COUNTERPOINT
An original romantic serialFrom Alina Adams the author of "When a Man Loves a Woman" (DELL 4/00), "Annie's Wild Ride" (AVON 8/98), "Inside Figure Skating" (METROBOOKS 11/00 & 9/99), "Thieves at Heart" (AVON 12/95) and "The Fictitious Marquis" (AVON 6/95)
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CHAPTER 41
Victoria heard herself fall, before she actually felt it. She heard the skid of her shoes before she felt her legs melt out from under her, and the hard smack of flesh against rock prior to the tentacles of pain searing through her chest like hot, metal rods. The wind wrapped her hair around her face, catching it around her nose and jaw, and binding her eyes, so, that, to Victoria's brain, it seemed as if one moment, she was upright and viewing the world from a normal angle, and the next she was pressed against a wall of jagged rock, her hands futily grasping at the slippery sides, nails ripping off her flesh as she desperately tried to claw her way up -- or at least keep from sliding into the frigid water at a rate so fantastic, it felt like her chest and stomach were being cleanly sliced by each rock edge she passed.
Victoria kicked her legs madly, feeling one shoe slide off her foot and the other pop a heel to the unforgiving rock. She must have looked like a cartoon character who, having accidentally run off a cliff, now pedaled thin air in an attempt to keep from plunging to her death. She thought this, even as body instinctively did the same thing, for the same reason.
She grabbed at a protruding stone, only to be rewarded with a palm full of slippery algae, her hand slipping off as quickly as if she'd grabbed at an illusion. It was too late to scream. It was too late to do anything, really, except cuddle up in a warm coat of shock and denial. Victoria wasn't scared, really, because being scared would actually mean acknowledging the doomed magnitude of her situation.
She felt a tug on her shoulder-blade, and realized her own weight was about to yank it out of the socket. It would be hard to continue clinging to the rock-face with only a single working arm, Victoria thought flippantly -- seeing as how flippant was the sentiment she seemed capable of producing, at the moment -- when the tug became even stronger, and, in the space of a single breath (or sarcastic thought) Victoria found herself being pulled upward and back on the reef, where she landed face down, and in even more shock then when she'd fallen.
She looked up to see Robin peering down at her, his eyes blazing so brightly that, for a moment, Victoria through she was seeing the lightening reflecting in his pupils. One of his hands was running skillfully up Victoria's limbs, checking for broken bones. The other was still wrapped tightly around her wrist.
"Damn you," Robin spat out. "Damn you, Victoria, you could have been killed."
Victoria's breath came in quick, short, painful gasps. As understanding broke through the cocoon of shock, and she was finally forced to consider how close she'd almost come to losing her life, she began to shiver uncontrollably. And yet, in spite of all that, Victoria still managed to spit out, "Ditto, Cooper."
He stared at her as if he didn't know whether to smack her for her insolence, or grab her face between both his hands and kiss her with such force, it would make the ocean that had almost swallowed her seem like a puddle being stirred by a stick.
He did neither.
Instead, Robin bent over, sweeping Victoria into his arms and carrying her off the reef. He bundled her into the passenger side of her own car, then held out his hand for her keys. The look on his face told her now was no time to discuss anything, and so she handed them over without a word.
Robin started the engine, and drove them both away from the beach. Neither of them had any reason to look back.
He took Victoria to his hotel room, wrapping her in his jacket and hustling her pathetically dripping, shoeless, half-limping form past the openly gaping staff with an expression of such fierceness, any impertinent question they might have been planning to ask died on contact with Robin's demeanor. As they stood waiting for the elevator, Victoria made the mistake of raising her head high enough to catch a peek at her reflection in the mirrored doors. She knew now why the staff had been gaping so openly, and, in retrospect, she commended them for their show of restraint.
Victoria looked like she'd gone fourteen rounds with a fire hydrant, and the hydrant didn't just win, it tattooed its initials onto her face. Besides the sopping wet, tangled hair lying on her shoulder like a dead rat tied into a knot for good measure, she also sported a burgeoning purple shiner over her right eye, and a gash on her cheek, parallel to her nose not unlike the one first popularized by Frankenstein's monster.
Clearing her throat of excess sea-water and gravel, Victoria whispered to Robin, "I'm going to give you a horrible reputation around this place."
Robin smirked and, without looking at her, pushed the elevator button, waving Victoria inside.
"Too late," Robin said.
His hotel room looked pretty much the way Victoria remembered it from her first visit -- a lifetime and a half ago. And yet, on that long ago afternoon when she'd come to confront the unknown on Gabriel's behalf, Victoria had felt less scared than she did now. Because, back then, no matter how big of an ogre Robin might have turned out to be, wasn't nearly as threatening as the sweet man she knew he could be now. An ogre, Victoria could fight off. She'd been doing it most of her life. But, for the Robin Cooper who'd made her fall in love with him, she had no defenses.
Well, no defenses except one. She looked like something the proverbial cat would have been too selective to even drag in. Victoria doubted Robin was much interested in making a move on a woman who looked like a candidate for both plastic surgery, and a delousing. Or one who'd so recently ripped out his guts.
Yet, in spite of Victoria's musing, the first words out of his mouth upon closing the hotel room door behind them, were, "Take off your clothes."
His second words, though, were, "You need to take a hot shower and put antiseptic on those cuts. I'll call down for some aspirin, too. And maybe tea and some food."
But, Victoria failed to budge from the wet spot she was dripping onto the rug. She was too busy dealing with the shock of Robin asking her to take off her clothes, and the disappointment of realizing he meant it medicinally, to force her frostbitten limbs into actually obeying.
"Come on, come on, love." Robin opened the bathroom door, and twisted on the shower, filling the room with steam. "Before you catch pneumonia."
Victoria took a hesitant step towards the bathroom, her legs feeling as unsteady as if she were walking on gelatin. And her brain wasn't faring much better.
She made it as far as the bathtub's edge. And then she stood there, unable to, for the life of her, think of what she was supposed to do next. All she could remember was that once she knew the correct steps to take upon approaching a running shower. But, that knowledge was temporarily blocked by the knowledge that, a half hour ago, she'd almost died.
Fortunately, Robin seemed to be in better control of his faculties. Moving slowly, so as not to startle her, he gently rested both his hands on Victoria's shoulders. When she didn't flinch, when she didn't so much as react, but, continued standing there, a statue of a deer caught in the headlights, he moved to unbutton her blouse. It was a gesture of courtesy, utterly devoid of any eroticism or opportunity.
And yet, it was the one action that managed to penetrate the psychic ice-storm assaulting Victoria's senses. She felt Robin's hands, even though he wasn't even touching her. She felt the heat off his fingers on her shivering skin. She felt his breath on her neck and his arms around her shoulders and his cheek against hers.
"Robin..." Victoria began.
But, before she could finish her thought, he interrupted. "I am so sorry, Victoria," he said. "I am so sorry about everything."