After Midnight

by Diana Palmer

  “Oh, why bother being pessimistic?” she replied. “Life is so short. It’s a crime to waste it, when every day is like Christmas, bringing something new.”

  She loved life. He’d forgotten how. His dark eyes turned toward the distant horizon and he tried not to think about how short life really was, or how tragically he’d learned the lesson.

  “Where are we going?” Nikki asked.

  “No place in particular,” he said. He glanced at her with faint amusement. “Unless,” he added, “you like to fish.”

  “I don’t mind it. But you hate it!” she laughed.

  “Of course I do. But I have to keep my hand in,” he added. “So that I don’t disgrace the rest of my family. The gear and tackle are under that tarp. I thought we’d ease up the river a bit and settle in a likely spot. I brought an ice chest and lunch.”

  “You really are full of surprises,” she commented.

  His dark eyes twinkled. “You don’t know the half of it,” he murmured, turning his concentration back to navigation.

  He found a leafy glade and tied the boat up next to shore. He and Nikki sat lazily on the bank and watched their corks rise and fall and occasionally bob. They ate cold cut sandwiches and potato chips and sipped soft drinks, and Nikki marveled at the tycoon who was a great fishing companion. Not since her childhood, when she’d gone fishing with her late grandfather, had she enjoyed anything so much. She’d forgotten how much fun it was to sit on the river with a fishing pole.

  “Do you do this often?” she wanted to know.

  “With my brothers and my father. Not ever with a woman.” His broad shoulders lifted and fell. “Most of them that I know don’t care for worms and hooks,” he mused. “You’re not squeamish, are you?”

  “Not really. About some things, maybe,” she added quietly. “But unless you’re shooting the fish in a barrel, they have a sporting chance. And I do love fried bass!”

  “Can you clean a fish?”

  “You bet!”

  He chuckled with delight. “In that case, if we catch anything, I’m inviting myself to supper.” His eyes narrowed. “If you have no other plans.”

  “Not for two weeks, I haven’t,” she said.

  He seemed to relax. His powerful legs stretched out in front of him and he tugged on the fishing pole to test the hook. “Nothing’s striking at my bait,” he grumbled. “I haven’t had a bite yet. We’ll give it ten more minutes and then we’re moving to a better spot.”

  “The minute we move, a hundred big fish will feel safe to vacation here,” she pointed out.

  “You’re probably right. Some days aren’t good ones to fish.”

  “That depends on what you’re fishing for,” she said, concentrating on the sudden bob of her cork. “Watch this…!”

  She pulled suddenly on the pole, snaring something at the end of the line, and scrambled to her feet. Whatever she’d hooked was giving her a run for her money. She pulled and released, pulled and released, worked the pole, moved up the bank, muttered and clicked her tongue until finally her prey began to tire. She watched Kane watching her and laughed at his dismal expression.

  “You’re hoping I’ll drop him, aren’t you?” she challenged. “Well, I won’t. Supper, here you come!”

  She gave a hard jerk on the line and the fish, a large bass, flipped up onto the bank. While Kane dealt with it, she baited her hook again. “I’ve got mine,” she told him. “I don’t know what you’ll eat, of course.”

  He sat down beside her and picked up his own pole. “We’ll just see about that,” he returned.

  Two hours later, they had three large bass. Nikki had caught two of them. Kane lifted the garbage and then the cooler with the fish into the boat. Nikki forgave herself for feeling vaguely superior, just for a few minutes.

  Kane had forgotten his tragedies, his business dealings, his worries in the carefree morning he was sharing with Nikki. Her company had liberated his one-track mind from the rigors that plagued men of his echelon. He was used to being by himself, to letting business occupy every waking hour. Since the death of his family, he’d substituted making money for everything else. Food tasted like cardboard to him. Sleep was infrequent and an irritating necessity. He hadn’t taken a vacation or even a day off since the trip he’d taken with his wife and son that had ended so tragically.

