“What a picture you have of my life,” Karen said. “You make me sound like one of those plastic people in a TV situation comedy, the ones who go to bed in display window negligees and wake up the next morning in full makeup.”
“What do you go to bed in?” he asked lazily, momentarily distracted.
“Old football jerseys,” Karen responded tartly. “Now are you going to tell me this woman’s name, or am I going to wander around Sailor’s Haven knocking on doors?”
“Mary Lafferty,” he said with resignation. “You’ll find her on the second floor at the back. My bags are in her room.”
“What’s the address?”
“12-15 Water Street. You’ll see the sign out front.” He hesitated. “I really wish you wouldn’t insist on doing this.”
“I’m going,” she said flatly. She needed to show him she wasn’t the hothouse flower he thought she was, and she also wanted a glimpse of his milieu. This mission afforded her an opportunity to accomplish both goals at once.
“Then tell the cabbie to wait for you,” Colter said anxiously. “And go straight up; don’t stop to talk to anybody downstairs.”
She realized that he was really worried about her.
“Steven,” she said briskly, “if I survived being held hostage in Almeria I can survive one trip to a waterfront dive.”
“I’m sorry I let you worm that out of me. I still don’t know how you did it,” he said darkly.
“It’s my fatal charm,” Karen observed airily, grinning. “You can refuse me nothing.”
“We’ll see,” he replied, with a slight smile.
“Come on, don’t worry. I’ll be all right. Besides you need your bank book, don’t you?”
“People have lost them before, Karen, and civilization survived.”
“Well, you know what a terrible time they give you when you try to make a withdrawal without one; you have to sign all those papers and things. One trip to Water Street and I’ll have it for you.”
“You’re just dying to get down there and see how the other half lives, aren’t you?” he said dryly.
“I want to see how you live,” she replied honestly.
“Just be careful. You’re not as tough as you think you are.”
“Neither are you,” she said pointedly.
At this juncture a nurse entered the room to check Colter’s dressing. She retaped the gauze tightly and said, “I don’t know why you’re not dead, Mr. Colter, but apparently you’re going to survive to harass us a few days longer.”
“When can I get up again?” he asked impatiently.
“Hold on there, Mr. C., this is only your first day out of bed. I told you before, doctor says a walk twice a day. And that’s a walk, mind you, not jogging down the passage as I saw this morning.”
“Twice is two times,” Colter said briskly. “I’ve only been up once.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed.
“Once in the morning and once in the afternoon,” the nurse said.
“Oh, come on,” Colter said, displaying his most engaging smile. “I’m going crazy planted on that mattress.”
The nurse shook her head, sighed, then supported Colter’s shoulders as he stood.
“This one could charm the devil into going to church,” she confided to Karen.
“I think Miss Walsh would disagree with you,” Colter said in an aside to the nurse. “She’s finding me somewhat lacking in charm this morning.”
“All right, Mr. C., there you go,” the nurse said as Colter got his bearings and she moved away from him. “Not too much exercise, now; I’ll be looking after you.”
“You know I always do everything you ladies tell me to,” Colter responded innocently.
“I’ll believe you,” the nurse observed skeptically, “thousands wouldn’t. Mind how you go, the floors are slick in those paper shoes.”
Karen’s eyes were drawn to Colter’s bare torso as the nurse left and he turned toward her. He was wearing pajama bottoms with an elasticized waist and nothing else. He looked a little thinner from his ordeal, but the weight loss only emphasized the well defined musculature of his upper arms and abdomen. She’d never seen him without a shirt and the view was riveting.
A thatch of brown hair, several shades darker than that on his head, spread between his pectorals and down to his navel, ending in a line below it that disappeared into his pants. His shoulders were broad, the skin across them tanned and silky with a sprinkling of toasty freckles. Even the bulky bandage, startlingly white against his dusky skin, could not detract from the hard beauty of his body.
Karen suddenly realized she was staring and tore her gaze away.
“Trying to keep me tied down like some kind of invalid,” he grumbled, shoving his feet into the flimsy slippers the hospital provided. But for all his talk Karen noticed that he was a little unsteady on his feet, and when he wavered as he moved for the door she ran to support him.
In her anxiety she overdid it. The combination of her excessive energy and his forward impetus resulted in a wrestling match that almost tumbled them to the floor. They ended up with Karen pinned to the wall and Colter leaning heavily against her, both of them breathing harshly. It was several seconds before Karen raised her head and looked into the ice blue eyes a few inches above hers.
Colter’s expression was tense, waiting, and when she didn’t pull away it became lambent, communicating a desire so intense she caught her breath. He slipped one long arm around Karen’s waist, drawing her to him, and bent to bury his face in the fragrant mass of dark hair spread against her neck.
Karen clung to him, pressing her cheek to his warm bare shoulder, and felt his lips tracing a line of fire through the fine screen of her hair. She ran her hands down his back, delighting in the response of his muscles as her fingers touched them lightly. Highly sensitized, he reacted to her slightest movement, pulling her closer as she caressed him. When he moved his mouth inside the collar of her blouse and she tilted her head back, yielding up to him a creamy expanse of velvety skin, he groaned aloud.
