A Bridge to Love

by Nancy Herkness

  “Some of the time. Oh, just get out of my way and let me put the damn dishes in the sink,” he said, shouldering her aside.

  Kate's lips curved into a satisfied smile as she picked up her own dishes. Randall pointedly made several more trips between the table and the kitchen. Finally, Kate said, “You've clearly demonstrated that I've grossly misjudged you. Go look at Clay's sculptures. And thank you for showing an interest,” she added softly. “He's quite passionate about his art and quite sensitive, too.”

  “I'm no critic but the sculpture I saw earlier in the living room looked very interesting.”

  Kate sighed in relief as he left the kitchen.

  When he was in a room with her, her nerves never stopped thrumming. She needed a break from his presence, although even his voice drifting in from the living room made her edgy with awareness. She wished that Clay would hurry up and take him out to the garage.

  She concentrated on putting out the dessert.

  Of course, the first recipe that had come to mind when she was revamping her menu on the way home had been the Chocolate Orgasm Cake. She had laughed aloud and instantly eliminated it. Instead, they were having apple crumble – which was slightly nutritious – served warm from the oven with vanilla ice cream melting over it. That particular combination of hot and cold is pretty orgasmic itself, she reflected, but at least Patrick couldn't embarrass her by blurting out the name.

  Soon enough her respite was over. Randall's shoulders filled the kitchen doorway as he sniffed appreciatively. “I've always said that there are two ways to a man's heart, and you're real good at both of them,” he drawled in his thickest Texas accent.

  “I see that you've abandoned your attempt at civilized manners.”

  “I'm just complimenting the lady of the house on her skill in the kitchen,” he said and then lowered his voice as he came toward her, “and in the bedroom.”

  “Quiet! There are minors in the next room.” Kate shoved the ice cream scoop into his hand to distract him. Without missing a beat, he slid it into his back trouser pocket, ran his hands up her arms to her shoulders and pulled her against him. “I like Clay's art a lot. He seems to have a real talent.”

  Kate's face lit up. “So does his art teacher. But it's an unusual talent for a young boy. It's a little hard to know how much to encourage him in it.”

  She suddenly realized that Randall had trapped her between the counter and his body and that his hands were roaming over her back. She braced her palms on his chest and said, “You are the most underhanded person I've ever met. Let go of me.”

  She might as well not have spoken. Randall leaned into her so that her body was locked against his from the knees up to the waist. He lowered his head and ran his lips up the side of her neck to her earlobe, which he nipped gently.

  Kate barely controlled the instinctive urge to arch her body even closer against his. “Stop it right now,” she whispered, as she pushed hard against his warm chest.

  For a moment he didn't move even a centimeter. Then he stepped away, saying, “What else is for dessert?”

  “I should send you home without dessert.”

  Randall laughed and pulled out the ice cream scoop. “Hand over the ice cream or I'll be forced to use this as a weapon.”

  Kate retreated to the freezer, yanked open the door and stiff-armed the carton of vanilla ice cream to him.

  “You're beautiful when you're angry... and aroused,” he said in a stage whisper.

  She glared at him and turned on her heel to march into the dining room. His taunting chuckle ruined her exit.

  When the boys had gone upstairs and Randall showed no sign of leaving, Kate picked up a sweater and reluctantly led him out to the porch. Now that the sun had gone down, it was getting chilly. If the temperature didn't bother him, she would allow him to finish his glass of wine and then make it clear that it was time for him to go.

  She sat down in a wooden rocking chair. Randall lounged on the swing. He seemed lost in thought and Kate watched him over the rim of her wineglass, trying to analyze why he had such a strong impact on her.

  He had an athletic build, with wide shoulders and muscles defined by exercise. She wondered how he found the time. He had an almost arrogant self-assurance that should be abrasive but instead seemed right. His face would never be labeled “handsome.” David had been handsome. But Randall's dark straight brows, intense eyes and razor sharp cheekbones were so striking that he made “handsome” unnecessary. And he had already proven that just his voice could heat up her body.

