To Love a Man

by Karen Robards

  XVI

  A brief knock brought Lisa blinking from sleep. She lay still for a moment, not sure exactly what had awakened her. Sunlight poured in through the windows, bathing her bedroom in a cheery golden glow. A delicious warmth rested against her back. Close to her ear she could hear a man’s steady breathing, and a hard arm curled possessively around her waist. Sam. Lisa smiled, stretching luxuriously as she remembered what had taken place between them the night before, and turned in his arms, meaning to kiss him awake.

  “Lisa!”

  The muffled summons, accompanied by an impatient knock on her bedroom door, brought her bolt upright. Beside her she could feel Sam stiffen suddenly, and she knew that he had heard it, too. Before she could answer, the door swung open. A handsome, moderately tall young man with a shock of tobacco-brown hair stood regarding them from the doorway, surprise plain on his face.

  Lisa gaped at him, as surprised as he was, completely forgetting that she was naked and that, sitting up as she was, he had an excellent view of her bare body to the waist. Beside her, Sam levered himself into a sitting position against the pillows, thrusting the sheet into her hands and indicating that she should cover herself. Blushing, she did.

  “Who the hell are you?” Sam growled at the intruder, looking menacing. Which was no small feat, Lisa thought hysterically, when one was caught naked in bed with another man’s wife—by the other man!

  “I’m Jeff Collins,” her legal husband answered, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning negligently against the doorjamb. To Lisa’s annoyance, she saw that he was starting to look amused. “You, I take it, are Eastman.”

  Sam’s eyes narrowed. Before he could reply, Lisa hastily intervened.

  “Did you want me for something, Jeff?” Which was a stupid question, she knew. Obviously he did, or he would not be standing in her bedroom door grinning at her.

  “I brought you your Christmas present,” he said, straightening and thrusting his hands into the pockets of his impeccably tailored tan slacks. “Sorry to be so early, but I thought you’d be up: you usually are, by this time. And I’m going out of town on business after lunch, so it was now or never.”

  “That’s all right,” Lisa said, feeling a fool as she clutched the sheet to her, miserably aware of Sam’s hard eyes moving from her face to Jeff’s. “You’re right, I’m usually up. But this morning . . .” Her voice trailed off. It was glaringly obvious what had kept her in bed this morning. How could anyone possibly overlook six feet four inches of belligerent male?

  “I can see that you got tied up this morning,” Jeff said with admirable gravity, only the twinkle lurking in his eyes revealing that he was laughing at the predicament she was in. “I’m sorry I intruded. I never expected . . .” His voice trailed off, too, as he met Sam’s distinctly unfriendly eyes.

  “No, of course you didn’t,” Lisa prattled, hardly aware of what she was saying but knowing that she had to get Jeff out of there before Sam decided to react to the situation. “If you’d wait for me in the sitting room, I’ll be right there. I just have to get something on.” As soon as she said it, she felt herself blushing furiously again. Jeff grinned, saluted her mockingly, and turned away. As he walked down the hall toward the door that opened into her sitting room, he called back over his shoulder, “Oh, by the way, nice meeting you, Eastman.”

  Sam did not reply. Lisa clambered out of bed, retrieved her nightgown from where it had wound up on the floor nearby, and pulled it over her head with hands that were not quite steady. Then she went to close the bedroom door. Sam didn’t miss a move she made.

  “What the hell is he doing here?” he said with a growl as she picked up her robe from the chaise-longue and slipped her arms into the sleeves.

  “You heard him: he came to give me my Christmas present.” Lisa was as flustered as she had ever been in her life. Why, oh why, had she never told Sam the exact nature of her relationship with Jeff? From his deepening scowl, she knew she was going to have to do a lot of explaining before they recaptured the mood of the night before.

  “Why the hell is he giving you a Christmas present?” Sam demanded harshly. “Doesn’t the fool know you’re divorcing him? Or did you ‘forget’ to tell him?”