“I thought of you so often after Caracas,” he whispered. “I could feel you in my arms, just like this, and I had to stop myself from going after you.”
“Why did you?” she murmured. “Oh, Steven, why did you stop?”
For an answer he crushed her mouth with his.
Karen forgot that he’d been ill, that they were in a hospital room, and everything else. She opened her lips and when his tongue touched hers, his sigh of satisfaction was so deep and heartfelt that she realized what it had cost him to send her away.
Colter moved his lips across her cheek and then bent his head, mouthing her breasts through her blouse. She felt the heat of his lips through two layers of clothing as if she were naked. She moaned helplessly and he tightened his grip, trapping her between his lower body and the wall. She felt him hard against her, full and ready. She surged against him, unable to control her primitive response, and he almost lifted her off the floor. His strength was amazing, his injury forgotten, and Karen thought wildly that he might take her right then, right there.
Karen’s head dropped to his shoulder, and the scent of him, hospital soap combined with the sweat of desire and heated male flesh, overwhelmed her. Impatient with their clothes, he pushed at her skirt, trying to raise it above her thighs. She melted into him, slipping her hands inside the waistband of his pants, and he gasped, turning his head to seek her mouth with his again.
“I’ll be right back, Mr. Murphy,” the nurse said in the hall. “I’ll get that for you right away.”
Her voice was so loud that it sounded as if it might be in the same room with them.
They sprang apart guiltily and Colter fell back against the wall. His deep flush spread from his face down his neck and across his chest, and his torso heaved with the force of his breathing. He closed his eyes and Karen watched his right hand clench into a tight fist.
“Best to think about getting back to bed, Mr. Colter,” the nurs
e said, sticking her head into the room. “You’ve been up long enough—don’t want to tire yourself out.”
Colter turned his head and stared at her as if she were mad.
The nurse took one look at him, and then at Karen immobilized in the center of the room, and bustled to her patient’s side.
“Good heavens, Mr. Colter, you’re all flushed and your heart is beating like a coinin’s. I told you not to overdo and you just turned a deaf ear by the look of you.” She seized Colter and ushered him back to the bed while Karen hovered in the background, wondering if she’d caused a relapse.
“Now stay just as you are while I go fetch a thermometer,” the nurse instructed, heading for the door. “I’m talking to myself around here, and no mistake,” she added under her breath as she scuttled into the hall. They listened to the starched whisper of her uniform fade into the distance.
“That can’t happen again,” Colter finally said, not looking at Karen.
She didn’t answer, unable to think of an appropriate response.
“Did you hear me?” he asked, turning toward her.
“I heard you.”
“And you have nothing to say?”
“You seem to be making the rules,” Karen said wearily.
“Do you realize how close I...we...” He stopped, stymied.
“I realize it. Do we have to talk about it?”
“Yes, we have to talk about it!” he replied vehemently.
The nurse entered, shaking down a silver and white thermometer. She swabbed the tip of it with a cotton ball and jammed it firmly between Colter’s teeth.
“That will be all for you today, my man,” she instructed Colter. “This young lady will have to leave and you’re not to move from that bed until you’re told otherwise.”
Colter tried to speak around the object in his mouth and the nurse shushed him.
“I can’t imagine what Miss Mandeville will say if she comes on duty this evening and finds you in this condition.”
Colter rolled his eyes expressively.
“You may well make faces,” the woman said. “Ten year olds can take direction better, and you at death’s door only days ago. I never saw the like of it in my life.”
Her commentary didn’t improve Karen’s already shaky state of mind. A few minutes earlier she had been climbing all over a hospital case and she was thoroughly ashamed of herself. By the time the nurse finally took Colter’s temperature and left, Karen could barely meet his eyes.
“I’ll go and get your things,” she said quietly.
Colter, who did indeed look tired, evidently decided not to pursue the conversation the nurse had interrupted.
“Be careful down there,” he said.
“I will,” Karen said and fled. She didn’t stop walking until she reached the third floor lounge, a few paces past the nurses’ station, and there she sank into a chair.
She hadn’t realized until that very afternoon that she was in love with Colter. Before then she had used other terms for it in her mind: she was concerned about him; he was alone and needed a friend; she was attracted to him; he was hurt and couldn’t be abandoned. But there was no denying the violent rush of feeling that had coursed through her body during the few brief seconds when he’d made love to her in his room. She told herself that it was crazy and she hardly knew him and all the sensible things that a woman in her position should tell herself, but the bare fact remained unchanged. She was as in love with him as it was possible to be, and she was terrified.
After about ten minutes of reflection she got up and headed for the elevator, starting out for Water Street.
Chapter 5
Karen found Sailor’s Haven with little trouble. The cabbie knew where it was, and though he expressed some surprise at Karen’s wish to go there he didn’t offer any further comment until they had pulled up in front of the bar.
