Death's Excellent Vacation - By Charlaine Harris & Toni L. P. Kelner Page 0,99
even regret being faithful to a woman who was now only a memory, but this trip was about him and Jenny, and he would honor that, no matter what. He wanted to start a new life, but not quite yet.
He laughed again, thinking of Jenny. If she were alive for him to tell her the tale, she would have mocked him with love but without mercy. Men, she had often said, were pitifully simple and predictable creatures. Pavlov had used dogs to test his theories about programmed responses, but all he would have had to do was put a man in a room with Diana, and there would have been no need to experiment further.
This final stop on his farewell tour was by far the strangest.
How Jenny would have teased him. God, he missed her.
THE phone woke him. In the darkness he searched for it, fingers scrabbling on the nightstand, and only managed to find it when it rang a second time. As he pressed the receiver to his ear, he saw the faint glow of the alarm clock.
Twelve seventeen A.M. After midnight. Who the hell . . .
“Hello?” he said, voice full of gravel.
“I can’t sleep,” she whispered.
It took him a moment, and when the pieces clicked together, his breath caught in his throat.
“Diana?”
“Hey,” she said in a sleepy voice.
Tim had come back to the hotel around eight P.M. and eaten a late dinner alone in the restaurant downstairs. Afterward he had held his breath walking past her room, heart racing. Their conversation on the balcony that morning had stayed with him all day, and he had caught himself fantasizing about her, wondering if her thinly veiled invitation for tonight had been more than just flirting.
It hurt his heart. This whole strange vacation had been meant to be about Jenny, and his not being able to get Diana out of his mind seemed a dark stain on pure intentions. But, Christ, he was only human.
“Did you have a nice day?” she asked, when he didn’t reply.
“Yeah. I guess. Do you . . . do you know what time it is?”
Even her laugh had that soft, sleepy intimacy about it.
“I do. I’m sorry. I told you I have trouble falling asleep.”
They both let that hang in the air for a bit. Lying in bed in the dark, hearing her voice in his ear, Tim found his memory of the previous night returning with perfect clarity. He could practically hear the thump of the headboard against the wall behind his head, and now that he knew what she looked like, the images in his mind were more than imagination.
“Listen, Diana, I enjoyed talking to you this morning—”
“Can I come over there?”
Tim squeezed his eyes shut. How come this couldn’t have happened to him before he met Jenny, or sometime in the future? Six months—hell, one month—from now, maybe his mind would have been in a different place.
“I’m sorry, I just . . .”
You can put it anywhere you want.
Holy God, how was he supposed to handle this? His heart slammed in his chest. His face felt flushed, and once again this woman had given him a painful erection, this time with nothing but a whisper. He felt like a fool for having so little control of his body.
“Tim, hush,” she said. “Think about this. You’re trying to forget, right? I can give you that. We can help each other. I can make you forget, and you can help me get to sleep.”
“It isn’t that simple.”
“But it is.” She laughed that sweet, soft laugh again. “Honey, trust me, I’ll make you forget your own name.”
There in the dark, he felt himself grin. “I have no doubt you would. And you have no idea how tempting it is—or, actually, you probably do. But this isn’t about forgetting Jenny . . . I never want to forget her. It’s about making peace with the fact that she’s gone, and . . .”
He trailed off. The rest was too personal. He didn’t know Diana.
“And?” she whispered.
Tim took a breath and turned onto his side, phone pressed between his cheek and the pillow.
“I betrayed her once. This would feel too much like doing that again.”
“She’s been dead over a year, you said.”
“Not to me. I need to finish saying good-bye. Whatever life has in store for me after, I’ll embrace it, but not here. This place was part of us.”
“Please?” she said in a little-girl sort of voice. “I can’t sleep.”