by Diana Palmer
She remembered her mother sometimes, marveling at the way the seemingly gentle and unassuming little woman had handled her father’s moods and demands. Only someone close to them would have ever realized that Martha was her husband’s strength, and when she died, he collapsed. From that day on, Kitty became his strength, and he depended on her more and more. Despite her frequent asthma attacks, he clung. When he had the stroke, the dependence became complete. Only then was his fear visible, because he no longer had the strength of will to conceal it. Kitty had learned to use her medicines conscientiously for her father’s sake. It was crucial that she keep well to look after him. Even so, there were times when she had to depend on kind co-workers to get her to the emergency room. She didn’t even tell her father about the attacks that precipitated more and more medicine changes. Finally a preventative added to her regular regimen made trips to the emergency room almost a thing of the past.
Kitty became the colonel’s substitute mother for the last few pitiful years of his proud life. But at the end, he had enough consciousness to call her mother’s name, once, achingly…
She blinked away sudden tears. Her parents had been married for thirty years when Kitty’s mother, Martha, had died. Perhaps that was how Drew had been after his Eve died, lost and alone and afraid. But he hadn’t even a daughter to console him. No wonder he was impatient and ill-tempered and overworked. His job had probably been all that stood between him and madness just after his wife’s untimely death.
Houston loomed ahead, its familiar skyline bringing back the present. She couldn’t live in the past, although Drew seemed determined to do just that. She had to look toward the future. Marriage had seemed like an impossible dream, but now it might be accessible. If she worked at her appearance and tried to be outgoing, the possibilities were unlimited. Her asthma was under tight control and she could look nice if she worked at it. Who knows, she might actually interest a man enough to turn his thoughts to marriage. It would be nice to have a home of her own, someone to share her spare time with, children.
She sighed. It was going to take a lot more than a new dress to inspire anyone to marry her. But they did say that fine feathers made fine birds. It was worth a try.
She looked through several stores before she came across a dress very much like the one Drew had described—dark green taffeta with a low neckline and short, puffy pale green chiffon sleeves. It was ankle-length and when she tried it on, she was astonished at the change it made. The cut emphasized her firm breasts and narrow waist subtly, and there was a wispy chiffon scarf that matched the sleeves to go over her hair. It was like something out of the forties, a glimpse of bygone elegance that took her breath. She couldn’t really afford it, but she bought it anyway, and white satin pumps and a white satin evening bag to go with it.
The hairdresser’s was next, where she had her exquisite locks trimmed but not altered in length. The beautician enthused over the length and texture of her hair and talked her into a wavy style much seen on television and in movies. She was hesitant, but hours later when the curlers were removed, she was shocked at the face that looked back at her, surrounded by exquisite flowing waves. She went right to the optometrist and got herself fitted for contact lenses. They would be in long before the ball. She was going to make it a night to remember.
Just for fun, Monday morning she put on a lacy white dress that she’d bought during a trip to San Antonio with a cousin three years before. It was a Spanish style that suited her dark hair and olive skin, with lace and soft off-white embroidery around the flounced top and the long skirt.
She wore high heels and stockings with it, and wore her hair down for the first time ever. It was a dressy getup to go to work in, but she felt like a new woman. And after all, there was no time like the present to try out her new look on her boss.
She stood in front of her full-length mirror and marveled at what was reflected back. Even with her wire-framed glasses, she looked nice. She’d taken pains with her makeup and the new hairstyle made her feel very feminine.
As she gathered her purse and lacy shawl, she wondered what her boss was going to think of it.
She’d prepared herself for every sort of reaction, from mild surprise to indifference. What she got was a total surprise.
He was in his office when she arrived, engrossed in a patient’s file. He hadn’t shaved, an indication in itself that he’d been up either all night or since very early that morning without a chance to go home.
He didn’t even look up at first. He heard her footsteps as she tapped on the door.
“Bring me a cup of coffee,” he murmured. “Please,” he added, still without looking up.
Vaguely disappointed that he hadn’t taken time to even glance at her, Kitty went to the small kitchen and made a pot of coffee. She put a cup and saucer and napkin, a spoon and the sugar and cream holders on a tray and as an afterthought, added some almond cookies. He wouldn’t eat breakfast, she knew that from Nurse Turner, but he was bound to feel a little hungry if he’d been up all night.
She edged in the door and put the tray on one of the retractable leaves of his oak desk.
“Thanks,” he muttered, still absorbed in his file. Then he caught a glimpse of something long and flowing and looked up.
Kitty thought that, as long as she lived, she would never forget those few seconds.
He actually dropped the file. His black, shocked eyes went from her crown down her body to the exquisite, endless small curls that plunged down her slender figure all the way past her waist.
“Good God,” he breathed, and it sounded reverent.
His unblinking intensity made her self-conscious. “You mentioned getting it styled…” she faltered.
He got up from the desk, oblivious to the notes, and moved to stand just in front of her. Like a sleepwalker, like a man possessed, his hands gathered up her long, silky hair and tested its softness as he searched her eyes. His lips made a thin line in the fraught silence of the office, and the contraction of his fingers began to be a little painful.
