Think About Love

by Vanessa Grant

  I didn't want to wake you, you were sleeping so peacefully.

  I'm in the dining room. I'll bring back coffee. Yours, Cal.

  She smoothed the note and replaced it on the bureau. She wanted a long walk on the beach alone, but that was a luxury she couldn't count on this weekend. They were together, alone, without computers, in the enforced intimacy of their honeymoon. She was going to have to face him soon, and the dining room seemed a much more controlled atmosphere for their morning-after meeting than... well, than the bedroom.

  Cal was enjoying his second cup of coffee and allowing himself a pleasurable fantasy of returning to the room to wake Samantha. He would put the coffee beside the bed, on that end table. Then he'd bend down and touch her sleeping lips with his mouth. Her mouth would cling to his before her eyes opened, and under the morning sun awareness would dawn in her eyes as her cheeks flooded with the flush of memory.

  The image shattered when Sam walked into the dining room. She wore jeans and a peach-colored blouse, her hair smoothly contained as if she were heading for work. The waitress met her three steps inside the door. Their brief conversation resulted in the waitress leading Sam to Cal's table.

  "Good morning, Cal." Her voice was cool, friendly, the greeting he'd heard hundreds of times. First encounter of the morning. Efficient, the controlled woman he'd once thought was her true self.

  Last night's Samantha was gone, buried deep inside. This was Sam, businesslike, efficient, wearing a mask.

  She sat and the waitress bustled with coffee and a menu. Sam ordered toast and orange juice, picked up her coffee. Black coffee. He wondered if she'd ever taken it with sugar or cream, wondered if it was discipline that dictated it be black and bitter, her need to keep control.

  She wasn't looking at him.

  "Take your hair down, Sam."

  She looked up at him then, eyes cool. "No."

  He stared at her until he saw her face stain with the memory of last night, but her expression didn't change, nor her eyes. She'd warned him, last night, that she wouldn't lose control. Then she had, in his arms, but she had it back now.

  "Do you intend to leave your hair up forever?" he asked, keeping his own voice steady, and harsh enough to mask his desire to reach across and shake her until she turned real again.

  Her eyes skittered away from his, but he saw her force them back, saw her swallow, the only sign of her discomfort. "I always take my hair down before I go to bed."

  The waitress brought toast and orange juice, and Sam busied herself spreading marmalade on a triangular piece of toast.

  "Is that how you want it, Sam? Ice in the daylight, fire after dark?"

  He saw her hand tremble, but she recovered and spread the yellow preserve evenly over the toast. She put down the knife, but didn't pick up the toast.

  "We made a business deal," she said finally.

  "And last night was business?"

  "No." She shook her head. "It was—"

  "Sex?"

  "Yes." She couldn't quite manage to keep the coolness in her voice, and her face stained with color.

  "There's something you need to know, Samantha."

  She met his eyes. Hers were mostly under control now. "I'd rather you called me Sam."

  "Sam's okay for business, but it's Samantha I made love to last night."

  She shook her head and picked up her coffee.

  "I understand you're afraid—"

  "I'm not afraid!"

  "—of losing control. Have you ever done that before, Samantha? Lost control in a man's arms?"

  Her face was deeply flushed, but her voice was steady, husky and low. "No."

  "It will happen again," he said, and he wasn't sure if he meant the words as a promise, a threat, or as an affirmation because he was afraid she would get up and walk right out of his life and he'd never hold her again.

  "Is that what you wanted me to know? If so, I'd rather we changed the subject. We're not far from the Horne Lake caves. Since we don't have computers, e-mail, business, I thought we could spend some of the day exploring caves."

  She had a firm grip on her coffee and if he touched her he figured she might bolt.

  "Samantha, you may as well know. I'm in love with you."

  She put her cup down with a clatter. He saw coffee flow over the edges of the cup, panic in her eyes. "Cal, that's not part of the deal."

  "It's not forbidden in our agreement, and it's only fair I warn you that I want more, much more than unwilling fire after dark. I want you crazy in love with me, and I'll do whatever it takes to win you."

