"But Cal—"
He interrupted her again. "It's all right. Everything's going to work out fine. I'm going to enroll them in a school near my place on Monday morning. I've already talked to the principal and the head of the school board, who both know that as soon as St. Agnes School is rebuilt, they'll be transferring back over here. They're in agreement."
She gaped. "You can't do that! Melody and Curt—"
"Won't mind," he finished for her. "When the school burned down and it was decided the girls would stay with me, they—and their parents—wanted it to be here in town, but I insisted it had to be at the lake so I could work."
"Yes," she said, wrapping her arms around herself. "You had to be at the lake so you could paint. I know. Melody told me. Cal, you have to work. Your exhibit in December ..."
"I can't work." He took her hand and led her toward the living room he could see through an archway, with big squashy white sofas, lots of green plants, and a blue cockatoo in a brass cage. Tilting her face up to his, he said, "I've tried, B.J. I've tried to work since Monday afternoon. I want to paint, but the only thing I want to paint is you."
Her flush paled out to nothing. She looked down, but not before he saw misery dull the shine in her eyes. "No ... I told you, Cal. No."
Turning her face to his, he smiled. "We'll see. Don't discount the idea completely, B.J. You might change your mind." She knew she wouldn't. What she didn't know was when she would find the courage to tell him about herself so that he would understand why she didn't want him to paint her. She frowned, gnawing on her lower lip. If he knew the truth, would he still want to paint her? Would he still . . . want her?
"Don't frown like that." He touched the grooves between her brows. "Oh, but I've missed being able to look at you, to touch you." His knuckles stroked over her cheek. She shivered at the delicate sensations his touch sent through her system. "No, don't tremble. I'm not going to hurt you," he said, but she slipped away from him, going to the window to look out over the rainy street.
She heard him sigh. "When does your friend—the one who owns this place—come back?"
She turned. "In a couple of weeks."
"And your plans then?"
His eyes, though hooded, were watching her intently, and she thought she knew the direction his thoughts were taking. "I don't have any, but by then Curt and Melody's house should have a clear corner in it somewhere for me. That's where I was all day. The renovations are coming along fine. You won't recognize the place, Cal. You'll remember it—if you recall it at all—as a gloomy Edwardian house with little windows and dark paneling. Well, when we're finished with it, it'll be bright and modern and beautiful, and even before it's done, I'll be more than comfortable there and—"
"Stop it," he said, crossing swiftly to her. "It's all right. I wasn't going to ask you to move in with me," he said with something less than absolute truth. He maybe hadn't been going to ask her right away, but in a couple of weeks things might be different.
"Oh." She didn't know whether to laugh or get mad. He was the first mind reader she'd ever known. "I didn't say you were."
"No, but you were afraid I was."
All right, she admitted to herself, maybe that was so. She'd been babbling like an idiot, panicked at the thought of his asking her to move into his house. She wondered what she was more afraid of, Cal, or the depths of her own burgeoning emotions.
But what would happen right now if, while she was so tense and agitated, he were to reach out and pull her into his arms? Would her tension explode into passion? Her body tautened, just thinking about it. She knew the longing she felt was only a portion of what she could feel. There was more, so much more, and she wanted it. Oh, Lord, how she wanted it! But . . .
He touched her shoulder. "It's okay," he said soothingly when she went rigid. "I'm not going to do anything you don't want me to do."
She drew in several calming breaths. "I know." She looked up at him, then turned to the window to draw the drapes against the coming dusk. Skirting him carefully, she walked to the other window and drew those drapes, enclosing Cal and herself in a cocoon of soft lamplight. Behind her, even though half the room separated them, she felt his closeness, his warmth, his magnetism. Deliciously so. Dangerously so, she thought, facing him. But it was the kind of danger that exhilarated and thrilled, like just before the big drop on a roller-coaster ride. She wanted to hold on to that sensation, even though she told herself she should go and change out of her damp cotton jumpsuit.
But while standing there in the warmly lighted room and looking at Cal might be dangerous, it was also too strong a temptation to withstand. A lamp cast a glow on his face that highlighted planes and angles she hadn't seen before. She moistened her lips, seeing that the sleeves of his yellow sweatshirt were pushed back, revealing strong wrists and forearms liberally covered with dark curling hair.
"B.J.," he said softly, "don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Look at me like that." Holding out a hand, he silently called her to him, and she went, unable to prevent herself.
She wanted to touch his arms, to experience the corded hard muscles she could see flexing as he clenched his fists at his side. She wanted to feel that hair under her palms. It reminded her of the narrow strip that ran down the center of his chest. Would it be as soft, or more wiry? It was certainly more luxuriant. Would it be echoed on his legs? His belly? She licked her dry lips again, and the touch of her tongue reminded her of the feel of his.
She ached to feel his mouth hot and hard and insistent on hers, chasing away all her doubts. Why couldn't she be like any other adult woman and go to the man she wanted, tell him she wanted him? He had said, jokingly, that he would make love to her outside if she didn't invite him in, yet when they had come into the house, he had hastened to assure her he had no intention of doing anything like that. Yet. And she was glad to let it ride, wasn't she? No matter how much she yearned for his touch, his voice murmuring love words in her ear, his breath warm and moist on her skin, his hands firm and loving on her body, she was. still filled with a thousand doubts and a world of dread. . . .
