She gritted her teeth, stared at the mess around her, then closed her eyes tightly and remembered Kent outside her door, telling her not to worry because he was not looking for permanence.
Chapter Seven
Kent unlocked the driver’s door, turned and asked with a grin. “Do you want to drive it?”
Intimacies. Touching his arm. Watching the creases that formed at the corners of his eyes when he was amused. Driving his car.
“No.” Angela moved away from him, to the passenger door. “If I smashed it up, you’d probably kill me.”
“You wouldn’t smash it.” He stared at her across the roof of his car, as if sensing something of what she was thinking. Abruptly, he got in and opened the door for her. “Anyway, it’s insured.” He started the engine. It was very quiet.
She hugged herself, sitting in the passenger seat, feeling the air from the heater changing from cool to warm, blowing on her legs through her nylons.
He put the car into gear, twisted around to reverse. His hand brushed her shoulder and she jerked. She felt like a seventeen-year-old. She tried to remember being seventeen, dating Barney, then Ben coming back from wherever he’d been off working. She hadn’t been scared then, she realized. Excited, probably because she had been too young, too stupid to know the risks.
“What’s wrong?”
She stared ahead. There was a woman crossing at the crossroads. When Kent stopped for her, the woman gave Kent a quick grin and a wave of thanks.
“I think this is a bad idea.”
The car started. She stared at her hands, at the faint depression where Ben’s ring had been. She had taken the ring off before she went to the doctor. Ben was gone. Wearing his ring when she was thinking about having an affair seemed wrong to her.
“What’s a bad idea?” he asked quietly. “Dinner?”
She sighed. “You know what I mean.”
She glanced at him, saw his mouth a hard line. A muscle in his jaw clenched and he turned left instead of right, driving through the houses on the outskirts of Port Townsend.
“Where are we going?”
He could take her anywhere. She had no defenses. She knew she could not fight him, that it would not even come to that. All he had to do was look at her and she would be lost in his eyes. Damn it! He didn’t even have to touch her!
She chewed on her lip, staring through the windshield, knowing she had never behaved like such a fool in all her life. Dinner, and that tension building, knowing all the time where it was going. He would make love to her, and she would lose control completely. When he left, she might be crazy enough to chase after him. It could end with her calling his office day after day, begging him to come back to her. And that was insane, too, because she did not want forever from him. His life style was the last thing she needed, money and being nice to the right people.
Oh, God! Now she was thinking about marriage! With Kent. She gulped and blinked. There must be books on how to handle an affair, but she’d never read one and she knew she was going to make a mess of it.
He stopped in a half-empty parking lot. Point Wilson. She stared through the windshield at the lighthouse, the beach.
When he opened the door she got out. She had to make some kind of conversation. Maybe she could just talk her way through this evening. If she got through it intact, she would...
She looked around, saw two women walking out toward the point. Other than that, they were alone.
“There’s nowhere to eat here.”
“No,” he said grimly. “I figured if I drove far enough, I’d find somewhere we could be alone.”
Alone. She shoved her hands into her pockets. “This is Point Wilson. Ben used to bring me out here.”
He muttered something under his breath, then took her arm. “I suppose this is the local lover’s lane. Come on, let’s take a walk.”
Daylight still, although the sun was low in the sky. She went with him over the dunes toward the beach. They walked in silence, slowly, looking out over the wild water around the point. When they stopped, there was only white water ahead and Kent at her side. She had not looked at him the whole time. What would he say if she said something like, “Let’s go to a motel?” Maybe that really was the answer. Just get it over quickly, and it might not touch her so much.
“The tidal current is terrible off this point.” She pushed her free hand deep into the pocket of her coat. He held her other hand tucked firmly under his arm and she kept fighting the urge to curl her fingers into his forearm, to hold on.
He turned to face her, taking her hand in his, staring down at it. “You’re not wearing his ring any more.”
“No,” she whispered.
“Then...” He sighed. “Angela, this is insane.”
“I know,” she agreed miserably. What man would want an idiot? “Why don’t you...why don’t you just—just forget about it.”
He was turning her hand in his, playing with her fingers. She could feel his touch all the way up her arm. If he didn’t stop, she was going to scream. Maybe screaming was exactly the thing she should do.
“Just go away and forget you?” His voice was strained.
“Yes. I—don’t you think it would be the best thing?” She could feel the pain in her chest. Oh, God, maybe it was already too late! He was going to be in her dreams forever and she would wake in the night crying for him.
He shook his head as he stroked her palm with his thumb. “Best, maybe. But it doesn’t work. I’ve already tried it.”
“Well, if—” She gulped. “You’re only here this weekend because Charlotte called you.”
He laughed shortly. “If she hadn’t called, I might have lasted another six or seven days. Damn it, Angela! Do you realize what I did last week? I—”
“What?”
He shook his head. He had been dictating a letter to Patricia, an offer for a property on one of the Gulf Islands, and Angela’s name had come out in the middle of a sentence about terms. Patricia had stared at him and he hadn’t even realized for a minute what he’d said.
