Tender Stranger

by Diana Palmer

  She quickened her steps and darted around a corner just as a tall form loomed up in front of her. She jerked to a stop and almost screamed before she noticed the color of his hair in the fiery sunset.

  “Oh,” she said weakly, one hand clutching her sweatshirt.

  Dutch stared at her coolly, a cigarette in one hand, the other in his pocket. He was still wearing the khaki safari suit he’d worn on the plane, but he looked fresh and unruffled. She found herself wondering if anything could rattle him. He had an odd kind of self-confidence, as if he’d tested himself to the very limits and knew himself as few men ever did.

  He glanced over her shoulder, seeming to take in the situation in one quick glance. His eyes were very dark when they met hers again. “You’ll enjoy your holiday more if you keep out of this part of town after dark,” he told her pleasantly enough but with authority in his tone. “You’ve picked up an admirer.”

  “Yes, I know, I…” She started to glance over her shoulder, but he shook his head.

  “Don’t. He’ll think you’re encouraging him.” He laughed shortly. “He’s fifty and bald,” he added. “But if you purposely went down to the docks looking for a man, you might give him a wink and make his day.”

  He’d meant it as a joke, but the remark hurt her anyway. Clearly, he didn’t think she was likely to attract a man like himself.

  “It was more a case of forgetting where I was, if you want the truth. I’ll know better next time. Excuse me,” she said quietly, and walked past him.

  He watched her go, furious with her for letting the taunt cut her, more furious with himself for not realizing that it would. He muttered something unpleasant under his breath and started after her.

  But she’d had quite enough. She quickened her pace, darting into the hotel and up the staircase to the second floor instead of waiting for an elevator. She made it into her room and locked the door. Although why she should have bothered was anyone’s guess. He wasn’t the kind of man who chased bespectacled booksellers, she told herself coldly.

  She didn’t bother to go downstairs for dinner that evening. Probably he wouldn’t have come near her, but she was too embarrassed to chance it. She ordered from room service, and enjoyed a seafood supper in privacy.

  The next morning she went down to breakfast, too proud to let him think she was avoiding him. And sure enough, there he was, sitting alone at a window table with a newspaper. He looked good, she thought, even in nothing more unusual than white slacks and a red-and-white half-unbuttoned shirt. Just like a tourist. As if he felt her eyes on him, he lifted his gaze from the paper and caught her staring. She blushed, but he merely smiled and returned his eyes to his reading. She hardly knew what she was eating after that, and she couldn’t help watching him out of the corner of one eye.

  He was much too sophisticated for a little country mouse, Dani told herself sternly. She’d just have to keep well away from him. He had no interest in her, despite her helpless fascination with him. He was world-weary and cynical, and looked as if she amused him…nothing more.

  She made up her mind to enjoy the rest of her four-day holiday, and went to her room, where she got out a one-piece black bathing suit to wear to the beach. She pinned her irritating hair out of the way and stared at her reflection. What ravishing good looks, she thought sarcastically. No wonder he wasn’t interested. Looking the way she did, it was unlikely that even a shark would be tempted.

  Go to Mexico, have fun, her friend Harriett Gaynor had said. Sparkle! Attract men! Dani sighed miserably. Back home it was spring and things were beginning to bloom, and books were selling well—especially romances. And here Dani was, with nothing changed at all except her surroundings. Alone and unloved and unwanted, as usual. She glared at herself and impulsively she called the beauty salon downstairs and made an appointment to have her hair cut.

  They had a cancellation, and could take her immediately. Several minutes later she sat watching the unruly locks of hair being neatly sheared off, leaving her delicate features framed by a simple, wavy short cut that curled toward her wide eyes and gave her an impish look. She grinned at herself, pleased, and after paying the girl at the counter, she danced back upstairs and put on her bathing suit. She even added some of the makeup she never used, and perfume. The result wasn’t beauty-queen glamour, but it was a definite improvement.

