A Kiss Remembered

by Sandra Brown

  She peered through the tiny window at the side of the door and her heart lurched into her throat. “Daryl,” she whispered in dismay.

  CHAPTER 8

  He knocked again, more imperiously this time. For no other reason than to stop his insistent knocking, she unlocked the door and swung it open.

  For long moments they stared across the threshold at each other. Shelley marveled over her supreme indifference at seeing him. Once, shortly after the divorce, the sight of him would have made her heart do somersaults. She would have been nervous, self-conscious. At one time he had possessed the power to make her feel insignificant. No longer.

  As a sign of her newfound confidence, she made him speak first. “Shelley,” he said, nodding his head with cold condescension. He was still handsome in a boyish, dimpled kind of way. “Did I get you up?”

  “Yes,” she lied. It gave her a sense of superiority to know that she was naked beneath the robe and that he couldn’t arouse her body, never had been able to. She longed to shout that at him, to flaunt his failure, to debase and humiliate him as he had her the night he had emotionlessly informed her that he wanted her out of his life.

  “May I come in?”

  She shrugged and moved aside. He pushed past her brusquely and for the first time she noticed the anger that had kept his dimples from really showing. He was furious over something. He rarely let himself get so upset that it showed.

  He turned toward her after only a sweeping glance around her living room. “Sit down,” he said, flexing his fingers against his thighs, another sign of his agitation.

  “No,” she responded and crossed her arms over her chest. She couldn’t imagine what had brought him from Oklahoma City so early on a Sunday morning, but she wasn’t about to obey his commands as she once had. The only emotion he had aroused in her was curiosity. But she wouldn’t even give him the satisfaction of asking what he wanted. She looked at him coolly.

  His jaw tensed. He was grinding his teeth, a habit he’d tried for years to break. Once again his fingers were flexing as he held his arms stiffly at his sides. “I want to know what the hell you think you’re doing?”

  She blinked several times and laughed shortly. “I was about to make coffee.”

  He took a menacing step forward. “Don’t play cute with me, dammit. You know what I’m talking about. That Chapman guy. Are you seeing him?”

  She wondered distractedly how he could get the words past lips that didn’t seem to move. “Yes,” she answered simply. “I’m taking his poli-sci class twice a week.”

  “It’s more than that,” he roared, suddenly giving vent to his barely contained rage. “A friend of mine saw you at the football game and then later at the chancellor’s house together. You’ve been going to his apartment in the evenings. What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, repeating himself.

  “That’s none of your business,” she said, flinging her head back in an attitude of defiance that he’d never seen before and that momentarily stunned him. The storm brewing in her blue eyes was new to him, too.

  When he had regained his senses, he hissed, “The hell it’s not. You’re my—”

  “Ex-wife, Dr. Robins. And at your choosing, if you’ll remember. I don’t know why you’re here and care less, but I’m telling you now to leave.”

  He ignored her. “He’s always been your dreamboat, hasn’t he?” He sneered. “I don’t think you realized how often you dropped his name. My God, seven, eight years after high school, who the hell remembers their teachers? But not you. ‘Mr. Chapman this,’ and ‘Mr. Chapman that.’ I only thought you were enthralled because he had gone to Washington. Now I know better, don’t I? With his seedy reputation, I’d think your adolescent infatuation with him would be crushed. Or does what he did to that girl in Washington only make him more dashing?”

  She wasn’t going to defend Grant to this buffoon. Turning her back on him, she walked to the door and opened it. “Don’t bother to come see me again, Daryl. Good-bye.”

  He strode across the room and slammed the door shut. Grabbing her shoulders, he shook her roughly. “Are you sleeping with him?”

  “Yes,” she emphasized, looking up at him triumphantly. “And loving every minute of it.”

  “You bitch,” he lashed out, and Shelley knew she’d hurt him in the worst possible way. She’d punctured the ego that had needed deflating for years. He couldn’t take it. “Do you know what a laughingstock you’re making of yourself? Do you?” He shook her harder, but she never flinched.

