by Sandra Brown
"Hi," he said. "You made it."
"Am I late?"
"I was early," he confessed.
For a long minute they didn't say any more, only indulged their selfish eyes by gazing at each other.
"You look beautiful," he said at last.
Her challis dress was a soft gold, a perfect color and weight for the transition into the fall season. She'd chosen it to accent the wheat color of her hair and her warm skin tones. The fabric made velvety mysteries out of her eyes as she looked up at the man staring so greedily down at her.
"Thank you."
He seemed to pull himself physically out of the beckoning depths of those eyes and brought forth a magazine he'd been holding. It was a copy of Glamour. "I saw a model in this and wondered if it was you."
He opened the magazine to an earmarked page. On it was an ad for a soap and sponge combination imported from France that promised to smooth away unsightly cellulite when used daily. It featured a woman in a shower. It was a three-quarter shot of the woman's back. One raised arm revealed the sloping curve of a breast. It was a black and white photograph, but the woman's hair was pulled into a loose topknot as Shay often wore hers.
"No," she said, shaking her head. She looked up at him, then across to the newsstand where he'd obviously purchased the magazine. "Have you been looking for pictures of me?" she asked, her eyes swinging back to him.
"No, no," he hastened to assure her. "I was just thumbing through this while I was waiting for you, and I thought I recognized… I mean it resembled your … uh … back. Are you hungry?"
He spliced the two sentences together, obviously hoping Shay would forget the first and hear only the second. She was merciful, though she had a strong desire to ask him what about the picture had looked familiar. "Yes. I haven't eaten all day."
"Celia wouldn't like that."
"Promise you won't tell her."
"Only if you'll agree to eat in one of my favorite Italian restaurants. It's only two blocks from here."
"Do they have crusty bread and fettuccine Alfredo?" She tilted her head at a charming angle.
"Gobs of both."
She linked her arm in his. "Lead the way."
They were greeted at the door of a small family-owned restaurant by a short, rotund, balding man who smothered Ian in a hearty embrace. "My friend!" he boomed, thumping Ian on the back. "You honor my restaurant after too long a time."
"Hello, Lou," Ian said, disengaging himself from the bear hug. "I'd like you to meet Shay Morrison. Shay, Luigi Pettrocelli."
Lou inspected her with dancing black eyes. "A temptation for the pastor, hey?" His elbow dug into Ian's stomach as he laughed boisterously.
"Protestants learn to cope with temptation just as our Catholic counterparts do," Ian intoned solemnly, though his lips twitched with amusement.
"Pah!" Lou turned to Shay and whispered conspiratorially, "He's been trying to convert me for years."
"And you're a hopeless case," Ian said, finally giving vent to his laughter. "Do you have anything worth eating in the kitchen tonight?"
With a flourish Lou led them to a table and rattled off a string of orders in Italian to some unseen subordinate in the kitchen. A straw-covered bottle of Chianti and a basket of breadsticks were immediately hustled out by an aproned waiter, who seemed anxious to do his boss's bidding.
"I must leave, my friend," Lou said regretfully after he'd seen to their order. "My Tony is playing soccer tonight." He reached for Shay's hand and brought it to his lips. "You are a beautiful lady and just what this stuffy Protestant needs to stir his sluggish blood."
"Tell all the kids hello and kiss Angela for me," Ian said.
"Pah! She would swoon, and I don't want her lamenting over you when she crawls into my bed!" He thumped Ian's back with a blow that might have injured a weaker man. "It is good to see you, my friend. You are always in our prayers."
"As you are in mine," Ian said, standing to embrace the other man.
Lou bowed to Shay before he waddled off toward the back of the restaurant, issuing instructions in Italian that she interpreted to be for attentive service for his friend and his lady.
"He's wonderful," she said. "I gather you've been friends for a long time. Where did you meet him?"
"On the subway." At her astounded look, he chuckled. "I was about to be mugged by three toughs late one night. Lou came bounding up behind them like a linebacker, roaring like a lion. He banged the heads of two of them together and knocked them senseless. The third one ran away."
