Friends and Lovers (7 page)

“It’s very hard to miss,” she observed dryly.

He caught a strand of her loosened hair and tugged at it, bringing her face close to his. Her eyes were wide and dreamy, her mouth slightly swollen from the long, sweet pressure of his.

“Kiss me,” he murmured, bending. His mouth brushed hers and she looped her arms around his neck, her eyes closing as she felt his mouth crush against hers lazily, easily, as if he had all day. It wasn’t a threatening pressure at all, nothing to frighten her; just a warm, rough kiss.

He drew back with a faint smile. “How about the ballet tonight?” he asked. “I’ve got tickets for
Swan Lake.
”

Her face lit up. “I’d love to!”

“I’ll pick you up about six. We’ll have a late supper at my apartment. I’ll have Josito go over and get it started before I come by for you.”

She nodded, searching his face. “You’re different, like this,” she said.

He drew in a long, slow breath as he returned that intent look. “So are you, honey. Sweeter than I dreamed….”

She lowered her eyes. “Go drink your poisoned beer and bale your hay. Poor old tired thing,” she murmured, eyeing the broken-down machine with the two cursing mechanics grumbling over it. “If you had any compassion in you, you’d give it a decent burial and buy a new one.”

“Not,” he told her, “until it gives out completely. I’m not replacing a perfectly good machine.”

“It’s ten years old!”

“I’ve got a horse ten years old, and he works better now than he ever did.”

“He’s probably terrified that you’ll turn those mechanics loose on him,” she returned.

He leaned forward and kissed her mouth, hard. “See you later.”

He opened the door and got out, beer in hand. She stared at his broad back as he moved away, holding up the frosty cans to the obvious delight of his co-workers. Madeline started the little car and drove away, thankful that she was driving, not walking. Her knees didn’t feel too strong at the moment.

Chapter Five

S
wan Lake
had never been lovelier. The ballerinas looked like fairies as they floated through the sensuous ballet. Of course, the fact that John caught her hand at the beginning and held it warmly and tightly until intermission had nothing to do with her exhilaration.

He smoked his cigarette silently during intermission, his turbulent eyes never leaving Madeline. In her long, silky gold dress, she was a sight to hold any man’s eyes.

“I like you in that color,” he said quietly. “It brings out those tiny gold flecks in your eyes.”

She smiled. “You don’t look bad yourself,” she returned, letting her eyes run down the dark elegance of his evening clothes. “There’s a brunette a row over from us who hasn’t paid any attention at all to the dancers. She’s been too busy leering at you.”

“Oh?” A corner of his mustache was raised in a wicked smile. “You’ll have to point her out to me, won’t you?”

“Not on your life,” she said with a surge of pure jealousy. She frowned and turned away. “Hadn’t we better go back in?”

He moved in front of her, catching her under the chin to raise her confused eyes to his.

“Be possessive,” he said curtly. “I like it.”

She caught her breath at the emotion in his deep voice, the look in his glittering eyes.

“I don’t have any hold on you, John,” she said steadily. “Remember, you told me once that you didn’t like people getting too close.”

“People, not you,” he returned. “My God, come as close as you like. I won’t push you away.”

“You’ve been doing it for weeks,” she said, searching his eyes.

A muscle tightened in his jaw. “Don’t you know why?” he asked with a bitter laugh. “Haven’t you figured it out yet?”

Remembering the way he’d kissed her, the way he’d looked at her, touched her, she was beginning to understand a lot more about his recent behavior.

She looked away, faintly embarrassed by that wild flare of passion they’d shared in the fields. Their relationship had changed so subtly she’d hardly been aware of it. She couldn’t even think of him in platonic terms anymore. She’d wanted his mouth with a kind of violence, she’d wanted his hands on her bare skin, his eyes devouring her….

She was barely aware of people moving past them, the buzz of conversation drifting away as the audience filed through the doors into the auditorium. Her eyes were locked with John’s all of a sudden, and she felt frozen to the spot.

The smoking cigarette, forgotten in his fingers, sent curls of gray smoke up toward the ceiling.

“That’s right, look at me,” he said huskily, watching the curious intensity of her green eyes as they traveled over his hard face.

