Renegade Player

by Dixie Browning

  “ ’Morning, Willy.” He was seated atop the dune, wearing a pair of navy-blue trunks that weren’t much larger than her own bathing outfit, and as he unfolded his lean, hard-muscled length and strolled to meet her, she groaned inwardly and surrendered out of hand. “There’ll be ridable swells within fifteen minutes or so, so why don’t we wait for one good ride and then go back and have omelets with sour cream, tomatoes, and sweet onions, along with tiny smoked sausages?”

  “Oh, Lordy, not again,” she protested, only half-jokingly.

  The grooves that ran from his proud nose to his chiseled mouth deepened as he teased her with a sidelong look. “I always suit the bait to the quarry. With most women, it’s diamonds; with some, a villa in the South of France might turn the trick; but now and then you run up against one of those rare creatures who prefer horsepower and haute cuisine.”

  There was no point in being coy. She knew she wanted to be with him and, what’s more, he knew it too. At least over sausages, omelets and coffee, she wasn’t as apt to be seduced, especially as both of them had to be at work in little over an hour. Kiel didn’t strike her as a man who would care to be hurried, no matter what course he was intent upon, so she was reasonably certain he wouldn’t try to fit more than a swim and breakfast into the time alloted. That meant she was safe.

  Or so she rationalized.

  Breakfast became a morning habit and so did the morning swim, with Kiel’s behavior above reproach, Willy acknowledged with some degree of frustration. And still, it was marvelous fun.

  “If I’m not careful,” she said one Friday morning as they waded ashore, cool and invigorated after a half an hour of body-surfing, “I’m going to turn into a jock and then there goes my image as a lazybones.”

  “No chance! You might just turn into the Goodyear blimp, but that’s about the extent of it. Tell me something, have you always eaten this much?”

  “It’s not so much,” she argued with mock indignation. “It’s just so discriminatingly.”

  “Yeah, about as discriminating as a garbage truck.” He pinched her well-rounded but still-lean bottom, and she swatted his hand away.

  “I was a bean pole! I kept on trying to fill up all those places that other girls filled up when they were about fourteen. By the time I found out that I wasn’t really patterned after an ironing board, it had got to be a habit.”

  Looping the towel around her neck, Kiel drew her closer and began rubbing her hair as they stood on top of the saddle-backed dune bathed in a wash of gold sunlight. “What were you like as a little girl, Willy? Somehow, I can’t picture you as anything except the disgustingly lazy, ridiculously sexy woman with the offbeat sense of fun.”

  The last thing she wanted to do was talk about her childhood. Now that the wounds had healed over, she realized that it had not been all that unpleasant . . . only uneventful. Extremely circumscribed by a parent who, after his first wife died, had neither time nor patience to indulge a child, and so had arranged for her to be brought up in a way that didn’t disturb the sybaritic tenor of his own life-style.

  She snatched back her towel and flicked it at his lightly furred thigh. “Where’s that breakfast you promised me? Your turn to cook today,” she taunted, loping off toward her own apartment to get dressed.

  “Ten minutes,” he warned. “One minute later and the gulls get your share!”

  “Ha! You can put away enough for three people, easily,” she mocked over her shoulder as she swung up her stairway.

  “Yes, but when you’re eating with me, I always cook enough for six!”

  That night she drove the Porsche. They crossed the Currituck Sound Bridge and chose a little-used road on the mainland, and when they ended up near the Virginia border, Kiel suggested they keep on in the direction of Norfolk until they found a good restaurant.

  “Knowing that the quickest way to your heart is through your stomach,” he added with a sardonic smile as she geared down competently to negotiate a narrow, curving bridge.

  “Is that what you’re aiming for?” she dared, picking up speed again on the straightaway.

  “I haven’t quite decided yet. Maybe I’m looking for a bedmate, and then again, maybe I’m looking for a good cook . . . you never can tell.”

  “So when and if you find out, how about letting me in on it,” she quipped, wondering if her sudden shortness of breath were apparent.

