Judy Gill

by Golden Swan [LS-377] (epub)

  He lifted one hand and ran it over the tumble of curls on her forehead. "Just . . . because. Because I think they are." His fingertips trailed to the tip of her nose and down across her lips, over her chin to her throat. "And you know what else I think?"

  Her heart beat high and fast in her throat. "What else?"

  He continued to let his finger travel, its hard tip tracing a line along her collarbone, just until the yellow lace peeking from her lapel stopped it. She shivered deep inside, wishing the lace, the lapel, weren't there to stop his wandering hand, and wishing he didn't have the power to make her want him so badly. He didn't want the same things from life she wanted, and even if he did, he wouldn't want them with her.

  "I think," he murmured, "you feel the same way about me as I do about you, even though it might scare you a bit." He smiled, and his finger found its way under the lace, easing down from her collarbone to the upper curve of breast. "So why don't you stay? I think we'd both enjoy finding out just how well we could learn to . . . like each other."

  "No." It was barely a faint breath, but he seemed to hear it, and to hear the determination in it, because his smile faded.

  "Why not?" he asked, looking into her eyes.

  From somewhere, she found the strength to back away from him. He wasn't holding her tightly, and his hands fell to his sides.

  "Because you aren't even thinking about us 'liking' each other," she said with quiet dignity. "You're thinking about getting me into your bed, and that's all this conversation is about. You don't know me, or want to know me. You don't care about me as a human being. I'm fresh female territory you haven't yet explored."

  "That's getting pretty close to insulting," he warned her, and B.J. looked down.

  Oh, Lord, what was she saying? Did she really believe that? She didn't know, she knew only that what he wanted from her was not merely tenderness and companionship. And that wasn't what she wanted from him, either. But what was he offering her? Was he, like the men she had met during her year as children's entertainment supervisor for Club Caribbean, simply out for what he could get and damn the consequences?

  But was Cal necessarily as unscrupulous as some of those men had been? It didn't matter, because she was still unsure of herself.

  "I'm sorry," she said finally. "But are you denying it?"

  "No," he said, struggling against the anger her words provoked. What gave her the right to make such a sweeping, judgmental statement about him? But if they were to get anywhere, he was going to have to be up-front with her. "I do want to go to bed with you, but I want to know you in other ways, too. Is it so impossible that I could want both?"

  "I think so." Why she thought that, she couldn't have said. After all, didn't she herself want both? Was it really so strange to think that he might, too? Yes. Because he was who he was. Or who she thought he was. Had thought. Oh, lordy, she didn't know what she thought anymore!

  "B.J., I want you in every way that it's possible for a man to want a woman," he said softly, and his forthright manner rang true even to her skeptical ears. "But I promise I won't push you. I will, however, keep on trying to change your mind."

  "Why?" she demanded, the agony of her confusion evident in her voice, in her bewildered eyes. "Why are you doing this? I'm not your kind of woman." A disgusted man had said that to her once, when she had panicked like, as he had put it, a virginal twelve-year-old. "Stick to the ones you're used to, and who are used to you, Cal. I'm not for you."

  "I think you are," he said with dogged persistence. So much for not pushing, he thought, but dammit, he had to try to get through to her. This was important, and it wasn't a joke.

  He stepped close to her again and touched her face. He had to do it. His hand wouldn't stay away, he ached so much to feel her skin against his fingers, against his palm. He cupped her cheek and chin, keeping her face turned to him. "And as to why," he went on huskily, deliberately holding her gaze, "you are the most beautiful woman I've ever met, and yet there's a purity about you, a cleanliness, a wholesome . . . goodness, that draws me to you. And I want you more than I can say."

  She looked at him for a long time, then closed her eyes as if in pain. Her mouth twisted and she turned her head to one side as he gathered her close, wanting to comfort her, to make better whatever he had said to hurt her.

  After a moment, she placed her palms on his chest and tipped her head back to look at him. She lifted her thick lashes and said, "Cal, look at me! Really see me! I am not beautiful. What you're seeing is an illusion."

