Barbaric! And, she thought, to Kurtis it would be exactly that. He lived with words, loved words. He should have been a writer, perhaps was in his own peculiar way. Certainly his letters were like nothing she’d ever encountered.
She smiled to herself, then frowned at the next thought, which considered his involvement with words as an entrepreneur, which even she knew was a twenty- dollar word for huckster, at least according to some people.
Many people. The thought had her wondering how much she really knew about the man. Entrepreneur, she knew, might cover a multitude of sins and probably did. He had never told her much about his work, only that it involved vast amounts of travel, a good deal of buying and selling and wheeling and dealing.
The thoughts crept ghost-like along her spine, but Ruth shrugged them away almost angrily. This is silly, she thought; all he’s done is invite me for a weekend of theatre and... Now her thoughts crept along different parts of her, touching her breast, moving in small ripples through her tummy and lower to leave her squirming in her chair.
And ... what? For the first time the ‘what’ took on the meaning she realised it should have from the start. Was this to be a so-called ‘wicked weekend’? And, if so, was she ready for it?
Pondering on the issue accomplished less than nothing. All it did was increase the momentum of the emotional pendulum Ruth was clinging to, making things worse instead of better.
But Kurtis, as if he’d been reading her mind and doing it better than Ruth herself, resolved the issue as much as it could be resolved in the letter which arrived the next day.
‘The guest bedroom will undoubtedly welcome the company,’ he said. ‘I’ve been trying to remember when it was last called into service and can’t; you may be the first overnight guest I’ve ever had sleeping there.’
Which, Ruth determined, could mean everything or nothing. Which was probably his intention. She shook her mane of unruly hair and grimaced. How uncharitable. All he’d done was try to make her feel more comfortable, to ease a concern she recognised herself!
‘And all you can worry about is what overnight guests he’s had sleeping with him,’ she muttered, and sneered at herself, fangs bared, in the mirror.
Her biggest problem was in answering his letters. She had none of his facility with words, felt genuinely in awe, sometimes, of how much he could say both on the lines and between them. And too often she wondered if what she read between the lines was what Kurtis intended or what her increasingly facile imagination wanted to find there.
So Ruth kept her own replies light, breezy and, she was sure, so bereft of her true feelings that he would never guess how much more nervous she became about the whole trip with every passing day. Nor that the days without a letter had become worse than the days when she received one.
Until suddenly time seemed to telescope. One day the trip was a lifetime away, the next it was Friday the thirteenth and she was flustered and flighty at work and then rushing home to change and waiting nervously for the cab to take her to the airport.
Then she was in an aeroplane for the first time in her life, leaving Tasmania for the first time in her life, and the minutes stretched into weeks that collapsed into seconds until she could look out of the tiny window to see lights that went on forever.
And when she left the aircraft, mildly tiddly from the champagne she’d accepted during the flight, she had to follow other passengers for fear of getting lost in the immensity of the airport with its moving footpaths and innumerable signposts for the unwary, the innocent, the lost. Like her.
Then she emerged somehow into the public area of the airport and found Kurtis waiting, his sad eyes alight with pleasure, his smile welcoming, his hands outstretched for her own. And it was, as she had known it would be, just right.
‘You might have told me you’d never flown before,’ he said when they were driving away from the airport.
‘And that I’d never been out of Tasmania in my life? Oh, you’d have loved that,’ she replied, eyes drinking in his silhouette against the background of die city lights outside the car window.
‘You’d have withdrawn your invitation quick-smart, I reckon. What would you want with a country girl in your life here?’
‘Exactly what I’ve got,’ he replied, turning his attention from the traffic long enough to scowl at her across the small interior of his Porsche.
Ruth found his face ... different in the scatty light. Older, somehow, and yet younger too. Severe and yet, when the scowl transformed to a wondrously soft grin, so gentle it made her stomach flip, her very insides turn over.
Then the instant was over and he returned his attention to his driving until a red light gave him time to look at her once again. Which he did, a quirky grin playing round his mouth.
