by Sandra Field
Travis dredged his memory for events both touching and funny; and half an hour later they left the pub. Trish reached up and kissed him on the cheek. “It was lovely to see you again. Good luck, Travis. Keep in touch and make sure you bring her to dinner to meet the family.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” he said, and watched her leave. Not for the first time, he thought how wise a woman she was. He was glad she was happy.
He was even more glad she’d had the strength of character to break their engagement. He hadn’t been in love with her, not really. He’d never fallen in love in his life. Now that he was alone, he could admit something else: while he’d had all the normal sexual urges for Trish of a man in his early twenties, he’d never been pulled to her the way he was to Julie.
But to suggest he’d fallen for Julie was ridiculous.
The condo seemed even more empty after seeing Trish’s snapshots. Was this what he wanted for the rest of his life, Travis wondered, putting the bag of groceries down on the kitchen counter. A series of temporary lodgings; and no one to welcome him when he came home at the end of the day.
He’d always prided himself on his self-sufficiency. His independence.
Doggedly Travis cooked the steak and watched the late news. He worked several extra shifts that week, as well as volunteering at a local clinic. He also found out Julie’s phone number, although he didn’t call her. But he thought about her most of the time, far too much for his peace of mind. When the telephone rang on Friday evening, he raced to pick it up, absurdly certain that Julie would be on the other end of the line.
“Bryce here, Travis. How you doing, buddy?”
Normally Travis was glad to hear from Bryce; but tonight he had to swallow disappointment bitter as gall. “Fine… how are you and where are you?”
The last question was always relevant: apart from being a self-made millionaire and Travis’s best friend, Bryce Laribee was an international consultant in computer programming who traveled the world over. “Bangkok. Hotter ’n hell. I’m heading for Hanoi tomorrow. You getting itchy feet yet?”
Bryce had been convinced Travis wouldn’t last more than three weeks in Portland, Maine. “The practice is okay. I’m doing some freeby stuff in a downtown clinic as well.”
“I knew it,” Bryce chuckled. “Where are you headed come September?”
“I’ve got a couple of prospects. Mexico, near Cuernavaca. Or Honduras… any chance of us connecting this summer?”
“Give me a month. Then I should be back in the States.” Bryce paused. “You mentioned you might try to get together with your father—did anything come of that?”
Briefly Travis described the party and the rather puzzling reconciliation with Charles. “It was all too slick, too easy. And for some reason he wants me out of Portland on the first flight. I can’t think why.”
“Sounds like your father has all the instincts of a Machiavelli without the brains,” Bryce said caustically. “But you’re not planning on leaving?”
“No. I guess not.”
Bryce, who’d grown up in the slums of Boston, was known for directness. “What’s up? Did this really bother you? You don’t sound like yourself.”
Travis hesitated. “I met a woman.”
“You meet lots of women. They trample each other to get to you first, you think I haven’t noticed that?”
Travis grinned into the telephone. “You’re not backward in that department yourself.”
“So what’s with this woman?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be sitting in this goddamned condo all by myself on a Friday night!”
There was a small silence. “Give, buddy.”
There was no one Travis trusted as much as his old friend Bryce. At the age of twelve, Bryce had been admitted as a scholarship student to the boarding school Travis had been attending for six years. In Bryce’s first week, Travis had saved him from certain expulsion at least three times; then, together, they’d put the fear of God in the four bullies who’d been terrorizing the dorms after dark. Travis said, smiling, “Remember Jed Cathcart, the look on his face when you dumped that bucket of spaghetti all over him?”
“And then we wiped the floor with him and the spaghetti. Those were the days, Travis. Things were simpler, you knew who the bad guys were… now tell me about this woman. Name, age and vital statistics.”
Stumbling at first, but gathering momentum as he went, Travis told the whole story, from the stormy meeting on the wharf to the equally stormy goodbye in her bedroom. “So that’s that,” he ended. “I’ve never chased a woman in my life and I’m not starting with her. Wouldn’t do me any good, anyway.”
