by Jayne Castle
he really cared for you he should have been a little more, uh, forceful in looking after you!"
Reva lifted one shoulder negligently. "Bruce knows I'm capable of looking after myself."
There was a pause while they continued the play of the cards and then Josh said quietly, "Are you really considering marrying the man?"
"Yes." She selected a card from the discard pile, frowning as she added it to her hand. For some reason she was glad of the small excuse not to meet Josh's inquiring gaze.
"Why?"
"Why?" She did look up at that. "For a lot of reasons, naturally." Josh's eyes were curiously remote and detached as they studied her.
"Tell me about him, Reva," he suggested easily.
"What do you want to know?"
"What you see in him. Why you think you want to marry him. I'll admit I'm interested. I feel a little protective of you, I suppose, after that time we had together."
Reva relaxed slightly, a small, warm smile lifting the comers of her mouth. "That's sweet of you, Josh," she said, meaning it. "But you needn't worry about me. I know what I'm doing. Bruce is perfect for me."
"In what way?" Josh asked calmly.
"Well, he's considerate, intelligent, well mannered, and shares many of the same interests I do. Furthermore, he's one of the few men I've met who genuinely appreciates the importance of a woman's career."
"Her career!" He looked surprised, ignoring the fact that it was his turn to play. "What's that got to do with anything?"
Reva laughed with wry comprehension. "You're like so many other men, Josh, with no understanding of the value of a woman's career to herself and to the marriage. But to
me it's crucial and I need a man who fully accepts that. Are you going to play or not?"
He hesitated, the dark brows drawing together as he considered her words. Then he finally selected a card, adding it to his hand with seeming disinterest. It was clear he was thinking of their conversation instead.
"You have no intention of subordinating your career to your husband's?" he demanded after a thoughtful moment.
"No," she said very firmly. "I was tempted once and it ended in disaster."
"What happened?" he pressed, watching as she studied her hand.
"Josh, a very long time ago a very wise woman tried to teach me something very important. ..."
"What woman?" he demanded, the line of his brows growing darker.
"My mother. She found herself the sole support of herself and me after Dad divorced her, leaving almost no financial cushion. She went back to work after too many years out of the work force. Things were tough for a long time, to say the least. But with a lot of scrimping and saving and hard work she got me through college. The one thing she impressed upon me was that I must never allow myself to become economically dependent on a man. I must have a career of my own and be self-sufficient. I got through college with a degree in business administration and a solid background in computer science. My first job was a fabulous one with good money, great potential, and a lot of challenge. I loved it." Reva paused, thinking back. "But I thought I loved a man named Hugh Tyson even more."
"And he asked you to give up your job?" Josh interjected quietly, the card game now completely forgotten.
"We worked for the same company," Reva sighed, shaking her head. "He felt it would be impossible for us to maintain a serious romance without a lot of gossip which could damage his career." She took a deep breath, meeting the lion eyes across the teak table. "The long and the short of it is I agreed to leave the firm. After all, we were going to be married and it was obvious one of us had to quit. And since he was on a much higher managerial level than I was, it made economic sense for me to be the one to leave. I could always get another job somewhere else." Her mouth twisted wryly.
"Did you marry him?" Josh asked deliberately in a steady, almost gentle voice.
"No," Reva answered shortly. "Two weeks after I'd quit I found out he was having an affair with his secretary. Needless to say I was no longer interested in marriage. But I found myself out of a job and that turned into a major problem. It took me a year to find something anywhere near as good as the position I had left. As it was I had to take a cut in salary and wait longer for the first promotion. In effect, quitting set me back almost two full years. I was twenty-five at the time and I've worked very hard since then to reestablish my career. I learned my lesson, to put it mildly."
"So that's why you haven't married," he noted softly. "You've been rebuilding a career and making certain you didn't get burned again."
