by Peggy Webb
“I could give you about a dozen good reasons, starting with this dress I’m wearing.”
“I’m going to take you shopping and we’re going to get you a whole new wardrobe, something suitable for the exotic, exciting woman you are.”
“There’s no need to go overboard, Julie. A small white lie will do. Anyhow, new clothes are moot. I can’t go out with Jim Standing Bear.”
“Why not, I’d like to know?”
“I mean, he might not ask me out, anyhow, but if he does, who would watch after Dad?”
“The night sitter.”
“We don’t have a night sitter.”
“We’re going to hire one. I’ve been meaning to, anyhow. You can’t teach school if you keep losing sleep over Dad’s night prowlings.”
What Julie said was true. Last week he’d awakened Sarah three nights in a row dancing in the hallway with his top hat and cane and wearing his nightshirt. And just last night she’d caught him at three o’clock in the morning fully dressed and trying to open the dead bolt locks to the front door.
Sarah had taken to sleeping with the key.
“I suppose you’re right, Julie.”
“I know I’m right.”
“Why don’t we ask Mrs. Grimes to take the night shift and get somebody else for the daytime? I don’t think he’s happy with her.”
“Who would be? I think if she ever smiled her face would fall off. Tomorrow why don’t you ask Delta if she knows somebody to take the day shift? Somebody happy.”
By the time Sarah got up on Saturday morning, Delta was already in the sunroom, eradicating dust and singing a low-country ballad.
“Delta, do you know anybody who would be a good sitter for the day shift with Dad?”
“You gettin’ rid of that ole sourpuss?”
“We’re moving her to the night shift.”
“Hallelujah. It’s like a funeral home around with her. My sister’s looking for a job, and she wouldn’t be all the time pussyfooting around here looking like a prune, neither.”
“If she’s just like you, I’ll hire her sight unseen.”
“That depends on what you mean.”
“Is she a cross between the Rock of Gibraltar and a carousel?”
“That’s Savannah to a tee.”
“I have one other question. Does she dance?”
“She was born dancing.”
“She’s hired.”
Within an hour the new plan was in place, and Sarah took her breakfast out to the garden. The sight of the flowers moved her to tears.
Jim Standing Bear had created all this beauty for her. Only for her. Her heart set up such a clamor, she put her hand over her chest to calm it down.
“Don’t make too much of this,” she whispered.
Her mind took note, but her heart just kept up its runaway rhythm.
“Sarah,” Delta called from the front porch. “Telephone.” She grinned from ear to ear. “It’s Jim.”
The mistake Jim had made with Bethany was in doing all the things she loved and none of the things he enjoyed. As a result he’d fallen for a woman whose only interest in him turned out to be his celebrity status.
He wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. He was going to find out right off the bat if he and Sarah had anything in common except passion.
Not that he was planning to fall for Sarah Sloan. Not by a long shot. She was a sweet and lovely woman, absolutely desirable and totally irresistible.
And she deserved somebody who could give her the moon.
All Jim could give her was a star or two. Starting today.
He rang her bell, and she was smiling when she came to the door. She was also swathed in enough clothes to see an Eskimo through an ice storm—a big sun hat, sunglasses, a long-sleeved shirt, long pants. Was that a bathing suit strap he glimpsed? He hoped so.
“I take it you don’t like sun,” he said.
“Only in small doses.”
“Ever fished?”
“No.”
Jim’s hopes fell. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, then. Would you rather go somewhere else? The art gallery? A movie?”
Her laughter was as clear and soul-soothing as silver bells in clear mountain air.
“Goodness, no.” He loved the way she caught her lower lip between her teeth when she looked at him. “Unless you would.”
“Let’s go fishing, Sarah.”
His boat was an old cabin cruiser he kept in top-notch condition. It was stocked with everything a serious fisherman needed. Bethany had refused to set foot on it. She’d said it smelled of fish.
As he helped Sarah onto the boat he watched her with the critical eye of a protective parent seeing whether his only child will be accepted on the first day of school.
“Oh, my,” she said.
Was that good or bad? Jim was afraid to ask.
“Is this real teakwood?”
“Yes. This is an old boat. They don’t make them like this anymore. They use fiberglass now.”
Sarah ran her hands over the satiny surface, worn smooth from years of sun and wind and rain.
“It’s absolutely beautiful.”
Jim was smiling when he took the wheel. So far, so good.
“Hang on to your hat, Sarah. We’re taking her out into deeper water.”
Sarah was already in deeper water, and had been the minute she’d said yes to Jim’s invitation to fish. With the wind in his hair and the sun on his face he looked like a bronzed god. Thank goodness her hands were occupied holding on to her hat. Otherwise she’d have been doing something completely foolish, like running them through his dark hair and over his broad chest.
“Look, Sarah. Brown pelicans.”
She turned her head in the direction he pointed, and her hat sailed into the water and headed out to sea. Jim cut the motor.
“Don’t worry, Sarah. I’ll try to get it.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“Absolutely.” He was already stripping off his shirt. The sight of his bare chest almost made her swoon.
“Please, no.” She put a hand on his arm. “I’ve discovered I like the wind in my hair and the sun on my face.”