She was laughing. "Is that the truth?"
"Every word." He crisscrossed his heart with his index finger.
"You have a very ecumenical attitude toward each other," she said, teasing.
He was smiling but serious when he answered. "We understand each other. We worship the same Lord. Men all over the world call God by different names and worship Him differently than I do. He loves us all."
Tears glistened in her eyes as she regarded him across the candlelit table, admiring the man he was and all he stood for.
Later, as she popped the last bite of liberally buttered bread into her mouth, Ian said with amusement, "You only eat one meal a day, but it more than makes up for the other two." He inclined his head toward the platter she'd emptied.
She propped her elbows on the small, intimate table and glared at him. "Are you poking fun at my healthy appreciation of food?"
"Didn't your mother ever tell you that it's not ladylike to clean your plate? Especially in front of a suitor."
"My mother warned me about all the nasty things that can befall an incautious young lady."
He took a sip of Chianti and nodded to the waiter, who took away their plates. "Like what? What pitfalls did she warn you about?" Ian asked.
Shay ticked them off on her fingers, thoroughly enjoying herself. "Talking to strangers, accepting rides from men I don't know, letting a stranger into the house. Things like that."
Replete with good food and two glasses of wine—her limit since the night she'd climbed imprudently into Ian's bed—she sat back in her chair and gazed at him across the table. The friendly clatter of dishes in the kitchen, the murmur of conversation from other diners, the soft music from the overhead speakers all faded away. At that moment her world consisted only of the two of them. "The one thing she didn't warn me about," she continued, "was ministers with sexy blue eyes."
He set his wineglass aside and leaned across the table, as close to her as he could get. His eyes roved hungrily over her face. "Do you think they're sexy?" he asked, obviously pleased.
"Uh-huh."
"Why should your mother have warned you about such a thing?"
She was jolted out of her pleasant daze and back into the world of reality. "Because … because any feelings I might develop for such a man would confuse me."
"Why?"
She ignored his question and asked the one that had plagued her for days. "Ian, why did you become a minister?"
He signaled for coffee. The waiter obliged. After a thoughtful sip, he began. "After I graduated from Columbia, I joined the Peace Corps. It began as a lark, a frivolous whim. I had graduated with a degree in business. My father hoped I'd take over his business, but I stalled, unconvinced that was what I wanted to do with my life. The Peace Corps was a way of buying time without looking lazy or unambitious." He grinned, and even in the dim lighting his teeth shone. The candles on the table were mirrored in his eyes.
"I went to South America for two years. Without boring you with the details, I can say that my outlook on life changed while I was there. We, or I should stress I, had always taken my standard of living for granted. Food, warmth, and medicine if I was sick were elemental things to me but luxuries to so many other people. The hopelessness of the people affected me most of all.
"I came back filled with a zeal to be a foreign missionary. I attended seminary. It was exciting to me, Shay. For the first time I felt I really knew what I wanted to do with my life. B
ut I had a terrible time with languages. I had learned enough conversational Spanish to get by in South America, but as for reading and writing it properly, I was unteachable. I agonized for months. Why had God filled me with such a determination to do something, only to make it impossible for me to accomplish it?"
Without thinking, Shay covered his fingers with hers. He turned his hand over and captured hers, squeezing lightly. "One day while I was still in the seminary, a friend of my mother's came to me in tears, crying for her husband who was an alcoholic. We prayed together. I counseled her and finally managed to see the husband and talk to him. After several such occasions, when I was able to help the people I related to, it occurred to me that God was trying to tell me something."
Ian seemed embarrassed by his simplistic explanation. "You don't have to go halfway around the world to find suffering and need," he went on. "My congregation may have more amenities than their counterparts in an Indian village in South America can imagine, but spiritual deficiency is universal. It knows no boundaries—not geographical, not social, not economical." His eyes begged for her understanding. "Have I answered your question?"
She nodded without speaking. Yes, he had answered her question. She understood him better now and was faced with a bleak truth. She, Shay Morrison, had no calling like Ian did. She could share nothing of his life. She couldn't be even a small part of it.
