Hot Streak

by Susan Johnson

  She gave up the fight at that point because she wanted out of the marriage immediately. Her lawyer cautioned her. “If you're in a rush, you're not going to get as much. It takes time to uncover the hiding places. It's a big mistake to take the first offer.” But she didn't want to spend months in court haggling. She settled for half the equity in the house. Bart wanted to sell their suburban home and move into a river-view penthouse downtown. It was fine with her; she couldn't afford to keep up the house alone, anyway. And since he was eager to sell, that money was available to her swiftly.

  The years since the divorce had been a struggle, starting over again, but she wasn't afraid of hard work. She knew she'd make it somehow, although bankers were no more liberal in their loan policies than they'd been in the past. But after dogged knocking on doors, Molly had gotten a small first loan and, with some help from her parents and her share of the house money, had managed to accumulate enough capital to put a down payment on an old factory that had been sitting idle for years. She and Carrie had moved into a half floor of the old building, both to save money and so she could be near Carrie when she worked late on the weekends. Eighty percent of the building was rented now, the wholesale showrooms were exquisite, their anchor restaurant in the atrium was on a reservations-only status as of six months ago and her future looked to be financially solvent in under ten months.

  So head south, Molly thought, turning onto the freeway entrance. Pick up your daughter at Mom and Dad's, and you'll still be home by 8:30. Not too late at all.

  It was only five miles from the motel to Ely Lake, and every argument against stopping there had been laid out and swiftly discarded by the time the exit sign appeared.

  “Oh, what the hell,” she murmured in a soft explosion of breath and flipped up the turn signal. Hers had never been a rational temperament, anyway; she was defenseless against her quickening emotions. At least with Carey Fersten that had been the case. She had shivered once and said “yes” to his innocuous invitation to a movie years ago, and today her feelings were as turbulent, flaring like a pennant in the wind. She wanted to see him again. Her susceptible emotions were mercurial, unsettled, but blatantly transparent. She wanted to see his dark seductive eyes again, wanted to see if a glint of recognition, of arousal would gleam in their smoky depths. Youthful moralizing and parental pressures were gone now; no agonies or aching anguish of right or wrong, should or shouldn't, remained. She wanted to see him and, one way or another, put a ghost from her past to rest.

  After parking her car in the graveled parking lot near the stone pavilion, Molly walked to a large white trailer with Golden Bear Productions painted boldly on the side and knocked on the door. She was told by the young man who came to the door dressed in a sweater, jeans, and a baseball cap, that Carey Fersten was filming down by the beach, they were racing the setting sun, and please don't bother him.

  She hesitated at that point, not brave enough to incur the censure of an entire crew busily engaged in a losing contest with the light. Returning to her car, she sat cross-legged on the hood and debated, with increasing cold feet whether this was a sound idea. Not cold feet. Terror. It had been years, after all, with crowds of attractive, worldly women dogging his heels since she'd known him; she might be getting herself into a potentially embarrassing situation. Carey'd probably look at her and say, “Who?” She'd make a complete ass of herself.

  It was, she decided suddenly, much too stupid a move, even for someone as incredibly rash as she. Dropping her long, khaki-covered legs over the side of the fender, she slipped to the ground and turned to get back into the car.

  She heard the familiar voice before she saw him. Inexplicably, even after all this time, the low resonance was capable of causing her pulse to flutter. Its measured tones were explaining to unseen listeners, “We've still sun above the beach. Let's finish with the festival scene before we pack it in tonight.”

  A breathy female voice protested, “I'm getting hungry. How long are you going to keep shooting?”

  Carey's voice, overlaid now with a touch of impatience, slowly replied, “If you're hungry, Tina, there's food in the trailer. We shoot till the sun goes down.”

  And then Molly saw him cresting the rise of the path from the beach, surrounded by people hurrying to keep up with his brisk stride. The saffron rays of the late afternoon sun caught in his pale hair like gilded mesh, and as his lean, broad-shouldered form emerged fully over the ridge of the slope, shirtless, barefoot, clad only in worn jeans riding low on his slim hips. Molly decided that he was altogether too handsome and always had been.

