She could hear his rapid breathing and feel the tension in his body. Tilting her head slightly, she outlined his lower lip with the tip of her tongue. Muscles jumped and contracted, rigid as steel bands beneath her hands. He was like the most tolerant of the ferocious jungle beasts, pushed beyond his endurance, set to pounce, awaiting the crucial, lethal moment.
Often—too often—she had a tendency to push her luck.
“I want you, Oliver,” she said, kicking off her shoes.
He didn’t dare move. Didn’t dare breathe. Her hands left his chest to reach behind and lower the zipper of her dress. He heard the soft snap of elastic.
There was a most exquisite and wholly stirring moment of uncertainty before she spoke again.
“Is it okay to tell you that I love you?”
He gave her a stiff-necked nod.
He kept trying to warn her that he wouldn’t be responsible, couldn’t tolerate much more, wasn’t in any shape to be toyed with, that he didn’t want to rush it but...
She broke eye contact for a fraction of a second when she shrugged out of the top of her dress and bra, then slid everything else to the floor in one quick movement.
“It doesn’t scare you? My loving you?”
He shook his head, swallowing hard as he glanced down at her nakedness. Wave after wave of excitement washed over his body, depositing layer upon layer of frustrated needs and untapped passions.
And he wasn’t scared?
Well, maybe he was, just a little—of exploding. But he wasn’t afraid of her love. It was almost...
“It’s almost as if we’ve always been like this,” he said, marveling as he looked deep into her umber eyes to see footprints, side by side, deep in the sands of time. “Always.”
She worked his fists open to slip her fingers between his. She stepped closer, the tips of her breasts barely touching his chest as she pressed her lips gently, tenderly to his.
It was Christmas morning, prom night, the day the orthodontist removed the braces, Graduation Day, the driver’s license in the mail, finding Carolann, the first kiss, the first paycheck, the end of a job well done... it was every long-awaited moment of her life and then some.
He squeezed her fingers between his. His lips played over hers, teasing and tasting. The pressure increased. His mouth grew greedy. Bare flesh met bare flesh in a glorious dance conceived during the birth of time. In a savage motion he grabbed her thighs, pulling them apart as he lifted and locked them around his waist. He turned and lowered them both to sit on the bed. He cupped her breasts in both hands. Her fingers clutched at his shoulders as her head lolled back, her back bowed, and she moaned blissfully as he feasted.
Pagan blood boiled. Hearts tattooed a rhythm of celebration, and the world retreated, leaving one man and one woman, alone, on a common quest.
’Twas the day before Christmas Eve and all through the apartment house, not a creature was stirring, not even... she shuddered, wondering if there was anything in the mousetraps under the sink and behind the radiator. She hadn’t checked lately, but suspected it would be a good time to invite the little boy from 12C back for cookies and milk.
It was too bad the bigger rats of the world couldn’t be disposed of as easily, she thought, cuddling closer to Oliver, filling her mind with his scent. Her heart ached with happiness when his arms tightened about her and, in his sleep, he shifted his weight to accommodate her.
He didn’t know. She closed her eyes and offered a small prayer of gratitude. His donation coming the same day as the letter from the Carey Foundation, advising them that the grant given to the Joey Paulson Clinic was being reevaluated for renewal after the first of the year, was too much of a coincidence. It hadn’t made sense that he would be giving and taking away at the same time.
He didn’t know. Because, as with most large bodies of money, the Carey Foundation was run by a small horde of objective and, as in most cases, indifferent lawyers and accountants, and a handful of bored and indifferent advisers. He was simply a figurehead to the foundation, with no responsibility in its day-to-day operations. She’d have bet her last penny that he couldn’t name five organizations receiving funds from the endowment bearing his name.
And that was all right. She didn’t expect him to be superhuman, didn’t expect him to be any different than other rich men with vast financial responsibilities. She understood the delegation of responsibility. She understood that he couldn’t be everywhere, do everything, know everything, and still speak in coherent sentences, or still be beside her in bed, his warm body wrapped around her like a protective comforter.