‘I am extremely pleased, my lady witch, that you found it expedient to accept my humble invitation,’ he said, then continued without giving Ruth any chance to reply, ‘And while this humble chariot is, of course, a paltry vehicle compared to your incomparable broomstick, it is all I can offer for the moment.’
She laughed, accepting his overdone attempt to return their conversation to a lighter note.
"Twill suffice,’ she replied then. ‘Provided, of course, it allows you to pander to my tourist desires and point out all possible highlights en route to your castle.’
‘Your wish, my lady witch, is my veritable command,’ he replied with a grin, then returned his attention to the job of driving in traffic such as Ruth had never seen.
He drove her into a dream, the car’s throaty exhaust sound punctuating visions Ruth had seen on television and in magazine advertisements, but never in their awesome reality. Sydney Harbour Bridge, smaller than she’d imagined but memorable for all of that. The opera house, also smaller, somehow, but so lovely in the night lights. The centre of the city, the canyons of streets between the cliffs of the tall, bright-lit buildings, the crowds, the traffic. Ruth felt truly the country bumpkin, oooing and aaahing, her eyes bright, her very being alive with the excitement.
Until, suddenly, she was plagued by yawns and her escort grinned his gentle grin and reached across to touch her wrist, his fingers like butterfly wings.
‘I think ‘tis time you called it a night, my lady witch. It would be nice if you had some strength left for the theatre tomorrow night.’
Ruth could only nod her acceptance; she could barely keep her eyes open, suddenly exhausted. By the time he parked the car she was sound asleep, her head on his shoulder, and she barely wakened sufficiently to be escorted into a waiting lift, then into a high-rise apartment that looked out over the night city as if from the height of an aeroplane.
‘You sit here and I’ll be back in a minute with your gear,’ Kurtis said, smiling in the subdued light. He had to waken her again when he returned. ‘You’re fair whacked,’ he whispered, lifting her into his arms and carrying her through to a large bedroom where a utilitarian daybed shared space with an army of computer gear that seemed to have spread like a gigantic mould. ‘I just hope it’s a quiet night,’ he said, gently depositing Ruth on her feet. ‘I daren’t turn all this stuff off, so if you find yourself hearing all sorts of electronic grunts and groans just ignore them and go back to sleep.’
‘I don’t think anything could keep me awake,’ she replied, already eyeing the bed with a sigh of welcome.
‘Well, it might be noisier, but you’re safer here than with me,’ he grinned, and kissed her ever so gently before turning away to the door. ‘Bathroom’s first on the left and the kitchen’s straight ahead. Sleep well, my lady witch, and I’ll see you with the dawning.’
If he did, it could only have been a glimpse of a sleeping figure, because the next thing Ruth knew it was well past dawn and she was struggling up out of the deepest sleep she could remember in years. Throwing on her housecoat, she peered cautiously into the living-room to find her host sprawled in a balcony lounge chair with a newspaper on his knee and three others awaiting their turn.
‘Afternoon,’ he said with a grin that broadened at her half-shy nod. ‘You’ll want a shower and whatever, so why not get at it and I’ll start breakfast?’
‘I didn’t mean to sleep so long,’ Ruth replied, aware that she still wasn’t quite awake. Was she really here? Really in Kurtis Goodwin’s apartment ... in Sydney? It all seemed quite unreal and yet so ... comfortable.
‘You must have needed it,’ he replied, rising lithely to his feet. His hair was still damp, so he hadn’t been up that long himself, she presumed. Just long enough to have showered and dressed in casual jeans and sweatshirt and got his morning papers.
Comfortable, yet she shied like a nervous horse when he tilted her chin to touch her mouth with his lips, flinched at the closeness of him, the delicious taste of his mouth.
‘I ... I’ll have that shower, I think,’ she stammered, turning quickly away, but not so quickly that she missed seeing the wry grin he tossed her.
‘Coffee will be ready,’ he laughed, turning towards the kitchen. And when she emerged ten minutes later, he had ready not only the coffee, but a huge bowl of fresh fruit, and he was busy stirring at something in a large mixing bowl.
