Lover in the Rough

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “You have a distracting effect on me,” she said lightly, tossing her shoes in the trunk.

  Smiling, he took off his own shoes and socks. Then he held out his hand. She laced her fingers through his again, amazed at how natural it seemed to be standing barefoot in a parking lot with him, holding his hand.

  She led him past the rumpled main beach where women lay in scented oils and designer swimsuits, carefully made-up eyes closed against southern California’s potent early spring sun. Children too young to be in school swooped and screamed with laughter, chasing waves and seagulls with equal abandon. The water was cold and unusually calm. Long, low waves curled over lazily, as though unwilling to make the effort to break with their usual thunder and flashing spray.

  The tide was out, leaving behind a damp ribbon of packed sand. Chance followed Reba along the margin of the land and the sea, watching her gracefully find a way among the rocks scattered at the base of the headland that defined the north end of the beach. The headland had eroded into a series of fingerlike projections. Between the fingers nestled tiny, protected patches of sand no bigger than an apartment patio. Reba kept going until she found the miniature beach that was farthest away from other people.

  “We’ll have to keep an eye on the tide,” she said as Chance spread out the comforter for them to sit on, “but we should get an hour of peace.”

  “That’s why you come here, isn’t it? Peace.”

  She looked past him to the immense sapphire sea shimmering beneath the sun. “I spend so much time with people,” she said quietly. “When that and the noise and the telephone get to me, I sneak down here to be alone.”

  “Except today.”

  She turned to him, surprised.

  “You’re not alone,” he said.

  She smiled. “I don’t mind. I have lots of questions to ask. Nineteen, to be precise.”

  “Sixteen,” corrected Chance.

  “Who’s counting?” asked Reba innocently.

  Chance groaned and sank down onto the comforter. He sat cross-legged, looking up at her. His thick moustache didn’t disguise the essential hardness of his tanned face or the sensual sculpting of his mouth. Behind the startling silver-green of his eyes was a mind that weighed everything on a scale as old as life. Survival. Despite his expensive clothes and indulgent smile, he looked as though he had been born out of the restless movements of the earth. There was an intensity to Chance Walker that was compelling, a dynamic balance of opposites—distance and intimacy, danger and safety, excitement and release—that shifted with each moment.

  He waved his hand in front of her face. “Hello?” he asked. “Did I suddenly grow horns and a halo?”

  “If anyone could, it would be you,” she agreed, sitting beside him. “What’s your father like?”

  “No bloody halo.”

  “That isn’t what I meant,” retorted Reba.

  “What did you mean, then?” he teased. “Be specific.”

  “I’ll use up too many questions that way.”

  Chance shook his head. “Clever little chaton.” He brushed his knuckles over her cheek. “Dad was born on a piece of west Texas dirt that couldn’t even grow cactus. He started hunting treasures when he was six. He ran away from home when he was thirteen. He never went back. He’s lived in more godforsaken places looking for more godforsaken treasures than any man alive.”

  “Did he ever find any?”

  Chance’s laugh was hard and unpleasant. “He lost the greatest treasure he ever found and didn’t even know it.”

  The cold emotion in Chance’s voice told Reba more than his words. Whatever Chance felt for his father wasn’t love. For the space of several breaths Chance stared out at the sea, his eyes narrow and remote. Then he took Reba’s hand in his as though he needed to feel something warm, alive.

  “Between treasure hunts, Dad prospected for gold, diamonds, gem-quality quartz, uranium.” Chance shrugged. “Whatever men would pay money to have.”

  “Another kind of treasure hunt,” said Reba softly, thinking of her own prowling among various collections, seeking the one unique specimen that would literally be worth its weight in diamonds to the right customer. “The adrenaline is addictive.”

  “It’s worse than any drug,” he agreed.

  “Have you made good strikes?”

  His face changed. “A few,” Chance said, his voice resonating with remembered excitement, memories of extraordinary pleasure lighting his expression. “There’s nothing like it. Nothing. There’s no risk too big, no work too hard, no sacrifice too great if a big strike is the reward.”

