The Invitation

by Jude Deveraux

  All too soon he rinsed her hair for the second time, wrapped a towel about her head, making her feel like a movie star, and stood her upright.

  “I’m going to fill the tub while you undress and put on your robe.”

  With that, he turned his back to her and turned on the tub taps. After only seconds of hesitation, Jackie stripped off her filthy, stiff clothes, took her robe from the hook on the back of the door, and put it on. When William looked back at her, he had the tub full of steamy hot water with a five-inch-thick layer of foamy bubbles on top. If she plunged under that thick, opaque layer, she’d be completely hidden from sight.

  “I’m going to get some more towels; you climb into the tub. And be careful you don’t get your bandage wet.” Before he left, he turned out the light so the only illumination in the room was through the glass transom into the bedroom.

  After he left the room, she removed her robe and stepped into the hot, hot water. There was nothing more luxurious than a tub full to the brim of steamy water, topped by soft, fragrant bubbles. Rarely in her life had she allowed herself the pleasure of a long soak in a tub. Rarely did she have the time, but, more important, she seldom did things of such a decadent, purely sensual nature for herself. One could get clean in a shower, so why bother with all the time and waste of water and soap?

  Closing her eyes, she let the water soak through her skin, all the way into her bones. The bubble bath had been a gift from Terri two Christmases ago. Terri had the idea that a single woman did such delicious things as lounge about in a tub of hot water, but Jackie had never opened the jar. It smelled like a basket of freshly picked apricots warming in the sun, sweet and rich and luscious.

  She was two-thirds asleep when William quietly opened the door to check on her. Turning her head as it rested on the back of the tub, she smiled at him. He smiled back and closed the door.

  She must have been asleep when he reentered the room half an hour later and began to wash her face. When she opened her mouth to object, he said, “Don’t even think of protesting,” so she leaned back and closed her eyes. She was too sleepy, too relaxed, to think of anything. He washed her blood-encrusted face and neck, then her unbandaged left arm and hand. When he moved to the end of the tub, seated himself on the rim, pulled one of her feet out of the water and began a soapy massage of her foot, the feeling was too heavenly to consider resisting.

  It was nearly dark in the bathroom and the gentle foot massage along with the hot water, the smell of the bubble bath, combined with the pill, made Jackie feel quite wonderful. It sometimes seemed that she had been working all her life and she’d never taken time to enjoy anything. There had always been goals to achieve and, if nothing else, the responsibility of putting bread on the table.

  When William stopped massaging, she smiled at him, so handsome in the golden light that floated in from the bedroom.

  “Thank you,” she whispered as he moved toward the towel rack to take a fluffy white towel and hold it out for her.

  “Get out and I’ll dry you off.”

  As he said this, he turned his head to one side and closed his eyes. Reluctantly leaving the tub, Jackie stepped out, soap still clinging to her skin, and allowed him to wrap her in the towel. Her arms were pinned to her sides inside the towel and it was perfectly natural that his arms should go around her as he rubbed the ends of the towel up and down her back. In spite of her relaxed state, she shivered.

  “Cold?”

  “No,” she whispered and found herself putting her head on his shoulder.

  Pulling away from her, he lifted her chin with his fingertips. “You are exhausted.” At that he swept her into his arms and carried her into the bedroom where he stood her beside the bed and handed her a pair of pink pajamas. “Put them on. I’d help you, but you’d remember it in the morning and hate me.”

  That made her laugh, and while he busied himself with putting all her cosmetics on top of the mirrored bureau in precise military order, she slipped into the pajamas, then gratefully got into the bed.

  “Better,” he said as he tucked the covers about her chin.

  “Did you learn how to bathe people and tuck them in from your baby-sitter?” she teased.

  William stopped tucking and gave her a very stern look. “My baby-sitter’s idea of bathing children was to yell ‘Fire’ and have the fire department hose them down.”

  Jackie giggled. “That’s not true.”

