The Game Is Played

by Joan Hohl

  Helen went rigid, fingers curling lightly around the bedcovers. The self-truth was a shocking jolt her stiffened body tried to reject. Face it, Dr. Cassidy, she told herself derisively, you’re as human and vulnerable as the next woman. You like the breathlessness that intent, blue gaze causes. You like the feeling of weakness the touch of his hand on your body induces. You like the crazy riot of sensations his hungry mouth generates. For the first time in over ten years you have a physical need for a man. But why this particular man?

  Helen’s mind darted in different directions in an effort to avoid answering her own question. It was quite true she’d felt no urges of a sexual nature since the night of Carl’s assault. Filled with disgust, contempt, she had, for many months, withdrawn from any kind of personal contact with the opposite sex. As time passed and circumstances demanded she have some contact with men, the contempt lessened, and in a few cases was replaced by respect and admiration, but that was all. It was as if the part of her brain that controlled her emotional responses had closed shop—permanently. With the rest of her mind she could evaluate a man’s potential and his accomplishments, and applaud them, but always as a contemporary, never, ever, as an interesting male.

  Now, suddenly, this one man, this younger man, was arousing all kinds of needs and wants inside her.

  “No, please.” It was a whispered cry into the room’s darkness. The stiffness drained out of her body, replaced by a longing ache that made what she’d felt for Carl, before that night, seem mild and insipid by comparison.

  Head moving from side to side on the pillow, Helen’s eyes closed slowly. After all these years the emotional control center in her brain was alert and functioning and sending out signals she could not deny. She wanted this man. She needed this man. Damn it to hell, she thought furiously, I’m in love with him.

  No! I can’t be, her reason rebelled. I don’t even know him and I never even found out what it is, exactly, he does. Then, irrelevantly, he’s not even in the medical profession. The irrationality of her thoughts struck her, and aloud she moaned, “He is right, I am nuts.”

  The bedcovers twisted around her squirming body as she fought against the insidious languor thoughts of him had produced. I am not in love, she told herself firmly. Of course I’m not. This—this craziness is just that: physical craziness. Marsh is a good-looking—no, handsome— man. He has charm, and money, in abundance, and face it, he is downright sexy. His eyes alone had the power to set off a chain reaction of sensations inside a woman. And, she rationalized, I can surely handle my own physical attraction to him. I must. I cannot, I will not, expose myself to that kind of pain again. I’m a mature woman, not a silly young girl. And I certainly will not be an object of any man’s pleasure. Most especially a young man.

  Helen winced. Why, when all the mature, sophisticated men she’d met had left her cold, did she react so strongly to him? His assertion that they were fated to come together she dismissed as nonsense. She was a physician. She was aware, if not fully understanding, of the age-old mystery of one person’s chemistry striking sparks off of another. But it was totally incomprehensible to her why his was the only chemistry able to ignite hers, after all this time. She would not have it. She had worked too hard to allow a man, probably going through a phase in which he was attracted to older women, to disrupt her life.

  For a long time Helen’s thoughts ran on in the same vein, always coming back to the same conclusion. Since she could not order him to stay away—he paid no attention to her when she did—she’d go along with him, keeping him at arm’s length, until the phase, or attraction, wore itself out.

  Finally the plaguing ache left her body and she relaxed, grew drowsy. Her last coherent thought was he could not hurt her if she simply refused to allow herself to be hurt.

  She held on to that thought all through office hours the next day, whenever Marsh invaded her mind. She was in the apartment not fifteen minutes when the phone rang. Going to the wall phone in the kitchen, Helen glanced at the clock, thinking it must be her service as Marsh was not due to call for a half hour.

  “Dr. Cassidy.” She spoke briskly into the receiver.

  “I don’t want to speak to Dr. Cassidy,” the low voice taunted. “I want to speak to Helen. Is she there?”

  Steeling herself against the warmth the sound of his voice sent racing through her body, Helen asked coolly, “Is there a difference?”

  His soft laughter sent a shiver after the warmth. “A very big difference,” he stated firmly. “Dr. Cassidy is a machine, Helen is a woman.”