  In the next split second she knew her nervy impulse was all wrong. They didn't have anything in common anymore… never had with their disparate backgrounds… outside the passionate wanting. The scion of aristocracy was an international celebrity now, a lover of endless chichi women, eons away from one of his youthful flings. At best, they would exchange banal civilities, at worst… she didn't care to contemplate that humiliation.

  Molly already had one foot inside the car when she heard his deep voice cry, “Molly? Molly Darian?” The words held a question. And before she'd returned her foot to the ground, he was running toward her, shouting her name.

  Her breath caught in her throat as she stepped out of the car and the years dropped away. Impossible. Ridiculous. It can't be. Disbelief tumbled frantically through her brain, but in seconds he was standing before her, clutching her hands in his and, like so many times, so many years ago, whispering, “Honeybear,” in that incredible sexual rasp that always tore through her senses. Looking into the dark eyes lightly roaming her face, she saw the unsettling, smoldering possession that roused as acutely as a thousand caresses. “How long can you stay?” he murmured, intense as always, single-minded, oblivious to past and future.

  Molly finally found the breath to speak under his devouring gaze. “An hour or so. I'm on my way home.”

  “Good,” he said softly. He didn't ask where home was or where she'd come from. Only the short, clipped utterance, its meaning infinitely more complex than the single word. She looked exactly the same, he thought, his heart pumping as if he'd run ten miles; the woman from his dulcet memories, as though he'd only left her a minute before. A rush of sensation-more than that, sentiment, heavy as Irish lace, sweet as ripe papaya, unfamiliar but wonderful-innundated his mind. When he was with her he always felt as though the world had been washed fresh and clean and its bounties were his to enjoy. A childlike delusion, fascinating in its intensity.

  Her blond hair was still long, touching her shoulders, the natural curl softly frizzed as he remembered it in wisps around her face. He wanted to touch it lightly, as if testing the buoyancy of gossamer, then slide his fingers through it. He wanted to grip her head possessively and pull her close to him so her tall, slender body was pressed tight. Her lapis eyes in the perfect oval of her face were wide and startled, only inches away from him. He wanted to lean close and, just before his lips touched her soft, full mouth, he wanted to whisper, “You're mine. You've always been mine. I don't care about husbands or boyfriends or acts of God.”

  It was a feverish, mad feeling, an aberration in a man noted for his solid pragmatism and self-control, and he fought the overwhelming impulse to blurt out the Neanderthal phrases. Fought it down, locked it away, and decided in the next moment of sanity he was just unconditionally glad she was here. It was the first miracle to occur in his life, and with a twinge of guilt he reconsidered his insensitivity to religious experiences. No more. He winked at her and murmured, “The earth moved.”

  The crew following him had come up by now and were gathering round. Dropping one of her hands, he turned to them and in a businesslike voice said, “That's it for today. See you all tomorrow at 8:30.” He still held one of Molly's hands in a tight grip, as though she might disappear if he loosened his grasp. His tall body dwarfed her, but with a feeling of protection rather than intimidation, and his familiar presence warmed her.

  The response was a garb
le of protests, which he countered until only two people remained: the young man in the baseball cap and the tall redhead. “Christina,” Carey said politely, “Allen will drive you to the motel. I'll be back later.”

  Christina scanned Molly with icy eyes, noted the held hand with a black look, and replied in a throaty, pouting tone, “When later?”

  “Later, later. I don't know. Have supper with Allen.” Looking significantly at Allen, he added, “Drive carefully.” Allen winked behind Christina's back, purposefully took her arm, and marched her off.

  Turning back to Molly, Carey recaptured her other hand, pulled her up to his bare chest and, looking down at her from disturbingly close range, murmured, “You don't know how many times I've thought of you since that summer.”

  “Have you really?” It was gauche, she knew, and the words had come out oddly hushed, but only inches away from his body and his piercing gaze, any attempt at sophisticated repartee was lost in an overwhelming sense of awakening. How could he still do this to her after so much time? He made her feel that life was endlessly exciting and intoxicating.

