by Janet Dailey
As she was setting two cups on a round serving tray, the telephone rang in the living room. She moved to answer it, but just as she reached the archway, it was cut off in mid-ring. Race had picked up the receiver, answering it in an impersonal voice that quickly changed when he recognized the calling party.
“Hello, Dad,” he said, and glanced sideways to see her poised in the archway. Vanessa couldn’t help wondering what Phillip was thinking because Race had answered the phone. “Vanessa is fixing coffee,” Race said in apparent explanation for being the one who answered. The next time he spoke, his voice sounded more guarded. “No, I haven’t. I’m not going to—at least, not yet.” Without the benefit of hearing Phillip’s question, his response made no sense to her. “I will. Do you want to talk to Vanessa?” His query was followed by a slight pause. “I’ll tell her. Goodbye.”
“That was evidently your father,” she guessed the obvious.
“He was just calling to say hello,” Race said without elaborating on his brief conversation with him. “Is the coffee ready yet?”
“It should be.” Vanessa glanced over her shoulder and noticed the brewing light was off on the coffeemaker.
“Need any help?”
“No, I can manage.” She half-turned to reenter the kitchen. “You go ahead. I’ll be right out.”
After filling the cups with freshly brewed coffee, Vanessa carried the tray through the living room to the balcony doors. Race stepped forward to open them for her. In addition to the two wrought-iron chairs with removable cushions on her portion of the apartment balcony, there was a white wrought-iron table Vanessa set the tray on. Race dodged a hanging basket to take a cup from the tray, and walked to the railing to drink it. She carried hers over as well and leaned a shoulder against an intricately scrolled upright support.
“You have quite a view.” Race stood with his legs slightly spread apart, facing the rail.
Vanessa let her gaze make a slow arc of the scene before them. The main spire of St. Louis Cathedral was thrust toward the purpling blue of an evening sky, flanked by smaller twin spires. In the center of the square across the street, the statue of General Andrew Jackson sat atop a rearing horse, his hat lifted in a perpetual salute to the city he helped save. From the balcony, there was a glimpse of the Café du Monde and the French Market, while city lights were reflected on the waters of the Mississippi River just beyond the levee.
“Yes, it is impressive,” Vanessa agreed.
Below them, the city’s nightlife was wakening, yet they remained curiously removed from it, untouched by the noise and the activity. It was somnolent and quiet on the balcony; isolated. Vanessa was very conscious of being alone with Race. She sipped at her coffee, feeling the quivering awareness.
Race thoughtfully trailed a hand across the railing. “How does that quote go? ‘What light from yonder window breaks?’” He glanced at her, showing uncertainty in his expression that he had it right.
Recognition flashed instantly, “‘Wherefore art thou, Romeo?’” she quoted absently, tossing off the famous line from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet without any dramatic inflection.
“The famous balcony scene,” Race concluded.
Their eyes met across the distance, and the air suddenly became charged with a thousand little electrical impulses, primitive and elemental. She had trouble breathing, her pulse skittering all over the place.
His mouth twisted with unexpected wryness. “Do you know what this reminds me of?”
“What?” There was a breathy catch to her voice. It didn’t come out calm and unaffected the way she wanted it to sound.
“Standing here, looking at you, reminds me of the time when we were first dating,” Race said, expressing virtually the same feeling she’d had earlier in the kitchen. “In the beginning, I was always pondering whether it was too early to put a move on you.”
“And I was always wondering how far I was going to let you go,” Vanessa admitted with a brief, husky laugh.
Instead of making a comment, Race extended his hand. “Are you through with your coffee?” He was offering to take her cup.
She had barely drunk any of it, but on an evening that was so warm, she lost her taste for drinking something hot. “Yes.” She handed him the cup and turned her back to the rail, leaning back on it with her hands to watch him carry the two cups to the tray.
