Carnal Innocence (33 page)

Then they were kneeling in the center of the bed, the mattress groaning as it sagged, the heat pouring back as the wind died and the rain slowed to a patter. Her hands linked around his waist. His dived into her hair.
Surprise, and a flicker of fear, flashed into her eyes as he dragged her head back. The look darkened to passion as he crushed her lips with his.

This was the beast that prowled beneath his veneer of lazy affability. She could all but feel it roar through him, snapping at its leash, threatening to devour both of them in one savage gulp.

Her fingers dug into his hips, then went limp as he molded her to him. He was telling her something, but his harsh whisper was lost in the beat of her blood.

Yes, this was what he wanted. Everything he wanted. To feel her go pliant with pleasure. To taste the hot need on her mouth. To hear that soft, helpless sound she made deep in her throat as she lost herself in him. To know that she thought of nothing and no one but him.

“Caroline.” He steadied himself by pressing his lips to her shoulder, letting his teeth run over that scented curve. “There’s something I need to do.”

“Yes.” She reached for him, but he caught her wrists.

“No, not that. Not yet.” With his eyes on her, he pressed her back so that his body covered hers. He nipped at her lips, tormenting rather than satisfying. “What I need to do now …” He caught her chin lightly between his teeth then gently but purposefully captured her hands. “Is drive you crazy.”

“Tucker—”

“If I let you run those hands over me just now, this’ll all be over much too quickly.” He slid down, circling her breasts with slow, open-mouthed kisses. “There’s an old southern tradition.” He rolled his tongue lazily over her nipple and watched her eyes cloud over. “That if something’s worth doing, it’s worth taking your sweet time.”

Her hands flexed desperately under his as he shifted to her other breast. “I can’t.”

“Sure you can, darlin’.” He drew her into his mouth until she cried out, then gently released her. “I’m going to show you. After, if you decide you don’t like it, we’ll try again.”

She writhed, her head turning restlessly on the
pillow as the flood of sensation began to rise. With lips and teeth and tongue he savored. The air was too thick to breathe. She fought it into her lungs, hissed it out again through trembling lips. But even as her mind struggled against total submission, her body was betraying her. It reveled in the hot, primal glory of being taken. It shuddered and strained toward the wild release he held just out of reach.

Damp flesh slid over damp flesh as he glided down her, as much a prisoner as she. A moan dragged out of her, seductive on the sultry air. He rubbed his cheek on her belly, the anticipation of intimacy swimming in his head like fine wine. Once he would have said he knew all there was to know about pleasure. Once he would have denied that the pleasure was much different with one woman than with another.

But it was Caroline’s scent teasing his senses, her sobbing breaths quickening his heartbeat, her soft, pale skin quivering under his lips.

And everything was different.

She arched and bucked when he slid his tongue over the sensitive crease of her thigh. He lingered inches away from the core of heat, torturing them both until he felt her body stiffen, freeze, then go lax.

The first ragged climax left her limp. She was floating now, weightless, no longer aware of the room or the heat, only of staggering relief. Her lips curved. Freed, her hands stroked down her own dazzled body, skimming over skin slicked with sweat until they brushed through his hair.

“I guess I liked it after all,” she managed to say.

“We’re not through yet.” He cupped his hands under her hips, lifted them, and devoured her.

He shot her from contentment back into the storm so quickly the breath strangled in her throat. Her groping hands slid off his damp shoulders to grip desperately at the sheets. Wave after wave of titanic sensations battered her until there was only greed. His and her own. He was done with the gentle teasing, and the hands that had flowed over her like silk over velvet sought and demanded
with a ruthlessness that was as arousing as it was unexpected.

There were dark pleasures here, dark secret pleasures that were born on hot summer nights. Together they thrashed over the bed, wallowing in them as freely as animals coupling in the grass.

He fought the tide back one last time, dragging her with him with hands that shook.

“Look at me.” His chest heaved with each breath as he braced himself over her. “Caroline, look at me.”

Her eyes fluttered open, the irises dark as midnight.

“This is more.” He lowered his mouth to hers and the words were muffled against her lips as he plunged into her. “This is more.”