  “Word of honor. And she never tucked us into bed. All she did was say ‘Bed!’ and by golly, we went. If one of us dared to disobey her, she’d tie our feet together and dangle us over the balcony until we reconsidered our stand on going to bed.”

  “That’s not true either.”

  “It is! I swear it.”

  “There must have been something good about your baby-sitter. She couldn’t have been a complete monster.”

  “Mmmm, yes. She was unique. She had no idea what a schedule was, so when we were with her we could eat cereal for dinner and steak for breakfast. And she never tried to force us to be what we weren’t.”

  “Oh?” Jackie said encouragingly.

  “Sometimes parents have very odd ideas about their children. They think they should all be alike. They seem to think there is an ideal child, and they try to make them all like that ideal. If a child doesn’t like sports, parents say, ‘You should get out and play football.’ If the kid likes to play games outside, parents say, ‘Why don’t you ever sit down and read a book?’ It seems that whatever kind of a child you are, someone wants you to be different.”

  “But your baby-sitter wasn’t like that?”

  “No, she wasn’t. She liked or disliked people for what they were. She didn’t try to change them.”

  Jackie found this conversation extraordinarily interesting and very much wanted to continue it, but she was falling asleep. “She didn’t try to change you?” she whispered, her eyes closed.

  “No. She didn’t complain that I was too…whatever. She didn’t complain that I wasn’t like the other kids, because she was like no one else, either, and she understood what it was like to be different.”

  “A misfit. You were both misfits.” Her voice was barely audible.

  “No, we were both unique.” Leaning forward, he kissed her forehead. “Now go to sleep and maybe the Good Fairy will bring you what you most want during the night.”

  She smiled at that and was still smiling when he turned out the light and left the room.

  Chapter Seven

  When Jackie awoke the next morning she was immediately aware of a throbbing in her right hand and a spectacularly empty stomach. Too weak and too lethargic at first to get out of bed, she slowly became aware of a dull thudding noise coming from the direction of the kitchen. Curiosity won over her lethargy, and, too, there was a smell she couldn’t identify coming from the kitchen: chicken? herbs? freshly baked bread? and something tangy, like hot apple cider. She got up and followed where her nose led.

  William was just outside the kitchen, standing on the little flagstone pavement, straddling her unhinged screen door, which he was shaving with a small hand plane. The sun came in through the bright white lace curtains of the kitchen, and the round pine table was loaded with bowls of food covered with weighted cloths.

  For a while she watched him, his strong back straining against a pale blue cotton shirt that was frayed at the cuffs. His strong, lean hands moved the plane along the edge of the door in what was almost a caressing motion.

  Smoothing her hair with her hands, Jackie resisted the temptation to go back to the bathroom and spend an hour or so on her face and hair, maybe do her nails too. She forced herself to stay where she was. She wasn’t going to give in to silly female ploys. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  Turning, he smiled at her, a smile as bright as the sunshine. “Fixing a few things.” He leaned the door against the side of the house and came toward her. “Let me look at my patient.” Tenderly he put both his hands on her head and turned her
face toward the light.

  “My hand was hurt, not my face.”

  “You can tell a great deal from looking into a person’s eyes.”

  “Nearsightedness? How much the person had to drink the night before? That sort of thing?”

  “In your case, no. The whites of your eyes are clear this morning, whereas last night they were gray with pain and fatigue. Are you hungry?”

  “Famished.”

  “I thought so. Have a seat and I’ll get you a plate.”

  She allowed him to wait on her. It was so pleasant being waited on by a man that she didn’t protest, didn’t say that he was her guest and that she should be waiting on him. This morning she didn’t feel as though he were her guest. This morning she felt…She didn’t want to look too deep into how she felt.

  Maybe it was the aftereffects of the pain pill or of the pain itself, but this morning she wasn’t as nervous as she usually was around him. Usually she felt as though she had to run away from William, that her life depended upon getting away from him, but this morning the world seemed kind of fuzzy and pretty, as though she were seeing it through foggy glasses.

