Montega's Mistress Page 5

  His arm came up convulsively, his fingers tangling in the fine mass of her hair.

  “Oh, Helen,” he said brokenly, and in that one moment she almost believed he would stay.

  But then she moved back to look into his face, and what she saw there seemed too much like pity for her to allow it. She straightened at once, rose to her feet and turned away. He was not going to feel sorry for her. She had tried, and she had failed. Whatever called him was more important to him than she was, and that was that.

  He rose also, buttoning his shirt. “Can you go to the store once more for me?” he asked quietly. “There are a couple of things I need.”

  “Have I ever refused you anything?” she said bitterly, and he rounded on her, his dark eyes blazing.

  “Helen, do you think I wanted it to work out this way?”

  “I don’t know what you want, other than to get back to whatever it was you were doing last Friday night. And judging from appearances, that wasn’t good.”

  He looked away, his face closing. “You’d better get going to the store. It’s getting late.”

  Helen sighed resignedly. “What do you want?”

  “Dark glasses...”

  “Sunglasses?”

  “Yes, and a knit hat to cover my hair. And a penknife.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s it.”

  “I’ll go right now.”

  She picked up her purse and was on her way as he called after her, “Thank you.”

  She ignored him, pulling the door closed behind her.

  By the time Helen got back it was full dark, and Matteo was waiting for her anxiously, pacing the living room floor.

  When she handed him her purchases he donned the glasses and the hat and put the knife in his pocket.

  “Won’t people think it’s odd that you’re wearing dark glasses at night?” Helen asked. “If they see you, that is.”

  “They’ll probably just think I’m a drug addict,” he answered, and she couldn’t help smiling.

  He saw her expression and shrugged. “It’s better than being spotted,” he added, smiling a little himself.

  As she watched he pulled the .38 from his belt and depressed the hammer, sliding the cartridge out to check it.

  “Do you have to do that in front of me?” she inquired tightly, and he glanced at her quickly.

  “I’ll be ready in a minute,” he replied quietly, going into the bedroom and shutting the door.

  Helen waited, trying not to think how empty the beach house would seem without him.

  He returned shortly, the gun concealed beneath a pullover sweater Adrienne’s son Andy had left behind. She had to admit that he looked like a local. His dress was appropriate for early spring weather in north coastal Florida; the days were warm, but the nights were usually cool and breezy.

  “Let’s go,” he said, and Helen turned on her heel for the door.

  Matteo followed her to the Mercedes 300D her father kept in the attached garage and got into the back, lying down on the seat. Helen opened the windows and drove out the palm lined lane to the road, turning left for A1A.

  The salt wind blew through the car, stirring her hair, as she glanced in the rearview mirror. Matteo could not be seen. Although his precautions seemed almost paranoid, Helen didn’t comment on them. After all, someone had shot him.

  It was a short distance to the boat basin, and when they arrived Helen drove past a restaurant and a string of shops to the dock. It was almost deserted at that hour. Boats bobbed at anchor in their slips, the water was calm, the sky spangled with stars. She slowed to a stop and announced, “We’re here.”

  “Do you see a boat called Estrellital” he asked, his voice sounding spectral and disembodied floating toward her from the back seat.

  “I can’t read the names from here; it’s too dark,” she responded, turning her head toward him. “I’ll have to get out and look.”

  He hesitated, then said, “Be careful. If anyone sees you just turn around, get back in the car and drive away.”

  “All right.”

  Helen got out and strolled along the wooden dock, reading a succession of names emblazoned on a long row of power boats. She passed Sunshine Superman, Blue Lagoon, and a number of others, but could find no Estrellita. She turned around and came back, looking again, but it was not among them.

  She returned to the car and said, “It’s not there.”

  “Are there any other boats docked here?” he asked.

  “Just the commercial craft on the other side of the lagoon.”

  “Take me there.”

  Helen started the car again, noticing that his tone was changing as he assumed command of the venture. It was obvious that he was used to issuing orders and he was back to his old form.

  She circled the marina, pulling up at the commercial dock and getting out to look. It didn’t take her long to find the boat, a medium sized cruiser with a large, powerful engine. She glanced around her. No one was near. She could see a young couple walking hand in hand in the distance, but they were going the other way.

  Helen returned to the car and opened the door. “I found it,” she told him. “It’s right nearby. You can get out now; the dock is deserted.”

  He emerged feet first, straightening and looking around him. When he satisfied himself that she was right, he followed her to the boat and jumped down into it, reaching up with one hand to pull her after him.

  “How did you know this would be here?” she asked, thinking that the question was probably an exercise in futility, but trying anyway.

  To her surprise, he answered. “This is the boat I came in on,” he said shortly. “My men were told that if anything happened to me they were to leave it here.”

  “Sort of like an alternate escape route, huh?” Helen said.

  He examined her in the feeble light, trying to read her expression.

  “Sort of,” he finally replied, and she let it go at that.

  He went to the control panel at the front of the boat and looked over the instruments, seeming to find that everything was in order.

  “How will you get it started?” she asked. “You don’t have a key.”