Spent, she lay drowsing, content with Tucker’s weight. There were a few aches beginning to make themselves known, but even that made her smile. She’d always considered herself an adequate lover—though at the end Luis had certainly disagreed—but she’d never felt quite so smug before.

She gave a little sigh and stretched. With a grunt, Tucker rolled to reverse positions. “Better?” he asked when she lay on top of him, her head on his chest.

“It was fine before.” She smiled again. “Just fine.” Another sigh and she opened heavy eyes. After a moment’s bafflement she realized they were sprawled over the foot of the bed. “How did we get down here?”

“Dexterity. Give me a few minutes and we can work our way up to the other end.”

“Hmm.” She pressed her lips to his chest. “The rain stopped. Only it’s even hotter than before.”

“We might have had something to do with that.”

Caroline roused herself to lift her head. “You know what I want?”

“Honey, once I get my energy back, I’ll do my best to give you anything you want.”

“I’ll remember that. But …” She lowered her mouth to his. “What I want right now, what I really need
right now, is ice cream.” She grinned down at him. “Want some ice cream, Tucker?”

“I might be able to choke some down. Now that you mention it.” He had an amusing little fantasy about licking Strawberry Surprise off some interesting parts of her anatomy. “You going to bring it up here?”

“That was my plan.” After indulging in another kiss, she slid out of bed to root in the closet for her robe. “One scoop or two?”

His teeth flashed as she crossed the robe over her breasts. “I’m a two-scoop man myself. Want some help?”

“I think I can manage.”

“Good.” He tucked his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. Caroline walked out, certain he’d take advantage of the lull with a nap.

In the kitchen she scooped up ice cream by lamplight. It occurred to her that this was a moment that would cling in her memory. The sultry kitchen, the smell of rain and lamp oil, the strong, healthy afterglow of loving. Spooning up ice cream to be eaten in bed.

She was humming to herself as she carried the bowls back down the hall. Even the shrill interruption of the phone couldn’t dampen her mood. She set down one bowl and, cocking the receiver between her shoulder and ear, dug into the other with her spoon.

“Hello.”

“Caroline. Thank goodness.”

The spoon stopped on its way to her lips. Caroline dropped it back in the bowl and put the bowl on the table. Apparently there was one thing that could dampen her mood. Her mother’s voice.

“Hello, Mother.”

“I’ve been trying to reach you for over an hour. They had trouble with the lines. Which is no surprise, considering the kind of service down there.”

“We had a storm. How are you? And Dad?”

“We’re both fine. Your father’s on a quick trip to New York, but I had several engagements and couldn’t accompany him.”

Georgia Waverly spoke quickly, without a trace of
the delta she’d worked so hard to rid from her voice and her heart.

“It’s you I’m worried about.” she continued, and Caroline could imagine her at her rosewood desk in the immaculate and tasteful sitting room, checking off her daughter’s name on one of her innumerable lists.

Order flowers. Attend charity luncheon. Worry about Caroline.

The image brought a nasty tug of guilt.

“There’s nothing to worry about.”

“Nothing! I was attending a dinner party at the Fulbrights this evening, and I had to hear from Carter that my daughter was attacked!”

“I wasn’t hurt,” Caroline said quickly.

“I know that,” Georgia snapped back, testy at the interruption. “Carter explained everything, which is more than you bothered to do. I told you all along you had no business going down there, but you refused to listen. Now I’m told—and by the way, I don’t appreciate hearing about all of this over my soup!—that you’re embroiled in some kind of murder investigation.”

“I’m sorry.” Caroline closed her eyes. Apologies became the bill of fare when she dealt with her mother. “It all happened so fast. And it’s over.”

A movement on the stairs had her glancing up. She saw Tucker and wearily turned away.

“Carter made it quite clear that’s simply not true. You know he owns the local NBC affliliate here in Philadelphia. He said the story was already running, and that several news crews were flying down to cover it at the scene. Naturally, when your name was leaked, it became hot news.”

