by Diana Palmer
Faulkner stood staring at the closed door with shocked self-contempt. He couldn’t believe he’d made a remark like that to her, when she’d been so generous and uninhibited with him. He hadn’t meant to make her ashamed of such a sweet giving, but the look on her face had hurt him. He cared deeply for her, even if he didn’t want to. He had no right to wound her, to scar her young emotions by taunting her with her responsiveness.
“Shelly,” he said quietly, one big hand against the door. “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t know if she’d heard him, but he hoped she had. He turned and walked away, aching with regrets.
Shelly went to bed, pleading a headache from the music. She figured that Nan wasn’t fooled, but she couldn’t face questions now. She’d moved away from the door so quickly that she hadn’t heard Faulkner’s apology. She climbed under the covers, and her pillow was wet when she finally slept.
* * *
SHE MEANT TO AVOID BEN, so that she could avoid his father, but the boy was waiting for her in the restaurant the next morning. He stood up, beaming, when she and Nan came in.
“I’ve already ordered coffee for both of you,” he said with a flourish. “Do sit down.”
Shelly and Nan chuckled involuntarily as they took their seats.
“What am I going to do with you?” Shelly asked softly.
“Adopt me,” he said. “She saved my life,” he told Nan. “Now she has to take care of me for as long as I live.” He frowned. “She’s sort of reluctant, but I’m working on her. I really do need a mother, you know. And don’t say I’ll have one when Dad marries Marie,” he added gruffly when Shelly started to speak.
“Where’s your dad?” Nan asked, because she knew Shelly wouldn’t. Something had happened the night before, and it must have been something major for Shelly to be so tightlipped about it.
“Dad’s gone to a meeting,” Ben said. “He sure was upset. He didn’t even want breakfast. I guess he’s missing her,” he added miserably. “He said something about us going home earlier than expected.”
Shelly felt her pulse leap. So he was that anxious to be rid of her. Did he think she’d make trouble? Embarrass him with confessions of undying love? He needn’t have worried. She wasn’t that sort.
“I’ll miss you, Ben,” she replied, smiling. “But life goes on.”
“You look sick,” Ben remarked. “Are you okay?”
“I’m just fine. No more hangovers,” she promised.
* * *
BUT SHE WASN’T FINE. She went through the motions of having a good time, joining in a volleyball game on the beach and sunbathing and swimming. But her heart wasn’t in it. Nan had paired off with a nice student from New York she’d met on the sailing trip, and Shelly wished she had someone, if only to keep Pete at bay.
“We could go back to my room and have a drink or two,” he suggested. “Come on, Shelly, loosen up!”
She looked straight at him. Courtesy wasn’t working. Perhaps stark honesty would. “I don’t want to have sex with you.”
He actually flushed. “Shelly!”
“That’s what you’re after,” she said flatly. “Well, it isn’t what I’m after. I came down here to have a good time. I’m managing it, barely, in spite of you!”
He got up, looking embarrassed, and shrugged. “Okay. You don’t have to get upset. No hard feelings.” He walked off, and very soon he was talking up another girl. Thank goodness, she thought. One complication resolved.
She felt tired and drowsy, and she began to doze. A sudden sharp movement brought her awake.
“This is stupid,” Faulkner said roughly. “You’re baking yourself. Haven’t you put on any sunscreen at all?”
“Of course I have.”
“Not on your back.”
“Well, I can’t reach it, can I?” she asked angrily. She sat up. “And don’t offer to do it for me, because I don’t want you touching me. Go away.”
He searched her eyes slowly. “I apologized, but you didn’t hear me, did you?”
Her eyes dropped. She didn’t like looking at him in swimming trunks. He was disturbing enough fully clothed.
“I have to go back to the room,” she said stiffly. “Nan and I are going shopping with some other—Faulkner!”
He had her up in his big arms and he was carrying her lazily down the beach to the water.
“Listen, you…!”
