To Love a Man

by Karen Robards

  “Wow!” He grinned, stopping in front of her, his wide shoulders blocking her view of the rest of the room. “The kid’s right, for once: you do look great.” Jay, caught up in the action on the screen, merely grunted scornfully in reaction to that dig. Lisa giggled as Sam added for her ears alone, “Good enough to eat.”

  “Thank you.” She smiled up at him, her rosy nails tracing a teasing path up the pleats at the front of his shirt. “So do you.”

  Sam gave her an exaggerated leer. “Remind me to remind you of that later,” he murmured wickedly.

  Lisa twinkled up at him. “You won’t have to remind me,” she promised, her voice a tantalizing whisper.

  Sam grinned and bent to kiss her, his mouth hard against her own. Lisa, breathing in the faint, tangy scent of aftershave, felt her stomach muscles tighten. Her hand slid around behind his strong neck, her nails digging into the sinews there.

  “I hope you guys aren’t going to be mushy like this all the time.” Jay’s disgusted voice broke apart what had promised to become a fairly heated exchange. Sam grinned ruefully down at her as Lisa reluctantly pulled her mouth away from his.

  “Isn’t it past your bedtime?” Sam threw with mock irritation over his shoulder at Jay. The boy didn’t even bother to honor this piece of heresy with a reply.

  “Let me tie your tie.” Lisa’s lips were twitching at this banter between father and son. Their relationship warmed her to her toes. They loved each other with a slightly embarrassed, seldom expressed love that was totally masculine and outside anything she had ever experienced.

  Sam smiled warmly down at her while she dealt efficiently with his tie, arranging it into a neat bow at his neck. This was a service she had performed many times for Amos, whose fingers were stiffened from a mild form of arthritis, and occasionally, in the early days of their marriage, for Jeff. Which last piece of information she had no intention of divulging to Sam. She suspected that he could, if provoked, be a very jealous lover indeed.

  “There.” She patted the side of his cheek when she had finished, loving the feel of the slightly rough texture of his jaw against the soft skin of her fingers. He caught her hand, holding it against his face while he pressed an intimate little kiss into her palm.

  “Thank you,” he said huskily. Lisa felt her breath stop momentarily at something in those blue eyes. If ever a man’s heart could be said to have shown in his eyes, Sam’s did then. Lisa smiled up at him mistily.

  “Are you two going to stand there staring at each other all night?” Jay demanded, sounding disgusted again. Sam lowered Lisa’s hand from his mouth while still retaining his grip on it.

  “Watch yourself, pal, or I’ll sell you to the next Arab who offers,” Sam warned over his shoulder. Jay hooted. Lisa, laughing, pulled Sam from the room.

  The party was a great success, as Lisa had known it would be. She circulated from group to group, keeping Sam at her side as much as possible so that he wouldn’t feel too lost in a gathering where he knew only her and Amos. She was pleased with the impression he made on the male and female guests alike. The men seemed to respond instinctively to his natural air of authority, bred, she supposed, from his years in the military, while the women positively drooled over the long hard body in the elegant evening clothes. She was conscious of being on the receiving end of more than one distinctly envious look from other females who would have given their all if Sam had so much as crooked his little finger. And, being human, she enjoyed it immensely. To his credit, Sam appeared oblivious to the very obvious attempts of some of the women guests to attract his interest. The most they ever got from him in response was a polite smile.

  To those who asked after Jeff’s whereabouts, Lisa briefly said that he was out of town on business. She did not feel that so large a gathering was the place to announce that she and Jeff were getting a divorce, or that she was planning to marry the man at her side. She introduced Sam by his name only, feeling that no explanation of the exact nature of their relationship was called for. Speculation was rife among the female guests particularly, she knew, but she had no intention of satisfying their curiosity, and so far none of them had quite gotten up the nerve to ask her outright who Sam was.