It was a ramshackle, weathered two story structure hugging the edge of the wharf. It seemed to be listing to one side and looked about ready to pitch into the sea at any moment. The sign out front hung from a metal crossbar and swung in the ocean breeze, creaking as it moved. It depicted a thirsty sailor downing a pint of “stout,” or ale, and the painted logo beneath the picture had been so beaten by the elements that it was now almost illegible. Electric signs advertising Guinness beer and Silk Cut cigarettes flashed on and off in the streaked windows, and the front door hung askew on its hinges, its brass work tarnished green by the salt spray. Karen and her driver stared at it in silence until the man said, “Are you certain this is the place you wanted, miss?”
“Yes, I think so,” Karen said, with more assurance than she felt.
“I don’t know as I’d go in there alone, miss,” the cabbie said, understandably concerned.
“I’ll be all right. I’m just running an errand for a friend. After all, it’s only eleven o’clock in the morning.”
“They’re drinking in there all day long, miss, and don’t take no notice of the time,” the driver said.
“Oh. Don’t the bars stay closed until four in the afternoon or something like that?”
“Not in Belfast,” he said dryly. “Do you want me to wait for you?”
“Yes, thank you. I’ll just see if the person I’m looking for is there,” Karen said, opening the rear door.
“If it’s one of the girls you’d best give a loud knock; she might be sleeping,” he said wisely. “They work late, you know.”
Karen nodded, getting out of the car. Her nerve almost failed her as she neared the door, but she squared her shoulders, determined to find out what she could about Colter’s life.
The interior was a cavern of darkness and Karen blinked rapidly, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. It was several seconds before she could make out the figures sitting on the stools to her left, a group of customers, all of them hunched over a shot glass or a pint of beer. Behind the bar a big bear of a man in a stained apron was wiping glasses. At his back a huge fly-spotted mirror reflected the whole room, and shelves of multicolored bottles climbed almost to the ceiling on either side of it.
Everyone in the place was staring at her.
Karen crossed the aged warped floorboards in her low- heeled sensible shoes, feeling as out of place as a Junior Leaguer at a strip show. The bartender eyed her as she approached him and he put down his rag, leaning on his meaty forearms when she stopped in front of him.
“What can I do for you, miss?” he asked in a pronounced cockney accent.
“Do you know where Mary Lafferty is?” Karen replied.
“Who wants to see her?” he asked. His crafty brown eyes surveyed her as he asked the question, and he lifted one hand to stroke his wild sandy beard, the same color as his wild sandy hair.
“Steve Colter sent me,” Karen said, thinking that his name would have more impact than hers.
She was right.
“Colter? That the Yank, big blond bloke, drifts in a couple times a year on a job?”
“That’s him,” Karen replied, nodding vigorously. “He left his things with Mary and I’ve come to get them.”
“She know you?” the bartender asked warily.
“No, we’ve never met. Colter just asked me to come here and see her.”
The bartender glanced at his companions with a “this ought to be good” expression, then gestured to a flight of stairs at the rear of the room.
“Second floor at the back, the door on your left,” he said. “She wakes up cranky so watch yourself.”
Karen followed his direction, and she heard the group of men burst into laughter as she climbed the rickety stairwell into the dusty crib at the top of it. She could well imagine that she presented an amusing picture, but was too intent on her mission to mind what they were saying about her.
The second floor was nothing more than a large windowless attic divided into four rooms by rudely constructed walls, with an alley of a hallway down the middle. She picked her way past a single electric bulb left bur
ning in the ceiling and knocked at the indicated door.
She heard nothing but silence until the third knock.
“What is it?” The voice was muffled, querulous, and very young.
“My name is Karen Walsh. I’d like to speak to you about Steve Colter,” Karen answered.
She heard a thud, muttered oaths, and then the door swung inward. She could see one large green eye streaked with the previous night’s mascara and a shock of black hair.
“What’s that about Steve?” the girl asked.
“He sent me to pick up his clothes,” Karen explained.
She could see the green eye roving over her, taking in the navy skirt, crisp striped blouse and conservative shoes.
“Who are you?” the girl asked.
“A friend of his.”
“You don’t look like no friend of his to me,” the girl observed adroitly.
“Look, have I come to the right door?” Karen asked. “Are you Mary Lafferty?”
“Yeah, that’s me. How do you know Steve?”
“Well, we met a little over a month ago and he’s in the hospital here in Belfast.”
“The hospital!” Mary said, alarmed. She yanked open the door to reveal a tiny room crammed with every kind of clothing draped on doorknobs, bedposts, and window frames, and an assortment of mismatched furniture.
“You’d best come in and tell me,” she added, stepping aside.
Karen entered the apartment, making her way through the clutter to an overstuffed armchair in the comer. Mary swept a pile of gossamer underwear off the back of it and said, “Sit yourself down. Would you like a cup of tea?”
Karen saw that she was indicating a hot plate on a counter and nodded mutely. She got her first good look at Mary as the girl bustled to fill a kettle at a cracked porcelain sink affixed to the same wall.
She was all of about twenty, and would have been beautiful with her face washed clean of the excess of makeup disfiguring it. Tall, slim and barefoot, she was wearing a flowered cotton robe belted at the waist with a man’s necktie. Her black hair hung down her back past her shoulder blades and fell into her eyes as she moved. She kept pushing it back behind her ears impatiently while she talked.
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