by Diana Palmer
She pushed it away from her face. “Why were you so angry?” she asked belatedly.
“The night I proposed to Eve, she had her hair in a similar fashion and she was wearing a white lacy Spanish dress,” he explained. “I wasn’t at all prepared for the way you were going to look in your new image.”
“I see. I’m sorry,” she said through her teeth.
“There’s no need to apologize,” he replied at once. “You look delightful, Kitty Cat,” he teased softly. “Wear your hair like that anytime you please. I’ll try to restrain my enthusiasm.” “Is that what it was?” she asked demurely.
He linked his hands behind her waist and pulled her close. “It was affection punctuated with the purest lust I’ve ever felt,” he replied, looking at her possessively. “I want you. I mean it. I’m not thinking of any other woman, either, when I touch you.”
“But it makes you feel guilty.”
His shoulders rose and fell. “Yes, it does. I loved Eve. I’ve never been able to let go of her memory.” He looked her straight in the eye. “I never will. I loved her too much. I can offer you some passionate kisses. I can sleep with you. God knows I want to. But that’s all it would be,” he added, trying to be honest with her. His hands contracted. “Sex wouldn’t be enough.”
Her eyes fell to his hair-roughened chest. She wanted to touch him there, caress him, but she didn’t. He wanted her. But he still loved Eve. It was always going to be like that.
“We can be friends,” he said. “Even intimate friends. I like you a hell of a lot. You’re good company and you aren’t afraid to speak your mind.”
She looked up. “Friends.”
“Lovers, if you like,” he added bluntly.
She managed a soft laugh. “With everyone in town knowing?” “I’m afraid so. Your face is a dead giveaway right now.”
“I suppose it is.” She moved away from him, reaching to the floor to pick up her robe and wrap it around her. She felt cold.
He went to her, and tilted her face up to his. “I can’t love you,” he said shortly. “I can’t offer you marriage.”
“I know that.” She tied the robe. “And I can’t accept anything less.” She moved away from him. “I want a husband and children.”
He drew a long, sad breath. “I’m sorry.”
“You can’t help it. If I’d had someone that wonderful in my past, maybe I could settle for memories, too. I don’t blame you.” She turned to look at him. “But I’m only twenty-four and I have my whole life still ahead of me. I don’t have any memories to live on.”
He stuck his hands into his pockets. “I guess not.”
She took a deep breath and coughed, then grimaced. “The pollen count’s terrible today,” she murmured, searching in her purse for her inhaler. She kept them everywhere: one in the bedside table, one in her purse, one in the pocket of the jacket she wore on walks. It staved off attacks if she used it soon enough.
She did her spaced inhalations and then sat down, breathing better. “I walked to work this morning,” she murmured.
“Stupid.”
She shrugged. “It was beautiful outside, and I love flowers,” she said with a nostalgic smile. “Life isn’t fair, is it? I used to keep a garden when I lived with Dad. It was hard on my lungs when everything was blooming, but I wore a mask and hoed right on.”
“At least you don’t mind using your medicine. I have patients who never fill the prescription.”
“The same ones you have to see in the emergency room at two in the morning,” she ventured.
He smiled. “Exactly.”
He picked up the watch he’d laid on her bedside table and grimaced as he looked at it, shaking his head. “I’m really late.”
“So am I.”
He buttoned his shirt and put the watch back on, reaching for his jacket. He pulled out his comb and stopped in her bathroom long enough to put his hair back in its pristine condition.
“You need a shave,” she murmured when he came out.
“Tell me about it. I was planning to have one when you walked into the office looking like Venus rising.”
“You said to get my hair fixed and buy new clothes,” she said pointedly.
“To attract Guy Fenton and Matt Caldwell,” he shot back, scowling. “Not me!”
She wrapped her arms around her breasts. “Sorry.”
He ran a hand through his thick hair, mussing it again. He couldn’t bear to look at her. It made him hungry.
