Then, wanting to absolve him of guilt for all time, she opened her thighs and welcomed him. The ensuing fire was purgative, cleansing, propelling them onward to a climactic point where it seemed their souls would fuse forever. When, after wave upon wave of glory washed over their straining bodies, they finally cooled, exhaustion took its inevitable toll. Deliriously happy and at peace, Leslie fell asleep in her lover’s arms, awakening only when morning had fully established itself over the island.
* * *
“Happy Birthday, sweetheart.”
She snuggled closer, eyes closed, a smile on her face. “Mmm. You remembered.”
The arms around her tightened. The voice by her ear was a deep, lazy hum. “Of course, I remembered. Thirty years old … oops, what’s this?”
She felt the hair being lifted from her neck. “What’s what?”
“This line.”
“What line?”
One long finger sizzled around her throat. “This. Must be your age. They say the neck is the first to show it, love.”
Leslie tipped her head back, arched a brow and opened the violet-hued eye beneath it. “Is that so?” she asked smartly.
Oliver nodded, trying his best to keep a straight face. “Uh huh. I should know. In my business, the face is everything. We worry about important things like lines around the mouth and receding hairlines and sagging chins.”
“Do you now?” she teased. “And what’ll you do when your day is done?”
“Oh, I’ve got no cause for concern,” he stated outrageously. “Men don’t get older; they just get more dignified-looking. It’s women who have to worry. Say, Les, I wouldn’t scowl like that. It’ll only bring out lines on your forehead.” He ducked in time to avoid the playful swat she aimed at his head, then grabbed her and kissed her soundly. She protested for only an instant before surrendering to his morning pleasure. When he came up for air, his eyes were dark and earnest. “Somehow,” he said softly, stroking the delicate lines of her face, “I don’t think you have to worry about wrinkles. You sure as hell don’t look thirty. I may not have known you five or ten years ago, but I’d guess that you’re one of those women who’s getting better, not older.”
“Oliver Ames,” Leslie scolded gently, “this sounds like a living advertisement. Next thing I know the cameramen will pop out from behind the drapes.”
“There aren’t any drapes.”
“Then … from under the bed.”
“Heaven help anyone who was under this bed last night. Poor fool would have a concussion.”
She shook her head and sighed through a grin. “You are incorrigible.”
“Better incorrigible than late for breakfast. Come on,” he announced, dropping her onto the sheet as he rolled out of bed, “I’m hungry.” Then he looked down at her. “On second thought, you stay put. For the birthday girl, breakfast in bed.”
The birthday girl, however, was suddenly and acutely aware that she’d never seen Oliver nude in the daylight. Beneath the bright sun streaking through the skylights, his body looked very strong and very male.
“Les?” He leaned over her. Startled, she raised her eyes. “You do want breakfast, don’t you?” he whispered.
She swallowed once and realized how silly he’d think her if she said she just wanted to look at him, to touch him. “Sure.”
As though reading her thoughts, he sat back down on the sheets. Taking her hand in his, he pressed it to his hip, moving it gently over the very strip of flesh that all the world had seen. “Maybe I’m feeling my age, after all,” he teased. “You gave me quite a workout last night.” Leaning forward, he kissed her forehead. “We’ll have breakfast and then go … exploring. How does that sound?”
The deep velvet of his voice sent shivers of excitement through her, as did the smoothness of his flank. She grinned. “I’d like that.” Slipping beneath the sheet, she watched him leave the room and closed her eyes, awaiting his return.
Return he did, bearing a tray filled with all sorts of breakfast goodies. They ate to their hearts’ content, then explored as he’d promised. It was nearly noon before they finally climbed from bed, showered together, then headed for the beach wearing nothing but oversize towels, which they proceeded to spread on the sand and lie upon.
“This is indecent,” she remarked, eyeing the solid length of Oliver’s naked body stretched beside her, “but I love it.”
