The Wall (20 page)

snooze. She watched him for a long time, noting the restless nose, the

twitching tail. He whined once or twice, picturing, no doubt, some

running rabbit, some past glorious chase. How simple life was for

him! she mused. Life, for him, was to be enjoyed in a mad, dashabout

way. He would gallop through his early years, trot happily through

his middle years, and walk sedately at the last of his life, by his

master's side. Greg was steady, gentle and firm with the dog.

Beowulf had no worries beyond the enticing smells carried on an

afternoon's breeze. How marvellously simple and carefree!

All the same, she was very grateful not to be living that kind of life.

She wanted all the pleasure and the pain that her own life would give

her. She felt a brief spurt of compassionate affection for the dog's

simple mind, and then forgot it. It slipped away as easily as the

summer days slipped into autumn, leaving behind perhaps a gentler

and more understanding view for the animal's confinements and

liberties, for his unswerving loyalty to his master.

She poured herself a cup of coffee and, finding herself in need of

serenity and some sort of comfort, went into the den and put on some

music. She picked classical and then looked through Greg's other

albums, curious to see if he had any of her own. He had several; in

fact, he had the greater part of her work, and she felt touched by this

somehow. It seemed that without even knowing it, he was attracted to

that other part of her personality. She curled up on the couch and

tucked the ends of her dress neatly around her. Beowulf settled on the

floor, having followed her closely into the next room.

After a while she put some logs on the fire and was soon staring

deeply into the flames that were constantly shifting and changing.

The fluid movement of the yellowish-red fire was mesmerising,

hypnotic. It freed her mind from troubling thoughts and left her

relaxed and mellow.

When Greg came quietly into the room to sit beside her, she didn't

even start.

As if they had never stopped having an easy conversation, she asked

him idly, 'What do you do for a living, Greg?'

Silence for a while. She felt him relax as the warmth of the flames

seeped insidiously into his chilled limbs. A quick glance showed that

his hair was ruffled and blown about his rugged face. A reflective

mood seemed to have settled over him, and he looked to be more at

peace with whatever had been bothering him. She reached out a hand

and his strong cold fingers closed over it.

'I was a criminal lawyer for several years,' he said quietly, leaning

back against the couch and closing his eyes. 'I also inherited some

money, and have been retired from the actual court practice. I've

written two books, one on the American criminal justice system, and

the other on the political structure hampering the justice system.'

'It sounds utterly fascinating, and a little frightening,' was her

response. She looked at him, realising how much of his personality

was wrapped up in the lawyer part of his life. It affected his whole

thought processes. His mind was so clear and sharp and quick. She

shuddered to think of his formidable intelligence used as a weapon.

'Did you defend or prosecute?'

'Both, eventually. My last case was defence.' His replies were brief,

but not necessarily dampening. He was just being as simple and as

straightforward as he had always been, getting quite devastatingly to

the heart of the matter.

'Do you think you'll ever get back to it?'

'No.' He turned his head as it lay on the back of the couch and looked

at her. His dark brown eyes caught the glow of the fire, and it made

them brighter than usual, like twin dark flames. Sara could see into

the depths of the colour, and it wasn't as dark as she had thought, but

instead a honey shade, warm, compelling. 'Sara, I -'

She spoke at the same time. 'Greg, there's something you must know

-' They both stopped and just looked at each other. Her heart began to

thud in slow pounding strokes. His fingers were lightly stroking her

wrist; he must feel her heart race, feel how fast her pulse was going

now.

Then he was saying huskily, 'No. No, we'll talk later. But now, Sara,

I've got to kiss you, I've just got to, I -' He shook his head

impatiently, hauled her over to him in an abrupt manner, wrapped his

arms around her tightly and brought his mouth down on hers.

An emotion swept over her so strongly that she was carried away by

its tide. She didn't even struggle. This was what had been started, she

thought hazily, this is what I wanted all along. Something came to

her then, and she struggled both to sit up and to clear her mind

enough to be coherent. 'Greg, I've got something to tell you,' she

began, but was effectively cut off by another deep, long, mind-

weakening kiss.

'Not now, Sara,' his voice came to her, spoken low against her

temple, roughly, urgently. He was pleading with her for something

and she didn't know what. With every caress, every movement to pull

her bodily closer, he was telling her an immensely important message

without words. He needed her. He needed her now, tonight.

Tomorrow faded away like morning mist. He wanted her physically,

yes, she could feel that, but emotionally he needed her.

It was all out of control when it had started. She had lost all desire to

withdraw before he had even re-entered the house. All she had been

doing was waiting for him to come back to her, and he had come, just

as she had known he would. Whatever devil he had gone to exorcise

had vanished for the moment, the wall left completely behind. His

mouth was inside her blouse, searching, caressing, kissing, and she

was lying back on the couch with his hard weight on top of her. He

raised his head, looked into her eyes, and she knew she was seeing to

the core of the man. It was a naked look, more so than any naked

body could appear. She knew him in that moment and then knew

herself. This was no infatuation.

She loved him.

