RoxannesPirate Read online

  At the end of their nearly silent dinner, Carlos apologized and said he had more work to do. He retreated to his study and closed the door behind him.

  Roxanne lay down in bed to read the same book she’d struggled with that afternoon. After a chapter, she closed her eyes. When she opened them, it was close to midnight. She got up, brushed her teeth and changed into the t-shirt and boxer shorts she had packed to sleep in and had not yet worn in Carlos’ bed. She got back in bed and pulled up the covers. Carlos appeared in the doorway.

  “I’m sorry I took so long,” he said. “Forgive me.” He undressed quickly and got into bed beside her. He dimmed the bedside light so the room was illuminated by a soft glow. He reached for her. All her doubts faded in the warmth of his arms. He took the t-shirt off over her head. He pulled the shorts down her legs. She kicked them away. He pulled her close. In the dim light, his features were indistinct, but she knew him by touch and smell, and that touch and smell made her ache.

  “I need you,” he whispered. “I need you so much.” He kissed her hard, his tongue held hers captive. He released her mouth and sought her breasts.

  This time she did not ask to lead. She sensed his need to possess, and knew her own desire to submit. “Take me,” she begged him. “Leave your mark on me.”

  Her request unleashed an animal ferocity. He covered her neck and breasts with biting kisses, his fingers raked the sides of her torso and the soft skin of her belly. He squeezed her, spanked her, pulled her legs up onto his shoulders and plowed into her. She arched her back and gave in to the electric force he generated.

  “Tell me what you want from me,” he demanded.

  “Anything! Everything!” she gasped.

  He answered with a deep growl in his throat and hard hammering thrusts until at last she cried out with her release, and he stiffened and bellowed and called her name.

  He collapsed on the bed next to her and pulled her to his chest. He was breathing hard. She was dazed and bruised inside and out. She touched his face with the tips of her fingers.

  “What are you like when you really let go?”

  “Was that too much?”

  “It was what I asked for.” She kissed his cheek. “I’m going to miss you.” Sadness swelled and threatened to pull her under. Their weekend was over—what would follow?

  “I have a request,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “Leave your dress for me. To remind me of you.”

  Won’t we meet again? “All right, if I can have one of your shirts in exchange.” She tried to sound casual. “One that smells like you.”

  They caressed each other but did not speak. Roxanne closed her eyes and concentrated on his now gentle touch. Hold on to this, it may be a long time until you feel this way again.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Wake up, Roxanne.” Carlos kissed her cheek. “It’s time to get up.”

  Roxanne sat up and rubbed her eyes. The overhead light was on. Outside, the sky was dark. Carlos was already dressed in a gray business suit and white dress shirt. He had on an olive green silk tie. His dark curls were still slightly damp from his shower. He looked handsome and polished, but his forehead was wrinkled, his mouth stern.

  “Unfortunately, it isn’t a great day to fly. It’s raining here and there are storms up and down the East Coast. I’ll leave you to shower and dress.”

  She showered in the guest bathroom and washed her hair, toweling it dry as best she could. She dressed in the pants, blouse and jacket she’d worn on the plane down. Had it really been only five days ago? She packed her clothes in her suitcase. Her dress was missing. She took a quick look in his closet but did not see it hanging there. She found his laundry hamper and helped herself to one of his dress shirts, sniffing it first to make sure it smelled strongly of him.

  He had made coffee and juice.

  “Your toast is ready.”

  He drummed his fingers on the counter.

  “Thank you.” She took a sip of coffee.

  “I have a driver coming to pick you up in a half an hour.”

  “You aren’t taking me?”

  “My plans changed. I have to leave now. Maria will be here soon.”

  He pressed her hand to his face and kissed her palm. “I’m lousy at saying goodbye. I always have been.”

  “I am too.”

  “I’m going to be very busy. You may not hear from me for some time, but I’ll be thinking of you.”

  She kissed him softly on his mouth.

  He gave her a brief hug and moved away from her.

  “Goodbye, Roxanne. Have a safe flight.” He put his hand on the door to the garage.