His closeness was affecting her. Her heartbeat against the flounced bodice was now noticeable, and her lips had parted under the force of her breath.
His eyes fell to them and held there for an eternity as his hands tugged and he moved closer, all in the same breath, until his legs were touching hers.
“You smell like a hundred varieties of roses,” he whispered, breathing in the perfume that clung to her. “I wonder…if you taste of them?”
Almost in a trance, he started to bend to her while the silence in the office intensified.
Then, as his lips hovered just above hers, so that she could almost taste them, the front door suddenly opened and closed. Nurse Turner had arrived.
Drew released her at once, and his eyes blazed. “Go home and put on something appropriate for an office,” he snapped, unbearably outraged by her appearance and his unexpected reaction to it. “Right now, Miss Carson! I’m not running an escort service here!”
The bite in his deep voice was painful. She couldn’t understand the sudden rage, as if the sight of her offended him. Was she dressed like some sort of call girl?
“And do something about that damned mane of hair!” he added furiously.
She stared at him with wounded eyes. She’d felt so wonderful when she left her apartment, and now she felt dirty and naked. Without another word, she went out the door and past the stunned nurse.
“Well, look at you!” Nurse Turner exclaimed. “Kitty, you’re gorgeous!”
“No, I’m not,” Kitty said through building anger and tears, grabbing her shawl and purse. “I look like a call girl. I’ve got to go home and change my clothes and do something about my awful hair. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
She went out the door, her first thought that she was going to grab the nearest pair of scissors and cut her hair to the skull!
Chapter 4
Drew could barely think. He’d been at the hospital until dawn with a
small patient who was going to live despite the odds against him from a burst appendix and peritonitis. Now he’d been cruel to Kitty, whose only crime was to look like a ministering angel in white. The sight of her had hurt him, taunted him, reminded him all too blatantly of Eve in a similar dress the evening he’d asked her to marry him. Eve had blond hair, not brunette, but hers had been long and she’d worn it similarly to that beautiful curling mass that Kitty had entered his office displaying.
The thought occurred to him at once that Kitty would be on her way home now in tears, thanks to his unreasonable anger, and probably the first thing she’d do was look for scissors…
It horrified him beyond all rationality to imagine that Kitty would butcher her hair. He got up from his desk, barely able to reason from lack of sleep, and rushed out the door.
“I’ll be back. An emergency,” he murmured to Nurse Turner on his way out.
It was thankfully too early for patients. In fact, he was due at the hospital to make rounds, but this couldn’t wait. He got into his Mercedes and burned rubber getting to Kitty’s apartment house.
He walked right in behind a young woman with a key who’d just entered it.
“You can’t…” she blurted.
“The hell I can’t,” he muttered, going up the steps in twos as he rushed to stop Kitty from what he knew she was going to do.
The pounding on the apartment door was loud and violent. Kitty glared at it from her bedroom, but if she didn’t stop it, the other tenants were going to be furious. Some of them worked nights.
She went to the front door and looked through the keyhole, knowing before she did who was going to be standing there.
“Go away!” she raged.
“No. Open the door.”
He looked as if he planned to spend the day on her doorstep. She thought for a minute and finally decided that it would be easier to lay a skillet across his thick skull if he were inside the apartment, so she opened the door.
He came in and closed the door, breathless from his rushed trip over here, and stared at her. She was wearing a bathrobe instead of the dress. She had a pair of scissors in her right hand, and apparently he’d been in the veritable nick of time. She was flushed. Her eyes were red from crying. Tracks of tears were visible on her cheeks. Even tangled, her hair was glorious.
He reached down and took the scissors out of her hand. “Not to get even with me,” he said quietly. “Not even if I deserve it. It would be a crime to cut it, Kitty. It’s beautiful.”
She glared at him with trembling lips.
He tossed the scissors onto the table and pulled her into his arms with a heavy sigh, wrapping her up against him. Odd how familiar it felt, how comfortable…how exciting.
His face nuzzled that thick mane of hair and found its way under it, to her neck, to her soft throat. His mouth pressed there, gently at first and then hungrily. His arms contracted. He bent and lifted her in the instant that his mouth searched for and found hers.
He tasted of the endless cups of coffee he’d had at the hospital, and the bristles on his face were rough and vaguely abrasive, but Kitty didn’t care. Her arms went around him and she held on for dear life.
“I love your hair,” he breathed into her lips as he laid her down gently on her bed and eased down beside her. “I love the feel of it, the smell of it, the glorious length of it. You can’t…cut it,” he murmured roughly as he began to kiss her again.
His hands were in it, gripping, savoring, and then they were under the bathrobe, against her thin slip, then under it, touching and tracing, delicately probing until she arched up with a moan that he took into his hungry mouth…
A long time later, he managed to pull away, his eyes full of her flushed face with its swollen, red mouth and wide eyes.