  “Of course he knows I’m divorcing him,” Lisa answered indignantly, her hands busy tying the belt of the gray satin robe. “But we’re still friends. Oh, Sam, I’ll explain it all to you in a few minutes. But first let me get rid of Jeff.”

  Sam looked at her, still frowning heavily. “All right,” he conceded finally. “Go get rid of him. But if you’re not back here inside ten minutes, I’ll take great pleasure in getting rid of him myself.”

  Lisa was back in eight minutes exactly. Sam was seated on the edge of the bed, smoking a cigarette, the toweling robe he had worn the night before belted around his muscular waist. He looked up as she came in. His eyes were a hard, glittering cobalt.

  “Well?” he drawled, when she had shut the door but hadn’t immediately said anything.

  Lisa sighed, then came to kneel in front of him, looking earnestly up into his stony face. In that position, she told him about Jeff.

  He was silent for so long after she had finished that she began to get worried. His face told her nothing. It was totally expressionless.

  “Sam?” she queried softly, when she could stand his silence no longer.

  “So he’s the only man you’ve ever slept with—besides me?” he asked ruminatively.

  “Yes.”

  “No wonder you were hot as a firecracker,” he said, his eyes bitter. “And to think I thought it was me! You would have been like that for any man: you didn’t want me—you just wanted sex!”

  Lisa stared up at him, barely able to believe what she was hearing.

  “That’s disgusting,” she hissed, jumping to her feet and glaring at him furiously. “Sam, if all I wanted was sex, there have been dozens of men I could have slept with! They just didn’t turn me on! You did—do—though God knows why! Do you think you’re the only man who’s ever tried to get me into bed? Don’t be ridiculous! If all I wanted was sex, I could have had plenty!”

  “You should have tried it,” he said ironically. “You might have liked it.”

  Lisa had to control a strong impulse to slap his stubborn face until he saw stars.

  “Do you realize how very insulting you’re being?” she asked at last, her voice deliberately even. “What is between us is special, and it has been from the beginning, and you know it. Your problem is that you’re afraid to trust me, afraid to trust what’s happened to us, because you might get hurt! I never thought you were a coward, Sam!”

  He didn’t say anything to that, but he didn’t much like it, Lisa could tell from the sudden narrowing of his eyes.

  “What do you want me to do, Sam?” Her voice was softly provocative. “Prove to you that you’re special? I could go out and sleep with another man—or two men, or six men—then come back and compare. Is that what you want?”

  Sam’s jaw tightened until white lines appeared around his mouth.

  “I’d want to kill every one of them,” he admitted, the taut lines around his mouth adding veracity to his words. “And then I’d probably start on you.” His blue eyes gleamed at her. Lisa felt her anger begin to die.

  “Then what do you suggest, Sam? I’ve told you I love you. What do you want me to do to prove it?”

  He looked at her for a long moment, his eyes slowly losing that frightening glitter. Then he smiled at her, his mouth rueful, and Lisa knew with an overwhelming sense of relief that it was going to be all right.

  “I guess I’ll have to take your word for it,” he said dryly. “It’s too late now for anything else. You’re mine, and I’ll be damned if I’ll give you a chance to change your mind. If you want sex, you’ll have to make do with me.”

  Lisa glared at him, torn between anger and laughter. The latter won out.

  “I’ll force myself,” she said with mock seriousness. “But yo
u’d better not fall down on the job. Because if you do, you’ll have to take the consequences!”

  “No, you’ll have to take the consequences,” he said with a growl, reaching for her and pulling her down on his knee. “If I ever see you even look at another man, I’ll paddle that luscious little bottom of yours until you can’t sit for a year. And then I’ll make love to you until you’re so exhausted you can’t look at anything but me.”

  “Threats, Sam?” Lisa murmured into his ear, where her tongue was making a teasing foray.

  “No,” he answered, bending her back over his arm and pressing his mouth to her satin-covered breast. “Promises.”

  It was past noon before they got downstairs that day.