  Her eyes were wide with shock, fixed on his.

  Cal had negotiated enough deals to know when to step back. He lifted his cup and forced calm into his voice and his body before he took a long sip. The coffee was cold, faintly bitter because the waitress had refilled it and he hadn't added more sugar.

  "Now I'll go change," he said, pushing his chair back. "Exploring caves doesn't sound like the kind of excursion one undertakes in dress slacks and leather shoes. Take your time over breakfast."

  Chapter Ten

  Cal was in love with her. Samantha shivered in the cold air blowing through the entrance of Horne Lake's lower cave. Cal had gone ahead, checking the cave out, she supposed, making sure it was safe or whatever it was primitive man did when he led a woman into a cave.

  Her imagination supplied the image. Primitive man... Cal standing at the entrance to a dark cave, his hand stretched out to her. She would step forward until she saw him clearly, perspiration glistening on his naked shoulders. Those shoulders, naked, were broader than she'd realized, corded with muscle that didn't show through his clothes. His hand... she should have known from his hands, taut and strong. Inside, fire flickering on the walls of the cave.

  Fire... fire after dark. He drew her into the cave and she went into his arms, eager for his touch, his words of love....

  Samantha shook the image away. The cave in front of her, one of two the Horne Lake Provincial Park deemed suitable for self-guided exploration, held no flickering flames. She knew this cave would be mysterious, wet, dank, its walls running with condensation and trickles of streams from the spring runoff.

  She'd been here before, though not to this particular cave. She'd been in one of the larger caves, on a guided tour. She was the one with local knowledge, yet she'd let Cal go ahead today, to scout the way.

  Impatiently, she stepped inside. The entrance was narrow, tightening even more as she stepped into it. Beside the rock she stood on, a river of water rushed out of the cave. She would have to step across, find her footing on that knob of rock, then squeeze through the crack.

  She took one step and the world darkened. No light in here, only damp, cold mysteries, and somewhere ahead, Cal. She reached up and switched on the light on the helmet Cal had rented for her at the park office. They'd stopped at the little building a half mile back, had rented lighted helmets for the dark exploration. Then they'd driven to the parking lot and crossed the swinging suspension bridge. She'd refused to be nervous on the bridge. After all, she'd crossed it before.

  It was bright outside; a hot sunny day, her skin tingling with awareness every time Cal glanced at her.

  But it was cold in the cave. The man in the park office had said it was only a few degrees above freezing. As if the cold sucked out the light, Samantha's lighted helmet threw only a pale yellow circle on the lumpy rock wall.

  "Cal?"

  "Right here." His voice came from ahead, on the other side of the narrow fissure. "I'll come guide you."

  "No." She reached out her hand and stepped across the racing water, her palm striking the damp rock and clinging. "I don't need help."

  The crack was tight enough that she had to twist sideways to get through the narrowest section. She saw Cal's light; then his hand grasped hers as she stepped into the inner cave.

  "My hand's filthy," she said, forcing her fingers not to curl around his.

  "Neither one of us is going to get ou
t of here without a certain amount of filth," he said with a laugh. "Come over here."

  The cave grew colder with each step. She was wearing Cal's sweater, which he'd insisted she put on before she entered the cave, and he was wearing his windbreaker.

  "Are you cold?" she asked.

  "No."

  "You must be thick-skinned. It's almost freezing—our voices sound strange." She'd expected an echo but it wasn't exactly that. Hollowness, but their words seemed to sink into those damp walls, and the sound of rushing water somehow caressed their voices.

  "It's those Denver winters," he said.

  "What?"

  "My thick skin." He grasped her elbow. "There's more cave up here, to your left, but it's quite a reach. I'll help you."

  She turned her head and the light reflected back the sight of rock walls in every direction. "This cave is smaller than the one I was in. Does it end here?"

  "No. We go up."

  The steep wall on her left had footholds. She pulled away from Cal, climbing on her own. Only a few feet and she could see over the edge, into more empty darkness.

  "Spooky." The light showed an expanse ahead, but the fissure led up out of sight. "The water comes from up there."