When he turned to walk back to the railing, a slow tightness began to climb inside her, moving up her throat. There was something about the way he was looking at her that made her blood run hot. He stopped in front of her, reaching with his fingertips to trace the curve of her cheekbone down to the delicate line of her jaw.
“Surely we’re past that stage,” he murmured huskily. “If I make a move now, how far will you let me go?”
His bluntness always managed to throw her off keel. This time was no exception. “I’m not sure,” she managed, unable to be as candid as he was.
He let his hand slide to her shoulder while he reached with the other to take her left hand, effectively drawing her away from the balcony and closer to him. Her legs felt unsteady as he carried her fingers to the hard male line of his lips.
“Why don’t you wear your wedding rings?” he asked, not taking his watchful eyes from her face while his lips formed the words against her curved fingers.
“I didn’t think it was proper to wear them after we were divorced,” Vanessa explained in a disturbed whisper.
“Other divorced women wear theirs,” Race pointed out, still rubbing his mouth over the back of her fingers.
“I know, but I didn’t feel I should. I didn’t get rid of them,” she added, in case he thought she might have sold them or given them away. “I kept them in my jewelry box.”
“That’s where they were.” He lightly stressed the past tense.
Her eyes widened, amethyst-bright with confusion. “What do you mean?”
“I mean they aren’t there now,” he replied, which didn’t really clear up anything.
“Then where…?” Vanessa halted in mid-question as his hand left her shoulder and reached into the side pocket of his slacks. He had the interlocking set of wedding rings in his hand when he brought it out, the diamond solitaire engagement ring fitting inside a wide gold wedding band.
“I never asked you to take them off your finger,” Race said as he slipped them back on and raised her hand to kiss the rings, as if realising the vows that had been exchanged when they were placed on her finger by him. “I want you to wear them.”
It had been years since she’d worn them—a little over four years, to be exact. They should have felt heavy or awkward on her finger; instead, they felt natural. She gave him a slightly dazed look.
“Any objection?” he asked at her continued silence.
“None,” Vanessa murmured with a vague shake of her head.
“Last night I slept in your bed.” His gaze moved possessively over her face, darting to each feature. “Tonight I want to sleep with you. Any objections?”
“Why?” She had to know his reason.
“Because it’s driving me crazy to stand here, wanting to touch you and waiting for you to show me it’s what you want, too,” Race answered with an urgent edge to his voice. He watched her lips. “Do you?”
It seemed impossible to be seduced without being touched, but he was making love to her mentally, and her desire was aroused by it. Her need built into a physical ache that wouldn’t go away.
“Yes,” she admitted with a throb to her voice.
The disturbing darkness of his eyes was lightened by a spark of humor. “But not here on the balcony. Even for me, it’s the wrong place.” He curved her arm behind her back, then hugged her waist to mold her to his side. “Shall we adjourn to a place that offers more privacy? Say, the bedroom.”
His remark seemed to take the heaviness from the moment, and leave in its place a naturalness. Vanessa was able to walk with him into the apartment without any awkward sensation of the deli
berateness of the act.
When they entered the bedroom, she noticed the bed was made, evidently by Race after he had gotten up this morning. It was not as neatly done as she would have made it, but she was moved by the gesture. Race left her to walk over to the bed and turn down the covers. He sat down on the edge to take off his shoes, just as he had always done when they were married.
There was suddenly a comfortable pattern to everything that put her at ease, even though her pulse continued to race with anticipation. Vanessa untied the polka-dot scarf and tossed it absently onto the dresser top. Her shoes came off next as she walked to the closet, where she unbuttoned her dress and replaced it on its hanger. Wearing only a bra and a half-slip, she moved back to the mirror above the dresser and started to remove the pins securing her silky brown hair in its smooth coil.
His reflection appeared in the mirror behind hers. “Let me do that.” Race volunteered his services for the task.
Vanessa brought her hands down and watched him begin deftly removing the pins. Gradually her eyes drifted closed while she savored the sensation of his hands in her hair, taking its weight, then running his fingers through it to comb it onto her shoulders.
