by Rae Summers
Jenny turned her head to look at him. In his tailored sports jacket and trousers, with his hair neatly parted and slicked back, he didn’t look much like the kind of man who’d dandle an infant on his knee.
He caught her look and shrugged. “The nightclub business is just like any other. I’m still a man. I still want what other men want.”
She swallowed again, and this time it wasn’t bitterness she tasted. Since when had her imagination become so active? Because in that instant she’d imagined what a man might want. She’d imagined the rough, heated touch of his fingers against her neck.
Yes, he was a man, and he made her feel like a woman again. As more than just an empty vessel going through the motions of living.
But she couldn’t let herself come alive again. That way led to temptation, and heartbreak.
Though perhaps that explained why her pulse kicked up its beat whenever he was near. Perhaps it sensed in Tom the same hunger she’d buried deep. Because that was the one diversion denied to them both.
She cleared her throat, but it still sounded raspy to her ears when she spoke. “Have you considered giving up your...?” She struggled for the right word. Crimes just seemed too judgmental. She tried again. “Would you give up your job if you were a father?”
He laughed lightly, as if it were an outrageous thought. “Why should I? I came from nothing, and I don’t plan on going back to nothing. Because of me, my mother no longer has to slave all day doing other people’s laundry. My youngest brother is the first in our family ever to go to college. I’ve given jobs to a lot of people from the old neighborhood. Why would I want to give that all up?”
There was nothing she could say to that. The longer she spent with him the less like a criminal he seemed. She’d been right about his noble streak. So she said instead, “You seem much happier today.”
He took another puff of his cigarette before he answered. “I’m still angry, but I’m coming to terms with Bee’s little revelation.” He reached out and laid light fingers on her arm. “I was rude to you last night. I’m sorry.”
“I had no right to ask. It was impertinent of me to ask, and I apologize.”
His voice was low. “With me, you need never apologize.”
She froze. He couldn’t possibly mean what she thought he meant?
She lifted her gaze to his, and the look in his dark eyes slammed into her. The mischief was still there, but the faint edge of mockery he wore perpetually was gone, replaced by an intensity that left her breathless.
Yes, he meant it.
The sound of the piano ceased. The sun had begun to dip towards the horizon, and soon the other passengers would start the pre-dinner promenade. They would no longer be alone. Relief and dismay fought for place inside her.
Tom followed her gaze, then stubbed out his cigarette and rose. He reached for her hands where they lay folded in her lap, and she shuddered as he raised her hand to his lips, his rough stubble brushing the back of her hand. “Until we meet again.”
Then he was gone, and she was left looking after him.
In that moment as his lips had brushed her skin, as heat had seared through her, she’d felt brave enough to dare anything for more of his touch.
Until we meet again. She couldn’t risk it. Every moment she spent with Tom her resolution crumbled a little more. She could not risk giving in to that part of her that wanted pleasure so badly it was willing to throw sense to the wind.
For the rest of this voyage, she would avoid Tom.
But that wouldn’t stop her from re-living those moments when she’d felt alive again, when his hand had touched her knee, when his fingers brushed the sensitive skin of her throat, when his lips touched her hand.
It wouldn’t stop her dreaming. Of a man with whom she could be herself, without ever apologizing. At least in the privacy of her own thoughts she could indulge the fantasies she could not act on in life. She smiled.
#
Lucy lay on her back on the narrow bed, twirling an ivory-and-enamel hat pin between her fingers. “You look very pretty today,” she commented.
Jenny stood at the wardrobe, packing away clothes. She half-turned to her sister-in-law with a smile. “I’m no different than I was yesterday.”
“Yes, you are. You’re smiling.”
Jenny frowned. “I always smile.”
“Only when you think someone is watching. Today you’re smiling to yourself. You look lighter, happier.”
Exactly what she’d told Tom. “You have a vivid imagination. Now what do you plan to wear to dinner this evening? I’ll ask the room steward to get it pressed. Everything in here is still crushed from the trunk.”
