by Kay Hooper
There was a moment of silence, and then Rafferty quickly sat back and signaled for the check. Sarah, her eyes down and her hands feeling strangely cold, said nothing and made no objection when they rose from the table and left the restaurant. He had chosen a place near their hotel, within walking distance, but once they were outside he guided her toward the beach, at this hour a pale strip in the moonlight.
Sarah paused once to remove her sandals, accepting his supporting hand in the same silence with which it was offered, then walked wordlessly beside him. The beach was nearly deserted. There were only a few couples strolling along, presumably taking advantage of the moonlight and the muffled roar of the ocean that provided an atmosphere of romantic intimacy.
It made Sarah’s heart ache.
Finally Rafferty spoke, his tone conversational but strained. “As I see it, we have two choices. Either one or both of us pull out, or else we go on. I’m not pulling out without you, Sarah. And I have a feeling you mean to go on with this assignment.”
“Yes.”
“Then we go on. Together.” He found her free hand with his own, and their fingers laced together instantly. “And we deal with this.”
Walking beside him across sand damp from the last high tide, sand unmarked because no one else had chosen to walk just where they walked, Sarah felt a curious and unfamiliar sense of fatalism. Despite everything, the pretenses and dangers, despite Hagen’s determined attempts to prevent an involvement between them, something had drawn them together almost instantly.
Gazing down at the damp, blank sand, she thought of a Robert Frost poem. Both of them, she thought, were looking at a forked road that was all but unmarked. A road neither had walked before.
No matter which they chose, regrets were likely, even inevitable. But Sarah thought that she would regret it more if they chose the safer, well-trodden path. She had always taken the safe way, the sure and predictable way, the familiar way. Until this assignment.
For once in her life she had followed an impulse undoubtedly created by Hagen, choosing to leave her safe office for the dangerous waters of a dangerous game. She had chosen. And she had met Rafferty. Hours ago. Only hours? If so much in her life could change within hours, how much more during weeks? And she wanted change. She realized then that she wanted change with everything inside her.
Anyone who knew her would have laughed uncontrollably at the mere thought of Sarah Cavell being incautious. Cautious, they would have said, didn’t begin to describe her. And there had been nothing in her experience to jolt her from the safe and predictable niche she had made of her life.
“Yes,” she said suddenly.
Rafferty looked down at her by his side, seeing something in her moonlit face he hadn’t expected, yet somehow wasn’t surprised by. The delicate beauty was still there, the poignancy remained. But her expression was subtly different. The smile curving her lips was reckless.
He drew them to a stop, turning so that they faced each other. “I know we’re taking a chance with all this,” he said huskily. “We don’t know anything about each other. But I think we’ll learn all we need to know during the next few weeks. Maybe by the time our ship reaches its home port …”
She looked up at him, still smiling. “It’ll be the beginning instead of the end? Maybe. The only thing I’m sure of, Rafferty, is that when I walk off that ship, I have to know that I took full advantage of the voyage.”
His free hand lifted to touch her cheek, skimming over soft flesh until it lay against her neck. Whimsically, he said, “I get the feeling this is more of a gamble for you than it seems on the surface.”
She hesitated, then laughed a bit unsteadily. “It is. Fair warning—I don’t think I know myself very well. I haven’t taken many chances in my life. It could blow up in your face.”
“I’ll take that chance,” he told her.
Sarah could feel the slow, pounding pulse of the ocean seeping into her consciousness as though some invisible dam was being eroded. It was like nothing she’d ever felt before, as if she were being swept away by something that was beyond her ability to fight. She stared up at his face, unconsciously marking each feature in her mind, fascinated by golden eyes even the moonlight couldn’t rob of color or intensity. Her body seemed to have a mind of its own, stepping nearer to his in response to the gentle pressure of his hand.
She barely heard her own breath catch when her body touched his. She was too involved with the abrupt rush of sensation stinging every nerve ending. After the first gasp she couldn’t seem to breathe, and despite the barriers of her silk dress and the fine linen of his white shirt, she could feel the heat of his flesh when her breasts touched his chest.
