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Date Posted: 05:12:20 04/13/03 Sun
Author: dqfan
Subject: Re: Ghosts - ch.29
In reply to: dqfan 's message, "Ghosts - ch.28" on 16:42:57 04/12/03 Sat

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE Wednesday


It was a little after four o'clock in the morning and Sophie hadn't been able to sleep a wink. It didn't matter whether she tried counting sheep or the number of times that the low hum of the air-conditioner kicked on each hour, all she could think of was the subject she'd been avoiding since they arrived: Chloe.

Her husband was spooned snugly up against her back, his hand at her waist, his fingers intertwined with hers; and still, all she could think of was that in this same city, he had pledged to love, honor, and cherish another woman until death do us part.

Why was this bothering her so much? After all, she knew he and Chloe had been married somewhere. New York, Las Vegas, what was the difference? And, wasn't it better to find out this way than to be vacationing in Hawaii or something and have Peter suddenly blurt that he and Chloe had been married there on the beach at sunset? Was eloping to Vegas really all that romantic?

Or was it that Peter had never told her very many details of his first marriage that troubled her so? "Ex-wife and Enabler…" It had been such a convenient moniker for Chloe, based on Peter's brief description of her. But the truth was that Chloe was smart and funny and pretty and Sophie could easily see the attraction Peter must have felt.

But attraction was one thing and marriage was something entirely different. Maybe after a year of her own marriage, that realization was just now finally dawning on her.

Peter and Chloe had been married for five years. Sophie knew that much at least. Five years… Five years of sharing friends and family. Five years of living together, playing together, having breakfast together. And, five years of lying in bed together, just the way she and Peter were right now.

Rationally, Sophie knew Michaela was right. Like Sully and Abagail, Chloe was part of Peter's past. He didn't talk about her because loving her was different, because that time in his life was over. Why should she expect he would share those memories with her now?

Early in their relationship, when Peter was still drunk and bitter, he had given Sophie the briefest sketch of his marriage. How the New York lifestyle that Chloe so adored had eaten away at him while she stood by and watched, then left when his life began to spiral out of control. It was the typical "my wife never understood me" response any ex-husband would provide and, at the time, Sophie hadn't wanted or needed to know more. There was no permanence in her life or her loves then so what did it matter?

Now that she and Peter were married, though, everything seemed to matter. Sophie wanted to hear every story. Experience every moment. She wanted to feel a part of Peter's life, past and present, good and bad.

Maybe after a year of marriage, she was simply beginning to feel like a wife.

Absent-mindedly, Sophie stroked Peter's fingers, laced with hers, clutching him even closer. She felt him stir at her touch.

"You okay?" he asked groggily.

"Fine," she lied, her voice cracking. "Go back to sleep."

"You don't sound fine," he nuzzled her. "What's wrong?"

Anxious, Peter turned her chin toward him. She looked sad and even a little scared somehow.

"Sophie…" He was awake now and obviously worried. "Tell me, Sweetheart. Did I do something…?"

Their lovemaking had been wonderful as usual, Peter thought. But maybe…

"No," Sophie reassured him, touched by his concern. "It's not that."

"Well, then what?" he asked, looking deeply into her eyes.

Sophie hesitated, then decided the time was right. "Peter, can I ask you something?" she said quietly.

"Anything, you know that," he smiled.

"Why didn't you ever tell me that you and Chloe were married here?" she wondered softly.

Peter let out a heavy sigh, cringing at the hurt written all over Sophie's face. He'd been so frantic in the cab ride from the airport, so caught up in his own turmoil - how could he have been so cruel as to share something like that with her so bluntly and then expect it not to bother her?

He was an insensitive idiot.

"I'm sorry, Soph…" he didn't know what else to say. "I shouldn't have…"

"No, no, I'm glad you did…" Sophie cut him off.

"You are?" Peter was surprised. He'd always gone out of his way not to talk about his life with Chloe.

"Well, maybe not the way you did," she shrugged with a shy smile. "But, I am curious…"

Peter refrained from reminding her what curiosity did to the cat and grinned.

"What did you want to know?" he touched her nose playfully, an impish smirk on his face.

Sophie relaxed a little and thought about her questions. "Well, how did you two meet?" she asked, finding it ironic that her first question happened to be the same question that Chloe had asked of them the night they all had dinner together for the first time.

Warmly, Peter snuggled her onto his chest, and stroked her back as he answered. "We met in graduate school. The Wharton M.B.A. Program. Turned out that our fathers belonged to the same squash club in New York and our families' homes on Long Island were less than a mile apart."

"A match made in heaven…" Sophie quipped, her fingers twirling his chest hair.