“Oh, Christ.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing.” She passed a hand through her hair. Be reasonable, she warned herself. Somehow she had to be reasonable. “I am sorry you heard about this from someone else. And I know the publicity will annoy you. I can’t help the press, Mother, any more than I can help the reason for it. I’m sorry if this upsets you.”

“Of course it upsets me. Wasn’t it bad enough that
we had to play down the scandal of you being hospitalized, dropping your summer schedule, your public estrangement from Luis?”

“Yes,” Caroline said dryly. “That must have been very difficult for you. It was inconsiderate of me to collapse that way.”

“Don’t use that tone with me. If you hadn’t let yourself become overwrought about a minor disagreement with Luis, none of it would have happened. And now this business of going down there, burying yourself in that place—”

“I’m not buried.”

“Wasting your talent.” Georgia plowed over Caroline’s protests like a blade through soft dirt. “Humiliating yourself and your family. Do you think I’ve had a single restful night knowing you’re there, alone, unprotected?”

Caroline began to rub at the ache in her temple. “I’ve been alone for years.”

Georgia never heard the statement, or the wistfulness behind it.

“And now—well, you might have been raped or murdered.”

“Oh, yes, and that would have been dreadful publicity.”

There was a brief pause. “That was uncalled for, Caroline.”

“Yes, it was.” She pressed her thumb and forefinger against her eyes and repeated the usual litany. “I’m sorry. Perhaps I’m still shaken by what happened.”

Are you going to ask what happened, Mother? Are you going to ask how I feel, what I need, or only how I behaved?

“I understand. And I expect you to understand my feelings as well. I insist that you come home immediately.”

“I am home.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t belong there any more than I did. I raised you better than that, Caroline. Your father and I gave you every advantage. I won’t see you throw it all away over some sort of pique.”

“Pique? Well, that’s an interesting way of putting it,
Mother. I can only say I’m sorry I can’t do what you want. Or be what you want.”

“I don’t know how this strain of stubbornness developed, but it’s very unattractive. No doubt Luis found it equally so, but he’s more tolerant than I. He’s terribly concerned.”

“He’s … are you telling me you called him? That you went against my express wishes and called him?”

“A child’s wishes aren’t always the same as that child’s best interests. In any case, I wanted to speak to him about your White House performance in September.”

Caroline pressed a hand to her stomach where the knot was tightening. “I stopped being a child the first time you pushed me out onstage. And I don’t need his opinion on my performance.”

“I’m not surprised by your attitude. I’ve come to expect this kind of ingratitude.” Georgia’s voice tightened. Caroline could picture her, drumming her carefully manicured nails on the polished surface of the desk. “I can only hope that when Luis contacts you you’ll display better manners. You and I are both well aware that he was the best thing that could have happened to you. He understood your artistic temperament.”

“He understood my pitiful naïveté. I suppose it makes no difference to you that I found him boffing the flutist in his dressing room?”

“Your language is as crude as your surroundings.”

“It can get cruder.”

“I’ve had enough of this nonsense. I insist you come home. We have no more than a matter of weeks, as it is, to prepare for your appearance at the White House. And of course you gave no thought at all to your dress. I’ve had to find the time to consult with your designer. Now this new publicity—it’s very detrimental.”

So’s a knife through the heart, Caroline thought. “It isn’t necessary for you to take on any work,” she said carefully. “I’ve already spoken to Frances and finalized the plans. I’ll be flying into D.C. for the performance,
and flying out again the next day. As for my costume, my wardrobe is more than adequate already.”

“Have you lost your senses? This is one of the most important steps of your career. I’ve already started arranging interviews, photo sessions—”

“Then you’ll have to unarrange,” Caroline said briefly. “And let me assure you, Mother, that I’m alive and well. The man who attacked me is dead. I killed him myself, so I should know.”

“Caroline—”

“Please give Dad my love. Good night.” Delicately, she set the receiver back on the hook. She waited a full minute, wanting to be sure she could speak without screaming. “The ice cream’s melted.”

Picking up the bowls, she walked back into the kitchen to dump them in the sink.

I
t seemed to be his day for soothing feelings and easing guilt. Tucker wondered how a man could get through most of his life riding just above the surface of troubled waters, then find himself neck-deep in the swirl.

