September Morning

by Diana Palmer

  “You're not a little girl anymore,” Nan said, coming to her friend's defense despite her attraction to Blake.

  “Tell Blake,” she sighed. “See?” she murmured as he lifted his arrogant head and motioned for her to join him. “I'm being summoned.”

  “Could you manage to look a little less like Marie Antoinette on her way to the guillotine?” Nan whispered.

  “I can't help it. My neck's tingling. See you,” she muttered, moving toward Blake with a faint smile.

  She moved forward, through the throng of guests, her heart throbbing as heavily as the rock rhythm that shook the walls around her. Six months hadn't erased the bitterness of their last quarrel, and judging by the look on Blake's rugged face, it was still fresh in his mind, too.

  He drew deeply on his cigarette, looking down his straight nose at her, and she couldn't help noticing how dangerously attractive he was in his dark evening clothes. The white silk of his shirt was a perfect foil for his olive complexion, his arrogant good looks. The tang of his Oriental cologne drifted down into her nostrils, a fragrance that echoed his vibrant masculinity.

  “Hello, Blake,” she said nervously, glad Maude had vanished into the throng of politicians so she didn't have to pretend more enthusiasm.

  His eyes sketched her slender figure, lingering at the plunging neckline that revealed tantalizing glimpses of the swell of her small, high breasts.

  “Advertising, Kate?” he asked harshly. “I thought you'd learned your lesson with Harris.”

  “Don't call me Kate,” she fired back. “And it's no more revealing than what everyone else is wearing.”

  “You haven't changed,” he sighed indulgently. “All fire and lace and wobbly legs. I hoped that finishing school might give you a little maturity.”

  Her emerald eyes burned. “I'm twenty, Blake!”

  One dark eyebrow went up. “What do you want me to do about it?”

  She started to reply that she didn't want him to do a thing, but the anger faded away suddenly. “Oh, Blake,” she moaned, “why do you have to spoil my party? It's been such fun…”

  “For whom?” he asked, his eyes finding several of the politicians present. “You or Maude?”

  “She's trying to save the wildlife along the Edisto River,” she said absently. “They want to develop part of the riverfront.”

  “Yes, let's save the water moccasins and sandflies, at all costs!” he agreed lightly, although Kathryn knew he was as avid a conservationist as Maude.

  She peeked up at him. “I seem to remember that you went on television to support that wilderness proposal on the national forest.”

  He raised his cigarette to his firm lips. “Guilty,” he admitted with a faint, rare smile. He glanced toward the band and the smile faded. “Are they all playing the same song?” he asked irritably.

  “I'm not sure. I thought you liked music,” she teased.

  He glowered down at her. “I do. But that,” he added with a speaking glance in the band's direction, “isn't.”

  “My generation thinks it is,” she replied with a challenge in her bright eyes. “And if you don't like contemporary music, then why did you bother to come to the party, you old stick-in-the-mud?”

  He reached down and tapped her on the cheek with a long, stinging finger. “Don't be smart,” he told her. “I came because I hadn't seen you for six months, if you want the truth.”

  “Why? So you could drive me home and bawl me out in privacy on the way?” she asked.

  His heavy dark brows came together. “How much of that punch have you had?” he asked curtly.

  “Not quite enough,” she replied with an impudent grin and tossed off the rest of the punch in her glass.

  “Feeling reckless, little girl?” he asked quietly.

  “It's more like self-preservation, Blake,” she admitted softly, peeking up at him over the empty glass as she held its coolness to her pink lips. “I was getting my nerves numb so that it wouldn't bother me when you started giving me hell.”

  He took a draw from his cigarette. “It was six months ago,” he said tightly. “I've forgotten it.”

  “No you haven't,” she sighed, reading the cold anger very near the surface in his taut face. “I really didn't know what Jack had in mind. I probably should have, but I'm not very worldly.”

  He sighed heavily. “No, that's for sure. I used to think it was a good thing. But the older you get, the more I wonder.”

  “That's just what Maude was saying,” she murmured, wondering if he could read people's minds.