  Perhaps that very weariness had made him careless and caused his head injury. But looking at Nikki, so relaxed and happy beside him, he couldn’t be sorry about it. She was an experience he knew he’d never forget. But, like all the others, he’d taste her delights and put her aside. And in two weeks after he left her, he wouldn’t be able to recall her name. The thought made him restless.

  Nikki noticed his unease. She wondered if he was as attracted to her emotionally as he seemed to be physically. It had worried her when he’d admitted that he had a lover. Of course, he thought she did, too, and it couldn’t have been further from the truth. But it could be, she was forced to admit, remembering the feel of his big arms around her. He could be her lover. She trembled inside at the size and power of his body. Mosby had never been able to bring himself to make love to her at all. He’d only been able to touch her lightly and without passion. She hadn’t known what it was to be kissed breathless, to be a slave to her body’s needs, until this stranger had come along. There were many reasons that would keep her from becoming intimate with him. And the first was the faceless lover who clung to him in the darkness. She didn’t know how to compete with another woman, because she’d never had to.

  She forced her wandering mind back to the fishing. This had been one of the most carefree days of her life. She was sad to see it end. Kane had agreed to come to supper, but she was losing him now to other concerns. His mind wasn’t on the fish, or her. She wondered what errant thought had made him so preoccupied.

  “I have to make a telephone call, or I’d help you clean the fish,” he said when he left her at the front door of her beach house with the cooler.

  “Business?” she asked.

  His face showed nothing. “You might call it that.” He didn’t say anything else. He smiled at her distractedly and left with a careless wave of his hand.

  Nikki went in to clean the fish, disturbed by his sudden remoteness. What kind of business could he have meant?

  Kane listened patiently while the angry voice at the other end of the telephone ranted and railed at him.

  “You promised that we could go to the Waltons’ party tonight!” Chris fumed. “How can you do this to me? What sort of deal are you working on that demands a whole evening of your time?”

  “That’s hardly your concern,” he said in a very quiet voice. Her rudeness and lack of compassion were beginning to irritate him. She was a competent psychologist, and he couldn’t fault her intellect. But their mutual need for safe intimacy had been their only common bond. Chris wanted a man she could lead around by the nose in any emotional relationship. Kane wasn’t the type to let anyone, man or woman, dictate to him. He’d tired of Chris. Tonight, she was an absolute nuisance.

  “When will you phone me, then?” she asked stiffly.

  “When I have time. It might be as well if we don’t see as much of each other in the future.”

  There was a hesitation, then a stiff, “Perhaps you’re right. You’re a wonderful lover, Kane, but I always have the feeling that you’re going over cost overruns even when we’re together.”

  “I’m a businessman,” he reminded her.

  “You’re a business,” she retorted. “A walking, talking industry, and I still say you should be in therapy. You haven’t been the same since…”

  He didn’t want to hear any more. “I’ll phone you. Good night.”

  He put the receiver down before she could say anything else. He’d had quite enough of her psychoanalysis. She did it all the time, even when she was in bed with him; especially when she was in bed with him, he amended. If he was aggressive, she labeled him a repressed masochist. If he w
as tender, he was pandering to her because he felt superior. Lately, she inhibited him so much that he lost interest very quickly when he was in bed with her, to the point of not being able to consummate lovemaking. That really infuriated her. She decided that his real problem was impotence.

  If her barbs hadn’t been so painful, they might have been amusing. He’d never been impotent in his life with anyone except Chris. Certainly he was more capable than ever when he just looked at Nikki. But, then, Nikki apparently didn’t have any reason to hate and despise men. She was very feminine along with her intelligence, and she didn’t tease viciously.

  He got up and changed from jeans and jersey into dress slacks and a comfortable yellow knit shirt. Fried fish with Nikki was suddenly much more enticing than a prime rib and cocktails with Chris.