"Could we sit down?" he asked.
"Yes, yes, of course. I'm sorry. Would you like a drink?"
He shook his head and took her hand, drawing her down with him onto a love seat. Curling an arm around her, he pulled her head onto his shoulder. "I just want to hold you for a few minutes before we go, to hear your voice, smell your hair. And maybe, in a little while, it will be safe for me to kiss you again." His arms tightened for a moment, then he sat forward, releasing her. half turning to look at her. "You said you were at Melody and Curt's all day. What do you do, supervise? And what kind of renovations are being done?"
"I don't supervise as much as get in the way, I suppose," she said. "But the architect and I think it's just as well for me to be on hand in case there's a question, even though she has it all laid out for the contractors. When it comes to knocking out walls and putting in skylights, nobody wants any mistakes to be made."
"That's how they go about making a gloomy Edwardian house less so?"
"That, and lowering ceilings, enlarging windows, and renovating the kitchen entirely. They're doing the upstairs now. so my room should be ready by the time the owner of this house comes back. And if it's not. there's bound to be one little corner somewhere free enough of plaster dust for me to camp out at home somewhere."
"Your room?" Cal raised his brows. "Home?"
"Of course. Oh, yes, you've heard us refer to it as Curt and Melody's house. It is, but it's my home, too. I grew up in that house, you know. As a matter of fact, I own it."
"Oh," he said blankly, then laughed at himself. "For some reason, I've thought of you as not having a home. I guess because you live at the school."
"Poor little waif with nowhere to go?" she said with an amused smile. "Just because I don't live there all the time doesn't make it less my home. When my parents died, since I was the only minor child, the house went t
o me, in trust. Mel and Curt rent from me, but I keep a room for myself—the same one I had as a child. I use it on weekends and during vacations from school."
"Why didn't Melody and Curt simply ask you to move in with the girls while they're away?"
"First, because I have a commitment at the school, although I don't absolutely have to live in, and second, because of the renovations. Besides, the girls wanted to board for a couple of terms. They've been day students and I think they're a bit envious of the boarders." She grinned. "I don't think that will last, once they've tried it."
"If they really hate it, they can always come back to me," he said, then added slyly, "And if you hate it, you could do the same."
"Cal, I've lived in that school for three years. I think if I were going to hate it, I'd have done so before now."
"Ah," he said, "but before now, you didn't know what you were missing." Bending his head, he closed his lips over hers, showing her what she'd be missing when she lived again in the school.
Her breathing was unsteady when she finally pushed him away. "I . . . get time off, you know."
His laughter warmed her. "Good. You're going to need it. But right now, I need a time out. Let's go see the girls before dinner."
Laura and Kara were ecstatic with the new plans, as Cal had said, and B.J. could see no reason to object —except the obvious one. Cal didn't like to work there and he had a show coming up in time to capture the Christmas trade.
"I can work here if I have to," he said. "Maybe seeing you every day will inspire me, and if it doesn't, I have quite a bit of work already done."
He showed her his studio, with its good northern exposure, on the second floor. It wasn't as untidy as the one at the lake, but it smelled the same, and B.J. wondered if all women found the mingled scents of paint and turpentine and man as erotic as she did—or just those who knew Cal.
One wall was all glass, angling up to form half the roof as well, and outside she could see lights of other houses far up the side of Hollyburn Mountain. Back in the huge living room, she looked out over the lights of the city with the black strip of Burrard Inlet separating shores joined by the arc of Lions Gate Bridge. In the kitchen, she met the tall, reed-thin Miss Lutz, whose smile transformed her face from stern to jovial, and felt reassured that the girls would be happy there. Miss Lutz lived in, and was pleased to have someone to see to. She was lonely, she said, with Mr. Mixall spending so much time in that awful place where the mosquitoes could carry off chickens. She had been there once and that had been plenty, thank you very much.
"Tuva's mom's going to pick us up and deliver us back home," Laura said when they dropped the girls off at the nearest McDonald's. "You guys don't have to worry about us. Just get on with your courting."
B.J. burst out laughing. "Laura, that's not what we're doing! Where do you get these ideas, anyway?"
The two girls just grinned impishly and ran to meet their friends. Cal grinned and slid an arm around B.J.'s shoulder, pulling her close. "She got the idea from me." He dipped his head and dropped a quick kiss onto her nose. "That's why we came back to town. I'm here to court you, B.J. So get used to the idea."
It was, B.J. discovered in the days that followed, an idea she took to quite readily. "I hope you know what you're doing," she said to Cal a couple of weeks later as they stood in the glass cage of the gondola lift to the top of Grouse Mountain. There was no snow yet, but the sky ride operated year round for the sake of the view and Cal was determined to go up. She clung to his hand. Beneath her feet, tree-tops whipped by with breathtaking speed, and the parking lot grew smaller and smaller until the cars looked like toys. Shutting her eyes tightly, she buried her face against his shoulder. "Are you courting me, or are you courting danger?"
