaving his mouth. “I told her, but she didn’t listen to me.”
Jamming his hands back into his pockets, he moves around her and makes his way back to the edge of the water. This time, he makes himself look at the swirling current.
“The first day we ever came down here, we had a picnic. It was beautiful—a perfect moment and a perfect day. So, of course, I wanted to come back. I wanted to paint her here. But when we came back, things changed.”