  Kate took a swallow of her wine and leaned her head back against the chair. Not only was she no closer to solving the mystery of their chemistry than before, but she also had made it worse. She now wanted to drape herself over that large male body stretched out so tantalizingly near her.

  Randall's thoughts had taken a different direction. “Tell me about your childhood.”

  Kate choked on her wine in surprise. “There's nothing to tell. Didn't Tolstoy say that all happy families resemble each other? I grew up in a happy family with two older brothers. We were comfortable but not rich. I went to private school and got a scholarship to M.I.T. And that's about it.”

  “Where did you meet David?”

  He was lucky that she was enjoying having his body close by or she would have told him that it was none of his business. “At work. We got assigned to the same skyscraper.”

  “Do you regret marrying him?”

  Kate stiffened. “That's a very personal question.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  She was surprised into a laugh. “But you expect me to answer it.”

  “Why not?”

  Kate thought about it. If she hadn't married David, she wouldn't have Clay and Patrick, so clearly she didn't regret that. Furthermore, she wouldn't have had a life that, until David's sudden death, had seemed blessed and guided by some good fairy.

  She also wouldn't have suffered the anguish of having the man she loved die in the prime of his life. She wouldn't have had to struggle with the sometimes overwhelming responsibility of being a single parent. And she would not have had her very being shattered by the betrayal of the man to whom she had entrusted her life.

  “I hate not knowing why he did it,” Kate said finally.

  “He was a fool.”

  “You can't know that. You never met him.” Despite her words, Kate felt absurdly comforted by Randall's unequivocal statement.

  “I've met you. I've met your children. He was a fool.” Randall took a drink out of the wineglass he'd been balancing on the back of the swing. “I know you want to beat yourself up about your marriage failing, but sometimes men do stupid things without considering the consequences.”

  “Is that the opinion of an expert?”

  Randall half-smiled. “I've done as many stupid things as the next man, but I respect my promises.”

  “That I believe.”

  He suddenly straightened up and leaned forward to put his wine down on the wicker table in front of the swing. Looking up at her from under his eyebrows, he said forcefully, “You should stop trying to figure out what you did wrong and put the blame on him where it belongs.”

  Kate was touched by his attempt to make her feel better and surprised at the perception behind his comments. She also desperately wanted to believe him.

  Randall had evidently had enough of playing the comforter because he got up and strolled around the table to her chair. Bracing his arms on the armrests and rocking her chair backward, he leaned down until his mouth was inches from hers. “Why don't I call Rosa to come down and stay with the boys and we'll go back to my house. Have you ever made love in a pool? You lie back in the water and wrap your legs around my waist. It lasts a long, long time because there's no weight and no friction. Just heat.” His voice had dropped and slowed. His lips were practically touching Kate's. She let her eyelids close and tilted her chin just slightly upward so that her lips brushed his. She felt him shudder just as a jolt
streaked through her own body. Then he was gone, striding over to the table and downing the wine in one swallow.

  “You are the most unpredictable woman.”

  Kate was pleased to have knocked him off balance. She smiled. “I thought that I was being very cooperative.”

  “Just enough to make me die of frustration. Would you have come back to my house?”

  “No.”

  “Would you have let me make love to you in that rocking chair?”

  “That would be difficult. Too much enthusiasm and we'd go right over backward.”

  “I'll sit in the rocking chair. You can lower yourself slowly onto my lap.”

  All sensation centered itself between her legs as Kate visualized sliding slowly down onto Randall as he sat in the rocking chair.

  “If you don't stop looking like that, I'm not going to give you any choice,” he growled. “I have to get home.”

  “To make some calls?” Kate asked sweetly.

  “To take a cold shower.”