‘Pancakes or waffles, my lady?’ he asked, eyes roving approval over her casual shorts and T-shirt, put on in deference to the unexpected warmth.
‘For breakfast?’
‘Of course. I realise you Australians eat than for dessert, which is a habit I find quite astonishing,’ he replied. ‘But I prefer them for breakfast, with heaps of butter and maple syrup and bacon, though I wouldn’t dream of suggesting you have the bacon.’
‘Just as well,’ Ruth replied with a grimace. Then she remembered her manners. ‘Waffles would be heavenly, but only after I’ve had two cups of coffee to prepare me.’
‘As good as done.’
And it was. Delightfully so, and the more so since he proved to be a far superior cook to Ruth herself. Not, she admitted to him rather shamefully, that it would take much to accomplish that.
‘Hardly surprising, considering you live on rabbit food,’ he replied with a grin. ‘Not real fair to expect gourmet cooking from a woman who won’t eat the results. Or are you really that strict a vegetarian in the first place? It isn’t something we’ve discussed, and it might be nice to know, in case I have to change our dinner reservation for tonight.’
‘I’m not a fanatic about it,’ Ruth said. ‘I do eat fish and chicken occasionally; it’s just red meat I’m not fond of, really.’
‘That’s all right, then,’ he said. "The place I’ve booked, we can do a bit of Jack Sprat manipulating and both end up well-satisfied.’ He rose to pour them fresh coffee, then asked, ‘But first, considering we have most of the day ahead of us, I suppose you’d like to play tourist?’
‘Oh, yes, please. I want to see ... well... everything.’ And she knew he was seeing again the country bumpkin, but she didn’t care, because the expression in his eyes was one of total approval, total acceptance.
And play tourist they did — with a vengeance! Kurtis had her out of the apartment almost before Ruth could think. The dishes could wait, he said. Everything could wait; his electronic office virtually ran itself and there was an answering machine — ‘three, actually’ — to cover for him in his absence.
Hand in hand, they made the long, steep descent to the Mosman ferry terminal; hand in hand they rode the ferry into the city, Kurtis playing tour guide as they travelled; hand in hand they walked the inner-city streets, almost oblivious to the crowds, to almost everything except the city sights and each other.
Then they were on another ferry, this time to visit Taronga Park Zoo, then back to the city for a change of ferries and eventually back to where they’d started.
Ruth purely revelled in it all, taking in everything with a childlike wonder, a childlike delight. Kurtis, she thought, shed years in the single day. He laughed with her, at her, in spite of her. They laughed together.
And they returned to his flat, eventually, still alive with their adventure, closer than they’d ever been, somehow together in a fashion Ruth could never have imagined.
‘And there’s more to come,’ he said as they paused over a quick coffee before changing for dinner and their theatre date. ‘Not that I’m at all sure I can keep up, my lady witch. You set a fair pace for a geriatric to meet.’
‘You’re no more a geriatric than I am,’ she replied, eyes shining, then twirled in a pirouette of sheer exuberance. ‘The night is young...’
‘And you’re so beautiful.’ He concluded the lines for her, hands moving to catch her, to stop her spinning, to draw her into his arms as if she belonged there. ‘So very beautiful,’ he sighed as his lips swept down to plunder her mouth with the same enthusiasm he’d exhibited throughout the day.
It was a kiss, yet more than a kiss, Ruth felt. It was a sort of celebration, a recognition of how wonderful their day together had been, still was, would be.
She melted into his embrace, her own pleasure merely heightened by his touch, by the taste of him, the touch of him. His fingers tumbled an erotic tune down her spine, met in the small of her back in that soft place where they could stroke slow, intimate fires that surged through her entire body.
Ruth found herself wondering at how superbly they fitted together, how he was exactly the right height to kiss her, exactly the right flavour for her, how her fingers so naturally reached the back of his neck, where the crispness of his hair felt just right.
