The Hellion (24 page)

He grinned her way beguilingly. "And which did you do?"

She turned a snooty nose in the air. "None of your business."

"All right. Fair enough. So, what about Marshall True?"

Her head snapped around. "More-Marshall?" Her face burned at the memory of her last confrontation with Marshall.

"The town has the two of you linked
     
285 together. Surely you know that."

"I'm not seeing Marshall anymore."

"Oh?" His eyes flashed over her, but she looked straight ahead.

"Marshall made a pass at me that I didn't like at all."

"You don't like it when a man makes a pass at you?" he questioned quietly.

She picked at her purse catch with a thumbnail. "I didn't like it when Marshall made a pass at me."

Just at that moment they reached Rachel's house and he drew up at the curb beneath the deep, shielding branches of the magnolia, eased the car into neutral, and turned on the parking lights, then sat back smoking. "I take that to mean you never had an affair while you were married to Owen."

She was shocked by his words, appalled that he might even think her capable of such a thing. "No, never!"

"Not even at the end?" Again she flushed at the realization that he, too, had guessed the extent to which Owen's illness had incapacitated him.

"No, I could never have handled the guilt."

"And what about now?" he asked.

"Now?" Her eyes flew to his dimly lit profile, the crisp knot of his tie, the crisper outline of his lips, chin, and nose. "Are you one of those widows who would feel disloyal to her husband's memory if she had sex with another man?"

The warning rockets went off in Rachel's body. How many times had she asked herself the same question and come up with no answer? Twenty years with the same man had left her feeling shaky and doubtful about considering another. Yet she knew that when Tommy Lee made his move, she would not turn him away. And there was no doubt he was about to make it. She held her breath, waiting for him to turn off the engine and draw her into his arms, but instead he strung an arm along the back of the seat, half turning to her to say, "Rachel, I can't thank you enough for tonight."

Disappointment made her stomach go hollow as she realized he'd been sitting there waiting for his cue, which she had not given. Maybe it was best this way. Her common sense knew a thousand reasons why she should hurry to the house and let him drive away, but her heart knew as many more for wanting him

to stay. His company was pleasurable ... and
  
287 he'd changed. So much. But would the changes last? At that moment it ceased to matter, and she groped for a means to keep him with her a while longer.

"But I should be thanking you."

"No ... no," he said quietly. But still he sat politely on his side of the seat while her heart hammered crazily.

"Tommy Lee, I ..." Did he really intend to say good night without even kissing her?

"You what?"

She didn't know what she was going to say next until the words fell from her mouth. "Why didn't you tell me the earrings were for Beth?"

"You wanted to believe the worst about me."

"I did?"

"Of course. That would have made it much easier for you to deny what you were feeling."

"And what am I feeling?"

"You tell me."

But she really didn't know. There was this powerful attraction, but at the same time she feared his wildness, his reputation, the very real possibility of his backsliding.

So she asked, "Did you get the new

glasses because you knew I didn't like the old ones?"

His hand rested very near her shoulder. "Absolutely," he answered in a voice as soft as the fall of a dogwood petal.

Her eyes dropped to his lapel. "And your suit is new, isn't it?"

He, too, glanced down at his chest. "I'm afraid it is. I had to buy it to replace a perfectly good one I ruined in your pool." They laughed quietly, then fell still again, feeling the tension grow.

"And you've been ..." She was suddenly afraid to broach the delicate issue.

"I've been what?"

"You've been dieting."

"High time, wouldn't you say?"

She had saved the most delicate issue for last. "And how long has it been since you stopped drinking?"

His hand left the back of the seat and fished for a cigarette. "Six weeks," he answered, leaning forward to push in the dash lighter, leaving his arm extended while waiting for it.

She added it all up, as she'd been adding it

up all evening, and her heart melted.
    
289 She laid her hand on his crisp jacket sleeve. "Oh, Tommy Lee, that's wonderful."

His eyes flashed to the spot where she touched him, then quickly away. "You made me see I was on a fast train to nowhere. I decided it was time to change tracks."

The lighter popped out, and she dropped her hand from his arm while the tip of the cigarette took fire. The idling engine was making her more nervous by the second, and she sensed his impatience to get away if the evening was going to end here with a simple good night.

Suddenly his face took on a hard expression as he studied the glowing coal of his cigarette and asked, "Rachel, why did you come tonight?"

She was so surprised at his change of mood that she didn't know what to answer. She only stared at him, big-eyed.

"You wanted to check me out, find out if I really meant it when I said I could change. But what does it mean to you that I have?"

"Mean ..." I-I'm not sure what you--was

"Let me put it this way, then. Just because I've changed, I can't expect that I'll stand a chance with you. That's how it is, right, Rachel?"

"No! No, that's not it!" But it was. In spite of the sexual awareness she felt, she was afraid of people finding out she was spending time with him, afraid of the way he played romantic leapfrog, afraid that they were attracted to each other more by the tug of yesteryear than of today.

"Oh, isn't it? You've already told me you're not a woman who has affairs, and it would be stretching the imagination to believe you wanted anything permanent. So if I kiss you, if I start something, where does that leave me except hurt?"

He studied her intently now, waiting for some response. She felt like a hypocrite, wanting him sexually, yet unable to deny that she wouldn't want the town to find out. He turned to face her, crooking a knee on the seat and draping an elbow between the headrests. She was reminded of his similar pose on the deck railing earlier and pictured his trousers drawn tight, his jacket fallen open. With the hand that held the cigarette, he lifted a strand of her hair and let it fall. "It's all right, Rachel. You

don't have to say it."
                 
