The Homeplace

by Janet Dailey

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  Chapter Nine

  "OOHH, THE WATER IS COLD!" Connie said shivering, her feet dancing away from the gentle waves that lapped along the sandy shore.

  "No, it's not," Andy called from where she was treading water. "It's really warm once you get in it."

  "Come on." Clay grabbed Connie's arm and pulled her into the lake, laughing at her shrieks of displeasure as he firmly immersed her in the water.

  Cathie needed, no promptings as she waded into the cool water until it was nearly touching her white bikini, then submerged to swim toward the raft anchored several yards from shore. Through water-spiked lashes, she saw Clay swimming beside her, his grin challenging her to a race. He was already lifting himself onto the raft when she reached it. The rest of the group had gathered there too, with the exception of Connie and Dennis. But it was Rob's hands and not Clay's that reached down to help Cathie onto the floating platform.

  Under the glow of the moonlight, his tanned body glistened like a bronzed statue, muscular and smooth, naked except for his black trunks. She kept her eyes averted from his face, feeling an attack of breathlessness that had no basis in exercise overtake her as she inadvertently glanced at him, her senses traitorously ignited at his touch. The second her balance was established she eluded the firm but not restraining grasp of his hands and moved away toward Clay, her only refuge from the magnetic pull Rob's nearness produced.

  "Rob, give me a hand up," Connie called imperiously from the water near the raft. Cathie was thankful to have the attention diverted from her; she needed the time to regain her composure.

  Dennis came drifting past the raft, lolling in an oversized rubber tire while propelling himself with his hands. A duplicate of the tire was floating a few feet behind him along with a pair of yellow air mattresses. There was a scramble from the raft into the water to see who could lay claim to the floating objects which ended in laughs and shrieks as one swimmer after another was capsized by the rest. Cathie joined, finding safety in numbers.

  It was several minutes later while the others were engrossed in their water game of king of the mountain that Cathie slipped away from the noisemakers, taking one of the forgotten air mattresses. There was too much body contact in that game, and Cathie knew that sooner or later it would include her and Rob. Agilely she slipped onto the mattress, reclining on her back as the gentle rocking motion of the water carried her quietly away from the robust crowd.

  The smiling face of a silver-dollar moon illuminated the lake, chasing the dark shadows away to hide under the trees that gathered near the shore. It was peaceful lying here on this soft cradle, Cathie thought, relaxing as the waves carried her farther from the group and closer to the shore.

  There was no sound or movement to betray the presence of another person, but all of a sudden Rob's head appeared beside her. His brown hair, curling and wet around his forehead, gave him a rakish look to match the fiery blaze in his eyes.

  "What are you doing so far away from the rest of us?" An eyebrow arched over the brilliant light in his eyes. "We're operating according to the buddy system tonight. There's to be no separation unless it's in pairs."

  The initial shock was over and the blood was again starting to pump through her heart. "Where's Clay?" Cathie slid off the mattress into the water, using it as a shield against the penetrating gaze that had thoroughly raked hey skimpily clad body.

  "You cling to him as if he were a security blanket," Rob mocked. Like Cathie, he was using the natural buoyancy of the air mattress to keep him afloat without treading water. "What is it you're afraid of?"

  "I'm not afraid of anything," she asserted, pushing her wet curls away from her face as she eyed him with false boldness.

  His hand reached out and captured her arm, pulling her easily through the water to him. They had drifted close enough to shore so that Rob, because of his superior height, could touch bottom. Cathie could feel it just out of reach of her tiptoes. Without its support, struggling was wasted effort. He brought her close to him, his hands burning her flesh where they touched the nakedness of her waist. As he drew her tighter into the circle of his arms, Cathie tried to hold herself away, yet needing to cling to him to keep her head above water.