Ian consulted his watch and winced. "Can you forgo dessert until after the concert? If we don't hurry, Neil and Barbra will start without us."
They arrived just in time, plopping breathlessly into their seats after dashing down two blocks.
The concert was excellent. They applauded when encouraged to, laughing from the sheer pleasure they derived from the music. More than once Ian brought his fingers to his lips and piercingly whistled his approval of the performers.
Catching her wide, dismayed eyes on him, he leaned down and shouted in her ear over the roar of the crowd, "Don't look so shocked. I don't do that from the pulpit." He winked at her and threw an arm around her shoulders, hugging her tight.
During the poignant ballads, he held her hand, stroking her palm with his thumb. After one song with particularly romantic lyrics, the spotlight gradually faded to black. Ian reached over, threaded his fingers through her hair, and turned her toward him. Their mouths found each other in the total darkness.
His tongue barely breached her lips to touch the tip of hers, but she felt its caress deep inside her. Pinpricks of desire between her thighs brought a soft moan to her lips, a moan he captured with his mouth. Her breasts swelled with awakening passion. Her nipples tingled with expectation.
She knew then that what she'd felt with Anson had been the sensual enlightenment of a curious youth not far from her teens. What she felt for Ian was the strong, passionate drive of a woman, mature, full of need, wanting to share her body with a man who felt the same instinctive compulsion to be made complete by joining with another.
They left Madison Square Garden absorbed by the throng. Shay didn't mind the crowd. She actually welcomed the press. It gave her an excuse to keep her body plastered to Ian's. As she walked before him, her buttocks fit snugly against him. To prevent them from getting separated, he locked his arms around her waist.
Occasionally his biceps bumped into the sides of her breasts. Since she wore only a lacy camisole under her dress, those accidental touches induced erotic fantasies she was certain would have shocked her escort. But when she glanced up at him over her shoulder, laying her head against his chest to do so, the look in his eyes told her he could well be sharing and participating in her fantasies.
The place he'd selected to take her for dessert was a restaurant famous for its pastries and operatic memorabilia. It was a bustling narrow restaurant with patrons and waiters calling out orders piped in arias. Ian managed to squeeze them into a table and shout their order to a rushing waiter. Miraculously, within minutes they were being served pastries and aromatic coffee.
"What is this high caloric monstrosity?" Shay asked, probing with her fork at the base of a culinary sculpture.
"Just eat it," Ian commanded. He watched with delight as she dug into the layers of pastry, chocolate mousse, whipped cream, and slivered almonds. She'd bemoan any residual bulges later. For the time being she was unrepentantly gluttonous.
As they were leaving the noisy nightspot, a man entering the door Ian was holding whirled around and cried, "Shay! Is that you, my darling Shay? It is! How are you, darling?"
He leaned toward her and, bobbing his head forward, kissed first one of her cheeks then the other in an affected manner.
"Hello, Armand," she said flatly.
"It's been ages and ages," he gushed.
"Yes, it has," she agreed, thinking that it hadn't been long enough and that it would be another long time if she had anything to do about it.
The man's reptilian eyes appraised Ian, and apparently approving, he smiled up at him. "Armand Boliver, my friend Ian Douglas," Shay said, executing the introduction emotionlessly.
"Charmed," the man said, offering a limp hand to Ian, who shook it very briefly. "Working much, Shay?" Armand asked, keeping his eyes on Ian.
"Now and then."
"You're too modest, darling. I heard you're going to pose for Robert Glad starting next week. He does absolutely divine things in wood—if he doesn't get carried away with his chisel."
The remark was intentionally snide and laden with sexual innuendo, but Shay chose to disregard both. She couldn't lie and say it had been nice to see Armand. Instead she excused them by saying, "It's late. Good night, Armand."
Without giving the man a chance to speak, she grabbed Ian's arm and pulled him away. He didn't seem inclined to linger either. For several blocks they walked in tense silence. Shay knew Ian was curious, but she wasn't going to explain unless he asked. As they waited for a traffic light to change, he turned to her. "Have you ever—"
"No!" she said, shaking her head adamantly. "I've never posed for him."
