Think About Love

by Vanessa Grant

  "What were you like as a boy?"

  "Troublesome," he said with a grin. "Always taking apart the basement for my projects, getting Adrienne involved. Making a spaceship when I was eleven, raising gerbils, then rats when I was thirteen and wanted to make money. Adrienne made an animal hospital out of the basement later, after I left for college."

  "You never wanted to be a doctor?"

  He pushed his plate aside. "Those genes skipped me. Addie got them all. I wanted to take things apart, build things, make computers stand on their head—once I got into computers." He sipped his wine and she found her gaze caught on the movement of his lips. "What about you, Sam? I've met Wayne, but I know nothing about your parents. I don't even know how you got to be a dual citizen."

  She picked up a piece of parsley and rolled its stem between her fingers. "The usual way. I was born on Lasqueti Island, Canadian mother, American father."

  "Lasqueti Island?"

  "Not very far from here. On the other side of Georgia Strait, near the mainland."

  "And—"

  She dropped the parsley onto her plate and pushed the food aside, her appetite gone. "I grew up, went to college, took a job at Tremaine's."

  He reached for her hand, took it between both of his. She stared at their hands. She needed to change the subject. "Did Adrienne—"

  "Tell me about your mother."

  Her eyes flew wide open, meeting his.

  "It's a place to start. You seem to have trouble getting started."

  "Started what?"

  "Telling me about yourself."

  She stared down at their linked hands. "The details are boring."

  "Look at me."

  She didn't want to, but her gaze seemed pulled back to his eyes, as if he controlled her.

  "You don't need to lie to me, Sam."

  "It's complicated." She shivered and pulled her hand away.

  "We've got time for you to explain."

  She told herself to stare out the window, but her eyes seemed locked on his. "I don't remember Lasqueti Island. We left when I was three, Sarah a few months old. We went to New Mexico, then Arizona, Montreal, San Francisco."

  "Was your dad in construction?"

  "My dad...." She searched for the short version. "Gerry, my mother's third husband, was in construction in Montreal. He built houses. Sarah and I used to sit on the sawhorses, pretending they were real horses. I remember when the electrician came. We collected all the round metal plugs from the electrical boxes and pretended they were money." They'd planned what they would do with the money, Samantha remembered with a frown. They'd go to the bus depot and get a ticket to Grandma.

  "What happened to Gerry?" asked Cal.

  "Well...." She shrugged and tugged at her hand, but he wasn't letting go. "My mother moved around. We left Lasqueti Island after my father died. He was a lot older than her, an American who came to Canada to avoid the draft during the Vietnam war. He met my mother on Gabriola, talked her into moving with him to a commune on Lasqueti. New Mexico was a commune, too. I do remember that wedding. I was five... strange music, laughter. Later came the fights. I was seven when she left us at the commune on Sarah's fifth birthday."

  His hand had tightened on hers. "She left you?"

  "She came back a few months later, collected us and drove us to Montreal. She always came back."

  She saw the shock in his eyes. "You spent your whole childhood—"

  "It's just a fact of life." She pulled her hand free. "My mother couldn't stay in a relationship for more than a couple of years, but she picked good men. We were looked after, and when I was thirteen, we got off the roller coaster."

  She thought he was going to take her hand again, so she folded her hands together in her lap. "Can we talk about something else?"

  He gestured to the waiter and asked for the bill. "Let's go for a walk."

  "Yes." She needed to get outside, to walk hard and long. "I'll slip back to the cabin and change my shoes. I'll meet you outside."

  He didn't stop her. Somehow, she'd thought he would, maybe because she needed so much to be away from him and wasn't sure she could cope if he touched her now. She half ran to the cabin, stumbling on the path, cursing the shoes that had been so right for the wedding.

  She shouldn't have told him anything.

  But he had a right to know about her childhood, of course he did. They were married, and it would be ridiculous if he couldn't answer his own family's curiosity. She wished being honest about her upbringing could be done in a couple of sentences. But we moved around a lot hadn't worked, and anything more just led to more questions.

