One Night With You (8 page)

“Look in the music room. Daddy went there to get something that he wants to show Mr. Maguire.”

The boy ran off, and she said, “Biologically, Amy is Marcus's child, Marc is mine, and Todd is ours, but those distinctions don't exist in our hearts. They are our three children.”

They finished stringing the beans. “You're a remarkable person, Amanda. Marcus is lucky, and he knows it.”

She looked up at him. “We love each other, Reid. Each comes first with the other, and our children come before both of us. That's what makes it tick.”

“I'm glad we talked, Amanda. You've given me added confidence in the route I seem destined to take.”

K
endra left work that Monday afternoon, rushed home, changed into jeans, a shirt and loafers and drove to the theater group. She rehearsed the first scene with her stage daughter, and checked the lines of her first scene with the man who would play opposite her as the father.

“What? What's this?” she gasped. “Since when did you…I mean…gosh, this is a surprise.”

“It's just as big a surprise for me,” Reid said, “but I'm willing to go on with it, if you are.”

“Of course,” she said, frowning. “It's odd that we both decided to do this. I was keeping myself busy so I wouldn't think about…” She thought it prudent not to finish that sentence.

“My lawyer thought I should get active in the community, and Mike is an old friend of his. You're not going to show up looking like a boy Saturday morning, are you?”

She stared at him. Perplexed. “Like a boy?”

“I'll explain that later. Let's try this scene. I'm Don, and you're Lissa. Right?” She nodded.

“Why can't Tonya have the jeans?” Don asked. “They're just jeans, for heaven's sake.”

Lissa rose from the chair, walked over to Don and shook her finger at him. “That's what you said last Saturday when she wanted new ice skates because her friend got new ones. ‘It's just a pair of skates,' you said, although she already has three practically brand-new pairs.”

“Look, honey, don't blow a gasket now. She wants a little BMW for her birthday, and I told her she could have it.”

“Are you crazy? I can't stop you from giving it to her, but she'll get the keys to it over my dead body. Take the money and get her a reading coach. She's sixteen, and can barely read ‘Little Bo Peep.' All she wants to do is watch TV and talk to boys on the phone that you put in her room. Damn school. She couldn't care less about it.”

He stood and raised both hands, palms out. “Okay. This is getting too hot. We'll solve it later. You mad at me?” He leaned down to turn off the lamp on the table beside the chair in which he'd been sitting, and she turned aside at the sight of his tight jeans hugging his perfectly sculptured behind. Her fingers itched to stroke him.

“No. I'm troubled,” she read.

“If you're not angry, kiss me.” He walked over to her and stroked her back.

Caressing her was not in the directions that accompanied the script. “I don't—” She hated that her voice trembled.

“Yes, you do,” he said in a low, sultry voice. Startled, she forgot that they were playing a role and backed away from him, and as if he, too, forgot, he pulled her into his arms, bent his head and flicked his tongue across the seam of her lips. She opened to him and took him in, but her soft moan brought them back to reality and to the present.

He stepped away from her, but quickly she closed the space between them, furious and embarrassed, and punched his chest with her fist. “I'll remember that.”

“Fantastic!” Mike shouted. “We've got a hit. The two of you are born actors. How did I get so lucky?”

“Would you believe it?” Reid said to Kendra later as she drove them down Albemarle Heights to her home. “When we kissed, he actually thought we were acting.”

“Of course that's what he thought. As far as he knew, I'd never seen you until you walked into that theater. What do you suppose an audience would think if you did that to me in their presence?”

He shrugged, but she knew he had deep concern for what happened between them in that scene. “I expect I'd get the reputation for being bold as hell,” he said. “The play is so much like real life that it's hard to avoid becoming Don.”

“You want to become the character. That's the whole point of acting. I sure hope the script doesn't call for you to sock me.”

“Not to worry, sweetheart,” he said as they entered her house. “I'd revise that script in a hurry. Wait here, while I look around.” He ran up the stairs, then down the basement steps, went into the kitchen and the down stairs bathroom. “You're safe. Give me a kiss.”

“You had a kiss.”

“That was a mere tease. By the way, I've started a boys' a cappella chorus. That's what I was referring to when I said I hoped you wouldn't show up there Saturday morning looking like a boy.”

He held out his arms. “Come here, baby. I've been so lonely for you. You haven't even told me that you missed me while you were down in New Bern.”

“I'm not supposed to tell you that. We're not seeing each other. Don't you remember?”

He pretended to sulk, and it was all she could do not to run to him. “I got a taste of you, and I…Kendra, don't you need me?”

She wouldn't have thought she could move that fast, but in less than a second she was in his arms, and his hands were stroking and caressing her. “Kiss me. Love me. I need you,” she whispered.

She parted her lips for his kiss, and he grabbed her hips and lifted her to fit him. She felt him then, with his tongue dancing in and out of her mouth and his penis at the apex of her thighs. Jolts of electricity whistled through her body, and she sucked vigorously on his tongue trying to get more of him as he sent the fire of desire spiraling from her head to her toes. She needed all of him.

“Honey, kiss me. Kiss me,” she begged. “Oh, Reid.”

“Baby, I
am
kissing you.”

She grabbed his right hand and put it on her breast, and it was all the invitation he needed. His hand went into her blouse and freed her right breast. He bent his head and sucked her nipple into his warm moist mouth. She let out a keening cry as he began to suckle her, tugging on her nipple, feasting as if he were hungry for it. Reckless now, she clutched his shoulders and wrapped her legs around his hips. She had her back to the wall, and he leaned into her. His erection bulged against her, and he stopped, but she pressed his hips.

“Easy, baby. You don't want our first time to happen right here.”

