September Morning (16 page)

He turned on his heel and left her standing there.

She couldn't bear for Blake to think that about her, to look at her with eyes so full of contempt they made her shiver. But what could she do? The impact of his anger made her reckless and when the delicious white wine was passed around at the restaurant that night, she had more than her share of refills. Throwing caution to the wind, she sipped and swallowed until all her heartaches seemed to vanish. When Blake announced that he was flying to Haiti the next morning, she barely heard him. Her mind was far away, on pleasant thoughts.

“Honey, you're drunk,” Phillip said with some concern when they got back to the villa. “Go to bed and sleep it off, huh?”

She smiled at him lazily. “I'm not sleepy.”

“Pretend, before you give Vivian something else to laugh about,” he asked softly. “And don't push Blake's temper any further tonight. I'm surprised he hasn't lectured you about the amount of wine you drank. He didn't like it, that's for sure.”

“Be a pet and stop preaching,” she murmured, fanning herself with one hand. “It's so hot!”

“Feels like storm weather,” he agreed. “Go to bed. You'll cool off.”

She shrugged and, to Phillip's quiet relief, went up to her room before the others came inside the house.

Chapter Nine

B
ut once she got into bed, she was only hotter. It was too sultry, too quiet, and her thoughts began to haunt her. Blake's harsh words came back like a persistent mosquito—too much of a baby, he said.
Too much of a baby.

She tossed and turned until it became unbearable. Finally she got up, put on her brief white bikini and grabbed up a beach towel. If she couldn't sleep, she might as well cool off in the bay. Just the thought of the cold water made her feel better.

She made her way downstairs in the dark house with the ease of long practice, and walked a little unsteadily out onto the beach. Her bare feet smarted on the grainy pebbles until she reached the softer sand where the foaming surf curled lazily. The air was static, the beach completely deserted. She stood and breathed in the delicious scent of blooming flowers that merged with the tangy sea smell.

“What are you doing out here?” came a harsh, deep voice from the shelter of a nearby palm.

She watched Blake move into view in the moonlight, wearing a pair of white shorts and the same red and white patterned silk shirt he'd been wearing the other night. Only tonight it was unbuttoned all the way down his massive chest.

“I asked you a question,” he said, and even in the moonlight she could see the boldness in his dark eyes as they sketched her slender body in its brief white covering. The way he was looking at her made her pulses pound.

“I came out for a swim,” she said, very carefully enunciating each word. “I'm hot.”

“Are you?”

Her eyes traced the hard lines of his body, lingering on his massive chest with its wedge of dark, curling hair that disappeared below his waistline. Her lips parted as she felt a surge of longing so great, it moved her toward him without her even being aware of it until she was close enough to touch him.

“Don't be angry with me,” she pleaded in a husky voice. Her fingers went to his broad chest, touching the bronzed skin nervously, feeling the sensuous masculinity in those muscles that clenched under her soft touch.

“Don't,” he said harshly, catching her hands roughly.

“Why not, Blake?” she asked recklessly. “Don't you like for me to touch you? I'm just a baby, remember,” she taunted, moving her fingers under his deliberately. She could feel his heartbeat quicken until it was heavy and hard, hear the rough intake of his breath as she moved closer and let her body rest against him. The naked brush of her thighs against the hair-roughened muscles of his was intoxicating, and the feel of his hard chest against the softness of her body caused her to sigh.

“Blake,” she whispered achingly. The alcohol she'd consumed made her uninhibited; she'd never been so dangerously relaxed with him before. But now she touched his shoulders and the muscles of his big arms in a desperate surge of longing, drowning in the nearness of him, the feel of his big, warm body under her exploring hands.

Her head moved forward, and she pressed her mouth against his chest, drinking in the tang of his cologne and the smell of some spicy soap on his bare skin.

He caught his breath sharply, and his hands suddenly gripped her bare waist. “Don't, Kate,” he whispered roughly. “You'll make me do something we'll both regret. You don't know what you're doing to me!”

Her body moved sensuously against his, and she heard the hard groan that broke from his throat. “I know,” she moaned, lifting her face to meet his blazing eyes. “Oh, Blake, love me!”