He put his mouth softly over hers, closing the words inside it, while he waded far out into the ocean until they were up to their shoulders in it. Only then did he release her, just enough so that he could bring her body completely against his and deepen the long, slow kiss that locked them into intimacy.
“Oh, don’t,” she pleaded, but her arms were already holding him, her mouth searching for his.
He gave it to her. His big hands slid down to her hips and his fingers teased under the brief yellow bikini bottom as he pulled her to the hard outline of his body and moved her against him.
He nibbled her lower lip while he positioned her in an intimacy that made her gasp and shiver.
“I can’t get you out of my mind,” he whispered into her mouth, groaning. “You torment me.”
“Faulkner…!”
“I want you so, Shelly!” He kissed her hungrily. His hands released her hips and slid up to untie her top. It fell to her waist and his hands caressed her while his mouth teased and tormented hers. She felt his fingers teasing her nipples into even harder arousal, and she moaned sharply.
“Come here.”
He caught her against him, rubbing his chest against her breasts in a soft, sweet abrasion that made her cry out. His arms enfolded her and he buried his face in her wet neck, holding her, rocking her in an intimacy she’d shared with no one else.
“You feel of silk and it excites me when I touch you and you make those sharp little noises deep in your throat. Shelly, you want my mouth on your breasts, don’t you?” he whispered, letting his cheek slide down hers until he could reach her mouth.
The thought of it made her body ache. “Yes,” she moaned. “But we can’t!”
“I know. I’d have to lift you out of the water to get to you, and we’d be seen. Shelly…!”
His mouth fastened onto hers and his hands slid down her back, under the bikini briefs. He touched her with slow, deft intimacy. He held her like that, feeling her shiver and moan against his mouth as the intimacy took away all her inhibitions.
But he was too hungry for her. He had to pull back while he still could. An unwanted pregnancy was a terrible cost for a few minutes of pleasure.
For her, he thought as he restored her bathing suit to belated decency, it probably wouldn’t be very pleasant at all, after the foreplay. Because she was virginal. Virginal. His head spun wildly at the thought of initiating her into sex, teaching her how to feel and give the ultimate sensual pleasure. But she was young. Too young, and too far away socially and economically.
“Why did you do that?” she asked miserably when he was holding her, soothing her in the heated aftermath.
“For the same reason you didn’t stop me,” he replied quietly. “Because I needed to touch you. Just as you needed to be touched by me.”
“I’m too young and I don’t know anything and there’s Marie…!”
He bent and brushed his mouth softly, softly, over hers. “Open your mouth,” he whispered tenderly. “You know already that I like to touch the inside of it with my tongue while we kiss.”
She moaned. He could have thrown her down on the beach and made love to her in full view of the population and she didn’t think she’d have a protest in her.
He drew back with evident difficulty. His face was drawn and wan as he looked down at her. “There are just too many obstacles,” he said, thinking aloud.
She knew it. Standing in his arms, with her whole body screaming to belong to him, she realized that after the pleasure would come regret, shame, hurt. “Far too many,” she agreed sadly.
He sighed heav
ily. “You deserve more than a man’s lust.”
She swallowed. “Are you…sure…that’s all it is, Faulkner?” she asked miserably.
His face closed up. He let go of her. “Yes,” he said flatly, ignoring the denial building deep inside him. “An uncontrollable, feverish lust that makes me ashamed. I’m sorry. I genuinely meant to apologize, not to compound the problem.”
“I know.”
“I go mad the instant I touch you.” He laughed coldly. “It’s a quirk of nature. Fate mocking both of us.” He grimaced. “This can’t happen again.”
“I know. It won’t. I was trying to avoid you,” she confessed.
“So was I,” he agreed ruefully. “And you can see where it got us both.”
She flushed, averting her eyes as she remembered with unwanted vividness exactly how intimate they’d become in the water.
“I’ll try to think of it as a reality-based exercise in sex education,” she said bitterly.
