Footsteps (6 page)

Perhaps she had some kind of syndrome. Not
Stockholm Syndrome, because she didn’t love her captor, not in the
least. But something that made her not care one whit if he
succeeded. In fact, a part of her, and not a small part, would
welcome it. Not because she had a death wish, but because she
craved freedom at whatever cost it might require. Fifteen years,
she’d been unable to find her way free of him. Death was at least
that, at least freedom.

So now, the wry thought she’d had when he’d
first mentioned sending her to the shore had become a real hope,
even a prayer—
Please don’t let him kill me until the end of the
week. Please give me this bit of enjoyment in this life
.

Near dusk, she’d driven into town and gotten
some Chinese take-out, then returned to the house. She’d sat on the
veranda, overlooking the sea, and had eaten orange chicken and
fried rice straight out of the little cartons. She’d washed it down
with sugary soda. It had been her best day since she was twenty,
her best day since the day after they’d returned from their
honeymoon, when she’d woken to a life with a different man from the
one to whom she’d said, “I do.”

After her happy little meal, she’d lounged
on the veranda while the moon rose, feeling the cooling air of the
night sea make a comforting kind of chill on her skin. She’d felt
pulled by the susurration of the incoming tide, and the
ever-so-light spray in the air, and she’d gone in and opened her
bags to discover that, of course, they were perfectly packed for
this week. She’d pulled out a pair of softly-worn jeans and her
favorite sweater, and she’d dressed for a walk on the beach.

She’d walked and she’d thought, and she’d
gotten lost in her mind. With no sense of how long she’d walked,
she’d realized that she was coming up on a bonfire. As she’d
approached, she’d been able to make out a vinyl banner strung
between two posts—
Pagano & Sons
. The Pagano name again.
Had she walked all the way to Quiet Cove? Well, that was more than
two miles up the beach.

The scene at the bonfire had mesmerized her.
Although she wanted,
craved
, the promised solitude that had
been her sudden boon, the golden glow of the fire, the faint
strains of music and voice rising up into the air with the sparks
and smoke, the warm way the people were clustered near the flames,
all of it appealed to her in a way that made her lonely. What she
saw around that fire was friendship.

Sabina had multitudes of acquaintances but
not one friend. She could not remember what it was like to have a
friend. The sight of it on the beach had frozen her in
melancholy.

Now, with the tall, dark stranger standing
before her—no, not a stranger, her Good Samaritan from the night
before, who was a Pagano…Carlo. Carlo Pagano—she felt awkward.
Sheepish. It wasn’t a feeling that fit well on her. He’d hailed
her, welcomed her. So she put on her meet-and-greet face.

“Um…Sabina? Er…Mrs. Auberon, I mean?”

“Sabina, yes. And you are Carlo? We met last
night?”

He smiled, and when he did, his eyes
crinkled deeply at their corners. “Yes, kind of. Not formally,
though.” He held out his hand. “Carlo Pagano.”

For the space of one heartbeat, she
hesitated, without knowing why she would. Perhaps because he’d seen
her in an intimate weakness, dominated by her husband. But then she
turned on her smile and shook his hand. “Sabina Alonzo. Auberon.”
That, too, was interesting. Although her name was officially
hyphenated—James, despite his refusal to allow her her language,
the most important marker of her cultural identity, took great
pleasure in the fact that she was foreign-born, which he thought
exotic and alluring—she could not remember the last time she had
not introduced herself as Sabina Auberon.

Rather than release her hand immediately
after a polite shake, he held on. Not forcefully, but firmly. His
hand was large and surprisingly rough. Men who wore tuxedos and
attended high-profile civic events did not, as a rule, have rough
hands. They had hands like James’s—manicured. Soft.
Well-tended.

But she had noticed last night, in the
brief, fraught seconds she’d been in his company, that this man had
seemed not quite in place at that event. His tuxedo had been
expensive and well cut, fitting his tall frame perfectly, but he’d
seemed slightly awkward in it. His hair had not been so carefully
coiffed as the other men’s; it had been then, as it was now, rather
messy, but not in the studied, intentional way that some men
affected. It was on the long side of short, and very dark, swept
back from his face but not in a way that seemed like he had much
control. He had a dark, full beard—that
was
neatly
trimmed—and heavy brows that made his expression look particularly
intense.

Lord. He could have walked straight across
the moors. He was Heathcliff incarnate.

She snatched her hand back, freeing it from
his hold.

A furrow passed through his brow, and then
he dropped his hand. “You’re welcome to join us at the fire. It’s
just the town party, winding down. Nothing private.” He paused and
looked past her down the beach from whence she’d come. “Your
husband, too. All comers.”

“It’s only me.” She thought. She should
thank him and decline, then turn and head back to the solitude of
her house, solitude about which she’d been ecstatic only minutes
before, before she’d come upon the bonfire and suddenly and rather
ironically gotten melancholy about the absence of friendship or
connection in her life.

But she
was
melancholy about it.
Moreover, standing here, she’d realized that her feet hurt. She’d
walked quite a long way in her well-tended bare feet, feet which
were not allowed to become calloused. The salt in the incoming
tidewater stung, even as the cold numbed. And her knees ached.

Perhaps a short rest by a warm fire was a
good idea. “Yes, thank you. I’d like that. For a minute or two
only. Then I should go back.”

Again, he smiled and held out his hand. She
returned the smile but walked past his hand, heading up toward the
fire on her own, ignoring the sting on the soles of her feet. She
was quite adept at ignoring pain. When she reached the circle of
people and flame, though, she was at a loss. This was not an event
for which she understood the protocol, and there wasn’t an obvious
place for her to sit that she could see.

