She wondered how he would react to a little manipulation, himself.
That evening, after a peaceful, uneventful day spent reading—Scott having thoughtfully provided a box full of paperbacks of all kinds—Leslie stretched contentedly and sighed. She was favoured with a humorous glance, complete with whimsically raised eyebrow, as Scott’s attention was diverted from his own story. “I’m hungry,” she murmured and laughed. He was grinning, too. “I know, I know. A big breakfast, super lunch, and I haven’t done a blessed thing all day except sit, and I want to eat again? Well, it’s true. I'm famished, and it’s my turn to fix supper.” She started to struggle to her feet and was pushed gently back into the couch’s soft depths as Scott stood and prevented her from rising. Her dark blue eyes danced up at him, unsurprised.
“I’ll get it,” he said easily. “Kick your feet up and relax, will you?”
“You’re spoiling me,” she warned him, and he smiled down at her so nicely that her heart contracted queerly.
“But, of course I am,” he said cheerfully, and went to fix the meal.
She frowned heavily at the opposite wall, punched a cushion into shape, and subsided on to it thoughtfully. Yes, that was another definite, unspoken message from him. All deliberate, quite nicely executed, with that unknown goal in mind. She had to grin. It was all quite pleasurable too. She had never been treated so well, not even when she had given birth to Jenny. Sure, she had been taken care of, but there was a qualitative difference between the two. Scott’s care was gentle, considerate, enjoyable and quite undemanding. Her grin became twisted as she remembered her mother’s visit that month after having Jenny. Leslie had been made to understand, that whole, eternal month long, just how much her mother was giving her. By the end of the proposed thirty day visit, Leslie had nearly been climbing the wall in screaming frustration. Dennis had loved having her mother over. She had doted on him, that was for sure.
But then, in those days, who hadn’t? He had been the man who could do no wrong, in the eyes of her family and the town. She shook her head at the thought, and then laughed ruefully.
“I like your laugh,” Scott told her as he came into the living room. She wrinkled her nose up at him. He was so easy to be with. No “what are you thinking?”, but just “I like your laugh”. It occurred to her that not asking questions was another deliberate move from him.
“Thank you, kind sir. Scott,” she asked curiously, “have you ever been married?”
He leaned against the side of the armchair. “We’re having a casserole,” he told her. “It should be ready in about a half an hour. Do you think you can wait?”
“Oh, sure,” she replied absently. “Why won’t you answer me?”
He just looked at her. “Is there a good reason why I should?”
“Well—I guess not. I was just wondering why you wouldn’t want to. Do you have something to hide?” The stirring of curiosity was fanned by his uncommunicative replies.
“No, I’ve nothing to hide,” he replied, studying his nails with a slight frown. She let her eyes run over hard cheekbones, crooked nose, well moulded mouth. His gaze shifted to hers, shuttering lids and then a bright glittering glance that gave her a slight jolt. “Any more questions?” she was asked softly.
The pang of loneliness that hit her took her totally by surprise. “Would you even bother answering them?” she returned back, oddly bitter.
His eyes caressed her, and she caught her breath at the look, feeling a suffusion of warmth. “No,” he said gently.
“Another clue,” she whispered musingly, wondering why she felt shaken.
“Think what you like.”
Supper was eaten in silence. Leslie retreated, and while she knew that he was watching her and gauging her reaction, she couldn’t help it. She felt furious at her lack of control. What was he wanting? He was being everything that is attentive and thoughtful while leaving her room to breathe, and the situation should have been great. Then the question hit her and it left her with widened eyes, and a curiously frightened look. What was it that she was wanting?
She didn’t sit in the kitchen this time while he cleaned up, but moved to the living-room to throw herself on to the couch, wincing at the warning twinge from her wound. Then she plunked her head into her arms and sighed gustily. She felt her mind whirling with uncertainties and questions.
After a while, she started violently as she felt two large, warm hands descend on to her shoulders. She tensed and would have pushed herself up, but he pushed her back down, murmuring, “Stay right there, and I’ll give you that back rub I promised you.”
