For Now and Forever

by Diana Palmer

  “And the uncle?”

  She stared into the coffee. “I don’t know. Or care. I ran away to live with an old woman who was distantly related to me when I turned sixteen. Then I lied about my age to get a job in a restaurant in Atlanta. That way,” she added, smiling slowly, “I could see the exhibits at the High Museum of Art, and in galleries. I even found an artist who was willing to work with me for the little sum I could pay. She was a lovely lady, elderly, but quick and talented. What I know, she taught me.”

  “She taught well,” he said, and meant it. “You have a great talent. Someday you’ll hang in the Louvre and I’ll be able to say that I knew you.”

  That meant, she knew, that he was looking ahead to a time when they wouldn’t be together. She had to keep that in mind.

  But it wasn’t easy. Dancing with him kept reminding her of the wild, sweet interlude on the couch in his office, and the ways he’d touched and roused her. He was so big that the top of her head came only to his chin, and being held against him was warmer than hugging a blast furnace. He moved gracefully for all his size, and he was light on his feet.

  The band had been playing a moderately fast tune, but when they paused and began to play again, the music grew slow and sensuous.

  “Finally,” Nick murmured on a smile. “My kind of dancing music.”

  He lifted her arms around his neck and slid his own hands down her sides to her hips, holding her there while he moved with exquisite slowness among the throng of dancers. “Isn’t this nice?” he chuckled softly.

  She was aching in the worst possible places, feeling as if her trembling legs were going to dump her on the floor any minute. Her fingers tangled lazily in the hair at the back of his neck, feeling the soft coolness of the crisp curls there.

  “Closer,” he murmured, pulling at her hips. “I want to feel your thighs against mine when we move together.”

  “Don’t do that,” she whispered shakily. “I’ll faint.”

  His cheek nuzzled hers. “Isn’t it fascinating, the way we react to each other?” he whispered deeply. “I touch you, and we can’t get close enough together. We tremble and ache and strain to join our bodies, even when we’re only dancing.”

  “No fair, you said you wouldn’t rush me,” she pleaded.

  “Did I? How stupid of me.” But he released his tight hold with a sigh and let his hands slide up to her waist and rest there. “Perhaps you’re right. A little time won’t hurt. Probably,” he murmured softly, bending his lips to her ear, “the waiting will make it much more intense when we come together for the first time.”

  Her nails contracted in his hair helplessly. She loved the feel of him, the light scent of his cologne, the warmth of his big hands against her skin. She remembered how she felt lying naked in his arms, and she wanted that.

  Her eyes looked up into his, smoldering with passion, and he looked back for a long time without blinking, without speaking. One big hand trespassed to the very base of her spine and moved her against his hips with a slow, thoroughly explicit pressure.

  “Can’t it be tonight?” he breathed.

  But she was just barely sane. She leaned her forehead against his dark jacket. “I want to. But I need...a little time.”

  He sighed long and hard and his hand moved again. “Jolana, you’ll put me in an institution. For years, I haven’t felt like this.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” she murmured, forcing herself to say the words that were surely true.

  “Honestly,” he contradicted. “There have been other women, of course. But with you, my blood runs hot and wild. I want to do insane things with you.”

  “Like what?” she asked, lifting her dark eyes to his.

  “I want to make love to you on tables,” he said, his face mirroring the amusement in his deep voice. “Moonlit beaches. In the backseat of a car. Standing up,” he added, holding her fascinated eyes. “In ways and places that I never wanted it before. At my age, a bed is more comfortable. But when I picture you, it’s on a sandy beach with crashing surf and the moon gilding your skin as you move beneath me.”

  She pressed against him hard, trembling. “Nick!”

  His breath came heavy and rough. His hands moved on her back with sensuous pressure. “I know of such a beach. In the Bahamas. We could fly down there tonight or tomorrow. I have a house on one of the out islands, an isolated place with an isolated beach. Look at me, Jolana.” She did, and he held her eyes. “We could make love on the beach in broad daylight,” he breathed roughly. “You could look at me while it was happening...”

