Lacey drank half her beer as if it were water to quench her thirst, and leaning forward, lifted her hair off her hot neck. Rafe, fanning himself with a cocktail napkin, blew on the back of her neck.
Lacey turned and smiled at him. She inched closer to him and reached out and put a hand on his knee. She had never felt so at ease and yet so excited by a man in such a short time.
Talking was impossible in the noisy room, but Lacey managed to smile at Rafe and loved the feel of his hand on her back. She couldn't remember the last time she had had such fun on a date, or found so much to talk about and so many subjects she still wanted to discuss.
It seemed they had just sat down when the lights started coming on to announce that the place would be closing shortly. Lacey excused herself to go to the ladies' room, wondering where they could go next. She was wide-awake, drunk on the sight and feel and sound of Rafe, not ready to go home or accompany him to his house.
"Lacey!" Jane said, bumping into her in the rest room. "I wondered if you might end up here tonight. How's the date with the mystery letter writer? You are here with him, aren't you?"
Lacey laughed. "He's terrific! And he's both of them."
Jane looked puzzled, checking Lacey's hands to see if she was drinking.
"Rafe Chancellor is the same R.C. I met on the plane. Isn't that terrific!"
Jane laughed. "I don't believe it."
"What can we do now?" Lacey asked her manager. "I'm not ready to go home and I don't think he wants to take me home, but I don't want to go to his home with him. Is there any place left open between here and New Orleans?"
"Outside of an all-night hamburger stand, I don't think so," Jane answered. Lacey knew she would know, since she was frequently seen at the dating hangouts around the coast. "I have an idea. My date tonight wants me to go home with him, but I'm not too crazy about going home with him myself. Why don't I invite the two of you to his house with us? That way we can continue the party and safely leave whenever we get ready. He keeps telling me he wants to show me his pool table."
"Would he mind?" Lacey asked, jumping at the chance to have Rafe meet one of her friends.
"Sure, but I won't. It'll be perfect."
Lacey thought about it a moment. She liked Jane's company. It wouldn't hurt for a little while at least. "I'll go tell Rafe. Come out and meet us, will you?"
At three o'clock in the morning she and Rafe were shooting pool in the living room against Jane and her date.
Lacey wasn't half as interested in the game as she was in the affection she was receiving from Rafe. He put his arms around her chest, hugging her from behind as they waited their turns with the cue sticks. When she managed by chance to knock the right ball into the pocket, he rewarded her with a quick kiss. Whenever they passed each other maneuvering around the tight corners of the room, he reached out and touched her; Lacey could live with that all night.
When Lacey felt as if she needed a couple of cue sticks to prop her up to keep her awake, she suggested they leave. Jane and her date were still going strong, ready to challenge each other to another game on the felt. Lacey didn't think they'd mind being alone too much.
Rafe supported Lacey as they walked out to the car, and then he tucked her into the front seat. He was silent as he climbed into the car, started the engine and drove back along the coast. As he was driving he reached out and caught her hand. She squeezed it, loving his need for her affection.
"I'm not ready to take you home," he told her.
"I'm not ready to go home," she answered him, "but I'm fading fast." She tried to stifle a yawn but wasn't too successful. "Do you have any suggestions? What are we going to do next?"
"I have plenty of suggestions," he told her, "but you've already said no to them."
"For tonight. Not necessarily for always." She smiled across at him in the dark.
He patted her hand and kept driving. "How about some breakfast?" he asked.
"If you can help keep my eyes propped open," she said, yawning again, "I'd love it."
"I'll have to try something stimulating."
"Like conversation?" she said, not feeling as if she was up to anything else this night.
"If that's all I can get."
She nodded. "I'm afraid that's all the market has left for tonight. Or is it today? I guess it's this morning already, isn't it?"
By the time breakfast arrived, Lacey was wideawake again. Too wide-awake, she later decided, because somehow she had gotten onto the subject of Dominick and ended up telling Rafe all the details of her last love ordeal. When she finished, she realized it was the first time she had revealed so much of her emotional upheaval to a man, and he had listened attentively to her every word.
"Sorry," she apologized. "I shouldn't have gotten so morose."
"It never hurts to verbalize these things," he told her, making her wonder what episodes in his past he kept to himself.
He lived with his past more than most people, carrying it with him when he moved, like mementos in a trunk. Without his friends and a strange kind of mobile family, he would not be the person he was: a composite of memories and actions. Lacey felt awed again at how much there was still to discover about this man.
By the time coffee arrived at the end of the meal, she was barely awake. Rafe smiled across the booth at her as if she were a favorite child who had fallen asleep in the picture show. He pulled a stack of bills out of his wallet to pay for the check, and reached across the table to take her hand and help her up.
Exhausted, Lacey kept a contented smile on her face as he slowly drove to her house. "I don't want to take you home," he told her.
"I don't really want to go," she answered, "but turn left at the stoplight."
"I know where you live," he told her, smiling across at her and taking her hand in his. "I've checked you out pretty thoroughly."
"Were you so sure I'd go out with you?" she asked.
