She didn’t want thoughts of Deke Washburn to intrude on her life; now that she had an idea about what it would be like to make love with him, she was wary. She didn’t want to get involved with anyone and most certainly not him.
She’d taken measures to stay away from him. For instance, the first time Deke had called after the night she’d driven away from the Europa in the Miata, she’d told him she was busy.
“You’re not,” Jill had said accusingly.
The next time, Dorian told him she had another date.
“You don’t,” Jill said.
Then finally, on the night she wrapped up the Tarzan commercial, Deke called again. Dorian, lounging around La Roacherie with Jill, told him she had a cold.
“You never get colds,” Jill said after Dorian had hung up.
Dorian threw the section of the newspaper with the apartment ads in it at Jill.
“Watch it, watch it,” Jill yelped. She picked up the paper and smoothed it before handing it back. “Are you having any luck with your search for an apartment?”
“Everyone wants me to sign a year’s lease,” Dorian said. “I don’t think I can, since I have to be ready to pick up and go anywhere at a moment’s notice if I get a chance at a good part.”
“I don’t want you to move out, anyway. We’ve just managed to vanquish the bugs here, and the place is finally looking decent.”
“I still wish you’d move with me to a bigger apartment. I’ll pay most of the rent until your promotion comes through,” Dorian wheedled, but Jill turned her down as she had every time that Dorian had sug-gested it.
“If you do get a good part in some other city, I’ll still have to find a new roomie eventually,” Jill said.
“I feel compelled to mention that no one has come forth with any major theatrical offers yet,” Dorian pointed out.
“You’re on your way, kiddo. It’s only a matter of time. I’ll ask around the office and find out if anyone is looking for a new roommate.”
“In the meantime, how about ordering a pizza? I’m not up to cooking,” Dorian said, and Jill, who had a fondness for pepperoni, anchovies and mushrooms, made the call.
When the doorbell rang, Dorian, still circling every newspaper ad that stated 2BR 1BA MOD CONS, hurried to the door and flung it open.
The person standing there was not delivering pizza. The person standing there was Deke, cooling his heels on her doorstep. His face was screwed up in pain and he was rubbing his shoulder.
“Got an ice pack?” he said by way of starting the conversation.
Dorian, who was wearing a yellow silk kimono as old as Mount Fuji and a pair of bedroom slippers that looked like twin Miss Piggies with blue bows in their hair, gaped.
“What’s the matter?” she asked as he more or less slouched into the apartment.
“I fell over a baby stroller.”
“Oh, Carla has taken to parking that thing under the stairs, and it rolls out sometimes. I’ll talk to her about it,” she said. “Do you really need an ice pack? We don’t have a real one, but I could put some ice cubes in a plastic bag.”
“What would really feel good is if you rubbed my shoulder.”
She knew what he was up to. She didn’t think she ought to play along with it. But the fact was, she wanted to rub his shoulder. To feel warmth radiating from his skin to the palms of her hands, to run those hands across his collarbones and up around the back of his neck.
“Well?” he prompted. “The pain is not going away.”
“Where does it hurt?” she asked, reaching for him.
“There,” he said with a sigh as she kneaded. “And there. Oh, that feels good. Oh, Dorian, that’s so good—”
“What in the world is going on in here?” Jill said, coming in from her bedroom. “Oh,” she said, taken aback when she saw Deke.
Dorian dropped her hands. “Don’t you have something to do in the kitchen?” she asked Jill, who frowned at her but went into the kitchen, anyway. While Dorian and Deke were staring speechlessly at each other, Jill stuck her head out the swinging door. “I’m getting really fond of this Dr. Feelgood’s stuff,” she said to Deke. Was she flirting with him? Dorian thought she might be.
“I’m glad to hear it,” he said, but he was looking at Dorian again even before Jill returned to the kitchen.