They crossed the street before Ian pursued the topic. "What does he do?"
"He's a photographer," she said crisply. "A sorry excuse for one, if you ask me. My agent sent me to him on a go-see. I stayed in his studio—and I use the term loosely; pleasure palace would be far more appropriate—for exactly two minutes. I've never gone back. Nor will I. I've heard all kinds of tales since then about what goes on in that room lined with leopard skin. Drugs, orgies." She shuddered. "He gives me the creeps, and he's never forgiven me for laughing when he suggested that I take off all my clothes and lie down on his vibrating waterbed."
She stopped in her tracks as Ian issued a blistering curse through his teeth. He grasped her arm and spun her around. "If he hurt you—"
"No," she said firmly. The feral light in Ian's eyes alarmed her. To the passionate nature she sensed in Ian she added a volatile temper. But then she'd seen evidences of it before, just not to this degree. If she'd given the least hint that Armand had done something unpleasant to her, she felt certain Ian would have gladly gone back and leveled the man. "Armand is too much of a coward to hurt anyone," she added. "Did you hear what he said about Robert Glad? That's just the kind of petty remark I'd expect him to make about someone with real talent."
"Who's Robert Glad?"
"He's a sculptor who works mainly in wood." They were touching upon a sensitive subject, and she wished she could think of an unobtrusive way to change it.
"That … that Armand person said you were posing for Glad. Next week."
"Yes."
After another lengthy, awkward silence, Ian picked up the conversation. "Will you… I mean, is it…"
She came to a sudden halt in the middle of the sidewalk and faced him. "Nude? Is that the word you find so difficult to say?"
"No. I mean, yes, that's the word, but no, I don't find it difficult to say!"
"Sure you don't," she ground out. "You were going through that magazine tonight before I got there looking for pi
ctures of me, like a temperance marcher sniffing out demon liquor."
"Shay—"
"Is Armand the kind of artist you picture me working for? That base, decadent worm?" She pulled herself up to her full height and tossed her head back proudly. "For your information, I'm as particular about the artists I'll work with as they are in choosing me. And to satisfy your curiosity, so you won't be too embarrassed to ask again, yes, my breasts will be bare next week, though the rest of me will be covered. Robert Glad, a famous sculptor, has been commissioned by a historical society in Hawaii to do a piece for a museum. He's using a Polynesian girl's face but my torso. Now, does all that meet with your moralistic approval?"
"You're not being fair, Shay," Ian said with a calmness that further infuriated her.
"Nor are you." Her body was taut with anger. Every muscle was straining with it. "You formed an opinion about me when you caught me looking at you naked. All right, that was a dreadful sin. Gouge out my eyes. Start the fires at the stake."
He, too, was getting angry. Several passersby stared at them, but they were hardly aware of anything except their anger and their problem, which at the moment seemed insurmountable. The hopelessness of it contributed to Shay's fury.
"You have a beautiful body, Reverend Douglas. I have a deep, artistic appreciation for beautiful bodies, so I looked at you. And yes, I liked what I saw. And no, I wasn't looking strictly aesthetically. And damn it, I wish I didn't still want you."
She spun away from him, only to collide with the side of a newsstand. She scanned the lurid display with tear-filled eyes, and her stomach turned in revulsion. The selection of magazines varied only in their degree of tastelessness. All the reading matter was pornographic. Choking on her hurt and anger, she turned back to Ian. "Why don't you buy some of these and pore over them carefully to see if I'm in them? That's what you liken me to, isn't it?" Her hand swept the rack, knocking a number of the magazines to the sidewalk.
The proprietor came off his stool and shouted at her, "Hey, lady, what the hell do you think you're doin'?"
She stumbled blindly down the sidewalk, then turned to see Ian shove a five-dollar bill at the man, who was cursing them both viciously with each chomp on his stale, unlit cigar. She glimpsed Ian rushing after her and heard him calling her name as she entered the parking garage and gave her license number to the attendant.