  “It’s hidden on board.”

  “But the customs check, the harbor police, Matteo.”

  “I’ll be all right, don’t worry.” He turned to face her, and she knew that this was the farewell she’d been dreading.

  “When you get off the boat,” he instructed her, “don’t wait for me to leave. Just take your car and drive directly back to your house.”

  “And forget you?” she concluded for him, hating the betraying tremble that invaded her voice.

  He put his arm around her and pulled her tight against his shoulder, rocking her gently. “No, mi corazon. Remember me, as I will always remember you.”

  He let her go, taking her face between his hands and kissing her lips lightly.

  “Mi corazon,” he whispered again, still brushing her mouth with his.

  “What does that mean?” she asked, fighting the growing tightness in her throat.

  “My heart. And you are my heart, even if I never see you again.”

  Helen closed her eyes, unable to bear the thought of it.

  “Mi princesa americana, mi senorita dolorosa blanca,” he murmured, stroking her hair.

  She understood only that he was saying goodbye.

  He embraced her once more, quickly, fiercely, and then pressed something into her palm.

  She glanced down at it, glinting gold in the harbor lights, and realized that it was the small ring he wore on the little finger of his left hand. It had a signet ring’s flat surface and bore on its face, not initials, but the symbol of a tropical bird inscribed in a circle.

  “It’s the only thing I have of value,” he said, “and even that is more sentimental than monetary. Please keep it, so that you’ll think of me when you see it.”

  Helen slipped it onto her ring finger, closing the hand that wore
it into a fist.

  “Now go,” he said huskily, pushing her toward the dock. “I can’t delay any longer.”

  Helen accepted his assistance in climbing up to the wooden walkway, turning to look down at him once she was out of the boat.

  “Go,” he urged her. “Walk to your car and don’t look back.”

  She hesitated.

  “My safety is in your hands,” he warned her. “Farewell, majita.”

  That convinced her, as he had known it would. She hurried back to the car, not risking a glance at the basin until she was behind the wheel.

  The Estrellita was still there, but its deck was empty. He had gone below.

  Helen started the car and drove out of the marina, seeing the road before her through a blur of tears.

  Chapter 3

  The night Matteo left was the longest night of Helen’s life. It was ridiculous, but she couldn’t sleep without him. She, who had prized solitude since childhood and had lived alone since she graduated from high school, was surrounded by the emptiness of the beach house as if lost in the Siberian wasteland. The compact, functional rooms seemed cavernous, and the bedroom where he had slept was a desert. She wound up dragging her pillow and blanket out to the living room couch and sleeping there, where the memories weren’t quite so painful.

  In the days that followed she tried to go back to her old routine, but the 1500’s no longer held the charm for her that they once had. She found she didn’t much care any more what had inspired Christopher Marlowe to write Tamburlaine; she had met her own twentieth-century adventurer, and he was the one on her mind.

  Helen spent a lot of time sitting on the beach, staring out to sea, thinking about the changes Matteo had brought to her life. She finally decided that she wasn’t going to get any work done as long as she remained in St. Augustine, so she made arrangements to go back to her apartment in Massachusetts. On the day before she was to fly north she went to the supermarket for cleaning supplies, intending to leave the house the way she had found it. Her father employed a housekeeping service, but Helen always felt an obligation to tidy up before she left. When she was younger her mother used to tell people laughingly that Helen cleaned her room before the maid could get to it; she didn’t want the poor woman to face a mess.

  After she parked her car in the lot, Helen entered the air- cooled supermarket, picked out a cart and wandered the aisles aimlessly. She stared at the array of sprays and cleansers, soaps and scouring pads, seeing instead the empty deck of the Estrellita.

  She missed Matteo terribly. She felt half alive without him, purposeless, incomplete. She didn’t realize until he was gone that she had admired his dedication, the single mindedness that took him away, because while he was with her she had also resented it. She felt, no, she knew that he had wanted to stay with her, but he had put his ultimate goal before his personal desires. And after twenty-five years of her mother, Helen found his attitude a refreshing, even enlightening, change.

  She picked up a box of steel wool pads, looked at the price stamped on it and put it back. She couldn’t organize her thoughts enough to make a decision and finally started tossing items into her basket in rapid succession, eager to finish. She was at loose ends. Taking care of Matteo had made her feel needed for the first time in her life. She had never before experienced the fulfillment associated with helping someone she had grown to care for, and she felt its loss deeply.

  She got in line at the checkout counter and picked up a newspaper on a nearby stand, scanning the stories for word of Matteo, as she did every day. She had seen nothing and, as desperate as she was for answers, she kept silent and made no inquiries, determined to keep his presence in her life a secret, as he wished.