  Too hungry to search further, they ate at a third-rate diner on juicy, scrumptious hamburgers loaded with big slabs of sweet onions and a horseradish sauce that was unbelievably good. Willy declined beer and settled for milk, to Kiel’s disgust. On the way back home, he drove and she snuggled down in the comfort-engineered seat and watched admiringly as he made the powerful pistons march to his tune.

  “There’s a bit of harshness in the upper midrange, but she’s a superb animal for all that,” he observed as he slowed down for a stop sign.

  “Hmmmm, is that what makes my spine tingle when you let it out? I like it, whatever it is . . . like a huge pipe organ in a tall-ceilinged church.”

  “You’re really a sensuous creature, aren’t you, Wilhelmina Silverthorne?” he asked playfully, and she slanted a look at his hawkish profile against the lights of Coinjock Bridge.

  “Am I?” she asked. “I suppose so if you mean it in the literal sense.”

  “I wonder just what else you are?” he mused.

  Facetiously, she enumerated on her fingers: “I’m a fairly up-and-coming real-estate saleswoman for one thing and . . . I’m an unbelievably bad violinist for another. Ahhh ... oh, yes, and I play a near unbeatable game of checkers and . . . and I love ghost stories, especially Ambrose Bierce,” she finished with a rush.

  He laughed aloud. “The first I wonder about, the second I cringe from, and the third . . . well, I’ll challenge you to two out of three anytime you like.”

  “You’re on!” she rejoined gleefully. “And what’s this about doubting my prowess as a salesman— saleswoman if you’re into lib jargon?”

  “I’m not, and neither are you, thank the Lord. I didn’t say you can’t make a living at it. You’re obviously doing it, but what about those little extras you’re so fond of, such as lobsters thermidor and Mercedes sports cars? Don’t tell me your commissions cover such luxuries because I won’t believe it. No, there’s a man somewhere in the background and I’m becoming increasingly curious about him. Feel like taking your hair down, love?”

  She remained silent. Kiel’s tone had been light and playful, but there was an underlying thread of steel . . . or was it just her imagination? Was she letting past history color present relationships too much? “I feel like taking a nap, is what I feel like taking,” she prevaricated, snuggling deeper into her seat and closing her eyes. “If I start talking in my sleep, don’t listen; it’s only the horseradish talking. It always gives me bad dreams.”

  “If you start mumbling in your sleep, I’ll pull over and listen. I have an idea that what goes on under that lazy, spotted exterior of yours would make mighty fascinating listening.”

  She hoped he was teasing. Somehow, she sensed a deeper note under his surface lightness, and things were precarious enough without imagining things. She pretended to be asleep until she felt him gearing down for Wimble Court. There was a particular pattern of patches on the pavement that sang against the tires with an unmistakable beat and she sat up and stretched, surprised to find she had really dozed.

  Tonight he walked her up her stairs, one arm around her and their hips moving together with a fascinating rhythm as they jostled each other on the narrow treads, and when they reached the top, Kiel took the key from her nerveless fingers and unlocked her door. Before turning on the lights, he revolved her deliberately in his arms, murmured the word, “Onions,” and lowered his mouth to her own.

  In spite of herself, Willy was caught off guard, for he hadn’t kissed her since that night they went dancing, and now she felt all her old fears rushing in on her. Against his intense virility sh
e was utterly helpless, for her own traitorous body negated the warnings of her cautious mind. As his kiss deepened, probing, tasting, provoking her into a response, her arms went around his waist and her fingers dug into the satin-hard muscles of his back, and he groaned and hauled her breathlessly close to him, making her alarmingly aware of his aggressive masculinity. Taking the lobe of her ear into his mouth, he breathed her name over and over and each stroke of his breath on her sensitized nerves brought her closer and closer to surrender.

  One of his hands moved up to her breast and she curved into the pressure, craving it as a starving man craves food, while deep inside her some flickering fragment of rationality told her she was courting disaster. She had been hurt badly enough, the voice of sanity whispered, when only her pride had been involved, but what if more were concerned in this case? Kiel Faulkner was a man apart, a man whose natural dominance had nothing to do with what he owned, but with what he was, and any sexual entanglement with a man of his caliber could only spell disaster.