"Exactly. I suppose it's become a kind of obsession with me. But there's more to it than just a basic desire not to be economically dependent on a man who might casually walk out at any time. During the process of rebuilding my career my job has come to mean a great deal to me. I like working. It's become an intrinsic part of my life and one which I wouldn't give up even if I suddenly inherited a lot
of money and could afford to quit forever. I like the power of being in management and I enjoy the challenge. There's a satisfaction to be had in my work which I couldn't get in any other way and I know that now. Perhaps the mistake 1 made when I was twenty-five made me appreciate all the more what I built afterward. I don't know. The one thing I am sure of is that when I finally do marry it's going to be to someone like Bruce who understands me." She put down her winning hand with a sudden flourish and grinned to shake off the heaviness of the atmosphere. "Gin!"
"And I cheated so hard," Josh complained, collapsing back into the pillows in self-disgust.
The rest of the day passed in quiet pursuits geared to the sickbed and Reva took a strange pleasure in soothing Josh's discomfort and tending to his small needs. He was a very undemanding patient, which made her all the more anxious to comfort him. She had the impression he was suffering more than he wanted to admit and she found his brave front touching.
"I really appreciate this, Reva," he told her in a heartfelt voice as she delivered the third cup of honey-and-lemon tea of the day. "Damn! but I feel like a fool imposing on you like this!"
"I don't mind, Josh," she assured him earnestly. "In a way it gives me a chance to repay you for the way you took care of me back in that jungle. Of course fixing you honey and lemon is hardly equivalent to saving your life, but it's something!" she added with a small laugh.
"The way I feel right now, it is more than equivalent to saving my life," he informed her with a grimace. "I'm hardly ever ill, but this thing really gets me down." He broke off at the sound of a knock on the door, sipping his tea as Reva went to answer it.
"Hello, Sandy, Tom," she smiled at the young couple from next door. "Come on in. I believe you already met my guest," she added with a grin as Sandy pushed her husband's wheelchair into the room. Tom Pierce had been confined to the chair for two months and he had another month to go before he would be free of it. Reva knew he was chafing at the trapped feeling and Sandy had more than once dropped in during the evenings to share a cup of coffee with her neighbor and recuperate from the strain of being at her husband's beck and call. She was very much in love with her good-looking, dark-headed husband but, as she had confessed to Reva, there were times when she could cheerfully have locked him in the closet for the sake of some peace and quiet.
"Good grief!" Sandy commented, seeing Josh tucked into a quilt on the couch. "Don't tell me we have another invalid on our hands!" She tossed her auburn curls and her green eyes sparkled at Reva with feminine laughter.
"I know you must have been glad to see him, Reva," Tom put in, shaking his head admonishingly, "but did you have to reduce your future husband to that state?"
Reva turned a brilliant shade of red and unwillingly met Josh's teasing gaze. "First things first," she announced grimly, planting her hands on her hips and facing the new arrivals. "I would like to straighten out your, uh, impression of this relationship. Josh Corbett is a friend of mine. But that's as far as it goes. I'm afraid he was reduced to implying there was more
to it than that because he was trying to find me last night and figured people would be inclined to help in the process if they thought they were aiding some secret romance. That's it!" She waited chal-lengingly for any comments.
"A friend?" Sandy repeated delicately, tilting her pretty
head to one side as she took a seat in the Chinese garden print chair across from the couch.
"A friend," Josh assured her, smiling blandly.
"Remember that mess I wound up in on my vacation a few months ago?" Reva said, heading toward the kitchen to make coffee for her guests. "I told you about it one night when you were over here visiting."
"I remember," Tom said immediately, his curious dark eyes on Josh.
"Well, this is the man who got me out of it," Reva said calmly. Sandy and Tom were about the only ones to whom she had told the story and that was only because she had been going through a particularly bad bout of nightmares. She had thought it might help to talk to someone, and her neighbors had proven sympathetic listeners. Nevertheless, she hadn't told them everything, and she now let Josh know that by sending him a silent signal as she crossed the carpet with a tray. He met her eyes and she knew he'd gotten the message.
