Charade of Hearts – Finale

A/N:  And here it goes, violent reactions are all welcome… Marami pong salamat sa mga nagbasa, naglike, nagcomment sa bawat chapters…Sharing this story by creating this blog is all worth it, met (virtually) a lot of co-adiks, new friends and sissies… As I’ve always mentioned I do not own this story, credit is due to Judith McNaught, author of the novel Double Standards.

 

 

San Nicolas, Mindoro, joyful mood is in the air. With Christmas decorations hanging at all the town’s intersections, San Nicolas had quaintness about it that reminded Richard rather poignantly of Maya’s initial primness about sex.

Aided by the directions a taciturn old man had given him a few minutes before, Richard had no trouble finding the quiet little street where Maya had grown up. He pulled to a stop in front of a modest white frame house with a swing on the porch and an enormous acacia tree in the front yard and turned off the ignition of the car he’d rented at the airport that seems to be the longest two hours of his life.

The slow, treacherous drive across wet roads had been the easy part; facing Maya was going to be the difficult part.

His knock was answered immediately by a wiry young man in his mid-twenties. Richard’s heart sank. Never in his worst imaginings during the drive down here had he considered the possibility that Maya might have another man with her.

“My name is Richard Lim,” he said, and watched the young man’s curious smile change to open animosity.

“I would like to see Maya.”

“I’m Maya’s brother,” the young man retorted, “and she doesn’t want to see you.”

Her brother! Richard’s momentary relief was followed by an absurd impulse to smash the younger man’s face for stealing Maya’s allowances when she was a little girl.

“I’ve come to see her,” Richard stated implacably, “and if I have to walk over you to get to her, I will.”

“I believe he means it, Simon,” Maya’s father said, stepping into the hallway, his finger in a closed book he had been reading.

For a long moment, Arturo Dela Rosa studied the tall, indomitable man in the doorway, his penetrating doe shaped eyes observing the lines of strain and tension etched deeply into his visitor’s features. A faint, unwilling smile softened the stern line of Mr. Dela Rosa’s mouth.

“Simon,” he said quietly, “why don’t we give Mr. Lim five minutes with Maya to see if he can change her mind. She’s in the living room,” he added, inclining his head over his shoulder in the direction of the Christmas Esmeraldas playing on the stereo.

“Five minutes, and that’s all,” Simon grumbled, following right on Richard’s heels.

Richard turned to him. “Alone,” he said determinedly.

Simon opened his mouth to argue, but his father intervened.

“Alone, Simon.”

Richard silently closed the door to the cheerful little living room, took two steps forward and stopped, his heart hammering uncontrollably in his chest.

Maya was standing on a stepladder, hanging tinsel on the upper branches of a Christmas tree. She looked heartbreakingly young in her trim jeans and bright green sweater and poignantly, vulnerably beautiful with her hair tumbling in burnished black waves over her shoulders and back.

He ached to pull her off the ladder and into his arms, to carry her over to the sofa and lose himself in her, to kiss and hold and caress her, to heal her pain with his body and hands and mouth.

Stepping down off the ladder, Maya knelt to pull more tinsel from the box lying beside the gaily wrapped packages beneath the tree. From the corner of her eye she glimpsed a pair of gleaming brown men’s loafers.

“Simon, your timing is terrific,” she teased softly.

“I’ve already finished. Does the star look all right on the top, or should I go to the attic and bring down the angel?”

“Leave the star on top,” said an achingly gentle, deep voice.

“There’s already one angel in the room.”

Maya’s head jerked around, her gaze riveted on the tall, solemn man standing a few feet away from her. The color drained from her face as her mind registered the determination carved into every masculine feature, from his straight dark brows to the tough jut of his chin and jaw. Every line of his well-remembered body was emanating wealth, power and the same forceful magnetism that she ran from in her dreams at night.

His features had been seared into her brain; she remembered him perfectly. She also remembered the last time she had seen him: she had been on her knees then too—weeping at his feet. Humiliation and fury sent her surging upright.

“Get out of here!” she blazed, too blinded by her own torment to see the tortured regret, the sorrow that darkened his chinky eyes.

Instead of leaving, he came toward her.

Maya backed away one step and then held her ground, her whole body shaking with exploding violence. He reached for her, and she swung, slapping him full force on his face.

“I said get out!” she hissed. When he didn’t move Maya lifted her hand in an incensed threat, “Damn you! Get out!”

Richard’s gaze shifted to her raised palm.

“Go ahead,” he said gently.

Trembling with thwarted rage, Maya jerked her hand down and wrapped her arms around her stomach, moving sideways to escape him, trying to sidle around the tree, away from him, out of the room.

“Maya, wait—” He stepped into her path and reached for her.

“Don’t touch me!” Maya almost screamed, recoiling wildly from his hand. She moved sideways to take the remaining three steps that would enable her to circle past him and out of the room.

Richard was willing to let her do anything, anything to him, except to leave him. That he could not let her do.

“Maya, please let me—”

“No!” she cried hysterically.

“Stay away from me!”