She stayed where she was, rigid and immobile, half inclined to get up and reject his overtures, but his touch was too relaxing, too gentle and rhythmic, much too enticing. She closed her eyes. Gradually, muscle by muscle, she relaxed and lay there passively while he worked on her shoulder muscles. She loved to have her back rubbed.
His thumbs dug into the pliant muscles between her shoulders while his long fingers gently rotated at the base of her neck. Then he stroked the top line of her shoulders to her upper arms, hypnotically systematic, over and over. He dug in deeply on either side of her spinal column, working all the way down to the small of her back. With the heels of his hands touching each other at her waist, fingers splayed out and curved around her sides, he wiggled his fingers underneath her weight. “You’re so slim, I wonder if I could span your waist with my hands,” he said amusedly. Her frustration and bafflement at his behaviour had dissipated, and she was feeling the warmth from his uncomplicated friendliness.
She lifted her hips up slightly and said, “Try it and find out.” His hands shifted around, the tips of thumbs meeting at the base of her back, the fingers stretching around. She hissed at old bruises. “Not too tight,” she grunted, remembering. “I have a sore stomach.” He immediately slid his hands out from under her and continued with his rubbing.
“You do? Was it something I cooked?” he asked her drily, and she chuckled shortly.
“Hardly that. No, I was kicked in the stomach several times, and it’s still tender.” She gave a surprised whuff of pain as his hands convulsively tightened, as if in uncontrolled rage, and he then let her go suddenly.
“Sorry. I didn’t know,” he muttered. “I knew you’d been hit, but I didn’t know the full extent of it. If only—” He bit off what he was going to say, telling her instead, “I’ll be more careful.”
But Leslie wasn’t paying that much attention to him, as she started to do some deep thinking. She did say lightly, “The man’s got magic hands.”
He laughed lowly, and went back to work. Leslie jerked when he reached down and gently eased up her right pant leg. “Relax,” he soothed. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just going to rub your thigh and foot. You’re so tense down here! Is there that much pain?”
“It is aching quite a bit, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. Oh…” she hissed, tensing again, trying to trust him, “…don’t—”
“Leslie,” he murmured, and his hands rested warmly on her foot, now bare of sock and shoe. “Calm down. I don’t want to hurt you, I want to help you feel good. When have I ever been anything but gentle?”
She was much struck by that. “Well, yes, I see what you mean,” she told him, lifting her head and peering over her shoulder at him. He was smiling, and his sparkling eyes met hers. They looked at each other for a long moment, each completely understanding the other’s thought, and then Leslie put her head back down and closed her eyes.
His hands very carefully rubbed at the thigh muscles, manipulating her flesh into relaxation. Then he moved down to below the bandage, caressing her slim ankle and rubbing the bottom of her foot with the ball of his thumb. “Is that helping at all?”
She groaned in pleasurable answer as she felt the constant grip of pain’s tension ease away. “It sure does. I hadn’t realised how tense I was holding myself. Mmm, that’s marvellous.” After working on her right leg, he then worked on her left, and
she felt like boneless jelly, she was so wonderfully relaxed. Warm sexual awareness pierced her, and she rolled over abruptly, shying away from it, again. What was this need that she kept feeling? She questioned him, as she narrowed blue eyes that were nearly black, “You were saying something, a few minutes ago, and then you stopped. You said “If only—” and I wonder how you would have finished the statement. How would it have ended?”
He smiled easily. “Did I say that? I don’t remember.” He was lying blatantly, and they both knew it. Leslie suddenly realised that he had made a mistake and was angry at himself for it.
She smiled slowly. “Could you have possibly meant: ‘If only Jarred and I had got to you sooner?’”
He sat back, the light from the kitchen catching at the edges of his silver blond hair, throwing his face into dark brown shadow. It triggered a blurred memory in her mind; she straightened a little, alertly. “Now what in the world would make you think a thing like that?” he returned blandly. She thought he smiled a little. “Weren’t you running a fever from your wound, and delirious?”