“You’re…very pleasant to look at,” she said involuntarily.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said curtly. His chest rose and fell heavily. “You’re just beginning to see me as a man, aren’t you?”

The conversation was beginning to disturb her. She fumbled with her purse, avoiding his eyes. “I always have,” she murmured.

“Not exactly. Not in the way you’ve noticed me for the past few weeks.” He lifted the cigarette to his chiseled mouth with a faint smile. “What’s behind this sudden compulsion you seem to have about touching me?”

Her eyes spit green fire at him. “I’m a physical person,” she muttered.

“Like hell,” he replied pleasantly. “You never touch anybody, honey, male or female. That was one of the first things I noticed about you when we met. You’re fastidious in that sense.”

“I never knew my mother,” she reminded him. “And my father wasn’t outwardly affectionate, even though we were close.”

“I wasn’t asking for an explanation, I was simply wondering why you like to touch me,” he continued.

She clutched the purse tightly. Perhaps if she got a running start…

“Oh, hell, why do I start these conversations?” he asked the ceiling. “Do you want to watch the ballet or go see if Josito’s got supper ready?” His mustache twitched. “That beer you brought me didn’t last long. And it’s the only thing I’ve put in my stomach all day.”

“John!” she gasped, forgetting her irritation with him. “No breakfast?”

“Wasn’t time,” he replied. “The damned machine broke down and it looked like rain. When we finally got through, I rushed home to shower and shave and dress for the ballet.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” she chided. “I wouldn’t have minded missing the ballet, truly I wouldn’t. Let’s go, before you pass out from hunger and I have to drag you out of here by your pants’ legs.”

“That might cause some interesting speculations,” he murmured.

She laughed up at him, once more on familiar footing. “With my luck, someone who reads my books would see us and think I was acting out my next plot.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Dragging my latest victim off to a secret grave after inflicting a fatal wound with some untraceable instrument.”

“Like that icicle you used in
The Grinding Tower?
” he asked with a chuckle.

“It was a big icicle,” she reminded him. She grinned devilishly. “And impossible to trace, except for the huge patch of wetness on the victim’s shirt, remember?”

“Which your dauntless detective, Matt McDuncan, spotted at the onset. When he found a water spot on the suspect’s jacket sleeve, he knew immediately who the perpetrator was!”

She laughed delightedly. “I was afraid that was going to be terribly obvious, but the readers swallowed it.”

“Fans are always loyal,” he reminded her. His eyes narrowed. “I even forgave you for that rotten crack about McDuncan using the typewriter even with five keys missing because ‘he never used those particular letters, anyway.’“

She followed him out to the Ferrari, hurrying as a few large raindrops spattered down, and let him put her in the passenger seat, still laughing. “Sorry about that,” she murmured. “But John, you do push equipment to the absolute limit.”

He got in beside her, started the big engine and pulled out into traffic with the smooth motions of an old race car driver—a sport which John had dabbled in years ago.

“Old habits die hard, honey,” he reminded her. “When I went to live with my father and we started drilling for oil, we had to jury rig equipment to keep going financially. We could hold a car together with baling wire and hairpins.”

“And now you can afford a Ferrari and a Rolls,” she smiled. “And I’ll bet part of you misses those old days.”

He lit a cigarette. “Most of me misses them,” he admitted. He leaned back against the seat, weaving in and out of traffic lazily. “I used to have time to go riding early in the mornings every day—the way we did last week,” he added, glancing at her quietly.

She stared out at the night-lights of Houston glowing through the rain-streaked windshield. “And direct misguided tourists to snake-filled bunkhouses?” she said, trying to make a joke of it.

He laughed shortly. “Not exactly. I had her going for a little bit.”

“Until you mentioned that part about the ten-foot snakes,” she teased. “And the houseful of illegitimate daughters…”

“I used to have women running in and out of my house,” he admitted, his face thoughtful. “Before I married Ellen.”

She shifted restlessly in the seat. “And since?” She didn’t like hearing about his wife.

“I’ll be forty years old in September, Madeline,” he said, his tone strangely subdued, solemn. “The business takes up practically every waking hour, and I have to sleep sometimes. That’s what I meant, about missing the old days. I didn’t have a lot of money, but I had a lot of time.”

