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He looks at her from across the room. A suitably crowded room, filled with suitably elegant figures, men and women in evening attire, dancing and chatting. Liz is wearing her newly blond hair swept high on her head, a strapless dress, high heels that lift her well above her customary diminutive stature. This isn’t just a social event, but also her first outing under her new cover identity. A reclusive author, newly settled in Dallas, not particularly interested in meeting new people, but towed along in Red’s wake.
Or rather, the wake of one of his many identities, this one a ranch owner, a widower, and a sometime, reluctant patron of the arts that his dead wife had adored.
He stands with a glass in his hand and a story on his lips, and his eyes follow her small, proud head.
She’s chatting with eligible bachelors. That’s why he brought her here, isn’t it? To test out this cover story, this false life. She needs to begin developing her own arsenal of identities, her separate social circles, even her favorite restaurants on every continent.
He never wanted her to be like him. But now that she needs to, how proud he is of how hard she tries to perfect the skills it took him so long to develop.
Red looks at her as a protégé, and finds himself proud. He looks at her as a woman, and finds himself humbled.
He’s lived a full life, given his promise in marriage as a young man, given his loyalty and his trust to various women throughout the years. And he’s also broken certain promises, abandoned women who wanted to know him better, and watched lovers suffer and die under his command.
But he’s never looked at a woman as he looks at Elizabeth Keen.
He aches for her as he aches for his lost childhood, his mother’s arms and her gentle kiss on his brow, the smell of his father’s pipe wafting from his workshop on the evening air.
Red watched her grow up, not only from the vantage point of Sam’s letters, but also through the eyes of his many associates, drifting through her life over the years, always at least two casual connections and sometimes more, awaiting his signal to snatch her to safety if that was ever needed.
He knows so many things about her. Her loyalty, her sweetness, the core of steel that carries her through so many losses.
Knowing the bright future she deserves, how can he still be so unsure in his decision to let her go?
***
Liz can feel his eyes on her as she turns and flirts with the tall, rangy man in the pristine cowboy hat. She likes this crowd, wealthy and interested in the arts, but not pretentious. Although they do seem to care more about football than she expected. She’ll need to do more research into the sport, if she stays.
For now, her ignorance is forgiven. A reclusive writer without a television is an oddity.
“Would you care for another glass?”
The man in the cowboy hat motions to a circulating waiter, and handles the transfer of her empty glass and selection of a new one with casual ease. She ought to remember his name, but she keeps catching Red’s eye as he chats on the other side of the crowded room with a group of men around his own age.
She’s in a circle of friendly men and women, their host’s son Mark prominent among them. Mark would be handsome if it weren’t for his slightly protuberant eyes, as if all the exercising that formed his clearly powerful and graceful frame had pushed on them slightly from the inside.
“So you’re considering writing a column?” he prompts her, steering the faltering discussion back to the facts gleaned from his father’s introduction.
“Considering, but not committed,” she responds with a smile, tilting her head as if to take the response to that particular word.
As expected, the man in the cowboy hat laughs loudly.
“Aren’t we all, in one way or another?” he interjects, his voice slightly slurred, and two of the women begin speaking at once, as if to move quickly away from the subject.
Liz looks over at Red once again, suddenly longing to depart, to be back in their hotel suite, or better still, on his plane in the silence of the night sky.
She isn’t sure why he insisted on coming to Dallas. By dint of constant movement, they’ve eluded their pursuers quite well so far.
He keeps rocking back on his heels, then jerking his chin up for emphasis, all the little signals that she’s come to recognize as signs of discomfort or tiredness. His chest still pains him, even now, months after the shooting.
She never wants to leave his side, and yet his rancher identity rarely visits Dallas, ostensibly preferring Fort Worth. Has she done something to make him want to separate from her?
***
The cab smells like stale beer, and Red sits looking out the window as they return to their hotel, not speaking after he hands her into the back and carefully closes the door.
It isn’t like him not to wait for the cabby to perform that office – did he see something unusual?
Even more unusual is his reticence to leave the cab once they arrive.
“You go on in, my dear, I’ll be along shortly.”
And that twist of his lips at her puff of indignation, his message as clear as if he spoke.
No, she doesn’t really want to have this conversation in a cab.
Then he’s gone into the night, and she’s left alone with her increasingly bitter thoughts. And a hotel suite stocked with expensive bottles, that smells like his cologne.
Liz was careful to monitor her drinks at the party. That’s the life she is preparing for, she thinks, kicking off her heels at the foot of her bed, then stripping off the expensive dress and tossing it in the direction of the closet. A life where she can never relax, never be herself.
In front of the bathroom mirror, she examines her makeup for a moment before removing it. She looks younger with her face bare, the dark circles beneath her eyes those of a tired little girl, awake too late.
Her hair is braided and pinned and sprayed so tightly atop her head she may as well leave it alone until morning. The blond contrasts poorly with her plum-toned lingerie, purchased in Milan, that brought out the highlights in her formerly dark hair.