He opened one eye. “You’re very daring for a conservative lady. Topless on the public beach, nude here. Say, you never did finish the story of the flower child.” He closed his eye and flipped onto his stomach, propping his chin on his hands in time to see her bob up.
“Wait,” she said, “if you’re going to switch on me, you need more lotion.” She had the bottle in her hand and was kneeling at his hips, grateful for the excuse to touch him. He shivered when she drizzled a line of cream down his spine. “Wouldn’t want your butt to get burned.”
“God forbid,” he muttered, burying his face in his arms to endure the agony of the hands working so diligently over his skin. It was a full minute after she’d finished and lain down again before he thought to look up. Shifting in a vain attempt to make himself comfortable, he cleared his throat. “Your story.”
She was on her back, arms and legs restful, eyes closed, face to the sun, As an afterthought, she rubbed the lotion lingering on her hands over her stomach and breasts, then fell still. “Not much more to tell.”
“Did you transfer back east to finish school?”
“And jeopardize my independence? No way.”
“It didn’t bother you to be out there with memories of that fellow all around?”
“I was so angry at the time that I was thinking only of the discomfort he’d feel knowing I was there. When the anger faded, I realized that there wasn’t an awful lot left. Yes, I was hurt and embarrassed and more than a little disillusioned. But I knew that it’d be worse to fly back home with my tail between my legs. Besides, I liked Berkeley and what with the course load I took on, I had plenty to keep me busy. I graduated a semester early and taught for six months before going back to grad school. By that time I’d accepted what had happened with Joe.”
“So you came home.”
She nodded. “I’d done a lot of growing up during those three and a half years. Not only was I the wiser for my experience with Joe, but I realized that I was a strong enough person to hold my own among the Parishes. And, as it happens, I love New York.”
Eyes closed, he groped for her hand, finding it, enveloping it in his. “Look who sounds like an ad, now? And I thought you didn’t like crowds.”
“I don’t … when it comes to going to work or the bank or the dry cleaner or the supermarket. But I love museums and the theater, and there’s nothing more delightful than bundling up and strolling down a packed Fifth Avenue at Christmastime. That’s why I live outside the city but within easy reach. If I don’t feel like reaching, I don’t. I have the choice.” Oliver’s respectful chuckle brought her head around. “What about you? Doesn’t it bother you—living right in the thick of things?” He’d previously told her that he lived in the city, though he hadn’t elaborated either on where or on what kind of place he had.
He shrugged. “For the convenience of it, I’d put up with most anything. Besides, I have a small place in the Berkshires. Great for weekends.”
She wondered what he did on those weekends, whether he had someone to play Scrabble with and … do other things with. But she didn’t ask. She didn’t feel she had the right. After all, there had been no lofty words of love or proclamations of undying devotion. She didn’t want them. They could be so very shallow. No, she mused, better to assume nothing than to pin false hopes on something that would probably never materialize. It was far safer this way. Safer, if discouraging.…
“You’re awfully quiet,” Oliver whispered.
She tossed off his concern with a shrug. “Just … thinking.”
“About what?”
�
��About … how beautiful it is down here and how much I wish I could stay another week.” Though roundabout, it was the truth.
He was up on an elbow. “Can’t you?”
Feeling his gaze, she shook her head and smiled, but didn’t open her eyes. “The centers await.” She gave an exaggerated sigh. “Ah me, the price of success. For us lady executives, the day is never done. They depend on us,” she drawled. “They need us. Oh, to be a lowly errand girl—hey, what are you doing?” She opened her eyes with a start to find Oliver on his haunches by her hip.
“Lotioning you up.” His hands were already at work spreading the cream he’d gushed on.
“But I’m already lotioned!” Feeling her body’s instant reaction to his touch, she twisted to the side. Oliver simply straddled her hips to hold her still. “Oliver…” she warned, lying flat, looking up at him. His hands slid over her skin in a pattern of sensuous circles, teasing by sheer impartiality. “Oliver!” she whispered more urgently. “This is ridiculous! The oldest trick in the book—seduction by suntan lotion!”
