Page 24 of Whispers of Torment

“Him?”

“The name you saw on the USS Arizona Memorial. Robert Albright.”

She jerked. Her mind couldn’t be farther from Robert Albright just now, but at the sound of his name a sharp pain welled inside her. Through a glaze of tears, she picked at a fingernail. “My mortal husband,” she whispered.

John’s eyes snapped to hers. They glittered like coal. “Yes.”

Memories circled her mind, soft brown eyes and gentle caresses, riding on the handlebars of Robert’s bike and sharing ice cream cones, the day Robert had his head shorn when he joined the service, crushing her against the kitchen sink and kissing her, kissing, kissing.

A tear slipped from beneath her lashes. “He was a good man, and I loved him.”

John twisted his gaze from hers.

Seeing his pain filled her with remorse. She climbed into his lap. “John. My love for Robert was a mortal’s for a mortal. What I feel for you is different.”

He tucked her head beneath his chin and encircled her with his arms. She felt the tension flood out of him, but her anxiety was just beginning. The deep, sickening tremor in her core grew. Yes, her love of John was different. But how to explain her overpowering need for her dream man?

* * *

Lillian eyed the cotton sleeves concealing John’s immortal tattoos. The first time she saw those blue-black bands circling his biceps, she was awestruck. Where did he get them? Had he traveled to an exotic land where such acts were common? No, he explained. It was the mark of immortality. She possessed such a mark on her spine. And then he had spun her to the mirror and made her look.

She gasped, not in shock, but at its loveliness. It was perfectly fitting, as were John’s. The Celtic knot pattern reflected his Irish descent. She knew she could gain comfort by touching his tattoos. The shocking sensation would grant them both calm. He was offering it—his shirt sleeves were rolled up against the fuggy heat of the train car and they beckoned to her. But lines of the same color lived on the chest of another man, and she could not touch John’s.

Nathan Halbrook was following her. She saw his face, sunk in the cradle of his hands, and knew the blame for the hurt he experienced was hers.

When John went out of the train car to retrieve drinks, Lillian put pen to paper and slipped a note into the crack between the seat and wall.

An hour later the train drew into the terminal and she disembarked, still jittery from leaving her gift. Yet she knew he would find it.

The chaos of the train terminal brought violent images of Nathan to mind. Voices of travelers and the barking of announcements echoed off the high ceilings. A wave of dizziness struck her. She felt Nathan’s roar of fury, the pounding of feet on pavement, the thud of fists against metal.

Surfacing from this shaking and dizzy, she released John’s arm and made a beeline for the ladies’ room. She shoved the door against the wall of a stall with an unsteady hand, and for long moments hovered over the toilet, thinking she might vomit. She hadn’t been ill in over half a century, but the back of her tongue was ticklish and her eyes streamed.

She sat abruptly on the toilet seat, weak-kneed, and unrolled a length of toilet paper to wipe her eyes. The paper was frail and rough and separated beneath her tears. Visions flashed through her mind like snapshots. Crooked smile. Mouth to hers. Mouth to spine.

Diving into the perfumed depths of her handbag, she retrieved the rose sculpture. Beneath the flickering fluorescent lights, it glowed like alien rock. She brought the cool, smooth rose to her lips and murmured, “I’m sorry.”

When she returned to John, he wound a supportive arm about her waist and led her into the sultry San Diego air. But he could not help her from the confusion of her mind.

In the back of a taxi on the way to the airport, she was haunted by Visions of Nathan’s sensual mouth set in his blond beard. She had seen those lips on her too many times to remain indifferent. She also saw his rigid forearm slung over his face, making her realize she had never seen his eyes.

She thought of John’s, deep and black. Robert Albright’s were hazel and gold-flecked, and her own were grey and almond-shaped. She bit her lower lip brutally.

John stroked the crest of her cheek. “I promise you can sleep on the plane, Lily.” Then he loaded her onto another plane carrying her to yet another city separating her from Nathan.

The past few days were a cyclone in her mind. The cities blurred together, the taxis, the jets and hotel beds all merged into one. She stared at the dusting of black hair on John’s knuckles, thinking of the blond.

As the jet engine vibrated to life and John fastened her seatbelt around her waist with a smile and pat of her knee, she panicked. Where was she headed? Behind her, she heard the strains of a song bursting its confines of a man’s headphones. The pilot’s voice sounded through the white walls of her prison, tinny and distorted.

She was so isolated and treasured these past decades in John’s care that she had failed to enter this new world. She streaked through the atmosphere at a thousand miles an hour, when once she had lain in a quiet bed with Robert and listened to the rain patter the roof of their home.

Lillian.

The voice slammed her, defying all laws of space and time. It Called to her.

Beside her, John was deep in conversation with a Christian minister and oblivious that Lillian’s soul had been caved in by this voice.

She wound her arms about her torso to hold him in. Nathan.

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