Caroline’s emotions still sizzled in the air. It was as if someone had tossed a live wire into those churning waters, where it would snap and spark.

He wished he had a cigarette, but the pack was upstairs, probably drenched by his wet shirt.

He looked up those shadowy stairs—not without longing for the peace and solitude of the bedroom—then back toward the kitchen, where the lamplight flickered and tension brewed.

When he went into the kitchen, she was standing at the sink, looking out the window much as she had the morning after Burns’s visit. Only this time she was facing the dark.

Tucker didn’t want her to face it alone. He walked up behind her, felt a wave of frustration when her shoulders stiffened at his touch.

“You know, my usual routine on finding myself with a broody woman would be to make some joke and talk
her back into bed. If that didn’t work, I’d find the quickest way to the door.” Despite her resistance, he began to knead her rigid shoulders. “The usual doesn’t seem to have much to do with you.”

“I wouldn’t mind a joke right now.”

He laid his brow on the back of her head. Wasn’t it a damn shame he couldn’t think of one, he mused, or of anything except what was hurting her. “Talk to me, Caroline.”

With a restless movement she switched on the tap to wash the sink clear. “There’s nothing to say.”

As he lifted his head, he could see the ghost of their reflection in the black window glass. He knew she could see it, too, but he wondered if she knew how fragile it was, how easily wiped away.

“When you walked downstairs a few minutes ago, I could still feel the way you’d been, lying there with me. All soft and easy. Now you’re all tied up in knots. I don’t like seeing you this way.”

“It’s nothing to do with you.”

The speed with which he whirled her around surprised them both, as did the barely restrained violence in his voice. “You want to use me for sex and leave out everything else, then make it plain right now. If what went on between us upstairs was just a tussle on hot sheets for you, then say so and we’ll play this your way. But it was more for me.” He gave her a quick shake, as if to rattle the wall she’d thrown up between them. “Dammit, it’s never been like that before.”

“Don’t pressure me.” Eyes blazing, she shoved against his chest. “My whole life I’ve had to tolerate other people pressuring me. I’m done with that.”

“You’re not done with me. If you think you can take a few swipes and send me out the door, you’re wrong. I’m sticking.” To prove his point, he pressed his lips to hers in a hard, possessive kiss. “We’re both going to start to get used to it.”

“I don’t have to get used to anything. I can say yes, or I can say no, or I can—” She broke off, squeezing her eyes shut. “Oh, why am I fighting with you? It’s not you.” After a deep breath she slipped away from him.
“It’s not you. Tucker. It’s me. Shouting at you isn’t going to make it go away.”

“I don’t mind you shouting—much—if it makes you fee! better.”

She smiled, rubbing absently at her temple. “I think one of Dr. Palamo’s miracle pills would do a better job of it.”

“Let’s try something else.” Catching her hands, he drew her to a chair. “You sit here while I pour us a couple of glasses of that wine I brought you a while back. Then you tell me why that phone call got you all het up.”

“Het up.” She sat, closing her eyes again. “That expression covers a lot of ground, doesn’t it? My mother would say overwrought, but I like het up.” When she opened her eyes there was the faintest hint of amusement in them. “I’ve been het up quite a bit over the last months. That was my mother on the phone.”

“I got the drift of that.” He drew the cork on the wine. “And that she was—overwrought—about what happened yesterday.”

“Yes indeed. Particularly since it was a topic of conversation at a dinner party she attended. Gossip’s a habit of Yankees, too—though my mother’s crowd would call it socializing. But she was most particularly upset since the press has picked up the scent, and I have an important engagement pending. She’s afraid the President and the Soviet Premier might not want to hear Mozart’s Violin Concerto Number Five played by a woman who so recently shot someone’s face off.” She accepted the glass Tucker held out and offered a quick toast. “Georgia Waverly’s daughter Caroline isn’t supposed to attract unsavory publicity. What would the Women’s League think?”

“Could be she was scared for you.”

“Could be. Oh, to give her her due, she wouldn’t want anything to happen to me. She does love me, in her way. It’s just that her way is so difficult to live up to.” She sipped her wine, and it was cold and tart and bracing. “She’s always wanted the best for me—her idea of the best. I’ve spent my entire life trying to give her
that. Then I had to take a hard look and admit that I couldn’t give her that anymore.”

