Renegade Player (6 page)

And now, just when she was getting along so well, she had to run up against something—someone—she was ill-equipped to handle. Vague disquiet followed her into her sleep, making uneasy dreams plague the few remaining hours of night. When the first fingers of dawn stretched up through the low-lying cloud bank out over the Atlantic, she was no closer to a solution than before.

A moderate drinker at best, Willy regretted the wine she had consumed last night. Each one had been carefully selected for the course and drunk sparingly; nevertheless, it still added up to too much. She tried to convince herself that the wine was responsible for her abandonment last night, but she knew it was not so; she was terribly afraid that in the clear light of day, with nothing more intoxicating than water, she would still find herself shatteringly vulnerable to Kiel Faulkner, and the worst of it was, she
liked
the man so much! It would be easier to deal with physical attraction if it didn’t mean losing a friend and playmate she was only now coming to appreciate.

She sat up in bed, staring absently at the moisture beaded on the window screen, and felt the morning coolness pour over her bare body. Above the narrow strip of gray that traced the horizon, the sky was a sultry, colorless bowl, promising another scorcher, and she swung her feet to the floor, knowing exactly what she needed.

Taking time only to brush her teeth, she tugged on her old bikini and dropped down the stairs, two at a time. She made a mental note, which she promptly forgot, to buy herself a new one-piece bathing suit before the season ended, because this one, her most comfortable one of all, was faded colorless and out of style ... as well as too revealing by half!

The tide was out, exposing a wide expanse of hard sand with a shallow pool and a bar between her and swimmable water. Willy ran, splashing through the shallows, her hair streaming out behind her, and when the water surged around her hips, she fell flat on her face, arms extended, and allowed herself to drift over the sluggish swells.

Twenty minutes later, feeling vastly refreshed, she turned shoreward. Her problems weren’t all that insoluble. All she had to do was say no when—and
if
— Kiel Faulkner asked her out again. Nothing to it. Why had she allowed herself to get into such a tizzy last night? Now in the bright light of morning, she wondered as much, and it took only the cool, gritty baritone to tell her how shallow had been her spurious security.

“ ’Morning, Willy.” He was seated atop the dune, wearing a pair of navy-blue trunks that weren’t much larger than her own bathing outfit, and as he unfolded his lean, hard-muscled length and strolled to meet her, she groaned inwardly and surrendered out of hand. “There’ll be ridable swells within fifteen minutes or so, so why don’t we wait for one good ride and then go back and have omelets with sour cream, tomatoes, and sweet onions, along with tiny smoked sausages?”

“Oh, Lordy, not again,” she protested, only half-jokingly.

The grooves that ran from his proud nose to his chiseled mouth deepened as he teased her with a sidelong look. “I always suit the bait to the quarry. With most women, it’s diamonds; with some, a villa in the South of France might turn the trick; but now and then you run up against one of those rare creatures who prefer horsepower and h
aute cuisine
.”

There was no point in being coy. She knew she wanted to be with him and, what’s more, he knew it too. At least over sausages, omelets and coffee, she wasn’t as apt to be seduced, especially as both of them had to be at work in little over an hour. Kiel didn’t strike her as a man who would care to be hurried, no matter what course he was intent upon, so she was reasonably certain he wouldn’t try to fit more than a swim and breakfast into the time alloted. That meant she was safe.

Or so she rationalized.

Breakfast became a morning habit and so did the morning swim, with Kiel’s behavior above reproach, Willy acknowledged with some degree of frustration. And still, it was marvelous fun.

“If I’m not careful,” she said one Friday morning as they waded ashore, cool and invigorated after a half an hour of body-surfing, “I’m going to turn into a jock and then there goes my image as a lazybones.”

“No chance! You might just turn into the Goodyear blimp, but that’s about the extent of it. Tell me something, have you always eaten this much?”

“It’s not so
much
,” she argued with mock indignation. “It’s just so discriminatingly.”

“Yeah, about as discriminating as a garbage truck.” He pinched her well-rounded but still-lean bottom, and she swatted his hand away.