  Her breath caught and her mouth opened. Unable to resist the temptation, he bent and kissed her softly, warmly, as the music came to a close.

  “Come,” he whispered.

  She followed him to the door and waited while he paid the tab. With mixed emotions, she let him lead her out to the car.

  “Not tonight,” she said as he climbed in beside her. “Give me two weeks. Just that. And I’ll give you an answer. I promise.”

  He considered that for a long moment, looking as if he’d have liked to insist. He could have, and they both knew it. Her resistance was nil when Nick put on the heat. “Two weeks, amore mia,” he agreed softly. “And then I take the choice from these delicate, talented hands.”

  Living through those two weeks hadn’t seemed quite so hard at the time. But as the days wound by, and Nick began to insinuate himself into her life at an alarming rate, she felt as if she were going wild with hunger. He seemed to deliberately tempt her, in ways so subtle that she couldn’t protest. He’d lean over her to serve her a drink, to ask a question, his lips poised just over hers. And when she was dying for the kiss he was threatening her with, he’d draw away with laughter and triumph in his dark, wicked eyes. Or he’d sit beside her to watch television or at a movie, and one big hand would travel slowly up and down her side, teasing at the edge of a breast, or just above it, until involuntarily her body would lift toward his fingers. And then he’d stop, abruptly, as if his movements hadn’t been deliberate at all. They were little things, but maddening things. And all the while, they were talking, playing, having fun, learning about each other.

  She found that he was an avid chess player, very deliberate with his moves, darkly concentrating. She, on the other hand, was haphazard, thinking only halfway through a move. He liked to jog. So did she. Often, she tried to picture him in shorts. She’d have bet that he had gorgeous dark, strong legs. She remembered that his chest and arms were darkly tanned. Sensuous. Very, very muscular.

  He liked to work out in the gym, and one day she went to watch, feeling awed at the muscles in his arms as he lifted weights. He was wearing a T-shirt, and under it the unleashed power of his splendid physique made her sigh with admiration. He wasn’t muscle-bound as a lot of weight lifters were, but he looked formidable enough. He caught her watching him and threw back his dark, curly head and laughed gloriously. He was so uninhibited. He fascinated her. She saw him cry over a particularly sad movie, unashamedly. She watched him with his mother on the occasions when they went to see her, and saw the love shining in his eyes. He was an emotional man, all arrogant pride and rough charm, but he appealed to every insecurity she had. He was strong and forceful and able to charm or demand whatever he wanted from life. Within days, she was head over heels in love with him and helpless to escape his pull. She knew she was going to give in, because she had to have something of him to remember when it was over. And if a few nights in his bed were the only way she could really get close to him, she’d agree to it gratefully.

  Love like this was incredibly rare. It wasn’t like the greedy, selfish infatuation she’d had for her long-ago salesman. No, this was a giving thing. She liked to do little things for Nick. She liked to make him special desserts when they ate at her apartment. She liked to give him presents. She’d found out that he was crazy about crystal, and she bought h
im a tiny lead crystal swan and presented it to him with bursting pride. She’d glowed when he became enthusiastic about it, turning it over and over in his big hands, fascinated. She didn’t tell him about the portrait she was doing of him, a splendid painting of his torso with storm clouds behind and an aura of mystery about it.

  The only irritating habit he seemed to have was making frequent references to Margery. As he and Jolana spent more and more time together, it began to grate on her nerves.

  It seemed that they couldn’t even have a meal together without some memory leaking out of Nick’s past with a potent reminder of the woman he had cared for for so many years.

  “I love eating out, don’t you?” he asked one evening when they were enjoying a spaghetti supper at a nearby restaurant. He grinned at her. “I especially like leaving the dishes behind.”

  She laughed, too. “I like not having to remember four orders at once and not worrying about fouling up at least one of them.”

