‘See, I told you it was easy,’ Con smiled over the gradually diminishing pile of goodies before them. The waitress arrived to refill their wine glasses, and Con waited until she’d disappeared before lifting his glass in a toast.
‘To Dragon Lady the Editor,’ he said with a grin. And Verna was already raising her own glass when he continued, ‘and may all her fantasies be fulfilled.’
If only he knew just what fantasies lurked behind her gracious smile, Verna thought, he’d probably be running for cover! ‘And to her creator,’ she replied, lifting her own glass.
To her surprise, a flicker of a frown crossed his eyes, but then, he smiled and raised his own glass, silently.
Throughout the rest of the meal, Con seemed just a touch reserved, as if his mind wasn’t quite all there in the restaurant, but was partially off somewhere on a journey of its own. Several times Verna had to repeat herself because he missed what she’d said, and gradually she found it increasingly difficult to keep the conversation alive.
Her own imagination filled in the reasons quite well: obviously he had seen her look of undisguised love, and it was beginning to worry him. Because, of course, he didn’t fancy any serious involvement with a girl whose innocence put such a distinct liability on the relationship. There had been, she was sure, many women in his life, women able to offer him physical satisfaction without the emotional implications Verna realised his knowledge of her own situation would involve. Well, fair enough, she thought. In a way she could hardly blame him. Only why did she have to love him? It’s just not fair, she thought, and had to forcibly restrain herself from thumping the table and crying out her indignant anger.
When they finally left the restaurant and began the silent drive back to Bargara, she had already begun to construct her defences. Con would only be living in his rented beach house another six months, then he’d be going back to Sydney, or Melbourne, or wherever he really lived. She could hang on that long, provided she kept their association to a bare minimum.
She was so engrossed in her thoughts that she didn’t even notice when he took a different road, and the car began to climb up the side of the Hummock. But as they neared the crest, and her eyes began to roam across the miles of light-speckled darkness, she sat up straighter in her seat and exclaimed with excitement, ‘Oh, isn’t it absolutely glorious?’
She could see Bundaberg, and off to the left and much further away a lesser glow that she assumed was Childers, while in the other direction were the various beach settlements and the almost invisible horizon line between the sky and sea.
Verna’s excitement overwhelmed her; when Con stopped the car she bounced out of it and fairly ran around the top of the Hummock, stopping briefly to peer in every direction. Only when a gentle hand caught her own did she slow down and allow him to point out the various highlights of the hundred and eighty-degree view.
‘It’s too bad you missed the cane harvest,’ Con murmured gently in her ear. ‘From up here, it looks as if the whole world’s on fire; you could almost believe then that this was once a volcano.’
She didn’t reply, content to simply stand there, her hand to his and a feeling of exquisite peace pouring through her.
Then he spoke her name, very, very softly, and as she turned towards him, his head blotted out the stars as he bent to kiss her. The stars came on again, this time in her own head as his lips roamed across her mouth, gentle as a whisper. He lifted his head only long enough to whisper, ‘Verna,’ again, and then his mouth returned and her arms crept up around his neck as the touch of them surged a tide of emotion through her. His arms closed around her, fingers splayed against the small of her back as he pulled her closer, and Verna’s own body strained as she rose on tiptoe to draw him even closer.
She could feel his hands moving, caressing her with a gentleness she would never have believed, exploring her body and sending sparks of fire through nerves she’d never realised existed.
When he turned her slightly so that his lips could slide across her cheek, down the column of her neck to cross the straps of the dress, burning a trail into the cleft of her bosom, she swayed with his direction, her own hands busy on errands of their own in his hair, across the rugged muscles of his shoulders and back.
When his fingers followed his lips, cupping her breast and dipping expertly to release it from the suddenly-loosened top of the dress, she felt her breasts responding to the play of his fingers, and when he suddenly turned her and sought her mouth again with his own, she felt his own desire rising against her.