“People get comfortable with the way things are.” He sat beside her. With the oil lamp flickering on the table between them. “It might take her a while longer to accept that you’ve changed the rules.”

“Or she might never accept it. That’s something else I have to understand.” Cradling the glass in both hands. Caroline looked around the room. The old refrigerator thudded, then began its whining hum. Rain was dripping musically from the gutter.

Worn linoleum and faded curtains, she thought. The lamplight was kind to the room, as it would have been to a tired woman. Caroline found that incredibly comforting.

“I love this place,” she murmured. “Despite everything that’s happened, I feel right here. And I need …”

“What?”

“I need to belong somewhere. I need the simplicity, the continuity.”

“That doesn’t sound like something you should apologize for.”

So he’d heard it, she thought with a grim little smile. It was still there, that habitual tone of apology whenever she took something for herself.

“No, it’s not. I’m working on that. You see, she’d never understand what I’m saying to you, what I’m feeling. And she certainly can’t understand what I need.”

“Then I guess it comes down to pleasing her, or pleasing yourself.”

“I’ve come to that conclusion myself. But it’s difficult, when pleasing myself alienates her so completely. She grew up in this house, Tucker. She’s ashamed of that. She’s ashamed that her father chopped cotton for a living and that her mother canned jellies. Ashamed of where she came from, and of the two people who gave her life, and did the best they could to make that life a good one.”

“That’s something for her to deal with, not you.”

“But it’s because of that shame that I’m here at all.
It connects us. I guess that’s what families do, and you don’t really have any choice about your link in the chain.”

“Maybe not, but you can choose what comes after you.”

“And what comes after is still bound with what came before. She never gave me a chance to know my grandparents. They did without a lot of things so that she could go to college in Philadelphia. I didn’t hear that from my mother,” she added, and there was bitter regret in her voice. “I heard it from Happy Fuller. My grandmother took in laundry, sewing, did what the ladies call fancy work to sell. All to scrape together pennies for tuition. They didn’t have to pay it long, which was a blessing, I suppose. She met my father during the first semester. He’s often told me how he’d tried to weasel out of the blind date his roommate had hooked him into. And how, the moment he set eyes on my mother, he fell in love. Do you ever picture your parents that way? On their first date, falling in love?”

“My father set his sights on Mama when she was barely twelve years old. She made him wait six years.”

“Mine moved quicker. They were married before my mother finished her first year of college. The Waverlys were an old, established family in Philadelphia. My father was already destined for corporate law. I know it must have been difficult for her, trying to fit into that niche of society. But for as long as I can remember, she’s been more of a snob than any of the Waverlys. A house in the best part of town, clothes from the most exclusive designers, the proper vacations at the proper resorts in the proper season.”

“Most people tend to overcompensate when they’ve got something to prove.”

“Oh, she had a lot to prove. And in short order, she produced a child to help her prove it. I had a nanny to deal with the messier aspects of child rearing, but Mother took care of decorum, behavior, attitudes. She used to send for me, and I’d go into her sitting room. It always smelled of hothouse roses and Chanel. She would
instruct me, patiently, on what was expected of a Waverly.”

Tucker reached out to touch her hair. “What was expected of a Waverly?”

“Perfection.”

“That’s a tough one. Being a Longstreet, my daddy just expected me to ‘be a man.’ ’Course, that was in big, tall capital letters, and his ideas and mine veered apart after a while. He didn’t use the parlor either,” Tucker remembered. “The woodshed was his style.”

“Oh, Mother never raised a hand to me. She didn’t have to. It was her idea that I take up the violin. She thought it was classy. I should be grateful for that,” Caroline said with a sigh. “But then, it wasn’t enough that I play well. I had to be the best. Fortunately for me, I had talent. A prodigy, they called me. By the time I was ten that word made me cringe. She picked out my music, my instructors, my recital clothes—the same way she picked out my friends. Then I began to tour, just sporadically at first, because of my age. There were tutors, and the touring increased. By the time I was sixteen, the path had been set. For nearly twelve more years I kept to it.”

