“We could just dine in town—” she was saying when Irene grabbed at her sleeve and shook her so hard, she nearly lost hold of the receiver. “Hold on a moment, please.” She turned to her mother impatiently. “What do you want?”
“We’re all leaving for the evening, dear,” Irene said. “If you want a quiet evening in privacy, why don’t you invite him here?”
Quite surprised, and unwilling to believe in such good luck when the evening had already started badly, she turned to Ricky, who shrugged and nodded. She grinned quickly. “Out with Larry?”
He looked pained. “We’re going to see a movie.”
“Of course. How nice.” She relented and turned back to the receiver and the patiently waiting Pierce. “How would you like to come over here for the evening? Mother tells me everyone’s leaving, and if Liz isn’t around, I’m sure I can whip up something that won’t kill you.”
He laughed out loud. “Why do I feel that I’ll be taking my life into my hands? No, I take it back! You’re on. Shall we try for seven then?”
“Be a bit more positive about that,” she admonished with a laugh. “All right. Pierce? Drive carefully.”
“I always do, sweetheart. I always do.”
Not long afterward, her parents left for the party they were attending, and, from experience, she knew they would be quite late. Ricky then left too, after scolding her mightily for her teasing in front of Irene, who obviously hadn’t suspected anything anyway. She was left with the empty house and the knowledge that Pierce would soon be there.
A quick trip to the kitchen found Liz still there, but preparing to leave as no one had been expecting to eat at home. When prevailed upon, she willingly helped Caprice pull together a tasty casserole, along with salad and both soup and dessert, which were left over from two nights earlier and had been frozen for just such an occasion. Caprice then waved her out the door, promised she wouldn’t leave the kitchen a disaster and hurried to set the table before Pierce arrived.
She was just setting the finishing touches, with candles ready and dark and painstakingly set silverware and heavy cloth napkins, when the doorbell rang. She jumped and hurried to answer it, knowing it would be Pierce, and suddenly, inexplicably, so nervous she could barely breathe. As she swung the door slowly open, revealing a wet, dark night, it sank in to her that they had the whole evening ahead of them, alone, with unlimited privacy. It suddenly seemed like a long, long time.
Chapter Eight
Pierce leaned against the doorpost, his dark overcoat hanging carelessly open to reveal the elegant gray suit underneath. His head was cocked to one side as he looked at her up and down, and then smiled slowly. It kicked something to life in her chest, and she stood back wordlessly to let him enter.
He looked quickly around as she shut and locked the door behind him. “Everyone gone already?”
“Yes, we’ve the house to ourselves,” she replied and stepped close behind him with her arms uplifted. “May I take your coat?”
But even as the words were leaving her mouth, he was turning around and putting his hands at her slim waist. “This,” he stated with some satisfaction, “is getting better and better. Did I tell you that you look—” His head bent, and he nuzzled his face into her neck. “—good enough to eat?”
Her arms were up, and she didn’t know what else to do with them, so she put them around his neck and held his head to her. “Mmm,” she murmured, and his mouth began to move on her skin. Her next words came ragged. “No, I don’t think you—mentioned it. Cut that out; I can’t think. Don’t let me forget the casserole, or we won’t be eating.”
He laughed into her shoulder, his chest moving, and whispered, “I’ve already got my meal right here. But you might go hungry.” He let her go and moved away.
Knowing he was regarding her with great interest, she turned her head quickly away and tried to breathe evenly. “I’ll go check on supper,” she said, intending to sound light. It came out as breathless as she felt, and she positively fled as his laugh sounded like a purr of contentment.
In the kitchen, she opened the oven door twice and peered in, without remembering what she saw either time. She cursed viciously and looked a third time as Pierce strolled in, minus his overcoat and suit jacket.
“Looks nice,” he said, peering over her shoulder. He sounded astonished. “Did you make that?”