She understood and she didn’t expect, and she was glad he didn’t know that his foundation was about to put her out of work, not to mention close another door to hundreds of needy people. How could she love him otherwise?
And she wasn’t going to tell him, she decided, as the sun tried to illuminate the gray skies with morning, turning darkness to dim light at the windows. He wasn’t responsible for her life. She didn’t need him to fight her battles or to use his influence to get her what she wanted. She’d go to the hearing and she’d state her own case. She’d make that finely dressed, well-fed committee see the need to keep the Paulson Clinic open. She was a money-people manipulator, that’s what she did, and she was good at it. She was glad he didn’t know.
“Those gears in your head are keeping me awake,” he said, sliding down in the bed, then sliding back up, tipping his face into her neck. “What are you thinking about? It’s too early to be thinking.”
She laughed softly, rubbing her toes together as he kissed a path ear-to-ear along her neck.
“I was thinking it was time to get up, but I could be wrong.”
“A rare find. A woman whose mind is as flexible as her body.”
“A horny contortionist?”
“Those are hard to find too,” he mumbled, pushing the sheets lower to expose her breasts. His hand ran smoothly between them, across her abdomen, a little farther south. “I love watching your eyes.” He kissed her quickly. “They sparkle like gold dust at first, then they turn molten like liquid gold, hot and flowing.”
“Yours get darker,” she said, her breath gaspy, her body tensing in excitement with the play of his fingers between her legs. Her hand rose to his face. “Black. Like an abyss. I’m afraid I’ll fall in.”
He took her hand and lowered it to the bed, finding the other fisted beneath the pillow. He raised his body and settled it over hers.
“Go ahead and fall in, Holly,” he said, separating her legs with his knees, looking deep into her eyes. “It’s safe.”
Would it be safe to fall deep into Oliver’s soul? It called and spoke to her in a voice as familiar to her as... as anything she’d ever known before. There were still so many things she and Oliver hadn’t talked about, so many things he hadn’t yet told her, but it didn’t seem to matter. She knew him. Where she might have tested any other man’s worthiness, she innately believed in Oliver.
Oh, he would surely disappoint her in his humanness, she knew. He wasn’t perfect. He would be angry and moody and forgetful and commit a hundred other imperfect acts, just as she would. But always his heart would be open to her. Always his soul would be faithful. And never would his mind scheme against her.
Until the day he died he would... Until the day he died... Something deep in the recesses of her mind tore loose. Even after the day he died... even after... Something free-floating and indecipherable pulled at her memory. Even after...
A moan of intense pleasure escaped her as he suckled her breast. Consciousness narrowed to sensation alone, to feeling without choice or control. The fragmented memory was gone. Every nip to her flesh, every touch of his tongue, was sweet torment. Her arms extended at her sides, her muscles aching with splendid expectation as he dribbled kisses across her ribs, nibbled and tasted the soft quivering skin of her abdomen. Palms parted, fingers locked in joyful battle, as he spread her legs wide and plunged her over and over again into t
he infinite chasm between pain and ecstasy.
Suddenly he was with her, above, beside, within her. Together they were one, a whole. Together they traveled time and space. Together they knew absolute fulfillment. Together they were life.
Wrapped in a damp towel, he left her in the bathroom to do “girl stuff.” Feeling clean and refreshed after a shower would never mean what he’d thought it meant before he’d taken one with Holly. He grinned and shook his head in recollection. Nothing would ever be the same with Holly... or without her, he realized, falling back onto the bed, enjoying the coolness of the sheets against his overheated skin.
He wallowed in the sheer delight of being happy and within the sound of her voice for a few more minutes, then rolled over on his empty stomach.
“I’m starving,” he wailed pitifully.
“Gee, Oliver,” she said, coming to the bathroom door with a look of shock and disgust etched on her face. “Don’t you ever quit? I can hardly walk.”