  This time Kate got to laugh at him as he walked back into her house. She sauntered in after him, feeling very satisfied with her tactics. She knew that she was playing with fire but she felt safe in her own house with her children there. Despite Randall's pretensions to lechery, Kate was sure that he had never for a moment considered seducing her with Clay and Patrick in the house. A pleasant sense of power surged through her. She had called his bluff.

  She arrived in the kitchen to find her guest saying good night to her sons. “Your mother's going to walk me to my car,” he concluded as he took the glass out of her grasp and put his hand in the small of her back to move her toward the back door. Kate gave him two points for the maneuver but she didn't see what it would gain him. After all, she didn't have a private courtyard to park in.

  But Randall hadn't spent an hour in her backyard without noticing the landscape. Kate found herself propelled into a pitch-black corner created by an odd angle in the join between the house and the garage.

  “You're going to go to bed just as frustrated as I am,” Randall said as he backed her against the wall and slid his knee between hers to hold her there. Kate gasped involuntarily as his leg pressed against the juncture of her thighs. “That's what I want to hear,” he said.

  He held her face between his hands and Kate braced herself for an assault on her mouth. Instead he lightly ran his lips along her eyebrows, over her eyelids, to her temples and finally to her ear which he simply breathed into. Kate's skin prickled deliciously, and she shivered against him. “Good girl,” he murmured.

  Two could play this game, and Kate suspected that she had a slight advantage. She slid her hands slowly up his chest until she found his warm skin through the open collar of his polo shirt. She wrapped her hands around the back of his neck and pulled him toward her so that she could kiss his throat. His muscles jumped quite satisfactorily when her lips touched his skin so Kate decided to see what happened when she tasted him with her tongue.

  Randall's groan was all that she had hoped for. He was so hard against her pelvis that it would have been painful if Kate hadn't felt so pleased with his reaction. She laughed softly and then regretted it when Randall ripped her shirt-tails out of the waistband of her slacks and slid his hands under the fabric to unhook her bra.

  “Stop it,” she hissed, trying to lower her arms to push him away. But he had angled his arms under hers and he was far stronger than she was. He cupped her breasts and circled his thumbs over her nipples, turning Kate's furious whisper into a long moan. She wouldn't have imagined that there was any space to move but somehow as Randall's fingers played over her sensitive skin, Kate's hips rocked against his without any conscious thought on her part.

  Now Randall laughed, although Kate detected a certain ragged edge in the sound. “If you're going to engage the enemy, you have to be prepared to accept the consequences,” he said and then slid his hands down to the belt buckle at her waist.

  “Randall, no!” Kate dug her fingernails hard into his shoulders and did her best to keep her buckle out of his grasp. Since his leg was still firmly braced between hers, her evasive action created considerable friction.

  Suddenly, his hands were clamped on her hips. “Hold still, damn it, unless you want to finish this right here and now.”

  “That seemed to be your intention.”

  He chuckled and let go of her. “I was trying to be helpful.”

  Kate wanted to slide bonelessly down to the ground. Instead, she locked her knees and drew in a shaky breath.

  Before she could think of anything to say, Randall spoke again. “I've been playing this game a lot longer than you have, Kate. Remember that. Thanks for the nutritious, well-balanced dinner.” He started to walk out the gate, then half-turned. “You should tuck your shirt back in before you go inside.” He melted into the shadows before Kate could open her mouth.

  She listened for the slam of his car door and the soft roar of the Ferrari's engine before she re-hooked her bra and loosened her belt to push her shirt back where it belonged.

  She walked to the back steps and sat down. She reminded herself that he had said he was just playing with her. She recalled that he had told her he wasn't a nice man. Right now, she didn't care.

  Until she walked in the door and saw the look that Clay and Patrick exchanged.

  “Mr. Johnson's really cool,” Patrick said, cautiously.

  “I'm glad you liked him.”

  “It must be great to have your own indoor swimming pool,” he continued. “He says that he swims every day, even if he gets home at midnight. Are you and Mr. Johnson dating, Mom?”