  In the cabin, she rummaged in her suitcase for jeans. Nicely practical, so he'd know she wasn't angling for a romantic walk. Unfortunately, she hadn't packed anything as basic as a sweatshirt, so she topped the jeans with a silk blouse. The evening was warm. She wouldn't need more.

  She pulled on socks and sneakers, yanked out the combs from her hair, and brushed it hard, then tied it back.

  She stared at herself in the mirror, decided she looked too young and too vulnerable with her hair pulled back tight like that. She yanked out the fastener and refreshed her lipstick.

  Maybe she should put her hair back up?

  Maybe she should tell him she wanted to go to bed now, get it over with.

  Was it normal to feel so uncomfortable? She had ridiculously little experience with men. Just Howard, who had romanced her back in college. Love, she had thought, and she couldn't remember now exactly how it had been before the first time they made love. Had she felt awkward, jumpy? She didn't think so. But then, when Howard kissed her, she'd never lost track of the rest of the world.

  She wouldn't with Cal either, not this time.

  She stared at herself in the mirror, relieved that her panic didn't show on the outside. Was she actually planning to—well, not seduce Cal, but...?

  To invite him.

  Then, at least, he wouldn't be asking her about her childhood, her mother, and looking shocked as if he pitied her. She was damned if she would tolerate another minute of this horrible tension. She'd been sitting across from him at the dinner table, answering questions as if she had no control of anything. As if she had to answer any question he asked, as if she had no will, no power over what happened.

  As if she were thrown back into her childhood.

  That would change now.

  She left her hair down, locked the cabin, and stepped outside—straight into Cal's arms.

  Chapter Nine

  "Easy," He breathed, holding her shoulders in his hands as if to steady her.

  "I'm fine." She didn't need steadying, didn't need holding, and wouldn't let this breathless trembling take hold. But there was nowhere to step back except through the door to the cabin. "Let go. I'm fine."

  He stepped back, his hands dropping to his sides. "Sorry."

  "It's OK" This had to stop, inanities on the edge of the path. "Shall we walk? Or did you want to change, too?"

  "No. Let's go."

  Was he as uncomfortable as she felt? Probably not, because her nerves felt ready to scream, but he wasn't relaxed either. This weekend away together had been a bad idea, but impossible to avoid when his parents presented the gift.

  "We should have brought our computers," she said.

  "We'll get by. Here, down this way. There's a path."

  When he took her arm, she didn't jerk away, didn't lose track of her breathing. Before, it had been panic, and she'd better stop it. She was thirty-one years old, too old for such silliness.

  "Nice," he said. "I always like the water at night. Is that a small freighter out there?"

  "I think so. There used to be lots of small freighters along the coast, but not so much now."

  "I wonder what he's hauling," said Cal.

  When she slipped at the edge of the water, Cal let go of her arm and took her hand instead. Over the water, the moon had risen enough to send streaks of white through the ripples. Her fingers curled,
returning his grip. Friends held hands.

  So did lovers.

  Cal lived right on Washington Lake. She hadn't walked on his beach, but she'd seen it from the windows of his house, moments stolen from being hostess to look out at the water.

  "Do you go walking on the beach at your place on Washington Lake?"

  "Not often enough. When we get back, when you move in, I'd like to make a habit of it, walking like this."

  Her heart took a jagged stumble at the thought of moving everything she owned inside Cal's walls, of living with him.

  "I like the sounds," she said desperately. "Water sounds. Listen."

  Very soft whispers of water on the sand, through the trees. A bird, crying in the night. A muted chorus of frogs from farther away. Sand shifted under her feet as they walked along the edge of the water. When he released her hand and touched her shoulder, she turned into his arms. His hand brushed her chin, lifted to bring her eyes to his in the moonlight.

  "Moonbeam," he said softly.

  "Samantha," she corrected. "Moonbeam was my name until I was thirteen. Then I changed it."

  She felt his kiss coming, felt her own lips part and knew she would need to hang on tight this time, to give herself without losing control.