  But when he whispered, “Really,” and bent to kiss her, Molly suddenly pictured herself in a vivid freeze-frame image as another adoring female in an endless parade of people who loved him. People just do, Molly thought. They loved the energy, the fascinating, charming vitality.

  Although her hands were still tightly held in his warm grasp, she pushed against his chest, taking grudging exception to her mental image and his casual ardor. Torn between ferocious desire and pent-up cavil, she perversely asked, “And how many times have you used that winning turn of phrase, Mr. International Director?”

  He stopped, lifting his head when Molly forced him back. Looking quizzically at her, his rugged brows raised, he answered, “Since there hasn't been a ‘that summer' with anyone but you, it's a virgin line. Something wrong?”

  “Don't you care to know where I came from or where I'm going or what I've been doing for the last ten years?” Her blue eyes weren't the typical placid blue that blond hair demanded, but a rich, deep cobalt, touched at the moment with small storms like potent gusts off the coast. Too many pictures of Carey with too many magnificent women for too many years fed her testiness.

  A tilted half-smile appeared and the tenseness infusing his body diminished. “Sorry, Honeybear. It was such a miracle to see you again, I wasn't going to take any chances of dissolving the mirage with cold, hard questions. I wanted to kiss you to see if you were real or only another creation of my wishful thinking.” His smile widened. “You must be real. Your fiery temper has survived intact, I see. Remind me to keep wine bottles out of your reach.” Her defiance melted, and they both laughed at the memory of the flare-up on a long ago summer night.

  “I'll have you know I bear the scar to this day. It's given me lots of mileage over the years. I don't mention that a sweet as honey young woman swung at me with a wine bottle and my hard head broke the blasted glass. Detracts from my macho image to be bested by a mite like you. So, okay, Honeybear, tell me where you've been all this time, and then I'll kiss you. Come on, sit down on the wall here and we'll watch the sun go down. Fill me in.” And he swung her up on the stone wall, his hands warm around her waist. Leaning against the irregular masonry, he listened patiently while Molly, in a deliberately casual tone, gave a rapid and highly edited account of her life to date.

  “Divorced,” he said thoughtfully when she finished. “Love to hear it, although having you appear after all these years, I wasn't about to quibble over marital status. I tried to find you once a few years ago, but I didn't know your husband's name, your folks had moved out of town, Linda's parents were gone, too, and I never did know where Georgia lived. I came up against a blank. When women marry, they can drop out of sight pretty easily.”

  It warmed Molly's heart that he'd tried. “When was that? When you looked,” she asked.

  “I don't know… probably four or five years ago. Life had been pretty hectic for a while; I was vacationing with my Dad and just wanted to see you. Everything's supposed to be progressive nowadays-anyone can be friends-so I thought, married or no, I could drop in and say hello.”

  “I wish you had.”

  “Since I struck out on that attempt, I'm glad as hell you stopped by. Can you stay with me now?” He asked the question in a conversational tone.

  Molly scanned his hard body casually braced against the wall next to her, took in the bold, beautiful face, the coarse, sun-streaked hair and she tried to reconcile the familiar image with the international jet-set celebrity director he'd become. She also tried to decipher the meaning of his simple question. “What do you mean, now?” she quietly asked.

  “Now as ‘from now on.' Ten years is a long time to wait, and I'd rather not wait any longer.”

  “You haven't exactly been waiting alone.”

  “Well, neither have you.”

  “I think your scorecard, at least according to the glossy magazines, totals considerably higher than my one-and-only husband.”

  “How long have you been divorced?”

  “Two years.”

  “And there's been no one else?” A skeptical edge had crept into the bland question.

  “No one appealed enough.”

  “You fascinate me, Honeybear,” he said teasingly. “You mean it's all for me?”

  “It is not for anyone. We live in liberated times, Carey Fersten. My life's my own, my body, too.”

  “Pardonnez-moi.” His dark eyes sparkled. “Perhaps Ms.-” He waited for her to contribute the name he'd never known.

  “Cooper. But I use my maiden name now.”