  One of his hands moved to the back of her hair, holding her firmly while his head, framed against a star-spangled sky, began its slow descent. The feel of his sleek body pressed against hers was a potent sensation as the heat from him generated a different fire in Cathie. Shudders of sweet ecstasy quaked through her when his mouth closed over hers, expertly arousing the desire that she had always before kept suppressed. Rob was an irresistible force that she had to resist. It was a supreme test of will to keep her arms from encircling the hard smooth shoulders and mold herself closer to his body. In that Cathie succeeded, only to have her lips betray her and part under the sensually demanding and experienced request of his.

  It was torturous bliss, wanting this kiss and despising herself for that want. It was Clay she was going to marry, not Rob. It was Clay who should be making her respond physically like this. When she thought she couldn't stand not giving herself wholeheartedly to the embrace, his mouth moved away from hers. Rob still held her tightly against him, his mouth moving softly against her golden hair. Cathie's head rested weakly against his shoulder, her breath silent sobs in her attempt to regain control. Shame and humiliation inflamed her because she had responded to a man who was not her fiancé. Yet she wanted to feel the hard pressure of his mouth on hers again.

  "You're trembling like a frightened little cat," Rob murmured. "You're afraid, but you're afraid of the wrong thing."

  Tears burned her eyes and she held them tightly shut. "Let me go!" she demanded in a tense voice that cried to be silenced by his lips.

  "Is that what you want?"

  "Yes." Hoarseness rasped her assertion.

  As Rob let her drift away from him, he kept a steadying grip under her arms that loosened as she began treading water on her own. It was all she could do not to swim back to his open, inviting arms. Cathie glanced over her shoulder at the laughter and splashing horseplay of the rest of their party. She was suddenly cold, terribly cold and unwilling to face Clay as though nothing had happened. The darkness of the tree-lined beach beckoned and after casting Rob a condemning look, she struck out toward it, her arms cleaving the water with sharp, vigorous strokes.

  Blinding hate enveloped her as she walked the last few yards to shore and strode toward the oversized blue beach towel she had left on the sand. At that moment Cathie hated Rob Douglas with a violent, sickening rush of emotion. The ache at the pit of her stomach told her that he was awakening her to the needs of the flesh as only her future husband should. Rob was changing her. Even Clay had noticed it. And she hated Rob for that, for disrupting her safe, secure world.

  With hard, vigorous movements, Cathie scrubbed every clinging droplet of water from her skin, the harsh rubbing chastizing the weakness of her flesh. When the fury of her rage passed, she slung the towel around her shoulders and sunk to the ground in the darkness of an overhanging tree. Gazing out at the glacial moon and the brittle silver of the stars, she shivered, then caught a flash of yellow flame out of the comer of her eye.

  "Here." Rob stood above her, his approach muted by the traitorous cushion of the sand, holding a cigarette toward her.

  "I don't smoke," she said icily, but he pushed it into her hands anyway. It was something for her trembling hands to hold on to, so she kept it. He was obviously impervious to the coolness of the night as he lowered himself to the sand beside her, his naked chest glistening in the pale moonlight. "I didn't ask you to join me." The frigid sarcasm of her voice lashed out at him while she wished she could do the same with her hands.

  A cloud of cigarette smoke hung in the air between them, as Rob lazily reclined on one arm. "I know you didn't," he replied with infuriating calm.

  "Do you have any idea how much I despise you?" Cathie demanded, her green eyes shooting fiery sparks
as she glared at him. "You are the most loathsome, disgusting man I've ever met! How could you be so brazenly uncivilized as to make love to a woman when the man she's engaged to is not twenty yards away?"

  Why didn't you call out to him to rescue you from my barbaric person?" he retorted smoothly, a glint of retaliatory anger in his dark eyes. Cathie's sharp intake of breath was an admission that he had found the vulnerable chink in her defensive armor. "You may call that an engagement ring, but it's nothing more than a friendship ring. You can't love him and kiss me like you just did."

  "I'm going to marry Clay," Cathie declared, a hollow ring to her voice.

  "Then I pity both of you."

  "Pity?" She turned her puzzled, angry face toward him. "Why should you pity us?"

  "I pity Clay more than I do you," said Rob, inhaling on his cigarette. "Because he'll end up with a dissatisfied unhappy wife and won't know why."

