Return to Paradise

by Carol Grace

  Christine was vaguely aware of Sarah watching the two of them and grinning impishly. She tried to speak but the words caught in her throat. And her heart missed every other beat. Why had she come? Why hadn't she foreseen this?

  "I didn't expect to see you," he said at last. He didn't say "ever again," but she knew that's what he meant. His voice was a shade deeper than she remembered, his shoulders a little broader, his eyes even bluer. Did he have to be so damnably good-looking? "You've changed," he said, his eyes taking a tour from her shiny curls to her expensive suede shoes. He didn't say "for the worse," but she wondered if that's what he meant. What did he expect? That she'd show up in jeans and a checked shirt?

  "It's been a while," she said brightly.

  Ten days, he thought, but who's counting? He clenched his fists together to keep from taking her in his arms. Right there in front of Sarah. Ten days since she'd said goodbye. Ten days telling himself he'd better get used to being without her because he was never going to see her again. And now she was here, but she wasn't the same woman he'd known at the ranch. This woman had clearly found herself. What did she find? Who was she? All he knew was her last name and that she had friends and family. What did that mean?

  As if she'd read his mind, his daughter piped up, "She's not married, Dad."

  They both looked at her and after a brief, awkward pause, they laughed. It broke the tension. And encouraged Sarah to elaborate. "And she's thirty-one years old. Just what I thought when I looked at her teeth," she said smugly.

  Parker looked at Christine. Unmarried at thirty-one. While they walked together toward the cafeteria he wondered why someone hadn't snatched her up by now. Inside the brightly lighted room they found chairs at one of the long tables set up for dinner. They sat on either side of Sarah who couldn't stop smiling and waving to her friends. He glanced at Christine's left hand. No ring. Sarah said she wasn't married, but he just wanted to check. Not that it mattered to him. She probably had a good reason for staying single, just as he did.

  What was important was that she was back where she belonged. He had a few questions to ask her, but with Sarah between them, listening to every word they said, he couldn't risk coming off looking too interested. Still, as the dinner wore on and was followed by speeches from the headmistress and the dean, his curiosity consumed him.

  He draped his arm across Sarah's chair and his fingers brushed Christine's sleeve. He leaned back in his chair. She leaned back in hers and slanted a glance in his direction. "How are you?" he asked. How inane. After sitting there for two hours, was that all he could come up with?

  She smiled brightly. "Fine."

  Sarah went to join the girls' chorus and Parker tried again. It should be easier without Sarah between them. "What happened... after I left?"

  "I went up to the house, my house and I let myself in. It was so weird, trying to imagine living there."

  "And your memory?"

  "It came back, just as the doctor said it would, in bits and pieces. There are still things I don't remember, like faces, names and phone numbers."

  "What about the recent past, do you still remember the ranch?" he asked, as if the return of her long-term memory might have erased what had just happened. He had to know for sure.

  "Your ranch? Of course I do. I remember the swing on the front porch, the smell of wet grass, the cold water in the brook." Her gray eyes grew soft and luminous as she reminisced. He let his fingers linger on her shoulder, let his gaze wander to the swell of her breasts under the soft sweater. Wishing he could take her home with him, back to the smell of wet grass, to the porch swing and crush her to him, slide his hands up under that soft sweater and finish what they'd started. He was breathing hard now. He should never have come tonight. If he'd known she'd be there.. .if he'd known she'd look like she did. So familiar and yet so different. As if she'd been polished, from her hair to her fingertips, like a shiny apple. A delicious, irresistible apple. One that was out of his grasp.

  "It's lambs wool," she said, following his gaze.

  "What? Yes, I know. Who do you live with?" he asked, jerking his gaze back to hers.

  "No one," she said. Was there a trace of sadness in her voice or did he just imagine it?

  "That's good," he said with relief. "You don’t have to share the kitchen. You've got your own bed... bedroom." All he could think about was the bed in the hotel where they'd almost made love and he wondered if the color that suddenly tinted her cheeks meant she remembered, too.

  "What do you do?" he asked.