When he frowned at her, she grinned—he grinned back at her proudly.
“I need food now,” he said, defining his appetite.
“That’s what I like about you, Oliver. You keep all your most basic needs wrapped up in the same general area, and you don’t need more than a bath towel to do it.”
He laughed but didn’t deny it. She padded into the kitchen in her bare feet and robe, and he rolled over again like a puppy waiting to have his tummy rubbed.
“What are all these?” he asked, reading the titles on her bookshelves upside down.
“All what?” she called back.
“These foreign dictionaries?” There was a whole shelf on foreign languages alone. A few on the next shelf about customs and religious practices in different countries.
“Poverty doesn’t have any trouble crossing language barriers,” she said, appearing above him with two steaming mugs of coffee, one light with sugar. “Only people do. Would you like fruit or cereal? It’s your lucky day. I have both.”
“Cereal’s fine,” he said, sitting up and taking both cups from her. He set hers on the bookshelf and sipped at his own. “How many languages do you speak?”
“Only Italian and Spanish really well,” she said from the kitchen. “You can’t grow up in L.A. in a house full of Spoletos without speaking both of those fluently. You wouldn’t believe how many times I had to volunteer to clean the bathroom at home until I caught on to enough Italian to claim some other chore.” She returned to the bed with two bowls of cereal and a carton of milk. “One bathroom and all those boys.” She grimaced and shuddered with disgust. He chuckled. “And then the short time I spent in the city, when I first came up here, I felt like I needed to learn Chinese. At least enough to ask the questions I wanted to ask and to know what they were saying about me when I walked away. Do you want sugar on that too?” she asked, nodding at his bowl.
“I’ll get it,” he said, standing. “And don’t look at me like that. I’m more afraid of being shot in the head than I am of eating too much sugar.”
“Did I say anything?”
“You didn’t have to. So, who do you know that speaks Vietnamese?”
“There’s a whole Vietnamese community here. Most of them speak English, of course, and French, and we don’t see all that many of them, but we get a few. Some of the older ones bring their children with them to interpret. I’d rather speak to them directly.”
“Why? What difference will it make?” he asked with no prejudice, simply curious. He came back to sit beside her on the bed, his flakes sugared indulgently.
“It’s more polite for one thing, and it shows a genuine interest for another, and it’s important to learn because the more you know about the language, the more you learn about the people.” She took a spoonful of cereal into her mouth, chewed, and then added, “About their customs and the way they live and what they need to survive here.”
She continued to eat as if they were talking about something as plain and mundane as a television commercial, not the keys to international peace. And yet, for Holly, it was just that much of a routine; that ordinary to treat everyone with polite and equal kindness, to know and understand them, to give what she could.
And who gave to Holly? he wondered, watching her eat. She didn’t live much better than those she helped, and he knew it was a calculated choice on her part. There were better jobs, more money, nicer apartments. Could job satisfaction compensate for having so little to call her own?
He wanted to drench her in silk and jewels—fake furs, because she wouldn’t tolerate the real thing—and cars, a dozen cars, and a big fancy home with bodyguards. He wanted to give her everything before she even knew she wanted it, anticipate her every wish, fulfill her every need. Keep her safe, shield her from all unhappiness. He sighed. Most of all, he wanted not to be angry or impatient or critical of her when she turned her nose up at it all.
“What are you looking at?” she asked, glancing up to catch his love-lights on. “I told you in the shower it was the last time. I have to go.”
“Don’t you ever have a day off?”
“Today is my day off.”
“Then where are you going? You said work.”
“I said go. Every Thursday I go to St. Augustine’s. I do hair there.”
“You do what?”