"No kidding?" Tom said with an enthusiastic note in his voice. Sandy glanced interestedly at her husband and Reva knew the look was prompted by the fact that Tom hadn't been enthusiastic about much of anything lately. "I'd like to hear the whole story sometime, Josh. Reva gave us a brief outline but she didn't have the full picture of what was happening around her, I gather. The papers carried only a couple of small headlines and then dropped the tale. Revolutionary coups seem to be a dime a dozen in that part of the world. How did you happen to be down there at the time?" Tom accepted his cup of coffee from Reva, his eyes on the older man.
"I was there on business," Josh began slowly, and went on to give the political details of the situation to a fascinated Tom. The conversation lasted for a good portion of the
afternoon, sparked by a continuing series of intelligent questions from Reva's next-door neighbor. Fortunately, Josh glossed briefly over the three days he'd spent with Reva, smiling across the room at her as he did so. There was an intimate, teasing aspect in the curve of his mouth which invited her to note how diplomatic he was being on the subject.
It was Reva who finally brought the discussion to a halt, frowning a little worriedly as Josh clearly began to tire. She made a quiet remark about her patient getting some rest and Sandy nodded at once. It was an effort getting Tom to agree to leave, but his wife handled the problem by taking a firm hold on the wheelchair and propelling him out the door.
"Just wait until I'm back on my feet, woman," Tom grumbled good-naturedly as he was whisked away. "I'm going to remember all this high-handed treatment!"
"Promises, promises," Sandy teased, waving good-bye to Reva and shutting the door behind them.
"How are you feeling, Josh?" Reva asked solicitously as she cleared away the cups and saucers. "Perhaps you should take a nap? I'm going to have to run out to the store for something for dinner, I'm afraid. I don't generally keep much on hand."
"So you won't be tempted to munch?" he chuckled, lounging back under the quilt with a sigh.
"Yes, but since you're here . . ."
"I get the impression I'm about to be used as an excuse so that you can treat yourself to a decent meal," he remarked, watching her move about.
"Perhaps you aren't very hungry, what with not feeling well and ail. . . ." she said at once with a serious expression.
"I'll be starving by dinnertime," he assured her.
"Oh, good! Do you like ravioli?" she asked hopefully.
"With heaps and heaps of Parmesan cheese," he murmured encouragingly.
"Lovely!" Reva spent a charmed moment thinking of the delights ahead of her and then brought herself back to the present. "I'd'better be on my way, then," she said briskly, heading for the coat closet. "I'll get some more fruit juice for you, too."
"And perhaps some ice cream for my sore throat?" he suggested helpfully.
"Chocolate or vanilla?" she demanded, her hand on the doorknob.
"Your choice," he told her magnanimously.
Several hours later, replete from a sinfully good meal of ravioli, salad, crusty bread, and chocolate sundaes, Reva poured the last drops of the Chianti wine she had bought to go with dinner and moved her playing piece on the checker board with a gleeful air.
"And down you go to ringing defeat once again," she announced grandly as Josh surrendered with a groan.
"Don't you feel a little mean taking advantage of a sick man this way?"
"Not when you're so much bigger than I am."
"What's size got to do with skill?" he retorted, collecting checkers and piling them back into the box.
"Nothing, it would appear," Reva smiled innocently. "You haven't won a single game we've played all evening. Cards, checkers, Chinese marbles ..."
"I've explained that I'm ill," he defended himself.
"Excuses, excuses. How about television? Can you manage that?" she inquired, pulling out the weekly TV supplement from the newspaper and leaning back beside him on the couch to study it intently.
"Depends," he hedged, glancing over her shoulder. "Any good movies?"
"Well, let's see. There's a Western," she said with relish.
"Nope."
"There's a horror flick. . . ." She cocked an eye up at him to see if he was interested. "Nope. Keep going."
"Here's a mystery." She mentioned it in a deliberately neutral tone, not wanting to influence him.