"Seemed like it at the time," Peter acknowledged, knowing Sophie needed to hear the truth right now.

"We dated for a year, were engaged for a year, everything strictly Emily Post…" he grimaced. "We found high-powered jobs in the city - me as a broker and Chloe as a investment banker."

"Meanwhile, her mother was planning the wedding of the century…" he noted wryly. "If I wasn't overstressed and on the edge before, I was then."

"I was working with twenty other first-year brokers, all out for blood," he continued. "I was under so much pressure, I didn't even know my own name, let alone whether I preferred Wedgewood or Belleek."

"And, I started drinking," he said softly, his voice fading. "A lot."

"Peter, you don't have to…" Instantly, Sophie felt guilty for asking him to relive the past.

"It's okay, Soph, really," Peter replied confidently. His strength was a thousand times greater with her in his arms.

"At first it was just for relaxation, to unwind after a tough day," he revealed.

"I'd been doing drugs off and on since high school," he confessed freely. "Nothing I thought I couldn't handle."

Sophie cringed inwardly. How often had she heard that from their students at Horizon?

"But the booze on top of it…" Peter hated to think of himself back then.

"And Chloe always did love her champagne," he recalled vividly.

"We 'd been having a rough week at work…her mother was being an absolute witch…and we got a little drunk one Thursday night," he explained.

"I told her we should just call in sick the next day, make it a long weekend, and elope to Vegas. The next thing I knew, here we were…"

"We got in on Friday, stopped by the county courthouse for our license, and then popped into the nearest wedding chapel. Saturday was our honeymoon and Sunday, we flew home."

"We never told a soul," he smiled, the memory of those first years still undeniably poignant.

"It was our little secret, but it took some of the pressure off and we breezed through our 'official' wedding, just six weeks later," he remembered.

A tiny twinge of jealousy shot through Sophie as she realized that Peter had married Chloe, not once, but twice. Though he may have been young and impetuous, driven and desperate, Peter had also, obviously, been a man very much in love.

"We had a couple of good years…." he admitted truthfully. "Some really great times. Chloe loved New York, she loved her job, she loved our life."

"I wanted to give her everything - maybe, too much - and I wanted to make my father proud," he said in quiet reflection. "But the more I tried to keep up with that lifestyle, with our friends, the more I felt myself drowning inside."

"It wasn't long before it all fell apart - before I fell apart," his voice broke.

"Chloe tried to get me to stop," he recalled those tumultuous last months. "But, it was tearing her apart, too."

Privately, Peter remembered his dinner with Chloe a few years back, when he'd returned to New York to seek funding for Horizon. The restaurant was theirs alone - a shared dessert, a shared dance…a shared kiss. They each had so many regrets. So many things they wished they'd done differently. Chloe wanted to start over again that night - share his bed…share his life. But his life was at Horizon; and, the woman who had saved him from himself was always in his heart.

"Chloe was young, and she was scared, and, one night she left and she just didn't come back," he shrugged. "End of story."

Sophie didn't know what to say. She'd seen and heard so many stories over the years of the pain and heartache caused by addictions - young lives wasted, thrown away without a chance.

She could almost picture Peter and Chloe, as they would have been then, the quintessentially happily married yuppie couple on the fast track to success. The image was as frighteningly real to her as her memory of Peter being wheeled into the Seattle emergency room from his last overdose - two halves of the same confused and troubled man.

Sophie understood Chloe's fear much too well. She'd felt it herself. The fear that she was getting in over her head, the fear that the love she had given so freely and so completely was being discarded in favor of a quick fix. Sophie had felt it all as recently as yesterday. Maybe that fear never went away? Maybe that fear was the price you paid for loving a man like Peter Scarbrow. If Sophie was older or wiser now than Chloe was then, did it really matter?

What mattered was the sensation Sophie felt when she'd looked into Peter's eyes in that emergency room, the feeling when his hand touched hers. He was at rock bottom then, as close to death as a man could come. Those days at Vashon afterwards were the most difficult times she and Peter had ever faced. And they'd come through it together.

Ironically, in the end, it wasn't Peter's addictions that sent her running. It was his love. Sober and on his way to a new life, the tables had suddenly turned. Peter had become her rock, her touchstone, ready for commitments that Sophie just couldn't give, and so she left.

Would there ever come a time when she'd see no other choice than to walk away again? God, she hoped not.

Was she sorry that she'd asked him for this brief glimpse into his past? No.

Peter's story just made Sophie realize how precious every moment she had with her husband truly was. He could still be married and living in New York, he could be dead in a gutter in Seattle, he could have been anywhere where she might never have met him, or known him, or loved him.