She replied softly. “That’s what I was told. But I could have sworn that you and Jarred were the ones who broke into the room when the leader of the group was questioning me. That couldn’t have happened really, could it?” She watched him closely. Absolutely nothing flickered across his features.
“Now, what do you think?” he returned calmly. “You know that after taking off, a radio message for help was sent to Florida.”
“Yes, that was also what I was told,” she said, sighing. “And the authorities moved fast, barely an hour passing by before the island was invaded.”
“Which was lucky for you,” he told her, tapping her on the nose. She chuckled reluctantly. Scott then went back to massaging her legs, and by that time she was so used to the curiously sexless and yet intimately sensual body rub, that she was profoundly surprised when he reached forward and tenderly kissed the side of her slim ankle. The slender foot he was cupping quivered, and he continued to kiss her up to her shin, and to her knee, and the inside of her lower thigh. She started to tremble all over, for it wasn’t particularly that he was kissing her bare leg, but how he was kissing her, for he looked as if he meant each kiss very deeply.
She reached forward to unbutton his shirt, but he stopped her. “No,” he said firmly, gently. That shocked her more than anything else.
She leaned back and stared at him with narrowed eyes. “You want me,” she said softly, though no betraying expression had crossed his face. “Why not?”
“I am not interested in having sex,” he said patiently. “I am quite mature. I know how to handle my bodily urges now. You still don’t understand me, do you?” Incredibly, sadness crept into his eyes as she stared at him. He reached over and stroked her hair. “Poor Leslie.”
She jerked her head back. “No more body rubs,” she uttered tersely.
He stood immediately. “Fine.” She stared up at him.
“You just did it again, didn’t you?” she accused. “What was I to learn this time?”
He just laughed as he stood looking down at her, shaking his head. And somehow the laughter was the sadness too, the sadness that hadn’t yet left his eyes, and yet it was quite genuine amusement. “Good night, Les,” he said softly, and walked into his bedroom, still laughing. She couldn’t believe her eyes and ears, as the door shut behind him.
She swore explosively at the door, and then was profoundly surprised when she started to laugh herself.
The next few days were not quite as tangled as the first few had been. Scott still spoiled Leslie outrageously. Instead of getting used to the special treatment, she became more and more flustered as time went by. She could see genuine enjoyment as he did it, and knew that he was deriving a great deal of personal satisfaction out of her reaction. There was amusement, too, admittedly on both sides, rueful on her part, wicked on his. There was something else too, but she couldn’t define it. She caught him watching her occasionally, with a look of something bittersweet and, oddly, pain. But the look always vanished before she could study it.
He taught her how to play poker, and she was a terrible player. They had an uproarious time as she made mistake after mistake, each one worse than the one before. She thought he would never recover his breath, when she asked him once what to do with four of a kind.
She looked around and found a pen and some paper, and then drew out a chequered board. They then played checkers, with pieces of torn paper, and chess, with the figures drawn with comical grotesqueness in miniature. She found Scott to be very astute, and soon there was a real competitiveness in their games, and they would let the board sit out all day, contemplating it from time to time, each victory hard won and never begrudged. If either one beat the other in the game of logic and strategy, they had deserved to win. Leslie was a challenging opponent.
“I like how your mind works,” he told her admiringly, after she beat him in a particularly long and involved game. The board had been out all afternoon, and each move had been agonised over, each chess piece lost with a groan of dismay.
“Thank you,” she returned, grinning lopsidedly. She was moving around with a greater ease now, and the leg didn’t throb quite so much. “Actually,” she told him, sipping at iced tea, “my mind doesn’t work.”
“Oh?” he laughingly asked, bending forward to tickle her bare foot.
“Cut that out. I play a lot on instinct. Isn’t that silly? Sometimes I think things through laboriously, figuring out every consequence of every potential move, but sometimes I just do what feels right. It’s my Achilles heel; now you’ll beat me every time.”