He had released her hand, his own moving to the small of her back to press her even nearer, and her hands lifted to slide beneath his jacket and encircle his lean waist, her shoes falling unheeded to the sand.
Sarah found her eyes focusing on his lips, and she felt a strange transformation beginning inside her. The tentative heat that had uncurled earlier at his blunt statement of desire seemed to spread now and intensify, flowing throughout her limbs, filling her until she was conscious of nothing but warmth and a slow pounding pulse that echoed the ocean’s eternal rhythm.
“Sarah …”
She stared at his face as it lowered to hers, losing herself in the enigmatic glitter of his eyes. And when warm lips found and captured her own, liquid heat became molten fire and seared a body that had never before known passion’s flame. She was lost, totally and completely lost, and her astonishment was a small, frail thing in the face of her overwhelming response.
She could taste the ocean’s salt mist and feel its cool dampness in the ever-present breeze off the water. The pounding of the surf seemed louder in her ears, elemental in her veins. The moonlight stole color from everything but his eyes, his glittering, compelling eyes.
Her chest hurt, and she wasn’t certain if it was because she couldn’t seem to breathe or because her breasts were crushed against his hard chest. But there was pleasure even in the ache, and Sarah was shocked that a man’s body pressed to her own could feel so wonderful. She could feel muscles in his back rippling beneath her fingers, and when his legs widened she instinctively moved closer, between them, her body molding itself to his.
All her senses went wild as she clung to him, rational thought seared away. Between one heartbeat and the next was born the overwhelming, mindless need to belong utterly and completely to him. Nothing else mattered. Her body craved his with the madness of starvation. Every inch of her flesh throbbed to life, and if she had been capable of thought she would have realized then that the possibility of dealing with this had never existed.
There had been nothing tentative in that first kiss, nothing hesitant. It was the touch of a lover, bold and demanding. Her response, instant and total, wrenched a smothered groan from Rafferty, and his lips slanted across hers to deepen that bold touch with growing hunger.
Her mouth was warm and responsive, and he could feel the way her body moved unconsciously and instinctively to be closer to his. His heart thudded in a quickening rhythm, the rhythm spreading outward to heat his flesh and clench his muscles in a spasm of need. The thin silk dress she wore was a tactile delight, the material sliding across her skin as his hand moved over her back and down to mold her hips, and his swelling body ached with the warm yielding contact of hers.
Rafferty had forgotten where they were; it didn’t seem to matter. The rush and pounding of the ocean was no more than a subliminal reminder of the surging desire he felt, drowning out other sounds even as his passion drowned out all reason. The taste of her lips was sweet as wine, the scent of her something heady, warmly potent, and her soft, curved body seduced him wildly.
And when the first crash of thunder came, Rafferty hardly recognized it as something outside the stormy world their embrace had created. But a sudden gust of wind, tasting strongly of salt and decidedly wet, all but knocked them from their feet, and start
led gazes met in near darkness when the moonlight was blotted out by fast-moving clouds.
They were drenched before they could even step apart, the capricious wind whipping madly at their clothing and snatching Sarah’s hair loose from the pins that had held it. Lightning split the sky, and Rafferty bent quickly to get her shoes. While cold rain beat at them, they raced back up the beach holding hands, fighting wind and wet to get to their hotel.
They were laughing when they ducked inside the door of the lobby, even as others caught by the storm were laughing. Sarah wasn’t the only guest to reach shelter barefoot and trail sand across the lobby to the bank of elevators.
Curiously enough, neither Rafferty nor Sarah felt a sense of constraint upon reaching their suite. The sudden storm had halted passion, chilling heated flesh and blowing a cold wind through dazed minds, but a part of them remained forever out on a moonlit beach.
He gave her a gentle push toward the other room the moment they were inside the door, trying not to think of how the silk dress clung to her body like a second skin. But it did cling, and he did think about it, tortured by visions of her naked and passionate; he couldn’t shut out the thoughts, but he managed somehow not to act upon them.