Never had a man so thoroughly roused her, not even close, she realised. And where others had automatically raised a voice inside her to cry ‘No! … Con’s touch had that same voice crying ‘Yes! Oh, yes!’ The urgency of her response frightened her, because she couldn’t, wouldn’t even attempt to control it. If he wanted her here, now, sprawling in the grass at their fret, it could be no less than her own wanting, and suddenly she realised that not only was her heart singing yes, but her voice was crying it as well.
Con’s lips were burning against the soft skin of her breasts, and her fingers against his neck were urging him on while she cried, ‘Yes, oh, please!’ in his ear.
Her legs were like rubber, and she was unconsciously sagging towards the ground, pulling him with her, when the sudden brilliance of a car’s headlights swam across her eyelids.
‘Damn!’ she heard Con mutter as he straightened and thrust her around so that his body protected her half-naked figure from the lights. Moving far more quickly than her own trembling fingers could have managed it, his hands swept up the top of her dress and fumbled the ties into some kind of union behind her neck. Then his arm was around her waist, almost dragging her towards the door of his car before he thrust her inside and strode quickly around to seat himself behind the wheel.
The engine roared and gravel spun out from the tires as he swung the car around and sent it hurtling onto the twisting road down, driving with both hands clenched on the steering wheel and his eyes nailed to the beam of the headlights. In the ten minutes it took to reach her small house, he said nothing and indeed didn’t so much as look at her, and although Verna wanted desperately to reach out, to touch him, she didn’t. She turned towards him when the car stopped, but he was already opening his door and moving around to help her out.
Hand in hand they walked towards her door, and Verna’s mind whirled with words unsaid, un-sayable. She wanted to plead with him, you’ve taken me this far — don’t stop. She wanted him to carry her into her house, into her own bed, where nothing could interrupt the fire that burned inside her, where she could give herself totally, completely and freely. But she knew, somehow, that he wasn’t going to do it. The tension she could feel through his fingers in her own was a different one from what he had shown up on the Hummock.
If he says he’s sorry, I’ll kill him, she thought quite irrationally, but when they reached her door and be said exactly that, she looked him straight in the eye and demanded, ‘Why?’
It wasn’t the time or the place for where we were heading,’ he replied grimly.
He stood, looming above her, with both of her hands buried in his own. But their touch no longer held barely constrained passion, only a great tenderness that threatened to bring tears to her eyes.
‘Will you come in?’ she said aloud. And the voice inside her was crying, ‘Please say yes! Please take me inside and love me, want me,’ even as Con shook his head sadly. And she saw that he’d heard the inner voices as well, and something inside her rebelled at the fact that he could read her surrender, her need, and yet reject her.
‘I’m not trying to trap you into marriage or anything, you know,’ she cried angrily, unable to stop the tears that sprang from her eyes as passion turned to a blinding, fearful rage. ‘Damn you — how can you do this?’
Her hurt bewilderment increased as she realised that her body was crying out to him even as she shouted out her anger and freed her hands to pummel them against his c
hest as frustration blinded her eyes and heightened her rage. How dared he reject her? Verna knew in her soul that Con had wanted her every bit as much as she had wanted him, and his quick return to self-control was nothing short of maddening.
She flailed out at him with her fists, unable to see him through the tears that flooded her vision. And then he was holding her, and her anger was spent in sobs that she couldn’t hold back.
He stroked her, like somebody gentling a frightened animal or child, and her sobs magnified and grew until her entire body was racked with shuddering and then gradually the tide turned, and finally she stood, shivering against him, but no longer sobbing. She opened her eyes and saw the shoulder of his suit, soaked with her tears and stained by her mascara, and she knew her eyes would be blackened by it.
Con’s hands lifted her purse from nerveless fingers, opened it to remove her key, and reached out past her to fit it into the door. And only then did Verna hear the frenzied whining and scratching as Sheba struggled to join them.