"Don't be such a baby. This isn't dangerous. Don't you ski?"
She lifted amazed eyes to his. "Heavens, no!"
"Why not?"
Tucking her under his arm, he walked off the lift at the top. From the viewpoint they could see for miles over a vista of mountain and water and city-scape that defied description, but filled her heart with a sense of pride.
"Why didn't you ever learn to ski?" he asked. "I thought everybody out here did. You know, the Pacific Coast myth, golfing, skiing, and sailing in the same day with only twenty minutes separating each activity."
"It's no myth," she said. "But that doesn't mean everyone has to do all three, you know."
She thought about how she had once wanted to ski, but the desire had been brief, dying at the door of the sportswear store. One look inside had been enough to tell her that skiing was not for her. Nobody had ever asked her to go sailing, and though she'd tried golfing, it wasn't until recent years that she'd begun to enjoy it. Odd, she thought now. She hadn't even considered taking up skiing, as she had riding motorcycles, when it became physically possible. She decided she'd start thinking about it now, then she remembered that gondola ride. Maybe she'd consider skiing. Cross-country.
"How about you?" she asked Cal.
"I ski. I love it. I share time in a condo in Whistler. This winter, Ms. Gray, you are going to learn to ski."
Her eyes widened. "At Whistler? Not on a bet! As you might have gathered on the way up here, I don't handle heights well."
"You handled the gondola ride beautifully," he said. "You look cute with your eyes squeezed shut and your knuckles all white. Besides, what if I promise to hold your hand all the way up, every time?"
She grinned and acquiesced. "Well ... I'll think about it."
He stood silent for several moments, watching the wind play games with her hair, then lifted his hand from her shoulder to help the breeze along. He liked to see her hair tousled. It made him think of the way she was going to look in the painting.
What, he wondered, would she say if she knew how well it was progressing? More to the point, what would she say if she even knew he had started it without her permission? He shouldn't be doing it, he knew, without her knowledge, but he was compelled and could no more have stopped painting than Canute could have stopped the tide. Even the sick feeling of guilt he got when he really allowed himself to think about what he was doing couldn't force him to stop. She'd forgive him when she saw it. She would!
Bending, he kissed her hard and slowly, almost, she thought, desperately. "Let's have lunch," he said when he released her. She held back, her hand on his cheek, staring into his eyes. She was aware of his hand trembling slightly at the small of her back. "Cal? Is something wrong?"
He shook his head, but refused to meet her eyes until they were seated in the restaurant looking out over a different panoramic view. By then, his gaze was clear and his face relaxed, and as they talked, laughing together, enjoying each other's company, she forgot her worries, concentrating only on having a good time with Cal.
He told her about his childhood, and she laughed at some of the scrapes he'd got into. "You must have had a lot of fun," she said with unconscious wistfulness.
"Sure. That's what childhood is supposed to be all about, isn't it?"
She nodded.
"Hey," he said, frowning. "Tell me about yourself as a little girl. You had fun, didn't you?"
"Oh, yes." She managed a smile. She hadn't had the kind of fun he'd had, but it hadn't been all gloom, either. It was just difficult, sometimes, to recall the high spots.
"Oh, hell, B.J., I'm sorry," he said. "That was insensitive of me, wasn't it? You lost your parents when you were pretty young, didn't you? I guess things weren't so very wonderful for you."
"I was eight when they were killed," she said. "I scarcely remember them. Besides, I had Melody's parents, my sister Phyllis, and her husband Henry. They were wonderful and loved me—love me—as much as I do them. I didn't lack for anything.
"Melody and I both wished Phyllis and Henry had had more children. They may have wished the same; we never discussed it. But Mel and I used to pretend we were members of a huge family. We both had a wonderful time when my brother Edwin—he's the ol
dest—and his family used to come out from Edmonton for Easter every year. He and his wife have five children." She smiled in reminiscence. "That was a lot of fun. It's the only time that big old house was ever really crowded."
"Do you think you'll make it your permanent home again?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. It's a big place, as I said. It needs a family."
She felt Cal's gaze on her. "Don't you want a family?"
Oh, Lord, but she wanted one! The yearning for that was becoming stronger daily, but Cal seemed content for them to drift along, enjoying each other's company and letting their relationship develop without any haste at all. She shrugged and said, "Maybe. Someday." He let the subject drop.
If he'd been suggesting, she mused, that maybe she should start thinking about raising a family, he was being pretty subtle. In fact, she didn't even know if he wanted one, or if he intended this relationship of theirs to progress any further than the inevitable affair she was certain was going to happen very soon.
But how was it ever going to happen if he didn't make it happen? she wondered. Was she going to have to be the one to say the time was right? It seemed so, but she didn't know how. She wished she had the grace to do it with ease and finesse, to tell him with the heat of her kisses, the responses of her body, that she was tired of waiting. Though she tried, he always called a halt much too soon.
Words, a little voice inside her said. Use the words, B.J. It's called communication.
Theory was one thing, though. Putting such theories into practice was another, she discovered, feeling the words dry up on her time and again. Until the evening he asked her to show him what was happening in her house.
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