Dorian was absurdly happy that he wasn’t flirting back at Jill, and she could hardly stop looking at him, her face flushed, her eyes wide. She fancied that she knew what Deke was thinking about, and the odd thing was that she was thinking about it, too. He wanted to kiss her, and she wanted to kiss him back. Big time.
“Why did you come here?” she asked after Jill started banging pots and pans around.
“I stopped by to invite you to go with me to my house in Mabry tomorrow morning. I’ve been to Chicago for a few days for a meeting of sales reps, and somehow I can’t bear city noises and city smells and city people. What I want is greenery, plenty of it, and a beautiful lake and blue skies and no pollution. Come with me for the day, Dorian. It’ll be so much more fun if you’re along. And anyway, you’ve been working hard. Aren’t you ready for a break in your hectic schedule?”
“Go,” said Jill, sticking her head out. “You’re not busy, you don’t have another date, and you don’t have a cold.”
“For once,” Deke said mildly.
If Dorian hadn’t been sure of Jill’s absolute loyalty, she might have thought that the two of them were in cahoots.
“I don’t know,” she hedged. “I have the King Tut script to look over as well as phone calls to make.”
“Bring the script, and the phone calls can wait.”
“I need to go to the tanning parlor, keep up my suntan.”
“You can work on your tan at the lake.”
“If I’m not ready for the shoot of the next commercial, I’ll let everyone down,” she said, her resolve fading fast. Deke really had the most devilish gleam in his eyes.
Deke reached out and touched a fingertip to her cheek, setting off some strange alchemy that actually turned her knees to jelly. “Please?” he asked.
She swallowed. She didn’t have to think for another minute. “I’ll go,” she answered, her heart beating against her ribs.
He smiled, a lazy confident smile, as if he’d always known she would. She would be angry at his cocky attitude if she hadn’t desperately wanted to go with him.
“Be ready tomorrow at seven. Can you?”
“Sure.”
“And bring a swimsuit along,” he added.
His eyes focused first at her head, where her hair was piled in a slapdash topknot, slid downward to the cleft between her breasts which was exposed by the loosely draped kimono, and continued down past her hips to her legs, stopping at her feet.
“I’m glad I dropped by. I was curious to see what you wear at this time of the evening. Miss Piggy slippers! I never would have guessed.” His mouth, wide and generous, curved into a grin.
“They’re the latest in hog couture,” she told him, and he exited laughing.
“What was he laughing about?” Jill wanted to know.
“Oh, he thought I said something funny,” Dorian replied.
“A man who can laugh like that can’t be all bad.”
“I never said he was all bad,” Dorian retorted.
Jill grinned. “In fact, I bet some parts of him are downright fantastic,” she said, but Dorian covered her ears and refused to listen.
* * *
DORIAN TOOK THE KING TUT script along on the day trip to Deke’s house, but on the way there, she never looked at it.
There was Deke to look at with his rugged good looks and his dark eyes glinting with all the impishness of a little boy who was skipping school. And there were the rolling hills and gentle scenery of north Georgia, the small towns nestled into the folds and hollows just off the interstate. Their names flashed past in a blur—Chicopee, Lula, Demorest.
Then they were on secondary highways, the
Wagoneer leaning into the curves, hugging the corners. At last Deke turned down a narrow unpaved road that meandered back and forth as it climbed over a forested ridge, after which it descended until she caught sight of the lake through the fresh green leaves of the trees.
“Blue Lake,” he explained.
Deke’s house appeared as they rounded a huge granite boulder, and Deke pulled the Wagoneer up under a massive oak tree. They were only two and a half hours from the city, but here it was like a different world. Birds flitted overhead, and a squirrel chattered at them from the edge of the roof.
The house was neatly situated in a hollow in the ridge, the property sloping to the lake in back. To the right was a clearing devoid of trees.
“Come see my grandmother’s herb garden,” Deke said as he opened the car door for her.
The garden was bigger than it looked from the drive and smelled fragrantly of lavender and sage and lemon verbena. The plants were laid out in neat rows.
