Island Hearts (Jenny's Turn and Stray Lady) (45 page)

“Are you wearing anything under that housecoat?”

“No.” He saw her breath quicken, her eyes widen.

He couldn’t stop himself from touching her, taking her shoulders in his hands and pulling her close until his lips covered hers. She gasped, her breath fanning his lips. Her soft unconfined breasts pressed against the muscles of his chest. He slipped his arms around to her back.

George’s arms went up, her fingers tangling in his hair, pulling his head down into a deeper kiss. He let his hands explore her back, shaping her woman’s curves close to him, caressing the wonderful contours of her back… down… down until his hands held the excitingly round curve of her buttocks.

Close by, a floorboard creaked.

“Robyn,” he groaned, stiffening. He could feel every beautiful inch of George pressing against him. He couldn’t bear to let her go.

“No,” she murmured against his lips. “Robyn’s downstairs, helping Jenny feed Mandy. It’ll be Jake, and he’ll probably want to shower.”

“Darling,” he whispered, finding her soft neck with his lips. “I wish I’d come to you last night.” He felt her skin quiver from his touch, heard her gasp softly at the pictures his words evoked. “Did you want me last night, George?”

Her fingers tightened in his hair, then drifted down to his neck, his shoulders. “Yes… I waited for you to come.”

He let his hands feel the shape of her. The thrust of her hipbones. Her narrow waist. His hands drifted over a trembling softness that was her abdomen, up to grasp the swollen fullness of her breasts through the thick fabric.

“I want to touch you, feel you,” he growled. His fingers fumbled with the button at the front of her gown, slipping inside to touch her hot flesh.

She shuddered and sagged against him. “Lyle, please!” His fingers found the rigid peak and grasped it gently. “Oh…”

A door opening, then closing. He stiffened. His hand moved outside the fabric. His voice was tight as he said, “I’ve got rotten timing, honey.” His arms gentled, stroking her as if he could ease the tension he’d imparted to her aching body.

“You sure have!” Jake’s voice, vibrant and laughing, followed by Jake himself in jeans and bare chest. Tactfully, his eyes just glanced off them, then moved on. “Excuse me, you two, but if I could just get past? Into the shower? Then you can resume whatever you were doing.”

George jerked back, hugging her gown to herself, not realizing that she was revealing the aroused curves of her body by pulling the fabric tight against her skin.

Jake laughed gently, patting her shoulder as he went past. “Your turn, is it?” he asked teasingly. George had a sudden vivid memory of Jake standing on the pontoon of a seaplane, shouting his love across to Jenny on the deck of
Lady Harriet
.

“What did he mean by that?” Lyle had his breathing under control now. Well, almost. “I’d better get downstairs,” he decided. “Robyn—”

George asked suddenly, “Are you going to see your wife?”

“She’s not my wife,” he said harshly. “We’re divorced. Years ago.”

George shivered and pulled the gown tighter. If he felt that strongly about Hazel, he might be fooling himself thinking he didn’t still love her. “She still has the power to upset you, it seems.”

“That’s for damned sure,” he muttered. “I don’t know why the hell she’d want to see me now.” He added wryly, “I wish you weren’t so bloody good-natured and understanding about her. It’s hard on my ego— what did you say?”

“You heard,” she muttered. She wanted to tear the woman off the face of the earth. It wasn’t as if she’d ever made him happy, but she was causing trouble even now. “It was a very unladylike comment. And I’m anything but understanding. I don’t understand anything! If you want her back, why are you kissing me? And—”

“And?” he prompted, hope rising in him until suddenly the fire closed down in her eyes and she was gone, back into her bedroom.

Damn!

Downstairs, Jenny was efficiently dishing out bacon and eggs while Robyn spooned baby food into Mandy’s mouth and all over her face. Lyle accepted a cup of coffee and watched his daughter, wishing he could give her a mother – George – and a baby sister. Damn, who was he fooling? He wanted George for himself, in his arms and his life and his home. Wherever the hell she wanted to be, but near him. And a baby. Two babies.

