Because she understood he was using flippancy to distance himself from her and from his less than idyllic childhood memories, she didn’t retaliate. “I want to walk on the beach,” she said mildly. “If you don’t want to come, you can stay with the kids and I’ll walk with Daddy.”
“You’re walking with me.” He slipped a possessive arm around her shoulder. “Babe,” he added in a perfect imitation of Steve Saraceni.
Leaving the children under their grandfather’s watchful eye, Rand and Jamie set off for a long walk along the beach. It was cooler than yesterday’s record breaker, the temperature just reaching sixty, and it was far too cold to wade in the surf, so they kept walking in the sand. For miles, talking and teasing and laughing, completely absorbed in each other.
Both were astonished to learn that it was nearly five o’clock when they finally returned to the spot where the boys, having tired of kite flying, were building a giant sand fort with their grandfather acting as consultant.
“I lost all track of the time,” Rand said incredulously, realizing it was true. He hadn’t glanced at his watch once during those hours with Jamie. It was a most unusual occurrence. He was usually protective of his time, guarding against demands and infringements on it.
Al Saraceni insisted that Rand stay for dinner with the family. Jamie tried to offer him a graceful way out, suggesting that he might have other plans for the evening, but her father would have none of it. Rand was having Sunday dinner with the Saracenis. There was absolutely no question about it.
“I wonder what would’ve happened if I really did have other plans for tonight?” Rand murmured to Jamie as they sat together in the backseat of Al’s big blue Buick. The children sat in the front, reading comic books.
“I’m afraid you’d be eating with us no matter what. Daddy is determined to offer you hospitality. You made a tremendous hit with him today, playing with his grandsons.”
“Even though I disappeared with his daughter for half the afternoon?” Rand murmured provocatively, inching closer. He caught her hand and held it in his, playing with her fingers. “For all he knows, I might’ve been off having my wicked way with you.”
“On a windy beach in the middle of the day? Not with me! My father knows very well that proper, discreet, restrained Jamie would never do such a thing.”
“I seem to recall a time in front of the library when proper, discreet, restrained Jamie was none of those things. In fact, you never are when you’re in my arms.”
No, she wasn’t. Flushing, Jamie chewed her lower lip. The comment demanded a response, but what could she say? She disengaged her hand from his. “I should’ve known we couldn’t spend a whole day without any sexual moves or innuendos from you,” she whispered reprovingly.
He took her hand and refused to let it go. “You’d be disappointed if I didn’t make a single play for you. You’d start to worry that I didn’t want you anymore.” He interlaced his fingers with hers and settled back against the seat, pulling her closer to him.
“I wouldn’t be disappointed, I’d be relieved. And I wouldn’t worry, either,” she whispered.
“No? You’re that sure of your appeal, huh?”
“No! Yes! I mean—” She shook her head and laughed in spite of herself. “You manage to twist things around so that any answer I give will be wrong. I do not consider myself the cutest little trick in shoe leather.”
With her free hand, she gave him a playful punch. He caught that hand, effectively restraining her. Laughing, Jamie began to struggle, using her knee as a lever to free herself. When he moved lithely to pin down her legs with one of his own, she wriggled, trying to remember how she’d escaped Steve’s wrestling holds when they’d been kids.
There was a major difference, however. She and Rand weren’t kids, and he wasn’t her brother. The sensations evoked by their movements were beginning to border on the erotic. And she didn’t feel like struggling anymore, she felt like melting into him.
She looked into his eyes and saw awareness and desire burning there. Her whole body began to throb.
“So, Rand, you think the Flyers will beat the Rangers tomorrow night?” Al’s voice boomed jovially from the front seat.
Jamie jerked convulsively, and Rand reluctantly let her go. Except for her right hand, which he kept firmly in his. “Proper, discreet and restrained?” he whispered in a voice so low she could hardly hear. “Not with me, honey.” She blushed, and he leaned forward, raising his tone to hale masculine heartiness. “I think the Flyers are going to kick some butt, Al.”