“This is where the concept for Dr. Feelgood’s Herbal Teas began,” Deke said, absently kneeling to pull a newly sprouted weed from a patch of mint. “Of course, this garden has long been superseded by a company-owned farming op-eration nearby. A gardener weeds and waters this little plot now that I’m away most of the time.” He brushed the dirt off his hands and said, “I’ll show you the house.”
They stopped at the car to get a picnic basket that Deke said Larissa had prepared for them before he left. “Nice of her,” Dorian said.
“Well, Larissa likes to encourage my social life,” he said dryly.
While Deke unlocked the front door, Dorian took in the old-fashioned rocking chairs on the front porch and the morning glory vine twining up one of the sturdy porch pillars. Through the window of the detached garage, she saw light winking off the chrome of a brand-new Mercedes sedan.
Deke shrugged it off. “Larissa chose it. It’s much too fancy for me.”
He ushered her in through the door, and she paused, instantly enchanted. Deke’s house had once been no more than a backwoods shanty, humble in its origins. But Deke had enclosed the original structure, which was now the living room, with wraparound bedrooms and bathrooms and a cozy kitchen. Now the inside was modernized, although the designer had kept the charming oak ceiling beams and handmade stone fireplace.
A peek into a bathroom revealed an old-fashioned metal bathtub tucked into a corner. Bunches of dried herbs swung from the kitchen beams, permeating the air with fragrance. Rich wood paneled the walls, and in the living room, couches and love seats were piled with handmade quilts.
“My Granny Nan made some of those,” Deke said when he saw her admiring the fine stitching. “I bought the others at local flea markets.”
In back, a spacious deck opened off sliding glass doors, and when Deke opened them, they were bathed in the scent of honeysuckle. Below the ridge, the lake sparkled in the sun, and at the edge of the water was a dock with a boat-house.
“Why aren’t there any other houses?” she asked. She had expected Blue Lake to abound with vacation cabins like nearby Lake Burton.
“Blue Lake is a small, spring-fed natural lake, not one of the sprawling man-made ones created when the power company dammed up the north Georgia rivers. The lake belongs to me, all of it. I’ve never brought anyone else from the city here, by the way. Somehow that would have ruined the peace for me,” he said.
Touched by this revelation, Dorian leaned on the deck railing and let the breeze blow her hair off her face. She could already feel herself adapting to the slower pace and marvelous tranquillity of the country. She smiled over at Deke, sharing the moment without self-consciousness, barely aware that their elbows were touching.
“I see that you feel it, too,” he said quietly. “The peace. Contentment.” When she nodded he took her hand. Before she could figure out if she should pull it away, he said, “Let’s walk down to the boathouse.”
He led her down the path, which wound around several trees and through a rock garden before ending at the worn wooden dock. The circuitous route gave Dorian a chance to get her feelings in order, but she wished that she wasn’t so distracted by his lanky form within the well-washed jeans, and his thighs swelling beneath the fabric before tapering into the curve of calf and ankle.
At least the boat and boathouse provided a diversion. “Somebody convinced me that I should have a speedboat, and I bought a bigger boat than I need,” Deke said sheepishly as she peeked into the boathouse. He dropped her hand and pulled off the tarp that covered the boat, which was long and gleaming white.
Deke tossed the tarp into a corner. “Get in and we’ll go for a ride.”
He handed her into the boat and she sat beside him as he backed it out of the boathouse. He turned the bow toward the opposite shore and settled into his seat, one arm flung across the back of hers.
“The lake is shaped like a four-leaf clover,” he said, close by her ear. “We’ll skirt the edges of a couple of bays before we go to the island.”
She wondered what island he was talking about but decided that she’d find out soon enough. For now she had enough to think about with Deke beside her, handling the boat as surely as he would handle a woman. She caught her breath. She hadn’t meant to make that analogy; it was just that when he was so near, she had a hard time maintaining her equilibrium.
