Kyle called up the stairs, "Bobbie, are you ready?"
She appeared at the top of the stairs, and he took in his breath appreciatively as she came down. "I'll say you are," he answered his own question softly. "You look gorgeous."
She laughed lightly, but she was no more immune to the compliment than any other woman would have been. "I've never been gorgeous in my life," she replied.
"Gorgeous," he told her, tucking her arm protectively through his, "is in the eye of the beholder."
She gave him a sidelong glance and knew that if the term ever applied, it did to him. He was wearing a champagne-colored shirt beneath his light beige sports jacket, open at the throat to reveal just a hint of deeply tanned collar-bone. His cocoa-brown slacks were fashionably well fitted, and there was a high shine on his brown leather boots. The colors highlighted, rather than subdued, the golden-brown and silver-yellow tones of his hair and his tan. Barbara remembered his bedraggled appearance and tacky attire that first day on the plane and thought in amusement how little could be learned about a person from first impressions. She had never known a man who had such a natural sense of color and design, and who could put together a wardrobe so perfect that it showed not the faintest trace of vanity or affectation. She knew she would be the envy of every woman they passed tonight, and she was not wrong. A woman could always spot the admiring glances given her escort by other women, but Kyle appeared not to notice.
Some devilish streak in her compelled her to point it out to him as they were seated. "Did you ever consider traveling with a bodyguard?" she suggested mischievously.
He glanced up from the menu in slight puzzlement. "Why?"
"Didn't you see the drooling look the waitress gave you?" she insisted. "And I wouldn't be at all surprised if the other women in the place didn't try to attack you before you leave."
He glanced around in feigned interest. "Is that right?" Then he turned back to the menu and murmured, "Must be my cologne."
She giggled. But then she felt compelled to add, "You must know a lot of girls around here."
"A few," he admitted. "Do you feel exotic tonight, or do you want to stay with the staples? The manicotti here is out of this world."
"Manicotti," she answered, but she couldn't let the subject drop, although she no longer felt like teasing him. "I suppose," she added, toying with the edge of her napkin, "you'll be looking some of them up, now that you're back."
He folded the menu. "Who?"
"Your girl friends."
His lips curved into a patient smile and he shook his head slightly. "I don't have any girl friends. And even if I did, I would have forgotten all about them tonight. Tonight I'm with the only girl I want to be with and I've waited too long for it to waste time talking about others." Now his smile became more tender, as though he were discovering an interesting surprise in her eyes. "You didn't tell me you were the jealous type."
"I'm not," she replied immediately and snapped open her menu. "Let's order."
He laughed softly.
"Do you think you'll be staying with Kate and Michael after the summer is over," he asked as the manicotti was served, "now that Katie's pregnant?"
She glanced at him. "Why should that make any difference?"
He lifted his shoulders lightly and reached for his wineglass. "I'm sure they'll ask you. Pregnant women get moody, and it will be good for Kate to have you around."
For some reason it embarrassed her a little to hear a man as masculine as Kyle refer to pregnancy and its various discomforts so casually, but she quickly told herself she was being silly. After all, they weren't living in the Victorian age, and his sister-in-law's pregnancy was probably not the first Kyle had encountered. She admitted, "I would like to see the baby, of course, and if I go back to Cincinnati, I don't know when I'll be able to afford the trip again. But I can't impose on them forever."
"Why would it be imposing?" he inquired. "They're family."
She smiled. It all sounded so simple when he said it. She thought that she and Kate were every bit as close as he and Michael were, so why should she feel as if she was imposing when she came for a short visit, while he was confident enough to build his house in their backyard? Perhaps it was simply that Kyle was used to taking with certainty and enthusiasm whatever life offered and she was too afraid of rejection to ask.
"Anyway," she said, "I don't see what difference it should make to you."
"That's obvious," he told her, smiling. "I'm here. It would be convenient if you were too."
"Convenient, is it?" she replied airily and threatened him with her wineglass playfully. Then she added, "But you won't be here forever."
"True," he admitted easily. "But I would like to know where to find you."
The words, though she did not take time to analyze whether or not they were sincere, caused a small thrill of pleasure to course through her, and she turned back quickly to her meal before he noticed it.
"Besides," he added, serious now. "I'm not sure it's the best thing for you to go back to Cincinnati."
She looked up at him in surprise. "Why not?"
He met her eyes evenly across the candlelit table. "That's where you and Daniel lived together, isn't it?"
She dropped her eyes in confusion. "Yes, but—"
"And every time you walk down the street you remember walking it with him," he continued in a quiet, unconstrained tone that went right to her heart. "You can't go into a movie theater without remembering a picture you saw with him. You can't go into a department store without remembering Christmas shopping together, or pass a restaurant where the two of you did not go or promise yourselves you'd go…" Tears were beginning to sting her eyes; she blinked them back rapidly. "You thought you had gotten rid of the painful memories," he continued gently, "when you gave away his clothes and moved out of the apartment you had shared with him, but it wasn't that easy, was it?"
She shook her head blindly, staring at the steaming dish before her, which only a moment ago had been so appetizing. Then she struggled to get hold of herself. "Other people," she managed, "lose husbands and they don't have to move out of the state to get over it. I don't think that's the answer."