“I’ll see you at the office. I told Nurse Turner that you were probably upset and might be late getting back. She knew that I’d upset you.” He sighed deeply. “I’m sorry,” he added. His eyes went to the bed and then back to her. “But I don’t regret one minute of this.”
Her arms tightened around herself. “Men never do,” she murmured.
He cocked an eyebrow. “Would you like to explain that?”
“Not really.” She walked toward the door.
He caught her hand before she could open the doorknob and turned her to face him. “You’re still going to the ball with me,” he said firmly.
“Are you sure you want me to?”
He nodded.
“All right, then.”
His dark eyes slid over her body in the bathrobe, down to her pretty feet and back up to her flushed, sad face. “It’s hard for me to remember that I’m a doctor sometimes. You have lovely breasts.”
She flushed.
“Embarrassed?” he asked softly, and moved even closer. “There’s no need. I’m not going to tell a living soul what I know about your body. Ever,” he added solemnly.
The flush got worse. She dropped her eyes to his chin. “I never did that before.”
His chest rose and fell. He touched her long hair gently. “You’re young enough to enjoy first times.”
She met his eyes, worried. “You didn’t enjoy it?” she blurted out.
His jaw tautened. His eyes glittered. “Hell, yes, I enjoyed it,” he said through his teeth. “Did you think your innocence didn’t show?”
“You…laughed.”
“Yes.” He bent, brushing his mouth gently over her eyes. “It was so sweet when you convulsed, and I heard you cry out because the pleasure was so overwhelming. Your first time…and it was with me.”
“It wasn’t…your first time,” she whispered.
“My first time was very much like yours,” he whispered, smiling as he recalled it. “With an older girl who was too afraid of getting pregnant to let me go all the way. But it was sweet, just the same.”
“Were you ashamed, afterward?”
“A little,” he confessed. “I was brought up to believe that certain things only happened between married people.”
“So was I.” She wouldn’t look up.
He tilted her face up to his. “You have a beautiful, innocent body. I did nothing to threaten your chastity.”
“I know that. But it was so intimate,” she emphasized.
“Yes.” He kissed her forehead gently, feeling things inside himself that he’d forgotten he could. “Intimate.”
“I wouldn’t, couldn’t, let anyone else do that to me.”
He put her away from him. “I’m going home to shave. You’d better have lunch and go to work. We’re going to have a busy afternoon.”
“I guess we are.”
He started to open the door. His black eyes snared hers. She looked vulnerable, somehow. He didn’t want to leave her like that.
“Don’t beat your conscience to death, Kitty,” he commanded.
“Won’t you?” she asked bitterly.
He scowled. He didn’t want to think about that. It probably would. He shrugged, smiled faintly in her direction and left.
Kitty went back to work, pretending that nothing more than Drew’s outburst of temper had affected her. Nurse Turner, knowing no better, accepted the explanation. But she noticed that Kitty had her hair bundled up again and that she was wearing the old nondescript clothes she’d
always worn to work. Drew might be sorry for what he’d said, but Kitty wasn’t taking chances.
He came back from making rounds at the hospital, glanced at her with strangely wounded eyes and went back to wait for his first patient.
Kitty knew from his behavior that he was going to pretend it never happened. She went along. It would make things at the office more bearable if they could just be boss and receptionist. She tried. Only at night, when the memory made her twist and turn with painful longing did she give in to what she felt for Drew. And he wouldn’t know, because she was adept at hiding her feelings.
She dressed for the grand charity ball feeling like a limp Cinderella in her green satin gown. She was sorry that she’d bought it, because when Drew saw it, the first thing that would occur to him was that he’d suggested the color. That couldn’t be helped. She couldn’t afford to buy another, not on her budget.
But it didn’t really surprise her when he sent word that he was called to the hospital for an emergency case and she’d have to meet him at the country club. She smiled to herself, knowing full well that any other doctor on staff would gladly have covered for him if he’d really wanted them to.