She threw her head back so that her vision was filled with the blue of the sky instead of Deke Washburn. The wind teased her hair into a froth of curls. When she lowered her head, she caught Deke looking at her and realized that he thought she was being intentionally provocative. Self-consciously, she gathered her hair into a ponytail at the nape of her neck, groping in the pocket of her shorts for something to tie it with.
“Don’t do that,” Deke said, and he raised his hand to catch hers, making her release her hair to the wind. It blew in his face, several of the fine golden strands looping across his lips. She reached out to brush it away, and he did, too. Their hands met, and their eyes caught and held. She looked away first, dropping her hand as if she had touched fire. Her heart was beating rapidly, and she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. Willing herself back to normal, or as normal as it was possible for her to be around Deke Washburn, she concentrated on the scenery.
The Great Smoky Mountains, tail end of the Appalachian chain, rose to the north, their rounded peaks barely visible through wispy cloud skirts. Out on the lake, the air was fresh with the scent of water and pine trees, and Dorian inhaled deeply, hoping to dispel her confusing thoughts about Deke.
At last Deke slowed the engine and slid an arm around her shoulders. “This is my special island, Dorian. I used to gather wild herbs here when I was a kid.” He shut the motor down as the boat coasted toward shore.
As they slowed to a stop, Deke pulled off his shoes and jumped into the water to guide the boat up on the narrow sandy beach. Dorian waded ashore and, watching Deke covertly, slipped her shoes on while he secured the boat.
“One of the reasons I brought you here is to show you my wishing well,” he said when he had waded ashore.
“Wishing well? Does it work?”
“About as well as wishing on stars or birthday candles,” he said with a short laugh as he guided her toward a path through the woods.
She took her cue from him and shot him a tentative smile. “I thought for a moment that I’d discovered the secret of Deke Washburn’s success.”
“If only it were that easy! I might as well tell you that there isn’t any secret other than hard work. You’d be surprised how many people think I made it big because I had a magic formula or high-placed connections or just plain good luck when it was none of those.”
She looked over at him when she realized that he had become more serious. Too serious, maybe.
As if he read her thoughts, he smiled and changed the subject. “Do you realize that I’m sharing my most special place with you, yet I know hardly anything about you? Where were you born, Dorian? Where did you grow up?”
“I was born in Illinois, but my parents and I moved to Atlanta when I was a baby. I didn’t have brothers or sisters, and my mother died when I was twelve, so then it was just Dad and me. I went to college, got a degree in business at my father’s insistence, and, against his wishes, quit a perfectly good job so that I could become an actress. My father’s dead now, so I have no roots. Nothing to hold me down or keep me in one location. Nothing like this place,” she said, momentarily envying Deke the sense of family history that went along with the house, the lake and the island.
“Tell me more about your father,” he said.
“He was a high school principal,” she said reluctantly. “He didn’t want me to be an actress. He wanted me to go on selling milking machines to farmers, which is what I was doing before I got a part in a community theater production and was discovered by a director who was casting a play at a professional theater downtown. The director didn’t have a hard time talking me into quitting the farm-equipment sales job and becoming a full-time actress. I was never fond of selling milking machines,” she added.
“Watch it, those are nettles,” he said, guiding her around a clump. “Your father would be proud of you now, I think,” he went on, returning to the subject.
“I don’t think so,” Dorian said in a tone that she hoped would discourage further discussion.
After a few more steps, the path widened and became a small clearing luxuriant with wildflowers. In the middle of it was a brick-sided well, once covered by a small shed that had collapsed in ruins.
Deke walked over to the well and peered in. “Here it is, my wishing well.”
Dorian looked into it, too. It gave her a chance to hide her face from Deke so that he wouldn’t know how much she disliked talking about her family situation. Leaves and branches floated on the surface of the water below. She couldn’t see her face reflected back to her. She knew what she’d see if the water were clear—doubt, pain, disappointment. Those were the emotions she felt every time she thought about her relationship with her father.
The World's Last Bachelor Page 10