  “I’m making a laughingstock of you, Daryl, and that’s what has got you upset. What did your friend do? Go back to the city and tell everyone that your pale, shy wife didn’t look so pale and shy any longer? Did he tell everyone that she doesn’t need you after all? That she’s happier every hour of her life without you than you made her in five years? If so, he’s right.”

  “Shut up,” he shouted. “I don’t give a damn what you do with your life, but I care how you affect mine. I’ve made a name for myself. I’m going to marry the chief of staff’s daughter. Can you imagine what a match like that can mean to my career? But if word of your sleazy affair with your professor gets out, it could send all my career plans to hell in a handbasket. You’ll stop this ridiculous affair immediately. At least until I’m married again.”

  She laughed up at him, making him all the madder. “Your name, your marriage, your career. Do you think I care about any of that?”

  “You never did!”

  “Oh yes, I did.” She ground out the words. “I cared enough to work long, hard hours to support us while you finished medical school. I cared enough to do research for you and type your tedious, endless papers. But when you graduated third in your class, it wasn’t me you thanked with a vacation or even a night out. You went on a three-day trip to Mexico with two of your classmates.”

  “I deserved a rest.”

  “So did I!”

  “So the little stunt you’re pulling now is to get back at me for all the injustices I heaped on you, is that it?”

  She shook her head in incredulity. “Your ego never ceases to amaze me,” she said laughing. “I wouldn’t waste such precious energy on you. You can become the most famous doctor in the world, or you can rot in hell for all I care, Daryl Robins. You excised me from your life and it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  He leaned down closer to her. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me, too. To think that I gave up my freedom to marry an iceberg like you. You played a gruesome joke on me, honey. Making me want you so much I married you, only to find out you’re made of stone. I’ll bet your professor was in for a shock, wasn’t he? Or were you kind enough to warn him that making it with you is about as exciting as making it with a corpse?”

  She paled, struck by his degrading words. But before she could form a comeback, he was yanked away from her and plastered to the wall. Grant’s forearm was like an iron bar across Daryl’s neck.

  Bare-chested, having taken only enough time to pull on his jeans, he was barbarously fearsome. His hair fell over his forehead with primitive disregard for convention. Unshaven, his jaw looked even more determined. His eyes blazed into Daryl’s face with pagan blood lust. “If you ever talk to her that way again, I’ll wreak havoc on that pretty smile you put such great stock in,” he growled.

  Daryl swallowed nervously. Unsuccessfully, he tried bravado. “So you’d add assault and battery to all your other crimes.”

  Grant laughed, though there was no mirth in his smoldering eyes. “Say what you want about me. Insult me if it makes you feel better. Believe me, I’ve been bombarded by many bigger and better than you, Robins. You can’t touch me. But I could easily kill you for talking to Shelley that way.”

  “What I said is true,” Daryl squeaked out.

  “What you said is trash. I wouldn’t insult Shelley by giving you the details of our lovemaking, but I assure you it’s the highest experience I’ve ever had in my li
fe. And while you’re lying in the cold sterile bed of your convenient marriage, I want you to think about all you’re missing, all you threw away because of your monumental, misplaced self-esteem.”

  A warm glow burned inside Shelley, but it wasn’t embarrassment over Grant’s words; it was gratitude and love. She didn’t even see Daryl’s darting look in her direction. He looked at her with a new interest, but she only had eyes for Grant.

  “Then you’re going to continue your shoddy little affair?” Daryl asked on a deprecating note.

  “No,” Grant said softly.

  Shelley’s bubble of love burst and her eyes widened in alarm. Without lessening his hold on Daryl, Grant turned his head toward her. “No affair. We’re going to be married.”

  Her lips parted in surprise but she didn’t utter a sound. Daryl, too, was rendered speechless as Grant turned back to him.

