She shook her head. “You fell in love with the way I looked, Brett. And with who I was, the daughter of two senior partners in the firm.”
“I fell in love with you. I fell in love with you before I even knew who you were. There’s something missing, though. You let me make love to you, but I can’t get close to you. Not your heart or your mind. One of these days you’ll discover that painting isn’t enough!”
“That’s not going to happen, Brett.” She spoke with finality.
His face contorted. “Well, I hate it! It’s separated us.” He lunged for her and she backed away swiftly, protecting herself from possible physical harm. “We can work this out,” he insisted. “If we break up, it’ll be a huge mistake. This is all that bloody woman’s fault.”
Distressed as she was, she was still desperate to show compassion. “I’m sorry, Brett. Truly sorry. But this is my life. I don’t love you.”
Brett sloughed off his civilized veneer as a snake sloughs off a skin. He surged toward her and struck her openhanded, but with such force she staggered back and fell to the floor, hitting her head against the foot of a teak cabinet.
For long moments he gazed down at her, rooted to the spot. Her long hair tumbled around her face in an ash-blond storm. In the fall, two buttons of her silk shirt had slipped their holes, so he could see the upward curves of her breasts.
Desire soared. He wondered what it would be like to take her right there, on the polished floor. He hunched down, wanting nothing more than to have her whether she wanted it or not. “Oh, God, Ally, I’m sorry. Forgive me.” Common decency briefly exerted itself.
He tried to get his arm around her, but his sexual excitement was showing in his flushed skin and his glittering eyes. Alyssa resisted wildly. One side of her face was scarlet, her skin bearing the imprint of his hand. Somewhere deep inside her ear a phone was ringing stridently, yet the outer shell was deaf. “Get out!” she cried, swallowing down her shock. She wasn’t going to grieve over their breakup anymore. This new Brett was a monster.
He just knelt there, staring at her. “You’re so beautiful!” Lust was coming off him in waves.
It presented a clear threat. “Get out!” Alyssa repeated, beyond fear. “You’re a brute and a coward. Violence is a sickness, an illness, a disease! You’re sick!”
The cold outrage in her voice, the condemnation in her eyes, slammed the brakes on hard. Brett started to remember who he was; more importantly, who she was. He thrust a trembling hand through his hair. “How did this happen?” he asked in a wondering voice.
Alyssa scrambled unaided to her feet, although she felt ill and more than a little dizzy. “I can tell you this. It will never happen again. Get out!”
He did.
Of course there were innumerable phone calls, messages she didn’t answer. Sheafs of her favorite flowers arrived, red roses galore. She refused to take delivery. It was over. Dreams had turned to ashes. She’d seen the real Brett, the dark side that had been hidden inside him. She could never ignore it now. She prayed he wouldn’t be foolish enough to stalk her, or show up at her door. She knew he was capable of it; she’d glimpsed that disturbing glow in the depths of his eyes. She wanted to keep their breakup private. If the full facts got out, it could mean the end of Brett’s promising legal career. She had no wish to harm him. She simply wanted out!
LOOKING BACK at her life over the weeks that followed, Alyssa felt deeply perturbed at how virulent Brett’s attitude to Zizi had become. He’d actually spent very little time in Zizi’s company, only two or three visits. She had so wanted them to like each other but as Brett had been at pains to tell her, he’d immediately perceived Zizi as a threat.
How could she have been so wrong about him? Her spirits sagged beneath the weight of her bad judgment. On her most recent visit to Zizi, she’d wisely gone on her own. They had a perfect, harmonious week together, sharing an empathy that went even deeper than the one she shared with her much-loved mother, Stephanie, and certainly her formidable grandmother, Mariel, Zizi’s older sister.
Then there was Zizi’s marvelous old plantation house, Flying Clouds. She’d adored it at first sight. As a child, it had seemed to her that there was no other house in the entire world like it. For one thing, it had a widow’s walk. She’d never heard of such a thing, let alone seen one. She’d found it thrilling beyond words to pace the narrow walkway looking out to the turquoise Coral Sea.
The house, a profoundly exotic jungle mansion, had a history. Of course it did. A Captain Richard Langford, an English adventurer-entrepreneur, had built it in the late 1800s. At that time Australia had been announcing to the Old Country that it really was the land of opportunity. Captain Langford had answered the call. It was his beautiful schooner, Medora, hired out for trade or charter that had brought him a fortune before he’d eventually turned his attention to starting a small shipping line that serviced the eastern seaboard. His ancestors today ran the giant Langford Container Lines, which transported anything and everything all over the world—automobiles, antiques, fine arts, boats, industrial machinery, whole households of personal effects, you name it. There was no stopping progress, and the Langfords had prospered.
Was it any wonder that in her make-believe games she’d often played the role of wife—and sometimes daughter—of that heroic sea captain? She’d stand high up on the observation platform, waiting for a glimpse of his ship returning home. Other times she was the grief-stricken widow, shedding real tears. For a change she’d be Peter Pan or Wendy and even the infamous Captain Hook. Treasure Island was a favorite and so were all sorts of swashbuckling pirate games—anything to do with the sea. Sometimes she was the beautiful damsel in distress, held for ransom, other times the dashing pirate. Zizi had always given her just the right old clothes to turn into a costume. Those were unforgettable days for the kind of child she was. Zizi understood her imaginative nature far better than anyone else. She was a dreamer, a great reader, often devouring books way beyond her years. It was Zizi who’d understood and nurtured her compulsion to draw and finally, paint.
Zizi!
She’d been totally happy at Flying Clouds, with the bond between them deepening steadily through the years. They both loved the house, although Zizi made it clear from the outset that it was haunted by the benign Captain Langford. At any rate, both of them found they were remarkably easy in his company. Captain Langford had actually died in his bed, but one of his descendants—another Richard and a renowned yachtsman—had drowned off the Reef when his yacht, Miranda, had capsized and sunk without trace during rough monsoon weather. That was in the late 1960s.
Some time after that, Zizi had made her final escape to the tropical North where, in her youth, she’d painted some of her most ravishing canvases. Back then she’d stayed on and off in the artists’ colony long since disbanded. With her intimate knowledge of the area, she’d had the great good fortune to acquire Flying Clouds cheaply, as most people, certainly the locals, believed it to be haunted.
The setting alone captured the imagination. The entrance fronted on to a private road lined by the white flowering evergreen species of frangipani that in the lush tropical climate had grown into very big trees. The rear faced the glorious Coral Sea, with a long, sea-weathered boardwalk that led to a zigzag flight of steps and on to the beach.
The house was of fine proportions and remarkably grand for the area. According to local folklore, Captain Langford’s mother was an American shipping heiress who’d lived in such a house when she was a girl. Whether that was true or not no one knew, but all agreed it was a good story.
The two-story—three if one counted the widow’s walk—was constructed of brilliant white stuccoed sandstone with deep verandas decorated and embellished with distinctive white cast-iron lace railings that appeared again on the upper walkway. The verandas shaded the house from the tropical sun while still allowing every available sea breeze to pass through. The shutters for the French doors, three to either side of the solid cedar front door, and the door itself were