He turned her face up with a long sigh. “Oh, no,” he said. “It wasn’t that.” His eyes dropped to her soft lips. “It’s been years since I’ve enjoyed a woman’s body, since I’ve indulged the need to touch and stroke and arouse. You make me want to find out how gentle I could be, Shelly.” He stopped, looking puzzled and irritated and even a little vulnerable.
Shelly searched his face with sad, quiet eyes. “Do I?”
He touched her face with something like wonder. “In the very beginning, I loved Ben’s mother. I felt such tenderness for her, such aching need. But she wanted what I could give her in a material sense. For her it was a business deal, and Ben was my price.” He winced. “She never loved me. She died in the arms of another man, and I hated her and loved her and mourned her for years afterward. Since then, women have been nothing more than an amusement. I’ve used them,” he confessed, lifting his eyes to hers. He searched her face slowly. “But, I couldn’t use you. And that being the case, I think it’s better for both of us if we forget everything that’s happened.”
CHAPTER FIVE
SHELLY LOWERED HER EYES to his chest and tried not to appear as devastated as she felt. She was already looking ahead to a time when she wouldn’t see him again. He wanted her, but wanting was not going to be enough. She knew that and so did he. His mind was clouded by the desire he felt. Once he satisfied it, the clouds would vanish and he’d hate them both. Even if she were tempted, and she was, it wouldn’t be wise to let things go any further.
“You mean we shouldn’t see each other again,” she said miserably.
“That’s about it.” He moved away from her, pushing the wet hair from his damp face. “We won’t be here much longer,” he added. “We’ll muddle through.” He searched her face quietly. “Somehow.”
She forced a smile. “What about Ben?” she asked.
“He’s crazy about you. Don’t deny him your company.”
“I hadn’t planned to.”
He touched her soft cheek gently. “Shelly,” he said huskily, “you know it wouldn’t work. Even if I took a chance on your age, our social backgrounds are too far apart.”
“And that would never do,” she agreed, averting her eyes.
“I’m a banker. I have a position that requires discretion.” He shrugged. “I’ve never cared much for convention, but when the jobs of other people depend on it, I can give the image I need to give. Besides,” he added bitterly, “it isn’t as if marriage would ever enter into any relationship I had. Do you understand?”
She lifted her eyes to his hard face, seeing the resignation and stubborn determination there. “You don’t trust women. Is that why you let Marie get such a hold on you? She was safe?”
“I know all about Marie,” he said, without taking offense. “She’s devious and snappy, and selfish to a fault. She has grown up around wealth. She enjoys throwing her weight around.”
“So I noticed,” Shelly said.
“Ben thinks you’re very special,” he said, his voice deep and soft. “So do I, Shelly. I’m sorry. I wish…I really wish things had been different. We seem to have a lot in common. We might discover even more.”
“So we might. But taking risks isn’t your specialty, is it?”
He shook his head. “I only bet on a sure thing. This isn’t.” He touched her mouth and slowly drew back. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I. But,” she added, drawing in a steady breath as she struggled for something light, “whatever happens, we’ll always have Paris.”
It took a minute for that to sink in. By the time he started to laugh, she was already halfway to the beach.
* * *
FAULKNER, TRUE TO HIS WORD, didn’t come near her again. Ben did. He haunted her.
“Can’t you find something else to do?” she wailed.
He grinned and shook his head, because he knew she liked him. Her face was an open book. “You can’t banish your only child.”
“But you’re not!” she cried.
“How do you know?” He looked very serious. “I mean, you could have had me and forgotten about it. You might have advanced amnesia.”
“I couldn’t have become a mother when I was twelve,” she muttered. “And besides that, I’d remember having had a child. It isn’t something anybody forgets.”
Ben didn’t say a word, but he could add. His father thought Shelly was in her teens, but she’d just subtracted his age from hers and come up with twelve. That made her twenty-four. He pursed his lips.
“How old are you?” he persisted.
