“But—” Her words were cut off by a kiss she was unable to move away from, and then Mark lifted his head, looking down at her with an emotion in his eyes that had never been there before. “Oh, hell, Jillian, ever since I first saw you, I’ve wanted you.”
She tried to speak, but he covered her lips again with a swift and potent kiss, his hands turning her hair free to spill over her shoulder and his arm as he reached up, tangling his fingers in it. As his lips moved over hers, Jillian shuddered, but she was too aware of the difficulties giving in to him presented to be able to respond the way he wanted her to, the way she wanted to.
She remembered the feel of his hands and his mouth on her body, remembered how close she had come to forgetting. So many other times his kisses had beguiled her to the point of thinking nothing mattered but making love with him, yet each time she had managed to regain control of herself and the situation. She knew she wasn’t being fair to him, but whenever she told him it had to stop, that they couldn’t keep on like they were, he only agreed and told her that he knew it. But he meant that things were going to have to go farther, when what she meant was that they had to stop entirely.
Yet she didn’t think she had the strength of will to stop entirely. Not to see Mark, not to touch him, to have his kisses, to feel his arms around her, to hear his heart pounding inside his chest was something she couldn’t bear to consider seriously. He was coming very close to melting her every defense, but deep inside she remained afraid that she still wasn’t ready.
She pulled her mouth free, but continued to touch his face with her hands, softly, gently, as if she couldn’t bear to lose contact with his skin.
“Mark! You just said it. Ever since we met you’ve wanted me. But what you met wasn’t real. It was a fantasy. It isn’t me you want, it’s that mermaid you caught.” Part of her wanted it to be true and another part rejoiced when he denied it vehemently.
“That’s ridiculous! We both know I don’t believe in mermaids.” For a moment he thought guiltily of the brief time when he had done exactly that, only now it didn’t seem possible that for even a second he could have permitted his mind to play that kind of game with him. Jillian Lockstead was all woman, and she was the woman he wanted.
“You have to know it’s more than that.”
He moved his hands over her body, shielding what he was doing from the children should either of them look in their direction. Jillian trembled and let herself sink into his warmth. His voice dropped to a low, seductive whisper as he continued. “Jillian, I want you so badly! From the moment you came ashore to me like some exotic creature out of a dream, I’ve wanted you.
“Every time I watch you perform it’s torture. I can’t bear the thought of any other man seeing you like that, wanting you, fantasizing about you. I want to have you exclusively. And I want to give you everything you’ve never had, everything you’ve ever wanted, both for yourself and for Amber. I want you to be able to stop worrying about your mother. I want—” He broke off, curling one leg around her hips, her legs bent so that she sat in the V formed by his. His hands were tight on her shoulders as he gazed into her face. He shook his head as if he didn’t know what else to say to persuade her.
Then he added simply but with an urgency so compelling, she could barely resist it, “Jillian, say yes.”
His hands molded her body, drawing her up against him as he knelt and pulled her with him, pressing their lower bodies together, showing her his heat and his desire and his need.
“Yes to what?” she asked, fighting against the danger of becoming totally lost in the sensuality of his touch. “I don’t know what you want of me,” she said, struggling out of his embrace. And it was only half a lie. She knew, certainly, that he wanted to make love with her. And Lord knew she desperately, achingly wanted the same, hut she was so afraid, and there had to be more than that between them. Much more. She wouldn’t settle for less, ever.
Especially not under the circumstances. He’d have to know and want her anyway. He’d have to...love her.
“I’m not the fantasy creature you seem to think I am, Mark. I’m a flesh and blood woman, with needs and wants that you’re stirring up like crazy, but I also have problems and worries and a mother and child dependent on me. I just can’t turn my back on them. I don’t want to.”
“And I don’t want you to, either. I want you to share your problems and worries with me. I want you to come and live with me. You and Amber and your mother, too, if she wants,” he added, his arms coming around her tightly once more.