Chapter three in the Guide to a Modern, Old-Fashioned Courtship recommended that courting couples spend time together doing things. Rand thought back to the bad old days when his idea of spending time with a woman meant taking her to bed. He smiled wryly. Well, he’d known from their first date that wasn’t going to be the case with Jamie.
She liked doing things. She liked dancing, swimming, roller-skating, ice-skating and even bowling. She liked to go to flea markets and movies, to the theater and the museum and the zoo in Philadelphia. She liked to ride bikes and to hike, to pick strawberries at local farms and then make ice cream to eat with them. She enjoyed cooking as well as eating out.
She and Rand did all those things during the weeks that followed, usually alone, but sometimes with various Sara-cenis or some of Jamie’s friends. They even played a few games of miniature golf! He called her every night, even if he’d been with her earlier.
To avoid providing the rest of the Saracenis with entertainment during television commercial breaks, he bought her a phone and had a jack installed in her bedroom. There, she could talk to him privately, responding to his outrageous suggestions and innuendos without inhibitions.
She fielded them with humor and grace, sometimes indulging in a few provocative remarks of her own. Knowing that Rand wanted her and admitting her own attraction to him were no longer threatening to her. She was in love with him; she’d never been more certain of anything in her life.
Her initial reservations about becoming involved with him seemed ridiculous to her now, as did her fears that he was a smoothly operating heartbreaker cast from the same mold as brother Steve. She and Rand had an honest relationship based on mutual respect and trust. And love.
Her parents and grandmother, never noted for their subtlety, were beginning to ask her about reserving the Sons of Italy hall for a big wedding reception in the not too distant future. Jamie managed to persuade them not to ask Rand to set a date and fended off their eager questions and plans. But she found herself leafing through the library’s copies of Brides magazine. Articles on travel, particularly ones featuring favorite honeymoon spots, interested her as never before. And she was more entranced than usual by the sight of a baby in its mother’s arms.
For though she and Rand had yet to discuss marriage, Jamie was positive that their relationship was moving in that direction. It had to be! She loved him so.
And she wanted him, as much as he wanted her. The flame between them burned hotter and stronger than ever, becoming even more intense as their relationship deepened. They couldn’t be together without touching. Whenever possible, they held hands; he was quick to put his arm around her shoulder or her waist or to pull her onto his lap.
They kissed often and impassionedly, but never within proximity to a bedroom. Jamie had been to Rand’s house three times, accompanied each time by her nephews, who’d demanded to come along to see Rand’s kitten. Somebody was always home at the Saraceni house, making intimacies there impossible. And though some of their most torrid kissing and petting occurred in the car, the contortions required for making love in a sports car seemed too ridiculous to contemplate at their ages.
At night, lying alone in her bed in the small pink and yellow bedroom she’d slept in since infancy, Jamie lay awake for hours, twisting and turning restlessly, tormented by sharp, sweet aches of need.
Rand, alone in his big water bed in the high-tech black and white room, did his share of t
ossing and turning, too. He took lots of cold showers and increased his daily exercise regime, hoping to exhaust himself into sleep.
He thought about Jamie, dreamed about her, wanted her more than he’d ever wanted a woman. He planned elaborate seductions and invented schemes to pressure her into his bed—and didn’t enact any of them. For though he desperately wanted to make love to her, and his desperation and desire increased daily, he wanted her to come to him without doubt or anxiety, to give herself to him completely, without reservation. He’d grown to care for her, to like her too much, for it to be any other way between them.
The only cloud in their almost idyllic relationship involved work—or Rand’s alleged lack of it. He didn’t tell her that he spent his days creating the latest as yet untitled Brick Lawson thriller while she worked at the library. His book proposal had been accepted with his customary whopping advance check arriving by mail. But he continued to make joking references about enjoying the life of the idle rich while Jamie, who loved her job, tried to interest him in the concept of meaningful work.
