A Woman's Heart

by Gael Morrison

  She wanted to be kissed. Her lips trembled with need.

  His jaw was taut, his own lips tight with tension. And his eyes pulled her. For all their hooded intensity, they glowed—the kind of glow no woman could ignore.

  He wanted her, and not just for a single kiss under a tropical moon, but completely, possessively, with nothing held back.

  He wanted all of her.

  Her lips parted. For an instant, she was positive he would take her right there on the deck, under the eyes of heaven.

  And for that same single moment, she longed to take him in return, to meet and match the thrust of his body and the penetration of his soul, to mingle their hearts and passion and come together as one. To be encircled in the shelter of his arms and loved as a woman should be loved.

  As she never had been loved.

  She saw all that was possible and ached to receive it, but this was the man who planned to take Alex from her. With an inarticulate cry, she pushed him away as fiercely as she would thrust a serpent from her bosom.

  She wrenched the hatch open and hurtled down the companionway. Through the chart room and main cabin, she came at last to the safety of her own bedroom. With a muffled sob, she flung herself onto her bunk, hot tears sliding down her cheeks and dampening her cotton sheets.

  The great gulps of air she was pulling into her lungs suddenly became too much, and she calmed, regulating her breathing to a series of shallow gasps. Stilling herself as completely as she was able, she lay there and listened.

  For what seemed an interminable length of time, she heard nothing save the slap of waves against the side of the boat and the creak of the anchor chain dangling from the hull.

  Then she heard it. The muted sound of Peter's footsteps as he slowly descended the stairs. He approached her cabin, but for a long moment just stood there with no further sound. Then, without knocking, he turned from her door and away from her. The settee creaked, where earlier that evening she had left blankets for his bed.

  Time passed but she was unable to relax. The face of her clock gleamed like a spotlight in the darkened room. First the seconds, then the minutes, then the half-hours trickled away, like sand through a sieve, never to return.

  Staring into the blackness with burning eyes, Jann's mind spun like a whirligig in the wind. She was unable to settle, to allow sleep to rescue her.

  She could think only of Peter, could imagine his hard lean body crunched into the confines of the six foot settee, his cat's eyes glowing and restless in the dark.

  Through the shadows, his soul called hers, stretching over the space between them and relentlessly willing her to come.

  She clamped her eyes closed, but the images continued to flicker in her mind like flames within a pit, sometimes flaring up, and sometimes dampening down to embers, but always, always, hot.

  She rolled over and tried to force her brain to visualize other scenes, other players, anything to dispel the image of making wild and uninhibited love with the uncle of her son.

  The night turned gray with early morning mist before finally she drifted, exhausted and confused, into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 11

  Tiny shafts of pain drummed through her skull, tapping a crescendo on the insides of her eyelids. Wincing, Jann opened her eyes to find the morning sunlight streaking through a crack in her curtain and blazing across her face.

  She groaned. Time to get up. Twisting onto her side, she drew her knees to her chest.

  Not yet. She couldn't face Peter yet. But how long could she avoid him? Forever would be just about right she thought then, with a resigned sigh, she straightened her legs and swung them over the edge of her bunk.

  Wrapping her bathrobe around her, she slipped into the hall and swiftly made her way to the shower. The water streaming down her face felt good, but didn't pierce the fatigue cloaking her. She toweled herself dry, but even rubbing her body briskly couldn't make her forget the sleepless night she'd just passed.

  Once back in her cabin, she sat motionless on her bed and tried to stop the swirling dizziness of her brain. But it was no good. No clarity emerged.

  With a sigh, she leaned forward, disheveled curls tumbling across her face as she extracted a pair of purple shorts from the second drawer of her dresser. Streaking her hair back with her fingers, she tugged on the shorts then reached for her pink blouse.

  After buttoning it, she sat motionless again, listening, as she had listened the night before. But she heard nothing. Perhaps Peter wasn't awake yet. If he'd spent the same sort of night as she, he'd probably sleep until noon.

