Reckless Moon (6 page)

“I grew up and left her behind,” Beth replied.

He shook his head. “No, I think you buried her under an avalanche of law books and suspicion. She’s still there, but she needs to be coaxed out of her hiding place.”

Beth raised her blue eyes to his brown ones. “By whom?” she asked softly.

“By me,” he replied, “if you’ll give me the chance.”

Beth stood, her purse sliding from her lap and hitting the floor. “You had your chance,” she said abruptly, and turned from the table, almost colliding with the astonished waiter, who dodged her nimbly, balancing their tray of food. Beth bent and retrieved her bag, heading for the door.

Bram caught up to her in the lobby, seizing her arm and spinning her around to face him. “Beth, wait,” he said, his face anxious.

“No,” she whispered, her eyes filming over with tears. “I won’t wait. I waited for you for ten years, and I’m not going to wait any more.”

Bram’s hands fell away, and Beth fled, blinking rapidly to clear her vision. All she could think about was getting away from him and back home.

* * *

But when she arrived there Bram was waiting for her, seated in his father’s long black sedan. He jumped out of it the minute she pulled into the driveway.

“How did you beat me back here?” she asked in amazement, her surprise at his feat momentarily sublimating her other feelings.

“I drove seventy all the way,” he said grimly, “because I was afraid you wouldn’t let me into the house if you got here first.”

They stared at one another.

“We have to talk,” Bram finally said. “You can dodge me until you’re exhausted with it, but I’ll run you to earth eventually. You know I will.”

Beth nodded wearily. He was nothing if not persistent. She led the way to the front door and unlocked it.

Once inside, they went into the living room and Beth sat in a wing chair next to the big bay window. “Help yourself,” she said, gesturing to the bar against the wall.

Bram quickly made a drink, and then sat opposite Beth after she declined his offer to mix something for her. She should have accepted, she thought as soon as the words were out of her mouth; she was so tense that her knuckles were white where she clutched the arms of the chair.

“What did you mean about waiting for me for ten years?” Bram asked, plunging right back into the depths again.

“Think hard, sailor,” Beth replied bitterly. “Maybe you can figure it out.”

He took a healthy slug of his bourbon. “I take it you’re referring to the night of your father’s party.”

“Bingo.”

“Was it so important to you?” he asked carefully, watching her face.

“A lot more important than it was to you,” Beth answered, getting up and walking to the other side of the room. “You obviously dismissed it, and me, the minute you left the party.”

“I never said that.”

“You never said anything!” Beth cried, whirling to face him. “You walked out of my father’s house, this house, and that was the end of it.”

“Your father wanted it that way,” Bram said.

“My father!” Beth answered incredulously. “Don’t make me laugh. You would never let him or anybody else stand in the way of what you wanted. Which only leads me to one conclusion. You didn’t want me.”

Bram stood also, pacing. “That isn’t true. I wanted you very much. And if you can’t accept that idea your recollection of that evening isn’t as clear as mine.”

Beth held up her hand. “Excuse me, you’re right. You wanted me physically. I remember that very well. What you didn’t want was a relationship with a clinging teenager who would foul up your plans to have a girl in every port.”

His eyes widened. “Is that what you think? That I let you go because I had to answer the call of the sirens or some stupid notion?”

Beth fell silent, halted by the derision in his voice. She had believed her version of the story so long that his contradiction confused her. “Isn’t that right?” she finally asked.

Bram closed his eyes, putting his empty glass on the coffee table. It was some seconds before he spoke again. “Beth, listen to me. You were sixteen years old. You were the sweetest, truest thing that had ever happened to me, and I couldn’t spoil you. It was hard for me to leave, harder still to let you grow up and live your life without hearing from me. But I know I did what was best, Beth. I was no good for you. You needed a chance to get an education and meet people, a chance to develop into the person you are today. Believe me when I tell you that walking away from you that night was the noblest thing I’ve ever done in my singularly ignoble life.”

“Are you saying my father was right?”

“He was right about my unsuitability for you at that time.”

She stared at him in dumb disbelief, then shook her head. “The two of you, so wise, so knowing, so
male,
deciding what was best for me. What about what I wanted?”

Bram looked back at her, unmoving.

“I tried to get your address from everybody who knew you after you left,” she said quietly. “Nobody could tell me where you were. Then I told myself that surely you would call me, contact me when I was home from school, get my dorm address from Mindy, do something. But when the days passed and then the weeks and the months I finally realized that I was just an evening’s diversion for you.”

Bram’s fist slammed into the wall behind him. “Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve been saying?”

“Oh, yes, I heard. A touching story, full of nobility and self sacrifice. But didn’t you leave something out?”

Bram watched her, his brown eyes intent.

“I scared you, didn’t I?” she went on softly. “You knew that it couldn’t be one night and then goodbye forever with me, you sized up the situation very well. I was a kid and kids don’t understand about mature relationships that allow for sex but bypass commitment and what it implies. I wanted it all, and you weren’t ready to give it.”

Bram dropped his eyes, and she saw that she had struck a nerve.

“And why didn’t you contact me later, when I was older and had acquired some of the experience you seemed to think was so important? I’ve had years to figure it all out; you still weren’t ready for the kind of relationship I wanted. And you aren’t now.”

He said nothing.

“What made you so cynical, Bram? Who convinced you that women aren’t to be trusted?”

He glared at her stonily, but didn’t answer.

“Was it Anabel?” she asked suddenly, on a hunch.

His reaction betrayed him. His mouth thinned and his eyes became as hard as flint at the mention of his stepmother’s name.

“Leave her out of this,” he snarled.

“What did she do?”

“I said to drop it. She has nothing to do with me and you.”

“I think she does. Why did you leave home to get away from her? Was she so intolerable?”