“I was a bean pole! I kept on trying to fill up all those places that other girls filled up when they were about fourteen. By the time I found out that I wasn’t really patterned after an ironing board, it had got to be a habit.”

Looping the towel around her neck, Kiel drew her closer and began rubbing her hair as they stood on top of the saddle-backed dune bathed in a wash of gold sunlight. “What were you like as a little girl, Willy? Somehow, I can’t picture you as anything except the disgustingly lazy, ridiculously sexy woman with the offbeat sense of fun.”

The last thing she wanted to do was talk about her childhood. Now that the wounds had healed over, she realized that it had not been all that unpleasant . . . only uneventful. Extremely circumscribed by a parent who, after his first wife died, had neither time nor patience to indulge a child, and so had arranged for her to be brought up in a way that didn’t disturb the sybaritic tenor of his own life-style.

She snatched back her towel and flicked it at his lightly furred thigh. “Where’s that breakfast you promised me? Your turn to cook today,” she taunted, loping off toward her own apartment to get dressed.

“Ten minutes,” he warned. “One minute later and the gulls get your share!”

“Ha! You can put away enough for three people, easily,” she mocked over her shoulder as she swung up her stairway.

“Yes, but when you’re eating with me, I always cook enough for six!”

That night she drove the Porsche. They crossed the Currituck Sound Bridge and chose a little-used road on the mainland, and when they ended up near the Virginia border, Kiel suggested they keep on in the direction of Norfolk until they found a good restaurant.

“Knowing that the quickest way to your heart is through your stomach,” he added with a sardonic smile as she geared down competently to negotiate a narrow, curving bridge.

“Is that what you’re aiming for?” she dared, picking up speed again on the straightaway.

“I haven’t quite decided yet. Maybe I’m looking for a bedmate, and then again, maybe I’m looking for a good cook . . . you never can tell.”

“So when and if you find out, how about letting me in on it,” she quipped, wondering if her sudden shortness of breath were apparent.

Too hungry to search further, they ate at a third-rate diner on juicy, scrumptious hamburgers loaded with big slabs of sweet onions and a horseradish sauce that was unbelievably good. Willy declined beer and settled for milk, to Kiel’s disgust. On the way back home, he drove and she snuggled down in the comfort-engineered seat and watched admiringly as he made the powerful pistons march to his tune.

“There’s a bit of harshness in the upper midrange, but she’s a superb animal for all that,” he observed as he slowed down for a stop sign.

“Hmmmm, is that what makes my spine tingle when you let it out? I like it, whatever it is . . . like a huge pipe organ in a tall-ceilinged church.”

“You’re really a sensuous creature, aren’t you, Wilhelmina Silverthorne?” he asked playfully, and she slanted a look at his hawkish profile against the lights of Coinjock Bridge.

“Am I?” she asked. “I suppose so if you mean it in the literal sense.”

“I wonder just what else you are?” he mused.

Facetiously, she enumerated on her fingers: “I’m a fairly up-and-coming real-estate saleswoman for one thing and . . . I’m an unbelievably bad violinist for another. Ahhh ... oh, yes, and I play a near unbeatable game of checkers and . . . and I love ghost stories, especially Ambrose Bierce,” she finished with a rush.

He laughed aloud. “The first I wonder about, the second I cringe from, and the third . . . well, I’ll challenge you to two out of three anytime you like.”

“You’re on!” she rejoined gleefully. “And what’s this about doubting my prowess as a salesman— saleswoman if you’re into lib jargon?”

“I’m not, and neither are you, thank the Lord. I didn’t say you can’t make a living at it. You’re obviously doing it, but what about those little extras you’re so fond of, such as lobsters thermidor and Mercedes sports cars? Don’t tell me your commissions cover such luxuries because I won’t believe it. No, there’s a man somewhere in the background and I’m becoming increasingly curious about him. Feel like taking your hair down, love?”

She remained silent. Kiel’s tone had been light and playful, but there was an underlying thread of steel . . . or was it just her imagination? Was she letting past history color present relationships too much? “I feel like taking a nap, is what I feel like taking,” she prevaricated, snuggling deeper into her seat and closing her eyes. “If I start talking in my sleep, don’t listen; it’s only the horseradish talking. It always gives me bad dreams.”