  “What? No. I don't think so,” Kate said. Her sons had clearly been discussing the relationship between Randall and herself.

  Patrick's face fell as he accepted her answer. Clay, however, looked skeptical. Kate thought of trying “we're just friends” but it was so far from the truth that she couldn't get her tongue around it. Instead, she said, “I think that we're trying to decide if we want to date.”

  That cheered Patrick up. Clay remained silent, and Kate wondered what he was thinking. She didn't ask him because it was not a discussion she was prepared to have until she had straightened out her own thoughts.

  As she shooed the boys upstairs to get ready for bed, she told herself, Just keep in mind that he's playing cat-and-mouse with you and you're the mouse.

  Randall drove the Ferrari home at an entirely illegal speed. He was irritated for several reasons. He had an erection that was going to require an ice pack to get rid of, and it was too late to invite any of his usual female companions out for dinner and a release of tension. Randall couldn't think of one that he really wanted to go to bed with anyway.

  Next, much as it bothered him to admit it, he had enjoyed his young hosts. Clay's sculptures were impressive. Patrick was a natural at soccer. They were smart boys. He had liked telling them about his business.

  Then there was the revelation of his hostess. In her own surroundings, Kate's veneer of self-containment melted considerably. Randall had noticed the way she brushed her fingers through Patrick's hair or lightly squeezed Clay's shoulder. She had scratched Gretchen's ears anytime the dog came near her. The first sip of the quite respectable wine had made her close her eyes in overt pleasure. This was the woman who had seduced him on his own terrace. Randall swore as that thought brought on another physical reaction.

  He turned his thoughts in a less incendiary direction. Based on Patrick's artless conversation and the circulation of Kate's resume, he concluded that she was having financial problems. Randall considered how easy it would be to solve them: he had so much money he could write a check and never miss it. However, he couldn't just hand Kate money. She wouldn't take it.

  He was inventing and discarding less direct ways of getting money into her hands. He had passed out enough diamond bracelets and earrings in the past that a Tiffany's salesperson sent him personal letters. Of course he had never done it with the intention of impr
oving his lovers' economic status. In fact, he had never given a moment's reflection to their economic status...

  He banished that train of thought as he downshifted to roar up the curves to his mountaintop. Usually, when he was pissed off, he would work it out in the swimming pool, but right now that reminded him of Kate looking like some silent screen goddess in her black bathing suit. She undoubtedly thought that she was dressed conservatively, but she had way too many curves to look anything but sexy when she was wearing wet spandex.

  That brought to mind his verbal fantasy about making love to her in the pool.

  “Oh, hell,” he said in disgust as his erection pushed harder against his trousers. He shoved down the accelerator and forced himself to concentrate on driving.

  He could hear his private line ringing when he walked into the house. He picked it up with the thought that it might be Kate.

  “And where have you been?” Tom Rogan's voice asked.

  “Is another oil tank on fire?” Randall barked.

  “No.”

  “Then why are you calling me?”

  “I wanted to find out if we're planning to invest in a chain of day care centers. Rosa said that you had been doing some research with children this afternoon.”

  “I didn't know you and Rosa were in the habit of discussing my guests.”

  “Rosa was so thrilled to have children in the house that she told me all about them. I was so astonished I listened. She also told me that you left in the Ferrari, a car I happen to know you hate.”

  “If you're trying to impress two preadolescent boys, a Ferrari is second only to a helicopter.”

  “So will it be helicopter rides next?”

  “No, their mother doesn't approve of recreational flying.”

  “Too bad. I'd like to see Janine's face when you showed up with two small boys in tow,” Tom said with a chuckle.

  “I'm glad that I can provide you with your evening's entertainment.”

  “I'm just trying to figure out what's going on here.”

  “I've found the point of greatest vulnerability, and I'm exploiting it,” Randall said, quoting one of their favorite lines from business school.