“I’m not on the witness stand,” Bram countered. “Don’t try to cross examine me.”

“I wish I did have you on the witness stand,” Beth said fervently. “I’d get the truth out of you.”

“The truth is no mystery,” Bram said, looking away from her. “My mother died and my father married somebody I didn’t like. It happens every day. Don’t you watch television?”

Beth shook her head. “There’s more to it than that.”

Bram’s brow darkened furiously. “Stop probing! God, you’re infuriating. Is this what maturity did for you? I liked you better at sixteen.”

“When I believed everything you told me?” Beth inquired archly.

His fists clenched, but he didn’t respond.

“I believed it all,” Beth repeated. “And remembered it. Shall I recite it for you now?”

“Beth...” Bram said warningly.

“Let’s see,” Beth went on musingly. “Something about my not being ashamed of what had happened between us because my feelings were natural and normal. Wasn’t that it?”

He took a step toward her, his eyes blazing.

“And oh yes, someday I would be a wonderful lover for some lucky man. Have I got it right?”

The fingers of his right hand flexed.

“Go ahead and punch me,” Beth cried. “That’s what you usually do when somebody makes you angry, isn’t it? Don’t hold back on my account.”

He reached out for her, and she struggled. Without hurting her he managed to subdue her and pull her into his arms.

“I don’t want to punch you, I want to make love to you,” he murmured, tangling his fingers in her trailing hair and turning her face up to his. “I’ve wanted nothing else since I saw you at your sister’s reception.”

Beth tried to hang on to the last vestiges of her pride, her resistance, but they were slipping rapidly out of reach. This was Bram, and he was touching her, holding her. Other concerns just didn’t seem to matter.

“We’ve waited so long to be together again,” he said huskily. “Let’s not fight.” His lips brushed her cheek.

Beth’s head turned involuntarily to bring her mouth to his. He kissed her gently at first, her awareness distracted slightly by the unfamiliar, tactile softness of his mustache, his beard. But then, as the pressure of Bram’s lips increased, she was submerged in a rush of sensual memory so intense her knees went weak and she dug her nails into his arms for support. After all this time, she thought dizzily, how can it still be so strong? She didn’t understand the basis of an attraction that could endure with such force, without contact, for such a long period. All she knew was that for ten years, through every experience of her life, she had never met a man who could make her feel what Bram was making her feel now.

He lifted his mouth from hers and kissed her neck, brushing her hair away from her ear and whispering into it, “Do you want to go upstairs?”

When Beth hesitated he bent his head and trailed his lips inside the collar of her dress, kissing her collarbone. He dropped his hands to her hips and pulled her tight against him, letting her feel his arousal. Beth gasped and went limp in his arms. Bram held her gently for a moment, as if to reassure her, and then turned her toward the stairs.

The movement released Beth from her trance. I can’t let this happen, she thought wildly. He doesn’t love me; if I go with him I will be no different from all the others. Bram was special to her, he always would be, and if she couldn’t be special to him, she would be nothing at all.

“No,” she said suddenly, clearly, and Bram stopped dead.

He grasped her shoulders and stared into her face. “What?”

“I said no. I can’t do this.”

“Beth, why not? You want me. That’s one thing that has never changed.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want you. But I needed more when I was sixteen, and I still do. You can give me your body, Bram, but I want you to give yourself. Until you’re ready to do that please don’t tempt me with glimpses of something that just can’t be.”

He was silent, his expression shrouded, and then he released her. “All right,” he said finally. “I’ll go. But it could have been very good for us.”

Beth’s breath caught in her throat. She had no doubt of that. Her heart was still racing from her short time in his embrace.

“I’m sure it’s been good for you with a lot of women,” Beth replied, her voice unsteady.

He smiled faintly. “Stubborn as always, I see,” he said softly.

Her chin came up slightly. “I hold out for what I want, Bram. If that makes me stubborn, then I guess I am.” She touched his cheek, and his eyes closed. “You were my first taste of love, Abraham Curtis, and I’ve always wanted to have the rest. But not this way.”

His eyes opened and looked into hers. “You think I’m not capable of love?” he asked, with a note of despair in his voice.

Beth held herself back from putting her arms around him again. He sounded as if he were worried about the issue himself.

“I think you’re capable of great love,” she answered quietly. “But you have to take a chance with your feelings first. And somehow I know that will be very difficult for you.”

He didn’t answer, merely picked up the hand that had touched his face and kissed it. Then, without a word, he walked to the door and left.

Beth went back into the living room and made the drink she’d refused earlier. She heard Bram’s car start, and she sat in the stillness long after the sound of the motor had faded into silence.

Bram was the only man she had ever wanted, and she had let him go. He was the only lover she had ever desired; in fact, she had never had another. But Bram didn’t know that. He didn’t know that she had turned away, disappointed and disillusioned, from every other man who had tried to make love to her.

Beth put down her drink. She folded her hands in her lap and considered her situation.

She was in love with Bram, and had been since she’d seen him standing on her lawn, talking to her sister on that summer night so long ago. It seemed such a ridiculous notion to her trained mind, that she could have fallen in love in the space of a few hours and then carried that torch, still burning brightly, through the succeeding years. Ever since she’d returned to Suffield she’d been trying to talk herself out of it, but tonight she conceded defeat. She had known better when she was in high school; there had been no doubt that fourth of July that she was in love with Bram, or she never would have let things get as far as they had. She’d been full of romantic ideas in those days, waiting for a dashing stranger to appear and sweep her off her feet. But that was exactly what had happened, and she’d accepted it at the time. It was a rude awakening to realize that her instincts had been better when she was a teenager than they were now. Now she was full of fears and anxieties that held her back from reaching for the only thing in life she had ever truly wanted.