It would have been an amusing conflict in a Brick Lawson tale, but Rand found his predicament less and less entertaining. All his life, he’d fought against being exactly what Jamie thought he was—an aimless dilettante living off his trust fund.
But how to tell her about his writing? Especially now, after all the time they’d spent together? Rand told himself that he was merely avoiding the fight they were certain to have due to his secrecy. But there was more at stake than simply a fight, and in the dark, lonely hours just before dawn, he would admit the truth to himself. He knew that she valued honesty, and he’d been less than honest with her. He was loathe to risk the possibility of her ending their relationship.
It was a humbling and alarming admission for a former feckless, unconcerned bachelor to make. For he’d finally admitted to himself that his end goal in courting Jamie wasn’t to get her into his bed. He couldn’t imagine his life without her in it and he would go to any lengths to make her happy. Was he in love with her?
He was asking himself that vital question one warm Friday evening in May as he was leaving to pick up Jamie for the Phillies-Pirates doubleheader at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia.
He was pulling out of his driveway in the Jag when Saran pulled up beside him in Jamie’s car. “Rand!” she called out the window. “Can I talk to you for a few minutes?” She hopped out of the car and came over to him.
“Is there something wrong? Where’s Jamie?” he asked, tensing with apprehension as he climbed out of his car.
“She’s at home waiting for you to pick her up for the game. This isn’t about Jamie, it’s about me. I’m in trouble, Rand,” she announced dramatically. “And you’re the only one who can help me.”
“Oh God!” Rand groaned. “You’re pregnant.” He felt the color drain from his face.
“I am not!” Saran exclaimed indignantly.
Relief flowed through him, followed by irritation. “Well, what else was I to think? When a teenage girl says she’s in trouble she—”
“I’m going to fail English, and if I do I won’t graduate,” Saran interrupted. “My English teacher says if I don’t turn in a five thousand word essay on Charles Dickens’ use of the color red as a symbol in A Tale of Two Cities by Tuesday, she’s giving me an F. I’ll have to take English in summer school to get my diploma and I can’t because as soon as I’m eighteen, on July first, I’m leaving Merlton and moving to New York.”
“So write the paper,” advised Rand, starting to get back into his car. He was eager to see Jamie.
“I can’t! I hate English and I hate A Tale of Two Cities and this paper is already two months overdue and—” “Two months? No wonder your English teacher is mad. Look, I know that kind of essay can be a pain to write, but just sit down and make yourself do it.”
“I was thinking that you would write it for me,” Saran said slyly.
“Ha! Think again, sweetie. My English essay days are long past.”
“But it’ll be easy for you since you’re a professional writer.” She flashed a triumphant smile. “Brick Lawson.” Rand gasped. “You—you know?” he managed to choke. “Since the night of the Merlton Spring Sing,” she said proudly. “I got bored in the kitchen with Grandma while you and Jamie were necking in the other room so I went exploring. I found your office with your computer and all that Brick Lawson stuff.” She tilted her head and studied him, her dark eyes intent. “What I couldn’t figure out was why you didn’t tell Jamie. But since you didn’t, I didn’t say anything, either.”
“You figured you’d hang on to the information until the most opportune moment for blackmail presented itself,” Rand surmised caustically. “That’s the deal here, isn’t it, Saran? If I write your paper, you won’t tell Jamie about Brick Lawson.”
Saran shrugged. “1 wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t really desperate. But I am. And I promise I’ll never breathe a word about you being Brick Lawson,” she added, smiling sweetly. “Although 1 don’t know why you think Jamie would mind. She loves books, and you write them. It’s a perfect match.” “She doesn’t like the kind of books I write, and I’ve waited so damn long to tell her that now it’s nearly impossible. She’ll accuse me of lying to her and—”
“Uh-oh,” Saran cut in. “Lies freak Jamie out. She’s, like, into the truth.”
“I’m well aware of that.” Rand scowled at her. “Oh, hell, I suppose this is exactly what I deserve. I bribed you, an impressionable kid, I haven’t leveled with Jamie ... blackmail is a natural consequence of all that dishonesty.”