  As Helen paid her bill, she wondered idly how long it had been since her mother had shopped in a supermarket. Queen Sophia, as Helen’s father still called her, never bought her own groceries. Clothes and jewelry, however, being far more important, commanded her personal attention. One of Helen’s earliest memories was of being dragged around to various salons while her mother tried on samples, took fittings for alterations and ordered up originals from designer sketches. Helen could also recall very clearly sitting in the reception rooms of Tiffany’s or Van Cleef and Arpels, fidgeting with a crystal paperweight on the salesman’s desk while her mother shopped. Sophia sipped tea with lemon from a Limoges cup and shook her head repeatedly, waving away the trays of rings, bracelets and necklaces presented for her inspection. The patient clerks, hoping for a big sale, tried to amuse the fractious child, but Helen was finally sent away with her nanny so Sophia could get on with the important business of selecting a new bauble to add to her collection. What a disappointment I must have been to her, Helen thought suddenly. She really wanted a friend to share her interests, and since Helen’s lay elsewhere, Sophia was forced to resort to the likes of Claudia Fierremonte. Claudia, who lived in Rome but didn’t know who the President of Italy was, could pick out any dress at a charity ball and tell you which designer’s house had made it.

  Helen realized that she was standing in the store’s foyer, carrying her bag and looking through the plate glass window at nothing. She shook herself and walked out to the parking lot, blinking in the blazing sunshine and pausing to extricate her keys from her purse. When she reached the car, she inserted her key into the door lock. As she did so, a black sedan came roaring to a stop next to her and two figures bolted from the rear doors on either side. Before she could react one man snatched the bag from her hands and the other one took her arm in an iron grip and hustled her into the back seat. In the space of several seconds she found herself sitting with a captor on either side of her as the driver took off again, tires squealing, the car bulleting into the street and rounding a corner almost instantly.

  “What’s going on?” Helen sputtered, looking from one man to the other. “Who are you?”

  Neither answered, gazing directly ahead.

  Helen’s first thought was that she had been kidnapped for her father’s money. Once, when she was about ten, he had been having trouble with the union at one of his plants. The fighting had been bitter, finally resulting in threats against Helen’s life by anonymous members of the local. The dispute had been resolved eventually, but she always remembered the incident, which served as a warning that wealth carried its penalties as well as its privileges.

  “Where are you taking me?” Helen demanded, trying to sound braver than she felt.

  The man on her right turned to look at her. “Do not be afraid,” he said, in thickly accented English. “We mean you no harm.”

  “What is this about?” she said slowly, beginning to change her mind about the purpose of her abduction. His accent, though cruder and far more pronounced than Matteo’s, sounded hauntingly familiar. Could it be...? Her heart leaped into her throat as he reached inside the collar of his shirt and withdrew a silver chain. A medallion hung from it, and he held it out, displaying it for her. A tropical bird inscribed in a circle glowed in the filtered light from the tinted windows. Helen looked down at her ring; the symbols were the same.

  “Matteo,” she whispered. “Does Matteo want to see me?”

  Her companion nodded. “Si, Matteo. We take you to him; you come with us. Yes?”

  Helen didn’t ask why Matteo hadn’t come himself or why he had chosen such a dramatic method of providing her with an escort. She knew from experience that he had his own reasons for doing everything, and she was so happy at the prospect of seeing him again that she didn’t question them.

  She sat back in her seat and watched the passing scenery as the driver, who was clearly familiar with the area, skirted Crescent Beach and St. Augustine and headed for the highway, turning toward Jacksonville. They drove for almost an hour in silence, while her guards stared out the windows and the efficient driver piloted them through downtown Jacksonville and into a seedy, rundown area near the docks. It was the sort of neighborhood Helen would not have ventured into alone, but she was sure that her two
companions, both the size of pro linebackers, were under orders from Matteo to protect her with their lives. When the car pulled to a stop and they got out, the men materialized on either side of her like secret service men flanking the President.

  Helen looked over the facade of what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse as her companions led her to a rear entrance. It was approached by walking through an alley littered with refuse remaining from a time when business was conducted inside. Sheets from newspapers, handbills and pamphlets crunched underfoot as one of the men opened a door set into the barnsided wall and they stepped through it.

  The interior was vast and empty. The man who had spoken to her in the car gestured for her to follow him, and he took her to a small inner office, which must have served as the center of commerce in its day. The second man fell in behind her as Helen entered the glass walled room and was asked to take the only available seat. She did so, wondering uncomfortably where Matteo was. The guards remained with her, obviously waiting for him also.

  Helen sighed and tried to get comfortable on the folding chair, ready to remain until he arrived.

  * * *

  As Helen was settling in to wait, Matteo was on his way to the warehouse by another route, lest anyone should be following his car. He was driving; two of his lieutenants sat in the back seat. As he looked into the mirror he saw the two men exchanging glances. He knew exactly what they were thinking, though they would never be bold enough to say it.

  Before leaving for this meeting he had explained his plan to the two of them, and it had met with a less than enthusiastic reception. Disputing their leader’s judgment was out of the question, but their covert looks, their unspoken incredulity, had said it all. They thought Matteo had finally lost his mind.

  Relying on the help of an effete American heiress was preposterous. If Helen Demarest did what Matteo proposed, she would be required to fly off to the jungle of a country she’d barely heard of to aid people she didn’t know. To even suppose that she might do so was absurd.