by Linda Barlow
She felt laughter bubble up. "So, your memory has returned?"
"I apologize for the feeble neurons, but you gotta expect that from someone so much older than you. Are you legal yet?"
She let the laughter out. When he heard her chuckling, he began laughing too. "I don’t know why I didn’t know you as soon as I saw you. My only excuse is that you look different now from the way you looked as a gawky teenager."
"Gawky? Who're you calling gawky?" Her heart was doing joyous somersaults.
"I'm fond of gawky. I can still see you that way, tall and kinda awkward, all arms and legs and heart."
His voice had made her hot before, but now it was making her all warm and toasty. He really did remember.
"But what," he added, "was with the short black hair? Were you dyeing it?"
"I guess you wouldn't know about the teasing a redhead has to put up with in high school. You’re lucky it wasn’t blue or purple—I went with those colors for a while, too. It took me another year or so to grow out of the crazy transformations and get comfortable with my natural hair."
"I get it, I guess. But your natural hair is beautiful."
"Thank you." Focus, she ordered herself. "Stephen. You disappeared. You never called, never emailed. You were just...gone."
"I know." His voice turned serious. "I'm sorry. Your father insisted. You were underage, and I never should have touched you. You were just a kid, Viola."
"I wasn't underage. We had been friends all summer. I couldn’t believe it when you just walked out of my life."
"I thought I’d done something terrible. Betrayed your trust. I felt like a complete shit."
"Justifiably so. You were engaged to another girl."
"What? Who told you that?"
"Are you denying it?"
"Yes, I’m denying it. Is that what Percy told you? Fuck. Looks like your father did a number on both of us."
She felt confused. What did her father have to do with this? What had he meant by ‘your father insisted’? "What are you saying? I don’t understand."
"I’m saying it wasn’t true. I wasn’t engaged when I knew you."
"No?"
"Not at the time, no. I had been engaged in the spring of that year, briefly, but it was over long before I met you. I've never been married. I was single then, and I’m single now."
Wow. Had her father lied to her? Had Percy’s interference scuttled their romance before it had even gotten started? "So, if you weren’t seeing someone else, why didn’t you call?"
"Because Percy threatened to have me arrested for statutory rape." A pause, then he added, "You didn’t know?"
"Statutory rape? Are you serious?"
"Because you were under eighteen. Turns out you only needed to be sixteen to be legal, but I didn’t know that then."
"But we didn't even—" she paused not sure which word to use. Screw? Fuck?
"I know, but your father thought we had." He paused, then added, "We did do a lot of other stuff, some of which was probably illegal in the Puritan state of Massachusetts."
Her cheeks grew warm as she remembered some of those things. "But I was eighteen. I guess I was still seventeen when we met, but my birthday is in July. That weekend—that was in August, remember? I was already eighteen. An adult, officially able to vote, smoke, buy porn, and have sex with whomever I wanted."
There was silence on the other end of the line. "And your father knew this?"
"Of course he knew. He's my father."
"He lied to me, then. Damn. Good old Percy. He lied."
"Well, he never even mentioned any of this to me." Viola’s stomach churned as she tried to square his story against her memories of her father’s behavior that summer. It was so different from what she had believed all these years. It was true that Percy could be overbearing at times, but she couldn’t imagine that he would have deliberately set out to destroy her happiness. "I can’t believe he meddled in my life that way. How did he even know that anything had happened between us? I never told him. Did you?"
"Of course not. He was watching us. He saw us together."
Now her face and neck turned scarlet. The nine years that had passed didn't do a thing to mitigate her embarrassment. "He was watching us?"
"You never knew any of this, Viola?"
"No." She could feel her teeth grinding. She had never known it, but that didn’t prove it wasn’t true. Her father had always been controlling.
"This is even more fucked up than I thought," he said after a short pause.
"No kidding."
"On the other hand," he said more cheerfully, "it was a long time ago. I’m still free, and Jeff tells me you’re divorced. So let me ask you once again, will you have lunch with me tomorrow?"
Oh jeez. What to say. Ever since he had walked into the auditorium yesterday, she’d been riding an emotional rollercoaster. If she accepted his invitation, that wild crazy ride would continue. Was that what she wanted?
She could picture him: his tall, rangy body with its hint of wound-up sexual energy stimulated her imagination, as did the thick, curly hair that seemed to invite a woman's caressing fingers. She thrilled to the memory of the look in his eyes when he held her against the wall of the elevator. Her body tingled with pleasure at the thought of him coaxing her into surrender. Not that much coaxing would be required.
There was no denying the attraction. And it was more than just physical. He was clever and amusing, and there was something about the battle of wits that had begun between them on the podium last night that had been fun.
Still, intentionally or not, he had ripped out her heart and stomped on it. What was to stop him from doing it again?
"Say yes," Stephen urged as the silence hung between them. "Give me a chance to make things up to you."