  She looked down and smoothed a crease in her skirt. "The only really worthwhile thing I do is work in the pediatrics ward of the hospital. I really love the kids and I guess they like me, too."

  "You mean, you're a nurse."

  "No, I'm not anything." She gave him a small embarrassed smile.

  "Not a teacher, not a poet or a professional cook?"

  "No, just a dilettante. A dabbler. I cook, I read poetry and I ride a horse I board at a stable. But not professionally. I live on a small trust fund so I don't really need to work." Again, the embarrassed little smile.

  "Nothing wrong with that," he said.

  "What about you?" she said, pressing her fingers together. "Did you have any luck at the meeting?"

  "Yeah. As a matter of fact I picked up some good breeding stock. The bad news is, while I was gone the cook quit."

  Her mouth turned down at the corners. "Oh, no."

  "Oh, well." He picked up his dessert fork and tapped it absently on the table. "It's always something."

  "Yes, it is, isn't it," she agreed, then turned her chair so she could see Sarah as the chorus filed onto the stage.

  Parker studied her profile, her straight nose, high cheekbones and firm chin, admired the way her hair framed her face in little tendrils. He knew how soft it felt, how silky. Was that why he couldn't forget her? Her hair, her face? No, it was more than that. It was the way she bit her lip when she was concentrating. The way she wrinkled her nose when she was worried. It was the way she turned his house into a home again. The smell of her soap, the smell of her cooking. It was all these things and more.

  That didn't mean he couldn't forget her. He had to. She had her own life now, one that had nothing to do with his ranch.

  When the singers took a break, he pulled his chair closer to hers. "Pop asked about you."

  "Tell him I miss him, and all those wonderful stories he tells."

  "What'll I tell him when he asks if you're ever coming back?"

  "Parker..." There was a pained look in her eyes. "Haven't we been through this before?"

  "Never mind. I can see you've got your life back and that's good."

  "I guess so." She twisted her napkin in her lap. "Sometimes I wonder what it's all about."

  "Your life?" he asked, raising his eyebrows. "Don't you know?"

  "Not yet. Maybe it will come to me. But when I wake up in the morning sometimes I don't know what I'm supposed to do." She glanced up at him, and when she saw the unwanted sympathy in his eyes she quickly continued. "Then I look at my calendar and I know." Her lips curved upward, but her eyes were still sad and troubled.

  "What about the diamond pendant?" he asked. "Did you find out who MTT was?"

  She stared at the empty stage as if willing the music to start so she wouldn't have to answer. "Yes," she said finally.

  "Well?"

  She sighed. "The man I was engaged to."

  "Was?"

  "It's over."

  He tried to conceal the relief that flooded his chest. Was this broken engagement the reason for the sadness in her eyes?

  Christine turned her head in his direction and changed the subject. "Sarah's looking forward to coming home for the summer. I guess you know she doesn't want to come back here in the fall. I can understand how she feels. I was sent away to school, too."

  "I take it you didn't like it."

  She shook her head. "I probably made my parents' lives miserable, too, just the way
Sarah's doing. Anyway, she asked me to ask you, and now I've done it. I knew what you'd say."

  "Am I that predictable?" he asked, leaning forward as someone came around to refill the coffee cups.

  Christine gave him a quick glance and the memories came flooding back. Of all the times he'd surprised her, caught her off guard. Catching her as she slid off her horse at the pond, tying her apron in the kitchen, taking her shoes off after the hotel banquet. No, he wasn't all that predictable. But this wasn't the time to tell him. That time was never. Because if she told him that, he might think she couldn't forget him, that it meant too much to her, that she'd fallen in love with him. It was better for him to think she had a happy new life, when the truth was she was as homesick for the ranch as she'd ever been at boarding school. Ached with homesickness for the swing on the front porch, the newborn lambs frolicking on the lawn and, most of all, for Parker.

  He was still looking at her, waiting for an answer to his question. "Predictable?" she repeated. "In some ways. In others..." She dragged her eyes from his, afraid he'd see the longing, the desire, she couldn't conceal.