  “And I’m smarter than you are, Robins. I’ll love her the way you were too stupid to. I respect her intelligence and ambition. Her career will be just as important as my own. The marriage will be a partnership. I’ll make her forget the days she spent as your muddy doormat.”

  With one last threatening look, Grant released him. “Get out of here. You’ve spoiled our morning all you’re going to.”

  Daryl almost slumped to the floor with relief. Recovering quickly, he straightened his coat and cast a disdainful glance at Shelley. “Congratulations,” he said with cocky assurance. Then he made the mistake of turning his back on Grant.

  “Oh, Robins?” Grant said pleasantly.

  “Yeah?” the doctor said, belligerently facing him again.

  “This is for all the times you brought her grief when I wasn’t there to do something about it.” Grant’s fist shot out and buried itself in Daryl’s stomach with a sickening thud.

  The proud doctor bent at the waist, clutching his stomach. Mercilessly, Grant grabbed him by the collar, jerked him upright and dragged him to the door. He shoved him onto the porch and released him with as much respect for his dignity as one would give a dead rat.

  Grant’s epithets were imaginative and explicit as he closed the door and locked it. But as he turned back to Shelley his expression softened. His arms were outstretched as he approached her. A moment later she was enfolded within them and pulled against his furred chest.

  His index finger tilted her head up and he looked down at her face lovingly. “It wasn’t with candlelight and wine, I wasn’t down on my knees, but it was a proposal just the same. Marry me, Shelley,” he whispered urgently as he pressed her head into the curve of his shoulder.

  Her arms went around him. She held him close, hugged him tightly. Squeezing her eyes shut in an effort to dispel Daryl’s smirking face, to obliterate his debasing words from her memory, she said shakily, “I don’t know, Grant. I just don’t know.”

  He heard her indecision, understood her reluctance to get trapped again. Easing her away, he said gently, “Let’s take a hike in the woods. This room still reeks of Robins. With any luck, once you’re outdoors you’ll see your way clear to marrying me.”

  “You’re very quiet,” he stated. At the caprice of the autumn wind, a golden-brown leaf had fallen on her cheek. He lifted it away with his little finger and stroked the curtain of hair that covered his lap.

  “I’m thinking.”

  They had taken a country road out of town and driven in contemplative silence until Grant parked his car on the side of the narrow, tree-lined road. “Let’s walk,” he’d said. After taking an old blanket from behind the seat of the car, he had helped her over a shallow ditch and into a wood burnished to a golden luster by the cool fall weather.

  The fallen leaves made a thick carpet that rustled with their footsteps. Even as they tacitly agreed to spread the blanket under a sprawling oak he respected her need for introspective thought. He hadn’t pressed conversation on her.

  She had lain with her head in his lap staring through the massive branches of the tree, not really thinking about what had transpired that morning, but enjoying the companionable silence, the strength of his thighs beneath her head, the whisper of his breath on her face.

  “Good thoughts?”he asked, leaning over her now.

  “Mostly.”

  “Want to tell me about them?”

  “I was thinking that I feel better when I’m with you than I ever have in my life.” She tilted her head back to see him better. “Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to be with you all the time.”

  “I fail to see the problem,” he said when he heard the anguish in her voice. He threaded his fingers through her hair. “I’ve asked you to marry me, Shelley.”

  “I know, I know,” she said, rising to a sitting position. She rested her forehead against her raised knees. “But I don’t know if we should get married.”

  “I see,” he said quietly. “Can you tell me why? Can we discuss it? Does it have anything to do with the scandal in Washington?”

  “No, no.” She shook her head dismally, though she didn’t lift it. “I’ve told you that as far as I’m concerned, that never happened.”

  He placed his hand on her back beneath her sweat shirt, moved it up to the base of her neck, then all the way down to her waist. Back and forth, lovingly. “Are you worried about becoming a second-class citizen again?” Her hesitation in answering told him more than spoken words could have.