“On a public beach?” he growled huskily, before bending his head to take her mouth.

Her arms lifted around his neck, and his hands dropped to her thighs, lifting her body abruptly against his so that it was molded to every masculine line of him in a joining that tore a moan from her lips. His fingers contracted, and she felt the shudder rip through his body with the force of a blow, felt the arms holding her begin to tremble as his mouth invaded hers, devouring it in the silence of the night.

They swayed together like palm trees in a hurricane, tasting, touching, burning with a hunger that seemed incapable of satisfaction. Her fingers buried themselves in his thick, dark hair, ruffling it as she yielded to the violent passion she'd aroused.

She felt his fingers at the strings that held her bikini top in place, and she was too lost in him to notice what was happening until she felt with a sense of wonder the curling hair of his chest against the bare softness of her own, and she cried out with pleasure.

“This is how it felt that day in the gazebo, isn't it, Kate?” he breathed roughly at her ear as he pressed her breasts against the thickness of the dark hair that matted his muscular chest. “I want all of you against me like this, I want to lie down on the beach with you and let you feel every delicious difference between your body and mine.”

Her thighs trembled where his broad fingers caressed them, drawing her hips to his. Her nails bit deeply into his hard back and she sobbed at the wave of emotion that trembled over her weak body.

“Kate, Kathy, sweet, sweet love,” he whispered as his mouth touched her lips again and again, brief, hard kisses that aroused her almost beyond bearing so that she pressed even closer against his big, warm body and felt the shudder that went through it.

His mouth moved down her throat and her body arched as he found the thrust of her breasts and let his lips brush warmly, moistly, against flesh that had known no man's touch except his.

“Blake,” she whispered achingly. I love you, she thought, I love you more than my own life, and if I have nothing else, I'll have this to remember when I'm old, and you and Vivian have children and I'm alone with my memories…Her fingers tangled in his hair and pressed his exploring mouth closer.

“God, you're soft,” he breathed, lifting his head at last to move his mouth sensuously over hers. “Soft, like silk, like velvet against my body…Kathy, I want you. I want you like I want air to breathe, I want to make love to you…” His mouth took hers again, deeply possessive, his arms swallowing her, rocking her while the waves pounded rhythmically against the white sand, the sound just penetrating her mind while she got drunker on pleasure than she ever had on wine.

“We've got to stop this,” he groaned, dragging his mouth away to look down at her in the darkness that wasn't darkness at all, his eyes black and tortured as they met hers. “I can't take you here!”

Her hands ran lovingly over his hair-matted chest, feeling the roughness of it, the strength of those well-developed muscles. She wanted to touch all of him, every sensuous inch of him.

“We could go inside,” she suggested in a husky whisper.

“Yes, we could,” he said roughly. “And you'd wake in my arms hating me. Not like this, Kate. Damn it, not like this!”

He pushed her away, and for just an instant, his eyes possessed the small high curve of her breasts like a thirsty man gulping water. Then he swooped and retrieved the bikini top. He dropped it into her shaking hands and turned his back.

“Put it on,” he said harshly. His fingers dug into his shirt pocket for his crushed cigarette package and matches. “Let me cool off for a minute. My God, Kate, do you see what you do to me?” he growled, half-laughing as his fingers fumbled with the cigarette.

She tied the top back in place with trembling fingers, avoiding his direct gaze. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the orange tip of his cigarette glow suddenly as he took a draw from it.

“I'm sorry, Blake,” she said miserably. “I…I didn't mean to…to…”

“It's all right, Kate,” he said gently. “You had too much to drink, that's all.”

Her eyes closed and she folded her arms around her trembling body. “I'm so ashamed,” she ground out.

He stiffened. “Ashamed?”

She turned away. “I can't think what got into me,” she laughed harshly. “Maybe it's my age, maybe I'm going through my second childhood.”

“Or maybe you're just plain damned frustrated,” he said, a whip in his deep voice. “Is that it, Kate? Can't Phillip give you what you need?”

Shocked, she turned, lifting her puzzled eyes to his across the distance. She'd never seen his face so hard. “What?”

