Jade Star - Catherine Coulter [84]
And she had been young, not much over thirty, Saint guessed. He left the small house, the husband sitting at the kitchen table, a bottle of whiskey in front of him.
Saint wandered along the one dirt street of Sausalito. Life seemed particularly burdensome. There was one saloon, the Little Willow, and even though it was early afternoon, he walked into the dim, rather smelly room and ordered his own bottle of whiskey.
He knew rationally that the woman’s death more than likely couldn’t have been prevented, even if he’d seen her sooner. Damn, doctors didn’t know a thing. He took a long pull on the whiskey. He hated death. He hated pain and illness, but even more than hate, something embedded deeply within him forced him to do what he could. And now he’d given his wife pain, gratuitous pain. He’d known better, but he’d allowed her, in all her sweet ignorance, to seduce him.
And he’d left her alone to face her thoughts.
He drank deeply, telling himself yet again that he was the last person she would want to see after the debacle of last night.
Jules wandered up to their bedroom late that afternoon. She paused in front of the long mirror and stared at herself. She remembered his words: Never, never again. Was she so unattractive, then? Slowly, after she’d locked the bedroom door, she undressed. Naked, she approached the mirror again and studied herself. She had never seen another woman naked, so she had no comparison. She didn’t think she was ill-looking. She wasn’t fat or bowlegged, or flat-chested. He had touched her, everywhere. She lightly placed her hands over her breasts. There wasn’t the same feeling of warmth she felt when he touched her. She stared at her belly, at the cluster of red curls between her legs. He’d even caressed her there. She didn’t flush with embarrassment, she simply continued staring at herself. She’d probably made him feel guilty, acting like such a watering pot. He hadn’t hurt her all that much. Never, never again. But she had hurt him—that, or he hadn’t enjoyed her body, taking her only because she’d demanded it of him. How could he have enjoyed it when she’d fought him, and cried like a stupid fool?
She felt tears sting her eyes now. Everything had gone awry. She’d hoped that he would change toward her, but not this way. Slowly she sank to her knees in front of the mirror and buried her face in her hands.
Saint pulled himself together when he heard a man talk about all the bloody fog rolling in. “Unusual this time of year,” the man said to his companion. “No way out now.”
That brought Saint to instant sobriety. “Fog?” he asked the man.
“Yep. You’re from the city, ain’t you?”
“Yes, and I must get back.”
“Ain’t nobody going out in that damned soup. Sorry, mister, but you’re spending the night here.”
Saint paid his shot and went outside. The man was right. He couldn’t see a foot in front of him. San Francisco could be a thousand miles away, and in any direction. He thought of Jules and cursed. He should have left her a note, dammit. She would worry, and there was nothing he could do about it.
There were no inns in Sausalito, so he walked back into the saloon.
19
Saint didn’t get back to San Francisco until late the following afternoon. He felt dirty, tired to the soles of his boots, guilty, and he didn’t want to go home. As he strode along Clay Street, his eyes on mud puddles that could bring the unwary low, he imagined the look on Jules’s face when she saw him. Disgust, revulsion—God only knew. For a moment he allowed himself to remember the intense pleasure he’d experienced, but of course, the pleasure had been all his. He kicked a stone viciously out of his way. Life, he decided, had become bloody hell.
He drew a deep breath and opened the front door to his house. “Jules,” he called.
Jules, who had talked herself into fatalistic calm, heard his voice and forced herself to walk slowly from the parlor into the entrance hall.
“Hello, Michael,” she said, not meeting his eyes. Somehow his presence made her feel dreadfully