“A hot shower, now. You’ll catch pneumonia otherwise.” Laughing, Sarah disappeared.
She returned to the sitting room less than fifteen minutes later, wearing a thick terry robe, her hair bound up in a towel. “Your turn,” she told him, faintly surprised to discover that her shyness had been lost on the beach.
While he was in the shower, Sarah stood before the wide windows looking out at the storm, absently towel-drying her hair. She didn’t want to think. Always before in her life, rational thought had crept in to dissuade her from some impulsive action, guarding her from her own folly. But there was something different now, she realized.
She had decided to take that unexplored path, and the interlude on the beach had set her feet firmly on their way. There was, she noted with a sense of relief, no going back now. She felt curiously free, unfettered by the caution and reserve of a lifetime. She had left behind her the woman who had built a wall of shyness and hidden behind it, the woman who had avoided closeness because she felt safer alone.
Hours before she had wanted to strangle Hagen, but now Sarah only wanted to thank him. He had pitchforked her into an uncomfortable situation, forcing her to accept a kind of intimacy with a stranger, and the jolt of that and her instant attraction to Rafferty had been enough to set her free. The passionate interlude on the beach had completed the cure.
She didn’t feel familiar to herself, and though that was unsettling, it was also pleasing. She could be anyone, test herself beyond the limits she had come to accept until now.
In a peculiar way—and not consciously recognized by herself—Sarah had only now, belatedly, come of age. She had been pushed by circumstances beyond her control. A personality dampened firmly by rational caution had just received a heady breath of fresh air and freedom, and like any unfamiliar atmosphere, it was rapidly going to her head.
Rafferty found her by the window when he returned from his shower, and he stood gazing at her for a moment. Her tousled hair, still damp, flowed about her head and shoulders in dark gold strands, its natural tendency to wave untamed. The white robe she wore was long, but it parted around a tanned leg as she scuffed her bare toes in the thick carpet, and her slender fingers toyed with the towel she held in front of her.
Rafferty felt his mouth go dry as his eyes watched the terrycloth rise and fall with her breathing, and he knew that neither the sudden storm nor the shower had done anything at all to cool his heated blood. The memory of her instant passion wafted through his mind, torturing him.
He wanted to finish what had begun on the beach, wanted to sweep her off her feet and into the bed in the next room. He wanted to feel her silky legs cradle him, wanted to … wanted. He wanted so much to make love to her. Needed to so much … but he had no intention of conducting a “shipboard” romance, two strangers meeting on a temporary voyage and indulging in a temporary passion. He could never, he knew, be satisfied with that. He wanted Sarah in his bed, not a stranger who would wave farewell at journey’s end with an indifferent smile.
He didn’t want a memory.
But when Sarah turned and smiled at him, he fought an impulse to take whatever he could get. Going over to her, he took the towel from her hand and began using it with intentional briskness to dry her hair. “I don’t want a sick wife,” he told her, pleased by the casual sound of his voice.
Laughing a little, she peered up at him with bright eyes through the damp red-gold tangle. He was wearing slacks and a knit shirt, and though Sarah had no experience in matters such as this, she instantly recognized the signs that Rafferty was more levelheaded than she was at the moment.
Curiously enough, she felt no sense of rejection, and her own reckless enjoyment didn’t diminish a bit. If anything, it increased dramatically. She felt aware, sensitized, and the possibilities seemed endless and fascinating to contemplate. And this new Sarah said something that should have surprised the old one. But, somehow, it did not. “Your wife in name only, from the look of it.”
If Rafferty hesitated in his task, it was only for a fleeting instant. Lightly, he said, “Restraint is supposed to be good for the soul; I’m trying to build my character. Don’t mess it up for me, huh?”
“I wouldn’t know how to be a siren,” she confessed, unaware that her eyes certainly knew.
Shrewdly, Rafferty said, “But you’d enjoy the opportunity to try?”