She tried to run, and Richard caught her by the arms. She turned on him like a demented weeping wildcat, struggling wildly, striking out at him.

“You bastard!” she screamed in hysterical, maddened pain, pounding on his chest, his shoulders. “You bastard! Lumuhod ako sa harap mo, nagmamakaawa na pakinggan mo!”

It took all of Richard’s strength to hold her until her fury was finally sent and she collapsed against him, her slim body racked with wrenching sobs.

“You made me beg—” she wept brokenly in his arms “—you made me beg.”

Her tears tore at his heart, and her words slashed him like knives. He held her, staring blindly ahead, remembering the beautiful, laughing girl who had walked into his life and turned it upside down with her glowing smile.

“What happens to me if this slipper fits?”

“I turn you into a handsome frog.”

His eyes stung with remorse and he closed them.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered hoarsely. “I’m so sorry. Forgive me please”

Maya heard the raw ache in his voice, and she felt the wall of icy numbness she’d built around herself begin to melt. She fought to blank out the exquisite beauty of being in his arms again, of being pressed against his big, strong body.

In the lonely weeks of sleepless nights and angry desolate days, she’d come to the quiet conclusion that Richard was incurably cynical and hard. His mother’s desertion had made him that way, and nothing she herself could do would ever change him. He would always be capable of shutting her out of his life and coldly walking away from her, because he would never really love her.

He had learned at five that a woman was not to be entrusted with his heart. He would offer Maya his body, his affection—but nothing else. He would never let himself be completely vulnerable again.

His hands were moving up and down her back in a gesture of helpless comfort, spreading warmth wherever they touched her. Summoning the last vestiges of her self-control, Maya firmly pushed away from him.

“I’m fine now. Really.” She dragged her gaze to his fathomless chinky eyes and said quietly, “I want you to leave now, Richard.”

His jaw tightened and his whole body tensed at the calm, deathly finality in her voice, but instead of leaving, he seemed to block her words from his mind, as if she had spoken in a language he didn’t understand. With his eyes still holding hers, he reached into his jacket pocket and took out a flat box wrapped in silver paper.

“I’ve brought you a present,” he said.

Maya stared at him. “What?”

“Here,” he said, lifting her hand and putting the box in it.

“It’s a Christmas present. It’s for you—go ahead and open it.”

Ms. Fe’s words suddenly rang through Maya’s mind, and her whole body began to tremble. “He intended to bribe his mother into coming back to him… He gave her the present… and insisted she open it right then…”

“Open it now, Maya,” he said. His face was carefully blank, but Maya saw the desperation in his eyes and the rigid tension in his powerful shoulders, and she knew that he expected her to reject his gift. And him.

She pulled her gaze from his and shakily removed the silver paper from the flat velvet box, which was discreetly embossed with the name of a famous jeweler, followed by the name of a hotel. She opened the catch. On a bed of white velvet was a spectacular ruby pendant surrounded by a row of dazzling diamonds. The magnificent pendant was easily the size of a pillbox.

It was a bribe.

For the second time in his life, Richard was trying to bribe a woman he loved to come back to him. Tears of tenderness filled Maya’s eyes, and sweetness pierced her heart.

Her voice was hoarse and tight, as if the words were being wrenched from him.

“Please,” he whispered.

“Please…” He jerked her into his arms, crushing her to his lean, hard length, burying his face in her hair.

“Oh please, sweetheart…”

“I love you. I don’t think I’ll be able to leave another day without you by my side…”

Maya’s defenses crumbled completely.

“I love you!” she said brokenly, winding her arms tightly around his neck, running her hands over the bunched muscles of his shoulders, smoothing his thick, dark hair.

As if not hearing what she said, “I bought you earrings too,” he coaxed hoarsely, urgently.

“I’ll buy you a piano—your college said you were a gifted pianist. Would you like a grand piano or would you rather have—”

“Don’t!” Maya cried in anguish as she rose up on her toes and silenced him with her lips. A shudder ran through his body and he wrapped his arms around her, his mouth opening on hers with hungry desperation, his hands moving over her back and the sides of her breasts, then sweeping lower, pulling her hips to his as if he wanted to absorb her body into his.

“I’ve missed you so much,” he whispered, trying to gentle his kiss, his mouth moving on her parted lips with tender, melting hunger as his hand sank slowly into the thick hair at her nape. But his control snapped almost instantly and with a groan, he tightened his hand, his tongue driving into her mouth with fierce, compulsive urgency.

Maya kissed him back with all the bursting, aching love in her heart, arching closer to him, holding him tightly to her.

An endless time later, she surfaced to reality, her arms still wrapped around him, her cheek pressed against the violent pounding of his heart.

“I love you so much,” he whispered, and before Maya could answer he continued in a husky voice that was part pleading, part teasing, “You have to marry me. I think I’ve just been voted off the committee on international trade—they think I’m unstable. And Provo took me off his list. Tita Fe says she’ll quit if I don’t bring you back. Rafaela found your earrings, and she gave them to James. He said to tell you that you can’t have them unless you come back for them…” Maya kissed him, silencing Richard.