“Hair,” she said, smiling. She took his empty bowl and placed it with hers on a table, then turned to her chest of drawers to gather clothes for the day. “I used to visit at St. Augustine’s. Just go in and talk, you know? But it got harder and harder to sit and watch the nurses and attendants working and—” she shrugged, “—one day I picked up a brush and went to the next bed and brushed the lady’s hair. Then I went next door and got the two men in that room and then two more ladies and then I hit the wards. I was crazy that day. I went from bed to bed making the men handsome and the women look beautiful... sort of. Then one of them said there was no sense brushing dirty hair, so I washed his hair, and one lady wanted to know if I knew how to give perms and I said that I would know how by the time I came back, and, well, things sort of snowballed after that.” She laughed. She lifted her hand in a high-class fashion. “The residents make appointments now at Cheveux de Holly. They come in hours too early and sit and talk and wait for their turn.”
He ran a hand over the back of his neck, trying to open his mind to the life she led, then stopped mid-motion.
“This is volunteer work, isn’t it?”
“Of course. They couldn’t possibly afford a real hairdresser,” she said, shaking out a pair of jeans. “Although I did go to beauty school for a while, after I fried a poor old lady’s hair to nearly nothing. What a mess. But I learned to give perms and simple haircuts, and I’m cheap.”
“How cheap are the supplies you use?” he asked, puzzle pieces falling from the sky and fitting perfectly. “You buy everything yourself and donate it to St. Augustine’s, don’t you? You pay for the permanents, the shampoos, the conditioners, the—”
“For crying out loud, Oliver. It isn’t that much. We’re talking about short, thin gray hair here. I can color three heads with one bottle of dye and give two perms with one kit. It’s not that big a deal.”
It was that big of a deal when her bed folded out in a shoebox in a run-down neighborhood! But for some reason, he couldn’t make his tongue move to tell her how crazy she was to be so unselfish. It was too much Holly. It was the way she did things. It was also an answer to one of the many questions he had about the way she lived. He was going to have to be satisfied with that.
She stopped and looked across the room at Oliver. His resigned expression pulled at her heart. He was trying so hard to be an open-minded modern man and not follow his cave-man instincts. Her steps were slow as she approached him. She bent at the waist to kiss his uplifted face.
“Oliver, I love you. I have everything I need. And now I have everything I’ve ever wanted. There’s time enough for us. I promise.” She kissed him once more. “They look forward to Thur
sdays. I look forward to Thursdays. I’ll be done by five, and if you come back here at seven, I’ll have dinner and music and soft lights ready for you.”
He smiled at her, and she blatantly batted her eyes at him. He laughed. Grabbing the front of her robe, he pulled her to stand between his legs, his hands sneaking inside to run up the back of her thighs to her softly rounded backside.
She caressed his face—such a wonderful face—and fingered a few strands of dark damp hair off his forehead. His hands were warm and sensuous on her buttocks. Tender and gentle and soothing. There was so much love in him, and all he wanted was the time to give it.
“You’ll be exhausted by seven,” he said. “I’ll take you out.”
Her smile turned sly. “If you pick up Chinese, we could eat it in bed.”
“Hello, dear. Am I disturbing you?” his aunt asked over the phone. But before he could answer, she went on, “I’ve been so worried about you since yesterday. You stayed away last night, and there was no answer at the apartment downtown... Are you still angry with me?”
“No.” How could he be angry and in love at the same time?
“Well, my goodness, you were so upset, I didn’t think you’d ever forgive me.”
“You are forgiven.” But the incident wasn’t forgotten. “However, I prefer to sort out my own messages from here on. All right?”
“Yes, dear.” She sounded pensive.
“What else can I do for you?”
“Nothing, dear. I merely wanted to remind you about dinner tomorrow night. You’ve been so busy, you’ve forgotten to call Barbara and invite her.”
“Invite her to what?”
“Dinner, dear. It’s Christmas Eve. You always call and invite her to have family dinner with us.”
“No. You always call and remind me to invite her.”
“All part of the tradition,” she said, laughing gaily.
“Well, why don’t you invite her this year, Elizabeth. I’m not sure I can make it.”
“Not make it? But, Oliver, it’s Christmas Eve...”
Wait for Me Page 10