The robe was gone and her gown was around her hips. He looked down at the vivid mauve tips of her firm breasts and the faint marks his mouth had made on the rest of them. She hadn’t protested anything he’d done to her. Her eyes were still on him as she lay there like a creamy sacrifice, watching him, searching his face like loving hands.
“I haven’t had any sleep,” he began gruffly.
“Is that an excuse?” she asked breathlessly.
“I don’t need an excuse. If you ever come to work again dressed like you were this morning, women’s liberation notwithstanding, I’ll lay you down on the floor in my office!”
He was breathing heavily. Of course, so was she. Her arms were beside her head and she felt hot and trembly all over. She’d read in books that men touched women in the ways he’d touched her, but she hadn’t understood what it felt like until now.
She moved experimentally. Her body still felt shocks of pleasure go through it with every movement. She shivered a little.
He watched her with indulgent amusement. He hadn’t meant to let things go so far, but her shocked pleasure had made it impossible for him to stop. He enjoyed her fledgling responses to his lovemaking. He enjoyed all of her. It had been years since he’d indulged in anything remotely resembling this heavy petting. He found that his body still responded sharply to a woman’s, and it pleased him that he wasn’t completely dead from the neck down.
He traced her face with his fingers, lightly touching, teasing. He sighed and eased down, stretching, before he pulled her completely against him and held her there, her bare breasts against his hair-roughened chest. His shirt was on the floor somewhere, along with his belt and her robe. They were both disheveled as hell, and he didn’t care.
His hand fumbled for the telephone. He lifted his head long enough to punch in numbers.
“Nurse Turner?” he murmured drowsily. “Call the hospital and tell them I’ll be two hours late for rounds. I’ve got to have some sleep. They can reach me by my beeper. Yes. Thank you. She hasn’t? Well, we’ll start in two hours, I imagine she’ll be back by then.” He chuckled drowsily. “Oh, I think she’ll get over it. I’m not easy to get along with when I haven’t had any sleep. Yes, I will. Thanks.”
He hung up and pulled a stunned, still drowsy Kitty closer. Seconds later, they were both asleep.
Used as he was to grabbing odd moments of sleep, Drew woke in a little over two hours, feeling an unfamiliar weight on his arm. He opened his eyes, turned over and stifled a gasp at what he saw.
Kitty was lying beside him, her firm, pretty breasts bare, her glorious hair making a veil over the upper half of her body. She looked like a painting he’d once seen of a fairy, almost glowing, beautiful, vibrantly alive.
His hand lifted involuntarily and he touched her breasts, tracing their firm contours, delighting in their instant response. Even asleep, her body recognized him and lifted toward his searching fingers.
He groaned deep in his throat and moved again, tracing Kitty’s warm, soft flesh with his mouth.
She stirred then and moaned breathlessly, lifting again.
Something was touching her. She felt wanted, beautiful, wanton. She cradled the dark head to her breasts and moved sinuously, enjoying the unfamiliar warmth of Drew’s hungry mouth against her bare flesh.
“God Almighty,” he breathed roughly, leaning his forehead against her while he fought for control, “what am I doing?”
“Don’t ask me,” she whispered shakily, “I’m a novice myself.” She laughed softly as she moved against the sheets. “But I wouldn’t mind if you kept doing whatever it is.”
He lifted his head with a heavy sigh and looked down at her. She met his eyes with curiosity and drowsy pleasure. She smiled. Unthinking, uncaring, he smiled back.
His lean hands cradled her face. He bent, kissing her tenderly. “I have to make rounds,” he whispered.
“I have to go to work,” she whispered back.
His body moved restlessly against hers. He ached all over with desire. He could have her. He knew it without a word passing between them. He was more than prepared, there would be no risk, none at all, of a child.
But what then? His mouth lifted from hers with
reluctance. He searched her soft eyes for a long moment.
She could see him deliberating. Seconds later, she knew that he’d taken several mental steps away from her. Nothing else was going to happen. That iron control wasn’t going to let him lose his head completely.
Her arms fell away from him and she lay there, just watching him, without speaking.
He rolled away from her and got up, shrugging into his shirt before he replaced his belt.
She watched him do these routine things with pleasure. She should have felt embarrassed, she supposed, but she didn’t. It occurred to her in that moment that she was in love with him.
His eyes slid to where she still lay on the bed and she tried not to let the possessiveness she felt for him show.
“Get dressed,” he said quietly. “We both have work to do.”
She didn’t look at him as she sat up and replaced her slip. She got out of bed, pushing her hair back over her shoulders.
He took her by the shoulders, smoothing his hands over the soft, warm skin. “I won’t lie and say that I didn’t enjoy it,” he said quietly. “I did. But it’s still too soon for me,” he added.
She looked up into his eyes, searching them quietly. “Was it me?”
“It was you, not a ghost,” he replied, understanding the question. “You’re very attractive, and I think you already know what effect that hair has on me. You saw it in the office, when I lost my temper. I was so afraid that you’d cut it before I could get here.” He laughed flatly. “I think I’d have cut my own throat. It’s glorious hair.”