She let the oven door bang shut and turned to slap him with the oven gloves. “As a matter of fact, yes,” she retorted. Then she grinned. “Liz helped me whip a meal together before she left, since it was such short notice. But, I’ll have you know, I can cook perfectly well without any help!”
He threw up his hands as though truly menaced by her slight figure, and then spoiled it by laughing. “I believe you! No need for bloodshed here; simmer down! Merciful heavens, there’s even soup.” He suddenly grew serious. “I’m sorry about this. Shall we dine out tomorrow, to make up for this evening?”
Her violet eyes turned full on him, going suddenly stricken, and she blinked rapidly a few times before staring down blankly at her hands and the oven gloves she’d forgotten she was still holding. “You’re here, and you’re fine and strong. If you’d been just one car ahead, you’d have been in that accident.” The oven gloves twisted between her fingers. “I don’t think I’m sorry for how the evening turned out.”
His expression swiftly changed, and he bent forward to press a gentle kiss to her forehead. “Most of all, I’m sorry that I worried you,” he said softly. Then, a quick change of subject, he asked, “What can I do to help?”
She looked up and ogled him in amazement. “Do you mean you know how to cook?”
“All right, cut it out!” he expostulated, his grin doing funny things to her. “I’m a bachelor. I know how to put plastic pouches in boiling water for my supper.”
Suddenly as comfortable with him as if he’d been her own brother, she hooted in derision as she opened the refrigerator to pull out the salad. They were soon sitting down to eat, the candles lit and throwing a flickering, intimate light over the two, sending the rest of the room into murky shadow.
The soup tasted as fresh and delicious as it had that first evening, thanks to the freezer, and Caprice settled back to enjoy herself. When a brief silence fell over them, she sent several curious glances his way. The candlelight threw his eyes into shadow, an occasional dark sparkle showing through the dark, slanting veil. When he looked up quickly, the impression vanished and his eyes showed clear and bright.
“What do you do in New York?” she asked, toying with her food. “I mean, I vaguely know what your family’s business is, but I don’t know what you do. Textiles, right?”
“Yes, it’s rather more prominent here in Richmond than in New York, obviously. My end of the business is taking the manufactured cloths and making them into clothes.”
She couldn’t resist the laugh that bubbled out. “I can just see you, sitting cross-legged, needle in mouth, working busily away. No, I know of the Langston Fashions, but what do you do?”
“Well,” he said, leaning back and stretching lazily. “I handle the business, literally. The marketing, the sales projections, the management. I guess you could say I am the management. I’m not really that visible a person in the business. You’d be amazed at how many people associate our models with our clothing. But then, that’s the reason we’re paying them, of course, to be in the public eye.”
She ran her eyes over his figure: lean, elegant as he was always elegant. “You wouldn’t do badly at all in the public eye,” she said then, and turned back to her supper.
“Perhaps.” He leaned his elbows on the table after sitting forward, and laced his fingers together. “But that’s not my style. I prefer to live more quietly. Once you’re exposed to publicity, there’s never an end to it.”
“Mmm. Yes, I see what you mean.” They were finished with the main course, so she rose to take the dishes and to get the dessert. When he started to stand also, to help, she w
aved him back, and in the kitchen she started coffee and prepared a tray. Soon she walked carefully back into the dining room, poured the coffee and served the dessert and settled back into her chair. “Jeffrey mentioned something about you being interested in philosophy?”
“Oh, yes,” he replied, with a slight smile. “In fact, I minored in it in college. But it doesn’t make for good conversation, in general, so I don’t talk about it much.”
“A philosophical businessman,” she murmured, with a laughing glance thrown his way. “That is definitely an intriguing combination.”
His smile was tolerant. They finished their coffee and dessert in a leisurely fashion, and when she stood to stack things on the tray, he stood also, and no amount of persuasion would get him to sit down and relax again. In the kitchen, she found two aprons and laughingly tied one around his lean waist, and then he did the same for her. But somehow his hands began to wander, sliding around to her front and pulling her back against him. His head bent and he let his lips wander as much as his hands, until she was flushed and trembling.