“What?” This time she managed to break free completely. “You’re out of your mind!” Ever conscious of her sleeping child, of Chris only fifty yards away on the other side of the creek, she kept her voice low but emphatic. “That’s the craziest notion I’ve ever heard.”
“It’s not crazy, dammit. I’m being practical here, Jillian. I have it all worked out. I can help you with Amber. You’ve told me that there are things she needs that you feel you aren’t providing. I have money. More money than I could ever begin to spend. To start with, I’ll buy a speedboat and take her for a ride. And you say your mother’s not well. I could hire the best doctors in the world, if that what she needs. I could—”
“That’s not what she needs! She’s getting what she needs—they both are—financially as well as medically!” Jillian said angrily, almost in tears.
How awful! She didn’t want anything from him. If he had asked her exactly what she did want, she wouldn’t have been able to tell him, but she knew it wasn’t this...this “practical” solution to what he saw as her problems. He didn’t have the faintest idea of what her problems might be, what worried her almost to the point of obsession, what kept her from having a good, honest relationship with any man, even one she was beginning to—No. She tried to break the thought off before it could form fully.
But the thought was there. The knowledge was there. The truth was there. She loved him. But it wasn’t love he was asking her for, it wasn’t love he was offering her. It was a practical solution to their need to be together in bed, and she suddenly was furious—with him, with herself, with fate for putting her in such a position. “What makes you think I would even consider moving in with a man I’ve known for three weeks?” she demanded in a hot, hissing whisper, her eyes snapping with anger.
“It took me less than a quarter of that time to know that I want you in my life, Jillian.”
“In what part of your life?” Her voice cracked. “Am I to be part of your weekend retreat? You’ll come to the club on Friday and Saturday nights and ogle me with the rest of the customers, take me out for an early breakfast and...and then what? Back to your place for a little sexual exercise? Or will we giggle and pretend we’re teenagers in the basement at my place and hope my mother doesn’t wake up? Does that turn you on, Mark? Acting like a sixteen-year-old again?” She knew it was a terrible thing to say, but something compelled her to do it, and even when she saw the hurt in his face, she couldn’t retract her words. She shook with fear and fury and pain. She sank down onto the sand again half-turned from him, unable to go on looking at the agony in his eyes.
His voice was a low growl close to her ear as he said, “I want you out of that club, dammit. I want you with me all the time.”
“How could I be with you all the time? Aren’t you forgetting you live in the city and I live up here? I work here. I have a good job that I don’t want to leave. And my mother lives here. I can’t leave her on her own, and I doubt very much that she’d want to move. And what about Chris? How do you think he’d feel if I moved in with you only a few months after his mother’s death?”
“Dammit, Chris knows and so do you that his mother and I were apart for nine years. It isn’t as though her death released me to ask you to live with me. Chris likes you. You like him. We could... Well, be a family, Jillian. Think about it. The four of us together. Five, if you include your mom. But if you’re right, and she wouldn’t want to move, then I could hire a co
mpanion for her someone she likes, someone you trust so you wouldn’t have to worry about her. You told me that you only came back home because you’d gotten sick and then after you were better, stayed for her sake. If she hadn’t needed you, would you have stayed?”
Before she could reply, he had grabbed her and turned her, staring into her face again, his eyes blazing as he tried to convince her. He didn’t know why it was so important, but suddenly getting Jillian to agree to live with him, getting her out of that nightclub had become the most important task in his life. He’d do anything to persuade her.
“Or she could just live near us. I could buy her her own—”
“Mark, dammit, you sound as if you’re trying to buy me!” she cried, crouching away from him. Her eyes shimmered, the hair he had untied blew around her flushed face and stuck in the wet streaks that trickled down her cheeks.
“Do you think you’re the first one to come up with that idea? Though I must admit you’re the most inventive so far. Your offer is a lot more detailed than any of the notes that have been sent to my dressing room, offers of money for my services as if I’ve put myself on sale simply by performing in a club. Well, let me tell you, Mark Forsythe, Jillian Lockstead is not for sale!”