  “I wish I'd known Cooper five years ago and now that I do, it doesn't matter, so Ms. Darian, perhaps you'd be willing to share some of your”-his eyes slowly slid down her body-“liberated sensibilities with me. If I appeal of course,” he added, smiling. “Am I going too fast?” His gaze was back on her face and while he spoke with lightness he was impelled by emotions he couldn't control. He couldn't have slowed down if he wished and it required all his self-control to keep from carrying her off to his bed.

  Yes, Molly thought, considering this is the first time I've seen you in ten years, and no, because she was honest enough to acknowledge she'd wanted him ten years ago, all the time between and now. “You always were fast,” she said instead, smiling back, thinking Paradise had materialized right here in the gravel parking lot of Ely Lake park.

  Carey exhaled the breath he'd been holding. “Back to square one, then, Honeybear. Can you stay with me now?”

  “Stay with you?” She knew she was sounding obtuse or retarded or coy, but much as she wished to jettison her entire life on the spur of the moment, she had to consider her daughter who was waiting for her in the Cities, her business which didn't operate without her and, equally important, Carey Fersten's vagrant and capricious life. Including one impermanent wife and possibly ten such invitations to ladies a week.

  “Stay, as in walk, talk, eat, play.” He paused, took a small breath. “… Sleep with me. Can you?”

  A heated rush tore through her senses, but she couldn't-just like that-like picking up Boston cream pie in a cafeteria line. “Not now,” she said, her ambiguity a blend of logic and wanting. She was careful not to say no.

  He frowned. It wasn't the answer he wanted. “When?” he asked, very quietly, not forcing too hard, but wanting to know if there'd be a “when” so he could last till then, only breathe small breaths and last till then.

  “I don't know.” Was it because she was afraid of being a number-that old girlfriend, what's her name-who stopped by during filming. She was questioning his sincerity. “I have to be back in the Cities to pick up my daughter and I've an appointment with my banker in the morning.” The truth intervened to mask her uncertainties.

  “Tomorrow then?”

  “I'd love to, but…”

  “But?” His query was very soft. He wasn't used to refusals.

  “Look,” she sai
d, hearing the small touch of resentment in his voice, deciding to be frank, “you walked into my life once and tore it apart. I don't know if I want a repeat performance… If I can handle one.”

  “You were the one who married that summer, not me.” His voice was controlled but he'd never completely gotten over his anger.

  “The wedding had been planned for months.”

  “Not my idea of a reason to get married.”

  “I was young.”

  “That, at least, is a reasonable excuse.”

  “You never mentioned anything more permanent to me.” After all these years did she want an apology?

  “Damn right I did,” he said, and for a flashing moment he felt young and uncertain again. “It just wasn't good enough.”

  “It was vague as hell and you know it.”

  “You were nothing but a bundle of contradictions-flighty and uncertain, persuaded it could never work. That's what I remember. You only saw me between visits from your fiancй who was away at school, and even then I had to beg like crazy because you were so guilt-ridden. ‘What will my parents say? What will Bart's parents say? They're such good friends.'” His voice mimicked the words he'd heard so often. “I wasn't,” he went on in a cool tone, “getting reassurances about you wanting me, either.”

  Molly's eyes widened. “None?”

  “Besides that,” he hastily murmured.

  She smiled at the correction and sighed softly. All the years of unrequited love vibrated through the gentle sound. “Oh, I did,” she slowly replied, “I wanted you… in every way. But all the pressures of the wedding-”

  “And I didn't fit into the plans.”

  She mutely shook her head. “You weren't even from the same world. And you never said anything about us-not voluntarily. Why didn't you talk about us?” she whispered.

  Carey looked at her downcast eyes and tightly clenched fists, then took her hands in his and soothed the backs of them with gentle brushing movements of his thumbs. He glanced past her shoulder to the blue lake spread serenely below them, as if its serenity would somehow calm the tumult in his mind. “I don't know,” he murmured, thinking of all the years he'd searched for Molly in other women's arms. “All sorts of mixed-up reasons… fear mostly, I suppose. I'd never really thought of marriage and maybe I figured you'd change your mind about marrying Bart and I wouldn't have to consider it, right then. We could just be together… but the days kept ticking away… until they were gone. You'd never talked about marriage either except-that last night-and when you didn't accept my offer of marriage…”