Swindlers Read Online Free PDF

one another,
half-eaten desserts crushed and melted into shapeless blobs of
sugar. The silence was everywhere, eerie and absolute, as if the
passengers and crew, grown tired of the voyage and of each other,
had left me there alone. But then, as I passed the door of the
yacht’s master suite, I thought I heard a muffled noise. I stopped
still, listening intently until I was certain what I heard. It was
St. James all right, shouting at his wife. I could not make out
what he was saying, the door was too thick for that, and if
Danielle was saying anything, none of it, not even the sound of her
voice, came through. It was none of my business, I told myself, but
the taste of her mouth was still on my lips, and I knew that they
were arguing about me. I started to walk away, but suddenly the
door opened and Danielle came running out.
    “I don’t care if I ever -!” she screamed over
her shoulder just before she turned and saw me. The look of anger
on her face changed to something close to panic. Spinning around,
she faced St. James and cried in an injured tone, “Do you think I
want to sleep with every man I talk to?” And then, closing the door
behind her, she went back inside.
    I thought about that question, that last
thing I had heard her ask, as I lay in bed and tried to sleep; not
whether she wanted to go to bed with every man she talked to, but
whether she wanted to with me. If we had been somewhere else, where
there was more privacy and where, with her husband gone, there had
been more time, would it have happened, would we have forgotten
everything except each other and what we wanted? It was no question
at all. That kiss had answered that. I tried not to think about
her, but I could not think of anything else. Laying there, in the
middle of the night, I laughed out loud at how easily I could play
the fool, mesmerized by a woman I could never have and, once this
short cruise was over with, would never see again. Strangely, or
perhaps not so strangely, I did not feel bad about it. It was
vanity, and I knew it, but I liked knowing that for a few stolen
moments Danielle had wanted me. In the secret recesses of my
uninhibited heart I was Don Juan, but in heaven, not in hell. There
may have been a smile on my lips when I finally fell asleep.
    “Who’s there?” I demanded as I woke up with a
start. The shadow moving toward me moved more swiftly at my
voice.
    “Quiet, not so loud,” whispered Danielle as
she pressed her fingers on my mouth and sat down on the edge of the
bed. She was wearing a silk nightgown that did not quite come to
her knees. “He’s asleep, but when he’s angry….I’m sorry you heard
that, sorry that -” But before she could finish I pulled her down
to me and started to kiss her.
    “No,” she protested. “We can’t – not here,
not like this.”
    I couldn’t help myself, I wanted her too
much, and I tried again.
    “It’s too dangerous,” she said with a look in
her eyes that seemed ready to chance it. “Too dangerous,” she
repeated as if to remind herself what she stood to lose. “You don’t
know him; no one knows him the way I do. He’d kill us if we got
caught.”
    For a moment, neither of us said anything. In
the moonlight, filtered through the window like a silver screen,
her face was as lovely as any I had ever seen. It held me captive,
unable, unwilling, to look away. She was almost too beautiful to
want, a painting in a museum too beautiful to touch.
    “I shouldn’t have come,” she said finally,
gently stroking my hair. She smiled at the look of hopeful
disappointment in my eyes. “I had to see you again, one more time
alone.”
    The excitement, the confidence, the sense of
being always at the center of things, watched by everyone whenever
she entered a room, all of that was gone. In its place was
something sad and wistful and far away.
    “You don’t remember me, do you? I knew it as
soon as I saw you, as soon as we started talking. You didn’t
recognize me; you