He dropped her hand and pushed his hands into his pockets and said angrily, “Give me one good reason why you won’t go out with me!” He jerked his hand back out of his pocket in a frustrated gesture. “I don’t believe I said that. I sound like a ten-year-old. Damn it, Angela, you’re turning my brain to sawdust!”
He swung away, glared at the white water. Hell, he was making a mess of this. When he turned back, she was staring at him, looking half scared to death, as if his shouting had made her expect he would strike her next.
“Angela, why do you fight it?” He touched her arm. “If you can go with the lukewarm Charles, why not—” She jerked away, her jaw set. Where the hell was his ability to negotiate? He spread his hands in a placating gesture. “Angela, I find you very attractive and...and you’re not indifferent to me. Hell, I’ll even keep my hands off you if that’s what you want.” He crammed his fists into his pockets. “What can you lose? A few dinners. The theater.”
She was staring at a point below his chin. He growled angrily, “What makes me so much more impossible than Charles, for God’s sake?”
“Charles and I didn’t make love.”
The words didn’t make sense to him at first, then suddenly he understood. He touched her face and she shivered. Her skin felt like satin, but she would not look up at his eyes. He remembered the feel of her in his arms, his lips finding places that were so soft, trembling. The fire in her eyes and on her flesh.
“Angela, are you telling me you went out with Charles for months, and you never...?”
She flushed at the knowledge in his eyes. He was so close she could feel his body heat.
“How long since your husband died?”
“Seven years,” she whispered.
“And there’s been no one?” He closed his eyes and she saw him swallow. “God, that’s like going out with a virgin. Why not, Angela? Are you afraid of making love?”
She shook her head. �
��I just—I didn’t want to. There was nobody I wanted.”
“You wanted me.” He laughed, an uncomfortable sound. “Almost a year with Charles, and how many other boy friends?” She shook her head and he said, “If you were going out with me, I wouldn’t give us a week before—”
She whispered, “I know.”
His eyes found hers. “Scared, Angela?”
“Yes.” There was no point in denying it. She was terrified of what he did to her.
“I would never hurt you.”
She shivered. “Not physically. I know that, but—but emotionally, I think you’d tear me into pieces.” She tied her fingers together into knots and muttered, “I’m not willing to risk that.”
When he turned away, she hugged herself and watched him walk along the beach toward the point. Away from her. If she had been looking for words to send him away, she seemed to have found them.
She loved him. Senseless though it was, she was in love with Kent—suddenly, violently, hopelessly. Not soft, young passion, not dreams and hopes. This was different—more, it was harsh and all-consuming, and it was going to tear her up for a long time. Years of looking at Charlotte, trying not to ask when Kent would be visiting next, hanging around and knowing it was hopeless, but unable to leave.
She was hopeless at any kind of pretence. He would know.
She got into the car and stared through the windshield, glad it faced the trees and not the beach, that she didn’t have to watch him. She heard him walking across the asphalt of the parking lot.
He opened the driver’s door and got in. She saw his fingers curl around the steering wheel. She said dully, “You don’t have to take me to dinner. Just take me back home.”
She heard the breath he took in, deep and ragged. He probably had an urge to slap her. His kind of affair had rules, and she was not playing by the rules.
He stared at the trees, that muscle in his jaw twitching every few seconds. Finally, he said tonelessly, “We could get married.”
She shivered and her voice was sharp and high. “Please don’t do that.”
His chest swelled and she thought he was going to explode. Cold Kent—but he wasn’t. He was white hot under the repression. She wasn’t sure exactly what emotion he was hiding under that toneless proposal, but she was not insane enough to accept. She hugged herself tighter.
“I’ll go away with you if you want. I—it’s not that I’m putting the price on myself—” She squeezed her eyes closed.
He turned the key and the Chrysler’s engine came to life with a subdued roar.
She said painfully, “You don’t want to get married.”
“Probably not,” he agreed without expression, “but your reaction is hardly flattering. Is there some reason why the idea of marriage made you scream?”
“I didn’t scream.” The car was getting warmer now. She undid the buttons on her coat, then did them up again.
“You did, and you’ve been shivering ever since. Can’t you put anyone in your husband’s place, Angela?”
“It isn’t that.”
“You loved him.”
“Yes.” She deliberately unwrapped her arms and tangled her hands together in her lap. “The whole thing was doomed from the start.”
“Are you talking about us? Or your marriage?”
Oh, God! She gripped her hands together more tightly. “Both, I guess. I was a pretty stupid kid.”
He took her hands and held them between his. “Tell me.”
“It’s not exciting. I was seventeen. It was spring, and I was going to graduate in a couple of months...My parents had my future all worked out—college, then a year in Europe, then some man my father would approve of. My father was a doctor. My mother was from what she liked to call an important family.”
“Your parents were living here then?”
“Yes.” She shifted and looked away from him, at the dark sky. “They’re in England now. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen them. They write and I answer, but we don’t have much in common and they’re so far away.” She turned her hand and his fingers threaded through hers. “Ben—Well, I was dating Barney, you see. We’d always been in the same class, and we’d dated off and on through high school.” She shrugged. “If I’d had a brother, I’d have wanted him to be like Barney. Part of the charm was his home, too, Harvey and Anna. Anna taught me to cook.”