  Reba saw the change in him and felt something close to jealousy. It wasn’t that she wished she had found gold or diamonds buried in the earth as Chance had. It was the passion and intensity of his response that made her jealous. She wanted to be able to captivate him that completely, to have him as hungry for her as he was for gemstone buried in the earth.

  “You feel the same way about treasure as your father. Why do you hate him?” Even to her own ears, her voice sounded accusing.

  Chance turned on Reba with a look that made her want to get up and run. “My father knew enough about minerals to tell gold from pyrite but he didn’t know dirt from diamonds when it came to people. Luck was the same way. The strikes they made were stolen by gamblers and whores and gem buyers. Before I was old enough to fight back, Dad even gambled away money from my own small finds. He believed in honest card games almost as much as he believed in treasure maps and whores with hearts of gold. He never grew up.

  “But I did,” continued Chance in a hard voice. “I learned to tell an ambush from an accidental meeting. I learned that treasure maps are lies and that most gem buyers are crooks. I learned that any cards I don’t buy and deal myself are almost certainly marked and stacked against me. I learned that whores lie down with men for money, not pleasure. I learned that you never trust anybody. I learned that information is all that separates men from sudden death. If you know something that gives you an edge, you bloody well keep it tucked.

  “And most of all,” Chance said, watching Reba with eyes like hammered silver, “I learned not to be like my father. I never married and dragged a good woman after me into some of the worst hellholes on earth. I never made my family go ragged and hungry to buy a fool’s map. I never went off prospecting and left my seven-year-old son to watch his mother die of some jungle disease that didn’t have a name or a cure.”

  For a time there was only silence punctuated by the harsh cries of seagulls wheeling overhead. Reba realized that she was shaking her head in silent protest at what the answer to her question had cost Chance. She didn’t know she was crying until she felt a tear fall from her cheek. She looked down and saw her tears glistening on his hands.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” said Chance, his voice gentle again as he held her clenched hands between his. “Don’t cry, chaton. I’m not angry anymore.”

  “That’s not why I’m crying.”

  He tilted her face up until she had to meet his eyes. “Why?” he asked.

  She took his hand and pressed her cheek against it, then she kissed his palm. “I can’t bear to think of you being hurt like that,” she whispered.

  Chance drew Reba into his arms, holding her with a fierce tenderness that made her tremble. “No one has ever cried for me before,” he said huskily, kissing her eyelashes where tears glittered. “Some tears taste very sweet.”

  Reba put her arms around Chance, holding him tightly, feeling again the paradox of his hard body and gentle hands. His heart beat smoothly beneath her cheek. With each breath she felt his chest muscles shift beneath the soft chamois shirt. Gradually his warmth sank into her like sunlight, relaxing her until she fit against him perfectly.

  “Tell me about yourself,” he said quietly. “I want to know what kind of woman cried for me.”

  “My life sounds very dull after yours.”

  She felt his fingers in her hair, pulling out the comb once
more.

  “Nothing about you is dull,” he said, taking a handful of her hair and pouring it out of his palm like gold dust in the sun. He tipped back her head and kissed her slowly, deeply. “Tell me,” he murmured finally, settling her across his chest once more.

  “I never had a father. In fact . . .” Reba hesitated, then shrugged. Whatever she said could hardly shock a man of Chance’s experience. “I think I’m a bastard.”

  “Love-child,” he corrected easily, trying to erase the tension he felt returning to her body.

  She laughed shortly. “Some love. Mother never told me his name. Sometimes I wonder if she even knew it.”

  “Don’t, chaton. Not if it hurts you.”

  Reba rubbed her cheek against his shirt. “Mother raised me to be perfect. Other girls could get dirty, but not me. Other girls could get angry, but not me. Other girls could go to Christmas dances and kiss under the mistletoe. Other girls could date and have boyfriends and even neck in cars. Not me. Mother was obsessed with never giving the neighbors anything to talk about. Above reproach. That was it for her, the El Dorado and the Hope diamond in one.”