  Then she stared at her bodice ruefully. Well, there wouldn’t be any miracle to correct this problem, she told herself, and pulled on a beach wrap. It was colorful, tinted with shades of lavender, and it concealed very well. She got the beach bag she’d bought in the hotel lobby and stuffed suntan lotion and her beach towel into it. Then, with her prescription sunglasses firmly over her eyes, she set off for the beach.

  It was glorious. Beach and sun and the lazy rhythm of the water all combined to relax her. She stretched, loving the beauty around her, the history of this ancient port. She wondered what the first explorers would have thought of the tourist attraction their old stomping grounds made.

  Feeling as if someone were staring at her, she opened her eyes and twisted her head just a little. She saw Dutch wandering along the beach, cigarette in hand, blond head shining like white gold in the sun. He was darkly tanned, shirtless, and her fascinated eyes clung to him helplessly. He wasn’t a hairy man, but there was a wedge of curling dark blond hair over the darkly tanned muscles of his chest and stomach. His legs were feathered with it, too: long, powerful legs in cutoff denim shorts, and he wore thongs, as most of the people on the beach did, to protect against unexpected objects in the sand.

  She turned her head away so that she didn’t have to see him. He was a sensuous man, devastating to a woman who knew next to nothing about the male sex. He had to be aware of her naivete, and it probably amused him, she thought bitterly.

  He watched her head turn, and irritation flashed in his dark eyes. Why was she always gazing at him with that helpless-child longing? She disturbed him. His eyes narrowed. New haircut, wasn’t it? The haircut suited her, but why in hell was she wrapped up like a newly caught fish? He’d yet to see her in anything that didn’t cover her from neck to waist. He frowned. Probably she was flat-chested and didn’t want to call attention to it. But didn’t she realize that her attempts at camouflage were only pointing out her shortcoming?

  He glowered at her. Long legs, nice legs, he mused, narrowing his eyes as he studied the relaxed body on the giant beach towel. Nice hips, too. Flat, very smooth lines. Tiny waist. But then there was the coverup. She’d said she needed to lose weight, but he couldn’t imagine where. She looked perfect to him.

  She was just a woman, he thought, pulling himself up. Just another faithless flirt, out for what she could get. Would he never learn? Hadn’t he paid for his one great love affair already? Love affair, he thought bitterly. Never that. An infatuation that had cost him everything he held dear. His home, his future, the savings his parents had sacrificed to give him…

  He tore his eyes away and turned them seaward. Sometimes it got the better of him. It had no part of the present. In fact, neither did Miss Frump over there.

  He turned, blatantly staring at her, a tiny smile playing around his mouth. She was a different species of woman, unfamiliar to him. He found he was curious about her, about what made her tick.

  He moved forward slowly, and she saw him out of the corner of her eye. She felt her pulse exploding as he came closer. No, she pleaded silently, closing her eyes. Please, go away. Don’t encourage me. Don’t come near me. You make me vulnerable, and that’s the one thing I mustn’t be.

  “You won’t get much sun in that,” he remarked, indicating the top as he plopped down beside her. He leaned on an elbow, stretched full-length beside her, and she could feel the heat of him, smell the cologne that clung to him.

  “I don’t want to burn,” she said in a strangled tone.

  “Still angry about what I said last night?” he asked on a smile.

  “A little, yes,” she said honestly.

>   He leaned over and tugged her sunglasses away from her eyes so that they were naked and vulnerable. He was worldly and it showed, and so did her fear of him.

  “I didn’t mean to ridicule you. I’m not used to women,” he said bluntly. “I’ve lived a long time without them.”

  “And you don’t like them, either,” she said perceptively.

  He scowled briefly, letting his eyes drop to her mouth. “Occasionally. In bed.” He chuckled softly at her telltale color. “Don’t tell me I embarrass you? Not considering the type of reading material you carry around with you. Surely every detail is there in black and white.”

  “Not the way you’re thinking,” she protested.

  “Little Southern lady,” he murmured, watching her. She had a softness that he wasn’t used to, a vulnerability. But there was steel under it. He sensed a spirit as strong as his own beneath shyness. “Do I frighten you?”