  He sighed, finishing his meal, and leaned back with his coffee cup in his hand. “Oh, the good life. Enough food, enough clothing, enough money. A car. A place to live where I don’t have to fight to get into the bathroom.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t always so good.”

  “Yes, I know.” She toyed with her dessert, a rich pudding. “I’ve still got a long way to go, but it’s nice to be able to afford things.”

  “Margery always wanted a diamond watch,” he recalled. He laughed. “I gave her one, for Christmas a few years back. Andrew raised hell.”

  His mention of Margery hurt Jolana, but she was determined not to let Nick know.

  “Doesn’t he mind your giving his wife presents? I gather that he isn’t wealthy?”

  “Andrew would drink up any profits he made if he were in business for himself,” he scoffed. “He works for my stepfather, if you can call it work.”

  “People don’t drink without a reason,” she began.

  “He beats her,” he growled, glaring across the table.

  “My uncle beat me,” she returned, glaring back. “I got out. So could Margery if she wanted to.”

  He didn’t like that. It showed in his eyes. “You don’t know anything about it.”

  “Nobody really knows anybody else. Not deep down, behind the masks we all wear to protect us. You don’t know what it’s like between Margery and Andrew. You only know what she tells you.”

  He put his cup back on the table. “How’s the pudding?” he asked, changing the subject with apparent friendliness. “Want something else?”

  She started to protest, then let him have his way. Perhaps he didn’t realize how often he mentioned Margery. She wasn’t going to make an issue of it. Not yet, anyway.

  Nick liked to sit with her while she painted, bringing along work that he couldn’t find time for at his office. He wore reading glasses when he worked, and she couldn’t help thinking that the dark-rimmed frames suited him, made him look even more masculine.

  She poised at her easel, studying the fluid lines of his big body where he was sprawled on the studio couch with a sheaf of papers in one hand. He sensed her scrutiny and looked up, grinning.

  “Painting me?” he teased.

  She was, but not on the canvas before her. She was painting him in her mind, in indelible colors. “Sort of,” she hedged. “You do a lot of work in the evenings, don’t you?”

  “I have to. I spend most of my day answering the phone and seeing people,” he confided. “I can’t get through paperwork and do that, too.” He took off his glasses with a sigh. “I get sick of it sometimes. I’d like to fly off into the sun.”

  “To Nassau?” she probed.

  He looked up. “How did you know?”

  “Tony told me you liked my island landscapes and when I asked why, he said you grew up in Nassau. I went there once, for several days,” she recalled with a faint smile. “It was beautiful.”

  “Yes, I always thought so. When I was a boy, I used to hang around Prince George wharf watching the ocean liners dock, or wrangle invitations to go out on the fishing boats.” His dark eyes grew dreamy. “Pirates were all over the islands a couple of centuries or so ago, you know. Woodes Rogers drove them out when he became the first governor of the Bahamas, there’s even a statue of him...”

  “...in front of the Sheraton,” she added, grinning. “I used to come in by it every evening while I was staying there. And the old cannons... Aren’t they something?”

  “As you might imagine, I spent a lot of my boyhood playing pirate,” he murmured drily. “Rick and I had some good times.” Then the smile faded, and she knew he was remembering the end of it, his father’s death.

  “You loved your father, didn’t you?” she asked quietly.

  “He was some kind of man.” He laughed softly. “I wanted to grow up and be just like him.”

  “Haven’t you?”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes I like to think so.” He glanced up at her. “What are you working on?”

  She stared at the canvas, at the pastel colors overlayered with vivid dark ones. An outline of a man and a girl was just beginning to take shape. “Something Impressionistic,” she confided. “I don’t often get to paint just for myself. I have to paint what people are buying, and landscapes have been very popular in recent years. That, and portraits. I’ve done several, but I don’t like to. I have to paint what I see. And people don’t like truth on canvas.”