“Such a lovely face.”
His fingers trailed lightly over her cheeks, and she thought she’d died and gone to heaven. The two of them were alone in the boat in the middle of the bay. They might as well have been the only two people in the world. It felt that isolated. And that wonderful.
“I don’t want you to burn,” he said. “Let me get the sunblock.”
Jim disappeared into the small cabin. All Sarah could see was the bottom half of him. And it was just as gorgeous as the top.
“Oh, help,” she whispered. Why hadn’t Julie given her some good advice instead of the ridiculously tiny bikini she wore under her clothes?
“It’s not as big as a handkerchief,” Sarah had told her sister.
“That’s the general idea.”
Jim reappeared with the sunscreen. “Come here, Sarah.”
The command was soft and seductive, and she went to him like a woman sleepwalking. Smiling down into her eyes, he began to rub the lotion on her face. It took every ounce of her self-control to keep from moaning.
“I can do that,” she protested, but not very vigorously. After all, how vigorous could a stick of melted butter be?
“You might miss a spot.” His hands were on her neck now, massaging the tiny V of skin visible above her shirt. “I wouldn’t want one inch of that soft skin burned.”
Sarah closed her eyes and gave herself up to pleasure.
“You like that, don’t you, Sarah?”
Oh, God, he was making love to her with his voice. Sarah’s knees were so weak she could barely stand.
“Umm,” she murmured. “Very much. I think I’m becoming a hedonist.”
“My favorite kind of person.”
His hands were on the back of her neck now, doing things far more significant than spreading sunscre
en. Sarah, a hedonist newly born, began to unbutton her shirt. For once in her life she didn’t think about responsibility and propriety. She didn’t think about being plain.
All she knew was that the moment was glorious and golden, and so was the man. All she knew was that his hands were caressing her face and neck and she wanted them all over her. Now. This very minute. While opportunity thundered at her door.
After all, men like Jim Standing Bear came along only once in a lifetime.
“Would you do my back, too?”
The blouse slid from her shoulders and she heard his sharp intake of breath. Sarah opened her eyes, for suddenly she didn’t want to miss a single thing.
Jim was looking at her as if he’d discovered treasures beyond compare. Or maybe that’s what she wanted to see. Maybe he looked at all women with a hungry gleam in his eye.
“Such perfection should only be viewed by the gods,” he said, and then his hands were on her shoulders, moving inward along her collarbone.
As if to compensate for her face, God had given her a body that rounded in all the right places, and for that she was eternally grateful. So it seemed, was Jim.
His hands played lightly over the tops of her breasts, spreading the cream in slow dreamy movements. Sarah stood proud and tall, electrocuted by desire.
“Why don’t we go down below?” he said.
Sarah would have followed him to the moon. Going down a small flight of steps was going to be no effort at all.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes.”
Jim couldn’t believe what was happening. Passion had ambushed him. Desire held him captive.
He hadn’t meant it to be this way. He’d planned to show Sarah how to fish, to cook the catch over some nice hot coals on the beach, and then to seduce her slowly while the moon rode like a galleon in a night filled with stars. In short, he’d planned an evening of romance.
Was it the sight of that wisp of red satin around her lush breasts that had set him off like a rocket, or had he gone into orbit the minute his hands touched her face?
“It’s close in here. Watch your step.”
He was the one watching her. Somewhere between the top step and the bottom she’d shed her slacks, and now she stood before him a vision in red with a body that would make grown men weep. Her legs were long and slender, beautifully toned. All that dancing, he guessed.
He pulled her slowly into his arms, and she gazed at him with the wide-eyed, flushed look of an innocent. It was a beautiful illusion that set his blood on fire. Whether he would admit it or not, every man dreams of being the first for a woman. Every man longs to believe that he’s the only one who has ever touched her, ever made her feel sexual hunger, ever shown her the indescribable joy of making love.
In this day and age they were pipe dreams, of course, but there in the tight confines of that cabin with the boat rocking gently on the sun-struck waters, Jim Standing Bear saw himself as that kind of hero. Sarah did that to a man.
And perhaps that was her greatest charm.
Perhaps that was why he was struggling so with control.
Jim liked his loving slow and leisurely. He liked to savor a woman, to take his time with the seduction, to stand back, both emotionally and physically, and watch passion build until she was humming like the strings of a guitar drawn too tight.
Sarah shattered all his long-held notions. With her, he was savage, a ravening beast who stripped aside her miniscule top and closed his mouth greedily over her breasts. Feasting. Exulting. Glorying in the sweet soft mounds of fragrant flesh and the electrifying response of her body.
Shivers shook her, and the nipples that were already responsive hardened to diamond points. Jim’s tongue toyed, teased, bathed, and when that was not enough, he took her deep into his mouth, groaning with a pleasure that shook him all the way to his toes.
A red light went on in his brain. Caution, it signaled. This woman is different.
The warning was far too late. Jim was already over the brink. Sarah was under his skin so deep she’d burrowed somewhere in the vicinity of his soul. If he didn’t have her, he would die.
It was that simple.
