In Love With a Master Read online

Pouring rain was hammering against the window with a sound like gravel on the glass. Howling wind buffeted the house and rattled the window in its frame so that when dawn came it was as cold wintery light that was not strong enough to chase away the darkness of the night before. I shifted stiffly in the chair where I had slept, and blinked. The fire had turned to ash sometime during the evening and now the cold seemed to seep through the walls. I stared back out through the window as the morning slowly began to spread across the rim of the earth, cold and grey, and weak watery shadows stretched across the carpet.

  There was a lingering dull ache of remorse behind my eyes. I pushed myself out of the chair. My head felt filled with the numbness of tragedy and I swayed unsteadily on my feet. I pulled open the office door with barely the will to go downstairs.

  Dead man walking.

  Mrs. Hortez was in the kitchen early – there were plates and dishes, and cutlery and crockery stretched across the kitchen benches. She was dressed in black, still mourning Tiny’s death. She had her hair tucked up in a bun, held in place with a collection of pins and clips so that it looked like a bird’s nest. She heard me behind her and glanced over her shoulder, then turned her attention quickly back to the cooking. I drifted out into the foyer, wandering aimlessly, followed by the hollow echo of my footsteps. The whole house felt cold and empty, and I got lost in the depths of my despair and bitterness somewhere near the back rooms of the house.

  I drew the heavy drapes aside and stared out across the lawns of the estate. The morning was damp and cold. Bleak rain clouds hung like a veil across the rolling green grounds and gardens so that even their vibrant colors were muted and dull. I drifted back upstairs to my office like a haunting ghost.

  The phone rang, and the clamor of it was shrill and strident. I sank back into the leather chair and waited until the sound cut off.

  I couldn’t help but think of Leticia. I didn’t know if it was her trying to reach me, but my thoughts snapped instantly to her: where she might be and what she might be doing. An image of Leticia in her apartment flashed before my eyes, and I clung to it. I visualized her in her tiny kitchen reading the morning newspaper, her finger drawing slowly down through the columns of type looking for my name in the obituaries. The image flickered and wavered behind my eyes like bad reception, and then came back as a close up of Leticia’s face. She was crying, just as she had been crying that first time she had driven out of my life.

  Just like she had been crying at the funeral.

  The day drifted by in a blur of whisky. The reek of alcohol and cigar smoke hung like a thick haze in the air. Empty bottles littered the edge of the desk as I drank heavily. The anesthetic of the alcohol numbed my grief and washed away the choking bitterness in the back of my throat. I visualized Leticia standing over my grave, at my funeral… and I realized suddenly that the thought of my own death no longer filled me with resentful anger. I began to embrace the idea – welcome its inevitability.

  With my death would come relief.

  The notion seemed to bloom in my mind. I stared up at the ceiling through the swirling blue haze and let my imagination take hold of the thought until it became something more tangible, more practical. I dwelled on the vision of myself laying slumped dead over my desk with a macabre kind of fascination. I imagined myself finally free – unburdened of a lingering grey existence, released and relieved.

  Would I be mourned?

  Would it matter whether Jonah Noble died tonight, rather than in a few months or maybe a year from now?

  When I thought I had reached the point where the depth of my desolation could become no darker, no more consuming – when I could find no solace – I slid my hand into the desk side drawer and wrapped my fingers around the cold steel of a pistol.

  I laid the weapon on the polished tabletop and stared at it for long seconds, coming to terms with the enormity of what it represented – what the weapon offered. I ran my fingertips over the blunt, ugly shape, caressing it like a lover. I took the pistol in my hand and felt the comforting weight of it.

  I reached across the desk and switched on the lamp. Light glinted off the stubby, ugly barrel of the gun. I twisted and turned the weapon in my hand, examining it in minute detail as though I had never seen it before. I pulled back the slide to chamber a round, and the metallic ‘snick’ of the weapon loading was obscenely loud in the silence.