When the door opened, a black shadow plunged out to dance in a frenzy around their feet, but Verna couldn’t move from the cage of Con’s arms. Her anger had gone, and so, miraculously, had her fiery passion. All that remained was a cold, expanding emptiness inside her, and she shivered, knowing that when he took his arms away the emptiness would swarm up and take over her world.
She knew her face would be a mess of smeared mascara and blotchy, swollen eyes, but she raised it to look up at him, afraid of what she’d see but knowing she must see it, no matter what the cost. But there was no laughter, no harshness, no mockery in his eyes. Only a great empty sadness that extended to his voice when he spoke.
‘Anything I could say — right now — would be wrong,’ he whispered. Then his lips descended to brush against hers, ever so gently, and he turned away.
Verna stood there, one hand raised to touch her swollen, trembling lips, and watched him leap the fence, step into his car, and drive quietly, slowly, away.
Then the emptiness she had feared did come, and she felt it close around her like a shroud, shutting out everything as she turned and went into the house, oblivious to the dog beside her, oblivious to everything.
She moved through the house like a sleepwalker, mechanically turning out the lights behind her, undressing when she reached the bedroom, and finally flinging herself down to lie rigid upon her narrow bed.
Sleep came not as a comfort, but as a dark, glowering curtain that flowed across her consciousness like a black river in which she couldn’t swim.
She didn’t dream, she didn’t move. She just lay there until the heat of the rising sun and the whimpering of her dog brought her back to a semblance of reality. But the face in her mirror was that of a stranger, a stranger whose eyes were smudged, and whose features seemed strangely distorted. She expected to see shame for her wanton behaviour, but there was no shame. She expected to feel anger, but there was no anger.
Only a strange, wearying emptiness.
CHAPTER SIX
By the time she reached the office, Verna realised the wisdom of Con’s actions, and she couldn’t help but be thankful for his strength and wisdom. But what surprised her was her own reaction, once a massive breakfast and several cups of coffee had brought her back into the real world.
She had thought about it on the way into town, a drive in which she’d deliberately sidetracked via the crest of the Hummock and parked for several minutes while she considered her position. She wasn’t angry, neither with Con nor herself. Nor did she feel the slightest shame in her reactions of the evening before. The entire thing had a vague, dreamlike quality, and yet she didn’t think of it as a dream.
It had been, she realised, the closest she had ever come to the kind of ecstasy that dreams are made of, and she knew that she would never regret a single second of it. There had been a rightness about his kissing her, his caresses, and her own responses, and somehow that rightness carried over to cover the rest of the events as well. Con had indeed taken her so far, and no farther, but that was as it should be, somehow.
She was no longer the Verna of the day before; what he had called her obsession was gone. And best of all, she knew it didn’t matter any more.
Her chastity was intact, but no longer a burden, no longer a subject of embarrassment or even of concern. It was a part of her that had somehow become as natural as her red-gold hair or the fingers that touched wonderingly at lips still swollen from Con’s kisses.
As natural as the love she felt for a man who might never return that love, but who somehow, she now knew, would never spurn it as valueless, either. She had, in a strange and inestimable way, grown up. And despite the knowledge that she loved Con Bradley with every fibre of her being, he had somehow shifted from her fantasy figure on the beach at dawn to a much more complex, and yet strangely more simple role. He was her friend.
That knowledge brought with it a calmness that seemed to pervade the entire office, and Verna’s heightened senses understood and accepted when Jennifer and young Dave absorbed some of the calm, and were unusually quiet throughout the morning.
When the telephone rang at eleven-thirty and a rumbling voice said, ‘How about lunch?’ the new Verna glanced at the work still remaining and said, ‘I can’t, honestly, but I’ll cook you dinner if you’ll wait until seven. We’re a little bit behind today.’
‘Red wine or white?’ he replied with a soft chuckle, and Verna knew it would be all right.
‘Whichever you prefer,’ she said, ‘and Con ... thank you for a lovely evening last night.’
‘My pleasure,’ he replied. ‘See you about seven.’
Verna replaced the receiver with a sigh that brought a wide grin from Jennifer, and at the sight of it Verna quite calmly stared the younger girl down.