  Fortunately the music started up just then and she watched Sarah standing tall in the back row. She sang alto, and as she sang she watched her father and Christine with a small anxious expression in her blue eyes that Christine could see all the way across the room. Was it just changing schools that concerned her, going home or was it something else? Some other dream she was afraid wasn't going to come true.

  When the program was over, and the audience clapped appreciatively, Sarah rushed back to the table where Christine and her father were standing waiting for her. She linked arms with both of them and they walked her back to her dorm.

  To her credit, Sarah didn't ask or beg her father to let her come home. But when she said goodbye to them, she winked at Christine as if they were fellow conspirators. Christine wanted to tell her he'd said no and that he'd always say no, but she didn't have the heart to spoil the moment. She'd call her on the telephone and tell her next week.

  "Thanks for coming," she said, hugging Christine. "Will you call me sometime?"

  Christine promised, then she found herself walking through the school grounds in the dark toward the parking lot with Parker at her side. He didn't say anything. Neither did she. She thought they'd probably said everything they had to say.

  But the silence went on too long, weighed too heavily on her, until Christine finally blurted, "She's a wonderful girl. You're very lucky, you know."

  What she wouldn't give for a daughter or a son.

  "She likes you, too," he said, walking her to her car.

  "I hope you don't mind my intruding on your parent weekend. When Sarah invited me, I didn't know."

  "Of course not. It was good to see you again."

  He sounded so formal, so polite, she wanted to scream. Good? Was that all it was, good to see her? While she broke out in a sweat, her heart did a double flip, her palms stuck to her skirt, for him it was just "good to see you again." Damn him for being so much in control.

  He took the car keys out of her hand and unlocked her door for her. "Could we go somewhere and talk?" he asked, leaning against her car door.

  "Haven't we been somewhere talking?" she asked. "And don't you have a long drive home?"

  "I'm not going back tonight. I have a meeting tomorrow with Sarah's teachers. A progress report. I'm staying at a hotel."

  "The same hotel where we..."

  "No, a different one."

  Christine looked up at his face, half-shadowed in the yellow glow from the sodium-vapor parking lot light. His eyes were pools of dark blue, so deep she felt she could drown in them. She had no clue as to why he wanted to talk more. But she knew she couldn't get in her car and say good-night, because she knew it would be goodbye. This time for good. And besides, she owed him a debt of hospitality. A debt a cup of coffee wouldn't quite repay. But it was a start. "Would you like to stop by my house? I could make a cup of coffee," she offered, suddenly feeling shy.

  He hesitated only a second. "Sure?"

  "Yes, of course. Why don't you follow me."

  As she drove down the side streets with his headlights reflected in her rearview mirror, she wished she'd suggested a coffeehouse, or a pub. Oh, no, she had to invite him to her house for coffee in a halfhearted attempt to repay him for saving her life. When he suggested going someplace to talk she should have pleaded a sudden headache or maybe a touch of a contagious virus. What she really had was an attack of the jitters, that got worse the closer they got to her house. Her hands were clammy on the steering wheel just thinking of him assessing the house she lived in. When she pulled into her driveway, he pulled in behind her and she was trapped. It was too late for a headache, much too late for smallpox. And as soon as he walked in the front door he'd see how very different they really were. As if he didn't know it already.

  Chapter Nine

  Parker glanced up at the imposing three-story house. Well, what did you expect? he asked himself. That she'd live in a shack? Not a shack, he thought as she opened the front door and he followed her into the living room, but not a sophisticated town house either.

  "Nice place you've got here," he said.

  She looked around as if seeing it for the first time. "I suppose so. It's funny. Sometimes I feel like an impostor, like I don't really belong here." She twisted her fingers together. "But of course I do." She looked at the thermostat on the wall and turned the heat up a notch. "What they say about lightning victims is that life is never the same afterward. Maybe that's what's wrong with me."

  "You don't look like anything's wrong with you," he assured her. She looked lovely, sophisticated, completely at home, the soft gray of her sweater blending with the pale shades of the wainscoting.

