Private Dancer

by Suzanne Forster

  “Bev! Are you in there?”

  “Who is it?” she asked, wincing at the sound of her own voice.

  “ It’s me, Arthur,” the voice called. “Are you all right?”

  Arthur? She touched her forehead. Who did she know named Arthur?

  “Bev, it’s me,” he said again. “Everything happened so fast, I didn’t know what hit me. By the time they got me out of the wine vat, you were gone.”

  Wine vat, Arthur ... Arthur, wine vat. What was happening to her memory? She vaguely recalled a warning about memory disturbances on the box her seasick patches came in. She’d removed the patch, but if the drug was still in her system—

  “The way you disappeared, I was afraid you were angry with me,” he said. “I didn’t mean to touch your breast, Bev. That was an accident.”

  Touch her breast? Oh, of course, Arthur. It was coming back to her now, in little bits and pieces of detail, in large chunks. She’d been at a party with Arthur, crushing passion plums with her bare feet and—

  She glanced down at her own undeniably nude body, at the wet shambles of a bed where she and Sam were sprawled, at the room with its soggy, plum-stained clothes thrown every which way, and let out a tiny moan of despair. Was that water dripping off the ceiling? It looked as though they’d had an orgy. Her moan degenerated into a husky groan. It looked as though they’d turned her tiny cabin into the Roman baths.

  “Bev! Are you in there! Are you all right?”

  She struggled off the bed, dragging a blanket with her as far as it would go, which wasn’t far enough. An edge of the material caught beneath Sam’s dead weight, and she couldn’t budge it.

  “Bev?”

  “I’m fine, Arthur,” she whispered, darting to the door, naked and shivering. “I was feeling a little lightheaded, so I came back to the ship.”

  “What did you say, Bev? I can hardly hear you.”

  She cupped her hand to the door and whispered louder. “It’s very late, Arthur, and I’m a little under the weather at the moment.” Somehow she had to get rid of him without waking up Sam. She needed some time to figure out what had gone on in this dripping room.

  “How about breakfast in the morning?” she suggested. “No, make that lunch. Does lunch sound good?”

  It took a little more whispering and wheedling, but she finally got Arthur to leave. Breathing a sigh of relief, she turned around to find Sam propped up on his elbow, looking like an indolent Greek god as he surveyed the situation. A smile tugged at his handsome mouth, and Bev came face-to-face with one of life’s immutable truths: There wasn’t any way to adequately cover the naked female body with only two hands.

  “Stop staring at me,” she said sharply. “I’m naked.”

  “I noticed.” His voice was wry, husky, a man mightily pleased with his circumstances. “You were naked the last time I looked too.”

  “Either turn the other way, or close your eyes.”

  “You’re no fun.”

  The bedspread was in a heap on the floor, and Bev made a dash for it as he averted his eyes. “What do you mean, the last time you looked?” she said, wrapping herself like a mummy in the fabric’s jungle motif.

  “Well, you weren’t naked the entire time,” he conceded. “You had your panties on in the shower—for a while.”

  “Shower?” More details were creeping back into Bev’s head, strange and lurid flashes she would have preferred not to remember. Perhaps she’d had a terrible dream while she was asleep. “I took a shower? Why did I do that?”

  “You were a mess, babe, plum wine head to toe, but we got you cleaned up pretty good.”

  “We?” Bev felt an immediate clutch of anxiety. She searched through her memory as though she were in a darkroom processing negatives—until she came to a slide show that astonished her. She saw herself naked and arched over a man as if they were doing something unbelievably sensual. She saw herself moving above him, touching and caressing him as if she were the aggressor. No ... impossible!

  But her mind flashed slide after slide, as though determined to convince her that she’d made wild, abandoned love with him, that she’d flung herself on top of his beautiful, battle-scarred body and ravished him.

  “Did something happen in this room?” she asked Sam breathlessly. “Besides the shower?”