  “And she could be right.” His eyes narrowed to a glittering darkness as he studied her in the revealing little dress. “That dress is years too old for you.”

  “Does that mean it's all right with you if I grow up?” she asked sweetly.

  One dark eyebrow rose laconically. “I wasn't aware that you needed my permission.”

  “I seem to, though,” she persisted. “If I try to do anything about it, you'll be on my neck like a duck after a June bug.”

  “That depends on what sort of growing-up process you have in mind,” he replied, reaching over to crush the cigarette into an ashtray. “Promiscuity is definitely out.”

  “Not in your case, it isn't!”

  His head jerked up, his eyes blazing. “What the hell has my private life got to do with you?” he asked in a voice that cut like sheer ice.

  She felt like backing away. “I…I was just teasing, Blake,” she defended in a shaken whisper.

  “I'm not laughing,” he said curtly.

  “You never do with me,” she said in a voice like china breaking.

  “Stop acting like a silly adolescent.”

  She bit her lower lip, trying to stem the welling tears in her soft, hurt eyes. “If you'll excuse me,” she said unsteadily, “I'll go back and play with my dolls. Thank you for your warm welcome,” she added in a tiny voice before she pushed her way through the crowd away from him. For the first time, she wished she'd never come to live with Blake's family.

  Chapter Two

  For the rest of the evening she avoided Blake, sticking to Nan and Phillip like a shadow while she nursed her emotional wounds. Not that Blake seemed to notice. He was standing with Maude and one of the younger congressmen in the group, deep in discussion.

  “I wonder what they're talking about now?” Phillip asked as he danced Kathryn around the room to one of the band's few slow tunes.

  “Saving water moccasins,” she muttered, her full lips pouting, her eyes as dark as jade with hurt.

  Phillip sighed heavily. “What's he done now?”

  “What?” she asked, lifting her flushed face to Phillip's patiently amused eyes.

  “Blake. He hasn't been in the same room with you for ten minutes, and the two of you are already avoiding one another. Talk about repeat acts!”

  Her rounded jaw clenched. “He hates me, I told you he did.”

  “What's he done?” he repeated.

  She glared at his top shirt button. “He said…he said I couldn't be promiscuous.”

  “Good for Blake,” Phillip said with annoying enthusiasm.

  “You don't understand. That was just what started it,” she explained. “And I was teasing him about not being a monk, and he jumped all over me about digging into his private life.” She felt herself tense as she remembered the blazing heat of Blake's anger. “I didn't mean anything.”

  “You didn't know about Della?” he asked softly.

  She gaped up at him. “Della who?”

  “Della Ness. He just broke it off with her,” he explained.

  A pang of something shivered through her slender body, and she wondered why the thought of Blake with a woman should cause a sensation like that. “Were they engaged?”

  He laughed softly. “No.”

  She blushed. “Oh.”

  “She's been bothering him ever since, calling up and crying and sending him letters…you know how that would affect him.” He whirled her around in ti
me to the music and brought her back against him loosely. “It hasn't helped his temper any. I think he was glad for the European trip. She hasn't called in over a week.”

  “Maybe he's missing her,” she said.

  “Blake? Miss a woman? Honey, you know better than that. Blake is the original self-sufficient male. He never gets emotionally involved with his women.”

  She toyed with the lapel of his evening jacket. “He doesn't have to take his irritation out on me,” she protested sullenly. “And at my homecoming party, too.”

  “Jet lag,” Phillip told her. He stopped as the music did and grimaced when the hard rock blared out again. “Let's sit this one out,” he yelled above it. “My legs get tangled trying to dance to that.”

  He drew her off the floor and back to the open veranda, leading her onto the plant-studded balcony with a friendly hand clasping hers.

  “Don't let Blake spoil this for you,” he said gently as they stood leaning on the stone balustrade, looking out over the city lights of King's Fort that twinkled jewel-bright on the dark horizon. “He's had a hard week. That strike at the London mill wasn't easily settled.”