You take your chances in life and you don't look back. The free spirit in Sophie always knew that. The wife in her just needed to be reminded.

"I love you, Peter…" Her eyes filled with tears and the passion in her voice reached his very soul.

Peter cradled her close. "What we have is so much more, Soph," he vowed, hoping she knew that at last.

Sophie did know that. In her heart, she always had.

With her questions answered and her doubts erased, Sophie lifted her head shyly, offering her husband a slight, tentative kiss in apology. "Forgive me?"

Peter chuckled softly, his eyes sparkling with love. "You're gonna have to do better than that," he teased, placing his finger over her lips.

In response, Sophie nibbled his finger playfully, then drew it tantalizingly into her mouth, before releasing it with a lingering, gentle kiss.

"I can do better," she offered, enjoying the low, almost pained moan that escaped him.

Peter gulped and let his head fall back against the pillow, his hands leisurely caressing his wife's soft, naked body as she set about proving her claim.

"Soph…" He implored, shattering the stillness of the early morning quiet.

Sophie was determined to take her time, as Peter had with her earlier...react to every nuance of his body, focus on his every breath, listen for every…

"Psst…Tap." The faint but odd sound began interfering with Sophie's concentration. "Psst…Taptap."

"Do you hear that?" she asked stopping.

"Nothing, it's nothing…" Peter gasped, his hands in her hair.

"Psst…Tap." It was coming from the door, a little louder now. "Psst…Taptap."

"Peter, you don't suppose…?" Sophie listened again and heard a familiar voice whisper, "Fresno…"

Growling an appropriate expletive, Peter rolled Sophie off of him and reached for his pajamas and robe. Dazed, Sophie scrambled to throw her camisole over her head, tie her pajamas, and follow Peter hastily, as he switched on a small table lamp and opened the door.

Reggie was crouched close to the lock, unprepared for Peter's vehement rage. Instinctively, he sunk to his knees in fear.

"I will hate you for the rest of my life," Peter gritted his teeth and lifted Reggie in by the scruff of his neck.

"Peter, don't hurt him…" Sophie scowled, hurrying Reggie safely behind her, protecting him as she would a stray puppy.

Desperately, she moved close to her husband's ear and whispered, "Anything you want… I'll make it up to you, I promise…"

Peter rolled his eyes, doubting that would be possible. However, the suggestion alone made him glad he was wearing his robe.

"What do you want?" he demanded of Reggie, closing the door swiftly, and crossing his arms in front of his chest.

"They were together tonight!" Reggie explained excitedly.

"Great…" Peter thought to himself. Everywhere in this city, people were together tonight, until Reggie interrupted them, that is…

"Who?" Sophie asked, hoping to speed this along and improve Reggie's survival rate.

"All of them…" Reggie replied, almost giddily. "Mr. Leighton, Ms. Wilcox, and some guy in a Sheriff's uniform that I've never seen before…"

"All three of them, together, in her hotel room, not more than an hour ago," Reggie continued. "I would've been here sooner but I got stopped on my way up by a lady who got locked out of her room...""

"What did you see - exactly?" Peter tried to calm down and absorb all that Reggie was telling him.

"Well, I went up to watch Ms. Wilcox's room like you asked me," Reggie explained. "I wasn't outside her door more than twenty minutes when that Sheriff guy showed up."

"What'd he look like?" Peter asked to be sure.

"Big, bulky, not too bright…" Reggie replied. "Your typical Dukes of Hazzard type."

"Leroy Carter," Peter was absolutely certain of it.

"Then what?" he asked Reggie.

"A few minutes go by and then Gus Leighton shows up. Looking VERY unhappy." Reggie surmised.

"I hear shouting," Reggie remembers. "Can't make out the words but it didn't sound good…"

"Gus leaves in a huff, then, a while later, the Sheriff leaves, looking mean, oh, boy, I'll tell you. And just as unhappy as Gus."

"Ms. Wilcox never left her room but I'm betting she wasn't happy, either," Reggie finished, his intriguing tale now complete.

"Did you follow Gus?" Peter wondered.

"Of course, what kind of a spy do you think I am?" Reggie replied, insulted.

"And?" Sophie couldn't help smiling.

"He went down to the fourth floor, to the Sahara Sandbox," Reggie answered her, a bit perplexed by the destination.

But Sophie wasn't. "It's where he goes when he's upset," she revealed, surprising Peter with her seemingly intimate knowledge of Gus' habits.

"He took me there the other night," she flustered quickly, seeing Peter's questioning glance. "For ice cream…"

"It brings out the kid in him," she shrugged innocently.

"He was still in there when I left," Reggie added. "And according to the doorman, the Sheriff took off in an unmarked car."