  She stood, reluctant to look into the mirror above her dresser, and when she finally did, found her eyes were two black smudges of fatigue. Bruised and swollen from crying, they looked enormous on her pale face. She couldn't allow Peter to see her like this. He would know in an instant that he was the cause, would no doubt use it to his advantage.

  She snatched a tube of lipstick, Cadillac Pink, from her top dresser drawer and drew a jaunty slash across her lips. Then she slathered make-up around her eyes and the worst of the night's ravages were subdued. The face staring from the mirror back at her wasn't perfect, but she would do. Patched up, smoothed over, ready to face the world—Jann grimaced—or at the very least, one tall, handsome, too-dangerous-to-mess-with man.

  She silently opened her bedroom door and tiptoed down the passageway toward the main cabin. Holding her breath, she peeked toward the settee.

  Saw nothing.

  Not one long leg dangling over the arm, not one muffled snore resonating from beneath the powder blue quilt.

  Jann frowned. Where was Peter? She hadn't heard him leave.

  Then she stepped into the cabin and the aroma of freshly brewed coffee hit her like a waft of perfume. Cautiously, she moved into the galley, but other than the steaming coffee pot, there was no sign of him there either. She poured herself a cup of the black wake-me-up and made her way to the stairs.

  Perhaps he'd had the decency to take himself off. She hoped so. It would give her time to collect her thoughts, to figure out how she was going to handle being around him for the next day and a half.

  Shoving the hatch aside, she stepped outside and squinted into the morning sun, almost blinded as her eyes adjusted to the light. Blessedly warm right now, it would be a scorcher later on.

  Peter watched her emerge and shade her eyes from the sun. He slung his wet towel around his neck, felt the water stream off his chest.

  He could imagine how she would look in a bathing suit, had been imagining her naked all night long, had lain on the settee unable to sleep and unable to think beyond the consequences making love to Jann would incur.

  "The water's great," he said, struggling to forget now all that had passed between them the previous night. "Are you going in?"

  "A little early for me," she murmured, shifting her gaze to the water.

  One part of him was relieved. When she looked at him with her big blue eyes, he desired her too much, wanted nothing more than to pull her down on the deck and kiss her until their problems disappeared.

  "There’ll be plenty of time for swimming later. In Hana," he added. Plenty of time to reduce his need for this woman to its proper place, to remember the difference between making love and being in love, to remind himself why he was in Hawaii in the first place.

  "Hana?" she asked, looking up at him with a frown.

  "I've always wanted to go there."

  "Why?"

  "To see the Seven Sacred Pools." If they could keep on the move, keep away from this boat, then perhaps he wouldn't need her so, wouldn't be making a list in his head of all the ways he was starting to like her. "We'll head out after breakfast."

  "Hana's miles away."

  "It's not so far." Was keeping her near him a bad idea, like placing a scotch in front of an alcoholic?

  "I have a lot to do today," Jann protested.

  "Until the dance this evening, you're free as a bird. You told me so yesterday.
"

  "There are some boats not in yet. I was going to go back out."

  "You don't need more pictures of boats!" He took a step closer, unable to stop, unable to remember why he should. "What's the matter? Are you afraid to be alone with me?" His heart thumped faster at the thought of being alone with her.

  "Of course not," she said, but her eyes grew wide.

  "Good." It was good. He'd be able to prove, if only to himself, that he didn't want her or need her so much his body ached. "I arranged a car rental for today. We'll leave right after breakfast. I'll have you back in plenty of time for the Yacht Club dance."

  * * *

  Jann undid her seatbelt, let it swing back into its sprocket then slowly pulled it out once more, this time making sure it didn't rest quite so snugly against her stomach. Peter did make the best banana pancakes she'd ever eaten, but they had left her so full she barely had room for air.

  She glanced across at him. One hand rested lightly on the steering wheel while his other arm lay along the open window. He was obviously enjoying the low-slung sports car as much as she.