She removed a crepe-du-chine blouse and dark skirt for herself.
Without removing her focus from the hat pin she wove under and over her knuckles, Lucy said, “You should wear the peach dress.”
Jenny frowned. “If you’re not careful, you’re going to prick yourself with that thing.” She looked back at the wardrobe. “I don’t really know why I brought that dress along. It’s the dress I wore the night Robert asked me to marry him.”
“So? That doesn’t mean you have to wrap it up in paper and moth balls and hide it away forever. It’s a pretty dress, and it should be worn.”
Jenny stroked a hand down the silken length of the pale dress, its gauzy chiffon over satin like a spider web beneath her fingers. Why not wear the dress tonight? As Lucy said, it was just a dress. Why not set her drab mourning clothes aside for just one night and feel alive and young again?
She blocked the thought just as a knock sounded on the door. Great timing. She lifted the blouse and skirt from the wardrobe and moved to open the door.
But it wasn’t the steward.
“I brought you a book I thought you’d be interested in,” Colin said, holding it out to her.
“Thank you.” She glanced at the book as she took it. The Beautiful and the Damned. How apt.
Colin glanced at the floor, and swallowed nervously. “The jazz band is playing in the ballroom this evening. Would you...?” he cleared his throat and lifted his gaze. “Would you care to go with me?”
Jenny didn’t need eyes in the back of her head to know Lucy was grinning behind her. Mustering all her dignity, she replied, “That would be my pleasure.”
After she closed the door behind him and threw the book onto her bed, she faced Lucy, who wore an irritatingly smug expression.
“So that’s why you’re looking so much happier,” her sister-in-law said.
“Don’t be silly. It’s not Colin.” Then, realizing her slip-up... “We grew up together. He’s just a friend.”
“He wants to be more than a friend.”
That made two people in two days. She frowned. “I don’t want to marry again.”
Lucy swung her legs over the edge of her bunk. “But isn’t that why you’re coming to New York – to meet a new husband?”
Jennifer laid cool hands against her flushed cheeks. “Is that what your family thinks? Surely you know no one could ever replace Robert.”
“But you’re still young. You’re only twenty-five. None of us expect you to mourn him forever.”
Jenny swallowed the grief that welled, all the more bitter because its edge had begun to fade. “I will always love your brother.”
“Of course you will, but he’s no longer here, and you are. He certainly wouldn’t want you to stop living simply because he can’t be here with you. And he’d be the first to admit he wasn’t the only man on the earth.”
He was for me. Except the image of intense dark eyes intruded. Could it be that she was wrong? Was it possible for her to have a second chance at love?
Even though she didn’t deserve it.
She shook her head and managed a weak smile. “How did you get to be such a know-it-all?”
Lucy tossed her Mary Pickford ringlets and assumed a superior smile. “Because I just do.”
Jenny laughed. “So what are you wearing to d
inner tonight? If we don’t hurry, the room steward won’t have time to press anything.”
She turned back to the wardrobe to find something suitable for Lucy, and to buy herself a moment. As much as she didn’t want to marry Colin, it wouldn’t hurt for Lucy to believe it was he who’d made her smile again. The deception was far better than the truth.
She couldn’t let herself fall in love again. Not with Tom, and not with any man.
At least with Colin there was no risk of giving in to temptation, no risk of revealing herself. Because with Colin there was no risk of feeling the excited thrum in her blood that the mere thought of Tom Gallagher induced.
A thrum that, given half a chance, would reveal she was not a very respectable widow after all.
#
It shouldn’t have been so hard to avoid one person on a ship this size. Yet no matter where she turned the next two days, Tom was there.
