Tamed Spirit

by Alison Tyler

  "I'm real, all right," she whispered. "You don't have to break some bones to prove it."

  She kissed him then. "This wasn't the cure I had in mind," she murmured as he grasped her more tightly, kissing her back.

  "You are real." He stared intently into her eyes, sparkling sea-blue in the morning sun. "What are you doing here?"

  "Aren't you glad to see me?" she teased. "You certainly seemed pretty happy last night."

  "My God, last night! It wasn't a dream."

  "Most definitely not. You're something else when you've been nipping at the ouzo."

  "What do you mean? I didn't hurt you, did I?"

  Cat laughed. "Let's just say that when you inadvertently did, you made up for it with flying colors. Not that I recommend we make love under those conditions regularly. I prefer romantic afterglow to your passing out cold."

  Luke still looked stunned, but he was trying to take it all in.

  She placed a cool hand on his brow. "Lay down, Doctor. You need some rest. I do seem to get to play Florence Nightingale a lot when I'm with you. Were just going to have to see to it that you start taking better care of yourself from here on out." She gently shoved him back on the pillow, but Luke was not about to let her out of his grasp. She came willingly, nestling against his chest.

  "I missed you, Luke. God, I missed you." Her throaty voice trembled with feeling.

  He hugged her tightly. "I missed you, too."

  "I know. You told me so last night. You told me quite a lot of things last night," she said, seductively placing a moist kiss on the palm of his hand.

  Luke stirred, sitting up slightly, his elbows digging into the mattress for support. "What exactly did I say?"

  She gave him a mischievous smile. "Don't you remember?"

  He grinned back. "You devil." He grabbed her, but she put her hands on his chest, pushing against him so that he fell back on the pillow.

  "Whatever I did say last night," he said with renewed passion as she slid on top of him, "I meant it."

  He kissed her eyelids closed, then traced the delicate shape of her face with his lips. He followed the line of her chin to her throat, edging her over on her back, so that he could continue his languid, sensuous exploration.

  Cat could feel her body yielding easily as she curved into his caresses, her senses absorbed by his touch and the feel of him. As he teasingly stroked her flat belly with his tongue, she arched her back, her flesh tingling, trembling. Her hands reached out for him. He caught hold of her wrists.

  He smiled at her as she opened her eyes. "Lie still for a while and just let me give you pleasure. I missed a hell of a lot last night, and I want to make up for it this morning."

  He kissed each of her fingertips and then placed her hands in a sensuous pose above her head. After a look of approval, he slid his hands to her breasts, cupping them lovingly, tasting the taut, sweet nipples, then gazing up at her as Cat's eyelids flickered closed, her lips parting slightly.

  He moved slowly along her body, brushing light, tender kisses on her skin, tanned more now than a few weeks ago. His hands took possession of her hips as he drank in her wild-flower fragrance.

  Cat cried out in pleasure as his touches grew more erotic, his lips more intimate. She began to move in a sensuous, undulating motion as Luke intensified his own movements. Finally, poised on a precipice of throbbing desire, she thrust her fingers into his thick, tangled hair, her body arched against him. He slid up to meet her lips, their kiss hungry, urgent. When at last he filled her, she circled her legs tightly around his thighs, letting herself go completely, drowning in glorious waves of pleasure, shuddering deeply as the sheer power of the moment culminated in sweet ecstasy.

  Later, after Luke had more than made up for his passing out last night, he asked her again what she was doing in Greece.

  When she told him about the film, he wasn't surprised. However, he was disappointed. It would have fit his own fantasy better had she simply come after him with no other motivation than a driving need to be with him. Now he had to share her with her work, worrying constantly about her luck running out one of these days when she took a leap off some building.

  "You look unhappy," she observed. "I could have taken a job in Mexico. I chose this one because I've known since our last time in San Francisco that I wasn't going to be able to forget you. Now I'm convinced of it."

  She slid out of the bed, gathering her scattered clothes up from the floor. "I shouldn't have bothered dressing this morning. How foolish of me to think one little hangover would stop a man of your remarkable stamina." She winked slyly and then proceeded to get dressed again.

