by Sandra Brown
Ian took up a dish towel and began to dry the dishes she had stacked in the drain. For several minutes they worked in silence. The house was quiet except for the soft clatter of dishes.
"What happened to our parents?" Shay asked.
When he wasn't being the stern judge, his smile was breathtaking. "They went for 'a turn around the property,' ostensibly to walk off their dinner. Personally I think it was to get away from us and indulge in some serious kissing."
"Why didn't they just go upstairs to their room?"
"That would be unseemly."
She laughed. "It's hard for me to imagine my mother behaving like a bride."
"Children rarely see their parents as sexual creatures."
"Do you mind?" She looked up at him, her head slightly tilted, aware of the curls rioting around her face.
There was a lengthy pause as he studied her. "Mind?" he finally asked hoarsely.
"About your father marrying my mother. You spoke very fondly of your own mother and the times the three of you spent here as a family."
He tossed the tea towel over his shoulder and carefully placed the stack of plates he'd dried in the cupboard in front of him. "Dad loved my mother very much. Celia told me the same thing about the relationship she had with your dad. Statistically it's the ones who were happily married who remarry quickly after the death of their mate. What your mother and my father have together now doesn't detract from their former relationships."
Shay considered the matter thoughtfully. "I like John, not only for the man he is, but also for the happiness he's brought to my mother. I never thought I'd see her this relaxed and content again."
"You don't resent him? You don't look upon him as someone trying to take your father's place?"
Shay smiled up at him, then turned away. "That's a very intuitive observation. As you might guess, I adored my father. At first I might have felt a twinge of resentment for the man who had replaced him in Mom's life, but not now. Not after meeting John and seeing them together. It would be selfish to begrudge her this happiness." She risked looking at him again. "What about you? Were you happily married?"
"Very."
"But you haven't remarried quickly."
His eyes met hers steadily. "No, I haven't."
Okay, so he didn't want to talk about it. They'd talk about something else. Feeling slightly rebuffed, she asked, "At what point in one's life does one decide to become a minister?"
"At what point does one decide to pose naked for a living?"
"Damn you!" she cried, whirling around and thumping him in the stomach with her fist. "I'm making every effort to be pleasant because this weekend is important to my mother and to John. I've tried to carry on a polite conversation, but at every opportunity you drop in some sly innuendo."
His hand whipped out to catch her wrist, and in one swift motion she was hauled against him. "Don't ever hit me again, and don't ever curse at me." His teeth were tightly clenched. "As for my sly innuendoes, I was asking out of a desire to know. What makes a pretty young woman want to sell herself the way you do?"
If he hadn't had her wrist clasped between fingers of iron, she might have been tempted to slap him. If she'd had the nerve. She was seeing full-scale the power of his temper. It was fearsomely intimidating and equally as restricting as his grip.
"Because I'm pretty all over, that's why," she said loftily. "I was born with what some people consider a perfectly proportioned body. It has no blemishes, no scars, no birthmarks or moles. My body is far more striking than my face. That's why artists sometimes use my body even if they put another face on it."
She stopped to draw in a great breath and felt her breasts flattening against the solid wall of his chest. "It's a commodity, and that's what I'm selling. It has nothing to do with what's on the inside of me. You should revere the human body. It's God's creation. Some of the world's most fabulous artworks are nudes. The Vatican is full of them. Think about it, Reverend Douglas." She dragged her hand out of his grip, and fell back a step.
"What you say is true," he conceded, "but how can you live with yourself knowing that some … some pervert might make you the object of his sexual fantasies? Might look at your pictures and wish he could see you in the flesh, touch you, fondle you?"
"I can't be responsible for them! The people you're describing are rarely art enthusiasts. My pictures aren't sold on street corners by some vendor in a raincoat who accosts passersby with a 'Pst, pst, want to buy some filthy pictures?' As my mother hastened to explain, I don't pose for erotica." Instinctively, her better judgment clouded by anger, she arched her back and thrust her breasts toward him. "Besides, these aren't exactly the overgrown melons that would cause a hedonist to slaver, are they?"
The moment the words were out of her mouth, she realized what she'd done and resumed her normal posture. The softly swelling mounds of her breasts resettled on her chest. As she had said, they weren't very large, but were ripe with womanhood, delicately tipped, and beautifully shaped. Ian seemed to have a difficult time forcing his eyes away from them before he turned abruptly on his heels.
"All right," he said thickly, "you've made your point."
"Not quite." Fueled by rage, she seized the opportunity to put forth her opinion. Few people really understood her work. For some reason that was incomprehensible to Shay, it often made people question her morals. She usually looked upon such narrow-mindedness with a degree of amusement. But Ian's censure not only aroused her wrath, but also hurt her deeply, which made her all the more defensive.
Too, Ian Douglas's heart and mind might reside on a spiritual plane, but as evidenced by his barely suppressed fascination with her breasts, he had a carnal side just as everyone did.
