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known, I would have lost my virginity in some raunchy little motel
room with a total stranger, and then you wouldn't have to be feeling
so bad.'
She was totally unprepared for his viciously bitten off oath, or the
violent swerve of the car cutting off the highway and parking jerkily
at the side of the road. He reached for her, grabbed her by the
shoulders, and began to shake her hard. 'Don't you ever, ever say a
thing like that again!' he snarled, and she wondered at his anger, even
while a slow glow of warmth spread through her. 'My God! Don't you
have any more respect for yourself than that? I've never --'
She stopped him simply by reaching forward and pressing her soft
lips to his. Then she leaned back and smiled at him. 'And aren't you
glad I had more respect for myself and you by making it much, much
more special to me than just a tawdry one-night stand?' she asked him
softly. 'Mike, do you really regret it? If so, I'm very sorry. I just can't.'
He relaxed his grip on her and sighed, replying, 'Maybe I think I
should regret it. Maybe that's why I'm putting myself through such
throes of guilt, I don't know. And yes, it was very, very special to me,
and I'll treasure the memory.' He brought his lips down and caressed
hers gently.
But she drew back and frowned into his shirt. 'Mike, why won't you
tell me where we're going? Trust is one thing, but this is going a bit
far, surely?'
He looked at her a moment. 'I've been putting it off,' he muttered,
rubbing his eyes with his fingers. 'And you're right, I should have told
you sooner. We're going to Knoxville.'
It was a flat statement, brooking no argument, and yet he paused,
watching her closely. At his words, Dee felt a deep blow of dread in
her chest, but she strove to overcome it, thinking to herself, trust. He
wants me to trust him. Trust him, Dee. She drew a deep, shaky breath
and asked, 'How long are we staying, then?' And for the life of her,
she couldn't help looking the question why? at him, tensed. Why
home, why now?
He relaxed slightly, smiled a little, and he cupped her cheek in that
familiar way. 'You surpass all my expectations,' he told her quietly.
'We are, my girl, going to my apartment. We're going to test out that
once-tried theory of yours and really see if the one place no one will
look for you is at your own home base. My apartment is just
downtown, not fifteen minutes from your house. And if my guess is
right and if you manage to keep pretty much hidden, we should be
able to limp along tolerably well for a while.'
Dee felt stunned, bewildered. 'But why? Why can't we go somewhere
else for a while? Why do we have to go back home?' She stared at
him, feeling that odd barrier from the morning, getting the strangest
feeling that he wasn't telling her something, but she still couldn't
pinpoint what it was. 'I don't understand.'
Mike straightened in his seat and stared out into the golden day. 'You
said to me not too long ago that what you needed most was time to
think, to decide what you were going to do. Have you made a
decision?'
She hesitated, feeling swamped with uncertainty, puzzlement and the
desire to tell him just how she really felt about him. But it was too
new to her, too early for that, and she was silent a moment. Then,
reluctantly, 'No, I haven't.'
His jaw hardened. 'Well, what I'm going to do is buy you that time
you need.' Silence, and he muttered something under his breath,
something quick and stern sounding, and very strange. Dee suspected
that he hadn't really meant her to hear it, but she had very good
hearing and she picked it up in spite of the softness with which it was
spoken. 'I'm going to buy you all the time in the world.'
And she couldn't understand its gist, just as she couldn't understand
the element of inexplicability to his behaviour, but since she had
forced the issue so far, she didn't want to ask him anything else just
yet.
He started the car again, pulled out into the barren stretch of highway
and silence reigned for a long, long time in the confines of the car.
And she sank back into her seat and puzzled at the many unexplained
and unexplainable mysteries in her life.
They stopped soon to stretch their legs and to get a cold drink, and by
then she had simply given up on her endless speculating and just
concentrated on each moment. Life had begun to take on an element
of unreality for her, for the events in the past four days had become [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]