  Even as her frantic mind sent messages of caution, her willful body was growing more and more lethargic, its senses drugged with the sweet narcotic of passion. Her bands slid slowly down his sides to his hips, digging into the hard muscles convulsively in a way that had an immediate physiological effect on him as a man.

  “God, Willy, I want you so much I’m going out of my mind! You—Come on,” he growled, half-dragging her in the direction of the bedroom.

  “No . . . Kiel, no,” she pleaded in a last-ditch effort to slow the lemminglike course of self-destruction.

  “What is it?” he demanded hoarsely, reaching down to lift her in his arms as if she weren’t five feet, eight inches of solid woman.

  “Kiel, I can’t—I mean I... I don’t ...” she faltered, wrapping her arms around his neck because she felt totally, illogically secure in his arms.

  “God, what is this?” he exclaimed unbelievingly. “Don’t tell me I’ve got my signals crossed because I’m no inexperienced boy, Willy. You want it just as much as I do, and that’s saying a lot. Come on, darling, I can take care of you, if that’s what you’re worried about.” His voice had dropped to a low rumble that made gooseflesh rise on her spine and she wondered frantically if she had strength of character enough to hold out against both of them.

  “Kiel, please put me down,” she whispered into his warm, pulsating throat. “I ... I don’t think I’m ready for this sort of an involvement.”

  She could feel his eyes burning into her soul in the still darkness about them, and sense the hardening withdrawal in spite of his still-ragged breathing. The arm that supported her knees released her abruptly so that she staggered, and he steadied her only briefly before removing his arm from her shoulders. His voice was a raw parody of itself: “I’m a little old for this sort of game, Willy. If you grow up anytime soon, let me know; otherwise, I’ll see you around.”

  And then he was gone, leaving her staring blindly at the cool diffusion of moonlight through the screen-covered door. What had happened to the warm, comfortable friendship that had sprung up between them so spontaneously? Had it only been physical on his part? Something so superficial and fragile that it fractured irreparably when he ran up against her last line of defense? How could she be joking about something so ridiculous as onions and horseradish one moment and then be shaken by sarcasm, bruised by animosity the next?

  For animosity it was; there had been no mistaking that hard bitterness that radiated from him when he put her down so abruptly, nor the sarcasm in his final words.

  Willy turned away slowly and fumbled for the light switch. This time she pulled the shades, not caring to have any interested bystander see her when she dropped to the couch and buried her face in her hands. There were no tears. No, she was a big girl now, in spite of Kiel’s insinuations, and she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he could make her cry.

  For the first time in ages, Willy was on time the next day. The night had brought with it little rest and she surveyed the overcast sky through her salt-smeared window with a baleful feeling of satisfaction. She could not have stood the false cheer of a brilliant sun today, and if she wanted to wallow in morose self-pity for a few hours—hours that would have been spent in a brisk swim and a shared breakfast while they argued amiably over the pages of the Virginian Pilot—then what difference did it make, as long as she presented a cheerful facade at work? She could do without speculation in that quarter.

  Dotty greeted her with the news that Matt wanted to see everyone in his office at nine-fifteen, and she frowned in fierce concentration at the scribbly appointment calendar on her desk, seeing among her compulsive doodlings the reminder that she was showing a house in Colington at ten.

  “You look like you could do with a vacation,” Dotty observed. “Been burning the candle?”

  “I tried jogging after an early-morning swim lately. Didn’t I tell you exercise was hazardous to the health?”

  “Ha, ha!” the secretary mocked. “The day you exercise to the point of heavy breathing will be a long time coming, Willy Silverthorne, so pull the other one.”

  “The Chiswicks. Haven’t I heard that name before?” Willy speculated, glad to leave the subject of her recent activities. “I’m showing them that place at Colington this morning. Any advice?”

  “Only that if they’re the same Chiswicks who were in here off and on for the past month, Pete’s already shown them half the county. I think they’re sightseers, taking advantage of a free ride and a guided tour.”