  "Why the rush to get dressed?"

  "I'm supposed to dive off a cliff in Alonnisos at two. If we hurry, we'll make the noon ferry."

  "We?"

  Cat came over and sat down on the bed beside Luke as she ran a brush through her hair. "Come with me, Luke. If we're going to be involved with each other, you're going to have to get used to what I do to put bread on my table."

  "I can think of a million safer ways to buy bread," Luke said, his tone sulky.

  "Luke, that's the reason I want you to come along and watch. You have the wrong idea about stunting. I never do anything that is too great a risk. If you really look with your eyes and not your runaway imagination, you'll realize every stunt is carefully controlled and monitored."

  "So tell me why so many people in your business have wound up in hospitals—and funeral homes. I did some reading after you were gone. There are quite a few books on your line of work, but to be perfectly honest, after I read the statistics on injuries and fatalities in the first book, I felt too ill to read any further."

  Cat was silent for a minute. Then she looked across at Luke and sighed. "I'm not going to argue the point. I'm sure the book recorded accurate statistics, but I'm not a statistic, Luke. I enjoy life too much to go taking dumb chances. You're concentrating on the few crazy daredevils who took foolish risks rather than on professional stunters like me. You've checked me out enough times, now," she said in a low, seductive voice. "See any scars—or even a large scratch?"

  He did know every inch of her body and there wasn't a scratch, large or small, on her.

  "Get dressed and come with me. I promise you'll feel less worried if you watch the precautions I take. I was asked to do this stunt today, for instance, wearing a bikini, but I insisted on a full, one-piece tank suit with lots of padding, so I didn't damage those parts of me I know you love so well."

  Her seductive banter was having its desired effect. Luke drew her to him for a long, deep kiss.

  "You win." He sighed, reaching for the glass Cat had offered him earlier. He drank it all down. "Something tells me that my headache could return."

  Cat turned out to be half-right, half-wrong in her estimation of how Luke would feel when he watched her execute her stunt dive. As he followed her climb up the steep cliff, a sinking feeling took complete control of his stomach. Yes, she wore that padded suit she told him about, even though he overheard the director arguing with Dodger about the bikini up to the last minute. Yes, she had first checked out the water with several other crew members to make sure there were no hidden rocks below the surface. And yes, she showed every caution as she executed a perfect test dive off one of the smaller cliffs.

  Still, when he watched her arch her body for that final dive, he felt a riveting fear. Even when she surfaced from the water, waving and bright-eyed from the thrill and the excitement, his heart was still pounding a mile a minute. He could not deny that she was wonderfully talented, but he still couldn't shake the fears inside him that her work generated.

  To make matters worse, Dodger and Cat had a rousing fight shortly after Cat stepped out of the dressing room. Although Luke was too far away to hear the specifics, he picked up enough to know it had to do with some upcoming stunts Cat was planning on.

  "Let's get something cold to drink," she said to Luke after leaving Dodger in a huff.

 
"Am I going to meet your father one of these days?"

  "Tonight. Right now he's in a lousy mood."

  She took a firm hold of his hand. "Come on. There's a taverna I spotted on our way over here. It's just around the bend."

  Luke stuck with lemonade. Cat ordered ouzo.

  "You don't look too cheerful, yourself," Luke said lightly, trying to push aside the tension still clinging to him from her dive.

  Shrugging off his comment, she said, "Wasn't that a neat little stunt today? My next one is going to really be sweet."

  "Oh," he said distractedly, hoping she wouldn't give him the details. His stomach was just beginning to settle down.

  "It's a standard stunt, really," she said, oblivious to his wishes, "but I've added a few little touches to spark some more life into it."

  "Are those the sparks that caused the fight with your father before?"

  "Dodger?" She groaned. "He is impossible sometimes. I have to try to stop letting him get me all riled up. I know what I'm doing, and if he doesn't—well, that's tough. Look, it's simple…"

  "Cat, do me a favor and spare me the details. For one thing, I probably won't understand them any more than you would follow my treatise on Winnicott's theories on maturational processes in a facilitating environment."