  He cradled her face between his hands and laughed softly as he dropped a kiss on her nose. "B.J., in spite of what you might think, you just happen to be totally gorgeous."

  She stepped away from him carefully, as If there were mines on the floor all around him, then turned at the door to look back. "Good night, Cal. And . . . thank you."

  Then she left.

  Cal stood thinking bleak thoughts for several minutes before forcing himself to turn back to his easel. He stated at the painting, satisfied, or nearly so. Too bad other problems Couldn't be solved "through a glass, darkly" or by the sweep of a sable brush, the flick of a palette knife. Or, he thought, turning from the easel and picking up a sketchpad, the turn of a pencil line.

  He sat on the chair where B.J. had been, pad on his knee, and stared at the pencil lines his hand was drawing. Curves, angles, spirals. Curve of cheek, angle of shoulder and neck, spiral of shimmering hair on brow and temple. He flipped the page and drew some more, over and over, searching his memory for each mood he had seen on her mobile face, each change in her expressive eyes. Then, in frustration, he flung the sketchpad to the floor and buried his face in his hands.

  Why couldn't he accept what he was? Accept his own limitations? He did. He had. For years he had known that he was an excellent painter of animal forms, but not of portraits, as he'd once aspired to be. And he had learned not to let it matter. So why was it different now, all of a sudden?

  Because a woman named B.J. Gray had come into his life and made him so damned dissatisfied with himself that he ached with wanting to be more, to be better, to be different. Different how? Better than what? More what?

  He left his studio, deep in thought, and was still pondering when he flopped into bed again and switched off the light. More worthy. The answer came just as he was about to slide into sleep and it brought him sitting erect with a muffled curse.

  Worthy enough. He had never seen himself as unworthy before, except when he looked through the eyes of the Dutchman. Now was he to see himself that way again because one particular woman, who was surely becoming much too important, might see him that way?

  He was on the verge of sleep again when a memory popped into his head. This time. What had she meant by that? She'd said, Why should anything be different this time? This time as opposed to what other time? But sleep came before he could start to sort that one out, and in the morning he forgot all about it in the bustle of breakfast with B.J. and the girls.

  Was that disappointment he saw in her eyes when he shouldered his pack and prepared to go out for the day alone—or was it relief? He pondered it as he hiked, considered it as he sat patiently waiting for subjects to photograph or sketch, but was still no closer to an answer when he arrived home again just as dusk came.

  Laura heard him while he was taking off his boots in the back entry. "Hi, Uncle Cal," she said, letting both swinging doors flop back and forth as she came into the kitchen from the lounge. "You were gone a long time today."

  "Hi, punkin." He set his boots on the plastic mat and entered the kitchen himself. "I had a lot to do." And a lot to think about.

  "Oh. Well, you missed a great dinner. We had chili and toast."

  "Oh? That's nice," he said, wishing he'd hadn't felt compelled to stay away for the sake of his own sanity. The last chili he'd eaten had come from a can. He'd thought it was all right, but the girls had complained bitterly. He really should make an effort to learn to cook, he knew, but the only time he
thought about it was when he was hungry, and then it was too late. He needed something already prepared. Like now. His stomach growled hungrily as he opened the refrigerator. Was there any of B.J.'s chili left? If there was, he was having it, regardless of whether she meant it for the girls' lunch the next day. Unless he could change her mind, she wouldn't even be there at lunchtime tomorrow and she'd never know and . . .

  And there was no chili in the fridge.

  "Want me to ask B.J. to fix you something, Uncle Cal?"

  "No, I do not!" he said, slamming the refrigerator door and slapping a pound of sliced bacon onto the counter.

  "Laura!" Kara called. "It's on."

  "Oops. Time to go. B.J.'s letting us watch 'Jeopardy!' tonight. She says it's educational, but I think it's just because she likes it. She's so smart, Uncle Cal, that she nearly always gets the right answers. Questions, I mean."

  "Good for her."

  "You're sure grumpy, Uncle Cal."

  "Sorry. I'm tired."