  Groaning, Willy got up and poured herself a cup of coffee, staring out the window at the CCE Building as she sipped it, and then, with an exasperated exclamation, she put down her cup and marched into Matt’s office. Each of the three men rose when she entered and both Pete and Frank offered her their chair, but she smiled and took a perch on the corner of a low filing cabinet, absently picking dead leaves off Matt’s begonia.

  Half an hour later, the three of them stood morosely, after having had their own observations confirmed. When the two men filed out of the office, Matt signaled Willy to remain behind. He closed the door, then returned to lean against his own desk with a frown marring his nice, regular features. “It’s all too true, you know, Willy. Economic ups and downs, interest rates, gas uncertainties—it all adds up to a slowdown in business. Meanwhile, overhead goes up at a rate that makes my head swim.” He shook his head as if to illustrate his point.

  Seeking to smooth out the worry lines on his young-old face, Willy murmured something to the effect that where there were people there would always be a need for housing and not only on a temporary basis. “Second homes are our stock-in-trade, I know, Matt, but look how many newcomers are flocking down here to live. Ada Willits, who lives downstairs from me, said her parents lived out the depression here on collards and croakers, so maybe we should change our focus.”

  He grinned, some of the worry leaving his eyes. “Okay, Pollyanna, point taken. All the same, I thought you should know which way the wind’s blowing.”

  “Just so it blows. My air-conditioner’s been on the blink for three weeks and the man keeps telling me he’ll get to it terreckly, whatever that means.”

  “Then why don’t we go out to a nice air-conditioned restaurant and maybe take in whatever’s playing at the Colony House afterward?”

  On the point of making an excuse, Willy impulsively agreed. It was just the medicine she needed to keep her mind off Kiel Faulkner. When you get thrown, the best thing to do is to get right back on again, she thought, then immediately began picking holes in her rationale. As if Matt or any other man could take her mind off Kiel.

  It was almost ten and she had to meet the Chiswicks at their motel at ten, so she asked if she might borrow the station wagon.

  “When are you going to get yourself a sensible car, Willy?” Matt asked, strolling out with her. “Let me get something out of the glove compartment and it’s all yours.”

  They stood there in the parking lot
for several minutes while Matt went over the points she needed to stress about the Colington place, and then, as she slid under the wheel, he called after her, “I’ll be out all afternoon, so why don’t you just keep this and I’ll drive yours and we’ll meet at the Drake at eight?”

  Since Matt lived at Southern Shores, and Willy all the way at the other end of the beach, in South Nags Head, they usually both drove to save time and gas. Willy tossed him her keys, trusting his ultraconservative driving habits, and backed out of the shady parking place and only then did she see Kiel standing outside the CCE offices. He had just turned away from talking with two men who carried rolled-up drawings as if they were priceless manuscripts and now he paused in the act of opening the door and stared at her. Neither of them acknowledged the other, but Willy had the unmistakable feeling that he had been aware of her the whole time she had been talking to Matt and she lifted her chin imperceptibly. Wasn’t this just what she wanted, to let him know that she didn’t have to tumble into bed with the first man who kissed her? She wasn’t that much of a pushover, no matter how devastatingly attractive the man was.

  Her foot hit the floorboards in a vain effort to clutch and she swore mildly at all automatic transmissions for preventing people from expressing themselves on the road, and then she grinned ruefully at the self-image that thought conjured up. Anyone would think she was a teenage boy with his first hot rod, when actually she simply enjoyed one of the few luxuries that remained to her.

  And unless she got on the ball and sold something to someone soon, even that luxury would go by the board. Upkeep and maintenance on a car like her little persimmon were not cheap.

  The Chiswicks were a charming couple, retired and boasting of fourteen grandchildren scattered all over the country. While Willy sat in the car and waited for them to explore the Wright Memorial and the nearby museum—“Since we’re passing so close, I’m sure you won’t mind, my dear”—she thought sourly that in a world whose greatest problems stemmed from overpopulation, fourteen grandchildren weren’t so much to be bragged about but to be apologized for, and then her natural good nature came to the surface again and she damned the man who had put her out of sorts toward all mankind today, and set herself out to be charming to the prospective buyers, knowing all along that they weren’t really interested in buying anything more than a morning’s entertainment.