"All three of them…" Peter sighed, repeating Reggie's words, considering the implications.

"Well, thanks for letting us know, Reggie." Sophie decided it might be best if Reggie left while Peter was still preoccupied in his thoughts.

"What should I do now?" Reggie felt at a loss without instructions.

"I'm meeting Gus on the Tequila Trail at seven," Peter told him. "I want to know everything he does between now and then."

"Check…" Reggie nodded in receipt of his orders. "You want me to come back here?" he asked in a faint, fearful voice.

"No!" Peter and Sophie responded sternly, and in unison.

Woefully, Peter shook his head. "I'll meet you in the lobby at 6:30."

"Right-o, Chief…" Reggie saluted Peter briskly. "Nighty-night, Sophie…" he added warmly.

Sophie closed the door behind him and smiled. "You do have to love him," she laughed.

"No…no, I don't…" Peter frowned in disagreement.

"So, what do you make of Reggie's news?" she wondered, leaning back against the wall.

"Makes me think Virginia City's got a crooked Sheriff," he replied gravely.
"I wonder what Ivy did to make them both so angry?" he added with a sigh.

"So, what do we do now?" Sophie asked, a little frightened by the idea of a lawman gone bad.

"Stick to the plan," Peter reassured her. "I'll go running with Gus. And you go to that exercise class with Ivy. Ask as many questions as possible and stay in public if we can. One of them will make a move soon."

"I hate this…" Sophie's frustration was building.

Discouraged, she walked toward the curtained window and pulled it back, just enough to peer out into the glittering world of the Las Vegas Strip.

Peter came up behind her and looked out, too, hoping to be of comfort. "Lights are pretty, aren't they?"

Restless, Sophie closed the curtain. Unable to settle down, she slumped dejectedly into the antique gold velvet chaise in the corner of the room.

"You really think so?" Nothing about Las Vegas would ever appeal to her.

Peter stood alone at the window, hating to see her so upset.

"Well, no…" he answered truthfully, much preferring the heavenly stars in the night sky - as seen from the lawn chairs in their own front yard.

Hesitantly, he sat down beside her and took her hand in his. "I was just trying to make you feel better," he admitted with a guilty shrug.

Sophie smiled weakly. "I thought I was supposed to be making you feel better," she winced, wondering where the passion had gone.

Determined to recapture the mood, Peter held her gaze and tugged mischievously at the drawstrings of Sophie's pajamas, until the bow unfurled in his hand. "Any reason we can't make each other feel better?"

Sophie couldn't help smiling at her husband's amazingly one-track mind. "Well, no, I guess not…"

Quietly, she watched Peter's fingers skim lightly back and forth along the lacy edge of her pajamas, until she felt all the tension in her body suddenly dissolve in a rush.

"I…think I'm feeling better already." Warming at his touch, Sophie covered his hand with hers and attempted to rise from the chair, hoping to lead her husband back to bed.

"Where you goin'?" Gently, Peter nudged her to stay. He was enjoying himself right where he was.

"Here?" Sophie was a bit surprised. The high back and sculptured arms of the chaise didn't leave much room.

"Uh-huh," Peter nodded, with a wicked gleam in his eyes. "You did say anything I wanted…"

Intrigued, Sophie inched obligingly toward the back of the chaise. The friction of its velvet upholstery against her jersey pajamas only bared her midriff more and caused her short, eyelet camisole to twist slightly askew. Peter's delight was written all over his face. Smiling, Sophie leaned back, rested her arms along the sides of the chaise, and waited.

Lying there, cornered into that narrow corridor of chair, Sophie's heart pounded with surprising anticipation, especially as Peter removed his bathrobe. Reggie's visit had done little to quell her husband's desire. Eagerly, she eyed him up and down, his chest naked in the lamplight.

He crawled toward her slowly, like a cat, then placed his hands firmly on her hips. Without a word, he bent his head and began trailing tiny kisses along that soft, tempting, strip of flesh, peeking from the bottom of her camisole to just below her navel.

Lazily, Peter's lips, and then his tongue, traveled that exquisite path, while his hands coaxed her body to sink further beneath him.

A throaty sigh escaped her as Sophie felt herself sliding into the luxurious and incredible sensations of skin and velvet. As the confines of the chaise made every movement both a challenge and a pleasure, her sighs mixed with an occasional giggle, only arousing Peter more.

"Good idea, huh?" His voice was husky.

"How long til you meet, Reggie?" she gasped, wriggling out of her pajamas, then helping him do the same.

"About two hours," he caressed her, his eyes and body blazing.

Sophie bit her lip and smiled.

"You're gonna be late…"

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