Greg carried her upstairs, her head falling against his shoulder, her

hair draping them both like black satin. There was no hesitation in his

steps; he didn't have to ask. He had asked her with his eyes down on

the couch, and she had already given her answer, as wordlessly as he.

He paused at his closed door, expression lost in the darkness, and

quietly reached out a hand. He carried her in and put her very gently

down on the large bed that was his. She had never been in his room,

had never seen what it looked like, and she now waited in the strange

darkness with an odd trembling in her limbs and a weakness

pervading her mind and body.

She couldn't tell him the truth. She opened her mouth to tell him and

she couldn't. He undressed her carefully, with many caresses and soft

tantalising kisses. Then he undressed himself, standing by the bed to

shed his clothes, and Sara remembered the odd feeling from long

ago, from only a few days ago, when she had seen him as being a

monolith in the night. It came back to her when she saw the faint

gleam of his powerful body in the near total darkness. He was

strength.

It was a night of giving.

He was so gentle with her, as if he knew, and at the same time so

urgent. There was warmth and tenderness and emotional sharing.

There was intense, earth-shattering, wrenching passion.

He stopped when he found she was a virgin. His whole body froze

into a shocked stillness, and he began to say very quietly, 'Oh, my

God, oh my dear, sweet God—Sara!' Then he was loving her, and the

world dissolved into the rhythm of his loving. Afterwards, she

thought she could feel a single drop of wetness slide down her neck,

where he was resting his head.

They fell asleep…

Greg woke her in the middle of the night; she didn't know what time

it was. She opened her eyes to darkness and the safe, delicious

feeling of being held very close. Her head was on his warm hard

shoulder and his arms were wrapped tightly around her. His hand was

cupping her head.

'Sara.' The whisper barely reached her, and she sensed it rather than

heard it. She felt the movement of his chest come out like a sigh,

when he whispered her name, and she opened her eyes. Her hand

came up without her even realising her own impulse, and she was

delicately tracing his face in the dark, like a blind person. Her fingers

came to his lips, and he kissed each one.

'I wish I'd been a virgin too. I wish I'd known that you were. Did I

hurt you?' The question sounded anxious, and she had to smile.

'Only a little physically and not at all emotionally,' she told him

gently. 'And you were a virgin in a way. It was the first time you'd

ever made love to me.'

That made him groan deep in his throat. Sara had to laugh aloud at

that, huskily, and his bare arms squeezed her until she coughed a

protest. He let her go for a moment, then rose above her and began to

kiss her neck. She responded immediately by running her hands over

his long torso in a sweeping caress. He said just one more thing.

'Dear heaven, how you got to be twenty-eight years old and still be a

virgin with this body, I'll never ever know . . .'

She pulled back. 'I never really wanted to before.' Of course, after

that, she didn't have a chance to say anything for a long time.

Sara woke up first in the morning.

The curtains were pulled together, but a sliver of light still managed

to slice through, and it streaked blindingly across her eyelids. She

moaned and rolled over and really woke up with a shock when she

came against a large warm, hard body as naked as her own. Her eyes

flew open and she surveyed Greg's sleeping form with tenderness

flooding through her at the thought of the night before. Her body

ached strangely, and she could no longer ignore the urge to move in

an effort to relieve some cramped muscles. Carefully sliding out of

bed and standing with a painful yet luxurious movement, she stood

staring down at him. He was on his back, with his head turned to one

side, and her heart lurched as she looked at the glossy brown hair she

had stroked, the strong, graceful curve of the neck, his broad brown

shoulders and the fuzz of hair on his chest. He was wonderful to look

at. She let him sleep.

After a quick shower in her own room, she dressed and, driven by

some restless urge, clicked her fingers to an eager Beowulf after

leaving Greg a note. She needed to clear some things up in her mind.

She sat restlessly at the piano in her cabin, later, and played a few

bars of one of her favourite songs. Why was she feeling such agony

and regret this morning? Why was she wrenched with feelings she

didn't want to acknowledge?

She was beginning to understand not just the morality of the decision

to wait to have sex until after marriage, but also the emotional

reasons. She had just made love to the man she loved. She loved him

more than anything, it seemed. But there had been no word of love

from him. There had been many tender murmurs and the memory

was good, but there had not been one word of love. It must be nice,

she thought sadly, to know that every morning when you got up you

would see the one you love in the bed beside you. That assurance,

that long-term faithfulness—she craved it. It could make for a whole

lifetime full of the kind of loving from last night, manifested in

different ways and not all of them physical. Now, the morning after,

all she felt was loneliness. She was so unsure of him. It was the

saddest feeling in the world.

She came to a decision then, and made several calls. The first was to

Barry, and Sara listened to his news patiently, with some relief. The

man who had written her the crazy fan letters some time back had

broken down and confessed to breaking into her house, and he was

being dealt with. Also, the contract had been argued out, and all it

needed was her signature. She promised him, 'I'll probably be there

by this evening, Barry. See you.' Her next call was for a plane

reservation.

Some time later, after a long refreshing walk on the beach, she