  He selected a bottle of wine from the supply he’d imported and carried it along with him. He wondered if Nikki knew anything about fine white wine. She was an intelligent girl, but she hadn’t the advantages of wealth. Probably she wouldn’t know a Chardonnay from a Johannisberg Riesling. That was something he could teach her. He didn’t dare think about tutoring her in anything else just yet. She could become even more addicting than alcohol if he let her. Chris was all the trouble he needed for the present.

  Nikki had cleaned and fried the fish and was making a fruit salad and a poppyseed dressing to go with it when Kane knocked briefly and let himself into the cottage.

  She glanced over her shoulder and smiled at him. “Come on in,” she invited. She was wearing a frilly floral sundress that left most of her pretty, tanned back bare while it discreetly covered her breasts in front. She was barefoot at the kitchen table and Kane felt his body surge at the picture of feminine beauty she presented. How long had it been, he tried to recall, since he’d seen a woman in his own circle of friends wearing anything less masculine than a pin-striped business suit? Nikki dressed the way he liked to see a woman dress, not flaunting her curves but not denying it, either. She dressed as if she had enough confidence in her intellect not to have to hide her womanhood behind it.

  “I’ve just finished the salad and dressing. Want to set the table?” she asked brightly.

  He hesitated. He couldn’t remember ever doing that in his life. Even as a child, there had always been maids who worked in the kitchen.

  “The plates are there,” she nodded toward a cupboard with her head. “You’ll find utensils in the second drawer. Place mats and napkins are in the third drawer.” She noticed his expression and his hesitation with faint amusement. “You do know how to set a table?”

  “Not really,” he admitted.

  “Then it’s high time you learned,” she said. “Someday you may get married, and think how much more desirable you’ll be if you know your way around a kitchen.”

  He didn’t react to the teasing with a smile. He stared at her with a curious remoteness and she remembered belatedly the dead wife she wasn’t supposed to know about.

  “I don’t want to marry anyone,” he said unexpectedly. “Especially a woman I’ve only just met,” he added without being unkind.

  “Well, certainly you don’t want to marry me right now,” she agreed. “After all, you don’t even know me. Sadly, once you discover my worthy traits and my earthy longings, you’ll be clamoring to put a ring on my finger. But I’ll have to turn you down, you know. I already have a commitment.”

  His face went hard and his eyes glittered. He turned away from her and began searching in drawers. “Some commitment,” he muttered. “The man doesn’t even come to check on you. What if a hurricane hit? What if some criminal forced his way in here and raped you, or worse?”

  “He phones occasionally,” she said demurely.

  “What a hell of a concession,” he returned. “How do you stand all that attention?”

  “I really don’t need your approval.”

  “Good thing. You won’t get it. Not that I have any plans other than supper,” he added forcefully, glaring at her as he began to put things on the table in strange and mysterious order.

  She didn’t bother to answer the gibe. “You really should take lessons in how to do a place setting,” she remarked, noting that he had the forks in the middle of the plate and the knives lumped together.

  “I don’t want to make a career of it.”

  “Suit yourself,” she told him. “Just don’t blame me if you’re never able to get a job as a busboy in one of the better hotels. Heaven knows, I tried to teach you the basics.”

  He chuckled faintly. She turned and began to put the food on the table. Afterward, she rearranged the place settings until they were as they should be.

  “Show-off,” he accused.

  She curtsied, grinning at him. “Do sit down.”

  He held the chair out for her, watching when she hesitated. “I am prepared to stand here until winter,” he observed.

  With a long sigh, she allowed him to seat her. “Archaic custom.”

  “Courtesy is not archaic, and I have no plans to abandon it.” He sat down across from her. “I also say grace before meals—another custom which I have no plans to abandon.”

  She obediently bowed her head. She liked him. He wasn’t shy about standing up for what he believed in.

  Halfway through the meal, they wound up in a discussion of politics and she didn’t pull her punches.

  “I think it’s criminal to kill an old forest to save the timbering subsidy,” she announced.