  "And you do, I suppose." She turned away from him to study the granules of sand at her feet, his words cutting more deeply than she cared to admit.

  "Yes. Would you like to know what's wrong with you?" he asked, an arrogant smile on his face.

  Her mouth was compressed in a tight line. "Not particularly," she said with a dismissive shake of her head. "But I have the feeling you're going to tell me whether I ask you to or not."

  Rob leaned forward and rested his arms on his knees as he contemplated her profile thoughtfully. "You haven't grown up yet, little kitten." He smiled as she gave him a startled look. Many things she could be accused of, but at that moment she was more aware of herself as a woman than she had ever been. "You're still living in some fantasy world that you built when you were a romantic teenager. You mapped everything out to enclose yourself into a cocoon of security. You chose Clay to marry because he was a link with your childhood happiness. With him, there would be no secrets or surprises because you'd grown up with him. But your plan included the farm where your idyllic marriage would be acted out. That's why you and Clay have kept finding excuses to keep from getting married, because you wanted the proper setting. My arrival disrupted your world before you even met me."

  Cathie nodded numbly in agreement, uncaring of the glittering fire of satisfaction that lit his brown eyes. His words were so close to what had actually happened that it frightened her, casting doubts as to how genuine her affection for Clay really was and more doubts as to why she was marrying him.

  "Tell me, Cat," Rob continued, "did you just ignore the physical aspect of a man-woman relationship or was it something you were going to endure in order to have the children who would one day discover all the magic of the farm? Why did you become a teacher? To maintain your connection with your childhood?"

  His arrows of speculation were coming too fast for her to ward off. She cupped her hands over her ears so she wouldn't have to hear any more. "Stop it!" Cathie cried. "I don't want to hear any more of your stupid theories!"

  With her eyes shut she didn't see his hands reach out to grasp hers and pull them away from her ears. At his touch, she struggled wildly until she had no more strength and submitted to the bruising hold he had on her wrists. But her eyes remained wide and rounded, reflecting the glittering anguish and fear that she would once again succumb to his charisma.

  "I don't mean to hurt you." Rob's voice was low and soothing as if he were trying to calm a frightened animal. "There isn't anything wrong with having dreams or even trying to make them come true, unless it goes against your heart. Don't fight me any more, Cat, because of a dream."

  The moonlight beamed down over his shoulder lighting her face and hiding Rob's face in its shadow. "I'm twenty-four years old," she protested weakly. "I'm not a child anymore. I know what I want."

  She could see the flash of his teeth that signaled a smile, indulgent or mocking she couldn't tell. "There's always some part of all of us that remains a child."

  "I love Clay." Cathie blinked at the tears hovering at the edge of her lashes, one last protest against her growing emotion for Rob. "I've always loved Clay."

  "Of course you love him. But as a brother or a lover?"

  "Why do you care.?" There was a pleading, protesting tone in her voice. "What difference could it possibly make to you?"

  His hesitancy was a tangible thing. Unconsciously Cathie was holding her breath in wary anticipation of his reply. There was an overpowering feeling that his answer was of supreme importance, her future happiness hinged on it.

  "I don't come into it at all, Cat." Rob finally spoke and her heart plummeted to her toes. He didn't care for her. "It's your relationship with Clay that's in question." He released her wrists and rolled to his feet to stand and look down at her. "Think over what I've said… for your own good."

  The next instant he was several feet away, briskly toweling his wet hair. Cathie couldn't help watching him, studying the wide shoulders and the narrowing waist and hips. But the only thing she could feel was a lonely, aching emptiness somewhere in the region of her heart. She had told herself before that it would be foolish to fall in love with Rob. And she had finally done it.

  "Cathie, what are you doing here?" Clay trotted out of the water, a happy grin of exhaustion on his face as he made his way toward her. He barely even glanced at Rob. "I wondered where you'd got to." As he walked past Rob, Cathie noticed the sharp contrast between Clay's almost white skin and the deep tan of Rob's. Clay collapsed on the sand beside Cathie, a wet arm playfully snatching her towel away. "You missed a lot of fun. What have you been doing, anyway?"