  He cooked himself bacon and eggs, thinking of the cholesterol, wondering if she would feel guilty if he dropped dead from clogged arteries. He wasn't even sure if chili was more healthful than eggs, but he'd have preferred it anyway. Oh, hell! he thought. Why did she ever have to come there? Shoving his half-eaten meal aside, he rested his chin on his hands and smiled. He was glad she had come. Even if she'd turned him inside out, even if she meant to leave tomorrow, he wasn't going to let her out of his life.

  He went into his studio, not turning his head at the sound of the gameshow host's voice as he crossed the far side of the lounge. Yet the memory of her perfect profile followed him. How could that be, when he hadn't even looked at her, for heaven's sake? Memory. That was what. She was imprinted on his damn memory.

  He picked up the sketchpad he'd filled last night before he'd finally slept, and looked at the faces drawn on each page. B.J. laughing. B.J. pensive. B.J., her mouth tremulous, her eyes filled with something he'd never be able to name as he drew a brush from her toes to her thigh. B.J., her eyes closed as they'd been when he'd lifted her unconscious body into his arms. B.J., her lips all puffy and damp from his kiss, and her eyes bewildered, with a whole lot of questions in them . . . and a hint of hunger. B.J., B.J., B.J., on every page.

  Cal groaned and flipped the pad shut so he couldn't see the sketches. It didn't help. She was there, in the front of his mind, as she had been all day. In the back of his mind. In the middle of his mind. Maybe he should just go to bed, seek oblivion in sleep, but it was too early. Besides, he'd just lie there and think of her. He swallowed hard. Why was he having so much difficulty with this? Always before, when he spotted a lady to his liking, if she seemed the slightest bit willing or interested, he'd known exactly what to do, how to handle it. So what was the damned difference this time?

  The fact that she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen didn't account for it. The fact that he went weak in the knees and soft in the head in her presence didn't account for it. No, there was something else, and he didn't know what it was. He wished he'd inherited his father's analytical mind, as his brother had. How would Curt handle something like this? He'd sort it out, step by step. Okay, so he'd try it.

  One: He wanted B.J. Gray. Two: She probably wanted him, too, but was determined to ignore the situation. Which led to the question: Why did he continue to want a woman who had made it clear that she wasn't going to give in to anything so basic as lust? Answer: Because some elusive quality of hers had skewed his normal reactions. But what, dammit? What?

  Then, with a flash of insight, he knew: the lady might be interested, but she wasn't exactly willing.

  And why not? Why should she be so unwilling to give him a chance? Why should she resist his every attempt at friendship? Why did she have to walk away just when things were starting to get stimulating between them? Did she think he couldn't see that enchanting little pulse in her throat, the one that went wild when he stroked his fingers down her cheek, or touched her fqot, kissed her lips . . . or her toes?

  He smiled pensively. Never in his life had he kissed a woman's toes before he had so much as kissed her breasts! She was driving him insane! She had bewitched him.

  He groaned silently, flinging the sketchpad to a shelf. He was crazy to have wasted so much time and paper making sketches of her. He only made sketches preliminary to painting, and he did not paint portraits. Ergo, he should not be sketching B.J. Gray. And he would not do it again.

  7

  Cal closed up his paint tube, set his brush into its solution, and ran his hands through his hair. He couldn't concentrate. He couldn't even think. He wanted . . . something.

  In the kitchen, he lifted the lid of the deep freeze, rummaging through it for a dessert of some kind. The cook who spent all summer catering to the guests must have left a pie or two, or a cake for him. And right now he needed something. Something sweet. Something substantial. Something he could get his teeth into before he went storming through the rest of the house searching for the sweetest morsel he had seen or tasted in years.

  One who had turned her back on him. Walked away.

  "Ah," he muttered. "Fruitcake." He unwrapped it. "How appropriate."

  It was frozen solid.

  "Jeopardy!" was over and B.J. was playing a board game with the girls when he slipped quietly into the lounge and took a chair near them. Picking up a book from a nearby table, he held it open on his lap, his eyes downcast as if he were reading. He wasn't. He was listening.