“So why aren’t you dating that nurse you told me about? The one with the big blue eyes. Sounded like she’d be willing.”
Travis had had a coffee with the nurse on his Wednesday shift; he could have asked her out then. “Too tall, too blond, wrong shape, you want me to go on?”
“You’ve got it bad, man.”
“I’ll get over it.”
“You in love with this Julie?”
“No!”
“Not in the habit of falling in love myself, so I wouldn’t know the symptoms. But it’s not like you to pine like a lovesick teenager over a female who’s given you nothing but grief. You know what you should do?” Bryce didn’t wait for Travis to answer. “Call her up. Or better still, find out where she lives and knock on her door. See her again. Maybe you’ll find out you’ve imagined the whole thing. So she’s got green eyes. So what? Cats have got green eyes and you don’t want to date a cat.”
“She’s as graceful as a cat. And just as self-contained.”
“She’s got claws, too.” Bryce’s voice roughened. “No broad’s going to mess up your life, Travis, not if I have anything to say about it.”
“You think if I saw her, I’d be over it?”
“Worth a try. Or maybe she’ll have changed her mind and jump your bones.”
“In my dreams.”
“What have you got to lose? You’re as cranky as a caged hyena.”
“You got that part right.” Travis grimaced. “Not that a second rejection’ll make me feel any better.”
“Don’t be such a defeatist! Women drool all over you, I’ve watched ’em. Go for it, Travis. I’ll call you next week and see what happened.”
A few minutes later Travis rang off. He wasn’t going to go and see Julie. If she didn’t want him, that was her loss. On which militant note, he went to bed.
CHAPTER NINE
On Sunday afternoon it poured with rain. This suited Julie’s mood. Her parents were coming for dinner and it would take her the rest of the afternoon to get ready. Her mother was a fanatic housekeeper. But why, thought Julie, as she wielded the dust cloth, did she think she had to clean her apartment from top to bottom before her mother could walk in the door? Was she still that much under Pearl Renshaw’s thumb?
Julie loved her little apartment, which was owned by a wealthy and eccentric widow at the clinic whose arthritic pain she’d been able to relieve. She was paying through the nose for it, but it was only for a couple more months and her savings account was decidedly healthy at the moment.
She was living by the waterfront, on the top floor of an old brick building near the marina. She’d filled her tiny balcony with flowering plants, bought some attractive hand-painted furniture, and arranged some of her collection of artifacts from her travels on the walls. It felt like home.
Or it had, until she came back from Manatuck.
With a ferocious energy that had nothing to do with her mother, Julie scoured the tub until it gleamed. She wasn’t going to think about Manatuck. Or Travis. Or the fact that her body, awakened by Travis, now refused to go back to sleep.
She’d read about desire in books. Even though she’d felt twinges of it now and then with one or the other of the men she’d dated, she’d concluded privately that the authors had overactive imaginations. She’d never been obsessed by a man, so th
at he haunted her sleep, her dreams and her daylight hours.
Never, until this last week.
Scrubbing the bathroom floor as sexual sublimation, she thought with an unhappy smile, and carried the bucket into the kitchen. Her knee still hurt. Another reminder of a time she desperately wanted to forget.
Her bedroom was immaculate, the bathroom pristine, and it only took a few minutes to tidy, dust and vacuum the living room and dining area. Which left the kitchen.
The rain was hammering on the skylight and streaming down the windows; she could scarcely see the harbor. A ginger ale. That’s what she needed. And then she’d tackle the kitchen. She’d made a cheesecake this morning, so that much was done. As for the rest, she was planning a rather complicated Moroccan chicken dish that she’d organize once she’d finished cleaning.
At least work had gone well this week, that was one thing to be grateful for. She was finding the clinic a welcome respite from her normal work; she hadn’t realized how stressful her overseas contracts had been until she’d come home to Portland for the summer. Besides, some of her clients were a delight. There was Abigail Masters, who’d found her this apartment, who smoked cigars and swore like a stevedore; Leonora Connolly, a retired dancer who was paying the physical price for her career with humor and grace; and Malcolm McAdams, a famous hybridizer of daylilies, who insisted on bringing his Manx cat to his sessions.