  At exactly one hour before midnight, the dancing started. Lisa, with an apologetic little murmur to Sam, left him sitting in a chair talking to another gentleman who could not or would not dance and went to do her duty as hostess. As she whirled about the room in the arms of one man after another (Amos refused to have disco played or danced at his parties, so the dances were mainly waltzes and foxtrots), Lisa could feel Sam’s eyes on her. When she glanced over at him after freeing herself from one man who had imbibed too much champagne and had, in consequence, held her far too closely and with too much obvious enjoyment, she was amused to see his eyes narrowed and a faintly grim set to his hard mouth. She flashed a twinkling, naughty smile at him, to which, after a moment, he reluctantly responded. But all the same, it gave her a little thrill to realize that he felt so possessive about her. The notion was strangely appealing, chauvinistic or not.

  After the next dance, she resolved to go sit with Sam for a while and perhaps explore the fascinating possibility of his feeling jealous. After he admitted it, which she imagined might take some doing, she would assure him that he was by far the most attractive man in the room, and possibly set about proving it. Which could get extremely enjoyable, she thought, with another of those naughty smiles.

  “Lisa, darling, you look like the cat who’s been in the cream,” a slightly nasal female voice purred from behind her.

  Lisa turned, smiling, to see Elise Sutton, a slender bottle blonde of about thirty who wore a red dress slit to her navel, too much makeup, and was in the process of divorcing her fourth husband. Lisa had known Elise for years, since they had both competed for Jeff. Lisa recognized the feline expression on the other woman’s face from experience. It said that Lisa once again had her claws into a man Elise fancied.

  “Maybe I have,” she parried with a mocking tilt of her head.

  “I’d say, definitely.” Elise was smiling that charming, social smile she always assumed when talking with other women and which was as false as the color of her hair. “That’s some toy you got for Christmas. Mind telling me where you found him? He looks to be just my type.”

  Lisa smiled as falsely as Elise. “On the very highest shelf in the toy store,” she answered solemnly. “And, sorry, Elise, but he was the only one of that kind there.”

  Elise shrugged, the movement elegant. “Oh, well, then you’ll just have to let me know when you get tired of playing with him. I’d like to play with him awhile myself.”

  Lisa’s smile came again. “Oh, I’ll certainly let you know when I get tired of him,” Lisa promised mendaciously, thinking: Too bad you won’t be holding your breath, you cat.

  Elise smiled again, but this time it had a teasing, taunting quality and was directed at a point directly above and beyond Lisa’s head.

  “I knew you would. After all, we always shared our—toys—didn’t we, darling?” she purred. Then, casting another of those provocative smiles over Lisa’s head, she drifted away.

  Lisa already had a sinking suspicion that amounted to a certainty about whom Elise had been smiling at so seductively. Turning, she saw that her suspicion was right.

  “Making plans to pass me on to your friends already, Lisa?” Sam’s mouth was smiling, but his eyes had a hard, icy gleam to them that frightened her. “You should have told me I was starting to bore you: I’m sure I could have come up with a few more new tricks. After all, it would be a shame if your Christmas toy didn’t even last past New Year’s, wouldn’t it?”

  “Oh, Sam, don’t be silly,” Lisa murmured miserably. “You must know it was just—just party talk. I didn’t mean it—and neither, probably, did Elise.”

  “I don’t like being the subject of ‘party talk,’ ” Sam bit off, still smiling that frightening smile. “In fact, I don’t much like this party. If
you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll take my leave.” He made a mocking little bow that underlined the ironic politeness of his last words.

  “Sam!” Lisa practically wailed as he swung away from her. Her voice attracted several speculative looks from the people standing around them, and Lisa bit her lip as she hurried after Sam, who was already more than halfway across the room.

  She caught up to him on the stairs, which he usually took with extreme care. This time he was paying scant heed to his crutches, swinging down the steps two at a time with apparent disregard for the ease with which he could break his neck.

  “Sam!” Lisa hurried down the stairs after him, horrified at the hard recklessness of his actions. “For goodness’ sake, be careful!”

  Sam maneuvered down the rest of the stairs without more than a glittering glance at her as she hovered helplessly beside him, her hands outstretched in a futile gesture to catch him if he should start to fall. Which she had about as much hope of doing as a butterfly had of toppling Mount Rushmore, she thought.