  "That's a mouthful," she said sarcastically. "And what's the second reason?"

  "The second reason is that your feats of derring-do continue to terrify me. I still think you're in a business that will ultimately end up with you getting hurt. I get especially tense about this whole thing when I overhear your father telling you he thinks the little extra sparks you're adding to the stunt—excuse me, gag—are too dangerous."

  "Well, at least you are picking up the lingo." She had to smile. "Listen to me, Luke. I know I tend to push myself to my outermost limits. I'm a perfectionist. Don't you see, that's what keeps me safe. My father gets carried away at times with being overly cautious because I'm his one and only daughter. Keep in mind, Luke, that Dodger's my one and only dad. I don't need two fathers, believe me."

  Cat took a long sip of her ouzo and water and went on. "Maybe you're right. I would think you were talking Greek if you spouted some deep psychiatric jargon, and you feel the same about my profession. So why can't we just respect what the other person is doing and assume we can handle our own professions without interference? How would you like me telling you how to deal with a mentally disturbed patient?"

  "You present a good argument. Ever think of switching to law?"

  Cat sighed. "You're hopeless, Doc. I'm going to have to get you drunk on ouzo again tonight. You have a much more interesting spiel when you're tipsy."

  "You never did tell me what I talked about in my weakened condition last night." He grinned at her broadly.

  She leaned close to him, her breasts crushed against his arm. "Did you really almost go mad with longing for me all those weeks; your dreams each night filled with erotic fantasies? Shall I remind you of some of the details of those dreams?"

  "Later," he whispered. "What do you say we get out of here?"

  When Cat introduced Luke to Dodger that night at the hotel dining room, the two men sized each other up after shaking hands. On close inspection Luke could see a clear resemblance between father and daughter. He could also tell by the way Dodger studied him that he had not known much, if anything, about Luke's involvement with his daughter, and he was clearly puzzled by it.

  Luke's assessment was right on target. Dodger saw Luke Eliot as the most unlikely man he would have ever imagined his daughter getting involved with. On the other hand, he wasn't a stunter, so he already had one large point in his favor as far as Dodger was concerned.

  "So what do you think of that stunt Cat pulled off today? I spotted you on the side watching. Wasn't sure then… uh, what your connection was to Cat, else I would have come over and introduced myself."

  "I thought she was spectacular and she scared the… pants off of me. Maybe you get used to it in time," Luke said honestly.

  Dodger laughed, giving Luke a friendly pat on the back. "I still feel a knot in the pit of my stomach every time she goes out in front of a camera. And when she was a kid—let me tell you, my friend, she scared… the pants… off me every other minute with her wild pranks. She's a terror, this little girl of mine. Headstrong, restless… I won't say crazy, seeing as how that's your profession and you'll have to be the judge on that one. But, she's probably the best female stunter in the business. Best there ever was." He put his arm around Cat in an affectionate squeeze.

  "I don't know if you're going to scare Luke off more because of my impossible qualities or my shining talents." Cat only half-teased. "Luke and I don't see eye to eye on my profession."

  "You've got my vote, Luke," Dodger said. "As good as she is, I rather see her home knitting booties any day."

  Cat flushed. She was angling to keep her relationship with Luke afloat, not sink it into wedlock, and Luke felt the same way. He was barely getting adjusted to Cat being back in his life. He was certainly nowhere near the wedding bells stage.

  "Stop looking like I just told you both the world was coming to an end. Just making general talk. Well, actually, not so general. Where the hell is she, anyway?" he grumbled, checking his watch. "That woman is going to have to learn to be a little quicker after we get hitched."

  "Hitched?"

  "Oh, damn it. Now I've gone and done it. Joanie will have a fit. We were supposed to break the news together. There she is. Shush. Pretend I didn't say a word."

  Joanie rushed over to their table. "Not my fault," she said breathlessly. "Thank our dear director for calling a six o'clock meeting to go over tomorrow's effects." She sat down and smiled at Luke as Cat introduced them.