  In the week following, everything seemed fine between them—outwardly, at least. But Lisa, her love making her extrasensitive to Sam’s moods, thought she detected a certain wariness in him that had not been there before, a tendency silently to question her motives where once he had been ready to accept her actions at face value. When he brought her to the point of crying out for his possession while they were making love, she could sense a kind of cynicism in him before he complied with a controlled savagery that he had never previously displayed. She suspected that he still harbored nagging doubts about the sincerity of her love for him, and she could have kicked herself for not having told him about Jeff from the beginning. The whole thing was silly in the extreme, she knew, and if she had not been so crazily in love with Sam she would have giggled endlessly at the idea that he thought she wanted him only for his body or his prowess in bed. Under the circumstances, however, she had never felt less like laughing. But she feared to bring the subject out into the open, feared that any overt action on her part might precipitate a confrontation that she could very conceivably lose. And if she lost Sam now, she thought, she would want to die. She loved him in a way she had never thought to love anyone.

  Ever since the night he had come to her room, Lisa had spent her nights in his bed. She told herself it was simply to keep him from making that risky journey up the stairs again, but secretly she knew it was because she feared to give him too much time alone, time to decide he didn’t want her enough to face all the difficulties that loving her entailed. She tried to be circumspect about her behavior, leaving him before anyone else was awake and creeping downstairs after they had all gone to bed, but she had the feeling that every member of the household from Amos to Jay to the most anonymous part-time housemaid knew that she and Sam were lovers. In that day and age, when women took lovers more easily than they bid a hand at bridge, it was ridiculous to feel uncomfortable about openly sleeping with a man to whom she was engaged, she knew. But knowing it and being able to help it were two different things.

  She drove Sam to Saint Mary’s every afternoon for the physical therapy that had made it necessary for him to stay near the hospital in the first place. Without it, Dr. Peters had warned, he might never recover complete use of his leg. Sam told her that he would be quite happy to have Jay drive him in, or even Henry Dobson; there was no need for her to make the trip each day, then hang about for two hours while he did the repetitious exercises that had been set for him. To this, Lisa replied that she was happy to do it, and that was the absolute truth. She valued every minute with Sam as a chance to reinforce the love he felt for her; she wanted him to need her as she knew she needed him. Only then would she feel secure in his love. As it was, she had the horrible suspicion that she stood to lose more in their relationship than he did, and the idea scared hell out of her.

  Every New Year’s Eve since Lisa could remember—excepting only the one sixteen years ago, which had fallen a mere three days after her parents had been killed in a car crash—Amos had held a huge party in the ballroom that took up the entire second floor of the main wing of the house. Lisa had always handled most of the planning and acted as her grandfather’s hostess. Her marriage to Jeff had not interfered with this arrangement since they had lived less than five miles away, but she had missed the previous year because she had still been sunk in despair over Jennifer’s death. But Amos had taken it for granted that this year Lisa would take up the reins of the party again, and Lisa saw no reason to decline. In fact, she had always enjoyed doing it. Amos used the occasion to observe the people who managed his companies in a less formal setting than that provided by most of his offices, and more than once he had launched the career of a young politician in whom he believed by introducing him to moneyed influentials. There was always an interesting mix of guests and usually several unexpected happenings. Most people, Lisa included, enjoyed themselves tremendously.

  Sam was not overenthusiastic about the party, especially when Lisa told him that he would be expected to wear a tuxedo, but he agreed to come and be introduced to her friends, relatives, and acquaintances. Jay opted for a pizza and a football game instead. Lisa had the feeling that Sam’s inclination was to join his son, but out of deference to her feelings he didn’t say so. For which she was glad. She was dying to show him off. She had a feeling that dressed in a tuxedo he would be spectacular.

  On the night of the party, Lisa made one last check on the arrangements, then turned everything over to Mary Dobson’s capable hands. She would supervise the food and drinks, while Lisa, as hostess, concentrated on putting everyone at ease and making sure that no one was left without someone to talk to. The band that had been hired for the evening was already warming up by the time she hurried to her room to dress, and, looking out a front window, she saw the caterer’s van arrive. She was late, she realized, and would have to make haste getting dressed.