  I turned my hand so that the black mouth of the weapon stared back at me like a long, dark tunnel. I twisted my wrist and then felt my finger instinctively curl around the trigger and begin to take up pressure.

  Here was relief. Here was the ultimate escape from a slow, certain death and the relentless misery and ache of mourning.

  I slumped back in the chair and closed my eyes. I thought for a moment on my life and considered my regrets.

  I had won and lost fortunes, I had built a business empire, and I had known many beautiful women. I had made mistakes, but I had no regrets…

  And then a thought came from far away, like a distant call, only just penetrating the fatigued numbness of my mind. I tried to seize it – tried to draw it closer to consciousness, but I was made slow and sluggish by the enormous crushing weight of my grief, so that it slipped back into the shadows and I groped into the emptiness. I drew a deep breath and tried to shrug off the despair until my mind was empty, my thoughts swirling.

  I opened my eyes, and stared back down the barrel of the gun. As I did, the thought suddenly came back to me, ghosting from out of the depths and taking clear form, so that I felt a prickle of sensation jolt along the length of my spine.

  My eyes flew wide in a sudden shock of understanding. The regrets I had were the things I had not done. I realized then that when a man reflects upon his life, it’s not the regret of mistakes made that he dwells upon, it is the regret of those opportunities that passed him by which threaten to haunt him into the next life.

  Death was an instant away – one reckless moment of desperate resolve – one single heartbeat away, when I realized I would regret never knowing love.

  I set the gun down on the table – slid it across the timber surface out of reach. I looked at my hand – it was sweating and shaking. I felt a sudden rush of relief and adrenalin so that my breathing sawed across the back of my throat. I felt a flush of warm blood, and cold beads of sweat broke out across my brow.

  I had come within a moment of death only to realize that I had found a reason to live.

  And I had found new resolve.

  The angel of death no longer scared me. I had stared her in the eye and had felt no fear. I knew then that when my time came at last, I could go in peace if I could first reach out and seize the chance to know love.

  “No regrets,” I said to myself softly, “because with no regrets comes no fear.”

  On an impulse, I reached for the telephone, and then paused with the receiver in my hand. I stared down at the phone for long seconds, rehearsing the words I would say in my mind. I felt a tremble in my fingers, and my breathing became short as if I had been running.

  “No regrets,” I crushed down on my hesitation. I dialed the number and waited.

  It was late. The phone rang for long seconds and then finally a breathless, drowsy voice answered.

  “Hello?”

  A moment of blind panic – a moment where my resolve reverted to caution, and I could not speak.

  “Hello? This is Leticia. Who’s calling?” Her tone was solemn and there were traces of ordeal in the subdued whisper of her voice.

  “Leticia, it’s me. It’s Jonah.” My voice was husky and made rough from too much whisky. I felt a sudden sense of vertigo as though the floor had just dropped out from beneath me and I was falling. It was that terrifying instant where I realized I was committed… and from here there could be no retreat.

  I heard Leticia take a sharp breath like a gasp, and then a rustled movement before her voice cleared and she sounded suddenly alert and concerned. “Jonah? Tell me what’s wrong? Is eve
rything alright?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Of course. Is something wrong?”

  “No.”

  “Has something happened?” Leticia’s manner became full of pity and compassion.

  “Yes.”

  “Is it about Tiny?”

  I hesitated and tried to smile but my lips would not hold the shape. “Yes… and no…”

  “I can come over right now if you want, or you can come here.”

  I thought for a moment and sighed – an empty sound. “No… I realize it’s late. For now, it’s enough just to hear your voice. Can you come here tomorrow night?”

  “Of course. I can be there straight after work. Are you sure you are all right? Are you sure tomorrow night is not too far away?”

  “No,” I said and there was a sudden uplift in my voice that caught me by surprise. I stretched out across the desk and reached for the pistol. I dropped the weapon back into the drawer and slammed it shut. I turned the lock in a gesture of finality. “Tomorrow night will be fine,” I said. “I can wait, Leticia. I have the time…”

  Chapter 5.