  Cal's hand against her back steadied her. "We'll explore deeper, but I don't think we'll go any farther up."

  His decree sent rebellion through her. She'd been here before, during a college Easter vacation with Howard. She'd brought Cal here to the caves today, perhaps deliberately to remind herself of Howard, of the need to maintain control.

  But Cal was taking control.

  He loved her.

  It was his nature to take control, and if she made the mistake of letting herself love him in return, she would have no defenses. Her life would slip out of her own control and she'd be trapped, caught in a whirlpool she'd stepped into of her own volition.

  She pulled herself up another step, away from Cal's touch. "I think I will climb up here," she said. "It's a tower. The pamphlet said it was climbable."

  "The fellow we met in the parking lot said there were bats at the top."

  "Bats?" She couldn't see anything moving up there, but she remembered the time a bat flew into Dorothy's house in the summer.

  "I don't imagine they'll bother us," Cal said, "if you do want to go up. It's daytime, so I think they'd be sleeping. Whatever it is bats do in the daytime."

  "They hide. We had one in the house once." She retreated down the side of the rock face one step, feeling for a foothold. She felt Cal's hand at her back, steadying her. "I woke up in the night and saw it swooping circles over my head. I woke Sarah up to get her out of there. Sarah screamed and the bat flew out into the hall. Dorothy went after it with a broom. Then it disappeared. We couldn't find it for a long time." She shuddered.

  "Do you want to leave?"

  "No." This wasn't going to help anything, shivering like a maiden afraid of her shadow, cowering in the shelter of Cal's arm. She must have been crazy to bring them here, a place of darkness and mystery. "I'm going up onto this ledge. There's a pool up there, isn't there? The bats won't come down this far."

  She scrambled up, felt the damp layer of mud on the rock wall and told herself she'd look like a homeless person who hadn't washed in months by the time she got out of here. Thank heaven she'd put her hair up today. Bats... she'd kept shaking her hair that night at Dorothy's, terrified the bat would fly into it and become tangled.

  "What happened to the bat? Where did you find it?" Cal's voice echoed below her now, while she stood on the ledge, which had turned out to be quite broad, although the space wasn't high enough to allow her to stand erect.

  Then Cal was beside her, his face macabre in the dim light she wore on her helmet. "The bat?"

  "We found it pressed up against the corner between the big beam that runs along the peak of the cathedral ceiling. Just an inconspicuous shadow in a dark corner, way up over our heads."

  "That's what, twenty-five feet from the living room floor to the peak of the cathedral ceiling? How did you get it down?"

  "We couldn't. Dorothy got up on the ladder, but even with the broom she couldn't reach. So we went back to bed, and we closed our bedroom doors so it couldn't—" She shivered with the memory, managed a laugh. "This is no place to talk about it, especially if there really are bats up there. We kept our bedroom doors closed, and we left the doors to the upstairs balcony open during the daytime for several days, hoping it would fly away to find somewhere darker. I guess it did, because it was still there the next night, but then we never saw it again. I used to dream that it flew into my hair, that I couldn't get it out."

  Cal pulled her into his arms. Their helmets bumped together and blanked out their lights. "I'd save you," he said soberly. "I'd free you." He angled his head carefully and drew her into his kiss.

  She was breathless when he freed her. "It's just a childhood memory. I'm not afraid of them now. They're night creatures, and they don't want to be tangled up with me any more than I want—I'm glad, though, that I wore my hair up."

  He kissed her again and she held him with her hands, clenched in his jacket. "My hands." Her voice stumbled. "Your jacket—I've been hanging onto those rocks and I can feel the mud."

  "Come on, let's get out of here."

  She pulled back, wished her breathing weren't so loud in the cave, as if she'd gone spinning when he kissed her. Where was the sound of the rushing water? Could the rock wall they'd climbed mask the sound so effectively from them?

  "There's more to the cave, up ahead. I think if we walk along the edge of this pond... I'm not afraid of the bats. I'm not some wimpy woman who needs your protection."