“Oh, I doubt that. Your instincts are good, otherwise you wouldn’t trust them like you do. I’d seen that about you, anyway, so you weren’t telling me anything drastically new.”
“Is that so?” She bent forward and trickled cold liquid down his bare shin. He jumped and shifted sharply.
“Watch it, you little pervert!” she was reprimanded. She choked with laughter. He continued, “Yes, I did. You screw your face up when you think it through, and when a possibility occurs to you, you cock your eyebrow as if to say, ‘Is that so?’” He mimicked her perfectly, and she threw her pillow at him.
“I don’t.”
“You do, I swear it.”
She looked at him consideringly, eyes sharp. The bruises had faded, and vivacity had returned to her face, making her blue eyes seem even more blue, sparkling bright, her hair glistening healthily. “I do use my head occasionally,” she commented casually, tilting back her head, eyes narrowed, lips hovering in an elusive smile.
“Well, now, I’m glad to hear it,” was his hearty response, and she had to laugh again.
But she sobered quickly enough, and she continued chattily. “Yes, I can put two and two together, if it hits me in the face hard enough. I know why you brought me out here.”
He was very still, his regard sparkling dark, and she felt alive under that steady gaze. She smiled twistedly, and she could tell by the slight twitch of his lips that he was intrigued by her odd expression. “And what conclusion have you come to?” he asked carefully, after a moment.
“You are trying to make something up to me,” Leslie replied, still watching him closely. “You feel ashamed for leaving me on the island. You want to make it up to me. You think that I would not respect you for not having stayed, for not having made some attempt to make sure I was not dead, or making some attempt to save my life if I wasn’t dead, because you knew that I would be killed shortly, like as not.”
He slouched in his chair, broad shoulders hunched, legs kicked out, eyes hooded. “And is that how you see me?” he asked quietly.
“Oh, Scott!” she said, on a half moan, and then she laughed. His glance shot quickly to her, and she realised that he saw nothing funny in the situation. “If you hadn’t given yourself away already, you would have just now! Even if I don’t understand a lot about you, and even if I don’t know very much abou
t your past life, I know enough to realise that if you really had boarded that plane, right now you would be feeling like dirt! You would be so ashamed of yourself, that you wouldn’t be able to help mentioning it to me, apologising—you’d be acting totally different than you are right now—you wouldn’t be able to look me so steadily in the face, like you are! You didn’t go, and you won’t ever be able to convince me that you did. I wasn’t that delirious! You stayed, didn’t you?”
“What do you think?” he asked softly, and she was exasperated by the usual question instead of answer, even as she was taken by surprise at the steady, warm glow of something in his eyes that held her expression.
He was seated in the armchair, which was pulled around so that he could prop his legs on the coffee table. She was lounging on the couch opposite him, and she got up to come around the coffee table, easing down into a kneeling position beside the chair, watching him as he watched her so attentively, head turned to her, patient. She leaned her arms on the arm rest and bent forward, to stare at him eye to eye.
“What I think,” she whispered, “is that you were feeling so utterly furious, and so furiously helpless, that by the time you saw me struggling with the guard just outside the barrack, you’d just about had it. You leapt through the window and didn’t care if anyone did hear the glass break. You threw everything out the window when you jumped, because you just couldn’t stand to see me get raped. You risked everything, when you jumped, and it wasn’t just thirty hostages’ lives that I’m talking about, was it?”
“Because I’ve been thinking, and I’ve thought of the ‘commander’ and the People’s Revolutionary Republic and that they really didn’t make too much sense when they hijacked the plane, any more than you have on that subject, or anyone else. I’m thinking that they must have had something on board so valuable that they would risk many lives to get it out of the United States. Perhaps it was something to do with smuggling. If they had been smuggling marijuana into the States and found they couldn’t get out again because of increased policing in Florida—that would make sense, or really anything: industrial information, state secrets, any kind of illegal drugs. I’m also thinking that there were a few ‘journalists’ who were more than they seemed at the time. You were the one who found me, who shot and killed the commander after the plane had taken off, weren’t you?”
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