Promises to Keep (22 page)

He looked down at her. "All right," he relented, nodding. "You can keep the sweater, but the rest of your things will have to go, so let me have it just for the time being."

Obediently she took the sweater off and handed it to him but she made no move to help him with the rest of her clothes. Garth's chin jutted aggressively, and he began working busily on the row of fastenings on her blouse.

"It's broad daylight," she argued breathlessly.

"You'd never know it by the light in here." He glanced disparagingly around the shadowy room before his eyes returned mercilessly to her. "You'll survive," he said. "Just keep in mind that I won't be seeing anything I haven't seen before." He chuckled humorlessly at her outraged expression and insolently asked, "How do you think I passed the time while I was waiting for you to wake up this morning? You can bet I didn't waste much time contemplating the origin of the universe when I had your heavenly body to contemplate!"

She lay rigidly acquiescent while Garth divested her of her boots, slacks, and blouse, leaving her naked except for abbreviated wisps of underwear. She still held her grandmother's ring clasped in her hand. Her eyes were squeezed shut and although the rest of her face was pinched with cold, her cheeks were bright with embarrassment. Her heart was hammering so hard that the flutter of motion it caused was plainly visible beneath her breast. She felt Garth's hand on her cheek and her eyes flew open.

"You should be proud of your body, Julie," he said softly. "You're very lovely."

Against the rusty black of the couch, her skin lustered alabaster pale and his eyes roamed hotly over her slight form, lingering ardently on the twin mounds of her breasts, her narrow waist, the soft swell of her hips that tapered to slender, sweetly rounded thighs.

Although his hands scalded her when they brushed against her, she made no further attempts to elude him or oppose him as he stripped off her bra and panties. But when he held his hand out for Elizabeth's ring, she clenched it more protectively in her fist and mutely shook her head.

He rose to remove his jeans, and she turned her face toward the back of the couch, refusing to succumb to the temptation to watch him. But nothing could stop her from imagining the way he must look as a faint rustling sound told of his progress.

She could already describe Garth in intimate de-tail. She knew his body better than she knew her own. Her hands knew the shape of his finely modeled head. Her body knew the length and suppleness of his limbs, the breadth of his shoulders and depth of his chest, the hard strength of his belly and loins, the leanness of his hips. He was totally and devastatingly masculine.

When he lay beside her on the sofa, she kept her face turned away from him.

"My sweater," she reminded him stonily. She made no move to cover herself.

"I'll keep you warm," he repeated with irritating patience. "Anyway, you haven't kept your end of the bargain."

She turned her head to glare at him.

"When you give up the ring," he promised, "you may have your sweater if you want it."

Her lips quivered. "Y-you said you'd never hurt me," she said brokenly. She looked at him accusingly, and he saw the tears that glistened at the tips of her lashes. He sucked in his breath sharply at the sight, hurriedly caught her close, and kissed them away.

"Please, darling." His arms tightened beseechingly. "Try to understand that I only want to set you free."

At first she was cold and so lifeless, she was like a statue in his arms. When she began to thaw in the shared heat of his body, she shivered and her teeth chattered.

Garth was alarmed. She had been so cold that her body's involuntary mechanisms had failed to function and he hadn't even recognized the fact that her temperature had been dangerously low. He tried to disengage his arms from, her in order to find something to cover her with, but she murmured protestingly and pressed more closely to him.

As Julie grew warmer, she became fluidly pliant. He began to kiss her lightly and any further resistance was impossible. With her first response, tentative though it was, his mouth became hard and demanding. It was as if he could no longer stave off his desire for her and, infected by his desire, as hungry for him as he was for her, she responded without inhibition to his kisses and caresses, returning them with a passion so volatile, Garth was stunned it could have been contained within her slight body.

When the ring dropped from her relaxed fingers, he cried triumphantly, "Eat your heart out, Elizabeth Ayers." And when Julie laughed at this gibe, Garth knew he had won.

"Are you warm enough?" he asked between kisses. "Do you want your sweater?"