"Not at all," he answered. "I had no idea it would work out as well as it has."
"Do you feel it too?" she asked, smiling at him. Was he part of her imagination, or had this evening been better than a fairy tale?
"You still have three options," he told her, slowing down to turn the corner.
"Which are?"
"You can come home with me and we can both go to sleep. I'm capable of just plain sleeping with you, if that's all you want."
"Sounds wonderful," she murmured, tempted to say yes. But how could she? This was just their first date. "And?"
"Let me come home with you and we can both go to sleep. If that's all you want."
"Uhmm. I like that too. What else?"
"I can take you home and go home too."
"Uhm." It would be so easy to take him at his word and just fall asleep in his arms. She trusted him. After so few hours together, she knew she could be content just to lie in his arms and not worry about how smeared her makeup might be, or how she would look to him hours from now when they would wake up together. "I think I'll opt for suggestion number three."
"I thought you would," he said, stroking her hand as if to tell her he had expected that, as much as he would have liked one of the other options. He approached the main turning to her street. "It's still not too late for me to turn the car around and take you home with me. I won't ever accuse you of having a woman's mind if you change it."
She smiled. He was endearing himself to her even more. It also weakened her defenses so that if he so much as led her in the right direction she wouldn't protest any longer. She shook her head. She couldn't bring herself to tell him that she was ready to let him go.
"Why don't you call me later today?" he asked her.
"I will," she promised.
He drove into her driveway, stopped the car and walked around to let her out. But he blocked her way, leaning inside the car to kiss her for a long, luxurious time, his mouth courting hers, teaching her tenderness and longing.
"I had a wonderful evening," he told her when his lips finally l
eft hers and he allowed her to get out of the car.
"Not half as nice as the one I did," she said, smiling, loving his arm around her shoulders as he walked her to her door. She wouldn't invite him in because they both knew what that would mean. Nevertheless, she had never been so willing to give herself to any man the first time they went out on a date.
He kissed her again at the door, a brief kiss. And seeing that she was safely inside, he turned and left her.
The birds were chirping and the sun was creeping up past the trees as she listened to his car drive off—dusk-to-dawn date. Everything about Rafe Chancellor was original!
Lacey fell asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow, wondering how nice and snuggly sleep would have been if it had started in Rafe's arms. She thought about him from the minute she awoke the next morning, let her mind wander through the sermon at church, and barely contributed anything to the conversation over lunch when she joined her parents. She considered telling her parents about him, but her mother would be ready to marry Lacey off after this first date. Lacey just wouldn't be able to explain to her that they were good friends. Neither of them was ready for a serious relationship, no matter how brilliant the fireworks.
It wasn't until she had backed out the driveway and was on her way home that she realized she'd cut short her usual Sunday visit with her parents with the speed of a greased cannonball. She was eager to get home and phone Rafe. He had asked her to call; she hoped that meant he wanted to see her.
"Hello, lady," he said when she phoned and reminded him who she was. "Are you having a good day?"
Much better now, she thought, the tension going out of her just to hear his voice again. She shouldn't have left him this morning. It had only been on principle, because she had never spent the night with a man the first time she had met him. It hadn't been out of lack of desire to stay with him. That still amazed her, that she would even consider it. She was disappointed not to have led with her emotions. "Just fine," she answered. "What have you been doing?"
"I just woke up," he told her. She felt hot at the thought that if she had stayed with him, she would have just now been waking up too, or else going back to sleep after making love.
"Why don't you ride out to the country?" he invited.
Lacey bit her lip. It was what she wanted to do. Should she? They had just spent eleven hours together. Now he was tempting her to come home with him. Amazing, she thought, when most of her dates in the past wouldn't call her again for a week, just to keep her guessing.
"I'll fix you some tea," he coaxed her, "in tagless tea bags."
"That's an offer that's hard to refuse," she answered.
"Ride on out, then," he told her. "Can you find the way?"
"I think so," she answered, and threw one of his lines back at him. "I'm a good scout. I don't need a trail of bread crumbs or beer cans to find my way."
"I'll be waiting," he said.
"Wait a minute," she said before he could hang up. "I think we better get something straight. I'm just coming to visit."
"For tea, right," he told her, then surprised her further by guessing what was on her mind. "I've been keeping a secret count, and you've used up quite a few of your excuses, but you still have thirty-seven chances for 'no' left."
Lacey laughed. "When did I use up that many? This isn't fair. You have to call each one out to me as I use it up, or it doesn't count. The only one I know of is not coming home with you this morning."
"That was number thirty-eight," he told her. "Math was always one of my better subjects."
"I'm going to dispute that."
"Good," he told her. "This could be enjoyable. I'll leave the back door open for you."
"Where are you going to be?"
"Probably right here, in bed. You can come wake me up like Angela does, with a Sleeping Beauty kiss."
Lacey laughed, wanting to smother him with love. But she couldn't; it was too soon. That was the only thing holding her back. "If you don't meet me at the door, fully dressed, in your living room, I'm going back to 2001—just out of principle. And this time I'll be the record keeper."