Viola stared at her fingers, which were crumpling the corner of the bed sheet. Was she even ready to start seeing a guy again? She had to do it sometime. She wasn't planning to spend the rest of her life living like a nun! Still...this guy? It seemed like a treacherous minefield.
"I don’t know. It's just that old attraction, resurrected. You don't even like me particularly, after that book review."
"Forget the book review. It’s not important. Listen—however much we may have changed on the surface, at heart we're the same people we were that summer at your father's cottage. We liked each other then. Why shouldn't we like each other now?"
She felt a shadow steal over her. I'm not the same person. You have no idea. That old self is such a stranger to me now.
Maybe he could help her find herself again?
Or would he take what Derek had started and make it worse?
She thought about his dark hero, Bartholomew Giles. The truth was, distasteful though she found him, Bart was a fascinating character. How much of himself had Stephen put into his creation?
There was a rumble of thunder in the distance, but it sounded louder through the phone. She could hear the rain beating at her bedroom windows, and she thought she could hear it through the phone as well. "You’re not standing outside in the rain, are you?"
"I’m sitting in my car in a parking lot, but I got drenched as I ran out to the car. I’m shivering here. Are you feeling sorry for me yet?"
She laughed. "Not so much."
"There’s that laugh I remember," he said, his voice flowing over her, husky and warm. "Will you meet me tomorrow?"
What the hell. What harm could it do, a single lunch?
"Okay. Yes." She grinned into the phone. "But if I end up regretting this, you can expect an even nastier review of your next book."
Chapter 7
The Italian restaurant that Viola had suggested was crowded, but she managed to find a parking spot in the back. She and Stephen had exchanged several text messages during the morning on Saturday, settling on the place, the time, and the mode of transportation. Rather than allow him to pick her up at her home, Viola had insisted on bringing her own car. She had no idea how this meeting
was going to go. If it went badly, she needed to be able to escape.
When he met her at the entrance to the restaurant, sauntering up with that slow, unconsciously erotic sway of his narrow hips, her own lust-weakened knees just about gave way. He was casually clad in jeans, a tweedy jacket that had seen better days, a blue T-shirt, and sock-less running shoes. The jeans were more snug than the previous day’s pants had been, hinting at the toned muscles underneath. Despite the lazy masculinity of his body, there was something endearingly rumpled about him. His hair was thick and curly, shining with damp ends, as if he'd just stepped out of the shower.
His smile had enough wattage to knock out a city block. "Hullo, Professor," he drawled, subjecting her to the same hot-eyed scrutiny that she'd probably just used on him. "I like your shirt."
She'd changed her clothes about a dozen times before settling on the green silk top with the pearl buttons down the front. With its high neckline and long sleeves, it looked almost prim, except for the way it clung to her curves. She had also donned nice jeans and a killer pair of sling-back shoes that upped her height to only a couple of inches shorter than his. She had let her hair hang in gentle waves on her shoulders instead of restraining it. Long. Red. Natural.
"Thanks. It's busy here, but I was able to make a reservation," she said, leading the way inside.
She could sense him following close behind. One of his long arms reached over her shoulder to make sure the heavy doors didn't close too quickly, and by the time they had reached the hostess’s platform that hand was lightly resting on the small of her back. It was a subtle touch, but it electrified her.
Despite the crowd, they were lucky enough to get one of the more private booths toward the back. As they settled in across from each other, Viola realized that she was acutely nervous. Her heart was thundering, her palms felt damp, and she had no clue what to say to him. It was like being tongue-tied back in high school when the cute boy you were desperate to impress unexpectedly sat down at your lunch table.
"I hope you didn't catch a cold, huddling in your car in wet clothes last night," she ventured.
"Nope. Not so far, anyway." He appeared to be calm and confident, smiling and meeting her eyes with his usual direct gaze. "Thank you for agreeing to meet me. Are you still pissed? I must have been brain-dead not to know at once who you were."
"It's not as though we knew each other all that well, anyway."
His eyebrows quirked and his eyes glowed with a heat that seemed to burn her clothes to cinders. "Well enough," he said, grinning, and making her remember all those things that were probably illegal in Massachusetts.
The waiter intruded at that moment with menus and the wine list. Stephen ordered iced tea, and she followed suit. Good plan. Alcohol would just lower inhibitions that were already way below sea level.
He inquired whether she recommended any of the dishes on the menu, and they discussed the food for a few minutes before making their choices, which seemed to go right out of her head as soon as the waiter stepped away. She had no interest in the food.
"Did my father really frighten you off that summer?"
"He did. Scared me shitless, if you want to know the truth. I swallowed the whole under-eighteen thing. He threatened to have me arrested if I ever contacted you again. You know how he is. I thought he could do it."
She nodded. Her father had always been a huge, powerful, dominating figure in her life. Her mother used to say he should have been born in an earlier century. He would have made a good king.
"But why would he do that? He must have known how much I liked you. Why would he deliberately scuttle the connection that was growing between us?"