He reached for her again, his hands clamping on her shoulders.
“Stop it!” she yelled, startling Amber who sat up and blinked sleepily, rubbing her eyes.
“Mom? What’s wrong?”
Jillian moved quickly away from Mark and drew in a deep, tremulous breath as he finally got to his feet and paced away from her, his head bent, his shoulders slumped.
“Nothing, honey,” she said. “Just a...a hornet trying to sting me. Come on. It’s time to get up now. The picnic’s over.”
Mark turned and looked at her for a long moment before he said quietly, “The picnic, maybe, but not this discussion, Mermaid. Not by a long shot.”
The solution to the problem of Amber’s promised boat ride presented itself on Tuesday evening when Jillian got to work and found both Robin and Jim waiting for her with another offer from the congressional candidate. It wasn’t the extra money that persuaded her to take the job, but the fact that when she demanded a small bonus in the form of a trip in the Zodiac for Amber, all three men readily agreed.
The excursion was set up for the following Sunday, and Amber was an effervescent bubble of impatience for the rest of the week. It was all but impossible to keep her contained until then. But the day finally came, and Jillian sat in the rigid hulled-inflatable boat wishing for binoculars or at least her contact lenses so she could scan the shore and maybe get a glimpse of Mark. But her lenses were aboard the cruiser with her clothes, and she hadn’t thought to ask for binoculars.
On the blur that was the shore she couldn’t even begin to guess which direction, toward which barnacle-covered rocks she had been drawn and then been dashed against. She wondered if Mark was there watching and if he knew that she and Amber were in the boat.
As the small craft sped over the water, she curled half on, half off a seat, ready once more to go over the side with Robin, who was all suited up with scuba equipment as they neared the large, white cruiser where Ken Bristol waited along with his camera crew. This time, she had been promised, there would be no mistakes. Ken Bristol was going to use a very distinctive lure, one that Robin couldn’t mistake.
Again, her eyes swept the blurry shore as she wondered exactly where it was she had ended up last time. Was that a man standing on the rocks, or was it a tree? She wished she could see, but it was impossible. She sighed. She wished she could stop thinking about Mark Forsythe, but that was impossible too.
She hadn’t heard from him all week, so if he intended to continue the discussion she had terminated she had no idea when he meant to do it. Not that discussing it further would make a difference, but she would like a chance to apologize for having accused him of making a purchase-offer. Even as she had said the words to him, she’d known that she was wrong.
He’d panicked her, and she’d struck out at him the only way she knew how. She had to protect herself against the powerful pull he exerted on her—not just sexually, but on levels that went much deeper. His personality appealed to her too much. He was too easy to talk to. He answered a need she had long recognized within herself for a soul mate, someone she could lean on and who would be comfortable leaning on her.
She thought that it might be possible for her, with his help, to overcome the sickening fear she felt each time she thought of—She shuddered, remembering his kisses, remembering the tenderness with which his very presence surrounded her. Surely with him it would be all right, only...
She wanted a husband.
And Mark Forsythe had stated categorically that he did not want a wife ever again. All he had asked of her was to come and live with him. She—who had a child and a mother whose respect she cherished, to say nothing of a sister and a brother and several nieces and nephews, could never do that, not even for a caring man like him, and certainly not under the circumstances.
He cared deeply about his son; she had seen the gentle compassion with which he dealt with her own daughter. What he was doing for his “elves” was nothing short of saintly. And in the past weeks she had seen ample evidence of his concern for her. Even though they had fought, even though she had said cruel, hateful things to him and hurt him, she still was being shepherded home each night by her faithful taxi driver.
She missed Mark more each day. It wasn’t something she could control. She thought about him all the time, jumped whenever the telephone rang. But it was never Mark, nor had he come to the club as far as she knew.