"I'll be waiting for you," he told her again, ignoring her demands.
Lacey drove to Rafe's house in a fit of nerves. What if he did leave the back door open and expect her to find him in his bedroom? What if she gave in to her baser instincts and just plain fall into bed with him?
No. She just couldn't do it, no matter how special he was. Lacey Adams didn't fall in and out of bed or love that easily. She wasn't in love, she told herself as she turned into his drive. She was only "in happiness" with Rafe. Love couldn't happen like lightning. A woman had to build and grow and work at love.
When she drove up to the garage to park behind his cars, she saw him standing at the screened-in back porch, waiting for her, smiling. She heaved a sigh of relief. He was being suggestive on purpose, just to make her want him more.
"Come into the house," he said, holding open the door and pulling her into his arms.
Lacey moaned contentedly against him. He was such a wall of strength and affection. She couldn't get enough of him, and judging by the way he held her tightly in his arms, he, too, needed her.
He loosened his hold slightly to kiss her, then turned to lead her into the living room, where he had a steaming cup of tea waiting for her.
"What took you so long?" he asked her once he was seated in the bamboo chair, a cup of coffee sitting on the head of an elephant stand beside him.
"We just met," she said, trying to explain her feelings. That was another funny thing about him. They hadn't played the usual flirting games with each other. Their conversation had been direct, devouring, and often deep. "I don't want you to feel like I'm taking up too much of your time."
"I wouldn't have invited you here if I hadn't wanted you to be here." He picked up his coffee cup. "If you will recall, I didn't want you to go home last night, at least not without me."
She smiled, pleased, flattered, nervous. "It's too soon, Rafe," she said, not mistaking the implication behind his words.
"I know," he answered. "I meant what I said about wanting to be your friend and lover. You'll let me know when you get ready. But I'm not going to stop asking."
Lacey picked up her cup of tea, looking away from him around the room and wondering how best to change the subject. He did it for her, telling her about himself, introducing her to his world. By the end of the afternoon she had met his company from Vietnam through a taped interview; he had shown her a scrapbook his grandmother had compiled from his days in the service; and she had learned about the book he had written to separate his past life from his present one.
Little by little he gave her building blocks for her approval and acceptance of him into her world. This man was a leader; he could dominate. Yet he had taught her in a short while from his treatment of her that he could also be gentle, caring, and respectful of her own rights. He put her on an equal footing with himself, and let her know that he was impressed with her.
Her accomplishments seemed so tiny in comparison to his well-traveled past. All she had done was basically stay in one place and design apparel. Surprisingly, that fascinated Rafe, and his awe of her creativity was genuine. He knew how to make her feel significant, someone as commanding of respect as he himself was.
He also enticed her further to forget about those last thirty-seven excuses when he took her hand and led her gently down with him on the carpet. He didn't attempt to undress her, which aroused her more as his lips savored hers, kissing and sucking her lower lip into his mouth. Tenderly his tongue explored the tip of hers, waiting for her lips to invite his tongue inside. Gently he entered, tasting and exploring.
It was like slow-motion lovemaking, Lacey thought. He aroused sensations of breathlessness, excitement and awe she had never felt before. By taking his time, he made her that much more aware of how each nerve ending was attuned to his slightest move. He kept his hands on her back, but lying against him, she
could feel his arousal and knew her own heated response to him.
His tongue took a flicking path across her cheek to her neck and ear. She sighed and relaxed in his arms.
She returned his affection, sweeping her tongue in little circles along his neck, behind his ear. He nuzzled his head closer to her mouth, his arms tightening around her. Lacey smiled at his response and brought her lips back to his, tracing the shape of his mouth with the faintest tip of her tongue, taking her time as he had done with her.
His fingers caressed her spine, massaging her back, working toward her neck and shoulders. "Uhmmmm," Lacey murmured, snuggling closer, lifting her head and feeling his tender tongue on her throat. She felt chills and warmth at her response to him. She wanted to make love with him, knowing he would be tender, gentle, loving. But how could she, when she had known him only two days?
Why should time be a factor? she asked herself, sinking further into his embrace with the tender invitation of his lips on hers. The depth of her feelings was much stronger than anything she had ever had with Dominick.
It's too soon, she thought, frightened by the intensity of their coming together. He was tugging at her shirttails, pulling them out from the back of her pants to slip his hands beneath the material and caress the bare skin of her back.
"That feels so good," she murmured, "but you're making me nervous." She placed her hands on each side of his face and stroked his cheeks, thinking again of the pain symbolized by the scar.
"Do you want me to stop?" he asked, lying pliant in her arms.
"Yes. No. Uhm. Yes."
He pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes and smiled at her, loosening his hold enough so that she could slide off him into a less intimate position.
Lacey felt deprived. She wanted to stay close to him, but was afraid of the intimacy.
He got up off the floor and left the room.
I've made him angry, Lacey thought. He's going to be upset now, the way Dominick used to be when I told him "not tonight". Well, he'll just have to be upset, she decided. If that's all he's interested in, I'm not interested in him. Much.
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