  “But you married,” said Chance.

  “My mother picked him out. I was too innocent at eighteen to know which end was up. He was my French professor at college. Old enough to be my father. I suppose that’s what I wanted. A father. He wanted a little girl who would always look up to him. But little girls have a terrible habit of growing up.”

  “Particularly bright little girls,” Chance murmured, stroking her hair. “I’m glad you grew up, Reba.”

  “So am I. Mother wasn’t very pleased, though. She hasn’t spoken to me since the divorce. Seven years.”

  Chance shifted until he could look into Reba’s eyes. “Why?”

  “I was no longer perfect,” Reba said evenly. “My mother never loved me, not really. She loved what she wanted me to be. And when she discovered that I was something else, she no longer loved me at all. It was the same with my husband. He loved one thing and I was another. No one ever loved me until Jeremy Sinclair.”

  The sudden tension in Chance’s body lasted only an instant. “Tell me about him,” said Chance, his voice neutral, his eyes hooded.

  Reba hesitated, not knowing where to begin. “I met him by accident. I was getting gas one day when I heard these absolute fountains of French pouring out of the next car. I looked up and saw a white-haired man trying to describe mechanical problems in French to a very bewildered American mechanic who was about one-quarter Jeremy’s age.”

  Chance made a startled sound.

  “What?” she said, looking up.

  “How old,” he asked carefully, “was Jeremy?”

  “When I met him? Seventy-three.” For the first time since she had known Chance, Reba saw him totally off balance. “You didn’t believe me when I said Jeremy and I weren’t lovers, did you?”

  “You never said that. You just said that your relationship wasn’t the way loverboy thought it was. He thought you were a whore. You aren’t. That doesn’t mean you weren’t Jeremy’s lover, though. How was I to know? Besides,” added Chance, looking at her lips with hungry green eyes, “any man young enough to still be breathing would want to make love to you.”

  “It wasn’t like that with Jeremy,” she said in a flat voice.

  “I believe you,” said Chance, shifting his weight suddenly, pulling her down onto the blanket with him. “But I would have wanted you no matter how old I was.”

  Chance’s hands moved over Reba, fitting her to his body, telling her how much he wanted her now. She struggled to sit up again, wanting to tell him how it had been between her and Jeremy.

  “Don’t fight me,” Chance said against her hair. “I just want to hold you while you tell me about the man you loved.”

  Slowly the stiffness left Reba’s body. “I became Jeremy’s interpreter and secretary and chauffeur. I lived with him,” she said quietly, “just like his cook and maid and butler.” She braced her arms on Chance’s chest and looked at his face. There was no doubt or disbelief, simply interest and a hunger for her that made his eyes very green. “Jeremy had a good import-export business but little cash. He spent it all on his collection. His wife had left him long ago and his son was dead. Jeremy’s only ‘family’ was a brainless pile of meat called Todd Sinclair.”

  Reba paused for breath. Chance smiled, showing a white gleam of teeth below his thick moustache. Beneath the heavy silk of her hair, his fingers kneaded her scalp, sending chills of pleasure down her spine.

  “Go on,” he murmured.

  “There’s not much more to tell. Jeremy’s collection fascinated me. I began asking questions, thousands of them. He answered every one. After five years I’d learned enough to start my own business. Jeremy launched me as proudly as though I were his own daughter, introducing me to people who love the rare things of the earth. Sometimes I think he enjoyed my success more than I did.”

  Reba closed her eyes, feeling again the disbelief and the despair that had overtaken her when she realized how ill Jeremy was. “Six weeks ago, he had a stroke. I stayed in the hospital with him. I felt so useless. He had done so much for me, taught me, loved me, helped me to respect myself for what I was rather than for what other people wanted me to be. He gave me so much . . . and all I could do was hold his hand and watch him die. Sometimes,” Reba added, her voice so tight it was harsh, “sometimes I want to scream thinking about it.”

  “It will get better,” he said, stroking her hair.

