Full Circle

by Shannon Hollis

  Thank God.

  When they were both naked, Cate flung herself on top of him, laughing when he caught her effortlessly and lowered her until they were skin to skin.

  “I’m going to pretend that we have weeks and weeks together instead of just two days,” she said. “I’m going to block out the whole end of the week and just make tomorrow and Tuesday last forever.”

  He may have been about to say something, but she lowered her mouth to his and kissed it into silence.

  She knew the drill—the whole carpe diem speech. She didn’t need to hear it. She was just going to enjoy him for all she was worth and maybe it would warm her from the inside when she went back to New York. Maybe it would change her and she’d attract a different kind of guy. A guy who liked adventure, who had more in his life than school or his ex-wife. A guy like Daniel. Not the Indiana Jones media creation, but the real Daniel—down-to-earth, funny and willing to let her be herself.

  She’d find him some day. That was something to look forward to.

  Wasn’t it?

  “Hey. Earth to Cate. No out-of-body experiences when you’re lying on top of me.”

  “Not likely. My brain is full of you.” She kissed the corner of his mouth. “My senses are full of you.” A kiss on each eyelid. “And shortly my body is going to be, too.”

  “Promises, promises.”

  She moved in a sensuous S-curve as she stretched full length on him. “I always keep my promises.”

  “I believe you promised me something this afternoon.”

  She was so engorged and ready for him it was a wonder she didn’t spontaneously combust. The heat of his body wrapped her in sensuous promise—or maybe it was the heat of his gaze. Or maybe they were one and the same and all she wanted was to bury herself in him.

  Or better yet, let him bury himself in her.

  Without another word, she lifted herself up on her knees and took the hot length of his erection in both hands. Their gazes locked, and then with a lift of his hips he found that secret place between her legs that seemed to belong to him alone, where he was a perfect fit and every memory of anyone but him was erased. She groaned with satisfaction as the hot, smooth length of him slid inside her. Her mind blanked out and her body took over, meeting his every thrust, her eyes half closed. Still, she was aware of the way he watched her, as if her pleasure increased his own and he wanted to enjoy every nuance of it. Just as she’d been aware of his every breath when they’d made love before, now he focused on her, the sounds she made, making small adjustments so that her pleasure might be increased.

  When he lifted his hand and teased her clit with his fingers, adding the sweet, slick friction to the rhythm inside her, the pleasure begin to build. It was like darts of fire, waves of anticipation and need, all rolled into one. The explosion rolled through her, centered on his finger like the eye of a hurricane, and she cried out with the pleasure of it as it consumed her. He thrust into her, as deeply as any lost cavern he’d ever penetrated, and she fell onto him again and again as he found his own release and shuddered into fulfillment.

  She fell to one elbow, then slid off his body and into that warm spot beside him that in some wonderful way she was beginning to think of as hers.

  “Cate,” he sighed, and wrapped a lazy arm around her.

  She found the presence of mind to locate the comforter and pull it up around their shoulders, and he snapped off the light.

  “Feels like forever,” she thought she heard him say. The sound of his breathing told her he had slid into sleep almost before the words were out of his mouth.

  It felt like forever, indeed.

  For the next two days.

  14

  WHEN DANIEL WOKE, THE SUN hadn’t yet lifted above the trees on the far side of the wetland, but already he could hear the racket as every bird in the place went about its business of getting breakfast and catching up on the gossip.

  Cate still slept the sound sleep of the sexually satisfied—or so he could tell himself. Smiling, he got out of bed as quietly as he could, pulled on some clothes, and let himself out of their room to see if he could scare up some coffee. A bit of sweet talking with Dahlia Moreno, the owner’s wife, convinced her to bring breakfast up on a tray to their room around eight.

  She also poured him a cup of java from the huge pot on the counter in the kitchen.

  “I suppose I have you to thank for the feminine touches like the rose on the pillow.” He leaned on the counter and watched her take four trays of muffins—purple with fat berries—out of the double stack of ovens, one after the other.