She tried for her normal voice and found a reasonable facsimile. “This isn’t getting the dishes washed.” The last word trailed away uncertainly. He released her immediately and stepped back. “No, you’re right, of course,” he said, sounding perfectly normal. That somehow astonished her, and she didn’t know what to think as she brushed back the light wisps falling on her forehead and then went to the sink to start hot water.
The talk trickled into a few, short comments made while they worked companionably at cleaning the mess left from the meal. Afterward, she put the dishes away while he wandered into the den and came back again, holding two drinks. “Gin?” he asked as he handed one to her, and she smiled, pleased that he remembered.
They walked back to the den, where he seated himself comfortably at the couch while she walked, restless, aimless, around the room. She touched at a small table as she went by, fingers gliding over the cool, hard surface, and then she went to the window to stare out at the black, wet night. It was still rather early, just after eight, and he wouldn’t be leaving for a while yet. Sudden panic struck her. What should she say, what should she do, how should she feel? This was different. She didn’t want it to be. She wanted it as light and as inconsequential as all her other relationships, but it wasn’t; this was different. She was alone with him, with something unfamiliar throbbing inside her.
It was a temporary situation. But she was being tugged in different directions by her conflicting emotions, and she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know who she was, for she was motivated by reasons that even she could only guess at.
The glass was clear, and against the dark night her reflection, and that of the room behind her, stood out sharply, a ghostly mirror. She could see Pierce’s dark head turned toward her slantingly, as he studied her from under level brows. What was he doing here? What did he want?
“Want to come sit down?” he asked quietly. His expression was unreadable in the glass, and she felt as if she were with a stranger.
Without a word, she turned and walked to the couch, slipping off her black pumps and curling comfortably close by him. He turned toward her, one leg half propped on the cushions, his arm along the back of the couch. He reached over and curled a finger into a wisp of flyaway hair at her nape. The sensation was delicate, tickling, pleasurable. She turned her head slightly toward his fingers, which then went to trace the slim line of her jaw.
“Sometimes,” he said softly, staring at her, “sometimes I feel that I’m getting to know you, and then you can seem so distant. There’s an unreachable quality about you, something always held back.”
She closed her eyes. The myriad, conflicting emotions that she had been experiencing were melding into one. That feel of his fingers, cool against her warm skin. Yes, she recognized that. She turned even further and pressed her lips against them, then rubbed her cheek lightly up and down. She heard his intake of breath, and then he carefully took away her drink and set it aside.
The one emotion she then felt was a simple, wordless desire to be held and touched, kissed and stroked and caressed. When he turned back to gather her gently close, she willingly settled her head against his shoulder and turned her face to his neck. It was good, as good as every other time he had held her, and yet new. There must, she thought hazily, be as many different ways to hold a person as there are different moods. She pressed her lips to his neck and opened them.
And it was somehow the same as the other times. His body went taut, and the hand behind her head grew hard. He bent his head and nuzzled roughly at the hair at her temple. The sameness, underlying previous anger, shock, even the gentleness during that walk in the rain; and it was passion.
The fingers of his hand thrust into her carefully constructed chignon and tugged it loose. The silver-blonde fluff fell to her shoulders, and he buried both fists into it, pulling back her head and staring for a brief, throbbing moment at her parted lips. His head fell down to her swiftly, mouth working on hers in eagerness. Her hands splayed wide on his chest, feeling his warmth through his shirt.
The soothing touch of lips against her nape, in sun-blinded distress. The hardened ravishment as he took her by surprise before she left. The coldness of his fingers as he stroked her streaming face, upturned and still. The whirling memories melded into the present; the smoldering blaze already begun leaped to flaming brightness. A wave of hotness rushed through her, making her tremble. He slipped one arm around her waist and bodily lifted her between his legs. She was then kneeling in front of him on the floor, and he was bending forward, slanting his mouth down her neck to the confining line of her dress.