In the dining saloon, taking tea at the Verandah Café, dancing in the ballroom with his wife. They were a beautiful couple, and every head turned when they were on the dance floor. But he wasn’t always with his wife. Sometimes as Jenny strolled on the deck, she saw him alone, leaning on the railing and looking out to sea, lost in thought, and she had to turn and walk the other way. Once, as she’d been headed for the bursar’s office, he’d come out of the telegraph room. She’d ducked quickly into another companionway before he noticed her.
The hardest moment was when she slipped in the back of the music room to listen to the chamber orchestra playing an afternoon concert, only to find him seated across the room. Of course it would be childish to leave, so she sat and tried hard not to look at him. It was the most excruciating hour she’d ever endured. Aware every time he shifted in his seat, or consulted the program in his lap, or tapped a foot to the music.
He consumed her. And she hated him for it.
How could one person invade her every waking thought, her awareness, her body, completely against her will? He even invaded her dreams, and that was worse than any daytime encounter. Because it was impossible to sit at breakfast and smile and chat with Colin when her body still hummed from Tom’s imagined touch.
With only one day to go before the ship docked in New York, she couldn’t agree more with him. She couldn’t wait for this journey to be over.
Chapter Four
Jenny sipped a mouthful of scalding hot tea and flipped the page of the Harpers Bazaar on the table in front of her. Beside her, Lucy prattled enthusiastically about friends she’d made on board, and how they’d invited her to visit them on Long Island, but Jenny only listened with half an ear.
“Is this seat taken? Only it seems every other table is full.”
Jenny resisted the urge to smile as she looked up.
“Oh! You are...” Lucy’s voice trailed off into embarrassment.
“Who am I?” Tom asked, smiling.
“I mean, I’ve seen you around the ship.” Lucy cast a glance around the Verandah Café. Every seat did indeed appear to be taken. “You don’t mind if he joins us, do you, Jenny?”
“I don’t mind.” Jenny carefully folded her magazine closed and picked up her tea cup with a hand that wasn’t entirely steady.
Tom sat, his knee casually brushing hers as he pulled in his chair. She shifted in her seat.
“So you’ve noticed me around the ship?” he asked Lucy, his tone polite, but the amusement clear in his eyes.
“I couldn’t help but notice. You and your wife are so beautiful...” Lucy clapped her hand over her mouth. “I don’t suppose I should say that, should I?”
“I like a woman who speaks her mind.” His gaze slipped from Lucy to Jenny.
“Well, then, you are both so glamorous, you could be movie stars.” Lucy’s voice dropped. “You’re not, are you?”
He leaned closer, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “No, I’m not.”
“Then, is it true what they say?” she asked hopefully.
“Lucy!” Jenny admonished.
Tom laughed and winked at her incorrigible young sister-in-law. “Yes, it’s all true. I’m a rum-runner.”
“Wow!” Lucy breathed, awed.
As Tom lifted his hand to summon a waiter, Jenny took the opportunity to frown at Lucy, who merely shrugged back. He ordered tea, then looked at the ladies. “Would you like anything more? Cake, perhaps, or scones?”
“I’d love a scone,” Lucy said. “With clotted cream.” This time, she completely ignored Jenny’s frown.
“You were going to meet your friends in the drawing room for a game of bingo,” Jenny gently reminded her.
“Oh, don’t be such a bore, Jen. I’m hardly going to be corrupted by sitting with him in a public place.”
But Jenny might. Already, her skin crawled with awareness of him. Like an itch that had to be scratched.
“Besides, you’re starting to sound just like Mrs. Fenton-Bell.”
Jenny’s frown deepened. “I do not!”
“Who is Mrs. Fenton-Bell?” Tom asked.
“This prosy old bore who keeps lecturing me on how respectable young ladies are supposed to behave.”
Tom pretended to consider Jenny. “I think your sister-in-law isn’t quite as respectable as she likes to appear.”
Jenny choked on her tea. She was immensely grateful when the waiter arrived with Tom’s tea and the plate of scones. Not so grateful when Lucy wolfed down her scone and then announced she was going to play bingo.