  “Something?” The smile that glowed through his dark features made his eyes smoky and dangerously intimate. “You’re not even close, Lace. It was more like everything.”

  “I don’t believe you.” She clutched the towel to her breasts and shook her head, alarmed by his raffish grin. “All right, then,” she demanded. “Just what did we do? Tell me.”

  “You don’t remember anything?”

  She stepped back, refusing to commit herself. She remembered some things, all right, she just didn’t want to believe what she remembered. The details were still sketchy. Damn that seasick patch anyway. She ought to have paid more attention to the warning label. The plum wine hadn’t helped either. “We took a shower, right? I remember that, and then—”

  His smile widened, implying the worst.

  “What are you saying?” she bristled. “That we did something wrong? Something ... indecent?”

  “I thought it was damn decent. You don’t remember? Not even being on top?” He sighed. “It was your idea, Lace.”

  “Me? On top? Of you? No, I didn’t do that, I wasn’t—” She stopped babbling, caught her breath, and glared at him. She hadn’t been dreaming. No such luck. “You’re saying we made love, I was on top, and it was my idea?”

  “Hey, that was just the first time.”

  Her voice dropped off. “The first time?”

  “Oh, babe—” He broke off, laughing softly, as though he could hardly contain the images crowding his brain.

  Bev caught at her upper lip with her teeth. What had they done? She could see that he fully intended to leave her with the impression that they had committed myriad and unspeakable acts. She did sort of remember the being-on-top part. Actually, she was beginning to recall some astonishing things ... arching over him, bouncing up and down, throwing her head back and laughing like some pagan priestess during spring fertility rites.

  She pressed two fingers to her throbbing eyebrow.

  This was looking very bad. If she’d done those things, what else had she done? A hint of desperation sneaked into her voice as she glanced at Sam. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” she said.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, I was high on those damn fermented plums. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “Oh, right, likely excuse.”

  “Can’t you even be a gentleman about it?”

  He fixed her with a long, penetrating look that said it was too late for polite pretenses. “Now she wants me to be a gentleman?” he said softly. “Is this the same woman who whispered in my ear ‘Make me scream for mercy, Sam’?”

  “I did not!” she gasped.

  His eyes implied that she had whispered that and more. Shame and disbelief flooded her face with stinging heat. She couldn’t have said such a revolting thing. Unfortunately, she couldn’t contradict him with any real conviction, because she didn’t remember the specifics, just the lurid generalities.

  “I never would have figured you for such a wild little thing,” he said, his voice still softened and husky. “You damn near wore me out.”

  “Stop it,” she said, raising a hand. “Stop it right there. I admit that I don’t remember exactly what happened in here, but that doesn’t give you the right to torture me with insinuations and innuendo.”

  “Innuendo, hell, I can tell you exactly what we did.”

  “No!” She threw up a hand. “Whatever it was, it’s over and done with. We can’t change it now, much as I might want to.”

  She turned away from him, wishing she could wave a wand and vanish into thin air. It was such a comforting idea, she pulled the bedspread over her head and sank down at the same time, literally disappearing unde
rneath it. She crouched on the floor, enveloped in darkness, determined to escape his smug smile for as long as it took her to get a grip on the situation.

  “What is this? Hide-and-seek?”

  It was Sam’s voice. Light flooded her from behind as he picked up the other end of the spread.

  “Do you mind?” she said, elbowing the material around her. “I’d like to be alone in here.”

  He dropped the blanket and she heard the bed creak as he sat down next to her. He was quiet for several moments, as though trying to decide what to do. When he finally spoke, the wry amusement had been tempered slightly, by qualities she never would have thought him capable of—patience, concern. “Nothing like this has ever happened to you before, has it, Lace?” he said. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Bev’s heart began to pound oddly. She hesitated, then lowered the spread to look at him. Deep in his blue eyes she caught a flash of his trademark cockiness. Sam Nichols would always be Sam Nichols, but something else had crept into his expression, a hint of gravity that made him even more handsome. The scar tugged at his lower lip like a signal marker, a pointing finger. For some reason, it put her in touch with her own scars, her own invisible wounds. He wasn’t capable of sensitivity, was he? Of feeling concern for her? Her throat tightened, and her heart gave a quick, wrenching thud. Because if he was capable of those things, she wasn’t sure she could stop herself from getting involved.