  Dahlia, who was built along the lines of his godmother and who seemed to have her knack with cooking, glanced at him as she turned the muffins out onto a cooling rack. “I wish I could take credit for it, but I can’t. If you want roses on your pillow you need to go to the expensive places in San Francisco.”

  “No, I meant there was one. Yesterday afternoon, when we got back from a walk. A long-stemmed yellow rose.” He sipped coffee. “I thought it was compliments of the house.”

  “Your book is around here somewhere,” she said with a fine disregard for a writer’s ego. “Maybe one of the staff read it and left a token of her appreciation.”

  “Maybe the same person who left her perfume on the bed?”

  “I want to apologize again for that.” With the muffins cooling in neat rows, she lined up a row of baskets on the counter and laid a fresh cloth in each one. “We’re looking into it, you can be sure.”

  “You haven’t seen anyone strange lurking around the place?”

  “No more strange than the usual guests, tourists, hikers and lost people asking directions.” One by one, the warm muffins went into the baskets. “A rose and some perfume. Sounds to me like you’ve got a fan.”

  “According to your husband, he or she is a jealous one. But unless they’re a ghost who can walk through walls, I don’t see how they could have got into the room. It was locked.”

  Dahlia shrugged. “No ghosts here, unfortunately. If we had one, we could be in the national registry and charge more. Muffin?”

  “No thanks. How about a refill, and a second cup? Lots of cream.”

  “Help yourself. Bottomless cup. Rafael drinks it all day long. I’ll have your tray up in half an hour or so.”

  Daniel collected the two mugs of coffee, thanked his hostess and climbed the stairs to their room. With typical California laissez-faire, nobody seemed to be making much of their perfume bandit. Nothing untoward had happened during the night, so the thing to do was forget it. After all, nothing had been damaged, and a guy certainly couldn’t go to the cops complaining about a litterbug who dropped roses.

  The smell of the hot coffee woke Cate. “Daniel? Is that coffee?”

  “It is. Big and creamy, just the way you like it.”

  Her smile lit her face the way the sun was beginning to illuminate the world outside. “It’s even better when it’s in the hands of a sexy adventurer.”

  “With a taste for wicked women.”

  She laughed and sat up, then buried her nose in the mug. “Man, this is good.”

  “Compliments of Dahlia, who’s making breakfast. She also says there’s a copy of my book lying around here somewhere.”

  Cate grinned. “When you find it, you’ll have to sign it. ‘To Dahlia, whose coffee is to die for.’”

  “Hopefully not. She says there are all kinds of strangers around here on a daily basis, so singling out our perfume bandit is a lost cause.”

  Cate shrugged, apparently more concerned about getting caffeine into her bloodstream than catching bandits.

  “So, what do you feel like doing today?” He didn’t want to talk about stuff he couldn’t answer. Everyone else’s theories were going to have to do for now.

  Cate sat back against the pillows, cradling her mug in both hands. “I want a great big breakfast and then a walk on the beach. Then I want to go to some touristy wharf and buy a silly souvenir for my admin, Anne,
who is much too practical to do things like that for herself. After that I want to come back here and make love to you again, and then have supper.” She smiled at him like a cat sunning itself on a soft cushion. “Doesn’t that sound like a great day?”

  “Except for the shopping on the wharf part, it does.”

  “Without the shopping part, the making love part doesn’t happen,” she warned him.

  He held up his hands. “I give. You drive a hard bargain.”

  “It got me where I am today.” She lay back more deeply, more seductively, in the pillows.

  He put his mug down and stripped off his jeans.

  She put her mug on the nightstand and lifted the comforter.

  Neither of them heard Dahlia knock fifteen minutes later, or the sound of the tray being set down on the floor outside.

  WHEN DANIEL GOT UP the second time, he practically tripped over the breakfast tray when he opened the door. Though the muffins were cold, they discovered, the omelets and hash browns were still warm—and the homemade salsa that came with them was so hot he broke into a sweat.