She drove herself to the ball, crushing her pretty taffeta dress in the small confines of the little white car. She got out, her glorious hair in a becoming tangle down her back, her evening purse gripped in her hand, and went inside.
The Coltrains were at the door to greet their guests, since they were the organizers.
“Don’t tell me,” Lou said when she greeted Kitty, “Drew’s been called to the hospital.”
“Fortunes of war,” Kitty mused.
Jeb didn’t say a word. He smiled and said the conventional things and watched Kitty go to the refreshment table alone.
Lou’s hand clung to his unobtrusively. “He’s fighting it.”
“Damn it,” he muttered, contracting his fingers around hers. “He could have gotten someone to cover for him at the hospital.”
She moved closer to him, momentarily resting her blond head against his shoulder. “The road to true love is rocky.”
He looked down at her, his blue eyes narrow and full of love as they searched her pretty face. He smiled. “But worth the climb,” he murmured.
She smiled. He bent his head and kissed her softly.
“Cut it out,” Matt Caldwell teased, grinning at them.
They both flushed a little, still feeling like newly-weds after more than a year and several months of marriage.
Matt had a hand in his pocket, and he looked devastating in an evening jacket, his black wavy hair neatly combed above a lean and dark face with dancing dark eyes. He was the most eligible bachelor left in Jacobsville, but no woman ever seemed to touch his heart. All the same, he never lacked for dates as a rule. But tonight he was alone.
“Where’s Kitty?” he asked, tongue-in-cheek.
They both flushed even more. “Now, Matt,” Lou began.
He held up a hand. “It’s all right. I knew why I was being invited. I like Kitty. I didn’t have anyone in mind to bring anyway. Where is she?”
“By the punch bowl,” Jeb sighed. “She was supposed to come with Drew, but he had an emergency.”
Matt was looking past them at Kitty. He scowled. He’d known her since high school, although she was four years behind him, but he’d never seen her look like that!
“Poor man,” he mused. “His loss is my gain. See you.”
He went straight to Kitty like a shot, barely acknowledging the people who spoke to him as he walked through the crowd. He stopped in front of Kitty, towering over her.
“Cinderella, I presume?” he mused, giving her a bow. “The prince is here.”
She laughed. Her sad face was radiant as she went gratefully into his arms, feeling like the belle of the ball. The number they were playing was an exquisite waltz, and it was one dance she did very well. So did Matt.
He whirled her around the floor with pure delight, noticing that the other dancers moved aside for them. He had eyes only for pretty Kitty, with her contacts in and her glorious hair flying as he whirled her to the rhythm. Despite the fact that his name had been loosely linked with that of widow Elysia Craig Nash, he seemed to find Kitty enchanting.
It was at that moment that Drew showed up, his emergency having been little more than a scratch that needed a single stitch. He greeted Jeb and Lou, but they were engrossed in conversation with Jane and Todd Burke, so he waved and went forward, hands in his pockets, to see what the crowd was watching.
The sight that met his eyes had a strange effect on him. There, in the middle of the floor, was his receptionist dancing with the richest, most eligible bachelor in Jacobsville. And judging from the look on her face as they danced, she was floating on a cloud.
Chapter 5
Kitty felt like a princess as she twirled gaily in Matt’s arms to the rhythm of the waltz, her eyes half-closed, her face radiant and almost beautiful in the brilliant light from the chandeliers. She was breathless, oblivious, in those few moments. There was no past nor present, only now and the music and the brilliant color.
The waltz ended, though, and people applauded wildly. Matt hugged Kitty close and she returned his affectionate embrace, still exhilarated from the breathless joy of dancing for the first time in years.
“Oh, that was fun,” she exclaimed at Matt’s ear. “That was so much fun!”
He chuckled. “You’re some dancer, Miss Carson,” he mused, smiling down at her.
“So are you. You’re wasted on business.”
He shrugged. “Can’t make much money dancing, but I do all right at buying and selling horses.”
