Poisoned Cherries by Quintin Jardine Read Free Book Online

waves.   “True,” I admitted.   “It’s the way I was brought up.”
    “Rubbish,” she laughed.   “It’s you, Blackstone.   You’ve either got a voyeuristic streak, or it’s sheer paranoia .. . you’re afraid of the idea of anyone looking in on you.”
    I hadn’t thought about it before, but she’d a point.   I’ve always liked high places.   I broke my arm once falling out of a tree; not even that discouraged me.
    “I don’t think I’m a voyeur.   As for being paranoid,” I said, as I thought about recent events, ‘if I am, it’s been justifiable a few times in my past.   You know that well enough.”
    A cloud crossed her face, briefly; I guessed who might have been behind it.   “Do you think about him much?”   I asked her.
    She chewed her lip.   “Mike?   I think about him as infrequently as I can possibly manage .. . which is still quite a lot.   I envy you, in one way; when you think about Jan, you think warm.   I can’t do that. Funny, I don’t feel bitter about Jack Gantry, but I do about Michael Dylan.”
    “Then try not to; Mike was weak, but most of us are.   He loved you.”
    “No he didn’t,” she snapped.   “If he had he’d have stayed with me, and not got involved in all the stuff that got him killed.   And when that happened, he was leaving me, remember.”
    I couldn’t argue with that one; I’d been there, and I knew she was right.   “Did you love him?”   I asked her.
    “I thought so at the time, but not now.   I really don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone, not till last Saturday morning.”
    “Don’t let him put you off, Susie.”
    “Ah, but he has.   I wouldn’t know where to begin loving a man.   All I want is to feel safe.”
    “Do you feel safe with me?”
    “Most of the time.   When we’re together I do.   I like being with you, Oz, but I’ll never trust another man after Mike, and I sure as hell wouldn’t trust you.   I know you too well.   How many women have you slept with since last January?”
    “One.”
    She threw me a quick, guilty grin.   “I’ve misjudged you, then; sorry.”
    “No, you haven’t.   I never touched Prim after what happened in Spain; neither of us wanted to.   She never forgot you and I never forgot Barcelona.   There was someone else, though, someone in L’Escala, but it was complicated.   It shouldn’t have happened, but it did.   I’m sorry.”
    “You don’t have to apologise to me, remember?   You’re a free man.
    Anyway, what’s complicated about nooky?”
    “In this case, the lady was married ... to the guy Prim ran off with after she was tipped off about us.”
    “I see.   You were all getting even, then.”
    “Vero might have been, but I wasn’t.   You had shown me the real Oz Blackstone by that time; you’d taught me about myself.   Completely devoid of conscience, remember.”
    Susie looked at me, indignantly.   “Sounds as if I taught you too bloody well!”   The look became a frown; she doesn’t do that too often.   “But you’ve told me about her.   Why?”
    “You asked.”
    She snorted.   “And you told me, just like that!   Do you think so little of me?”
    “Far from it; I should have told you before.   It was a secret between
    US.”   f
    “Why didn’t you let it stay that way?   Are you just trying to put me in my place?”
    I looked at her.   I had come clean without thinking, but I knew why I had done it.   “I told you because I didn’t want it there any more. It’s a part of my past that I’m not proud of, and I didn’t want it lying between us like a land mine   I stepped up to her and put my hands on her waist.   “You said you felt safe with me, Susie.   I want you always to feel that way, and I promise you that you always will be.”
    Her eyes softened; so did her voice.   “What does that mean?”   she whispered.
    “I don’t know.   Just that you and the baby are now the two most important people in my life, and it