  “What’s the matter, Lisa?” he taunted when he reached the bottom of the steps, barely pausing before swinging along the entrance hall toward the door leading to the right wing. “Afraid your toy might get broken before you’ve quite finished playing with it?”

  “Oh, Sam, you’re being ridiculous!” Lisa was hurrying along beside him, practically having to run to keep up. “Would you please stop and listen to me for a minute? It was only a joke!”

  “I don’t like being the butt of your jokes.” He did stop, abruptly, but Lisa knew that it was not because she had asked him to. His voice was vicious as he stood glaring at her, towering head and shoulders above her, leaning slightly toward her as he balanced on his crutches. They were still in the entrance hall, where anybody coming down the stairs or from the kitchen could have overheard what they were saying. At the moment, Lisa didn’t particularly care. “I don’t like being called a toy, either,” Sam added, snarling.

  “You’re deliberately misunderstanding a perfectly innocent conversation!” Lisa snapped, beginning to get angry in her turn. “That’s just the way Elise always talks about men. I think she thinks she’s being sophisticated.”

  “I’m not deliberately misunderstanding anything,” Sam said gratingly. “I watched you tonight, playing with every man in the room, leading them on, playing with me! And I think your friend hit the nail on the head. That’s exactly what I am to you: a toy to be played with until you get tired of playing, then thrown into a corner somewhere while you go looking for a new one! Well, I don’t like being used that way, my little rich-bitch darling. And I won’t be! You can go buy yourself a new stud, honey, because I just quit playing!”

  Lisa gasped in outrage at his insults. Before she thought, her hand came up to make stinging contact with his hard cheek. He sucked in his breath sharply, his hand flying to cover the spot that was rapidly beginning to suffuse with blood. The rest of his face was white with rage, while those blue eyes glittered furiously down at her.

  “How dare you talk that way to me!” she said, hissing, her eyes as angry as his. “Who the bloody hell do you think you are, anyway? I don’t have to put up with this kind of abuse from you! We’re not married yet, you know!”

  “No, we’re not, are we?” he said slowly, his eyes dueling with hers. “Thank God for small mercies!”

  Lisa’s temper hit the flash point at that.

  “If you feel that way about it, you swine, you can take your damned ring and stuff it!” she shouted, pulling at the offending piece of jewelry until it slid off her finger, then flinging it at his face. He put up a hand to catch it automatically, but his crutches impeded him and it struck his hard cheekbone, the stone catching in his flesh and tearing it slightly so that a little drop of bright red blood welled up. “I wouldn’t marry you now if you got down on your knees and begged me!”

  “That’s just the way I feel myself,” he said, turning on his heel and swinging away. He made no move to retrieve the ring; it lay on the floor, the stones flashing green and white under the light from the chandelier. Lisa stared from it to the door that was already slamming behind Sam. As she stood there unmoving, her eyes as bright as the discarded emerald in her pale face, horns began to blow in the ballroom above, and dozens of excited voices yelled at once, “Happy New Year!”

  XVII

  BY the time Lisa got up the next morning, both Sam and Jay were gone. Mary told her stolidly that Major Eastman had phoned for a cab to take them to the airport soon after six o’clock. It was now after nine. Lisa, absorbing Mary’s words slowly, felt almost sick to her stomach as the awful truth sank in. Sam wasn’t going to treat this as a lovers’ quarrel. He had actually accepted her hasty words of the night before and considered their engagement broken. He wasn’t going to marry her—not even if she got down on her knees and begged! Remembering the words she had flung at him the night before, Lisa shuddered. To a man as proud as Sam, they must have stung like blows from a whip. How could she have said such a thing? When Mary expressionlessly handed her the emerald ring that she had thrown so furiously at Sam, saying that she had found it on the floor when she was sweeping up after the party, Lisa felt the hard knot of pain that was cramping her stomach begin to dissolve. She barely managed to make it to the privacy of her bedroom before bursting into tears.