  " 'What would you do if you saw someone shoplifting?' " Kara asked, reading from a card. " 'Tell a clerk? Walk away and pretend you'd seen nothing? Quietly tell the shoplifter that you'd seen and give him or her a chance to put the item back?' "

  B.J. groaned. "Why do I always get the real tough ones that can't be answered without qualification? If it was a young person who might be doing it on a dare or because he or she didn't really know better, I'd tell the shoplifter to put it back. But if it was an adult or an older teenager, I'd tell the manager. But what if it was a very poor person who was stealing to eat? Lord, kids, I don't know!"

  "You have to give an answer," Kara said gleefully. "One of the above."

  Out of the corner of his eye, Cal watched B.J. ponder the question, her chin on one fist. When she finally answered, he gave up all pretense of reading and listened openly as she said, "I'd have to tell the manager, regardless, because shoplifting is stealing and even if a person's hungry, there are other ways. But I wouldn't like it."

  "Want to play, Uncle Cal?" Laura asked, seeing his interest.

  "I. . . uh, don't know how." But he got to his feet, drawn to the table as if by the magnet of B.J.'s presence.

  "Oh, it's easy. And fun. And you learn all sorts of things about your friends and family and even yourself," said his niece, pushing a chair away from the card table with one foot in further invitation. Cal took the chair and sat across from B.J. The girls explained in confusing detail how to play the game, but when they started again it began to make sense.

  They all laughed as they learned that Kara most definitely would not tell a man his zipper was undone. She nearly hid under the table at the thought. Laura adamantly expressed her belief that using the wrong bus transfer was all right if the driver didn't notice. The bus company had more money than she did.

  But it was B.J.'s responses to moral dilemmas that interested Cal. She seldom saw things as black or white, and agonized over her responses, trying to see every side before she made a decision. "It's not right to laugh at ethnic jokes," she said. "But—"

  "B.J.! You're really bad at this game," Laura complained. "You can't have buts and ifs. You have to use the answers that are on the card." She read the card again. " 'You've always hated ethnic jokes, but your boss tells you a really mean, but hilariously funny one. You would laugh politely and quit your job? You would tell your boss you didn't like that kind of humor and ask him not to tell you any more ethnic jokes? You would laugh, in spite of your feelings, because the
joke was really funny?' "

  B.J. groaned and covered her face with one hand. "All right. I have to admit it. I'd laugh, if it was really funny. I know that. I've done it. But I'd feel bad for a long, long time and think a lot less of myself. Okay?"

  "You still stuck a but in there," Laura said, writing down a number on a scorecard, "but at least you chose an answer."

  As the game proceeded Cal was amazed at the things he discovered about himself as well. Like B.J., he couldn't view life with the black and white certainties children did. He found himself sharing wry smiles with her, understanding glances, the odd chuckle at the definite responses the girls made without any adult-type waffling.

  "It's easy to be right when you're eleven," she murmured.

  "It is. Almost as easy as when you're twenty-three."

  She knew he was referring to his first encounter with the artist who was to become his mentor, and smiled gently. "We all grow up eventually."

  Cal was sad when it was time for the girls to go to bed. He'd been enjoying the evening very much and didn't want it to end. With the kids tucked in and kissed good night by both their temporary guardians, and the light turned off in their room, he took B.J.'s hand as if it were the most natural thing in the world and walked down the corridor with her.

  "I have a treat for us in the kitchen."

  She lifted her brows. "Oh? What's that?"

  "Something really, really special, and far too good for children, which is why I didn't tell them about it. That, and the fact that it was frozen solid and I forgot about it until they were safely in bed. Freud would say I'd done it deliberately."

  B.J. had to laugh as she looked at the "treat" he had for her. She bit her lip and shook her head. "Not for me, thanks. I'm not hungry."

  "Well, damn!" he said. He dragged a hand through his hair, leaving it standing up in little tufts that caught the overhead light and glistened blue black. Some instinctive, feminine part of her wanted to smooth it down. "After all the trouble I went to, opening the lid of the deep freeze, bending over, pulling the cake out and leaving it here to thaw, all that work—for nothing. Lady, you have wounded me grievously."