“How old do you think I am?” she asked foxily.
“Twenty-four.”
She glared at him. “How in the world…”
He told her how in the world, and she let out a long, slow breath.
“I won’t tell Dad. But why don’t you want him to know?” he asked.
She couldn’t explain that without giving herself away. “I have my reasons,” she said. “So it’s our secret. Okay?”
“Okay. After all, a boy can’t afford to argue with his own little mother.”
She opened her mouth to protest, groaned and closed it again. Arguing did no good.
The night before they were to leave for home, Ben maneuvered Nan and Shelly into a leisurely supper with him and his father. It was a less than sparkling evening, with Shelly and Faulkner trying to ignore each other and act normally. They failed miserably. Finally Nan and Ben went in search of souvenirs at the shop next door to the motel office, leaving them alone.
“This wasn’t my idea,” he said gruffly.
“I know.” She stared into her coffee cup with eyes that barely saw it. She was leaving and so was he. They’d never see each other again.
“Damn it, you know it’s for the best,” he said through his teeth. “Will you look at me?”
She lifted her eyes and winced at the temper in his. “Yes, I know it’s for the best!” she muttered.
His lips parted on a rough breath. His silver eyes searched hers until she flushed. “I want you,” he said unsteadily.
She glared at him. “That’s it, reduce it to the most common terms you can!”
“What else is there besides lust?” he demanded. “That’s all we really have in common. And we wouldn’t have that if you hadn’t spent your entire holiday here coming on to me!”
“That’s right, blame it on me,” she raged. “Tell the world I tried to seduce you!”
“Tell me you didn’t,” he shot right back. His hand curled around his wineglass and tightened until the stem threatened to snap. “Every time I turned around you were making eyes at me.”
“I told you why…”
“You lied,” he said flatly, his smile world-weary and full of cynicism. “Don’t you think I know when a woman finds me attractive? I’m rich. I’ve spent my adult life fending off willing women.”
“Including Marie?” she asked sweetly, with blazing pale eyes.
“I don’t need to fend off Marie,” he returned. “She has status of her own.”
“You mean, her parents do,” she shot back.
“It’s the same thing.”
“No, it isn’t,” she replied seriously. “Life is about making choices on your own, taking your own chances, making your own way. A life-style should be earned, not inherited.”
“Ahhh,” he murmured sarcastically. “A budding socialist.”
“Hardly.” She glared at him. “Haven’t you been listening? I think people should earn what they get.”
“Marie earns it,” he said, his tone faintly suggestive.
She remembered how it felt to be in his arms, and she flushed, averting her eyes.
“I keep forgetting how young you are when you bait me,” he said angrily. He drained his wineglass.
“I’m not so young that I don’t know what you were insinuating about your relationship with Marie,” she said shortly. “If she’s what you really want, why were you kissing me on the beach?”
He searched her eyes. The memories were darkening his. “Maybe I wanted to see how far you’d go.”
She felt her cheeks becoming even ruddier. “As you said, I’m young,” she muttered. “A pushover for any experienced man,” she added pointedly.
He wanted to believe that, but he couldn’t. He toyed with the empty wineglass, watching the light from the chandelier reflected in the faceted crystal. “No,” he replied. “It was much more than that, for both of us.” He lifted his eyes back to hers and felt the heat shoot through him like fire as he saw his own hunger reflected in her soft, sad eyes.
His breathing roughened; quickened. “I want to make love to you, one last time.”
Her lips parted. “Faulkner…”
He signaled the waiter and paid the bill. Scant minutes later, he’d asked Nan to take a delighted Ben back to the girls’ motel room, and he and Shelly were walking down the dark, deserted beach.
Shelly was much too aware of the brevity of the strappy little green sundress she was wearing with high-heeled sandals. She felt vulnerable as she thought about his strong, callused hands on her bare skin. But she had no pride left and she couldn’t pretend that she didn’t want this. It would be their last time together.