  “Good stuff,” he gasped, and sucked back a glass of water from the bathroom to cool the heat from the chili peppers.

  When they’d eaten and dressed, he made sure the windows were closed and the door was good and locked before they went downstairs. No more surprises for him, thanks—unless they were the kind that involved Cate in some state of undress.

  The fog had pulled off the beach early and retreated to a fuzzy gray line on the horizon, leaving the sand washed by both intense summer light and the rolling surf. The waterline was marked by trails of kelp and bits of shell and polished glass, glinting in the sun. Daniel glanced behind them as Cate led the way down to the firm sand at the water’s edge, and saw they had made a wavering line of footprints.

  At some points there were two sets. At some points one. A perfect metaphor. Maybe even a sign that the time was right.

  He reached out and took her hand as they walked slowly down the beach. “Cate.”

  “Look.” She pointed at a flock of birds that looked like balls of fluff on Tinkertoy legs, running up and down the beach inches ahead of the waves. “Sandpipers.”

  Fascinating. “Cate, is there any chance you can get another week off?”

  She dragged her gaze off the sandpipers and up to his face. “I only got these days because it’s reading week, remember? I have to proctor exams next week.”

  A cozy vision of her going back with him and the two of them spending a week locked in his condo twisted like a plume of smoke and vanished on the wind. “Too bad. San Francisco is my last gig. I have some time off before my seniors come for the summer field trip so I was thinking we could hang out at my place in Long Beach.” He pasted on a smile. “But never mind. It was just a thought.”

  Her penetrating gaze burned right through the fake smile and it melted off his lips. “What are you really saying, Daniel? We both know this isn’t going to go any further. Why draw it out?”

  Ouch. Talk about bone-scraping honesty. Well, at least he knew where he stood. “Are you so sure?”

  She made a deprecating gesture with her free hand. “I know the kind of woman you like. Ones who are used to being in the spotlight and lead the same kind of exciting, adventurous life you do. Like that photographer. For a couple of days you and I can have fun together, but for the long term, I’m just not your kind of woman.”

  Just how shallow did she think he was? “Cate, you’re a scientist, just like me. How much of what you think I am is a media creation and how much is based on your own observations?”

  She pulled her hand from his and walked a little faster, but he had no trouble keeping up. “You don’t seriously think I’d say something like that because I was going on something I’d read. Give me some credit. You said yourself you loved that photographer, and she jets off all over the world to take pictures in exciting and maybe dangerous locations. Maybe she’s behind the camera instead of in front of it, but she’s still part of the world you live in. And what do I do? I give lectures. I write papers. I have drinks with a friend once in a while. Big deal.”

  “I think it is a big deal. You’ve probably influenced more students in a positive way through your classes than I ever did picking leeches off my legs in the jungle.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “That’s reality. Leeches and lectures aside, I think we might have something together, Cate. I don’t want it to be like last time, where we split up and go to the opposite ends of the country and never see each other again.”

  Her stride faltered, stopped. She stood and looked at him so long that the sandpipers stopped running ahead of them and began to probe the sand for whatever creatures they ate. Cate would probably know, but he didn’t want to disturb what was going on behind those clear eyes by distracting her with a non sequitur. So he simply waited for her to speak.

  “I’m afraid to think that you really mean it,” she said at last.

  That was an odd way to put it. “Anyone who climbs rocks doesn’t know the meaning of fear.”

  “Anyone who climbs rocks takes appropriate steps for safety,” she retorted. “Relationships are different. You don’t get a rope or a net. Not even a good, strong knot to help you. You’re on your own, stepping out into space to make a connection with another person.”

  “Ah, but that person is in the same place, stepping out to make a connection with you.”

  “Danger times two does not equal safety,” she pointed out, but he felt a little optimistic when she took his hand and began walking back the way they’d come. She’d said she wanted to go shopping and then make love all afternoon when they got back. That was a good sign, wasn’t it?