  Stung by his jibe, surprised at the swift shaft of pain it caused, Helen murmured, “That wasn’t very nice, Marsh.”

  “When did I ever say I was nice?” he mocked. “Oh, I have my moments, but not with you. I don’t want to be nice to you. What I want to do is shake some sense into your rigid mind. But not tonight. I’ll have to pass on that pleasure for the rest of the week.” He paused and his tone took on an edge Helen didn’t understand. “I’m going out of town for the rest of the week. I must make a circuit of several of my clients, clear up a few things.” Now he sounded annoyed, as if angry at the claim to his time. ‘The damned incompetence of some bookkeepers today is not to be believed.” Again he paused, and his tone had a controlled, frustrated ring. “I’ll be back sometime Friday. I’ll call you.”

  “All right, Marsh.” Helen’s calm reply gave away none of the confusion she was feeling. After wishing him a safe trip and hanging up the receiver, Helen moved around the kitchen, getting herself something to eat, her mind nagging at his tone.

  Why had he been so annoyed? she wondered with a vague twinge of unease. After forcing down a cold sliced roast beef sandwich and a small salad, she brewed a pot of herb tea and carried it into the living room. As she sipped the hot, green liquid Helen speculated on the reason for his anger. Was it really caused by the need to visit clients or was it connected in some way with her?

  Cup in hand, Helen moved restlessly around the tastefully decorated room in a vain attempt to escape her thoughts. It didn’t work. Her thoughts pursued her as she paced back and forth, into the kitchen to wash up her few dishes. He had been angry the night before. Angry and impatient and very likely frustrated with his failure at getting her into bed with him.

  A shudder rippled through her body and she stood un-moving at the sink, the towel she’d been drying her hands on hanging forgotten in her fingers. Had he thought she’d be an easy conquest? Her behavior the previous Thursday may have led him to believe so. Did he think, like many other people, that an unmarried woman in her mid-thirties was so desperate for male companionship that she’d hop into bed with almost any male?

  Wincing, Helen tossed aside the towel and went back to pacing the living room. Unlike most women, reaching thirty, thirty-five, had not bothered her. Why should it? She was performing at the peak of her efficiency and she knew it. She lived well and had a comfortable sum of money in the bank. Her life was evolving as planned. What more could she possibly ask for? Up until now her answer to that would have been an emphatic nothing. But now the answer that shouted in her mind shook her with its intensity.

  She wanted Marsh. She wanted the feel of his mouth on hers, his arms tight around her, his body, hard and urgent, leaving her in no doubt that he wanted her as badly.

  Becoming tired, yet unable to sit still, Helen continued to pace in a nervous, jerky manner that in itself was alien to her usual smooth movements. She did not feel like herself. She wasn’t even sure what she did feel like. She didn’t like it, but wasn’t quite sure what to do about it.

  Maybe, she decided clinically as she prepared for bed, she should have an affair with him, get him out of her system let him get her out of his. She toyed with the idea a moment, then rejected it. No, she could not do that, for she felt positive that in an encounter or affair like that she would end up wounded if not crushed. While he, male-like, would blithely walk away, one Helen Cassidy forgotten, looking for new battlefields to conquer.
No! She wasn’t quite sure how she’d handle the situation, but she felt positive that if she played along with him, let him have it all his way, she’d be the one left torn and bleeding on this particular battlefield.

  So ran her thoughts for the remainder of the week, and by the time her alarm rang on Friday morning she was thoroughly sick of them. Although it was an extremely busy week, with several deliveries and her office packed with patients, it had seemed like an endless one.

  By the time her last patient left on Friday afternoon, Helen decided she’d been a fool to give the matter so much consideration. Without Marsh’s proximity she had reached the point of observing the whole affair objectively and came to the conclusion that she was mountain climbing over molehills.

  Her sense of balance restored, Helen went home with the conviction that she could handle one Marshall Kirk with one hand tied behind her back. Her right hand at that.

  She would, she thought smugly, do exactly as Marsh had recommended: play it cool. She would go with him to have dinner with Moe and his wife and start the evening with a flat denial of Marsh’s assertions of the previous Sunday.