  "You're afraid," he said in the flat voice she'd heard him use once or twice when he called someone in a tight meeting. Stupid of her to deny it, because of course he could tell. "If I challenged you, I'm sure you'd climb that tower, fight the nausea and fear, and get right up there with the bats. You don't need to prove anything to me, Samantha."

  She was behaving like a fool, threatening to climb up there into the bats, if there were bats, because she wouldn't allow herself to be directed by Cal. Ridiculous, because she was being controlled by the desire not to be controlled.

  This wasn't working at all. Cal had taken what was a straight business deal and twisted it out of her control. She climbed down the rock face like a crab, hands and feet clinging, going down backward. Four steps along the edge of the rock she came to the narrow fissure, saw light marking the way. She turned off her helmet light. With her hand on one wall of the fissure, she turned around to face him.

  The sliver of light coming through the fissure wasn't enough to penetrate the darkness. Cal had turned off his light as well, and she saw only a man's shape, broad and threatening, in the blackness.

  "You tricked me," she said, and now the rushing water masked her words.

  He heard, though. "Did I?"

  "You said this was business. You said you wanted me for Tremaine's."

  "I do."

  She shook her head. "A business marriage. You said you'd help with Kippy if I helped your company. I would never have married you knowing that you—if you'd said anything about loving. You lied to me, Cal."

  "I suppose I did."

  She tilted her head back, although she couldn't see his face, much less his eyes, in the black of the cave. "I don't want you in love with me."

  "We'll see." His voice was cold, and she figured that was good, because she didn't want the controlling tendrils of love. She would not want.

  "No, we won't see. I won't."

  "Right." His voice sent shivers along her spine. "We've stated our positions, now let's get on with business. If you're not going to climb up to prove yourself by playing with the bats, turn around and get out of here."

  "Cal—"

  "Now. Out."

  She turned and scrambled through the narrow fissure, stepped over the rushing water. She emerged into glaring sunlight breathless, the urge to keep runni
ng clawing in her veins. Up those stairs cut in the hillside, down the path to Cal's car.

  Something crawled on her face and she gasped and reached a hand to flip it away. A spider? She slapped at it, panicked, felt it crawl onto the side of her neck. She bent over, slapping at her neck.

  Cal gripped her arm from behind and pulled her erect. She struck out at him, and he grabbed her other arm, too. "Easy, it's just your hair. Let me...."

  "What?"

  "Your hair." He released her and smoothed hair from her face with one hand. "Your hair's come loose. There's nothing on you. Nothing."

  She stood, fighting for breath as he carefully tucked strands of hair behind her ear. When he dropped his hand, he just stood there, staring at her. She rubbed the back of her hand over her forehead, tried for a laugh. "I guess that wasn't a very convincing show of fearlessness."

  His smile would have relieved her, except that his eyes were cool, darker than usual, as if he'd brought the cave outside with him.

  She realized she wanted to step into his arms, so she stepped back instead. She could see every word she'd said inside the cave, and she felt a sick certainty that she'd made a mistake, that she shouldn't have spoken.

  "Maybe you want to wash in the stream," he said. "There's mud all over your face."

  She realized she'd been holding her breath, and carefully let it out. She crouched beside the stream and rinsed her mud-streaked hands in the icy water. Then she used hands and water to bathe her face as Cal crouched beside her and washed his hands.

  "Your face is OK," she said, "but your jacket...." Her muddy handprints marred the smooth beige of his jacket, where she'd clutched him when he kissed her inside the cave.

  "It doesn't matter," he said.

  She stood and stared down at his sweater. It had been pale blue when he gave it to her, but now it was streaked with mud, and at one spot near the peak of her left breast, she must have snagged the sweater on the rocks.

  "I think I've ruined your sweater."

  "Forget it," he snapped.

  She backed away from the stream and pulled her helmet off. The strap snagged in her hair, and she ripped the clip and pins out and sent hair tumbling down her back. All around her, the trees stretched tall and dark green, the ground under her feet a carpet of last year's cedar droppings. She couldn't remember ever feeling quite so uncomfortable.