Left alone with him, Jenny threaded the napkin between her fingers, pretending absorption in the rainbow patterns made on the crisp, white table-cloth by the sunlight filtering down through the colored-glass ceiling.
“You’ve been avoiding me.” Tom’s voice was low.
She forced herself to meet his gaze with as much coolness as she could muster. “You think far too much of yourself, Mr. Gallagher. This is a large ship, and it’s entirely possible our paths would not cross again.”
“Possible, but not probable. And what happened to you calling me Tom?”
She glanced around at the other passengers taking afternoon tea and making polite conversation. No one looked at them.
“This is a very bad idea.”
“Worried your young officer will get jealous?”
“No, I’m not worried about anything. It’s simply not seemly.”
“Liar.” He leaned closer. “You’re worried because of the way I make you feel.”
“Your arrogance knows no bounds.” Then, because she couldn’t resist, “How do you think you make me feel?”
“Hot, bothered… Wicked.” His smile was dark, dangerous, and thrilling in equal measure. “But if you’re concerned your reputation might suffer from being seen at the same table as the devil himself, we can move to the reading room. It’s sure to be deserted.”
She choked. Being alone with him in a public place suddenly didn’t seem nearly so bad. “What do you want from me?”
“Nothing more than a last chance to talk to you before we dock tomorrow.”
She twisted the napkin in her lap. “Anything you want to say to me, you can say right here.”
He reached a hand into her lap and laid it over hers. Her body stilled instantly at his touch. She dared not breathe. She dared not pull away. The move might attract notice.
“If you don’t want a scene, then let’s remove to the reading room,” he said.
She swallowed, at war with herself. She shouldn’t. But she wanted to.
She slipped her hand out of his and reached for her tea cup. There was nothing left but the last dregs of the tea leaves, but she sipped anyway. “Yes,” she said, heart beating wildly.
The reading room was indeed deserted. It smelled musty, and the rays of sunlight falling through the windows were alive with dust motes. Tom led her to a corner half hidden by the fronds of a potted palm and sat beside her on the velvet brocade banquette not close enough to be touching but close enough that tongues would wag if they were seen.
“Tell me about your business,” she said. “Is it very dangerous?”
He shrugged. “No more dangerous than any other. My father was a bricklayer who took more knocks on the job than anyone I know. He worked fourteen hours a day until the day he died. Me? I get to watch pretty girls kick up their rouged knees while the rich and beautiful get drunk on my booze. It’s an easy life.” He grinned, his eyes lit with mischief. “And best of all, I’m my own boss. No-one tells me what to do.”
“I envy you.”
“Why ever would you want to do that? I’m an upstart nobody from the East Side. Haven’t you heard?” But there was laughter in his dark eyes.
“You don’t mind what people say about you behind your back?”
He laughed out loud. “Honey, they call me worse to my face! And why should I mind? There’s worse people could say of me, and it would be true.”
She opened her eyes wide in feigned shock. “How can you joke like that?”
“To get where I am today, I’ve bribed and blackmailed and threatened. I’m not the noble person you think I am. But the one thing I won’t do is lie about who I am.”
She bit her lip as she considered him. Now she envied him even more. Not only did he have the freedom to do whatever he wanted, he had the freedom to be whoever he wanted to. And to be honest about it. But what had honesty ever brought her except this deep and unshakeable sense of guilt?
“What is it?” he asked, studying her face.
She paused a moment, but his gaze would not release her. She answered slowly, against her will. “I am a liar.”
He arched an eyebrow.
In for a penny... “I might behave the way a young woman of good breeding and good education is supposed to behave, but inside...”
“But inside you’re not as sweet and innocent as you appear? And sometimes you want to break free and just be the real you?”
A blush heated her skin. How did he understand her so well?
Until now, only Robert had ever seen the rebel inside of her. Only Robert had known the wildness, how when she’d lain beneath him, beside him, on top of him, she certainly hadn’t been thinking of England.