  Cathie examined the clean lines of Clay's attractive face, not finding the strength and maturity that were etched so indelibly in Rob's face. "Rob and I were talking," she replied.

  "Hashing poor Tad over again, huh? Or was he bringing you up to date on the changes at the Homeplace?" Clay grinned.

  "No, actually we were just talking man to woman." Her statement didn't even bring a glimmer of surprise, much less jealousy, to Clay's face. He merely shrugged and began recounting how Connie's swimsuit top had accidentally came unhooked.

  "Clay, I'm cold," Cathie interrupted impatiently. "Let's go home."

  The rest of the party was just coming out of the water and Rob was walking to meet them. Connie had separated herself from the group to rush forward to meet him. And Cathie didn't like the twinge of pain that attacked her midsection at the burst of laughter from Connie at some unheard comment from Rob. Jealousy wasn't part of her nature, she had once bragged, but that was before Rob. She shivered.

  "Say, you are a mass of goosebumps!" Clay exclaimed, running a dry but cool hand over her arm.

  "I told you I was cold," Cathie snapped angrily, pulling the towel from his hands and wrapping it around her as she rose to her feet. Clay was forced to follow suit.

  "Hey, where are you two going?" Andy called out as Cathie started toward the place where they had parked their cars.

  "Cathie has an attack of chills. We're going to go ahead and leave now," Clay shouted back, lifting a hand in goodbye, but Cathie kept walking, not wanting to meet Rob's glance.

  "Don't you want to stop and change clothes before we drive back?" Clay asked as Cathie slid into the passenger seat of his green compact car.

  "I want to go home," she repeated determinedly.

  "You don't have to be so touchy." He frowned as he slipped a blue cotton tee-shirt over his head and took his place behind the wheel. "I only thought that if you were cold you might feel better in some dry clothes."

  After he had reversed the car out of the parking space and was on the road leading back to the highway, Cathie voiced the thought that had been uppermost in her mind. "Clay, would you like to get married? Right away, I mean."

  "You mean not wait until we find a house? To simply get married on the spur of the moment, like that?" He snapped his fingers and gave Cathie a look that doubted her sanity. "That wouldn't make sense, to throw away all our plans."

  "But what if it takes us another year to find the house we want?" she persist
ed, gazing straight ahead, her voice calm and unemotional.

  "Then it takes another year," he replied, lifting his shoulders in a dismissive shrug.

  "And after we find the house, it will take time to get it decorated and fixed the way we want it?"

  "We've already talked all this out and figured it into our plans." There was a bewildered frown on his forehead as he studied the pattern of his headlights on the concrete road.

  "And after that, what kind of an excuse do you suppose we'll come up with to postpone the wedding?" Her eyes widened with false innocence as she turned them toward Clay.

  "You aren't making any sense at all."

  "What I think I'm asking is, do you really want to marry me, Clay?"

  "Of course I do." There was a desperate note in Clay's confused voice as if he couldn't find the words to convince her. "Isn't that what we've been planning to do?"

  Cathie sighed heavily, turning her troubled gaze away from him. "Planning and planning and planning, but never doing."

  "Well, what do you want to do?" he demanded, half angrily. "Do you want to run off and elope tonight? Where would we live? I don't have enough cupboards in my apartment to hold my own clothes, let alone yours. You aren't suggesting that I move in with you, Connie and Andy, are you?"

  "No, I'm not suggesting anything like that," she answered. Her shoulders sagged with the confusion of her own thoughts.

  "Then explain to me what this conversation is all about," Clay sighed, his head moving from side to side in exasperation. Automatically he made the turn that would take him to Cathie's house. There was a moment of silence as he pulled into the driveway and turned off the engine. He turned sideways in his seat to study her.

  "Clay, weren't you the least bit jealous when you found me with Rob?" Cathie had to swallow the lump in her throat before she could get that question out.

  He cocked his head to the side, taken aback by her question and uncertain how to answer it. "Why should I have been jealous? You told me yourself that all you did was talk."