He stroked the back of her hand. “Where did Ben come in?”
“I’d never seen much of him until—he was four years older, and he’d gone off to take his welding, then one job and another.” She wasn’t doing a very good job of getting to the point. She twisted her hand in his, but he wasn’t letting go. “He came back that spring.”
“And you fell in love?”
“He was...exciting, I guess. Older. He made me feel very grown up, very attractive. That was exciting, too. My mother didn’t like him at all, and my father forbid me to go out with him.”
He shifted a little, turning to see her better. He brushed a curl back behind her ears. “You went out with him anyway?”
“I’d never been in love before. I’d never even been out here to Point Wilson before, until Ben brought me.”
She stared at his hand on hers. Her skin was tanned almost as darkly as his. “I wasn’t experienced at all. Barney knew that, I suppose, and he got mad at Ben. At the time I thought it was because Barney was jealous, but now I think it was just that he was worried Ben might take advantage. Barney got his nose broken. Poor Barney, and I was young and silly enough that I thought it proved Ben really loved me. When Ben asked me to run away with him, I was scared, but he said we’d get married.” She shrugged. “That was my price. I didn’t think of it that way, of course, but I think Ben did. And although I wrote and they lived happily aver after in my diary, I don’t think it ever meant that much to Ben.”
What was Kent thinking under the hard line of his lips, the eyelids that had dropped over his eyes to conceal their expression?
She tried again to get her hand away, said almost frantically, “So you see, I’ve had enough of getting married just because...just because...”
“You’re amazing, Angela.” He touched her cheek, his voice whimsical. “So blunt, and then embarrassed at the strangest things.”
She was already flushed. She gave up on tugging at her hand. “You’re thinking I was a pretty stupid kid?”
“No.” He half-smiled. “Actually, I was thinking that when you were seventeen, running away to marry the man you’d fallen in love with, I would have been twenty-three.”
“Oh.” She tried to picture him. He wouldn’t have had those lines on his forehead, but the chin would still have had that stubborn certainty that it was right. Maybe he would have laughed a little more easily then, but she didn’t think so. “What were you doing when you were twenty-three?”
“I’d just graduated—business admin, of course. I was working for my father. Serious business. What with that and—I’d decided I was going to keep my mind on business, that no woman was ever going to make a fool of me.” He grinned wryly, “Again, that is.”
“What was her name?”
“Sophia.”
“Was she pretty?”
“Absolutely gorgeous, and equally greedy. She was also married, which she neglected to mention. Considering how quickly I got over her, I don’t imagine you could say I was in love with her.”
Had he ever been in love?
He brushed a curl away from her ear. “Are you going to tell me the rest?”
She shook her head.
“He was the fool, Angela, if he had you and didn’t realize how much...how special you are.”
She leaned across to give him a quick, soft kiss on his cheek. “Thank you.”
He pushed the lever into drive, turned to reverse, then stopped with his arm along the back of the seat, staring at her. “Jake—when Jake asked why you and Uncle Ben hadn’t had children, I saw your face, Angela, I—I need to know why you looked like
that.” The car started to crawl back and he pushed the brake, stopping it as he touched her face.
She cleared her throat and swallowed the tears that always wanted to overcome her when she thought of the baby. “I—I—you see, I was—” She jerked her head away from his touch. “Ben didn’t want children. He made that clear at the beginning. He didn’t want to be married, either.”
“Angela...” He jerked the shift lever into park again and took her face in both his hands. “Honey—”
“We were together five years. Wandering around, chasing construction jobs. Then I got pregnant and he left me.” She shrugged and admitted sadly, “I don’t know when I stopped loving him. Maybe—maybe it was just dreams and wanting to be in love. It died somewhere. Maybe then, when he left me alone. I—Anna and Harvey...they came and got me.”
“Came? Where were you?”
“Upstate New York. A construction site again, living in the trailer, except—I don’t want to talk about this.”
He massaged her jaw, slid his hands into her hair and stroked the tension in her. “It’s inside you, bunched up, and it’s affecting us.”
She drew in a shaky breath that seemed to fill her lungs in jerky pieces. “After I told him...he didn’t say anything, and I—the next day I went into town, shopping for groceries. I took the bus in and—and when I came back, he was gone. The trailer was gone, the truck, just—just everything.”
Kent’s fingers were digging into her scalp. He pulled them away when she made a sound of protest. “He left you alone in New York with nothing?”
“Yes. I knew he wouldn’t come back. I’d seen his face when I told him about the baby. I—I found a job waiting tables, and a room to stay in.” She could feel the anger in Kent. He wanted to strike out, to protect her, but it was so long ago. She touched his chest uneasily. “It’s all past history. I can’t really even remember his face now. I look at Barney, and I know Ben looked a lot like Barney, but I can’t make the picture in my mind.”
Angela's Affair (Pacific Waterfront Romances, #13) Page 11