  “No, I don’t want to talk,” she said quickly, wishing the tight sensation in her throat would go away. Feelings were stirring inside her that she didn’t want to acknowledge, tender feelings that were completely inappropriate in a situation like this. She gathered the blanket around her, shaking off his attempt to help her as she rose awkwardly to her feet.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine.” She looked up, drawn by the worried tone in his voice and the questions in his eyes. “Is something wrong? Why are you staring at me like that?”

  Sam was trying to make sense of her behavior. There was something bothering her, something so personal she couldn’t open up about It. “You said you were married once, didn’t you? And divorced?”

  “Yes ... why?”

  “Divorce can be rough.” He drew the sheet around himself, buying some time before he went on. “I’ve been that route too. I just wondered if your breakup had anything to do with sex. You know, making love?”

  Bev felt a sparkle of panic. “Why would you think that?”

  “I don’t know....” He hesitated, then shrugged it off. “No reason, I guess. Maybe I’m out of line.”

  “Did something happen while we were making love? Did I say ... or do something?”

  He shook his head, but Bev didn’t believe him. She must have revealed something. Why else had he asked? Lord, she felt like a fool. She’d had the most intimate physical experience of a woman’s life, and she couldn’t remember what she’d said or done. But what disturbed her even more was that he did know.

  “Last night was a mistake, Sam,” she said abruptly. “One thing led to another, and we got a little carried away. All right, that happens. We’re consenting adults. But it was a mistake.” She eyed him sharply. “And I’m sure we would both be terribly embarrassed if anyone else found out about it. Arthur, for example. It could blow the Covington case, and then my father would demand an explanation.”

  Sam felt a twinge of guilt. If she’d wanted to prod his conscience, she’d picked the one thing that would work. She was Harve Brewster’s kid, and he’d made Harve a promise. He was also feeling a little uncomfortable about the wildness of their lovemaking. There’d been something too urgent about the way she’d wanted him to “do it all” to her, as though she had something to prove.

  “Maybe we could just forget this whole thing, huh, Sam?” she suggested, her voice softened, taking on a wheedling tone. “After all, I was under the influence of a chemical substance, and therefore ... not myself.”

  She peered at him from over the top of the blanket, her big gray eyes trying to convince him that she was a wronged woman, an innocent victim of circumstances, that it had all been the booze.

  He leaned back on his elbows, aware of a tight sensation in his chest. She was asking him to play along, to pretend that what they’d done had meant nothing. And for some reason he couldn’t fathom at the moment. That hurt. “Let me get this straight. You’re saying you wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t been drunk?”

  She nodded.

  “And that you didn’t enjoy it?”

  She began to nod again.

  “Like hell,” he said quietly. “You had a whale of a time, lady. I was there, remember? And as long as we’re talking about it, let’s set the record straight. You were no victim of circumstances either. You were exactly where you wanted to be. You’ve been hot to get physical since the day we met in the bar.”

  “Hot to get physical?”

  He nodded at her slowly. “Don’t tell me you haven’t been curious about what I’d be like in the sack. I’ve seen that wistful look in your eyes, that sexy question mark. You were dying to know what kind of thrills a rowdy like Sam Nichols had in store.”

  “I was not hot to get physical!”

  Sam rolled his eyes. He would never understand women. They couldn’t handle the simple biological truth. People got turned on. They had sex. It was all hormones and biochemistry. Why did women have to romanticize everything and make it meaningful? They couldn’t even admit to wanting what they wanted. “Have it your way,” he said finally.