  Since the others had already made their choices, Joanie scanned the menu quickly. As she did so, there was dead silence. Joanie looked up. First she eyed Dodger, then Luke, then Cat.

  "He already told you, didn't he?" She gave Dodger a sly look.

  "It slipped out." He smiled sheepishly.

  Cat could not remember another time in her whole life that Dodger had worn a sheepish grin. Joanie was bringing out qualities in her dad she had not known existed.

  Joanie grinned, then leaned over and kissed him, ruffling his hair in the process. "I finally won an argument with this stubborn old fool."

  "See, already you're calling me old," Dodger said, but there was only warm teasing in his tone.

  "I'd call you a few other things, if Cat and Luke weren't around," Joanie teased back.

  "Hey"—Cat grinned—"we're family, at least I am," she quickly amended. She did not want to inadvertently lead Dodger into talk about a possible double wedding. "Feel free to give Dodger a piece of your mind anytime you like."

  "Maybe I ought to back out," Dodger said, sighing. "Now I'm going to have two women always on my back."

  "Too late. She could sue you for breach of promise," Cat said, poking him in the shoulder.

  After they gave their orders, Joanie's expression grew serious.

  "How do you feel about Dodger and me, Cat? I mean, you and your dad have been teamed up for a long time…"

  Cat reached out for Joanie's hand. "I think you are the best thing that's ever happened to Dodger." She glanced over to her father and back again to Joanie. "Besides, it's about time he settled down, instead of bugging me to do it all the time."

  "I'm setting a precedent that those who come after me can follow," Dodger butted in. "What do you think, Luke?"

  Luke muttered something incoherent but was saved from repeating it as the salads arrived just then.

  A couple of hours later, Cat and Luke walked together down to the ferry. It was the last one back to Skiathos, and he did not intend to miss it. Cat was not planning to join him.

  "You were quiet tonight. Silent, as a matter of fact." Cat stared straight ahead as they walked.

  "I was the outsider at a family celebration. I guess there wasn't much for me to talk about."<
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  "I'm surprised Joanie is going to quit the business. Not that being an assistant special effects person is the kind of career someone would want for the rest of their lives. Still, I can't understand her wanting to sit quietly at home darning Dodgers socks as they grow quietly old together."

  "You plan to jump out of windows until you're old and gray?"

  "I don't plan to sit in a little white cottage with a picket fence baking pies and cookies while I'm still young and able."

  "I guess I don't see you baking cookies, anyway."

  They walked in silence for a while.

  "How's your book coming?"

  "Terribly. I'm a week behind schedule already. If I don't buckle down I'm going to start feeling a little guilty about all this sun and fun."

  Cat gave him a curious glance. "I guess this trip cant be all fun and games for either of us. We both have our work to do."

  "Right."

  They saw the ferry pulling into the dock.

  Luke grabbed Cat's arm so abruptly, she almost lost her balance and fell against him in the process.

  "Listen to me, Cat. I don't want this fantasy to end. But I can't quite deal with it moving along at fast speed. Let's just slow it down a little, okay?"

  "It's going too fast for me, too, Luke. Why don't we cool off for a few days? I don't have to be on the set on Friday. If you've caught up enough on your work, come over to my bungalow. It has a little kitchenette. I may not be the pastry and pie type, but I have cooked a great dinner on occasion." She cocked her head, her eyes sparkling with that touch of mischief never far from view. "I might even make some instant chocolate pudding for dessert. See, I do have a domestic side to my nature."

  "Great." He bent down to kiss her good-bye. "I'll bring over some of my torn socks, then."

  He reached the ferry just before it began to pull out. After he stepped over the low-slung chain, he turned back to wave to Cat. She looked so beautiful as she stood on the dock, the wind blowing her dark hair, a gentle smile on her lips. He wished he hadn't said that good-bye. He never had gotten to hear the details of what he'd told her the night before. He wanted to hold on to the fantasy—to the magic they created when they were together.