  By the time she had cried herself out, Lisa’s emotions began to change. For one thing, she had recalled the very nasty things that Sam had said to her the night before, and the unreasonable way he had refused to listen to any explanation of what was really a perfectly innocuous conversation. She was certainly not the only one at fault in their quarrel; he owed her an apology every bit as much as, and perhaps more than, she owed him one! And he could just be the one to eat humble pie for a change! She was sure that when his temper cooled and he had time to reflect on the things he had said to her, he would realize that he had goaded her into breaking their engagement and would beg her pardon like the imminently fair man she knew him to be. In the meantime, there was no point in upsetting herself. Sam would soon realize the absurdity of the situation and come back to her. Of course he would!

  Amos, when she confided this belief to him, seemed unconvinced. At first Lisa told him merely that she and Sam had quarreled, without going into details, but the habit of relying on her grandfather’s advice was too strong to break. Hesitantly at first, and then with words tumbling ont of her mouth one over another like a waterfall, she told him the whole miserable story, not leaving out even Sam’s touchiness on the subject of her wealth and his lack of it.

  “I guessed that was the problem,” Amos said when Lisa confessed this last. “I could tell he didn’t like the whole setup here. I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t like it myself, if I were in his shoes.”

  “But that’s silly!” Lisa protested, chewing on her lip as she stared across the study at Amos. “I don’t care that he isn’t rich. So why should he make such a big deal out of it?”

  “Because he’s a man, and he’s got a man’s pride,” Amos said bluntly. “I’d feel the same way myself. A man wants to provide for his woman, to give her things, to spoil her a little. There’s nothing he can give you that you haven’t already got, and probably a lot better than he can provide. He knows it—and it bothers him. Only natural.”

  “Not to me,” Lisa muttered resentfully, sinking deeper into the comfortable armchair and looking pensively into the fire that blazed and crackled on the hearth. Then, rousing herself from her reverie, Lisa asked, “What would you do if you were me?”

  “You want him back?” Amos sent her a piercing look. Lisa nodded miserably.

  “Then go after him, girl. That’s what you need to do. It won’t be hard to find out where he’s gone: I’ll have somebody at the office get right on it.”

  Lisa thought about this for a moment, then slowly shook her head. “No, I refuse to go running after him like some lovesick teenager. He’s the one who started the whole thing—let him be the
one to apologize!”

  Amos sighed. “It’s your decision, granddaughter, but I think you’re making a mistake. However, if that’s the way you want it, so be it. Only, I don’t think you ought to count on him running back here like a mongrel dog with its tail between its legs. If I’m any judge of men, he won’t do it.”

  Amos, as usual, was right. Lisa waited for almost a month, hoping every day that Sam would appear on the doorstep, properly penitent, or at the very least call. As weeks passed—weeks when she did nothing but hang around the house waiting for the phone to ring—she stopped caring whether he was properly penitent. All he had to do was get in touch, and she’d take his apology as read. But he didn’t. Finally, toward the end of January, Lisa was gradually brought to the realization that if she wanted Sam she would have to go to him. Swallowing her pride took some doing, but she finally managed it. Then she went to Amos and asked him if he could have someone discover where Sam and Jay had gone. Amos, it seemed, had anticipated her request by some days. He had the answer almost as soon as the question was out of her mouth. Jay was back in school, he said; Sam was in Montana, living out at some ranch he was in the process of buying.

  “The Circle C,” Lisa said, remembering.

  Amos, looking at her compassionately, nodded. “It’s just outside of Anaconda. Your best bet would be to fly to Butte and then rent a car. I’ll call the airport and have a plane readied. When did you want to go?”

  Lisa’s every instinct urged her to say “now.” Now that she had decided to go to Sam, she was dying to see him. She couldn’t wait. How would he look, she wondered, when she appeared? What would he say? She imagined him sweeping her into his arms and kissing her, and her knees went weak at the idea.

  “Tomorrow morning,” she said, knowing that it would take time to pack. If all went well, she might not be coming back. She should take enough for at least a week. In that length of time, Amos could have the rest of her things packed and sent on to her.