“Guess I’m not terribly original then,” he murmured, slithering his hands over the peak of her breasts again and again.
“My God!” she moaned. She bit her lip and arched helplessly into his touch.
“No, sweetheart, just me.” Planting his hands on either side of her shoulders, he stretched his full length over her. His eyes held the lambency she’d come to know, the depth she’d come to love, the vulnerability that could touch her every time. “Just me … needing you again.”
Leslie coiled her arms around his neck. “I don’t know about these male model types. They’re insatiable.”
“Only with you,” he murmured, seeking the honey of her mouth as he nudged a place for himself between her thighs.
And she believed … again. She believed because she had to, because the intense love that swelled within her came part and parcel with trust. If she was wrong, she’d be later damned. But for now she had no choice. No choice at all.
* * *
“This is positively decadent,” Leslie remarked. “I don’t think we’ve been properly dressed for two days.”
It was Saturday morning, and they’d just emerged from an early-morning swim. She blotted her towel over her face, then glanced up to find Oliver just standing there, dripping wet, looking down at her. His towel hung, forgotten, in his hand, but she, too, forgot it in the face of his strangely uncertain expression. She’d seen that expression more than once in the past two days. It was not quite haunted, not quite pained, not quite worried, not quite fearful, yet it held a bit of all of those emotions and more, thrown together to produce something that cut to her heart, then twisted and turned.
“Are you all right?” she asked softly. She took a step forward, then was stopped by a sudden sense of foreboding. Shaking her head, she moved forward again. “Oliver?”
He blinked and inhaled. “Sorry, Les. I missed that.”
Very gently, using her own towel, she began to dry his chest. “Didn’t miss much. I was only being smart.”
“Again?” His cockeyed smile was a relief, as was the mischievous eye that warmed her length. “You know, we really should get dressed,” he suggested, tugging her against him. “It’s been nearly two days. Think we’ll remember how?”
At first she thought he was mocking her. After all, hadn’t she just commented on their seemingly perpetual state of undress? But he looked so innocent and sounded so sincere. Where had his mind been then? She’d noticed his tension of late, a tension coming at odd moments such as the one just past. What was he thinking?
It was getting more difficult. Each day of bliss made it worse. Think of today, only today, Leslie told herself. But it didn’t work. There was tomorrow, and the tomorrow after that … and so on until she was back in New York. Would she see Oliver then? Could she possibly reconcile her far slower life-style with his faster one? Did she want to? Did he want her to? All she knew was that she wanted Oliver. Very desperately.
“Hey, what’s this?” he asked with exquisite tenderness as he dabbed a tear from the corner of her eye. Without awaiting her answer, he closed his arms about her and hugged her tightly.
“I don’t think I like the idea of getting dressed,” she said in a soft, sad voice.
“Neither do I, but we’ll have to sooner or later. You know that, don’t you, Les?” His deeper meaning was as glaring as the sun upon open waters.
“Oh, yes.”
He drew his head back to look at her. His jaw was tight, his expression closed. “You also know that I’m not letting you go, don’t you?”
His vehemence surprised her as much as it pleased her. “No, I didn’t know that,” she whispered.
“Do you mind?”
She shook her head. Mind? Mind? The first hint that he wanted to see her back in New York … how could she possibly mind? True, there’d be mammoth hurdles to clear. True, she might stumble and fall. But … what if she took it one day at a time, much as she’d tried to do here? Wouldn’t it be better than nothing at all?
“Of course I don’t mind,” she answered, eyes misty, a smile on her lips.
“Good. Then what say we get dressed and go into town. There’s something I want to pick up.”
“Sounds fine.”
“And brunch on the quai, a drive around the island, the afternoon on the beach?”
“Um hmm.”