"Not everyone," Kyle pointed out, "was as much in love as you obviously were."
She looked at him, and in her eyes was mute gratitude and wonder for his sensitivity. Had anyone understood quite so clearly? Had anyone ever been able to impart that understanding to her in such a gentle, matter-of-fact way, somehow touching the most painful parts of her without causing it to hurt?
"It may not be an answer," he added, and his eyes softened with an encouraging smile. "But it's a start. Think about it."
She would think about it. Maine was beautiful, and though she knew she. could not go on living with Kate, it would be nice to be near her, especially when the baby came. Of course she would have to find a job and a place of her own… She began to be excited at the prospect.
"I don't think I'm ready for dancing yet," he told her as he paid the check and they left the restaurant, "but we can go someplace and have a few drinks, if you'd like."
She laughed as they stepped out into the night air. She was right, it had turned a little chilly, but the effects of the wine and Kyle's arm about her shoulders more than compensated for it. "Thanks," she said, "but the wine at dinner was more than enough."
"Fine," he agreed as he helped her into the car. "We'll move right along to the second of the three things I promised I would do as soon as I could walk again."
She glanced up at him. "The second?" She remembered the promise of the Italian restaurant, but—
"Walking on the beach with you," he reminded her. "Remember?"
"Oh." But she was still confused. "What was the third?"
He leaned over her with a provocative gleam in his eye. "Now, you can't have forgotten that," he told her and touched her nose lightly.
It came back to her as he slid behind the wheel of the car, and she was grateful the darkness hi
d the tingle of color that touched her cheeks. She remembered his saying, "Let's take a couple of weeks to think it over, let me get this cast off…" He really was incredible.
She took her shoes off and swung them in her free hand as they walked along the surf's edge, loving the feel of the cool sand beneath her stockinged toes. The other hand rested quite naturally inside Kyle's large warm one. The breeze blew her stray curls about her face, tickling her cheeks, and the close, hypnotic rush of the surf was sensuous and absorbing. The moonlight turned the sand to a shimmering silver and reflected soft jewels in the foam of the rolling sea. Far in the distance a muffled foghorn sounded, and Kyle pointed out to her the barely discernible silhouette of an oil tanker on the horizon.
"How can you be sure it's a tanker," she inquired curiously, "at this distance?"
"Some things," he told her dryly, "you never forget." He explained, "My first job was on one of those things. I was underage, of course, but I made up for that minor deficiency in ingenuity and determination. I don't think they ever caught on to me. I may have been just a kid, but I was doing a man's work for eighteen months."
She looked at him in growing fascination. "That sounds like every boy's dream—to run away to sea! I never knew anyone who actually did it. Tell me about it."
He shrugged lightly. "There's not much to tell. I was crazy and headstrong, and while Mike was writing his first best-selling novel, I was seeing the world on the back of an oil tanker and driving my parents to an early grave. I returned home at the end of my hitch chastened and world-wise, saw the error of my ways, and went on to finish college like a good boy. It was a stupid thing to do to my family and I worked like hell the next few years to make up for it."
"And went on to become an eminently successful architect," she suggested. "Steady and levelheaded and everything your parents had always wanted you to be."
"Right," he agreed with a grin.
"But," she went on, "you never got over your restlessness, your yearning to see the world."
"Wrong," he corrected, laughing. "I got over it the minute I set foot on solid ground again. I think maybe I saw too much of the world too soon, and that's why my biggest fantasy now is to settle down in one place and never have to move again. Sometimes I think all the traveling I have to do now is my punishment for running away when I was a teen-ager."
"You should have listened to your parents," she told him in an exaggerated pretense of wisdom.
"Impossible," he assured her. "I'd like to hope my children will be a little smarter, but they probably won't."
She thought how much she had discovered about him since she had first taken him for an annoying playboy on the plane, and how differently he had turned out than from what she had imagined. He was funny and sweet, playful and wise, tender and compassionate—a man with the world at his feet who wanted no more than a quiet place to call his own with wife and children at the door. A few weeks ago she could never have envisioned Kyle Waters fixing a leaky faucet or assembling Christmas toys; now it was not quite so hard.
"Kate's baby will be lucky to have you for an uncle," she told him suddenly, for no particular reason.
There was a startled appreciation in his eyes, and it embarrassed her because she did not know why she had said it. But then he eased the moment by musing out loud, "You know, I've been thinking…when the baby comes, you and I will be his aunt and uncle. I wonder what that makes us to each other?"
"Brother and sister?" she suggested lightly.
He stopped and turned to face her, and he looked at her for such a long time that she began to blush. "I hope," he said at last, seriously, "that you don't think of me as a brother." Then he kissed her.
She was lost from the first moment. She felt her arms go around him instinctively, almost for support against the dizzying sensations his lips and the restless roaming of his hands on the bare portions of her back sent shuddering through her. Her heart was thudding wildly against her rib cage and she knew she shouldn't be reacting like this; it was only a kiss and she shouldn't let it sweep her away, but her body was betraying her. She was trembling all over and she knew it was not just an ordinary kiss. It was the kiss of a man who expects to wake up in the morning and find this woman next to him, and the worst was, she wanted it too.