  “Yes. I…don’t have much to do with men,” she said quietly. “And I’m not very worldly.”

  “Are you always that honest?” he asked absently as he studied her nose. There were a few scattered freckles on its bridge.

  “I don’t like being lied to,” she said. “So I try very hard not to lie to other people.”

  “The golden rule?” He fingered a short strand of her brown hair, noticing the way it shone in the sunlight, as sleek as mink, silky in his hand. “I like your haircut.”

  “It was hot having it long…” She faltered. She wasn’t used to being touched, and there was something magnetic about this man. It was unsettling to have so much vibrant masculinity so close that she could have run her hands over his body. He made her feel things she hadn’t experienced since her teens, innocent longings that made her tense with mingled fear and need.

  “Why are you wearing this?” he asked, and his hand went to the buttons of her shapeless over-blouse. “Do you really need it?”

  She could hardly swallow. He had her so rattled, she didn’t know her name. “I…no, but…” she began.

  “Then take it off,” he said quietly. “I want to see what you look like.”

  There had been a similar passage in the latest book by her favorite author. She’d read it and gotten breathless. But this was real, and the look in his dark eyes made her tremble. She forgot why she was wearing the wrap and watched his hard face as he eased the buttons skillfully out of their holes and finally drew the garment from around her body.

  His breath caught audibly. He seemed to stop breathing as he looked down on what he’d uncovered. “My God,” he whispered.

  She was blushing again, feeling like a nervous adolescent.

  “Why?” he asked, meeting her eyes.

  She shifted restlessly. “Well, I’m…I feel…men stare,” she finished miserably.

  “My God, of course they stare! You’re exquisite!”

  She’d never heard it put that way. She searched his eyes, looking for ridicule, but there was none. He was staring again, and she found that a part of her she didn’t recognize liked the way he was looking at her.

  “Is that why you wear bulky tops all the time?” he persisted gently.

  She sighed. “Men seem to think that women who are…well-endowed have loose morals. It’s embarrassing to be stared at.”

  “I thought you were flat-chested,” he mused, laughing.

  “Well, no, I’m not,” she managed. “I guess I did look rather odd.”

  He smiled down at her. “Leave it off,” he said with a last lingering scrutiny before he stretched out on his back. “I’ll fend off unwanted admirers for you.”

  She was immediately flattered. And nervous. Would he expect any privileges for that protection? She stared at his relaxed body uneasily.

  “No strings,” he murmured, eyes closed. “I want rest, not a wild, hot affair.”

  She sighed. “Just as well,” she said ruefully. “I wouldn’t know how to have one.”

  “Are you a virgin?” he asked matter-of-factly.

  “Yes.”

  “Unusual these days.”

  “I believe in happily-ever-after.”

  “Yes, I could tell by your reading material,” he said with a lazy smile. He stretched, and powerful muscles rippled all up and down his tanned body. Her gaze was drawn to it, held by it.

  He opened his eyes and watched her, oddly touched by the rapt look on her young face. He’d have bet a year’s earnings that she’d never been touched even in the most innocent way. He found himself wondering what she might be like in passion, whether those pale eyes would glow, whether her body would relax and trust his. He frowned slightly. He’d never taken time with a woman, not since that she-wolf. These days it was all quickly over and forgotten. But slow, tender wooing was something he could still remember. And suddenly he felt a need for it. To touch this silky creature next to him and teach her how to love. How to touch. The thought of her long fingers on him caused a sudden and shocking reaction in his body.

  He turned over onto his stomach, half-dazed with the unexpected hunger. Was she a witch? He studied her. Did she know what had happened to him? No, he decided, if she did, it would be highly visible in those virginal cheeks. She probably didn’t even know what happened to men at all. He smiled slowly at the searching wonder in her eyes.

  “Why are you smiling like that?” she asked softly.

  “Do you really want to know?” he murmured dryly.