  Helen waited for his call until after midnight, her hard-fought balance slipping away as each hour died a slow death. And when, in the small hours, she did finally drift into an uneasy sleep, she felt actually bruised, as if she’d been beaten, and her pillow knew an unfamiliar dampness.

  Her phone rang before her alarm, and as she had two patients due at any time, Helen snatched up the receiver on the second ring.

  “Good morning, love, did I wake you?”

  Marsh’s soft voice sent an anticipatory shiver through Helen’s body, and she had to clutch the receiver to keep from dropping it. How, she wondered, did he manage to sound so seductive at this hour of the morning.

  “Yes.” And why did she have to sound so breathless and sleepy?

  “I could tell,” he purred sexily. “You sound warm and cuddly and”—he paused—”ready, and I wish like hell that I was there right now.”

  Helen’s mouth went dry, and she placed her hand over the receiver as if afraid he could actually see her wet her lips.

  “No comeback?” Marsh taunted softly. “No cutting reply? You must still be half asleep.” He laughed low in his throat. “Or is it the other? Are you all warm ... and so forth?”

  The jarring noise of her alarm broke the spell his sensuous voice had caught her up in. So much for firm resolutions and objective reasoning, Helen thought wryly, her finger silencing the alarm’s persistent ring.

  “Actually.” How had she achieved that detached tone? “I was confused for a moment as to who it was. It’s been so long since I heard your voice.” A gentle, but >effective, reminder that he’d said he’d call the night before.

  His laughter appreciated the thrust. “You lie so convincingly, darling. Is it one of your habits?” His laughter deepened at the half gasp her covering hand was not fast enough to blank out entirely. “I know I said I’d call you last night but it was very late when I got in and I didn’t want to disturb you—or did I manage to do that anyway?”

  The soft insinuation brought a sparkle of anger, self-directed, to Helen’s now-wide-awake hazel eyes. Biting back the few choice names she would have found much pleasure in calling him at this safe distance, she snapped waspishly, “Marsh, I have to go to work. Did you call for a reason or just to annoy me?”

  “Ah-ha, she’s awake now, and the transformation has been made. There speaks the mechanical Dr. Cassidy.”

  “Marsh, have you been up all night?” Helen enunciated with exaggerated patience. “You sound somewhat light-headed.”

  “It’s an affliction that attacks the minds of men when they’re in love,” Marsh replied seriously. Then he added wickedly, “And have the hots.”

  “Not men,” she retaliated harshly. “Callow youths.”

  “Mind your tongue, Helen.” The bantering tone was gone, replaced by steel-edged anger.

  “Marsh, it’s after seven thirty.” Helen retreated quickly. “I have to get ready for work. What, exactly, did you call for?”

  “To find out what your early-morning voice sounds like,” he shot back smoothly. “And to tell you I’ll pick you up at seven.”

  “All right, now I must go.”

  “And, Helen? Give me a break and let your hair down. Bye, love.”

  Fuming, Helen stood several seconds, listening to the dial tone before replacing the receiver, unsure if he had meant her to take his request literally or figuratively.

  The morning went surprisingly well and before one thirty Helen found herself free for the day. About to leave the office, she turned back, picked up her phone, and called the hairdresser who occasionally cut and styled her hair. Yes, the young woman told her, if Helen could come right in, she could work her in.

  When she let herself into her apartment several hours later, Helen’s hair had been shampooed, shaped, and blown dry. It lay in soft curls and waves around her face and against her shoulders.