‘Off to lunch, the both of you,’ she said in mock anger that fooled nobody. ‘An hour without you lot and I might manage to get some work done!’
She did, too. Enough work that she was able to walk out of the office right at five o’clock, knowing she had enough time to get home and changed while she put together a simple but adequate meal.
It wasn’t until she looked out to see Con’s car out front that Verna suddenly began to feel the butterflies come to life inside her. She felt panic for just an instant when he knocked at the door, but as she opened it to greet him, the panic disappeared as if by magic.
He was dressed casually, in shorts and a soft, short-sleeved shirt that set off his muscular shoulders and splendid tan. One hand held a bottle of wine, and the other carried a bouquet of flowers, which he handed over with an exaggerated flourish.
Verna took the flowers and leaned up to kiss him on the cheek as if it were the most natural thing in the world, while Sheba sprawled herself brazenly at his feet and whined for her share of the attention.
They ate a slow, leisurely dinner of chicken and salad, sipping at their wine and talking comfortably about various subjects of mutual interest. Verna wasn’t surprised to find they had mutual acquaintances in journalism, even though she knew Con had been out of the business for nearly as long as she herself had been in it.
They talked about food, about wines, about the theatre and about writing. She admitted that she’d only ever read one of his books, and hadn’t been impressed, and he grinned his acceptance before rising to survey the contents of her bookshelves. He spent several quiet minutes examining the titles, and Verna felt no hint of embarrassment that a large percentage of them were pure romances.
As he pondered the books, she made coffee and brought it back into the small lounge room, and after a moment he turned with a mischievous grin and slumped into an easy chair where he could look directly at her.
‘I thought you didn’t like my books,’ he said with belaboured casualness, and Verna looked up with surprise.
That’s right,’ she said. ‘But...’
‘You only keep books that you like, don’t you?’ he interrupted, and she nodded her agreement wonderingl
y.
Then Con seemed to pause warily, and she could sense he was selecting his next words with great care.
‘Well, seeing that I’ve somehow become involved in sharing secrets with you,’ he said slowly, then paused as Verna pondered this apparent change of subject, ‘would you like to share one of mine as well? At least that way we’d be even.’
It isn’t really necessary,’ she said, and gained a slow grin in reply.
‘Of course not. That’s what makes it fun. But you’ll have to promise to keep my secret as long as I keep yours.’
‘You’re trying to trick me somehow, aren’t you?’
Con looked sorrowful and hurt. ‘Would I do that?’ he asked pensively, then smiled as she giggled in response.
‘You really haven’t guessed, have you?’ he asked. ‘I don’t know whether I’m happy about that or not.’
Verna’s confusion must have been evident on her face, because he laughed happily and said then, ‘All right, I’ll take you off the hook.’ He rose easily to his feet and took her hand to lift her from her seat and direct her to the bookshelves.
‘You read a lot of books by Con ... stance Bradley,’ he said quietly, then broke into gales of laughter as she stood there, open-mouthed and staring at him.
‘You? Oh, no!’ she cried. ‘I can’t believe that! You’re having me on,’
‘I’m not,’ he replied stoutly. ‘But it’s a secret, don’t forget. Nobody knows but me and my publisher ... and now you.’
Verna looked down at the row of novels, novels she had come to love for their tenderness, compassion, and the believable — or almost-believable — qualities of their characters. Then she looked up at the huge, pale-eyed writer of spicy thrillers. Impossible, was her first reaction, until she remembered the tragic sadness she’d caught in his eyes at the restaurant and later, in her own doorway.
‘But ... but why?’ she couldn’t help asking.
‘It’s such a change from sin, sex and sadism,’ he replied casually. ‘I get bored easily.’ Whereupon he returned to pick up his coffee and turn the conversation to other subjects, most of which Verna had trouble following because her mind kept returning to the improbable picture of the vividly masculine Con Bradley writing romances.
The Sugar Dragon Page 9