Her hands wove into his hair, and she pulled him closer, arching her back and offering herself up to him like the goddess she was.
“I can’t get enough of you,” he murmured, and she made a small unintelligible sound, half moan, half plea.
His hands skimmed over her body, memorizing, discovering. Hooking his thumbs in her waistband, he stripped her of the remaining bit of cloth, then picked her up and carried her to his bed.
“Watch your head,” he said. “It’s going to be a tight fit.”
She blushed even deeper, and he was thrilled. She laughed, a low, throaty seductive sound that filled the tiny cabin, and he was hooked.
“I’ve never known anyone like you, Sarah.”
She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him closer. “Don’t talk, Jim, just love me.” She rained kisses around his mouth and on his throat, and by the time she got to his chest Jim Standing Bear didn’t know whether he was coming or going, as his flying buddy Ace Jones of Arkansas often said.
This was the first time Jim had ever found the saying apt.
A small shaft of light poured through the narrow doorway, and he laid Sarah in the golden pathway that fell across the bed. She was luminous. Whether it was her silky skin that had been shielded from the burning rays of the sun or whether it was a trick of light, Jim couldn’t say. All he knew was that he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted another woman.
Bending over her he kissed the indention at the base of her throat. She smelled of sunshine, sunscreen and roses. Jim wanted to take her in through his very pores.
He inhaled her, tasted her, savored her. To Jim’s delight she gave herself completely over to pleasure. She moaned and purred and arched.
He traced an erotic path across her turgid nipples, under the soft scented mounds then downward to the tiny indention of her navel.
“I never dreamed…”
Her voice trailed away on a soft sigh, and she shivered as he continued his delicious exploration.
“Relax, Sarah,” he whispered. “Go with it.”
With gentle pressure he parted her legs and found the sweet hot core of her passion. And when he dipped his fingers inside, her body arched upward like a fish.
He’d never known a woman so sensitive to touch. And it drove him wild. His fingers plyed deeper, and she cried out as if she’d been gut-punched.
She tangled her fingers in his hair, alternately pulling him closer and pushing him back.
“I think I’m dying,” she said, the words spaced between deep gasps and excited moanings.
Her reaction goaded Jim, ignited him. He was stallion and she was spurs. He was flame and she was oxygen.
Need ripped through him like a tornado, tearing away the last shred of his control. Poised above her, Jim memorized every single detail—the way her hair fanned out on his pillows, the way the sun seemed caught in the center of her green eyes, the way she worried her full lower lip between her teeth.
Wanting to savor every minute, he entered her slowly. Sarah sucked in a sharp breath. Jim moved deeper and met a sweet tight barrier.
His heart thundered like war drums. Sarah trembled beneath him, her body bowed upward, her eyes so luminous he could see straight through to her soul.
“Sarah?”
Wonder filled Jim, and on its heels regret. He had taken her carelessly to his bed without thought of anything except pleasure, and in the process he’d almost deflowered a virgin.
Not just any virgin, but Sarah Sloan, a sweet giving woman who became Ginger Rogers in her garden because her father thought he was Fred Astaire, a generous woman whose heart was big enough for every wounded child she saw, a rather shy woman who had taken the shreds of a dream and woven them into a lifetime career of service to others.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He starte
d to withdraw, but she clutched him tightly, held on to him as if she meant never to let go.
“I thought you wouldn’t want me.”
“My God. I’ve wanted you from the first time I ever saw you.”
A shudder shook her, and tears spilled down her cheeks. Jim withdrew, then pulled her close and buried his face in her hair.
“I’m sorry, Sarah,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“Oh, please, please don’t say that.” She pressed her face into his shoulder, and her tears burned him like branding irons.
He thought she was crying for innocence lost. While her virginity was still intact, he’d taken the intimate liberties of a bridegroom, and forever robbed her of some of the joy of discovery on her wedding day.
As old-fashioned and impossible as it seemed, Sarah Sloan was a vanishing breed, a truly innocent woman who had probably been saving herself for the marriage bed. He’d almost stolen that from her. Nothing he could do, nothing he could say would make up for what he had done.
“If I had known, Sarah. If only I had known…”
“If you had known, would you have brought me down here?”
“No.”
The silence that filled the room was heavy with regret, eloquent with unspoken pleadings. Then suddenly Sarah’s tears vanished and her trembling ceased. Slowly she wound her arms around him and moved her hips with a natural eroticism that had Jim groaning.
“Sarah. Don’t.” he pulled his hips back, hoping that small separation would be enough.
It wasn’t. Passion stormed through him, almost ripping aside his control.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” he said.
“I do.” She snuggled into him once more, her body supple and sweat-slick, her eyes wide and pleading. “Make love to me, Jim.”
“It would be so easy, Sarah.” He smoothed her damp hair back and kissed her forehead. “So very easy.”
“Please, Jim.”
“Don’t ask that of me, Sarah.”
Her lower lip trembled, and she took a deep breath, fighting for control. How could he tell her no without hurting her feelings? And yet, how could he do what she asked without destroying her future?
Women like Sarah Sloan needed promises and commitment and vows. Jim Standing Bear was in no position to be making promises.