  She led the way into the kitchen. There was nothing warm and cozy about it, but from what he could see she had every convenience imaginable, including the espresso machine she'd turned on. "Is this where you got all your cooking expertise?" he asked.

  "I took a course at the culinary academy," she explained. "But I didn't graduate. I was never a professional. Anything."

  "Is that important to you?" he asked.

  "I'd like to feel useful," she said.

  "And you don't?"

  She shrugged. "Cappuccino? Latte?" she asked, measuring coffee from a package in the freezer.

  "Fine," he said absently.

  He straddled one of her straight-backed kitchen chairs, probably an original Shaker design, and watched her make coffee. Just the way he used to watch her work in his old, large, well-worn ranch kitchen, and yet everything had changed.

  She brought the steaming cups to the table, sat down across from him and looked up questioningly. Waiting to hear what he wanted to talk about.

  "You know, I was almost going to ask you to come back and cook for me again." He laughed, but it sounded hollow in his ears. "Pretty ridiculous, huh?"

  "Why?"

  "Why, because a woman like you belongs in a place like this. Not on an isolated sheep ranch with nothing to do."

  "Parker, how do you know where I belong? I don't even know myself. All I know is that I was happier on your ranch than I've ever been in my life. And I had plenty to do."

  "For how long?" he demanded. "You were there a couple of weeks. My ex-wife lasted a year."

  "I remind you of her, don't I? That's why you're afraid-"

  He shoved his chair back and got to his feet. "I'm not afraid of anything. Especially not afraid to learn from my mistakes. I've made plenty of them. And I'll make plenty more, but not the same ones. I'll never get married again, and never subject another woman to my lifestyle again."

  She jumped up and faced him, her eyes blazing. "Who asked you to anyway? Not me. Go ahead and live your life the way you want. You don't have to justify it to me or anybody. You're completely self-sufficient, you've got everything you want, except a cook. But you won't ask me to cook for you because you might end up liking me, you mig
ht even end up loving me."

  She stopped and stared at him, her face burning, looking like she wished she could snatch the words back out of the air where they hung between them.

  There was a loud roaring in his ears like the sound of an avalanche. With a sudden lunge of emotion he shoved the table aside, knocking the cups over, spilling the coffee, and he grabbed her by the shoulders. This was no time for words. There'd been too many already. And this was no time to think, either. Her eyes widened. Her pupils dilated. He took her mouth with one hard, hungry kiss. He forced her lips open and plunged his tongue to stake his claim, stroking, exploring, savoring the taste of her. With his hands tangled in her silky curls, he held her prisoner to his passion. And he didn't care. She'd pushed him over the edge. From the beginning. And now this.

  When she moaned in the back of her throat he ran his hands down her back, pressing her to him, wanting to possess her, to make her his, let her know what she did to him, forgetting everything he'd ever said, everything he believed. Only aware of one thing, the need, the steaming pent-up desire that swirled around them in that cool clean gourmet kitchen.

  She didn't pull away. She could have but she didn't. She returned his kisses, one after another, each one deeper, harder, faster. Her hands were around his neck, sifting through his hair. This time he groaned. He wanted her, all of her. He lifted her sweater. Without breaking the kiss, he cupped her breasts, felt the heat, felt them strain to escape from the wisps of her silk and lace bra. He felt the buds tighten under his calloused fingers. He knew how they'd look, how they'd feel in his hands, how they'd taste. Her lips were moving against his.

  "Yes," she whispered. "Yes, yes, yes..."

  He lifted her off her feet, and carried her into the living room. He'd done this before. At his house. He'd carried her from the bath to the bed that night. The past blended with the present. This time he wouldn't leave. If he could find the bedroom. She was no help. She'd angled her face to meet his, to tempt him, to kiss the corners of his mouth, his eyes, his ears until his knees buckled and he had to stop at the off-white sofa in the living room. They fell on it together. She was on top of him, her sweater twisted to one side, his face pressed against her flat stomach. He couldn't breathe. Didn't care. He reached for her bra but she got there first, un-snapping it for him.