  A faintly metallic taste was in his mouth as he turned away from B.J. Brewster’s self-proclaimed innocence. She might be Harve’s daughter, but from where he sat, she wasn’t all that different from the other lace collars he’d known. She’d gotten drunk, played out one of her secret fantasies, and now she wanted to forget the whole damn thing. She probably wanted to forget he existed. Well, so be it. They were right back where they started—partners on one of the most asinine cases he’d ever been involved in.

  “You agree, then?” she said, surprise in her voice. “We can put this behind us, forget it happened?”

  “You already have, right?” He raked a hand through his hair. “Yeah, sure.”

  As she turned away and began riffling through her suitcase for clothes, Sam grabbed a pair of jeans out of his duffel bag and pulled them on. As he buttoned the fly, he couldn’t help remembering their steamy encounter in the shower, and his thoughts took a cynical twist. Why did women always seem to want what they couldn’t have? The street-savvy women he had something in common with rarely looked at him with that flicker of sexual longing in their eyes. It was always the nice chicks—like her—who undressed him with their eyes, who secretly fantasized about an erotic detour from the predictable path of their predictable lives. He didn’t like being a diversion. He didn’t like it at all.

  Suddenly he felt like a drink. As he pulled on his T-shirt and began the search for his shoes, he noticed the small box Bev held in her hand. She was reading the label of what looked like a prescription drug. The first thing that popped into his head was birth control. “Is there a problem?” he asked. “Are you protected?”

  She turned abruptly, her face pale. “Birth control? Why did you ask?”

  He indicated the box she was holding. “We didn’t stop long enough to take any precautions. If there’s a problem—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said, cutting him off sharply. “I’m well protected.”

  Bev couldn’t imagine why she felt insulted by his question, but she did. If that wasn’t just like a man, she thought, tossing the seasickness prescription back into her suitcase. They certainly had a way of boiling sexual intimacy down to its lowest common denominator—in this case, her reproductive cycle.

  She began tidying up the cabin, picking up clothes, mostly Sam’s, and stuffing them into the ship’s plastic laundry bag. Her ex-husband had been obsessed because she couldn’t get pregnant. Now Sam Nichols w
as already getting paranoid because he thought she might be. Some women would have been pleased that he’d even mentioned birth control, but it felt too much like clinical detachment to her—and it hurt.

  “What the hell’s wrong now?” he asked softly.

  “Nothing.” She bent and picked up a damp article of clothing, holding it away from her as she realized it was her plum-stained panties. “This was a ghastly mistake, that’s all.”

  If the first week of the cruise had sailed by in a giddy whirl, the second chugged so slowly, Bev had begun to think they’d hit a sandbar. Time crawled by on all fours and the weather turned steam-bath hot. Nights in her cracker box of a cabin were nearly unbearable without air-conditioning, and Bev’s insomnia was relentless. Of course, she couldn’t actually have counted every tick of the clock, night and day, and noted every rising notch of the thermometer, but it seemed that way.

  The situation with Sam was equally unbearable. They’d been giving each other a wide berth, in every sense of that phrase, but it would never be wide enough. Bev was constantly searching her memory trying to recall what had happened between them. She would never have any peace of mind until she knew.

  Whenever she showered or dressed, she found marks on her body in the most embarrassing places—little bruises that looked suspiciously like teeth marks. Love bites? The thought left her lightheaded and slightly horrified. The nights she did sleep, fitfully, she had dreamlike flashes of such vibrancy, she woke up drenched with perspiration.

  Her stomach muscles would clutch the moment she sat up, and her thighs would ache with an intensity that made her want to moan aloud. Her wild night with Sam seemed to have set a strange and feverish physical chain reaction in motion.

  Even during the day she had a fiery ache inside that built to a crescendo whenever she glimpsed Sam. It was as though he’d given her body a taste of something so powerful it could never forget—and yet her mind refused to let her remember! What had they done? She wanted to ask him, to get the torment over with, but her pride wouldn’t let her. Asking for that kind of information would make her much too vulnerable to him.