  She sat quietly while he poured steaming coffee for her and didn’t complain when he loaded it with both sugar and milk—coffee for a child, she thought, but she knew that today it would taste good.

  “Breakfast or lunch?” he asked.

  A quick glance at the clock told her that it was nearly one o’clock in the afternoon and that she had slept nearly fourteen hours. She doubted if she’d ever before in her life slept that long.

  “Lunch,” she answered, then watched as he piled her plate high with a generous scoop from an enormous chicken pot pie. Creamy gravy oozed over chicken, carrots, and peas. There was coleslaw flavored with fennel, and bread still warm from the oven. Hot apple cider filled a stoneware mug.

  “Did you cook this?” she asked in disbelief.

  He laughed. “Not quite. Compliments of my family’s cook. One of my brothers drove it out here just an hour ago.”

  She was too busy eating to comment, ignoring the fact that William was staring at her, watching her with a dreamy smile on his face.

  “Jackie, how long has it been since you took a vacation? A real vacation? No planes, nothing that even resembles planes.”

  “I’ve never wanted such a time.” She smiled at him over her half-empty plate of food. “What about you? When was your last vacation?”

  “Exactly the same time as yours.”

  They laughed together.

  “Okay,” he said, “I am the Red King and—”

  “Who?”

  “The Red King, as opposed to Alice’s Red Queen.”

  “I see.”

  “Whatever. I declare this a holiday. No setting up books, no planning the future, no—”

  “No talk of the Taggie?” she prompted.

  “No talk of the Taggie. Now, what exactly do people do on a holiday?” He looked genuinely puzzled.

  “Let’s see…. Spend more money than they can afford. Sleep in unfamiliar, uncomfortable places. Eat strange food that makes them sick. Get up at four A.M. and spend sixteen hours wandering around looking at things too big, too ancient, or too something-or-other to comprehend, all the while wanting nothing more than a good night’s sleep at home in their own bed.”

  “Sounds great, doesn’t it?”

  “Divine.”

  “Anyplace you want to go?”

  “You mean a place far away and exotic?”

  “Sure.”

  She grinned. “How about if we walk up to one of the old mining towns and see if we can find anything interesting? Maybe we’ll find silver nuggets.”

  “Sounds exotic enough for me. Do you think you’re up to it?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “I’d like to get outside into the sunshine.” In spite of her hurt hand, she felt good. She felt lazy and peaceful, not anxious or restless as she usually did. Maybe it was the loss of blood from yesterday; maybe that was why she didn’t feel like avoiding William’s company today. Or maybe it was that she felt a bit sorry for herself, like when you’re on a diet and you make excuses for giving yourself a treat. You tell yourself that you deserve this because you sneezed and you might be coming down with the flu and it’s not good to starve yourself if you’re ill. So you eat a five-scoop ice cream sundae.

  Now she felt as though there were special circumstances between her and William. Yesterday he had rescued her, maybe even saved her life by keeping her from bleeding to death. So how could she continue her demand that he leave her house today? She’d have to be polite and nice to him, and tomorrow she’d resume her vigilance and make him leave. But for today, she’d be nice to him. And maybe in being nice to William, she would also be nice to herself.

  “If you’ve finished eating everything on the table, let’s get you dressed and go.”

  “I can dress myself,” she said sarcastically.

  At that he reached across the table and unbuttoned the top two buttons on her pajama top. “Now you button them back up,” he said.

  Jackie made an attempt with the buttons, but pain shot through her hand when she tried to move it. William just sat still, a smug look on his face as she tried to show him that she could fasten the buttons with her left hand. After several frustrating minutes, she looked up and stuck her tongue out at him. He could be such a brat at times. “I’ll bet that you’ve made yourself completely at home while I was asleep,” she said, trying to save her dignity. “What else have you taken liberties with besides my kitchen door?”