"No," she breathed. Not only was she deliciously warm, she was unable to hold still and she moved constantly, made restless by the intensely pleasurable sensations he was evoking with his questing hands.

"Do you want me to stop?" he whispered against her mouth.

"Don't stop!" So vehement was her denial, her head thrashed from side to side. "I love you. I want you to make love to me."

Garth removed her wedding band from his finger. "Give me your hand," he directed hoarsely. She did so solemnly, and he slipped the ring onto her finger, sealing it in place with a kiss. "With this ring I thee wed," he said. His voice was low and vibrant with emotion. "With my body I thee worship."

She was enthralled by the austere beauty of his face poised above her, and her arms tightened spasmodically around him as she sought the ultimate closeness to him. Sensing her readiness, he molded her to him with his hands urgently on her hips, and she received him gladly. Their bodies meshed, and they came together with an explosive onrush of passion that forged the bond between them and left her gasping, marveling at the lightness of his possession of her.

Their lovemaking was a joyous rededication to their wedding vows, each of them striving to give to the other the supreme pleasure, and their delight was increased beyond measure by the giving. They were willing hostages to their love and for a long time they were drunk with rapture and so blinded by the wonder of fulfillment that they were oblivious to everything but each other.

Reality intruded gradually. Julie became uncomfortably aware that the prickly horsehair fabric that covered the sofa was like sandpaper against the sensitive skin of her back and for the first time Garth realized how chilly it was in the parlor.

When the dustiness of the air in the room made Julie sneeze, he said, "You're cold, darling."

"Not really," she hastily replied. She was reluctant to end their idyll.

But at last, replete with love, they prepared to leave. When they were dressed, Garth leaned over to retrieve Elizabeth's ring from the floor in front of the couch.

"No!" Julie cried. "Leave it!"

He straightened and looked at her quizzically. "Is there anything else of your grandmother's you'd like to take with you?"

She wandered around the room slowly, pausing to study the portrait. With insight heightened by her love for Garth, she saw that it was only a picture of a discontented young woman who had permitted the insatiable demands of her nature to rule her destiny. In asking too much of others, in giving so little of herself, Elizabeth had willfully planted the seeds of her own unhappiness. She had been doomed to reap the bitter harvest of loneliness she had sown. In no way could her granddaughter be held responsible.

"No," Julie replied quietly. "There's nothing here for me." She looked at Garth and saw that he was frowning. She wished he weren't so far away. "Is something troubling you?" she asked.

A rueful smile erased the frown. "I was just thinking that your loss of memory might have been a stroke of good fortune. Otherwise things might not have ended so happily for us."

"But I'd already discovered I couldn't go through with running away from you!" Julie exclaimed. "Even when I let my grandmother come between us, I think I always knew I had to be with you. That's why I left her ring behind. I'd planned to call you when the bus got into Evanston and tell you—if you still wanted me—that I was coming back! If it hadn't been for the accident—"

"Let's go home, darling," Garth interrupted. He held his hand out to her and his eyes were luminous with tenderness. His smile was jubilant.

She went to him and placed her hand in his. "You're all I'll ever want or need," she said. "Wherever you are is home."

Hand in hand, they left the room. Their steps quickened as they crossed the veranda, and they ran with the carefree abandon of children through the yard and down the drive until Julie stopped abruptly. Swinging Garth's hand, she shouted to the hills, "I feel just like Rapunzel! I've been freed from the tower by my handsome prince and I've never been so ha-a-a-appy!"

Laughing, Garth hugged her close to whirl her about in a wild waltz that consumed the remaining distance to the car. They were still laughing and trying to catch their breath when they drove away.

In the parlor of the ranch house a ray from the setting sun penetrated the thicket of branches at the window and glinted on the diamond, causing it to wink and cast a tiny beam of acid-yellow light onto the portrait of Elizabeth Ayers.

If anyone had been there to witness it, they might have thought it resembled a jaundiced teardrop as it lay beneath the inside corner of her eye. And like a tear, it rolled down her cheek as the sun moved lower in the sky and disappeared behind the mountains.

Julie had not looked back.