“Did you want to?”

The fact that he would ask made her smile. No one else ever had. “Whenever I began to think I had a choice, she would be there. In person, by phone, in a letter. It was almost as if she could sense that little seed of rebellion beginning to take root. She’d just nip it off. I’d let her.”

“Why?”

“I wanted her to love me.” Her eyes filled, but she blinked the tears away. “And I was afraid she didn’t. I was sure she wouldn’t if I wasn’t perfect.” Ashamed, she brushed at a tear that had crept through her defenses. “That sounds pathetic.”

“No.” He wiped the tear away himself. “It only sounds sad, for your mother.”

She took a shaky breath, like a swimmer struggling toward shore. “About three years ago I met Luis in London. He was the most brilliant maestro I’ve ever
worked with. He was young, thirty-two when I met him, and he’d built a flashy reputation in Europe. He conducted an orchestra the way a matador dominates a bull ring. Decisive, arrogant, sexual. He was physically stunning, and magnetic.”

“I get the picture.”

She laughed a little. “I was twenty-five. I’d never been with a man.”

Tucker had started to drink, but set the glass down. “You’d never …”

“Rolled in the hay?” The stunned expression on his face had her lips quirking. But the smile didn’t last. “No. When I was growing up, my mother kept me on a very short leash, and I didn’t have the nerve to strain against it very often. When I required an escort to some affair, she chose him. You could say that her taste and mine didn’t mesh. I wasn’t particularly interested in the men she found suitable.”

“That’s why you like me.” He leaned over to give her a kiss. “I’d turn her hair white.”

“Actually, I never thought about it. Another first for me.” Pleased with the idea, she tapped her wineglass against his. “Later, when I began to tour by myself, my schedule was rugged, and I was … the term’s repressed.”

He thought about the woman who’d just tumbled over the bed with him. “Uh-huh.”

She hadn’t realized sarcasm could be soothing. “My sexuality was tied up in my music. I certainly didn’t believe I was the kind of woman who’d just fall into bed with the first attractive man who crooked his finger my way.” She reached for the wine bottle. “Within thirty-six hours of my first rehearsal with Luis, he proved me wrong.”

She shrugged and drank. “He overwhelmed me. Flowers, soulful looks, desperate promises of undying love. He couldn’t exist without me. His life had been meaningless before I’d come into it. He gave me the works. I should add that my mother adored him. He came from Spanish aristocracy.”

“Suitable,” Tucker said.

“Oh, eminently. When I had to leave London for Paris, he phoned me every day, sent small, charming gifts, gorgeous flowers. He rushed to Berlin to join me for a weekend. It continued that way for more than a year, and if I heard rumors that he was romancing some actress or cuddling with a socialite, I ignored it. I thought it was vicious gossip. Oh, maybe I suspected something, but if I so much as hinted to him that I’d heard something, he flew into a rage at my unwarranted jealousy, my possessiveness, my lack of self-esteem. And my work kept me occupied. I’d just signed a contract for a brutal six-month tour.”

She lasped into silence, thinking back. The airports, hotels, rehearsals, performances. The flu she’d picked up in Sydney and hadn’t shaken off until Tokyo. The strained conversations with Luis. The promises, the disappointments. And the news clipping someone had left on her dressing room table. With the picture of Luis embracing a gorgeous French actress.

“There’s no point in going into every miserable detail, but the tour was relentless, my relationship with Luis began to unravel, and my confidence—my personal confidence—hit the skids. Luis and I ended things with an ugly scene full of accusations and tears. His accusations, my tears. At that point in my life I hadn’t learned to fight well.”

Tucker laid a hand over hers. “Then you learned fast.”

“Once I make up my mind, I’m a quick study. Too bad it took me nearly twenty-eight years to make up my mind. When Luis and I parted ways, I wanted to take some time off, but I’d already been committed to all these guest appearances and a special for cable TV. My health …” It was difficult to admit it, even now. No matter how illogical it was, she was still embarrassed by the illness. “Well, it deteriorated. And I—”