  The way he'd been acting, the way he'd chatted all through breakfast about inconsequential events, it was as though last night had never happened, as though they were friends. Not almost lovers, not adversaries either.

  There had been just that one moment, the merest flicker in his eyes, when she'd been certain he was about to say or do something, then the look had disappeared as though it had never been there at all.

  Tomorrow they would sail home. She would see her baby. Be able to hold Alex and cuddle him, and know he was all right. She firmly squelched the now familiar thrust of anxiety, determined not to think about what Peter had said about access until he brought it up again. They understood each other better now. Perhaps he wouldn't bother to change a thing.

  With a sigh, she returned her gaze to the road. They'd been climbing steadily for the past few minutes and with each ascending foot, her apprehension increased. She loathed hilly, cliff-side roads, had known the road to Hana lay along the shoreline, but somehow had imagined it to be flat. Level to the sea. Safe.

  She sat up straighter, her fingers inching toward the loop of leather passing as a door handle. Then, with a suddenness that made her gasp, the next gentle bend twisted into a corkscrew. Straight ahead, all she could see was the azure blue of the sky.

  The car clung tenaciously to the road, the cliff face along Jann's right side comfortingly solid. She stared past Peter and all thoughts of comfort vanished.

  The ground fell away sharply at the edge of the road, dropping hundreds of feet over rocky outcroppings to the ocean below. Dizziness threatened to overwhelm her. She squeezed her eyes shut in an effort to control it.

  "Are you all right?" Peter asked sharply, slowing the car to a stop. "Jann?"

  She opened her eyes, reluctant to look in his direction, not wanting her gaze to stray past him to the nothingness of space.

  He turned away from her, glanced toward the cliff edge instead. Her teeth caught her lower lip as she followed his gaze.

  "You're afraid of heights," he accused, turning back to her again.

  "I'm not," she muttered, pressing her lips tighter. But her fear reverberated like a bumper car at a fair.

  "What, then?"

  She didn't answer.

  Peter shifted the car into gear, driving it off onto the road's shoulder, dropping in under the hill's shadow and jerking to a stop as far from the cliff edge as possible. With a swift turn of the key, with a shutter and a gasp, the car's engine died.

  He gently pulled her around to face him. "What's the matter, Jann?" he asked again.

  His eyes were insistent, their inky centers seeming to expand and whirl toward her, encompassing her, pulling her in as they had when he'd almost kissed her. But for some reason this time it felt all right.

  More than all right.

  Safe.

  Her lips trembled. Nothing was safe. She'd felt safe that night with her parents also. She shut her eyes again, determined to block the pain.

  Then he touched her. Just a simple brush of his fingers against her thigh, but the contact warmed her, made her believe she could tell him what had happened without it ripping her in two.

  "It was on a road just like this..." She stopped, the effort to find the right words leaving her exhausted.

  "On a road just like this... what, Jann?" Peter's voice had dropped to a silken caress, his eyes darkening to the color of the ocean at midnight—mysterious, enigmatic, yet infinitely soothing.

  "...that my parents died," she whispered. She glanced toward the cliff, but it was that other cliff she saw, where the sky wasn't blue, but rather black as a pit.

  He slipped his arms around her and pulled her close, his heart now thumping comfortingly against her cheek.

  For twelve long years she had kept the horror of her parents' death locked in her heart like poisonous waste in a vault, alternately ignoring it, then thinking about it, then trying once again to work it through in her mind. Despite all her efforts, she'd never managed to forget.

  "Tell me," Peter commanded, his breath ruffling her hair.

  Tell him that her parents' death had been her fault?

  She could never tell him that.

  He gently pushed her from him and held her so he could see her. She longed to shut her eyes, to block out the demand in his.

  "How did they die?" he asked softly.

  Few people over the years had even asked her that question, and those who had, had done so swiftly, not really wanting to know.