  He kept smiling. “I tidied a few things.”

  At that Jackie got up from the table and opened kitchen drawers. She had been so proud of moving into her pretty house, and she had given a great deal of thought to where she wanted to put things. She had put cooking utensils in a drawer near the stove. Things that she used near the sink were placed near the sink. She’d put the equipment she used most often near the front of the drawers and the things like an egg slicer way to the back.

  William had rearranged everything in her drawers. Where there had once been a pleasant, creative jumble, now every utensil was in military order. All of the spoons from everyplace in the kitchen were now in one drawer, lined up perfectly by size and material. Wooden spoons were together, then enameled, then stainless steel. Never mind that she cooked with some of the spoons, dyed socks with one, and used one to clean hair out of the drains. They were all together now. The same with the knives: her roofing knife was next to her bread knife. The pots of plants on her windowsill were arranged by size so they looked like a set of Russian dolls. He had placed a scented geranium next to the herbs so she’d have to read the labels rather than just reach for a stalk of basil.

  His presumption was annoying at the least, and it would take hours to re-sort her kitchen drawers. But for now she’d do the best she could to let him know what she thought of his arrogant male assumption that he knew more about organization than she did—and that he had a right to rearrange her personal property.

  She gave him a beautiful smile. Then, one by one, she opened the drawers and ran her uninjured hand through the too-orderly contents, jumbling them thoroughly.

  At the third drawer, William jumped up from the table, frowning. “You’re doing this out of defiance, but it makes much more sense to have an organized kitchen, an organized life, for that matter. The way I have everything, you could find things if you were blind.”

  “But I’m not blind, am I?”

  She opened drawer number four, but William caught her hand. “Stop that.” When she tried to pull her hand away he held it and pulled her against him.

  “There is no excuse for disorganization!” William snapped and Jackie began to laugh, and her laughter made him smile. “I’m not going to let you do that,” he said. “Do you have any idea how long it took me to sort everything in those drawers?”

  “Less time than it took me to put them in order in the first place.” Within seconds t
heir disagreement turned into a playful tug-of-war, with William pulling her hand back every time she reached for a drawer knob.

  “You’re an idiot, you know that?” she said, laughing, pulling against him. “This is a stupid idea of organization. I put things where I use them.”

  “Ha! You may have started out that way, but now you just put things wherever you happen to be standing. Ninety-nine percent of this stuff was in one drawer, the drawer closest to the sink where you take them out of the dish rack. Laziness is your organizer.”

  So what if there was more than a little truth to his words? It was dreadful when people got to know you well enough to see your faults. It was so much better before they knew you well and thought you were perfect.

  “Let me go,” she said, wriggling against him. Then somehow she was fully in his arms, facing him, her arms pinned between them.

  “I like this,” he said, beginning to nuzzle her neck. “You smell good, like sleepy perfume.”

  “Like what?”

  William was kissing her neck. His hands were firmly on her back, pressing against the thin fabric of her robe and pajamas.

  “I…I don’t think you should do that.” Her head was back and her eyes closed. She should stop him, she thought. But it was the ol’ ice cream subterfuge. How could she stop a fully grown man when she was so weak from loss of blood? She’d stop him when she felt better.

  “Jackie, you are so beautiful. Do you have any idea what you look like in the morning?”

  “Like I slept in the barn?”

  “Yes.” His lips were on her earlobe now. “You look warm and soft and sweet, so very sweet. Your voice is a little husky, and your eyes are only half open.” His hands slid down her back to the curve of her buttocks, moving no farther, just resting firmly on that curvaceous area, as his lips crept to the center of her throat.

  “William, I, ah, I think I’d better get, ah, dressed.”

  “Sure,” he said, and stepped away from her so quickly she staggered back against the sink, where she caught herself with her good hand. He walked toward the doorway of the kitchen and stood there a moment, his back to her. She could see his shoulders moving as he took one deep breath after another as though to calm himself.