“And dinner … a last night out?”
She swallowed down the knot that was so very quick to form. “You bet.”
He kissed her then, each eye in turn, then the tip of her nose, then her mouth. Sucking in a shaky breath, he hugged her tight, then, head down, moved back and took her hand. Leslie could have sworn he was as affected by the moment as she, but how much of what she saw was a product of what she wanted to see, she didn’t know. Wishful thinking was a dangerous thing. Dangerous … though irresistible.
* * *
It was a busy day, this, their last full one on St. Barts. By unspoken design, they kept their minds occupied with the pleasure of what they saw, said and did. It was as though each feared the thoughts that, given idleness, might creep in and begin to fester.
Gustavia seemed more alive than ever. They walked, then brunched—then, to Leslie’s horror, stopped at the jewelry shop Oliver had obviously visited earlier that week, to pick up a beautiful gold necklace he’d purchased. It was a serpentine chain whose central links had been removed to make way for a single amethyst. The stone matched her eyes perfectly. Only when he lifted the chain from its box and started to put it around her neck, though, did she realize he’d bought it for her.
“I can’t accept this, Oliver,” she breathed. “It’s … it’s too much!”
“Not too much. Just right. It was made for you, your birthday present. I’m sorry it’s late.” He deftly hooked the clasp, then straightened the chain and stood back to admire the way it nestled against her skin.
Leslie raised a trembling finger to touch the warm amethyst. “But you didn’t have to—There was no need.…” Then, embarrassed, she scowled. “Tony didn’t put you up to this, did he?”
For a minute she thought Oliver would hit her. His eyes grew dark, his features fierce. “No, Tony didn’t put me up to it. I thought of it all by myself.”
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, reaching out to grasp his arm, “that wasn’t what I meant.” In pain, she looked down. “It’s just that it’s so beautiful … and the thought that went into it.… I … I wanted, needed to know the thought was yours.” Dropping her hand, she turned away. “I guess I’m not very good at accepting gifts. So often they’ve either been too easily come by, or given with an ulterior motive.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” he moaned and turned her to him. Placing his hands on her shoulders, he lowered his head to look at her. Her eyes lifted slowly as he spoke. “I want you to have this just … because.”
“Just … because?” she echoed timidly.
“Just because
you’re you and I’m me, and together we’ve had a pretty wonderful week. I want you to have this so that when we get back to New York—” his features stiffened imperceptibly “—you’ll be able to touch your throat and remember what we’ve shared.”
“I could never forget,” she murmured, entranced by the goodness he exuded. “Never, Oliver.”
“I hope not,” he rasped, then crushed her against him with a kind of desperation that was to remain with them through the rest of their stay. It poked its head through the palm fronds when they played on the beach that afternoon. It was propped between the salt and pepper shakers when they had dinner out that evening.
Later that night their lovemaking was slower and more intense than it had been. It was an expression of all the things they’d meant to each other during the week—of fresh lemonade, wine and cheese and Scrabble, of gentle and intimate talk about nothing in particular, of loving and living and counting one’s blessings for the moment, of a gold chain with an amethyst at its heart. Particularly when they awoke again at dawn to desire and to each other was there a desperation in it, a kind of grasping and seeking and holding to something that might never come again. For that was precisely what Leslie feared. With the north would come the cold and the real world and all the differences she could only imagine to exist between herself and this man who’d made such a thorough conquest of her heart.
* * *
As a couple boarding the small island-hopper Sunday at noon, they were subdued. Transferring to the larger jet on St. Martin, they were distracted. Arriving in New York in the dark to subfreezing temperatures, they were visibly tense. Only when Oliver put Leslie in a cab headed for her home on the island, though, did she come close to breaking.
“Oliver?” She raised a frantic gaze to his, prepared to blurt out her love, prepared to plead, prepared to do most anything to prolong the inevitable parting.
Warm Hearts Page 31
