Horizons

by Catherine Hart

  She chortled, tugging at the dark fur on his chest. “Aren’t you always?” she joked. “From the beginning it’s seemed to me you’ve had more than the normal quota of arms, not to mention Russian hands and Roman fingers.”

  “It’s the only way I can combat that glib tongue of yours,” he countered, scooping her off the bed and heading toward the spa. He bent his head to lap at her bare breast. “Ah, I have the twins to thank for these. They were nice before, but now they’re spectacular. Lady, you really can fill out a sarong!”

  Minutes later, they were submerged up to their necks in soothing, swirling water, letting the jets pulsate pleasantly against their bodies. Zach tugged Kelly onto his lap. “Put your arms around my neck,” he instructed. “I want to try something. It’s occurred to me that these jets are like liquid vibrators. I want to see if they have the same affect.”

  “Zach! You’re incorrigible!” As he twisted her around, aiming for a more advantageous angle, she objected weakly, “Are you deliberately trying to drown me?” Followed by, “Holy Moses, Zach! I’m not double-jointed.” Then, on a sharply indrawn hiss, “Oh, my! Oh, God! Oh, Zach!”

  Things were just getting really interesting when the tub-side phone rang. “Let it ring,” Zach murmured past the nipple now clasped lightly between his teeth.

  Kelly was already fumbling for the connect button. “I can’t. It might be something important.”

  It was, in an oblique sort of way. Alita’s voice came over the speaker phone. “Gavin and I were just talking over old times, and I suddenly remembered something strange I forgot to tell you and Zach. Last month, when I was in LA. promoting the movie, I saw a man who reminded me very strongly of Earl, but this guy had a beard. I only caught a quick glimpse of him through the limousine window, but it was enough to give me the willies.”

  “It couldn’t have been him, Alita,” Zach stated flatly. “He’s dead.”

  “It was probably just someone who looked a lot like him,” Kelly put in.

  “Maybe, but one thing really struck me odd. He only had one arm. The other one was missing from the elbow down. Like maybe he’d lost it in an accident of some sort— or had it bitten off by a shark. Or perhaps even got it ripped off, like Earl might have, struggling to stay aboard the raft in that storm, or if those handcuffs got hung up on something.”

  Kelly’s eyes widened, meeting Zach’s in mutual query. After a moment of thought, Zach said, “Thanks for telling us, Alita, but even if it was Earl, which I seriously doubt, I don’t think any of us have anything to worry about He’d still be a fugitive from the law, and lying low. He’d avoid us, knowing we might recognize him. He certainly wouldn’t want us to know he was still alive.”

  “Oh. I was afraid he might do just the opposite, and come after us because we could identify him,” Alita explained. “It had me really worried.”

  “All for nothing, most likely,” Gavin added, having appropriated Alita’s phone. “I told her she was being silly, but I guess she needed to hear it from someone else, or she wasn’t going to be satisfied. Sorry if we disturbed you folks. See you in the morning.”

  After Gavin had hung up, Kelly said with a shiver, “Lord! That’s enough to give a person the heebie-jeebies, isn’t it? A one-armed man who looks like Earl? Do you suppose it’s remotely possible that it truly is him?”

  “I think you and Alita are getting worked up over nothing. She’s a very high-strung, emotional woman with an overactive imagination.”

  “I wouldn’t criticize someone else’s imagination after the trick you just pulled with those jets, fella,” Kelly rebutted. “Only you, with your twisted, inventive mind, could come up with something that bizarre.”

  Zach shot her a satisfied, if slightly pompous look. “It worked, didn’t it? Or were you just screaming to high heaven to exercise your vocal chords?” He pulled her close, and began nibbling on her ear lobe. “Now, where were we before we were so rudely interrupted?”

  Kelly’s hand delved below the water in search of him. “Right about here, if I recall correctly,” she murmured.

  A short while later, Zach was sheathed within her satin-smooth body, as they created tidal waves in the spa and each other. They’d just reached that rapturous peak, and had begun their tumbling descent, when the telephone rang again.

  “Damn, Sam! Don’t answer it,” he grated though climax-clenched teeth.

  The phone continued to ring, until Kelly could stand it no longer. This time, it was Blair, who blurted excitedly, “The Baldwin sisters!”

  Kelly frowned in confusion. “Pardon me?”

  Zach, whose moment of ecstasy had been cut short, was feeling much less polite. “What the devil are you blathering about, Blair?”

  “Those two old women on ‘The Waltons.’ Remember when we were trying to identify all the characters from the show, and couldn’t think of what they were called? Well, I finally, just this minute, remembered their names. They’re Miss Emily and Miss Mamie Baldwin,” she announced proudly.

  “I’m thrilled for you,” Zach grumbled, as Kelly started to giggle. “We’ll issue you an extra banana at breakfast, as an award. Now, if you don’t mind terrible, I was in the middle of making love to my wife.”

  “Oops! Sorry!” Blair said in an apologetic tone, and promptly disconnected.

  “Hell’s bells!” Zach declared disgustedly, pulling the plug on the phone. “We finally got the kids trained not to come barging in on us, and now we’ve got a bunch of idiot adults bugging the heck out of us! Is there no end to it?”

  From the tree outside the open window, a shrill voice called out, “Hell’s bells! Damn Sam! Awk!”

  Zach sank into the tub with a persecuted groan. “Blast you, Fricassee!”

  Kelly, convulsed with gales of laughter, choked out, “I hear parrots can live to be a hundred years old. How long do you think Frick has got yet?”

  “Only until I can catch his feathered butt and pop it into a stew pot,” Zach proclaimed. “Then—maybe—with immense luck, we’ll finally stand a chance of making love without anyone or anything intruding on our privacy at the most intimate and inopportune moments!”

  “Don’t bet the farm, or the island, on it,” she advised him. “Now’s probably not the best time to announce this, but I think I’m pregnant again—you virile, randy rascal.”

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