  His thick eyebrows lifted. “So you should. It is criminal,” he added.

  She put down her fork. “You’re a conservationist?”

  “Not exclusively, but I do believe in preservation of natural resources. Why are you surprised?” he added suspiciously.

  That was an answer she had to avoid at all costs. She forced a bright, innocent smile to her face. “Most men are in favor of progress.”

  He studied her very intently for a moment, before he let the idea pass. “I do favor it, but not above conservation, and it depends on what’s being threatened. Some species are going to become extinct despite all our best efforts, you do realize that?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But it seems to me that we’re paving everything these days. It’s a travesty!”

  “I’ve heard of development projects that were stopped because of the right sort of intervention by concerned parties. But it isn’t a frequent occurrence,” he remarked.

  “I hate a world that equates might with right.”

  “Nevertheless, that’s how the system works. The people with the most money and power make the rules. It’s always been that way, Nikki. Since the beginning of civilization, one class leads and other classes serve.”

  “At the turn of the century, industrialists used to trot out Scientific Darwinism to excuse the injustices they practiced to further their interests,” she observed.

  “Scientific Darwinism,” he said, surprised. “Yes, the theory of survival of the fittest extended from nature to business.” He shook his head. “Incredible.”

  “It’s still done,” she pointed out. “Big fish eat little fish, companies which can’t compete go under…”

  “And now we can quote Adam Smith and a few tasty morsels from The Wealth of Nations, complete with all the dangers of interfering in business. Let the sinking sink. No government intervention.”

  She stared at him curiously. “Are you by any chance a closet history minor?” she queried with a smile.

  “I took a few courses, back in the dark ages,” he confessed. “History fascinates me. So does archaeology.”

  “Me, too,” she enthused. “But I know so little about it.”

  “You could go back to school for those last two semesters,” he suggested. “Or, failing that, you could take some extension courses.”

  She hesitated. “That would be nice.”

  But she didn’t have the means. She didn’t have to say it. He knew already. She’d ducked her head as she spoke, and she looked faintly embarrassed.
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  She had to stop spouting off, she told herself firmly. Her tongue would run too far one day and betray her brother to this man. She hadn’t lied about college, though. Part of the terms of her settlement with Mosby Torrance at their divorce was that he would pay for her college education. And he had. She’d worked very hard for her degree. The pain she’d felt at her bad experience had spurred her to great heights, but she hadn’t been able to finish. She’d had to drop out just after her junior year to help Clayton campaign. Kane didn’t know that.

  “What do you do for a living?” he asked suddenly.

  She couldn’t decide how to answer him. She couldn’t very well say that she hostessed for her brother. On the other hand, she did keep house for him.

  “I’m a housekeeper,” she said brightly, and smiled.

  He’d hoped she might have some secret skill that she hadn’t shared with him. She seemed intelligent enough. But apparently she had no ambition past being her boyfriend’s kept woman. That disappointed him. He liked ambitious, capable women. He was strong himself and he disliked women whom he could dominate too easily or overwhelm.

  “I see,” he said quietly.

  He looked disappointed. Nikki didn’t add anything to what she’d said. It was just as well that he lost interest in her before things got complicated, she told herself. After all, she could hardly tell him who she really was.

  Chapter Five

  Nikki put the dishes away while Kane wandered around the living room, looking at the meager stock of books in the shelves. She sounded like she was well-read, but the only books he noted were rather weathered ones on law.

  “They were my father’s,” she told him. “He wanted to be a lawyer, but he couldn’t afford the time.”

  Or the money, Kane thought silently. He glanced at her. “Don’t you have books of your own?”

  “Plenty. They’re not here, though. The house tends to flood during storms and squalls, so we…I—” she caught herself “—don’t leave anything really valuable here.”

  As if she probably had anything valuable. His dark eyes slid over her body quietly, enjoying its soft curves but without sending blatant sexual messages her way.