  “But commitment to the stepping out might.”

  His unease lifted when she smiled up at him and squeezed his hand. “Touché. There goes my metaphor.”

  “I’m a practical guy. I’d rather plain talking than metaphor. And I’d rather have you in my life than any number of models, starlets or photographers. Even if it means I have to learn the names of every damn bird on the continent.”

  She swung their linked hands between them. “Is that why you have my picture in your briefcase?”

  “How did you know that?” he said in surprise.

  “I knocked it over the other day, and when I was putting all your stuff back, I saw the picture tucked into the lid.”

  And she’d never said a word until now. “Yes, I suppose it is. You were like my guiding light, in a way. Kept me from making some stupid decisions once or twice.”

  “How? When we hadn’t seen each other in years and I left without giving you a thing?”

  He shrugged, uncertain even in his own mind of his reasons. “I don’t know. You were just so solid. So practical and so smart. I guess you were the standard I measured other women by. And, let’s face it, I liked looking at your face.”

  He liked looking at it now, when the wind whipped her hair over her eyes and her cheeks were reddened with it—or maybe with what he’d been saying. He couldn’t tell, and he wasn’t about to ask.

  “Well, if we’re into true confessions, here, I guess there’s a reason I still have that copy of Newsweek,” she admitted. “The photo was good enough to eat.”

  “How about the real thing?” he teased.

  She laughed and picked up her pace, then began to run. “Definitely good enough to eat. Come on, I’ll race you back to the hotel.”

  Maybe he’d get out of the shopping trip after all.

  CATE SHRIEKED WITH LAUGHTER as Daniel grabbed her and tossed her on the bed. In the hour that they’d been down at the beach, housekeeping had come in and made it up, and there was no sign of either roses or perfume. Life was good. Cate landed in the middle of the comforter and rolled off it like a stuntwoman before Daniel landed on the bed himself.

  He lay on his back and held out his arms. “Come on, babe. Just one kiss.”

  She backed away, shaking a
finger. “Not a chance. I’m on to you. Don’t think you can distract me with sex, mister. We’re going shopping in Monterey and you’re not getting out of it.”

  “Aw, man,” he complained. Cate had the feeling that his feigned chagrin was actually real.

  “Never mind. Adversity is good for you.”

  “But sex is better.” He put his hands behind his head and stretched, just for her benefit, she had no doubt. Oh, yes, he made a very appealing picture, in those worn jeans. And his T-shirt did for his chest and abs what no T-shirt should do in civilized company.

  But who said she was civilized? What she was was tempted.

  Sex or shopping? Shopping or sex?

  A month ago if anyone had told her she’d be in such a delicious dilemma, she’d have laughed at them. And now…well, it wasn’t even a binary decision. There was no either/or. It was simply a matter of deciding which came first.

  Delightful thought. “Don’t worry, I’ll stick to my promise,” she told him. “Wharf first. I have to get something for Anne and I don’t mean a T-shirt from the airport gift shop. After that you can bet I’m going to have my way with you, and there’s no getting out of it.”

  “I love a strong-willed woman.” He rolled to a sitting position on the edge of the bed. “But I’m not getting changed.”

  As if any woman passing by would complain about the sight he made. “Well, I am. Sweats are okay for the beach but I can’t wear them into town. What if I met Clint Eastwood?”

  “He’d be so dazzled by your smile and that thing your hips do when you walk, he wouldn’t even notice your sweats.”

  She paused in the act of unzipping her suitcase. “That thing my hips do?”

  “Mmm.” His gaze took on the faraway look of a man reliving a wonderful memory.

  “What thing?” Did she walk like a duck or something? Or worse—had the calories in the crème brûlée she’d devoured at supper last night relocated themselves to her butt so soon?

  “That thing.” He placed his hands a foot apart in the air and moved them back and forth in a hula rhythm. “I love that thing. Ever notice I walk behind you a lot?”