He buried his face and took a deep breath, while one hand crept around her rib cage to stroke at a slight, rounded breast. She held his head, bent over it, staring blindly at the sleek line of his back curved in front of her. Then he gently loosened his hold on her, pulled up and kissed her one more time on the lips, lightly.
She was in a state of incomprehension. Staring at him with her dilated, immense eyes, she waited for some kind of explanation, unaware she was pleading silently. She saw him look deeply into her eyes, his own widening, and then he screwed them shut and swallowed. “Don’t look at me that way,” he whispered.
He didn’t see how her face quivered as if struck. “Right,” she said then, and pulled away. A quick move from him, and he had her caught, his hands to her shoulders.
He opened his mouth to say something, hesitated as he saw her closed expression and brought a hand up to cup at her cheek. “I—” he started. “I’d better be leaving. Supper tomorrow?”
“Sure,” she replied flatly. It caused a swift frown to plummet between his black brows. He let her go, and after she climbed to her feet, he rose. Without a word, they went into the hall, and she handed to him first his suit jacket, and then his overcoat, which he didn’t bother to put on. He looked searchingly into her eyes, but she refused to look into his face, and walked over to the front door to unlock and open it.
He paused in the doorway and then turned back. “Shall I pick you up at six?”
“Fine.” Brief, terse.
His dark head was bent to her, and he was too close. He made a movement as if to kiss her good night, and she stepped back from the touch, which had him freezing quite still for a moment. “Don’t be this way,” he said in a low voice.
She smiled mockingly. “Why, I don’t know what you mean. I am what I am.”
He turned to the black night and walked away without replying. Her glittering smile faded as if it had never been, and she wearily shut the door on the cold.
Caprice went through the downstairs rooms, switching off most of the lights except the one in the hallway that was always left on, and then she took her shoes and padded up to her room. She locked her door, went to her bathroom to cream off her makeup, and then slipped into nightclothes, turned down her sheet and covers, and, with a flick of her wrist, put the room into darkness. And
for the rest of the night she concentrated quite furiously on not thinking about her evening spent with Pierce.
By the next morning, she knew she had made a big mistake. She never should have agreed to spend time with Pierce. She had been attracted to him from the very beginning, and last night had shown her just how far that attraction had gone. Their encounter last night had been almost virginal, and yet all her senses had leaped out of control. Then she had to top it off by acting like a disappointed nymphomaniac, and the memory of that burned.
If she had thought she could have salvaged her pride, she would have called him up and pleaded sickness to get out of their date that evening. But he would know better. He always knew better.
Her cheeks flamed hot, and she pressed her hands against them in mortification. Last night she had acted like such a fool, when he hadn’t appeared to be deeply affected at all. This was wrong, all wrong, and especially so since she was the one who was in danger of getting badly hurt. Her eyes narrowed on the opposite wall of her bedroom as she brooded in bed. She would have to try to get out of tonight somehow. She had no intention of being alone with Pierce again. It proved to be too devastating.
She lazed in bed until quite late, and only grudgingly rose to shower and dress. No skipping down the stairs today. She slunk down, blonde brow furrowed and lower lip thrust out in thought, but she still hadn’t come up with a solution when Liz informed her that she had a phone call.
It was Pierce. “Hallo,” he said, sounding disembodied. She was fiercely glad he wasn’t in front of her, for, infuriatingly, her cheeks flamed again. She would have to get in control by that evening, no doubt about it.
“Hallo, yourself,” she said, cheerfully enough. “What can I do for you?”
“Busy this afternoon?”
With a feeling of maliciousness that was quite disproportionate, she said gently, “Alas, yes. What did you have in mind?”
“Nothing that won’t keep for another time. I should have thought to ask you earlier. Well, I guess I’ll see you this evening, then.”
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