  "A lot happened the year you were thirteen. You changed your name. You got off the roller coaster—your mother's roller coaster?"

  "Yes."

  He lowered his head so slowly that she stopped breathing entirely, and he became only a black shadow blocking out the night sky. When his mouth settled on hers, her breath drained out.

  The kiss was too soft, too brief, and left her trembling and hungry. He took her arm and tucked it securely through his, drawing her along the beach again.

  "Tell me about it," he commanded gently.

  The night had grown more silent, her nerves more ragged. The frogs had stopped their chorus, or she and Cal had walked too far to hear. The water had stilled, the birds silenced.

  "Sarah and I were in foster care in San Francisco when my mother married Wayne. That was the second time the system got upset about us; we weren't going to school, and someone must have told. Maybe it was Edward. Her fourth husband."

  Cal drew her to a massive log lying on the beach, then wrapped his arms around her and sat down with her. She was on his lap, in his arms.

  "I'm glad she didn't come to the wedding," he said, and although his voice was soft, she heard grimness. "If I'd known this, I couldn't have been civil to her."

  Samantha shrugged. There had been anger once and hurt many times, but neither had helped. "It's a long time since she controlled my life. Sarah and I were lucky because we had Dorothy. It's Dorothy she hurt most, because I think my grandmother always worried that somehow she'd done something wrong in raising my mother."

  "What happened after your mother married Wayne?"

  "When she left him and us, he carried on as if we were his. Made sure we got to school, rearranged his work to be home early every night."

  Cal slid his hands into the hair at the back of her neck, sending ripples of sensation along her back and scalp. "Then?"

  "Then she came back." She tried to talk steadily, tried not to let the sensations from his caress leak into her voice. " 'Get your things, girls,' she said. 'We're going to New Orleans.' "

  The wind had picked up, sending ripples onto the shore. She shivered as cool air brushed her arms.

  "Cold?"

  "No." She was, which meant she'd lied again. "When Mom said we were going to New Orleans, Sarah began crying. She had friends. I had friends, too, but I'd known it wouldn't last. Neither would New Orleans. But Sarah crying—I told Mother we weren't going with her. Wayne backed me up. She cried, but she didn't know what to do about my refusal. I realized that day that I could stop it, that I could refuse, that I was stronger than she was. She couldn't make us go with her."

  "You stayed with Wayne?"

  "No, we went to Dorothy. That's what Sarah wanted. She remembered Dorothy from when she was seven, when Mom left us with our grandmother for a few months."

  He shifted his arms to shelter her from the wind. "And you changed your name?"

  "Yes, but not because of my mother. I hated being teased about being Moonbeam. When I decided nobody would ever have control of my life again, for a while I was pretty busy proving it. If it weren't for Dorothy, Sarah and I might never have learned what it was like to have a real home, a real family."

  "I'm glad she was there for you."

  "I'd do anything for Dorothy." She shivered. The warmth was gone now, night settling in. "She's my family—and Wayne. Until Wayne, whenever we left a place, we never saw the people again. Life just kept going forward, no looking back. Wayne didn't let us go, though. He had us down for holidays, insisted on helping Dorothy with our education." She shivered again.

  He slipped off his jacket and put it around her, then wrapped his arms around her again. "You're still trying to prove you're in control of your own life."

  "I am in control."

  He slid both hands into her hair. "You're afraid of losing control."

  She stared at him, felt his hands in her hair, felt his lips although they hadn't touched her yet. "I won't lose control," she said soberly. "No one will ever control me."

  "Some men would take that as a challenge." He drew her head closer, so slowly, so gently she could have broken his hold with one quick motion.

  "Are you one of those men?"

  She saw his lips curve, felt her own mouth dry in some mysterious chemical reaction.

  "Yes, I'm one of those men, Samantha. I've dreamed of you losing control."

  "That's sex," she said stiffly. "That's just...."

  His mouth touched hers. "Just sex?" he breathed, drawing back and letting his fingers slip away, out of her hair.