  She nodded, remembering that one of the corporation's biggest textile mills was located there, and that this was nowhere near the first strike that had halted production.

  “It's been nothing but trouble,” Phillip added with a hard sigh. “I don't see why Blake doesn't close it down. We've enough mills in New York and Alabama to more than take up the slack.”

  Her fingers toyed with the cool leaves of an elephant-ear plant near the balcony's edge as she listened to Phillip's pleasant voice. He was telling her how much more solvent the corporation would be if they bought two more yarn mills to add to the conglomerate, and how many spindles each one would need to operate, and how new equipment could increase production…and all she was hearing was Blake's deep, angry voice.

  It wasn't her fault that his discarded mistresses couldn't take “no” for an answer, and it was hardly prying into his private life to state that he had women. Her face reddened, just thinking of Blake with a woman in his big arms, his massive torso bare and bronzed, a woman's soft body crushed against the hair-covered chest where muscles rippled and surged…

  The blush got worse. She was shocked by her own thoughts. She'd only seen Blake stripped to the waist once or twice, but the sight had stayed with her. He was all muscle, and that wedge of black, curling hair that laced down to his belt buckle somehow emphasized his blatant maleness. It wasn't hard to understand the effect he had on women. Kathryn tried not to think about it. She'd always been able to separate the Blake who was like family from the arrogant, attractive Blake who drew women like flies everywhere he went. She'd kept her eyes on his dark face and reminded herself that he had watched her grow from adolescence to womanhood and he knew too much about her to find her attractive in any adult way. He knew that she threw things when she lost her temper, that she never refilled the water trays when she emptied the ice out of them. He knew that she took off her shoes in church, and climbed trees to hide from the minister when he came visiting on Sunday afternoon. He even knew that she sometimes threw her worn blouses behind the door instead of in the clothes hamper. She sighed heavily. He knew too much, all right.

  “…Kathryn!”

  She jumped. “Sorry, Phil,” she said quickly, “I was drinking in the night. What did you say?”

  He shook his head, laughing. “Never mind, darling, it wasn't important. Feeling better now?”

  “I wasn't drunk,” she said accusingly.

  “Just a little tipsy, though,” he grinned. “Three glasses of punch, wasn't it? And mother emptied the liquor cabinet into it with our hostess's smiling approval.”

  “I didn't realize how strong it was,” Kathryn admitted.

  “It has a cumulative effect. Want to go back in?”

  “Must we?” she asked. “Couldn't we slip out the side door and go see that new sci-fi movie downtown?”

  “Run out on your own party? Shame on you!”

  “I'm ashamed,” she agreed. “Can we?”

  “Can we what?”

  “Go see the movie. Oh, come on, Phil,” she pleaded, “save me from him. I'll lie for you. I'll tell Maude I kidnapped you at gunpoint…”

  “Will you, now?” Maude laughed, coming up behind them. “Why do you want to kidnap Phillip?”

  “There's a new science fiction movie in town, and…” Kathryn began.

  “…and it would keep you out of Blake's way until morning, is that how this song goes?” Phillip's mother guessed keenly.

  Kathryn sighed, clasping her hands in front of her. “That's the chorus,” she admitted.

  “Never mind, he's gone.”

  She looked up quickly. “Blake?”

  “Blake.” Maude laughed softly. “Cursing the band, the punch, the politicians, jet lag, labor unions, smog and women with a noticeable lack of tact until Eve almost wept with relief when he announced that he was going home to bed.”

  “I hope the slats fall out under him,” Kathryn said pleasantly.

  “They're box springs,” Maude commented absently. “I bought it for him last year for his birthday, remember, when he complained that he couldn't get any rest…”

  “I hope the box springs collapse, then,” Kathryn corrected.

  “Malicious little thing, aren't you?” Phillip asked teasingly.

  Maude slumped wearily. “Not again. Really, Kathryn Mary, this never-ending war between you and my eldest is going to give me ulcers! What's he done this time?”

  “He told her she couldn't be promiscuous,” Phillip obliged, “and got mad at her when she pointed out that he believed in the double standard.”