  “Warts and all, so to speak?” he chuckled. “I understand. Margery did a drawing of me once, when we were teenagers, and I tore it up. She cried and cried...” His eyes darkened. “She’s so sweet, so helpless, and now she’s stuck with that damned drunk, and there isn’t a thing I can do to help her. Nothing!” He shifted and glanced down at the papers in his hand while Jolana did a slow, furious burn. Margery. Every other word he spoke these days was Margery! It was a habit that she’d accepted at first, but as she became more emotionally involved with him, it began to grate. And tonight he’d outdone himself. “I can’t get into this tonight,” he said after a minute and tossed his work onto the floor, along with his glasses. He studied her with pursed lips and began to smile slowly. “Come here,” he said in a deep, sensuous tone, patting the sofa beside him.

  Just like that, she thought furiously. He could praise Margery to the high heavens, and then expect Jolana to fall into his arms. He was carrying that schoolboy protectiveness to impossible heights. Margery had been another man’s wife for ten years now, but Nick didn’t seem to appreciate that. She felt jealousy wash over her, along with a burst of pure hatred for the “helpless” other woman. How deeply did Nick still care for Margery?

  She turned, staring at him with cold eyes. “Why?” she asked. “Would you like me to substitute for the beloved Margery?”

  He paled. His expression changed and for an instant he looked murderous. He bent, picking up his papers and his glasses. He put the glasses in his pocket, slipped on his jacket, and stood up.

  “Margery is none of your business,” he said with icy formality.

  “She should be,” she laughed bitterly. “I hardly hear anything else from you but the wonder of her. You talk more about Margery than you do about your own mother.”

  “Are you jealous?” he taunted, letting his eyes wander over her insolently. “I don’t sleep with her.”

  “You don’t sleep with me, either, honey,” she said sweetly, “and you’re not likely to. I won’t be a poor second choice for any man. If it’s sweet little Margery you want, go for it. Just don’t expect me to fill in in the meantime.”

  “Do you think you could?” he scoffed. “My God, you’re all ice inside, with just an occasional meltdown. For days now, I’ve kept my distance, waiting for a single invitation. All I get is supper around here.”

  “What do you expect, for God’s sake, when you spend the evening talking about other women? If you wa
nt to talk about Margery, go to a bar. I’ve got work to do!”

  “Work seems to be the only thing you have any passion for,” he said, turning. His big body seemed rigid, and a twinge of regret made her shift uneasily. But she didn’t want Margery’s leftovers, she told herself. If he couldn’t give her anything but his body, then it was better that she never see him again.

  “I’m looking for a man who wants me,” she returned, glaring at him. “Just me, for myself. When I find him, I’ll give him everything he needs or wants from a woman. But I’m not passing out samples.”

  “I can’t imagine that doing you any good,” he replied from the door.

  “You seemed to like the taste you had,” she returned, lifting her chin and smiling at him regardless of the cost. “I know you’ve had more than just a taste of Margery, Nick. And how does her poor fish of a husband like having you thrown in his face like an Olympic gold medal?”

  For an instant she thought he might hit her, there was such fury in every line of his body. But, of course, he didn’t. And without another word, he reached for the doorknob and stormed out of the apartment. The walls actually shuddered behind him.

  It took a while for what she had done to sink in. She’d lost her temper and Nick, too. That was probably for the best, she tried to tell herself, because she was losing control of her life and her heart and even her body. But her life felt suddenly empty and impossibly lonely.

  She hadn’t realized just how involved she was getting with him. Even her apartment had begun to reflect it. There were ashtrays everywhere, for his cigarettes. There were magazines he liked, there were special desserts in the freezer that were his favorites, there were sketches and the unfinished painting of him. It was for the best, she told herself, and now he could go and moon over Margery.

  The show at the gallery was just two weeks away, and already Tony was running an announcement in the Times about it. She’d worked so hard to make it this far. Nick wasn’t going to ruin this for her, he wasn’t!