291

She closed her eyes and let the sensation of his touch thread down through her limbs and bring goose pimples as the hair dropped from his fingertips time and again. A thought filtered through--something about too much water over the dam--but it felt so good to be touched again, even in so casual a fashion. From above her head the smoke curled, filling her nostrils, while he played with her hair and made her shiver. At last she opened her eyes and found him watching her carefully.

"But still I can't resist you," he said throatily. "You know that."

All was still. Their eyes clung and questioned while intensity spun between them. He's right, she thought sadly, you could hurt him so badly.

"We have so much working against us," she said, in a soft, pained voice.

"Do we?"

She was hazily aware of his arm rising over her head, and of the way he reached toward the ashtray to tamp out the cigarette while studying her over his shoulder. Then he turned to her again, and one strong hand closed about the back of her neck.

"Come here, Rachel," came his thick-throated

appeal.

He drew her halfway across the seat, meeting her there with the kiss she'd been afraid would happen, afraid wouldn't. His lips were open, soft, and suckling, covering hers in a first exploratory hello-again that made her heart carom. The tip of his tongue drew persuasive lines along the seam of her lips, and she could no more have kept them closed against him than she could have stilled the wild thrum of her heart. Their tongues met--a sleek, hesitant greeting filled with uncertainty.

When they drew apart, their eyes shone like flinders of glass as they studied each other in the faint greenish-white light. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Now tell me," he ordered softly. "What do we have working against us?"

It was difficult for Rachel to reason, with her pulses racing this way. She forced herself to ease back to her own side of the seat, but the moment she did he took up the sensual fingering of her hair again. She shivered, came to her senses, and shrugged away. "Don't do that, Tommy Lee," she demanded sensibly, forcing herself to evaluate the situation rationally. He was justified in asking her

exactly why she was here and what she
      
293 wanted from him.

"Sorry," he said letting go of her hair. "A minute ago I thought you were enjoying it."

"A minute ago I was, but I shouldn't have been."

"What are you afraid of, Rachel?"

"The same things you are. You ... me ... the past ... the future."

"Broad answers. Could you narrow them down?"

She sighed and looked away from him in the hope that she would be able to think more clearly. "Oh, Tommy Lee, you're so ... so practiced!" She made an irritated gesture with her hands.

"Practiced!"

"Yes, practiced. I have the distinct feeling you've done it all, said it all a thousand times before. Do you blame me for being put off by the thought of all those others?"

"All right," he snapped, "so I'm not a fumbling schoolboy anymore. Is that what you want?"

"I don't know," she said miserably, propping her forehead on her knuckles. "I'm so mixed up."

"I told you before, Rachel. Those other women were only substitutes."

"And when you say things like that it only makes me wonder if you give this standard line to every one of us."

He tensed; then the lines of his face hardened, and he removed his arm from the back of the seat. "I don't have a standard line," he stated angrily.

"You wanted me to tell you what we had working against us, so there it is--part of it--and I'm not sure I can ever get past it."

He studied her profile for a full minute, then went on with stern reproof in every word. "Let me tell you something, Rachel. When you first came home from college, you wore your hair down to your shoulderblades, and you had a saucy little red shiny-looking coat that barely reached past your butt, and the day you were married it was sixty-seven degrees and raining. You honeymooned in Greece, came back, and lived in a rented house at fourteen hundred Oak Street, and your phone number was 555-6891. You went to work for the Chamber of Commerce during the time when your hair was screwed up in Afro ringlets, and you wore a more sedate gray cloth coat that fall --that was when you had the maroon Chevy Nova, the

one that kid sideswiped that time when you
     
295 hit your head on the windshield and had to have stitches in your scalp--let's see ..." With seemingly clinical detachment he clasped her head in both hands and explored her hairline with his thumbs. "I forget which side it's on, but I know it's right here someplace ..."

She chuckled and pulled away. "Oh, Tommy Lee, you're impossible."

"Do you want me to tell you about the cinnamon-colored suede suit that really knocked my socks off when I first saw you walking by in it? Or the grand opening of your store, held on September fif--was

She cut him off with four fingers on his lips. "No, you don't have to tell me any more," she answered meekly.

He kissed her fingertips, then pressed them to his lapel before declaring in a soft, sincere tone, "I don't have a line where you're concerned, Rachel."

"I'm sorry I said that. I really am."

"But I don't know what you want from me. What is it, Rachel?" His hand gripped hers harder. His eyes, so close now, held a

vulnerability he made no effort to hide.

"I don't know," she said. "Sometimes the thought of you scares me. You're so ... so ..."

"When I kissed you, you weren't scared."

"When you kissed me you caught me with my guard down."

His eyes dropped to her lips. He smoothed the back of her hand, and even through his stiff lapel she could feel the strong, fast thud of his heart. "You're afraid I'll use you and move on, is that it?"

"That's part of it."

"And the other part?"

She looked into his eyes with a sad realization that there were no guarantees in this world. "That I'll use you and move on," she admitted, then continued softly. "There are still feelings between us, I won't deny it. But why? Simply because we were denied the right to each other once a long time ago? And if and when we've explored those feelings, what then? Please understand, Tommy Lee, I don't want to hurt you, but it's becoming clearer all the time how easily that could happen."