  “Nos veremos,” she said. “I looked up ways to say ‘goodbye’ in Spanish. One site said this meant ‘we will see us’. It sounded hopeful.”

  “Nos veremos, Roxanne. Adios.”

  “Adios, Carlos.” Don’t go!

  He opened the door and walked into the garage. The door shut behind him. She heard the electronic garage doors slide open and his car start. She listened to him back out of the driveway. The garage doors slid shut. She heard the sound of his car driving away.

  “He’s gone.” A feeling of loss swept over her.

  She drank her coffee and picked at her toast. She had no appetite. She roamed around the house. It seemed cold and empty without his presence animating it. She stared at the rumpled bed and ran her hands over the sheets where he had slept. The sheets were cold. She picked up two curly black hairs from his pillow.

  “Buenas dias!” a woman’s voice called from the living room.

  Roxanne jumped. Maria must have come in from a side door.

  “Hola!” Roxanne called back. She wrapped the hairs in a tissue and put them in her pocket. She stepped into the hallway and smiled at Maria.

  “Señor Delgado left me note,” Maria said. She waved it for Roxanne to see. “Driver come soon.”

  “Have you worked for Señor Delgado long?” Roxanne wanted to talk about him with someone to ease this new ache.

  Marka shook her head. “My English is not good.”

  Roxanne tried the question again in her broken Spanish. Maria only shook her head again.

  Roxanne sighed. She retreated to the kitchen for the rest of her coffee. She checked her email. She read The New York Times online. She was relieved when Maria told her the driver had come.

  She walked to the car and took one last look at Carlos’ house. Don’t be maudlin, she told herself. You will see him again. Still, she had the sinking feeling as they passed the gates that she would not be coming back.

  The bustle at the airport was a relief. The ticket agent informed her that there was a delay in her flight to Newark, but as a first-class ticket holder, she had access to the private lounge. She did not fly first class on her own, but Carlos and Mrs. Bigelow were spoiling her for more plebian modes of transportation.

  She flashed her ticket to the lounge attendants and entered into the relatively hushed environment. She took a cup of coffee to a comfortable chair. The other occupants of the lounge were a mixture of men and women of various ages in the conservative dress of business people, and a few iconoclasts in more artistic ensembles. She wondered if any of them had been at the gallery opening. It would be interesting to run into Eduardo and his group. She thought of Eduardo’s leer and Carlos’ possessiveness.

  She thought about his slip of the tongue regarding Hector Rivera and that led her to Rivera’s odd behavior. Why had Rivera been in such a hurry to get his payment? Had Carlos paid him cash? She could not imagine Rivera settling for less than several hundred thousand dollars. Where had Carlos kept that kind of cash? Why had he been so disturbed after Rivera’s visit? Carlos was a complicated man, in and out of bed. What had made him so ferocious last night?

  Her gaze flicked around the other occupants of the lounge. How many of them might be just as complicated, hiding their passionate sexuality under business suits, just as he did. Just as she did. She smiled
. Her gaze caught the eyes of an older gentleman in a pinstriped suit and yellow bow tie. He grinned at her.

  Her smile faltered. She was clearly broadcasting the wrong message. Her face should be displaying a No vacancy sign instead of Come on over. She flipped open her laptop and got to work on the Bigelow Foundation documents. She worked for hours until her bladder reminded her that she needed to take a break.

  It was almost noon. She checked her flight and sighed heavily when she saw the departure time had been pushed back until four in the afternoon.

  She was coming out of the bathroom when she spotted a slight blonde woman in a light blue suit curled up in a chair, an empty wine carafe on a low table beside her. The woman seemed familiar, but Roxanne could not place her until the woman raised her wineglass and her diamond bracelets sparkled.

  It was Elspeth Perry, the woman at the foundation meeting who had been so sad about Spencer Marshall’s death, the woman who had denied knowing about John Murkley.

  Elspeth’s glance met Roxanne’s.

  “Hi,” Roxanne said. She was not sure how willing Elspeth would be to talk to her.