“I don't know what I was thinking,” she said when she could collect her thoughts. “It can't happen right now, anyway. Nature must be orchestrating this relationship.”

He picked her up, carried her into the living room and sat in an oversized chair with her in his lap. “No apology or explanation is necessary. You and I are in this together, and we start the fires together. I realize it happened in the heat of passion, but you told me to love you. Do you want me to love you? Your answer is important to me.”

With her head in the niche between his neck and his shoulder, she put an arm around his shoulder and the other one across his chest. It never paid to lie. “Yes.”

“I already love you,” he said. “I've never been more certain of anything, and I want you to love me. If you'll let me, I'll teach you to love me.”

She raised her head and kissed his lips. “You won't have much work to do.”

“Will you go with me to Caution Point Saturday after rehearsal? I want you to meet my friends there.”

“Yes, I'd love to meet your friends. Does Marcus like your design for his building?”

“He's already approved it, and I'm working on the plans. I'll rent a car, because I don't want to drive yours. Scratch that. We are not going to drive your car to Caution Point.”

Suddenly, she laughed. She couldn't help it. Didn't he know that practically everything he said sounded like a command, that he didn't need to be extra-forceful? She raised her hand in a mock salute. “Yes, sir. I got the message, and I'll be ready when you get here Saturday. What will you have on?”

“Since I'm taking you there for the first time, I'll wear a business suit. I'd better leave while the temperature in here is still at a moderate level. I'll call you.”

“Okay. By the way, did you hire Barker?”

“I did, and he's already busy.” He stood, set her on her feet and walked with her to the door. “Sleep well.” He left.

There is a man who knows his limit,
she thought, and wondered what Saturday would be like. With his friends, would he be the Reid she knew or the one he used to be?

Reid locked the front door of his apartment and leaned against it. Exhausted. Maybe he'd better start going to church. His feelings for Kendra were beginning to get the better of him, to control him. During that rehearsal, he'd bent over to turn off the light, and when he looked up, the expression on her face nearly caused him to have an erection. He'd never seen such blatant lust on a woman's face. When she spoke, her voice trembled, and he knew she wasn't acting. He'd wanted her at a gut-searing level. He took a deep breath. He'd better wear a jockstrap when he was acting with her in that play, because there was no telling what kind of scene they'd create. He only hoped they'd stay close to reality and not do anything that would reflect adversely on her as a judge.

He telephoned her. “I have an idea,” he said when she answered. “Maybe we can see each other outside the Queenstown area. We can meet some place on Saturday afternoon and come back Sunday night. Kendra, I just can't go on not seeing you.”

“We'll be together with your friends in Caution Point Saturday afternoon, and we'll see each other at rehearsals Thursday nights. Let's not move beyond that, Reid. I am not going to allow myself to forget what's at stake.”

“I'm not forgetting that.”

“No? If you lose that case and can trace the reason to me, that will be the end of our relationship. Even if I didn't believe that, I wouldn't risk causing you to lose something that is so important to you. So let's try to be patient.”

“All right, baby, but I'm so damn frustrated. Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

“What? What did you say?”

“Reid, honey, this is not the time for this discussion, with me here and you there, and you're not coming back over here tonight.”

He stared at the telephone. “No, I don't think I should. See you Saturday morning.”

If he went across Albemarle Heights, unless she called the police, he wouldn't leave there until he buried himself deep inside her.

On Saturday morning, he drove the rental car to the theater group quarters and parked. Once he would have rented a big and impressive Lincoln or Cadillac, but he no longer felt the need for such trappings. “I don't worry about what people think,” he said to himself, “and that is a relief.”

Kendra stepped out of her door and raced down the walk before he could get out of the car. He walked around it, opened the door for her, hooked her belt and closed the passenger door. When he'd seated himself, and moved away from the curb, he said, “What's the matter? Don't you trust me?”

She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I trust you, and I trust me, but I don't trust
us
together.” She took a thermos from a bag, opened it and poured coffee in the top. “Here. Drink this. If I didn't trust you, would I bring you coffee?”

He took a long sip. “Ah. This is great. When it gets warmer, I want us to spend a long weekend in Maryland at Dickerson Estates. I haven't been back since I left, and I miss my friends there. We can swim or ride. It's a wonderful environment.”

After turning onto Route 34, he drove half a mile and pulled into a roadside farmer's market, bought a bunch of yellow lilies and got back into the car.

“These are for Amanda. Marcus is a figure of a man, at least an inch taller than I am, and she isn't big as a minute. When we were in college, he went for those lean, willowy model types. Funny, I went for the little ones. Both of us learned that it's the inside that matters, and we both learned the hard way. Not that your outsides aren't mind-blowing and don't attract me. Lord knows I can get high just looking at you, but it's what I found
in
you that binds me to you. It's a whole lot of things put together.”

“Will it be warm at Dickerson Estates around the first of May?”

“It's getting warm there now. I've swum in the Chesapeake numerous times late in April.”

“Then we'll go. I love to swim. How far are we now from Caution Point?”

“Three or four minutes.”

He parked in front of the white brick house at the end of Ocean Avenue and got out to open the door for Kendra, but when he reached her side of the car, she stood beside the door as if in awe.

“What is it?” he asked her.

“It's so beautiful. The willow saplings swaying so quietly and so sensuously among the blossoming dogwood trees. Pink ones, white ones. It's so lovely. And the breeze. So soft and fragrant. I'd be so happy here.”

He felt a rush of blood, a swift tightening of his groin, and ordered his libido under control, for what she stirred most deeply in him at that moment was love. For a moment, he remained transfixed by the powerful elixir of her feminine sweetness. And standing beside the car with the sun warming their bodies and her words caressing his heart, he put his arms around her and kissed her lips.