When it all tumbled loose around her neck, he lifted it aside to kiss the sensitive nape area that raised delicious sensations all through her skin. A second later, his fingers had found the back fastener to her bra and were unhooking it. She drew a breath of heady excitement as he slipped the straps from her shoulders.
“Come to bed, Vanessa,” Race urged huskily, and moved silently away from her.
By the time she had stepped out of the rest of her underclothes and come to the bed, he was already under the covers, waiting for her. The color of his dark eyes blackened as he watched her come to him, the silvering light from a streetlamp casting a white sheen over her nakedness.
She went into his arms with the eagerness of one coming home after a long absence. His mouth bruised its fierce welcome on her lips while his arms gathered her to him. She was fired by the heat of his passion and the burning warmth of his body, intertwined so intimately with hers. Race was knowledgeable about all the ways to excite her, all the pleasure points on her body that aroused her, and he exploited every one to the fullest.
When he mouthed the erect nipple of her breast, Vanessa moaned aloud in exquisite anguish. Her fingers raked their way into his hair to force him to stop this teasing, but he continued to rub his mouth over the hard peak of her breast without taking it.
“Talk to me, honey,” he urged in a passionthickened voice. “Tell me what you want…what you’re feeling.” When she moaned inarticulately again, he asked, “Do you still hate the way I make your body feel?”
“No,” she admitted on a half-groan. “I love what you’re doing to me. But please don’t torment me like this.”
“It’s heaven and hell all at the same time, isn’t it?” Race described it accurately.
“Yes,” Vanessa whispered on a tortured ache. “Love me, Race.”
“Why?” He resisted her plea to end her searing misery.
“Because I want you,” she admitted.
A fine tension seemed to leave him. Vanessa could almost feel him relax. “I’ve waited so long to hear you say that. I don’t think you know how long,” he muttered.
All that had gone before seemed nothing compared to the leaping fires he ignited in her. She was reeling and soaring, glorying in the crushing weight of his body, and inflamed by its hardness. Again and again he carried her to the high plain of ultimate satisfaction, until neither of them had the strength to attempt the journey again.
Exhausted, but more contented than she had ever been in her life, Vanessa lay comfortably wrapped in his strong arms. With each breath, she inhaled the warm, musky smell of him. She felt strangely boneless, without form or substance except through him. The feathering touch of his breath caressed her cheek.
“If this is all a dream, and you aren’t really here in my arms, don’t wake me,” Race murmured.
“I don’t think it’s a dream,” she assured him softly, “… unless we’re both having the same one.”
There was a long silence before he said, “We probably should go to sleep.”
“I know,” Vanessa sighed. “But I don’t want to. If I go to sleep, then when I wake up it will be morning.”
“That’s the usual order,” Race mocked gently. “First morning, then afternoon, then night, and morning again.”
“That isn’t what I meant.” She guessed he knew that.
“You’re afraid this won’t last until morning,” he accused softly.
“Yes.” It was a quiet admission, reluctant and subdued.
“I have no intention of letting you go a second time, Vanessa,” he stated. “This is where you belong, so you might as well start accepting it.”
“But—”
“There aren’t going to be any buts,” he interrupted. “This time we’re going to work out our problems. No, go to sleep. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
Vanessa wished she had his confidence. She wasn’t as sure about the outcome as he was. It was sheer exhaustion that finally closed her eyes.
CHAPTER NINE
THE INTERMITTENT ringing wouldn’t stop. An irritated frown crossed her features as Vanessa tried to snuggle closer still to Race’s hard, warm body and shut out the sound that was disturbing her sleep. But his hands moved her away from him and onto the mattress.
“It’s the phone, Vanessa,” he said in a voice graveled with sleep.