  She rolled over onto her stomach as well, and propped herself up on her elbows, looking down at him, at the hard lines of his face, the faint scarring on one cheek. She felt drawn to him physically, and couldn’t understand why it seemed so natural to lie beside him and look at him.

  His eyes were fixed on a sudden parting of fabric that gave a tantalizing view of her generous breasts; and when she started to move, he reached up and held her still.

  “You won’t get pregnant if I look at you,” he whispered.

  “You’re a horrible man,” she said haughtily.

  “Yes, but I’m much safer than any one of these wily Latins,” he told her. “The lesser of two evils, you might say. I won’t seduce you.”

  “As if any man would want to.” She laughed, and started to move away again. This time he let her, looming over her as she lay back, with his forearms beside her head and his eyes boring into hers at close range.

  “If we weren’t on a public beach, I’d give you a crash course in arousal, doubting Thomasina,” he murmured. “Something just happened to me that shocked me to the back teeth, and it’s your fault.”

  Her eyes widened as her mind tried to convince her that she hadn’t heard him make such a blatant statement.

  “I see you understand me,” he said with a lazy smile. “What’s wrong, Southern belle, have you led such a sheltered life?”

  She swallowed. “Yes.” She studied his hard face. “Yours hasn’t been sheltered.”

  “That’s right,” he told her. “I could turn your hair white with the story of my life. Especially,” he added deliberately, unblinkingly, “the part of it that concerns women.”

  Her eyes dilated as they held his. “You…aren’t a romantic.”

  He shook his head slowly. “No,” he said quietly. “Occasionally I need a woman, the oblivion of sex. But that’s all it ever is. Sex, with no illusions.”

  Her eyes searched his, reading embarrassing things in them. “There’s a reason,” she said softly, knowingly.

  He nodded. “I was twenty-four. She was twenty-eight, wildly experienced, and as beautiful as a goddess. She seduced me on the deck of a yacht, and after that I’d have died for her. But she was expensive, and I was besotted, and eventually I sold everything I had to buy her loyalty.” His eyes darkened, went cold with memory and rage as Dani watched. “I’d helped buy my parents a small home for their retirement with money I…earned,” he added, not mentioning how he’d earned the money. “And I even mortgaged that. The bank foreclosed. My father, who’d put his life savings into his part of the house, d
ied of a heart attack soon afterward. My mother blamed me for it, for taking away the thing he’d worked all his life for. She died six months later.”

  He’d picked up a handful of sand and was letting it fall slowly onto the beach while she stared at his handsome profile and knew somehow that he’d never told this story to another living soul.

  “And the woman?” she asked gently.

  The sand made a small sound, and his palm flattened on it, crushing it. “She found another chump…” He glanced at Dani with a cold laugh. “One with more money.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said inadequately. “I can understand that it would have made you bitter. But—”

  “But all women aren’t cold-hearted cheats?” he finished for her, glaring. “Aren’t they?”

  “The one boyfriend I ever had was two-timing me with another girl,” she said.

  “What a blazing affair it must have been,” he said with cold sarcasm.

  She searched his face, seeing beneath the anger to the pain. “I loved him,” she said with a gentle smile. “But he was more interested in physical satisfaction than undying devotion.”

  “Most men are,” he said curtly.

  “I suppose so.” She sighed. She rolled over onto her back and stretched. “I’ve decided that I like being alone, anyway. It’s a lot safer.”

  He eased onto his side, watching her. “You disturb me,” he said after a minute.

  “Why? Because I’m not experienced?” she asked.

  He nodded. “My world doesn’t cater to inexperience. You’re something of a curiosity to me.”

  “Yes. So are you, to me,” she confessed, studying him blatantly.

  He brushed the hair away from her face with strong, warm hands, callused hands that felt as if he’d used them in hard work. She liked that roughness against her soft skin. It made her tingle and ache with pleasure. He looked down at the bodice of the bathing suit, watching her reaction. The material was thin and the hard tips of her breasts were as evident as her quickened breathing.