  "We were on our way to the cabin we always rented at the lake." She didn't look at him as she spoke, found it easier that way. "It was my birthday. We were going to celebrate. My parents and I... we celebrated everything." Every day had been a party, every moment a joy. Birthdays especially. A burning scorched her throat, as though a thousand tiny flames had been lit and flamed to life.

  "How old were you?"

  "Does it matter?" she asked wearily.

  "Yes," he answered, his attention as relentless as sand blowing across a desert.

  "Fourteen," she said, swallowing hard. "My friend Dale asked me to go to the theater with her and her family. I was thrilled. I thought it seemed very... grown-up."

  "But you were headed towards the cabin?"

  "That was later, after the theater." She looked at him then, found eyes soft with concern, tinged with an emotion she couldn't define.

  Bewildered, she lowered her gaze. The top few buttons of his shirt were undone, and wiry black hairs spiraled out through the opening. She longed to return her head to his chest, to block out the past and never examine it again.

  "So you went with Dale and her family?"

  "Yes," she said reluctantly, "My parents told me to go with Dale and enjoy myself, said it sounded the perfect birthday treat."

  Peter's face was like marble, impassive, not moving.

  "They went up to the cabin as usual then came back for me Saturday evening when the play was over. They said we still had time to go to the cabin for a few days, so we headed back again that night." She was starting to feel dizzy again, as though no matter how many breaths she took, not enough oxygen found its way to her lungs.

  She also felt chilled, as chilled as that night her parents had died.

  "The road was icy," she said, glancing at the pavement in front of the car, "and narrow, like this road." Her lips felt frozen, too, like two blocks of ice sticking together.

  "We went over the edge," she whispered, holding herself stiffly. Peter stroked her back in a long, caressing sweep, his fingers tracing a fiery path up her spine and across her shoulders, but the heat from his touch didn't penetrate her skin. She sat straighter yet, tried to hold onto her composure, tried to remain in control... unbreakable.

  But no one was unbreakable.

  Glancing back toward the cliff, she involuntarily clutched Peter's leg, remembered how she'd felt when she was little when her father threw her
giggling and shrieking above his head

  But this time, no one caught her. This time, she had landed. Not in a laughing tangle of arms and hair, cheek against cheek and warmth against warmth, but in a screaming, burning mass of metal against stone.

  She would never forget the noise, or the terror in her mother's eyes as she wrenched her head around for one last helpless look, or the icy whiteness of her father's fingers as he fruitlessly clutched the steering wheel, twisting and turning it in a vain attempt to stop the car's headlong plunge.

  But the silence that followed had been even worse. Complete. Absolute. Empty.

  She had returned to consciousness yards from the burned-out wreckage of their car, flung from the back seat like a doll from a giant's hand. When she opened her eyes, she'd seen nothing at first, only the stars and the moon, and the black wall of the cliff. But when she twisted her head, the fiery ball that had been their car filled her heart and brain like a never-ending nightmare.

  "They died," she said tonelessly, trying to shut out the images.

  Peter stared down at her, his expression unchanged. No sign of horror, or even of pity. He stroked her hair now, his fingers tangling in its strands.

  Numbness engulfed her once more. "It was my fault."

  Peter's eyes grew black as shadows.

  She pushed herself from him and huddled against the car door, the air surrounding her body as icy as her battered soul.

  "It was an accident," Peter said firmly. His hand clamped her shoulder, as hot as the flat side of an iron. He dragged her around to face him. "It had nothing to do with you."

  "If I'd gone with them in the first place we'd never have been on the road that late at night." She pressed her lips closed, determined to keep them from trembling. "We'd never have been going back."

  "You've been a mother now for months," he growled. "You know how demanding parenthood is. Your parents probably relished the opportunity to spend some time alone."

  She knew all that, had been trying to convince herself of it for years. "They made the trip back to town especially to get me!" she repeated dully. "If they hadn't, they'd be alive today."