“You’ll probably have to tell her sometime,” said Saran, sighing. “But I hope it won’t be now.”
“Now isn’t the right time,” Rand muttered. If writing that odious paper bought him a little more time, so be it. “I’ll tell her eventually, but not until... not until—”
“Not until when?” Saran asked curiously.
“That’s none of your business, you conniving little criminal. I’ll do the damn paper, and you keep your mouth shut.”
“Rand, you’re an angel! A livesaver! I’ll be grateful to you forever and ever.” Saran gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek, then dashed back to the car. “Have a good time tonight,” she called gaily as she pulled out of the drive.
Rand tried not to snarl; he tried to think positively. After all, he could still wait for the ideal moment to break the Brick Lawson news to Jamie. He hadn’t read Dickens in years; maybe he’d gain some fresh insights from the old English superstar for use in his own writing. And last but definitely not least, scheming little Saran would pass English, graduate from high school and leave Merlton—he hoped forever!
On that happy note, he left to pick up Jamie.
It was Memorial Day weekend, the weather was warm and springlike, and Rand had been commissioned to help Jamie plant some flowers in the beds in front of the Saraceni house. He’d never planted anything before, but Jamie said putting in flowers over Memorial Day weekend was a longtime tradition for her and Cassie and their mother. The Saraceni family had many traditions, and he rather liked that. He contrasted them to his own family, that group of disparate persons who shared nothing but the tiresome obligations of old money.
Families. Chapter four in the courtship book recommended meeting and getting to know each other’s families, if it was possible. Rand certainly knew the Saracenis from weeks of spending time with them, but Jamie had yet to meet another Marshall.
He frowned. Yesterday in the mail he’d received an invitation from his parents to attend the tenth anniversary party they were giving for his brother, Dixon, and Dix’s wife, Taylor Ann, set for the last weekend in June. Just for laughs, he’d brought along the formal engraved invitation, with nary a personal word on it, to show to Jamie. It contrasted dramatically with the latest Saraceni invitation, a warm, verbal one from Jamie’s Aunt Rita to “come on over for Uncle Bob’s birthday and bring as many friends as you want.”
“Nat
urally, I’m not going to Dix and Taylor Ann’s party,” Rand told Jamie as he took a long swallow from the glass of iced tea he held.
They were taking a break from planting begonias, sitting together on the bench swing that hung from the roof of the small screened-in porch in back of the house.
Jamie studied the invitation, running her fingertip over the raised letters. “Why not?”
“Being around my brother is coma-inducing, and his wife is an insufferable snob. Actually, I’ll be doing them all a favor if I don’t show up, especially my parents. Having me around will ruin the party for them. We haven’t seen each other in three years, and it’s better that way for all concerned.”
“But it’s wonderful, having you around,” Jamie said loyally. Her eyes were troubled. “This is the most you’ve ever talked about your family, Rand. I’d figured from the little you said about them that you weren’t close, but you’re actually—” she paused, searching for the right word “— estranged from them, aren’t you?”
“I always have been, even when we lived together. My brother is the son of my parents’ dreams, and as far as they’re concerned, I turned out to be the son from hell. They’ve disapproved of me since I was a kid, but after I graduated from college and refused to lead the life they’d mapped out for me—you know, a window-dressing job on the board of the family foundation, the round of parties and hunts, wintering in Palm Beach—yes, winter is used as a verb in their circles—they made it very plain that I had no place among the Marshalls.”
He could tell by Jamie’s stunned expression that she couldn’t comprehend it. It was no wonder. No Saraceni cut another Saraceni loose, no matter what. “Rand, are you sure they feel this way? Sometimes misunderstandings are blown out of proportion and each side—”
“It’s sweet of you to want to play family therapist, honey, but it won’t work in this case. My folks consider me an ungrateful, disloyal miscreant because I’ve always wanted to live my life differently. To them, the idea of my work is—” “But you don’t work.” She stared at him. “Do you?”
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