Now, as she watched Amber sitting perched on the back of the front seat of the Zodiac beside the man at the helm, her face held up to the wind, her small hands clutching tightly to the sides of the seat-back, Jillian reminded herself how important even this little jaunt was.
Amber was having a wonderful time, turning her head to let the wind whip her hair in different directions, opening her mouth wide to catch the salty drops that flew toward her, and holding up a hand to the wind and the spray, clearly enjoying the experience.
Jillian hitched herself to where her daughter sat. “Pretty good, huh?” she asked, as Amber turned a laughing face toward her.
“The best, Mom!” she shouted over the noise of the outboard engine at the stern. “The absolute best!”
For Jillian the whole day became worth it.
Mark stood as he had three weeks before, fishing rod in hand, and tried to bring himself to cast the line out into the rippling water.
He could not. Each time he tried he remembered the very thing he was trying hard to forget, the sight of Jillian swimming toward him with that hook embedded in her breast.
That picture and so many more had lived with him this past long week while he had tried to get her out of his mind. It was impossible, and now he knew it.
Something had drawn him back with a pull too powerful to resist, and he had been at the club the last two nights, watching her, aching for her, wishing he knew what was happening to him and why he couldn’t get a grip on himself.
It was agony, being so near her and not being able to touch her, but it was ecstasy just watching her perform.
Her beauty enthralled him. He ached to hold her again, to feel her lips under his, to taste the sweetness of her mouth. He yearned to slowly peel away the barriers of her clothing—especially the mermaid suit—and see again the beauty he knew they concealed, to feel once more her hard, hot nipples jutting against his tongue. But sitting there and hearing the comments of the men around him made him grit his teeth and clench his fists in order not to break a few heads.
That described his relationship to date with Jillian Lockstead. From the very beginning, most of his feelings about her had caused him either agony or ecstasy.
There was the jealousy; all those evil-minded men and their foul talk. Couldn’t they see there was a real, live, sensitive woman inside that suit, a w
oman who would hate the things they said about her, the things they discussed doing to her and crudely laughed about?
Also there was the fear. In spite of what she’d told about keeping her car in good repair, he couldn’t help worrying. What if it did break down? There were too many dark streets she was forced to travel en route, too many “dead zones” lacking adequate cell coverage. There was even one undeveloped area she had to pass through. If she had trouble there, she’d be forced to walk blocks to the nearest telephone, and the thought of her doing that made him crazy inside.
No woman should be forced to travel home from work in the middle of the night under those circumstances. And no woman of his would ever have to. No woman of his would have to work in a damned nightclub! If she were his wife, it wouldn’t happen!
He sat down abruptly on the unforgiving rock. His rod and reel threatened to slide into the sea, and he caught the butt end of the rod, setting it into a safer location, wondering where that extraordinary idea had come from.
Since his divorce he had not once contemplated marrying again. And it wasn’t as though he was really giving it serious thought now, he told himself. It was just that damned jealousy and the fear he felt for her safety. He wanted her, true. He had asked her, impulsively and much too soon in their relationship, he now acknowledged, to come and live with him. No wonder she had taken offense.
Practical or impractical, sane or insane, the woman had done something to him. If it was the last thing he ever did, he vowed, he would get her out of that tank, get her off public display and into his bed until he had her completely out of his system, because, like it or not, he wanted her all to himself.
He saw the fast-moving Zodiac come sweeping around the tip of the point, heading in his direction, and he concentrated on it, glad of the distraction. A child with long, dark hair flying loose was seated high in the bow, another figure stood at the wheel, and one sat low in the middle of the boat. Seemingly oblivious of anyone else, the operator of the small craft sent it zipping along, throwing a huge wake that dashed up on the shore nearly to Mark’s feet, sending other boats into frenzied rock and roll maneuvers. Over the scream of its engine a high, childish voice shouted, “The best. Mom! The absolute best!”
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