It was such a change from crushing heat, foreign tongues and equally crushing poverty…
Julie was just topping up the glass with pop when her buzzer sounded. She frowned. The little boy downstairs had a tendency to open the security door to whomever he pleased; she must speak to his parents about it. Again. She went to the door, peering through the peephole.
Travis was standing in the hallway. The glass jerked in her hand, spilling ginger ale on her shirt. She looked down at herself. Bare feet, a luridly bruised gash on her leg, cutoff shorts and her very oldest shirt which had a button missing in a rather strategic place.
Let him see her as she was. That should fix him.
She pulled the door open. His hair was plastered to his skull, his raincoat was dripping on the mat, and his eyes were even more blue than she remembered. He was carrying a rather bedraggled bouquet of sweetpeas. She went on the attack. “How did you find out where I live?”
“Asked one of my colleagues at Silversides.”
“How did you get in the front door?”
“A kid with bright red hair let me in. You should complain about that.”
“I have. His parents think he’s a little angel who couldn’t possibly be breaking the rules.”
“Are you going to ask me in?”
Her heart was bouncing around in her chest, her knees were weak and her mouth dry. Too much adrenaline, she thought clinically. “Give me one good reason why I should.”
“Because you want to,” Travis said.
She wanted to kiss him senseless, Julie thought faintly. If only she’d taken yesterday’s newspaper to the little coffee shop on the corner instead of opting for ginger ale in her messy kitchen. “You’re wet,” she said with blinding originality.
“It’s raining. Or hadn’t you noticed?”
So what was she going to say? You can come in if you promise to stay at least six feet away from me at all times? “I’m cleaning,” she said. “I’m a mess.”
Travis looked her up and down, taking his time about it, laughter lurking in his eyes. As warm color crept up her cheeks, he said, “Are you last on the list?”
“After the kitchen.”
He eyed the glass in her hand. “I like ginger ale.”
As all her nerves screamed danger, she gave him what she hoped was a noncommittal smile. “You’d better come in. Here, give me your coat and I’ll hang it in the closet.” Once she’d done so, he handed her the flowers.
“These are for you. They were selling them at the market.”
She frequently went to the market, which was only a few blocks from her apartment. “Where do you live?” she said, suddenly suspicious.
He crossed the living room, rubbing at the pane. “You should be able to see my place from here. The second group of condos.”
On a clear day she’d be in full sight of his windows, she thought edgily. Just what she needed. “Do you really want pop? I could make you some coffee. Or there’s beer.”
“A ginger ale would be fine.”
She fled to the tiny galley kitchen, where unwashed dishes were heaped on the counter. After rinsing the worst of the stain from her shirt, she filled a second glass and went back into the living room. Travis was standing on the sisal mat, looking around him with appreciation. He dwarfed the room; he also looked very much at home.
“Those carvings, aren’t they from Bali?” She nodded. “And the pillows look like they came from a Calcutta bazaar.”
“They did.”
“You’ve traveled a lot.”
She said rapidly, “I do overseas contracts all the time. I just came home this summer because my mother had a minor heart attack.”
He picked up a delicately carved giraffe she’d bought in Tanzania. “Where have you worked?” After she’d rattled off the names of some of the countries, he added, “You didn’t tell me any of this.”
“I don’t often talk about what I do. It makes people uncomfortable.”
“So you’ve noticed that, too… you see, I do the same sort of thing.” Travis named the international organization he’d worked for the last ten years, establishing that he’d left Tanzania the year before Julie had arrived.
She frowned at him. “I thought you were a rich doctor who looked after the rich.”
“And I thought you catered to the privileged and pampered.”
“You know the kind of things people think. Do-gooder with a savior complex.”
“Guilt-dumpers. Disturbers of the status quo.”