Then she felt a hand on her lower back, and
she flinched a little and turned. Carlo stood behind her, his hand
out oddly, as if he’d just pulled it away—which, in fact, he had.
With his other hand, he gestured to a long log, where an enormous
animal...a dog? Was that a
dog
?...lay, its head up, watching
her with interest. That interest didn’t seem hungry, so Sabina
allowed Carlo to lead her to the log, and she sat.

“Can I get you a drink? There’s some beer
left, some bottled water…a couple of bottles of booze are going
around, but I don’t guess…”

“Water would be nice, thank you.” He went
off with a nod, and Sabina sat and looked around the bonfire. No
one had taken much notice of her, except the dog, which had risen
to sit and was now staring at her imploringly. When Sabina met its
eyes, it pushed its nose toward her and shifted. The giant, furry
beast wanted her to pet it. Hoping that she would not lose a limb
in the effort, she brushed her hand over its wide head covered in
soft, silky fur, and the dog immediately dropped that massive melon
into her lap.

“Elsa, down.” Carlo was back and holding out
a bottle of water to her. At his command, the dog slithered sadly
from her lap to lie again on the sand.

Sabina took the bottle, and Carlo sat next
to her. “Elsa. It’s—she’s a girl?”

“Yes.”

“She seems very sweet. She’s enormous,
though. Like a bear. What kind of dog is she?”

“Leonberger. She is sweet. They’re known as
gentle giants.”

Sabina nodded and sipped from her bottle.
Having exhausted all the things she could think of to say about
dogs—pets were not part of her experience with James, and thus not
part of her experience at all—she fell silent and let her eyes
trail over the people around her. They were mostly clustered in
small groups—couples, families with sleeping children, friends—and
yet the atmosphere, full of music, was very much of togetherness.
It made her feel peace and tumult all at once. Perhaps she’d been
better off without this taste of life out from under James’s thumb.
The past few hours had been all about things she could not
have.

But if he was going to kill her, at least
she could first take a little taste of what life was for other
people.

She turned; Carlo was looking at the fire.
He was handsome, in that brooding, dark romance way. Wearing
mismatched clothes—camouflage shorts and an unbuttoned plaid
flannel shirt—he looked more relaxed than she was used to people
being. With his attention away from her, she let herself indulge
further in her critique. Strong, long, solid legs, with a moderate
coverage of dark hair. His forearms, too, what was visible beyond
the cuffs of his shirt, were long and visibly muscled. The loose
lay of his open shirt didn’t afford much of a view of his chest,
but what she saw was nice.

Yes, he was handsome. And she was absolutely
insane for even indulging her eyes. She felt as if somehow James
would be able to tell, as if at this moment in Providence, wherever
he was, at the office, at home, in another woman’s bed, wherever,
he could see her seeing this man here.

She had never been with any man but James.
She wondered what it would be like to be touched in that way by
someone who did not need to cause her pain to feel his own
pleasure.

And how, exactly, was she so certain that
this man would not cause her pain? Or that any man would not?
Because he was being polite to her now? Because he had intervened
ever so slightly between her and James last night?

Yes. Because he had intervened. Because he
had felt enough power and self-possession to walk up to James
Auberon and interrupt his abuse of his wife. A crowd of Rhode
Island’s most prominent citizens had not felt that kind of power.
They had all simply watched and pretended not to be looking.

And because fate had put him in her path
again tonight. Sabina laughed. Mother Mary. Even after all that had
happened to her over the past fifteen years, the silly, bookish
girl with the romantic notions about tortured heroes and the
redeeming power of love had not been killed. She’d merely lain
dormant until the next ‘hero’ came along.

She stood. “Thank you for the rest, and for
the water. But I need to go back to my home now.”

Carlo stood, too, and the dog rose with him.
“There’s not another house on the beach for quite a ways. Where did
you come from?”

“Not far from Seagazer Point.”

“Jesus. That’s more than two miles. Here—I
can drive you.” He waved at some point behind her, trying to get
someone’s attention.

“Please don’t bother, really. I like the
walk.” She stepped over the log to make her way around him, but she
got tangled up in the mass of dog somehow, strafed one sore, bare
foot across the rough wood, and only missed falling because Carlo
grabbed her arm.

As soon as she was steady on her feet again,
she jerked her arm free. “Thank you. Good night.” She started off
down the beach.

He trotted after her and took her arm again.
“Sabina!”

She didn’t like this, not at all. Now she
was beginning to feel like yet another man was forcing his will on
her. Again, she yanked her arm away, and this time she stepped
backwards, continuing down the beach but keeping an eye on him.
Stupid romantic naïf in her head. She truly should know better.

Walking after her, he put his hands up in a
gesture of surrender. “Mrs. Auberon. I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s
dark, and you mean a long walk alone. I don’t intend anything
inappropriate. I was only going to offer you a ride home. I can ask
my sister to drive you, if that would make you feel more
comfortable.”

Sabina’s feet hurt. Her knees hurt. She had
walked much farther than she’d intended when she’d come out for a
stretch of the leg after her take-out dinner, and now she had to
retrace her steps. She was cold, and it was dark. But there was not
even the most microscopic chance that she would agree to a ride
home from this man or from any of his relatives, male or female.
This was about her will and his will. She would have preferred
actually to have an accident on the beach and save James the
trouble of staging one than to take the ride being offered.

She turned without a word and continued
toward home, her back to Carlo and his bonfire.

For a few minutes, she walked alone, feeling
both relieved and bereft. She had enjoyed that brief, warm respite
at the fire. She had felt younger, even, somehow. Now, she was
alone and cold, and her feet burned, and it was too dark to tell
where the sharp shards of shells might be lurking, waiting to take
a slice. The tide had come in, and she had to walk in the deeper
sand, and around rock formations, which made her knees unhappy. The
ride with his sister might well have been the smarter choice.