  “Kathryn! You didn't say that to Blake!”

  Kathryn looked vaguely embarrassed. “I was just teasing.”

  “Oh, my darling, you're so lucky you weren't near any bodies of water that he could have pitched you into,” Maude said. “He's been absolutely black-tempered ever since that Della toy of his started getting possessive and he sent her packing. You remember, Phil, it was about the time Kathryn wrote that she was going to Crete on that cruise with Missy Donavan and her brother Lawrence.”

  “Speaking of Lawrence,” Phillip said, drawling out the name dramatically, “what happened?”

  “He's coming to see me when he flies down for that writers’ convention on the coast,” she said with a smile. “He just sold another mystery novel and he's wild with enthusiasm.”

  “Is he planning to spend a few days?” Maude asked. “Blake has been suspicious of writers, you know, ever since that reporter did a story about his affair with the beauty contest girl…who was she again, Phil?”

  “Larry isn't a reporter,” Kathryn argued, “he only writes fiction…”

  “That's exactly what that story about Blake and the beauty was,” Phillip grinned. “Fiction.”

  “Will you listen?” Maude grumbled. “You simply can't invite Lawrence into the house while Blake's home. I've got the distinct impression he's already prejudiced against the man.”

  “Larry isn't a pushover,” Kathryn replied, remembering her friend's hot temper and red hair.

  Maude frowned, thinking. “Phillip, maybe you could call that Della person and give her Blake's unlisted number just before Kathryn Mary's friend comes, and I'll remind him of how lovely St. Martin is in the summer…”

  “It will only be for two or three days,” Kathryn protested. Her soft young features tightened. “I thought Greyoaks was my home, too…”

  Maude's thin face cleared instantly and she drew Kathryn into her arms. “Oh, darling, of course it is, you know it is! It's just that it's Blake's home as well, and that's the problem.”

  “Just because Larry's a writer…”

  “That isn't the only reason,” Maude sighed, patting her back. “Blake's very possessive of you, Kathryn. He doesn't like you dating older men, especially men like Jack Harris.”

  “He has to let go
someday,” Kathryn said stubbornly, drawing away from Maude. “I'm a woman now, not the adolescent he used to buy bubble gum for. I have a right to my own friends.”

  “You're asking for trouble if you start a rebellion with Blake in his present mood,” Maude cautioned.

  Kathryn lifted a hand to touch her dark hair as the breeze blew a tiny wisp of it into the corner of her mouth. “Just don't tell him Larry's coming,” she said, raising her face defiantly.

  Phillip stared at Maude. “Is her insurance paid up?” he asked conversationally.

  “Blake controls the checkbook for all of us,” Maude reminded her. “You could find yourself without an allowance at all; even without your car.”

  “No revolution succeeds without sacrifice,” Kathryn said proudly.

  “Oh, good grief,” Phillip said, turning away.

  “Come back here,” Kathryn called after him. “I'm not through!”

  Maude burst out laughing. “I think he's going to light a candle for you. If you're planning to take Blake on, you may need a prayer or two.”

  “Or Blake may,” Kathryn shot back.

  Maude only laughed.

  ***

  The house was quiet when they got home, and Maude let out a sigh of pure relief.

  “So far, so good,” she said smiling at Kathryn and Phillip. “Now, if we can just sneak up the stairs…”

  “Why are you sneaking around at all?” came a deep, irritated voice from the general direction of the study.

  Kathryn felt all her new resolutions deserting her as she whirled and found herself staring straight into Blake's dark, angry eyes.

  She dropped her gaze, and her heart thumped wildly in her chest as she dimly heard Maude explaining why the three of them were being so quiet.

  “We knew you'd be tired, dear,” Maude told him gently.

  “Tired, my foot,” he returned, lifting a glass of amber liquid in a shot glass to his hard, chiseled mouth. He glared at Kathryn over its rim. “You knew I'd had it out with Kate.”

  “She's been gorging herself on the rum punch, Blake,” Phillip said with a grin. “Announcing her independence and preparing for holy revolution.”