  Elspeth’s lips lifted into a faint smile. “Hello, Roxanne. Please join me.” She waved her wineglass in the direction of the chair on her right. “I hate flying on the best of days. A day like this is murder.”

  Roxanne sat in the chair. Elspeth seemed even more fragile—there were slight blue shadows under her eyes.

  “Did you stay in Miami on business?” Elspeth asked.

  Roxanne shook her head. “I’m seeing someone who lives here.” She hesitated a moment. “Actually, you know him. He was Spencer Marshall’s partner—Carlos Delgado.”

  “You’re dating Carlos?” Elspeth looked shocked. “How did that happen?”

  “It’s a long story,” Roxanne said. There was something more than surprise in Elspeth’s expression. Alarm? Jealousy? “The short answer is we met through friends.” Bless you, Mr. Cooper, and your box of cigars.

  A server cleared away the empty wine carafe.

  “I’ll have another white wine, please,” Elspeth said. “What about you, Roxanne?”

  It was early for wine, but there was a long afternoon ahead. “I’ll have white too, please.”

  Elspeth leaned her head back on the chair. “I knew Carlos years ago when I was young and the world was a different place.”

  “He told me you dated Spencer in college and that he and Spencer were friends in boarding school.”

  Elspeth finished her glass of wine and refilled it from the new carafe. “I met Spencer my junior year.” She stared into her wineglass. “He was handsome, gregarious, a born storyteller, the life of every party. He asked me to marry him a week after our first date. I said yes.” She glanced at Roxanne. “I didn’t understand his devotion to Carlos. Carlos was so serious. So intense. Still, he had a new girlfriend every time I saw him.”

  “He went to a different college, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, but he came to see Spencer often enough. They weren’t just friends. They were best friends. When Spencer would slip into his dark moods, Carlso was the only one who could reach him.” Elspeth gulped her wine. “One summer, a group of us was staying at a lake house in Maine. Spencer started off the weekend in fine form and then he crashed. He got terribly sad. I sat on the deck, crying. I was so young. I turned to Carlos for comfort. One thing led to another…” She stared into her wineglass. “Nothing happened really, but Carlos seemed to think he’d been disloyal. It was all so complicated.” She laughed.

  Roxanne frowned. Elspeth was not slurring her words, but her eyes were glassy and there was a feverish quality in the pink spreading over her cheeks.

  “It doesn’t matter now,” Elspeth added. “It was all so long ago.”

  “What happened to you and Spencer?”

  “He couldn’t stay clean. He’d try, but it would never last. I moved to Texas after college and met Richard. He was my boss. He was a safe choice.”

  “I understand. I chose safe once. It didn’t work out.”

  Elspeth drained her glass. “Is that why you took up with Carlos? He’s hardly safe.” She refilled her glass from the carafe. “How is he?”

  “He’s fine,” Roxanne said. “He’s busy.” What to tell Elspeth? “He settled his lawsuit with Hector Rivera. I think he’s glad to have that behind him.” She took a sip of her wine. It was only a few steps up from vinegar but that did not seem to matter to Elspeth.

  “Is he? How nice for him. I suppose he’s put Spencer’s death behind him too. I seem to be the only one who’s still bothered by it.” Her eyes welled with tears. “It haunts me.”

  Roxanne took another sip of her dreadful wine. Her father had once told her that sometimes the best way to question a witness was to keep silent and wait.

  “I have a good husband, three wonderful daughters, a good career. I have a good life. A very good life.” Elspeth twisted her rings and sniffed. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Was she reassuring Roxanne or herself?

  “It must have been strange for you to work with Spencer after all those years.”

  “It was.”

  Tears rolled down Elspeth’s cheeks. She drank more wine. “I need some more to drink.”

  “I think you need something to eat. I’ll get us some food.”

  Roxanne walked to the table and selected a plate of cheese and crackers. She glanced at Elspeth. Elspeth was emptying her glass. She signaled a server for another.

  Roxanne sighed. She grabbed a bottle of water and carried the food and water back to the table. “You need to get something inside you besides wine.”