  I braced myself in front of the vanity mirror and shaved away days of stubble. I worked with the razor quickly and methodically, not daring to linger – not daring to study my reflection for fear of who I might see staring back at me. I stripped off my clothes and then stood under the scalding, stinging needles of a hot shower until I felt the steam and the heat scour away grime and toxins from my body and soul. I wrapped a towel around my waist and scrubbed myself dry with another until I felt fresh blood begin to surge through my body.

  I padded barefoot into the bedroom leaving a string of wet footprints on the carpet. On the bedside table was a bottle of whisky beside a single tumbler. I opened the bottle and poured. As I snatched up the glass I realized with a small shock that my hand was trembling. I hesitated, caught my reflection in the smoky glass of a bedroom cabinet. The face that stared back was like stone. My skin had turned ashen grey, and I shook like a man in the grips of a fever. With a jerky movement, I stared down into the tumbler for long doubtful seconds, then screwed up my resolve and made a decision. I carried the glass into the bathroom and drained the whisky down the sink.

  I worked at my desk for an hour, putting together a property deal with investors out west, but the morose shadows of Tiny’s tragic death never receded far, and it took all my will to work manfully with the temptation of a bottle and its comfort never far away. I shook off the melancholy and found myself at unbidden moments thinking again and again of Leticia. A reel of images that I had coveted secretly played behind my eyes and I gloated over each of them. It was a collection of memories, each image sharp and clear in my mind – each vision of Leticia some private celebration of the way she walked, the way she had smiled… the way she had looked at me.

  The rest of the day passed with the infinite slowness that comes with anticipation. Now it was me who was the victim of an agonizing wait. For so many years I had talked and shown women the exquisite sweet torture that anticipation could add to lovemaking.

  But this was very different.

  The long hours of waiting for Leticia to arrive were filled with instances where cold surging waves of doubt and pessimism would come crashing over the breakwalls and sweep me back into that maelstrom of despairing emotions.

  Had I made a mistake phoning Leticia?

  Was I even capable of love?

  And there were moments when the icy waves would draw back with a boiling hiss to reveal the jagged reefs of fear that lurked beneath the surface, so that my doubts became desolate feelings of hopelessness that threatened to drive me down and drown me.

  I could die any day.

  Had I earned the right to know love?

  And sometimes the ocean of my emotions was calm, a free-flowing current of optimism, and in those moments I allowed myself the secret delight to dream of being overwhelmed by love. I marveled silently at the possibility, and saw visions of myself swept up and consumed by feelings I had never permitted or considered myself capable of.

  Give yourself the chance!

  Give Leticia the chance to love you, and you the chance to love her.

  When at last the light began to fade and the office was filled with long shadows, I glanced up from my work and realized the day was done. Sunset blazed across the horizon in a riot of color: reds and oranges and radiant purples. The sun dipped low between two distant mountain ridges, spilling the last drops of its vibrant light along the jagged crests, and then finally dark began to fall, and with the night I knew would come Leticia.

  I cleared off my desk, and in a moment of distraction, I brushed away the dust from the heavy statue of Horus. I set the sculpture carefully back in place and pulled the office door closed behind me, shrugging off the uncertainty, the doubts, the sadness and the bitterness like a heavy black cloak, and leaving them where they belonged – in the darkness.

  Chapter 6.

  Leticia came through the door like a whirlwind, in a flurry of arms, long legs, a coat, a handbag and fits of breathless gasps. She draped the coat and handbag over an entry side table and swept hair from her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “God, the traffic is crazy and there are cars and vans everywhere along the mountain road. Sorry I am late.”

  “You are not late,” I said, and gave her a moment to catch her breath.

  Mrs. Hortez’s cherubic face appeared in the kitchen doorway with a look of expectation. She looked at Leticia, and then at me. I shrugged.

  “Are you hungry, Leticia? Have you had anything to eat?”

  “I’m fine, thanks, Jonah. I grabbed something to eat before I left the office.”