Jake came down and gave Jenny a kiss before he accepted his coffee.

Robyn asked, “Do you have a baby sitter?”

Jake shook his head. “No, but we’ll have to get one soon. Once Mandy starts walking it won’t be possible to have her with us at the studio. But, for the moment, she’s nice to have around.”

Jenny wiped food from the baby’s cheeks. “We have a friend, Monica, who runs a day care center. Mandy goes there when we can’t have her with us.”

Robyn took a sip from her glass of orange juice. Lyle noticed that she hadn’t eaten any of her own breakfast. He recognized the nervous tension in her eyes from past visits to the hospital.

He said, “I think Robyn would like to run a day care center. She likes babies.” The distraction worked. Robyn’s eyes lit up and she started asking quick questions about the unknown Monica and her fascinating job.

“I’ll take you to see her,” offered Jenny, “after you get out of hospital.”

Two cups of coffee helped make him feel more alert, but he knew his lack of sleep would catch up with him soon.

George came in, sparkling fresh in a flowered summer skirt and a thin embroidered blouse. She looked wonderful, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

Jenny said, “We’re just going off to work. Lyle, you and Robyn make yourselves at home.”

That was when he announced, “Thanks, Jenny, but we’ll be leaving in a bit. Robyn’s checking into the hospital this afternoon, and I’ll move to the hotel.”

George wouldn’t meet his eyes. He should have talked to her first, not made the announcement cold without her knowing. Robyn said tensely, “George, will you visit me?”

Her voice was falsely bright. “Sure, Robyn. Just tell me what time and I’ll be there.”

George watched Lyle and Robyn drive away in a yellow cab. Some independent woman she was! Emancipated, hell! She hadn’t even gotten the nerve to tell him she loved him. She was terribly afraid that he’d changed his mind, that his love song had been a thing of the moment.

Why hadn’t he come to her last night? Well, for that matter, why hadn’t she gone to him? Simple. She’d been afraid.

Maybe he was afraid, too.

She certainly hadn’t given him any reason to feel sure of her. She hadn’t told him that she loved him. She hadn’t told him that he’d made her feel whole for the first time in her life. She hadn’t said that she even wanted to cook his breakfasts – well, some of the time, anyway – and she wanted to make a child with him, to be a mother to Robyn and to their children. They could be grandparents together.

In the song, he’d said he loved her.

This was crazy! There was nothing she could do right now. She tried to push aside her thoughts and set to work cleaning Jenny’s house.

She wished she could have gone with Lyle and Robyn. Surely it would have helped Lyle to have someone else there to distract Robyn from her nervousness about the surgery. Why hadn’t he asked her to come?

She rubbed hard at a spot on the coffee table.

Funny, she’d always thought she was a direct and forthright person. If she wanted to go with Lyle, why hadn’t she said, “Can I come with you?”

She’d been doing that all her adult life. She’d resented Scott’s attitude to her music, but she had never said, “Scott, music is important to me. My soul needs music, and it doesn’t make me love you any less.”

Lyle, I love you.
Would it be enough, to say that? He was being so strange, reaching out to her, then drawing back. Was it possible that he still loved the woman who had once been his wife?

He’d written a love song for George, his stray lady.

She wanted to go out walking, but she was afraid Lyle might phone and she would miss the call. She hadn’t given him the number. Had he looked at the phone and written it down? It was in the phone book, but what if he forgot Jake’s last name? Jake Austin. There was no reason for him to remember that.

She had hoped he would want to do the documentary with Jake and Jenny. It would almost inevitably give his songs a boost, give him a way to make his living in the city, make it possible for her to live with him.

She’d even live on a lighthouse if he really wanted that. It sounded like a trap, but it hadn’t felt like one when he held her in his arms. There had been the ocean and the beach. The music room. He had a plane that he brought out in the summers. They could fly everywhere, be free to move about.

There were neighbors. Russ might smile at her again if she came back with Lyle. His wife, Dorothy, was almost certainly a nice woman. She’d like to see their new baby, the baby named Lyle.