Another one of the details to get right. That she’s still getting wrong.
Red never mentions her underthings. Perhaps he doesn’t think about them. Liz turns in front of the mirror. Her figure is neat, not curvaceous, the sleek plum lace perfectly tinted for her pale skin. She’s lost weight on the run, unable to match Red’s cheerful and eclectic approach to food.
There are usually snacks laid out in the suite. Liz pulls on her black silk robe without bothering to tie it, makes herself a stiff drink and sips it while nibbling on nuts and grapes, eyeing the heavier choices, cheese and crackers and some sort of pate on ice, without interest. As she wanders aimlessly around the large room she catches sight of herself in the large, silver-framed mirror on the wall near the front door.
A small, sad-faced woman, looking rather debauched with her robe hanging open, a glass in one hand and a grape in the other. Liz poses before the mirror, lays her head back and sticks out her tongue.
She looks like a caricature, her picture perfect hair in sharp contrast to her bare feet.
Her toenails match her lingerie, glossy and dark – another detail to correct.
Red hasn’t commented on her appearance once since they arrived in Dallas. It isn’t her hair color that he dislikes; he made such an incredible, almost inarticulate sound the first time he saw her.
She bends forward slightly, trying to make her breasts look larger, then takes another sip of her drink.
Red knows her so well. If he wants her, surely he would let her know.
She’s worked so hard to control her temper, to allow him to guide her and mold her, advise her and warn her. If he were anyone else, she’d have fled his company long ago.
But she can tell that he just wants her safety. Even if he doesn’t want her.
***
Red opens the front door of the suite silently and tiptoes into the darkened room. He’s only had two drinks, but the feel of them in his stomach drags him down, hopefully towards sleep.
He sat and watched young men playing pool, smoking cheap cigars. Flirting with equally young women, whose eyes passed over Red without lingering.
An old guy. Not worthy of their attention.
Another drink would be unwise, his stomach protests as he turns towards the display of liquor, moving quietly even though Liz has already closed her bedroom door, and is surely asleep.
A small noise is the only warning he receives when he flips on the table lamp nearest the silver tray of snack foods.
Liz is asleep, but on the nearby couch, not in her room, her black silk robe falling open to display her lingerie clad body, one arm flung over her face and covering her eyes.
Red looks down at her, captivated, unable to tear his gaze from the contrast between her pale skin and the glossy plum wisps of silk and lace that enhance rather than conceal her body. An empty glass sits on the floor near her head, and a plate with a scant handful of grapes.
He’s never seen her undressed before, and her swimsuits have always been modest, one piece designs.
His eyes greedily trace the burn scar at her hip, the delicate indent of her bellybutton. He can’t help but savor the way her breasts shift slightly with the rise and fall of her breathing, so perfectly the size of his hands. What he wouldn’t give to lean closer and lay his hands on her, and then his mouth.
Liz stretches slightly, turning further onto her back, her legs parting slightly, with her face still hidden by her arm.
It’s almost as if she’s displaying herself for him.
Red knows he should wake her or cover her up, or at least return to his room and make some pretense at sleep.
But he’s going to leave her, and soon, and the next man in her life, probably one of the assortment of Dallas millionaires she has clearly already attracted, would never allow a moment like this to occur again.
Red shouldn’t allow it. And yet he steps cautiously closer, gazing down at her with such a bittersweet taste in his mouth, joy and desire and sorrow mingling like cigar smoke and scotch, until he can’t tell which is quickening his breathing and causing his head to spin.
Her hips lift, her legs widening further, and for a moment he thinks she’s going to wake up, and he braces himself for a quick turn towards the liquor, an airy comment ready so that he can pretend he never noticed her.
Then he finds himself holding his breath, his eyes widening and his entire body trembling in reaction.
With one arm still over her face, she reaches for her panties with the other, and slides her fingers beneath them, the thin, damp fabric leaving him in no doubt as to their destination.
Red bites his lower lip hard in disbelief as she rubs herself casually, then thrusts her middle finger deep inside her body. Her hips rock up to meet it briefly, then she settles back against the black silk of her robe, knees splayed wide and unmoving.
He can’t see her face, but her breathing is deeper, her nipples visible now against the taut fabric of her bra.
He doesn’t want to see her face, can’t imagine what she would say if she caught him looking at her.
Shuddering in reaction, Red risks a quick stroke over his crotch, so aroused that his formerly comfortable evening dress seems to rasp against his most sensitive skin. His boxers tonight are black silk, so like her robe that just the thought brings him closer than he wants to be.
Her fingers remain still between her thighs, and the thought finally occurs, as he takes the most shallow, silent breaths he manage, that perhaps she sleeps with one finger inside herself every night, like a little boy with his mouth rooting around the comfort of his thumb.
He wants to touch her so badly, to press his face to her and learn the smell of her arousal, lick her nipples though the lace-trimmed silk.