Soon his hands were no longer content with her back, they traveled downward to gently explore the curves of her hips—lightly, so that she could stop him if she chose—and then to her breast. Something tightened in her abdomen, and the rest of her body went weak, so that she could not even nod when he whispered against her ear, "Okay?"
Her arms tightened convulsively about him, and she was afraid he had taken that to mean she wanted him to stop, because his hands came up then to cup her face. She waited breathlessly for his kiss, but what happened next was not a kiss. It was more, it was richer and deeper, as he gently encouraged her to follow him into a world of sensuality she had never experienced before.
The featherlight touch of his tongue on her lips caused her to shudder. The trembling threatened to choke off her breath as he traced the pattern over and over again until her lips were tingling and parted from his touch, then his tongue swept over her teeth and gently explored the inside of her mouth, before tracing a course along her jawline and to her ear. A moan escaped her and she arched her neck backward as her fingers tightened about his arms, knowing she would surely fall if she did not hold on to him. It wasn't fair. She had been married and she had thought she knew all there was to know about sensual love, but nothing had ever happened to her like this. Daniel had never aroused her like this.
It was that thought that compounded her helplessness, and the next sound that was released from her sounded like a sob. Daniel had been her first lover and she had thought he would be her last, but she wanted Kyle now and it wasn't right that she should want him. It was just her foolish body, just the expertise of a virile man like Kyle, and she could not betray Daniel's memory under the demands of her senses. His memory was all she had left.
Kyle drew her into his arms and tried to still her shaking, murmuring something soft and comforting against her hair, and she tried to keep from breaking into sobs. She did not know when the moment had changed from burning sensuality to tenderness and comforting, but she was glad—and at the same time perversely sorry. She was still burning with a hot flush and it seemed every nerve ending in her body cried out for him, but the confusion that was pounding in her head against the dam of tears was only combining to turn it all into a sensation of abject misery. Kyle had called her a tease—was that what he was thinking now? Or was he thinking that if he gave her a moment to calm herself she would yield to him again, and that this time it would not end with a kiss or a little light petting? She hoped that was not what he was thinking, because he would be right. Her willpower was gone and the morning would probably find her in his bed and hating herself.
He lifted her face with his finger and his smile was not teasing or accusatory, just gentle and genuine. "I'm sorry," he said softly. "That wasn't fair. I didn't mean to push you."
The emotion that surged through her was something like gratitude, only deeper—almost like love. She buried her face in his shirt and held him tighter.
"Some men," he said in a moment, stroking her back soothingly, "would find it flattering to hold a trembling woman in their arms." The light tone he had forced into his voice dropped as he lifted her face again. "But you're not trembling from passion," he told her seriously. "You're shivering like a trapped rabbit. Do I frighten you so much, Bobbie?"
She could only shake her head mutely. Her breath escaped her lips in chattering wisps, and there was helplessness in her eyes. Not you, she wanted to cry. I'm not frightened of you. It's me! The things I can't control…
Almost as though reading her mind, he brought her again into a strong, reassuring embrace, and then kissed her cheek lightly. "Come on," he said, slip-ping his arm about her waist. "Let's go inside. Some hot cocoa will hit the spot right now."<
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She glanced at him, trying to laugh. "H-hot cocoa?"
"At this time of night," he assured her, "it's the safest thing I can think of."
She busied herself heating the milk and getting the cups, spooning generous amounts of instant cocoa mix into each one. The reassuring movements and the bright lights of Kate's kitchen served to calm her, and she tried not to notice that Kyle's eyes were watching her steadily from his position at the breakfast nook. He never said a word.
She brought the two cups and sat down across from him, managing a weak smile. His eyes were very serious, as though he were studying a problem and considering various solutions. Then he said, "First of all, I want you to know there's no need to be afraid of me. I would never hurt you, Bobbie. You're too valuable to me for that."
She almost burned herself on the cup. She set it down hastily, casting about in her mind for some light reply, something that would bring the tone of the evening back to the innocuous level of Kate's kitchen and steaming cups of cocoa, and away from the passions of a moonlit beach they had just left behind. "Of course," she replied brightly, forcing herself. "You wouldn't dare hurt me. I'm Kate's sister and she would have your scalp."
"It's more than that," he replied with a small frown, "and you know it."
She felt something begin to tighten in her stomach as, at the same moment, her hand clenched convulsively around her cup. She brought the hot liquid to her lips, hoping it would have a soothing effect. It did not.
"Secondly," he added, and his eyes were steady, "you don't have to be ashamed of wanting me. It's not as though it's the first time for either of us. It's natural and it's good, so don't try to turn it into something ugly."
She dropped her eyes, helplessness churning inside her. This was ridiculous, that they should be sitting at Kate's table over cocoa, discussing their sexual problems. Sexual problems? she thought incoherently. Had they progressed far enough to have sexual problems? When all else fails, talk… Her thoughts were wild and vagrant and a little panicky.
Twice in a Lifetime Page 9