"What do you think I do when I pose? Rush up several flights of dank, dingy stairs to a cold-water flat with poor lighting and peeling wallpaper? Do you think the artist and I engage in all sorts of prurient activities after I've posed in lascivious—"
"Enough, Shay!" he shouted, spinning to face her. The hands he had sliced horizontally through the air froze at his sides. Her eyes locked with the blue ones over the tension-laden space between them. She didn't know which dumbfounded her the most, his overwhelming anger or his use of her first name. She stood shocked into mute immobility, holding her breath.
Had he been anyone else, she would have sworn he muttered a curse under his breath as he broke his frozen posture, turned away, and raked a hand through his hair. "No. That's not the concept I have of you or what you do," he protested. "It's unfair of you to label me as such a prude." He spun around to face her once again. "But what was I supposed to think? What kind of woman comes barging into a strange man's shower without the least bit of embarrassment?"
"Are you strange?" she quipped.
Her flippant retort only made him more angry. His hands formed hard fists at his sides. Deliberately she let her eyes travel down his body and up again. "The only thing I found strange about you was your choice of a song to sing in the shower. Knowing what you are, I'd have thought 'Rock of Ages' would be more appropriate than 'Good Vibrations.'"
She pulled the tea towel out of her waistband and lifted a few stray strands of hair off her neck with a negligent hand. She wanted him to know that his anger was of supreme indifference to her.
"I happen to like the Beach Boys," he said. "Also the Beatles and the Bee Gees and Blondie. Now let me tell you what I dislike."
"I don't—"
"I don't like women who are so insecure about their femininity that they try to assume the masculine role. Granted, you've got a pretty body, but you were right when you said it had nothing to do with what's inside you. Because I don't think there is anything on the inside. I think you're just a beautiful shell surrounding a vacuum where the soul of a woman should be. You're so busy playing at being a somebody that you don't really know who or what you are."
She gasped in outrage. "Go to—" She broke off the last word when she remembered his warning. Then in defiance she
yelled at him anyway. "Go to hell!"
She shoved the swinging kitchen door with unnecessary force. It banged against the dining-room wall as she stormed into the room. The noise caused John and Celia, who were standing just inside the front door locked in a passionate embrace, to jump apart, looking shamefaced and guilty.
"Oh, for pity's sake," Shay said in exasperation as she took the first few steps. "Why don't you two just go to bed and stop acting like morons?"
She thought that once she'd had a cool shower, brushed her hair and teeth, and climbed into the bed, she could dismiss what Ian had said as rubbish and fall into a dreamless sleep.
She'd been wrong downstairs, too, wrong to goad his temper, wrong to deliberately provoke his anger, wrong to curse at him. Curse at a minister! What was her problem? No wonder he thought so poorly of her.
Try as she did to block out his harsh words, they echoed in her head with the constancy of a waterfall. That they had been so close to correct made them all the more revolting.
Suddenly she heard the gentle closing of the bedroom door next to hers. Him again. Swearing that she wasn't interested in anything he did, she nevertheless listened avidly to the noises he made preparing for bed. When the house lapsed into stillness once more, she pounded the pillow, punishing it for her restlessness.
By what right did some rural preacher take it upon himself to point up all her personality flaws? Why should she care what he thought, what he said? Yet it wasn't so much his saying it, but the truth of what he'd said that anguished her.
She did play a role. For years she had felt empty inside, an emptiness that she couldn't put a name to but that seemed fathomless and impossible to fill. The body that had been preserved on canvas and in photographs was a valuable commodity, but it wasn't her. The husband she thought had loved her had actually been far more concerned about the way she looked and the things she did than with the way she felt and what she thought.
Anson Porter had been an ambitious young man on his way up the ladder of success in his accounting firm. His greatest goal was to achieve a full partnership in the company. He met Shay at an art exhibit. He wasn't there because he had an interest in art, but because one of the partners had sponsored a young painter who had done a series of nudes.
Shay, who was attending at the artist's invitation, liked Anson upon first being introduced to him. He asked endless questions about how the paintings featuring her had been conceived, how long she'd had to pose, etc. When he invited her for coffee afterward, she readily accepted.
That first date led to others, many others. They were happy; they were in love. When he proposed, Shay covered his face with ardent kisses. But soon after their whirlwind courtship and hasty marriage, it became apparent that even as Anson was grooming himself to become a full partner in the accounting firm, he was also grooming Shay to be his idea of what a full partner's wife should be.
She found herself driving a sedate car, dressing as conservatively and unimaginatively as all the other wives, and attending luncheons and bridge tournaments that she found tedious and boring with women she found stupid and shallow.
"You're what!?" Anson shouted one night when she told him about a job she had gotten.
"I said I have a job posing for a sculptor. He's—"
"I don't give a damn who he is," Anson brutally interrupted. "You do mean pose naked, don't you?"
She gnawed her bottom lip and counted slowly to ten."Nude, yes."
"Well, forget it," he said uncompromisingly. "What would everybody think?"
Vaulting out of her chair, she told him her opinion of what everyone would think. "You knew what I did for a living before we were married. It never bothered you then."
"Before we were married, not after. Un-huh, I'm not having my wife parade around naked in front of some dirty old man. I don't care how famous he is."