As if in response to the intensity of his gaze, she murmurs and turns onto her side, away from him, pressing her face into the back of the couch, gathering the black silk of her robe about her.
Concealing all but her lower legs and feet from his gaze.
Now is the time to walk away, Red thinks, staring down at her. Two minutes alone, and you’ll be finished and ready to sleep, with the dream of what you saw her do to hope for later in the night.
Instead he stands looking, trying to fix the memory of her in his mind, and as he shifts uncomfortably from one foot to the other, trying to keep from touching himself again, she begins to move once more.
Her knees are bent, and pressed tightly together, the robe outlining the curve of her bottom, the tight line of the lace panties clearly visible.
She shifts and rolls just slightly, and he can see the panties cutting into her soft flesh even more tightly as her hand moves on herself. Her thighs tighten, her toes curling.
Red thought he was aroused before, but now he’s actually in pain.
She’s pleasuring herself in her sleep, and he can barely see anything.
He wants to lift up the back of her robe and expose her. Position her legs open at the perfect angle.
Unbutton his trousers and stroke himself as Liz writhes in front of him.
Red has been so careful in the last few months to choose associates with whom he has no intimate history. He’s focused solely on Liz, suppressing his own needs, and now it’s all he can do not to lose control, even as he settles his weight from one foot to the other gritting his teeth before risking one more pass over his crotch, adjusting himself with a squeeze and then swallowing hard as she seems to tense for a moment.
He has to get away from her. He’s going to make noise, and she’s going to awaken.
Red flees as silently as he can to his own room and locks the door before beginning to strip out of his evening dress as quickly as possible.
He can barely believe that just happened.
***
Liz sits up on the couch and belts her robe the moment she hears Red’s bedroom door shut softly behind him.
So impatient. She had far more of a show planned, once she realized he was actually watching her.
Impatience isn’t like Red.
Neither is flight.
Liz gathers her courage, then tiptoes to the door. From the rattle of hangers, he’s undressing and hanging up his evening dress.
She raps softly.
“Red? Can I come in?”
His deep voice is muffled, but unmistakable.
“No, Lizzie. Go to bed.” A pause. “Go to sleep.”
She knocks again.
“Please, Red.”
“This isn’t a good time.”
From the sound of his voice now, he’s standing just on the other side of the door.
Liz looks down at her robe, belted tightly at her waist, the plunging neckline revealing the lace of her bra. He looked at her, she reminds herself. He stood and watched her little performance.
“Let me in, Red.” She allows just a hint of a threat into her voice, the challenge she’s managed to avoid over the last few weeks.
As expected, he pulls the door open.
Red is wearing one of the thick, white hotel robes over his white undershirt and, she assumes, although she can’t see, his boxers. His hands hang loosely at his sides, and he looks uncomfortable and weary.
She is almost ready to retreat when he licks his lips, his eyes sliding away from hers so quickly she can’t read that as anything but desire.
“You were watching me on the couch,” she says baldly, her eyes searching his face. Red flushes slightly, then purses his lips.
“I noticed you when I came in, yes,” he responds, his tone guarded.
“No,” she asserts, watching not his eyes now, but the slight twitches at the corners of his mouth, the way he seems to be trying to swallow. “You were watching me.”
“Watching you do what, Lizzie?”
His tone is gentle, the warning clear. He’s quickly regaining his composure. She doesn’t have much time.
“Don’t you want to watch anymore?”
As he blinks, his eyes momentarily widening, she reaches for his hand, gives it a little tug.
“Come back and watch some more, Red,” she urges him.
He looks almost frightened as she leads him slowly back through the darkened room to the couch.
“You stand there,” she directs him, dropping his hand when they reach the exact position where he was standing. “At least for now.”
Liz gives him her best, most encouraging smile and then opens her robe. Now she has a choice to make, a risk to take. Very delicately, she reaches over and gives the belt of his robe a gentle tug.
“Undo this whenever you want, Red,” she tells him, then turns to lie back down on the couch, her face pressed into the back. Then she reaches back and slowly, deliberately, begins to pull the back of her robe up until it bunches above her waist. Then she reaches further to tug at her panties, pulling them not off, but up, more tightly, until they are positively uncomfortable. Then she rolls onto her belly, pushing one of the small, decorative couch pillows beneath her hips, and spreads her legs wide.
***
The jet affords him every luxury his money can provide – leather seats, an attentive flight attendant, the best in food and drink. Most especially drink.
Red lays his head back and tries not to remember.
The rough touch of his own hand, painfully eager. The way she moved so sinuously, displayed herself so brazenly.
The sounds she made. He’s never heard anything quite like those stifled cries, her familiar voice high and new.
She’ll be happy in Dallas. Eventually.
He has nothing to offer her. Nothing but the hollow husk of a man wrenched back from the cold and darkness into the searing emotions of the light. He wants to flee, to worship her from afar. To know her to be happy.
Leaving was the most difficult choice, but the right one.