“Weirdos, wackos and neurotics.”
He gave her a warm smile. “It’s not easy work, is it, Julie?”
His smile made her tingle all the way from her head to her bare toes. “No,” she muttered. “No, it’s not. Would you like some more pop?”
“Sure.” As she padded into the kitchen, he followed her. “I’ll help you with the dishes.”
If he’d dwarfed the living room, he filled the kitchen. Almost dizzy with longing, Julie picked up the sweet peas and buried her face in them. “They’re my favorite flower,” she mumbled.
He put down his glass on the counter. “It’s interesting that we do the same kind of work… means we share a basic value system.”
“So what?” she blurted.
“One more thing we have in common.”
“You’re playing games with me, Travis.”
“Okay—I’ll cut to the chase. Do you know why I’m here?”
She looked at him warily. “Not really.”
“Then I’ll tell you. I’ve thought about you all week, night and day. I’ll be honest—I figured if I came here today and saw you again, I’d realize that you weren’t anything special, that I’d been fooling myself.”
She looked down at herself with a shaky grin. “You’ve got your proof. In spades.”
“It wouldn’t matter what you wore or how you looked,” he said with suppressed violence. “The moment you answered the door, I knew nothing had changed.”
She found she was gripping the edge of the counter with bruising strength, mostly to keep herself from pulling his head down and kissing him until neither one of them could breathe. She said carefully, “What exactly are you saying?”
“Hell, I don’t know.” He ran his fingers through his damp hair. “I want you as much now as I wanted you on Manatuck. I guess that’s what I’m saying.”
The intensity in his face made her tremble. She reached past him for the pop bottle, inadvertently brushing his bare forearm with her own. The pop was forgotten. Her hand stopped in midair. Then, very slowly, she lowered it to lie on his arm. She c
losed her eyes, oblivious to everything but his nearness and a tumult of longing. All those authors were right, she thought. Desire does exist. It’s like fire, hot and urgent and leapingly alive.
In a strangled voice Travis said, “Julie…”
His arms went around her. She buried her face in his shoulder, inhaling the clean masculine scent of his skin, so very much a part of him, so uniquely his. Then, of her own accord, she looked up, took his face between her palms and kissed him full on the mouth. As she’d been wanting to do ever since he’d arrived.
She’d learned a thing or two about kissing on Manatuck. But just in case he doubted her intentions, she whispered in between fierce, heated kisses, “Make love to me, Travis. Now.”
“There’s nothing I want more in the world,” he said, kissing her back with such blatant hunger that her body melted into his. Then, awkwardly because the kitchen was so small, he picked her up. “Don’t kick the pop bottle,” he added, his eyes giving her a very different message.
His eyes were undressing her. Against her cheek she felt the hard pounding of his heart, under her knees the sinewy strength of his arm. As he edged out of the kitchen, she said, “Down the hall on the right,” and added with a tiny chuckle, “it’s not usually so tidy.”
Because the room was small, she’d bought a three-quarter spindle bed, covering it with an old-fashioned quilt. Not bothering to pull the quilt back, Travis laid her down on the bed and covered her with his big body, his weight on his elbows. She was trembling very lightly. Then his head swooped down like a falcon to the prey, his mouth plundering hers until she was nothing but an ache of passionate need.
Only then did Travis reach for the top button on her shirt. His fingers brushed her skin; his irises were a blazing blue. Straddling her, he eased her arms out of the shirt, then in the same intent silence undid her bra, tossing it to the floor. She said softly, “Take your shirt off, Travis.”
His hands weren’t quite steady as he fumbled with the buttons, and this, more than anything, touched Julie to the heart. Travis, she already knew, was a man both self-contained and very much in control of himself: that she should make him lose that control filled her with a confusing mixture of wonder and excitement. Very deliberately she reached for the zipper on her shorts, easing them down her hips, then kicking them to the floor. She said with a faint grin, “Because I always wear utilitarian cotton in the tropics, I go overboard on lace when I’m home.”