He laughed shortly. “You make no secret of your preference for his company, honey,” he reminded her. “But he isn't passionate. You're just finding that out, aren't you? Can't he satisfy those wild hungers in you, Kate? Can't he give you what I can?”

“I don't…I don't feel that way about Phil,” she stammered.

“Don't expect me to stand in for him again,” he shot back. “I draw the line at being used for a damned substitute.”

“But I wasn't…!”

He turned away. “Go back inside and sober up,” he said, stripping off his shirt.

She stared after him, watching as he walked forward, flicking the cigarette away, and abruptly dived into the moonlit water.

Kathryn wanted desperately to follow him, to make him understand how she felt. To tell him that she loved him, not Phillip, that she'd give anything to be to him what Vivian was. But she knew he'd never listen to her in his present mood. He might never listen to her again, regardless of his mood. She wanted to hit herself for putting away all that wine. She'd killed Blake's respect for her, and along with it, every chance she'd ever had of making him love her. With a sigh, she turned away and picked up her beach towel. She trailed it aimlessly behind her as she walked past the gnarled sea-grape trees back to the house, the flower-scented breeze making sultry whispers at her ear.

***

She overslept the next morning, and when she awoke it was with a bursting headache. She got to her feet to get an aspirin, glancing toward the rain-blasted window and the darkness of the clouds.

Phillip was the only one in the living room when she went downstairs.

“Where is everybody?” she asked, lifting a hand to her throbbing head as she sat down with the coffee she'd poured herself from the tray in front of the sofa.

“They drove Blake to the airport,” he replied, watching her closely. “He was bent on flying to Haiti today, despite the storm warnings. He left before this started; I guess they stopped to do some shopping on the way back.”

Her eyes stared blankly out the window at the pouring rain, whipped by the wind. “It looks bad out there,” she remarked, her heart aching when she remembered what had happened last night and why Blake might have decided to take a risk like this. Had she made him reckless? Had her stupidity caused him to lose his temper so badly that he had to get away from the island, from her, at any cost?

“Yes, it does,” he said. He raised his cup of coffee to his lips, watching her over the rim of it. He sipped some of the hot liquid and then abruptly put the cup down with a clatter. “What happened?”

The question was so unexpected that she stared at him for several seconds before she spoke. “What?”

“What happened last night?” he asked again. “Blake looked like a thunderhead when he came downstairs this morning, and he didn't say a word all through breakfast. He didn't ask where you were, but he kept watching the stairs, as if he expected you to come down them any second. He looked like a starving man with his eye on a five-course meal.”

Tears formed in her own eyes, ran down her cheeks. She put her cup down and buried her face in her hands, crying brokenly.

He sat down beside her and patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. “What did you do to him, Kathy?”

“I'd had too much to drink,” she whispered through her fingers, “and he'd said I was a child—”

“So you went out and proved to him that you weren't,” he said softly, smiling at her.

A nagging suspicion formed in the back of her mind and she raised her tear-wet eyes to his with the question in them.

“It's a very public beach, Kathryn Mary,” he said with a mischievous grin. “And the moon was out.”

“Oh, no,” she whispered, going red. She buried her face in her hands a second time. “You saw us.”

“Not only me,” he replied drily. “Vivian. Watch yourself, little one. I got a look at her face before she stormed off upstairs.”

She swallowed. “Did anyone else…?”

He shook his head. “No. Mom and Dick were arguing politics. I'd taken Vivian for a stroll along the porch to see the view…and what a view we saw. Whew!”

The blush got hotter. “I could die,” she moaned. “I could just die!”

“It's nothing to be embarrassed about,” he said gently. “I'd give anything to have a woman care that much about me. And if you wondered how Blake really felt, I imagine you found out.”

“I found out that he wants me,” she replied miserably. “I knew that before. It's not enough, Phillip.”

“How do you know that's all he feels?” he asked quietly. He leaned forward, studying the coffee table. “Blake's deep, Kathryn. He keeps everything to himself.”

“I couldn't have faced him this morning,” she said bitterly. “Not after what I did. Oh, Phillip, I'll never have another glass of wine as long as I live, I'll never touch another drop.”