She exploded. "What a stupid, provincial, witless thing to say!"
"Maybe from your 'artistic' point of view, but not from the point of view of any self-respecting husband. Naturally I assumed you'd give up all this modeling stuff when we got married."
"Well, you assumed wrong, didn't you?" she said, stamping out of the room.
She didn't do that job. She gave in to Anson's arguments, but things were never the same between them. He had tried to stifle her lively spirit, the very thing that had attracted him to her in the first place. Or had he merely admired her body? Either way, he hadn't let her be what she was, but had tried to mold her into something she wasn't.
Everyone seemed to want to do that. Her mother wanted her to be a lady. Her husband had wanted her to be a society matron. What this Ian Douglas wanted of her she wasn't sure, but he didn't like her as she was.
What rankled most was that she wanted his approval, not approval of her body, which was easy to come by, but approval for the person she was. It was insane, it made no sense, yet she wanted him to like her. The thought persisted that for some reason she was attracted to him—not only to his body, though she'd never seen a man who appealed to her more. Something inside her seemed to cry out for something he had to give.
"You fool," she ridiculed herself in the darkness. "That's part of his job. He's supposed to inspire that kind of spiritual confidence." She dismissed the nebulous emotions he fired in her as no more than a response he'd cleverly manipulated, but even as she fell asleep, she wasn't convinced that's all there was to it.
The next morning she stood on the other side of the swinging kitchen door, listening to jovial chatter and the clinking of breakfast dishes.
For a moment Shay felt fierce resentment. Why had she bothered to come up here this weekend? The three of them were getting along famously without her. She had known nothing but torment all night, both in her dreams and during long periods of sleepless tossing. Ian Douglas was to blame.
A mischievous light began to dance in her dark eyes, and a smile tilted her lips. Damned if she'd let him make her odd man out and ruin her weekend. No doubt he'd pegged her as a rebellious hellion last night. What he was going to see today was a sweetly compliant stepsister whom he wouldn't recognize. Let him figure it out!
"Good morning, everyone," she called cheerfully as she breezed into the kitchen and kissed her mother's raised cheek.
"Good morning, dear. Did you sleep well?"
"Like a rock," Shay lied. She leaned over John and kissed him on the forehead. "Good morning, John."
"Shay, how lovely you look this morning."
"Thank you." Until now she hadn't glanced at Ian. Now she did. He looked far more virile, handsome, and sexy than any man of his profession had a right to look. Swallowing her timidity, she drew close to him, placed her hands boldly on his shoulders, and bent down. Her lips brushed his. "Good morning, brother."
The electricity that scorched her lips and sizzled through every vein had nothing to do with sisterly love. To the tips of her toes, she was aware of his masculinity, his scent, his feel, his size. All were testimonies to his manliness. Her body yearned for it, hungered for it, and she feared that he wasn't fooled for one moment by the childish game she was playing. She could even imagine that he felt the same current of arousal that she did the instant their lips touched.
But when she pulled back and stood erect, he stretched his long legs out in front of him and assumed a posture of utter indifference. "Morning, sis."
Shay's blood rose to a boil for an entirely different reason now, and her good intentions of a moment before flew out the window. "Why aren't you at prayers or something?" she demanded. "Isn't that what men of the cloth do?" Her sandals tapped smartly on the floor as she crossed to the stove. She heard her mother's sigh.
"I've already said my prayers," Ian responded levelly.
"I hope you said some for me." She flashed him a false smile as she splashed coffee into a cup.
"As a matter of fact, the many I said for you took up most of my meditation."
Shay tested the glass coffee pot's guarantee not to break as she th
umped it back onto the burner. "I didn't ask for—"
"John and I had the most wonderful idea," Celia interjected loudly, overriding Shay's scathing remark to Ian. "Why don't the four of us play tennis this morning before it gets too warm?"
"Tennis?" For a moment Shay's dislike for Ian was replaced by astonishment. She'd never known her mother to participate in anything requiring as much energy as tennis. "When did you learn to play tennis?"
"John's teaching me," Celia said shyly, looking lovingly at her husband. "Of course I'm not very good yet, but—"
"She's improving every day," he finished proudly. "What about it, kids? Are you up for a doubles match?"
"Did you bring your racket and tennis clothes, Shay?" Celia asked.
"Yes, though at the time I couldn't figure out why you suggested it."
"Wonderful," Celia said, clapping her hands happily.
"I don't know," Shay hedged.
"Maybe Shay feels self-conscious about her game," Ian suggested. "If she doesn't want to play doubles, you two—"
"I play a great game," she retorted angrily, interrupting his buttery drawl. Their eyes clashed. She knew hers were shooting sparks of irritation. His were guileless, but lurking just behind the innocent expression, she saw lights of amusement and victory. She'd fallen for the oldest ploy in existence.
"You men go change while Shay and I clear the table," Celia said, standing. "Shay, I know you don't usually eat breakfast, but those blueberry muffins are scrumptious."
"Thank you, Mom, but no. Coffee's enough."