  Later, as she was putting the finishing touches to her makeup, Helen paused to study the unfamiliar hairstyle. At first, the change being so radical from her usual smoothed-back neatness, Helen had not been sure if she liked it. But now, after living with it for some hours, she had to admit that the loose curls and waves framing her face softened the stubborn line of her chin, the curve of her cheek. Was she, perhaps, past the age for such a careless style? Her hazel eyes sharpened, searched thoroughly, but the thick mane, not quite brown, yet not quite blond, revealed not a sign of gray. Well, maybe for the weekends, the rare evening out, she finally decided. But never, never for the office, the hospital. The one thing she didn’t want while she was working was to appear, in any way, softened or vulnerable. At one minute to seven Helen stepped out of the elevator into the apartment building’s small lobby and came face to face with Marsh. Without speaking, she watched his eyes widen, flicker with admiration and approval as they went over her hair, her face, then move down to the muted red of her wool coat. She could actually feel the touch of that blue gaze as it slowly traveled the length of her slim, sheer nylon-clad legs to her narrow feet, not at all covered by the few thin straps of her narrow-heeled sandals. When he raised his eyes to hers, Helen felt her heartbeat slow down then speed up into an alarmingly rapid thud. The expression in his eyes, on his strong, handsome face, was so blatantly sensual, all the moisture evaporated from her mouth and throat.

  “You are one beautiful woman.” His voice was very low, yet each word was clear, distinct. “Why in the hell do you ever pull your hair back off your face?”

  Helen stared at her own reflection in his eyes, suddenly filled with an overwhelming desire to lose herself in their blue depths. Her lips parted, the tip of her tongue skimming over them wetly, but no words came. She heard him draw in his breath sharply, saw him lift his hands, take a step toward her before he brought himself up abruptly, a rueful smile twisting his lips.

  “We had better get out of here, love,” he murmured hoarsely, “before I do something that would very likely delight the people in this lobby but embarrass you.”

  With that he stepped beside her, grasped her elbow, and hurried her toward the front entrance. It was only then that Helen became aware of the group of people in the lobby, laughing and talking about the evening ahead, calling a greeting to another couple as they came in the door and joined the group.

  As they passed the group several pairs of eyes turned in their direction, and Helen could not help but see the sharp looks of interest and appreciation. Avid female glances took in Marsh’s imposing figure; warm male eyes ran over her own.

  With a jolt Helen realized that up until that point she and Marsh had been unobserved and that the eternity that had seemed to pass while she’d stared into his eyes had, in actuality, lasted only a few brief seconds.

  Oddly shaken, Helen walked beside him in silence to the car, slid obediently onto the seat as he held the door. Her mind numb, refusing to delve for any
deep meaning in the incident, Helen stared through the windshield as Marsh slid behind the wheel, started the engine, and drove away from the parking lot.

  When the stunned sensation left her, Helen stole a glance at Marsh’s set profile. Her glance froze and held for long seconds before, with a smothered gasp, she forced her eyes back to the windshield. But the windshield couldn’t hold her gaze, and slowly, almost against her will, her eyes crept back to fasten hungrily on his face. She had not realized how very much she’d missed him. In something very close to pain her eyes devoured the sight of him, soaked the image of him into her mind, her senses.

  “Stop it, Helen.”

  Helen blinked at the raw harshness of his voice, stammered, “W—what?”

  “You know damn well what,” he rasped. “I can feel your eyes on me. We have a date with Moe and Jeanette, but if you don’t look away, I’m going to say the hell with it, turn the car around, and take you to my place.”

  “Marsh—I—” Helen began tremulously.

  “I mean it, Helen.” He cut across her words roughly. “The way I feel right this minute, I could park this car at the first empty spot I find and make love to you and not give a damn if we drew an audience.”

  A shiver of excited anticipation slid down Helen’s spine, then shocked at her reaction to his threat, she practically jumped away from him and glued her eyes to the side window.

  “That’s better.” His tone had smoothed out and it now held amusement. Helen gritted her teeth and a few moments later greeted with a sigh of relief the bright red neon sign that spelled out the name EMILIO’S.

  There was an awkward stiffness between them as they left the car and walked to the restaurant, but the awkwardness soon dissolved when exposed to the sincere warmth of Moe’s greeting. With unrestrained pride Moe drew his wife forward to introduce her to Helen.

  At a quick, cursory glance Jeanette may have appeared simply pretty. But, as Helen’s glance was neither quick nor cursory, she was struck by the beauty of Jeanette’s mass of short, shiny black curls, her wide, dark brown eyes, which somehow managed to look both femininely soft and sharply intelligent at the same time.