  “Have you ever been married?”

  “I came close.”

  “When I saw Spencer, he told me that he had asked Richard to bid on the project because he wanted to see me again. He told me he’d never forgotten me.” Her tears streamed freely.

  Roxanne handed her a napkin.

  Elspeth wiped her eyes. Her voice dropped. “He was clean and sober and so happy, so proud he had Carlos’ trust. He was going to show the world what he could do. He was…” Her voice broke. “Beautiful.”

  Her shoulders shook. She cried quietly into her napkin.

  Roxanne patted her shoulder. “It’s not hard to guess what happened.” But what did he tell you? How much do you know?

  “We had one wonderful week together. He told me he would build me a castle where I would be queen.” Elspeth wiped her face with a napkin but new tears streamed down. “When I got home, I realized I couldn’t leave my children. Not even for Spencer. He didn’t understand. He would call and tell me that he would make it work, that he would be a great success, that he would take care of me.” She sobbed. “But everything went wrong!”

  Roxanne could not wait any longer. “Carlos told me that Spencer brought Rivera in to help him with the project. Carlos suspected that Rivera introduced Spencer to a man named John Murkley and that Murkley duped Spencer into giving him lots of money.” She hesitated. “Carlos suspected that Murkley gave Spencer drugs.”

  “That awful, poisonous man!” Elspeth’s hand shook. “Why didn’t Carlos protect Spencer from him? He knew how weak Spencer was! He knew the dangers! Why didn’t he stop Spencer?” Her face was paper white. She poured more wine and drank it.

  “Have some water,” Roxanne said. She could take the wineglass out of Elspeth’s hand, but the drunker Elspeth became, the more she seemed willing to talk.

  “Spencer told me about Carlos’ friends. Some of them are scary men—drug kingpins, corrupt politicians. Men who hide behind bullet-proof glass and carry guns. A man with friends like that should have known what was happening. He should have stopped it!” She banged her fist on the arm of the chair. “He should have made Murkley pay!”

  A bright beam of understanding pierced Roxanne’s brain. “You sent the chart to Carlos!”

  Elspeth’s face lost all its remaining color. She put her hand over her mouth and gagged.

  R
oxanne jumped up and looked frantically for something that could hold vomit. She grabbed a glass bowl that held an arrangement of orchids, dumped the flowers on the floor and thrust the bowl under Elspeth’s mouth. Elspeth puked a stream of liquid into the bowl.

  Roxanne waited a moment and steeled her own gurgling stomach. She tugged Elspeth to her feet and led her to the bathroom. Elspeth fell to the floor in front of a toilet and finished emptying her stomach. Roxanne dumped the contents of the bowl into the toilet in the next stall. She rinsed out the bowl and washed her hands while she waited for Elspeth to stop retching.

  Elspeth stumbled from the stall to the sink and washed her hands and face.

  “Come sit,” Roxanne said. She steered Elspeth to a corner settee in the adjoining lounge.

  “You must think I’m pathetic.” Elspeth leaned her head back against the settee. The white skin around her fine nostrils and lips was tinged with green.

  “I think you’ve been through something very painful and you need some help.”

  “I dream about him every night. I won’t have any peace until that man is punished.” She grabbed Roxanne’s wrist. “I want you to tell Carlos. He’s the only one who can do it.”

  “Tell me what you know and I’ll tell Carlos.”

  Elspeth rolled her head. Her gaze fixed on a spot near the corner of the ceiling. “Spencer had been calling me, emailing me, texting me. I knew he was using drugs again. I came to tell him that he had to leave me alone. He didn’t know I was coming. I had a key to his condo. He’d sent it to me with this sweet note about our precious time together.” Her eyelids fluttered. “He wasn’t home. I let myself in. I sat in the living room and watched the clock. I had no idea when he would be home. Or even if he would be home. I heard a noise outside. Suddenly, I couldn’t face him. I was frantic. I ran into the guest room. I hid in the closet.” She shut her eyes. “I sound like a lunatic.”