A little startled, Sarah realized he was right. She’d gone too far to resurrect shyness, but a faint flush did color her cheeks. “I suppose. I never thought of myself like that.” Then she blinked. “Oh, that’s ridiculous, Rafferty. With all we have to do …”
“I don’t know,” he murmured. “It might be fun.” Mentally, he apologized to a body appalled by the very thought. He was, he knew, inviting torture and sleepless nights. There was much about Sarah Cavell that intrigued him, but seeing that dawn of feminine enjoyment in her eyes fascinated him utterly. Having had no sisters, Rafferty had never watched a woman become aware of her own powers. He had a very strong feeling that he was seeing it now. “You’ve never gotten involved with a man before, have you?” he asked slowly.
She gave him a hesitant smile. “Well, no. I always thought I was cold-natured.”
Rafferty did an exaggerated double take, which sufficed to hide his very real astonishment. Were all the men she had known morons? “I beg your pardon?”
She giggled, flushing again as she remembered her response on the beach. “I did. I just wasn’t interested.”
“It must have been my charming smile,” he said.
Sarah cleared her throat. “Must have been.”
“How old are you?” he asked suspiciously.
“Twenty-six.”
In mock surprise, he said, “And you’ve never exercised your feminine wiles? How long has Hagen had you sequestered in that information retrieval office, anyway?”
“Since college.” She lifted her chin and met his gaze squarely. “Before that—I told you—I just wasn’t interested.”
He removed the towel and studied the tangled mass of her hair for a moment, then flopped the towel back over her head. “Find a brush for that,” he instructed briskly. “It looks like a rat’s nest.”
She pushed the towel back, laughing. “Thanks!” But she went and found her brush, lingering in the bedroom long enough to smooth the knots from her hair before returning to the sitting room. As soon as she came back, Rafferty spoke.
“I think it’s a good idea.”
Sarah lifted a brow at him. “What is?”
“Letting you vamp me.”
THREE
“VERY FUNNY.”
“I’m serious.” He grinned at her, enjoying her startled expression. “You don’t have to start from scratch, you know. Remember the beach? By the time we fini
sh with the assignment, I may well be putty in your hands. I’ll even up the ante.”
“How?” she asked slowly, staring at him.
Rafferty lifted his hand and brushed her cheek lightly with his knuckles. “Anything you catch,” he hesitated, “you keep.”
Sarah was smiling before she realized it. Something new within her was rising to the challenge. “Does that line work on all the girls?”
“I wouldn’t know. Never used it before. But I think we’re both going to enjoy finding out if it works on you.”
She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. When his eyes dropped briefly to examine the golden flesh that was bared as the lapels of her robe slid farther apart, she felt a little flicker of warm excitement.
Rafferty cleared his throat carefully. “Let’s not start just yet,” he murmured a bit hoarsely. “I need a good night’s sleep first.”
Sarah bit her lip to hold back a sudden giggle. “Let me get this straight. Along with everything else we have to do, we’re going to play a game. The game is seduction. And you’re the prize?”
Feeling a bit reckless himself, Rafferty grinned. “Something like that. If you don’t want me, you can always throw me back, but you have to catch me first.” He went to the bar, and fixed them both drinks. Handing one to her, he added gently, “And I intend to play hard to get.”
She sipped her drink slowly, her eyes speculative. “Why?” she asked finally.
Rafferty didn’t need the question clarified. “Oh … because we’re going to be in a serious situation and we’ll need to take our minds off it occasionally. Because we’ll inevitably get to know one another during the process. And because we’ll both enjoy it immensely.”
“You think so?”
“Don’t you?”
Sarah did. Her smile widened. “Are there any rules in this game of yours?”
“Prudence dictates. Nothing blatant. If you took me by the hand and led me in there”—he nodded toward the bedroom—“for instance, that would definitely be blatant. And since I’d feel compelled to defend your honor, don’t wear anything that’s liable to get you arrested or attacked. Subtlety is our watchword. Otherwise, it’s no holds barred.”