  Mrs. Hortez looked crestfallen. She ran her eyes up and down Leticia’s lithe frame and shook her head sorrowfully. She muttered something beneath her breath.

  Leticia looked at me for a translation.

  “I think Mrs. Hortez is concerned that you will fade away to nothing,” I said. “She is worried that you do not have enough meat on your bones.”

  The two women exchanged glances, and Mrs. Hortez folded her thick arms across her ample bosom and stood her ground defiantly. She was a woman in her fifties, as wide and round as she was tall, with a steely gaze that could melt ice.

  Leticia gave ground, and then nodded ruefully. “Maybe just a little something, thanks, Mrs. Hortez,” she smiled graciously.

  Mrs. Hortez’s stern expression became winning, and she turned on her heel in another torrent of Spanish as she scurried back into the kitchen.

  Leticia hadn’t moved. Now, suddenly, we were alone and she was awkward and unsure of herself. The smile she had manufactured for Mrs. Hortez faded from her lips and she stared at me, her gaze solemn and enigmatic, her expression becoming grave and concerned. She took a single, fearful, tense step toward me and then stopped again uncertainly. I could see strain in her face. She was anxious, and it showed in the tiny crease across her brow and her slightly parted lips.

  Leticia wore a knee length grey skirt and a white peasant blouse with drawstrings that hung loose at her throat. The fabric was thin cotton so that I could see the deeper shadow of her bra, and the bulge of her breasts as her skin shaded from honey brown to pale cream at her cleavage.

  She had taken care with her makeup. She had used cosmetics skillfully to emphasize the size of her eyes and the fine bone structure of her cheeks, but had done so in such an artful way that it seemed she wore no makeup at all. Her lips were glossy and her hair had a shimmering bounce and wave to it that caught the light. She used the finger of one hand to tuck loose tendrils of hair behind her ear, and I noticed that the skin on her arms had been gilded by the sun, so that her entire body radiated a healthy, vibrant glow.

  I felt my stomach swoop with a secret delight and wondered if my relief and pleasure to see her was transparent in the way I suddenly smiled.

  She was beautiful.

  “Thank you for coming,” I said. “T
hank you for taking my call last night. I’m sorry it was so late. I know I woke you, and I apologize for that.”

  Leticia dismissed my apology with a quick shake of her head. She stepped disconcertingly close to me, and I suddenly became aware of the scent of her perfume. It was the essence of some essential oil – a fragrance that was rich and floral. It suited her perfectly.

  “Jonah, I was glad you called,” she said softly. “I was shocked – but I was very glad. I wasn’t sleeping anyhow… I’ve had trouble sleeping for quite a while now.”

  There was pointed meaning in Leticia’s last remark, but I ignored it tactfully and simply nodded my head. “I am sure Mrs. Hortez won’t be long,” I said. “Let’s go into the kitchen, and after you have eaten I will take you upstairs where we can be alone and can talk.”

  I stood aside and gestured to Leticia in the kind of gentlemanly manner that most men have forgotten but women still appreciate. I trailed her through the foyer and into the kitchen, lowering my eyes to watch the way her hips swayed and the graceful movement of her body as I followed her. Under the clinging material, her figure was slim and beautifully shaped. She moved with a lithe grace and beneath the swishing fabric of her skirt, Leticia’s firm, rounded bottom swayed like a cheeky, tantalizing promise.

  I’m a gentleman, not a monk.

  The kitchen table was covered in a banquet of dishes – enough food to feed a small army. I held out a chair for Leticia politely and she sat. Mrs. Hortez swooped from out of nowhere with a wrought iron candle setting and placed it on the table. She smiled at me benevolently, lit the candle, and then produced a bottle of white wine. She set the bottle on the table and came back with two glasses.

  “It is from the wine cellar,” she said.

  Leticia looked at me, surprised. “You have a wine cellar?”

  “There is a wine cellar downstairs,” I said. “It’s not mine. I prefer whisky, but the old man kept a well stocked cellar.”

  I opened the bottle and filled the glasses. “I haven’t been down there for years.”