“If you start mumbling in your sleep, I’ll pull over and listen. I have an idea that what goes on under that lazy, spotted exterior of yours would make mighty fascinating listening.”

She hoped he was teasing. Somehow, she sensed a deeper note under his surface lightness, and things were precarious enough without imagining things. She pretended to be asleep until she felt him gearing down for Wimble Court. There was a particular pattern of patches on the pavement that sang against the tires with an unmistakable beat and she sat up and stretched, surprised to find she had really dozed.

Tonight he walked her up her stairs, one arm around her and their hips moving together with a fascinating rhythm as they jostled each other on the narrow treads, and when they reached the top, Kiel took the key from her nerveless fingers and unlocked her door. Before turning on the lights, he revolved her deliberately in his arms, murmured the word, “Onions,” and lowered his mouth to her own.

In spite of herself, Willy was caught off guard, for he hadn’t kissed her since that night they went dancing, and now she felt all her old fears rushing in on her. Against his intense virility she was utterly helpless, for her own traitorous body negated the warnings of her cautious mind. As his kiss deepened, probing, tasting, provoking her into a response, her arms went around his waist and her fingers dug into the satin-hard muscles of his back, and he groaned and hauled her breathlessly close to him, making her alarmingly aware of his aggressive masculinity. Taking the lobe of her ear into his mouth, he breathed her name over and over and each stroke of his breath on her sensitized nerves brought her closer and closer to surrender.

One of his hands moved up to her breast and she curved into the pressure, craving it as a starving man craves food, while deep inside her some flickering fragment of rationality told her she was courting disaster. She had been hurt badly enough, the voice of sanity whispered, when only her pride had been involved, but what if more were concerned in this case? Kiel Faulkner was a man apart, a man whose natural dominance had nothing to do with what he owned, but with what he was, and any sexual entanglement with a man of his caliber could only spell disaster.

Even as her frantic mind sent messages of caution, her willful body was growing more and more lethargic, its senses drugged with the sweet narcotic of passion. Her bands slid slowly down his sides to his hips, digging into the hard muscles convulsively in a way that had an immediate physiological effect on him as a man.

“God, Willy, I want you so much I’m going out of my mind! You—Come on,” he growled, half-dragging her in the direction of the bedroom.

“No . . . Kiel, no,” she pleaded in a last-ditch effort to slow the lemminglike course of self-destruction.

“What is it?” he demanded hoarsely, reaching down to lift her in his arms as if she weren’t five feet, eight inches of solid woman.

“Kiel, I can’t—I mean I... I don’t ...” she faltered, wrapping her arms around his neck because she felt totally, illogically secure in his arms.

“God, what is this?” he exclaimed unbelievingly. “Don’t tell me I’ve got my signals crossed because I’m no inexperienced boy, Willy. You want it just as much as I do, and that’s saying a lot. Come on, darling, I can take care of you, if that’s what you’re worried about.” His voice had dropped to a low rumble that made gooseflesh rise on her spine and she wondered frantically if she had strength of character enough to hold out against both of them.

“Kiel, please put me down,” she whispered into his warm, pulsating throat. “I ... I don’t think I’m ready for this sort of an involvement.”

She could feel his eyes burning into her soul in the still darkness about them, and sense the hardening withdrawal in spite of his still-ragged breathing. The arm that supported her knees released her abruptly so that she staggered, and he steadied her only briefly before removing his arm from her shoulders. His voice was a raw parody of itself: “I’m a little old for this sort of game, Willy. If you grow up anytime soon, let me know; otherwise, I’ll see you around.”

And then he was gone, leaving her staring blindly at the cool diffusion of moonlight through the screen-covered door. What had happened to the warm, comfortable friendship that had sprung up between them so spontaneously? Had it only been physical on his part? Something so superficial and fragile that it fractured irreparably when he ran up against her last line of defense? How could she be joking about something so ridiculous as onions and horseradish one moment and then be shaken by sarcasm, bruised by animosity the next?

For animosity it was; there had been no mistaking that hard bitterness that radiated from him when he put her down so abruptly, nor the sarcasm in his final words.