"What sort of mystery?" he asked at once.
"One of those elegant British things where some little old ladies go around doing in various gentlemen."
"Terrific," he said enthusiastically. "Let's watch that. Unless you'd rather see something else?" he added quickly, politely.
"Oh, no," she smiled, getting up to turn on the set. "This is my kind of film. I love these sophisticated old thrillers."
"Me, too," he grinned as she came back to join him on the couch.
They spent the next two and a half hours cheering for the little old ladies and trading odd bits of trivia on British mystery authors in general, but when the last commercial was over, Reva got to her feet with determination.
"Bedtime for you," she told her patient firmly. "I should never have let you stay up to see that film. You're probably exhausted. Up you go. You can brush your teeth while I'm making the couch back into a bed." She frowned worriedly as he obediently wrapped the quilt around himself and stood up. "Can you make it all right? Still feeling dizzy when you stand?"
"A little wobbly, but I'll take it slow. I'll help you with the couch."
"No, that's all right," she told him, puttering around and getting things organized in her usual efficient matter. "Just be careful on the way to the bath!"
"Yes, ma'am," he murmured in such a low voice she almost didn't hear him. When she shot him a fierce look he smiled, abashed. "Sorry. I'm not used to being fussed over."
She relented with a small grin. "Life is full of new experiences."
It wasn't the nightmare which woke Reva some time later, but an unfamiliar sound from the living room. Her eyes flickered open sleepily and she met the equally sleepy gaze of Xavier, who was curled in the middle of her covers, his head resting on her foot. He blinked his green eyes once, as if to tell her he'd heard the noise, too, and then went back to sleep. From which, Reva told herself, she could deduce that nothing terrible was amiss.
Still, she decided, eyeing the ceiling thoughtfully, the noise was undoubtedly caused by Josh, who might be having trouble sleeping. Or perhaps he'd gotten up for a drink of water and suffered another dizzy spell. She frowned to herself and then threw off the covers, reaching for her robe.
Tiptoeing was hardly necessary on the luxurious carpet, but Reva moved carefully nonetheless as she made her way out into the living room. In the pale city glow streaming in from the huge picture windows she
saw Josh's large figure sprawled across the bed, the covers hanging over the edge where he'd apparently tossed them in a fit of restlessness. She went forward worriedly, wondering if he was suffering from another bout of fever. He had seemed to be getting better during the day but perhaps the evening activities had been too much for him.
He was wearing only a pair of shorts and she had the
impression that that much clothing at night was only being worn out of deference to her. The fact that she had once seen him in less had not been mentioned by either of them all day. She reached the edge of the bed, her eyes running gently over his lean, tanned body. With a strangely maternal feeling she began to rearrange the covers back over him. She knew, deep inside, that in spite of the fact that he wasn't really a mercenary, this man had led a rather hard life. She thought about all the times he'd had to nurse himself through this strange malady he'd contracted and shook her head a little sadly. Like Xavier, Josh Corbett could take care of himself, but there was something about both males that reached out to her. Something that made her want to provide a bit of softness in their lives.
With a slight shake of her head Reva told herself not to be fanciful and settled the last of the covers back over the patient. As she did so, Josh turned fretfully in his sleep. Was he feverish? Was that why he'd pushed them aside in the first place? Josh twisted again and Reva leaned down to put her hand gently on his forehead. Instantly he seemed to relax. He didn't seem too warm, she thought, sitting carefully down beside him and letting her hand stroke his head lightly. With a small sound Josh turned his face into her robe-clad thigh and seemed to sink at once into a deeper, more restful slumber.
Reva sat there a long time, afraid to move for fear of bringing back the restlessness in him. She kept her fingers on him, moving them in light, soothing motions across his forehead and into the silver at his temples. As he slept quietly she watched the gleam of late-night city lights through her window and wondered what Josh Corbett would do when he was well enough to leave her apartment. The man didn't seem to have any real home. He'd