  She stumbled to her feet, escaping his touch. His jacket fell to the sand, and they both reached for it, their hands colliding. She let go, stood up, and jammed her hands into her pockets.

  He was manipulating her step by step, the forced intimacy of their conversation probing her life. Teasing touches, words. Drawing her slowly, steadily toward that bed, controlling every move.

  "I've changed my mind," she said abruptly.

  "Let me put the jacket around you again. You're—"

  "Cal, stop it!"

  He settled the jacket around her shoulders, murmured something soothing she couldn't hear over the pounding in her head. She shrugged the jacket off, jerked away as he reached to catch the garment. His hand twisted, and suddenly he was grasping her wrist, imprisoning her.

  He pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist. "What is it you do want, Sam?"

  She felt her pulse beating against his mouth. "I want you to stop—stop this seduction thing. Stop manipulating me. Trying to—"

  "Trying to get you to want me? To make love with you?"

  Something clenched in response to the image, muscles deep inside her.

  "Just do it," she muttered.

  "It?"

  "Sex." She felt like striking him, tearing her wrist from his fingers and punching him, tearing the amusement from his voice. "Not tonight, I said, but I've changed my mind. But not this way, not... just kiss me. Properly."

  His mouth moved along her arm, tracing nerves from wrist to elbow. "You want to make love?"

  "Sex," she said, her voice strangled. "For God's sake, just kiss me!"

  He tangled one hand in her hair and tilted her head back. She swallowed, felt the long line of her throat exposed to his lips, but he didn't touch her with his mouth, and he still held her wrist with his hand.

  "If you want a kiss," he growled, "then take it."

  He still held her wrist, still imprisoned her head with his in her hair. If she asked him to free her, he would... surely he would? She couldn't see his eyes, felt them as he stared down at her.

  "Damn you," she hissed. She reached up with her free hand, tangled her fingers in his hair, the curls slippery around her ha
nd as she pulled his head down.

  Her lips were closed when his touched, her body trembling with anger. Then she felt his mouth open and she clenched her fingers more tightly in his hair, his arm a solid bar up her back and his fingers moving in her hair, sending shivers over her scalp and down her spine.

  He pulled her hand up, between them, placed it on his chest.

  "Feel me," he said, his voice harsh. "Feel what you do to me."

  His heart hammered against her palm.

  "Kiss me," he growled. "You wanted it."

  Her hand fisted in his shirt and she pulled his mouth closer. Her lips parted, her own heart shuddering in the beat of his. He took her then, his mouth and hers, the world dizzy and spinning out of control.

  When he lifted his head and stared down at her, the moon bright behind his head, she had forgotten how to breathe.

  "I don't want to lose control," she whispered.

  He lifted her in his arms.

  "You can't carry me...."

  Her body crushed against his, her arms clinging now around his shoulders, his head, his mouth.... He pressed a hard kiss on her mouth, his tongue sliding inside, taking hers. She held on tighter, fought the dizziness.

  Then his mouth tore from hers and he said in a low voice, "I am carrying you."

  She turned her face into his shoulder, felt the hard play of his muscles as he walked up the gravel path. "Your jacket. Your jacket's on the beach."

  "I don't give a damn about my jacket."

  He reached the cabin. He wasn't breathing hard, but she could feel his heart as if it were her own, shaking her with each hard beat. His arms holding her. Lying in his arms, she felt vulnerable, unable to speak, to free herself.

  He set her down but kept one arm around her while he unlocked the door. Then he pulled her inside and the door slammed, and she heard the lock snap home.

  "Are you sure?" he asked. His voice sounded rough, uneven, and harsh. He wasn't touching her now, had stepped back, a threatening shape against the moonlight streaming through the patio doors on the other side of the room.

  "What if I'm not sure?"

  She'd have to be crazy. This wasn't Cal, the man in a suit, civilized, controlled with the fascination of fire burning inside. This man's fire was dangerously close to the outside, raw, and uncontrollable.