  “Will it?” she asked, watching Chance with dark eyes. “Will I finally forget?”

  “You never forget watching someone you love die,” he said quietly. “You learn to live around it, though. You learn not to let death rule your life. But you never forget.”

  “Quite a pair, aren’t we?” Reba said in a husky voice. “You have nothing left of your childhood but bad memories and a lust for prospecting. And I”—she laughed bitterly—“I have bad memories and fifty percent of a worthless tourmaline mine. It can’t be coincidence that we met.”

  Tension ripped through Chance like lightning, making every muscle of his body hard. “What do you mean by that crack?” he demanded.

  “Nothing,” she said, staring at him, surprise clear in her voice. “God must have a sense of humor. That’s all.”

  She didn’t understand the cold intensity of his look or his fingers so painfully tight around her arms. Slowly his grip softened. She rubbed her arms. “What’s wrong?” she asked, wondering at the pain and anger and other emotions she sensed seething beneath his rigid calm.

  “Nothing.” Chance swore softly, violently. “I’m a fool to lie here with you, asking you questions and getting sad answers, making you feel bad when you feel so good in my arms. Let me hold you, chaton,” he whispered. “When I kiss you I believe that anything is possible.”

  His need was irresistible to Reba. She forgot his frightening reaction when she had mentioned owning half of a worthless mine. She forgot the ache of her arms where his fingers had gripped her flesh. She gave herself to him without thought or reservation, holding and being held until she forgot everything but his heartbeat and his deep voice murmuring words in a strange, liquid language. His hands slid over her silk clothes, molding her to him until she was a supple column of warmth from his mouth down to the hard muscles of his thighs.

  He rolled over swiftly, his body covering her in one long caress. Instinctively Reba’s hands moved from his arms to his shoulders and then down the long muscles of his back, kneading his hard flesh with a sensuality that had been buried beneath layers of civilized restraint until Chance held her, teaching her how sweet wildness could be. His tongue was hot and hard as he took her mouth in a kiss that didn’t end until she twisted against him, crying wordlessly, gripped by a hunger as wild as his.

  Slowly Chance lifted his mouth, only to return again and again with tiny, biting kisses until Reba made a small sound in her throat. He lifted his head until he cou
ld see her soft lips and feel her breath rushing out in a long sigh. When he kissed the pulse beating in her throat, she tilted her head back and arched against him.

  Chance spoke softly; strange, rhythmic syllables that were another kind of caress. His lips moved down to the smooth flesh revealed by the open neck of her blouse. The tip of his tongue touched the swell of her breast and his hand brushed over her nipple. She made a small sound and stared up at him with dazed cinnamon eyes.

  “When you touch me . . . I don’t know myself. Chance . . . ?”

  “I’m a fool,” he whispered, “a bloody fool.” And then his mouth covered hers again, filling her with his heat and hunger.

  Only later, too late, would she remember his words about being a fool. Then she would laugh bitterly, knowing that there had been only one bloody fool on the beach that day, and it hadn’t been him.

  Four

  Reba sat at her desk in the Objet d’Art, staring at the Tiger God when she should have been staring at invoices and appraisals. Light rippled hypnotically over the sculpture, creating subtle bands of gold and shimmering brown, smooth and infinitely sensuous. The sculpture captured the essence of male power and grace. And beneath it all, beneath the satin polish and sophisticated modeling, there was a wildness that called to her in a language as old as need and love.

  She closed her eyes but still felt the Tiger God’s radiant presence. In her mind the sculpture changed, eyes silver-green now, midnight hair and moustache, resilient muscles sliding beneath her touch, gentle hands making her ache with a need that was so new to her she had no way to control it. With her eyes closed she could feel Chance’s body covering hers again, the world shrinking until there was nothing in it but him and her and the distant cry of gulls.

  She hadn’t known what it was to want a man. Not like that, tenderness and fierce heat, needing to please and consume him in the same instant, emotions tearing through her until she could only tremble beneath him, unable even to think. She had forgotten where she was, who she was, forgotten everything but the taste and feel of him.