“You make yourself sound like Methuselah,” she grumbled. Her eyes traced his big body. “My gosh, you could run circles around most of your vice-presidents.”

“You’ve got that backward,” he said. “Most of them have kids. They stay active by playing with them.”

There was a bitterness in his tone, and she turned in the seat to look at his hard profile. “You want children, don’t you?” she asked, faintly shocked at the realization.

“Who am I going to leave Big Sabine and Durango Oil to when I die?” he asked quietly, turning into the parking lot under the building that housed his Houston apartment. “My cousin?” he added with a vicious glare in her direction.

She averted her eyes. “Then all you have to do is get married,” she said. The thought made her sick. John, married, with children.

He laughed shortly. “What a novel idea,” he said gruffly. “I can have it drawn up into a contract, can’t I?
X
number of dollars in exchange for a woman’s body and one male child.”

“Oh, stop it,” she said, torn up inside at the cynicism in his voice. “You make it sound so cold-blooded.”

“It would be,” he replied as he eased the car into a parking spot and cut the engine. His face, in the dim lights of the parking garage, was harder than ever. “If I’m cynical, it’s because life’s made me that way.” He caught a strand of her loosened red gold hair and tugged at it idly. “I told you once that I didn’t mind paying for what I wanted. That’s true, within limits. But I’m not paying any woman for a son. Children should be born out of love, not business.”

“You old romantic, you,” she said with a faint smile.

He frowned at her. “Haven’t you ever wanted children?”

She averted her face. That was a question so deeply personal, she almost resented it.

“I’m too old for that,” she said coolly.

“At twenty-seven?” he burst out. “My God, women are having babies in their forties!” He scowled.

“It’s the commitment, isn’t it?” he said speculatively. “You might be able to manage a loose commitment to a man someday, but there’s no walking away from a child.”

She smiled self-consciously. “You know me pretty well.”

“Not as well as I’d like to,” he said flatly, his eyes suddenly smoldering. “And not in the sense I want to.”

“What sense?” she blurted out before she thought.

But he turned away to get out of the car without answering her.

“Are you really afraid of sex?” he asked as they walked toward the elevator, not looking at her.

The question, coming out of the blue, shocked her. She stared up at him, almost stumbling. “Afraid?” She flexed her shoulders under the cobwebby gold shawl she was wearing over her dress. “I don’t know. I only tried it once, you know, and it was a pretty brutal introduction.”

“He must have hurt you a lot,” he said curtly.

“He didn’t know I was a virgin until he was past the point of caring,” she said, hating the memory. She drew the shawl closer. “I was madly in love, for the first time in my life. Or thought I was. I’ll never be vulnerable again, thanks to Allen. He did that much for me.”

“He did nothing for you,” he countered, his eyes blazing. He glared down at her as they entered the elevator and he punched a button with a vicious jab. “Are you planning to live the rest of your life the way you are?”

Her green eyes widened. “Like I am?” she prodded.

“Alone,” he said.

She leaned back against the wall as the elevator hummed and began to move. “You’re alone,” she said.

“Not all the time,” he said meaningfully.

She glared at him. “I don’t believe in casual affairs,” she said shortly. “I could never be promiscuous, or give myself out of a purely physical urge.”

“And if it was with someone you cared about, who cared about you?” he asked quietly.

Her eyes searched his. “I don’t know.”

“What about if it was with me?” he asked in a deep, velvety tone.

She looked at him as if he’d just suggested that they catch a bellhop and barbecue him over a fire in the lobby. The expression on her face brought a reluctant smile to his dark face, and a twinkle to his eyes.

“What…are we having for supper?” she asked evasively, her face almost the shade of the red highlights in her hair.

He laughed softly. “Wait and see.”

***

Josito served them a delicious meal of beef burgundy with a crisp chef’s salad and homemade rolls, accompanied by a rich port wine with a cheese flan for dessert. John ate his with obvious relish, while Madeline only picked at hers, looking distractedly out the window where flashes of lightning illuminated the jagged shape of the city skyline. What he’d said in the elevator disturbed her. Despite the hunger she had discovered for him, and his equally obvious hunger for her, she’d never consciously let herself think of John as a lover. Now she was forced to think of him in that role, and her own reaction to the idea surprised her.