She stirred in protest, her frown deepening. The mattress sagged under his shifting weight. The shrill ring and his identification of its source finally penetrated her conscious mind. She dragged her eyes open just as Race picked up the extension on the small table beside the bed.
“Hello?” he answered dully, and wiped a hand across his face as if trying to rub out the sleep.
Little details began to register in Vanessa’s mind: the hustling noise of traffic and people in the street below, the brilliance of the sunlight outside the window—and the hands of the clock dial pointing to ninethirty. It hit her with belated force that she’d forgotten to set the alarm when they’d gone to bed last night. Her suddenly alert gaze flew to Race, sitting hunched over with tiredness, the covers loosely falling around his waist, and the telephone to his ear.
“Vanessa’s asleep,” he said into the mouthpiece, then glanced at her. One shoulder lifted in a slight shrug that indicated he hadn’t known she was awake. “Who’s this?” When he had his answer, Race lowered the phone and pressed it to his chest so the calling party couldn’t hear his question to Vanessa. “Do you know someone named Pierre Bennoy—or something like that?”
“It’s Peter,” she realized, and grabbed for the phone but Race lifted it out of reach. “He’s an interior decorator who works for me,” she explained impatiently. “He’s calling to find out why I’m not at the shop.”
Race wouldn’t give her the phone, carrying it again to his ear. “Vanessa won’t be in the shop until around noon today. You’d better cancel whatever appointments she has this morning.”
“Race, I can’t do that!” she protested, and tried again to get the telephone from him, but he was hanging it up.
“It’s all settled,” he informed her.
Her mouth opened in sputtering indignation. It was several seconds before she could get her voice out. “I can’t just arbitrarily take the morning off. I’m the boss. I’m supposed to be there.”
“Look at the time,” he reasoned. “Most of the morning is shot already. By the time you’ve showered, dressed, and had some breakfast, it will be practically noon anyway.”
His logic tempered her anger but it didn’t quell her irritation at oversleeping. “Why didn’t I set the alarm?” Vanessa muttered in self-recrimination.
“Because…” Race turned to her, his arm sliding diagonally across her stomach to curve his hand to her waist. When he began leaning toward her, the
sheer looming force of him pressed her backward until her shoulders were flat against the mattress. “…You were occupied in more pleasurable pursuits.”
With a tug, he removed the pillow from beneath her head and tossed it aside. Anticipation flashed like white-hot lightning through her veins. Her lips parted with the first brush of his mouth across them, while her hands slid over the rippling muscles in his back to gather him in.
As the kiss deepened, his roaming hands began an arousing exploration of her feminine form, sparking the fires of her passion and pleasure. They were not driven by the urgency that had claimed them last night. There was time to enjoy all that led up to the union of the flesh. And it seemed a stronger welding of desire and emotion because of it.
Cuddling afterward in his arms, Vanessa felt oddly refreshed and revitalized, instead of drained and spent. His lips moved against the tousled brown silk of her hair.
“Did you enjoy that?” Race asked with a trace of typical male pride for the role he’d played.
“Yes.” She smiled secretly at the faint note of triumph and self-satisfaction in his voice.
His hold on her shifted, turning her so he could see her face. His gaze was three-quarter-lidded, lazy and warm in its study of her, a complacent glitter showing.
“Explain to me, if you can,” Race challenged quietly, “what’s wrong with morning sex?”
Vanessa stiffened. It was happening again—old disagreements were being resurrected to cast black shadows on the new accord they had found. She fought the raw ache that threatened to spread.
“Nothing,” she murmured with lowered lashes to hide the hurt and resentment in her violet eyes.
Vanessa stirred in his arms, wanting out of them. Race didn’t attempt to keep her there, letting her move away from him to sit on the edge of the bed, holding the covers around her. The silence lengthened from seconds into a minute. She could feel his eyes watching her as she pushed her arms through the sleeves of her robe.
“You didn’t have that opinion when we were married.” Race finally broke the tense quiet, not content with the nonargumentative answer she had given.