“All right” meant that his Caldwell Enterprises was listed in the Fortune 500 companies. His business empire was so diversified that even if one company failed, there were a hundred more successful ones to take up the slack. Matt was the original hometown boy made good, except for that one black incident in his past…
“Enjoying yourself, I see, Miss Carson,” a cold voice murmured behind them.
Kitty turned, flushed and breathless, to meet the icy dark eyes of her boss.
“Indeed I am, Dr. Morris,” Kitty said with a breathless laugh. Her green eyes flashed at him. “I haven’t danced in years.”
Drew’s gaze had gone all over the green satin dress twice. He couldn’t seem to drag his attention away from it. Matt lifted an eyebrow and quickly glanced past them.
“Excuse me, won’t you?” he asked politely. “I have to talk to Justin Ballenger about some stock he and Calhoun are feeding out for me. Be right back, Kitty.”
He winked at Kitty and nodded at Drew before he strode off toward the Ballenger brothers and their wives.
“If you came on my account, you needn’t,” Kitty told Drew, and without resentment; he couldn’t help the way he felt about his late wife, after all. “I’m sure Matt wouldn’t mind taking me home.”
He looked really out of sorts, despite his striking appearance in evening clothes. His hands were in his pockets and his face was drawn and stiff with banked-down anger.
“Do you want to get something to drink at the refreshment table?” she asked when he didn’t speak. She glanced around to see eyes watching them surreptitiously. “People are staring at us.”
“They’re staring at you, in that dress,” he replied quietly. “You look devastating. I’m sure Matt’s already told you so.”
“No, not really. But at least he smiles at me.”
His shoulder moved restlessly. “I don’t feel like smiling. I don’t want to be here.”
Her heart plummeted. “I guess not. You’ve already put in a long day. Why don’t you go home? You don’t need to stay on my account, honest.”
“I might as well,” he said half under his breath, as Matt came back toward them. “I seem to be superfluous.”
Matt joined them, catching Kitty’s hand in his. “Glad you could make it, Drew. Did you bring anyone?”
Drew glanced a
t Kitty, who refused to meet his eyes.
“No,” he said flatly.
Matt laughed pleasantly. “I’m not surprised. You never do. It’s good to see you mixing socially, just the same. A man can’t live in the past.” His smile was bitter. “I ought to know.”
Kitty looked up and for an instant, the friendly, familiar Matt she knew was someone else, someone who’d known pain and sorrow.
He glanced down at her. “Let’s dance. Unless you have anything else to say to Drew?” he added with a pleasant smile.
“No,” she replied quietly. “No, I haven’t. Did you take care of your emergency case?” she added.
“Yes,” he said, “but it wouldn’t hurt to check on him before I go home,” he added, not revealing that his “emergency” was one stitch in a torn finger.
“Good night, then,” Kitty said, trying not to look as miserable as she felt.
Drew watched her walk away with Matt Caldwell, saw them holding hands. Guy Fenton was standing beside a pretty little brunette at the refreshment table. He greeted them and gave Kitty a soft, low whistle of appreciation. Drew cursed under his breath, turned and stalked out of the country club.
“Would you look at that,” Lou Coltrain murmured to her husband. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Drew so disagreeable.”
“Why did he bother to show up at all?” Jeb Coltrain asked curiously. “He didn’t want to come. All he managed to do was to make Kitty feel even more miserable.” He glanced at her solemn face, all the gaiety gone out of it with Drew’s absence. “She put up a good front.”
Lou shook her head. “Poor thing. I suppose she’ll choke back tears for the rest of the… Well, would you look at that?”
She stopped dead as Drew suddenly turned around and marched right back into the hall.
Jeb grinned. “Miracles will never cease,” he mused.
Kitty was staring into her punch with dead eyes, barely aware of the soft music playing while Matt and Guy talked about bloodlines beside her.
Before she realized what was happening, the punch glass was taken out of her hand and placed on the table, and Drew was leading her onto the dance floor.
He pulled her close, tucking her against him while a soft, seductive ballad sung by Julio Iglesias filled the room with exquisite sound.