His embrace tightened, flattening her breasts against the warmth of his chest, pulling her hips to him so that the evidence of his ardour was unmistakable, undeniable. His fingers were beneath her T-shirt now, his touch warm against her skin yet so light as to be almost ticklish.
Ruth could barely breathe, didn’t care, didn’t want to breathe. She wanted only for the kiss to go on forever, for his touch to go on forever. Her nipples had hardened against his chest, her entire body now replying to his caresses, her fingers tangled in his hair, holding his mouth as it claimed her own.
She could feel his fingers at her bra strap, sensed her body writhing to ease their task. And then, suddenly, without warning, it was over; Kurtis had removed his fingers, eased the tightness of his embrace.
‘Too soon, too late, too ...something, my lady witch.’ He shrugged, but his eyes glowed with a passion Ruth knew had matched her own, a need she had shared, had wanted to share.
Kurtis was stepping away from her now, though his hands had clasped her fingers to raise them to his lips and his eyes held her as firmly as a chain round her neck.
‘I think it best you go and get changed now, lest we be late for dinner," he said, his voice ragged with a passion she felt even through his light touch at her fingertips. ‘There may be a time for this, will be a time, I hope, but it isn’t now,’ he added, and his voice revealed both regret and determination.
Ruth met his soft sad eyes, knowing that in doing so she could only reveal her willingness, her acceptance of his embraces, of his caress, his touch, his entire being. But if he sensed that, saw that, he revealed nothing; he merely smiled down into her eyes, then slowly released her fingers and waved her towards the hallway.
‘First shower to you, my lady,’ he whispered as she turned away, breathless with her own emotions and her confusion. ‘I’ll have mine while you get changed.’
Ruth, her thoughts as much a jumble as her emotions, plunged beneath the shower and stood, head bowed beneath the needles of water, unable to make any sense of it at all.
He wanted her; no argument there. And she, beyond any question, wanted him to want her, wanted him ... it was that simple. But something was holding him back; something was interfering with his — their — situation.
Something as damned stupid as soaking her hair, she realised with a start that turned to a chuckle and then a heartfelt laugh. Going out in half an hour and here she stood like a drowned rat; it would take all of that to get her rowdy mane under sufficient control to look anything like ha
lf decent.
She was still smiling at the idiocy of it all when she passed him in the narrow passageway, her body wrapped in one towel, her hair in another.
‘I’m a fool,’ she said with a shake of her head, ‘but it’ll dry enough to tame before we get wherever we’re going. I hope.’
‘There’s one of those blow-dry things under the sink in the vanity, if that’s any help,’ Kurtis replied with a shake of his own head, the gesture revealing his wonderment.
By the time she emerged from her room, wearing a black evening skirt beneath a cream-coloured Broderie Anglaise blouse, she had towelled her hair into the beginnings of submission, and five minutes with the borrowed blow-drier completed the taming.
Kurtis, as she might have expected but for some reason hadn’t, was quite resplendent in evening wear, and his expression at first sight of her, the warm glow that spread from his eyes, forced a tiny lurch into her step. She blamed it on the unaccustomed three-inch heel, but knew better. She wanted to look good for him, wanted him to feel comfortable with her appearance, to take pleasure in it. She knew only too well that she lacked the money or sophistication — or interest, to be honest — to meet Sydney’s dress standards, had never been sufficiently interested in clothes to bother much about the latest styles and fashions.
Kurtis, of course, would have to. Power dressing, it was called, and she expected that in his line of work being properly turned out could be rather important. Or so she suspected; all she could think to say was, ‘You look very nice.’
‘As do you, my lady witch. Quite stunning, in fact,’ he replied with a half-smile. ‘Let us away and wow the peasants.’
Later, every second of that evening seemed to be burned into Ruth’s consciousness, but while it was actually happening it seemed just to flow in a river of sensation she never quite caught up with.
Their dinner was superb. Kurtis was obviously known at the restaurant he’d chosen, and everything about the dinner was splendid beyond expectation.
A Magical Affair Page 4