  He removed his hand from under her top. “I’ve told you we’d be equal partners. Do you think I’d want you meek and submissive, Shelley? I want a wife and lover, not a live-in servant. You’d have the same status in the household as I. You’ve made your niche in the world and are going to make a bigger one. I’m proud of that. I want to enrich your life, not take your independence away.”

  Gently, he placed his hand beneath her chin and lifted her head. Her eyes were brimming with tears when they met his. “How is it that you’re so understanding?” she asked huskily.

  “I’m so much older and wiser than you,” he said teasingly. When the corners of her mouth twitched with an answering smile, he said seriously, “Actually I’m not one of those men whose wife has to stay in the background so as not to threaten his ego. I can’t see how your success, in whatever endeavor, could do anything but improve my life.”

  “What if I want to work my way up to be the president of a bank?”

  “I’ll be right behind you, giving you little boosts up the ladder if you should become discouraged.” His hand slipped to her bottom and gently squeezed it. “A prospect I take delight in.”

  She blushed, more at what she was about to ask than at his display of affection. “And if I decide that I want to stay at home and … and maybe have a family?”

  “I’ll certainly do my part,” he said solemnly, though his eyes were dancing, showing more green than gray. “What I’m trying to tell you, Shelley, is that I’ll do anything to guarantee your happiness. I want you to be happy with me. I want us to be happy together.”

  To his surprise, her face crumpled and she turned away from him again. “Shelley, for godsake what—”

  “I want you to be happy with me, too, but I’m afraid I’ll fail you,” she sobbed softly.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked with a combination of frustration and bewilderment.

  “What Daryl said about me was true. Once we were married, I … I was like a corpse. I don’t know what’s happened to me these last few days, but I’ve never been this way before. Suppose we get married and I … disappoint you? I couldn’t bear it. You’ve had so many women and—”

  “Shelley, Shelley,” he said, turning her around and cradling her against his chest. He ran his fingers under her hair, massaging the back of her neck with a loving hand. “Are you really going to listen to that strutting peacock and let anything he says get to you? My God, can’t you see why he wanted to insult you like that?”

  He raised her face to his and peered down into her confused, tear-filled ey
es. “He knew that beneath your ladylike veneer was a passionate, sensual woman. I knew it ten years ago when I kissed you.

  “What galled Robins and what will gall him for the rest of his miserable life is that he couldn’t bring out that sensuality. The reason he came running here today wasn’t so much that he thought our relationship could ruin his career; he was curious. Some masochistic compulsion drove him up here to see for himself if that sensual creature within you had finally been freed. One look at the woman you are now and he knew the truth. Being the coward he is, his only defense was to insult you, your femininity.”

  “But maybe he’s right.”

  His smile was soft, knowing. “I’ll prove to you how wrong he is.” The rough quality in his voice gave it a special intimacy.

  She stared at him, wide-eyed and trusting, as he leaned forward and kissed her fleetingly on the cheek. His lips nibbled along her cheekbone, her temple, pressed a sweet kiss onto her forehead.

  He pulled back to survey the results of his work. “Your eyes are taking on that smoky hue that’s a sure sign of your arousal. Even when you deny it, that cloudiness in your eyes is a dead giveaway.”

  All the while he was talking, he was rubbing her ear-lobes between his thumb and forefinger. Now he leaned toward her and kissed one, whisking his lips over it. Then he paused, stayed. His tongue batted at it playfully before he caught it between his straight white teeth and worried it tenderly.

  She shivered and unconsciously placed her hands on his shoulders. He wouldn’t be rushed. He gave the same avid attention to her other ear until she was twisting her head around in an attempt to capture his gifted mouth with her own.

  When at last he obliged her, he sealed her mouth with his, joining them together and defying heaven and earth to try to break them apart. His tongue pressed deeply, explored thoroughly, evoking memories of the times they had loved.