  She opted for a shower instead of a bath, lingering under the lukewarm spray just long enough to soap and rinse her body. After toweling herself dry, she applied afterbath powder and then perfume in her favorite scent before shrugging into a light robe. Doing her makeup took less than ten minutes; she kept it light, using a variation of the look she used for day, the only difference being the silvery-green powder she dusted over her eyelids and the faint gold shimmer she applied to her cheeks and lips on top of the warm dusky rose color she ordinarily used. A flick of black mascara, a whisk of transparent powder, and she was finished.

  Although Lisa knew that most of the women who would be coming to the party had spent the afternoon at the hairdressers’, having elaborate coiffures created for them by experts, she had chosen to arrange her hair herself, in the interests of saving time. The style she had selected to wear was deceptively simple: a chignon secured at the nape by a diamond clasp that allowed enticing tendrils of silvery-blond hair to escape and curl around her face.

  Her dress was an unrelieved black silk-jersey sheath with an overlay of smoky chiffon pleats shot through with glimmering touches of silver. It descended from one shoulder, where it was secured with a diamond brooch, in a dark cloud to the floor, whispering around her feet and shimmering with every movement. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, Lisa knew that the garment suited her perfectly, enhancing her slenderness to the point of fragility and providing a startling contrast with the creamy paleness of her skin. Pear-shaped diamond eardrops and Sam’s ring were her only jewelry. Her eyes, wide with excitement and slightly tip-tilted above exquisitely molded cheekbones, and the matching emerald on her hand provided her only touches of color.

  When she was satisfied with her appearance, she walked downstairs to find Sam, careful not to trip in the high-heeled silver sandals that added three inches to her height. She was afraid that Sam might have found the attractions of the football game too much to resist and she might have to prod him into getting dressed. But she need not have worried. When she walked into the sitting room adjoining his bedroom, he was, it was true, watching the football game with Jay. But while Jay, dressed casually in jeans and a sweater, sprawled on the couch, Sam stood beside it, fully dressed except for his tie, which hung loose around his neck. They were both so caught up in what was happening on the screen that they didn’t hear her come in, and Lisa had a few minutes’
leisure to study Sam. He looked, as she had suspected he would, spectacular. In the severe black coat and pants and pleated white shirt of his formal clothes, he exuded raw male attraction. Against the starkness of his clothes, his skin looked very bronzed, and his harshly carved features had an appeal that made the word handsome seem inadequate. His hair had been neatly brushed, for once, but the curl had apparently been impossible to subdue entirely; it framed his head like rippling black sable to curl over the collar of his shirt in back. His height and powerful physique gave him an aura of power that was in no way lessened by the white cast revealed by a slit in the satin stripe of the pants, or the crutches he needed to stay on his feet. He looked superb, every hard male inch of him. Just the sight of him sent a surge of heat through Lisa so intense that she thought her bones might be melting.

  “Did you see that block?” Jay demanded excitedly of Sam, half-turning on the couch as he did so. Immediately he caught sight of Lisa. “Oh, hi, Lisa,” he added. Then his eyes widened as they swept over her. “Boy, you look great!”

  “Thank you.” Lisa was laughing as Sam turned to look at her, a sheepish smile on his face.

  “I just thought I’d watch for a minute,” he explained guiltily. “Am I late?”

  Lisa shook her head. “I came down early to see if I could help you with anything. Like tying your tie.”

  Sam grinned. “You must be a mind reader. I decided a few minutes ago that it is impossible for a man on crutches to tie his own tie. I thought I was going to have to ask Jay, but I don’t know how good he is at things like that. He’s just barely past the stage of learning to tie his shoelaces.”

  “Ha ha,” came the response from the couch. Sam and Lisa both grinned at Jay, who was once again absorbed in the football game.

  Sam turned his back on the television and hobbled toward Lisa. As he approached, his eyes swept her from head to toe. As Jay’s had earlier, they widened appreciatively.