What was she going to do if Lyle didn’t want her?

The phone didn’t ring. In the afternoon she called the hospital to ask about visiting hours. She thought Lyle might call her, suggest they visit Robyn together. He didn’t call.

She went to the hospital near the end of the evening visiting hours. She found Robyn half-asleep, and alone.

“Daddy was here a minute ago,” she mumbled. “I didn’t get any dinner, and they gave me a sleepy pill.”

Her eyes drooped and she was asleep.

Lyle was very close by. She could walk to his hotel in minutes, see him. But if he wanted to see her, wouldn’t he call her? Was she asking for too much, assuming too much? She shouldn’t have mentioned marriage. That had been her mistake. If he wanted an affair—

It didn’t matter what he wanted. She’d be whatever he wanted—

No, she wouldn’t! She’d finished with that. She was herself, George, faults and all.

And she loved him.

She went home. Twice she almost told the taxi driver to turn back, but in the end she arrived at Jenny and Jake’s home. She went to bed early and spent a sleepless night. What would he do if she called him in the middle of the night? No. Tonight belonged to Robyn. Tomorrow she’d have her surgery, and until that was over she couldn’t expect Lyle to have any time for anyone but his daughter.

Then, if he wanted an affair, they’d have an affair. She’d take whatever loving he could give her. If he wanted the lighthouse, then George would go with him. She’d have to be honest with him, tell him she didn’t know how long she could live out there, but she’d try it.

By mid-afternoon the next day she knew that she couldn’t stand waiting any longer. She’d always been terrible at waiting.

She left Jenny’s house, went to the corner store, looking for a book to read, picked up a romance, knowing she couldn’t read it without thinking of Lyle. Then she ran back, imagining the phone ringing in an empty house. It started ringing as she was fumbling for the key in Jenny’s porch. She dropped the key. When she bent to pick it up, her purse disgorged its contents onto the floor.

Damn! Wallet and lipstick all over. A scattering of odds and ends of useless paper. A few pennies. She left the mess and shoved the key into the lock. It stuck. She forgot for a minute that you had to hold up on the door for the key to turn smoothly. Why couldn’t Jenny and Jake have a house without these temperamental problems? She tripped on the rug inside the door, landing flat on her stomach with her hands taking a stinging slap against the linoleum.

The telephone stopped ringing. She got to it finally, picked it up. She heard the howl of the dial tone in her ear. It had probably been Jenny, checking on plans for supper. Or someone selling something.

What if he didn’t phone again? What if he had called her, and never tried again? What if he’d called with bad news about Robyn?

She fumbled for the telephone book, searched desperately for the Holiday Inn.

It rang again, a shrill sound. She jerked it up quickly.

“Hello?”

“Hi, honey.” He sounded very close. She could feel his breath in her ear.

“Did you call a minute ago?”

“Yes. I thought I had the wrong number.”

She shifted the receiver. Her fingers gripped it tightly. It was going to be all right. He’d called. And Robyn was all right. She knew from his voice that it was all right. “I was outside. I went to the store.” She glanced back at the open door. She hadn’t picked up the mess from her purse. “I couldn’t get the damned key to work in the lock. When I got to the phone, you were gone… Where are you? How did Robyn’s surgery go?”

She could hear sounds with his voice. A radio? People? “The hotel. I just left Robyn at the hospital. She had her surgery. She was in the recovery room, groggy and mostly asleep. The doctor says it went perfectly, that after six months of physiotherapy she won’t know which leg had the limp.”

“Does she know? Did you tell her?”

“I told her, but she may not remember. She’s still pretty much under the anesthetic.”

She sat down cross-legged on the floor, her hand flying out to stop the phone from crashing to the floor when she pulled the cord tight. “How long will she be in the hospital?”

“About a week. She’s sharing a room with another girl who’s having surgery on her knee in the morning. They were comparing legs this morning as they wheeled Robyn out for her surgery.”