"Maybe he just couldn’t deal with the idea of me a prospective lover for his little girl. When things took that twist, he freaked."
"So he really spied on us that day? That totally creeps me out."
"It creeped me out too. In retrospect, though, maybe it's not so surprising. He had that telescope mounted on the porch overlooking the beach, remember? The one he used to watch the stars and the ships on the horizon? And possibly the neighbors?"
"Oh my god. You mean he's like, a voyeur?"
He shrugged. "I'm just saying. He was into that stuff, spy-cams and electronic surveillance. It's in all his books."
He was right. Unlike Stephen's books, her father's mystery novels were contemporary stories that relied on high tech police procedure to uncover the murderer. It boggled her mind to think that her father had intruded into something so intimate and personal.
"I never gave him any reason to use his surveillance gear on me. I didn't even go out on dates when I was staying with him."
"All the more reason, I guess, for him to think you were too young. I should have called his bluff, but I was intimidated. He had been my teacher and I had a lot of respect for him. I was also writing my first novel at the time, and I guess I thought that if I defied him, he would trash my work and maybe put up hurdles that would make it hard for me to get published."
"You didn't fight for me," she said quietly.
He shook his head, looking somber. "No, I didn't. I would have, I think, if it hadn't all seemed like such a dream. Until that afternoon, we hadn't…I’d never thought of you that way. You were just this teenage girl, Percy's daughter, cute and friendly, with a huge, mischievous grin, and fun to chat with when I wasn't taking shop with your dad. I'm still not sure how you transformed into the breathtakingly sexy young woman who made my head spin."
The compliment made her flush again, but the emotion inspiring it was much nicer. "My father never even told me that he had confronted you. He said I should forget about you because you were getting married. I believed it. I felt betrayed."
"I’m sorry."
"I guess it’s him I should blame, not you."
"In fairness, I don’t know whether Percy knew my marriage plans had been called off. It wasn't the sort of thing I ever discussed with him." He paused. "I guess I can’t rule out the possibility that he thought I was still engaged. He was probably just trying to protect you."
It was something, she thought. She would have hated to believe that her father had lied to her about that. "He was always over-protective. I suppose, in a way, he was right. I still had college ahead of me. You were too old for me."
"Then." Leaning forward a bit, he pinned her with his vivid green gaze. "The same objection can't be made now."
There was something about his low, husky voice that just screamed sex, sex, and more sex. She felt herself swaying toward him just as she had in the elevator, wanting to get closer, and cursing the table for being in the way. There must be other objections that could be made now, she thought, scrambling to think of one.
"But now," she said, "we have a different problem."
His brows arched in that sardonic gesture that he did so well. "And what might that be?"
"I don't like your books," she said, smiling.
"Ah. Now that is unfortunate. I don't see it as a problem, though. My books don't come to bed with me. In fact, I have a library in my home where my books can be all snugly locked away, out of your sight, lest they offend your feminist sensibilities."
Viola wished her heart would not persist in beating so frantically. Had he just invited her to his home? Sounded like it. And to his bed. Where did he live? How long would it take to get there?
Her heart might be fluttering for him, but her brain was operating on its own wavelength. Without any conscious forethought she said, "But what if your books do come to bed with you? Aren't your stories part of you? Isn't Bartholomew Giles part of you?"
He tiled his head to one side, considering. "I admit that it's an intriguing question. Where do our stories come from? When I sit down at the computer to write, I have no idea what's going to pour out of me over the course of the next few hours. Why do I write about certain subjects? I don't know. I'm not sure any author knows."
"It must have been a conscious choice, though, to create a hero who beha
ves like a villain. Usually it's the bad guys who rape, torture, and kill."
"It's a narrative risk. That's part of what makes it fun. I have to find some way to keep my readers interested in Bart, even if he horrifies them. If there isn’t some tiny way in which they can sympathize with him, they'll probably throw the book at the wall."
"My sympathies are always for the unfortunate women he abuses, no matter how much treason they've committed against the crown."
"It's not always a woman."
Their food arrived, interrupting the conversation briefly. When the dishes were all placed on the table and the waiter moved away, Stephen said, "Bart has a rigid sense of justice. There are rules he follows to the letter. The rules are there to protect the Queen and ensure the stability of her government. People who break the rules are punished."
"So there's no place for mercy in his worldview?"
"None. To show mercy because the prisoner is a woman would not make any sense to him. She has reason, just the same as any man. She chose to violate the rules, so she should suffer just the same as any man. It's pretty egalitarian."
She hadn't looked at it from that perspective. She wasn't sure she bought the argument, but it did provide some insight into Bartholomew Giles's character. "With each book I keep wondering if maybe you're going to redeem Bart somehow."
"Redemption? Screw that. He's a sadistic, unrepentant bastard who has dedicated his life to keeping Elizabeth Tudor safe on her throne. He'll kill for her, but he'll also die for her because she's the only thing that gives his life meaning."
"Are you saying he loves the Queen?"
He paused, considering. After a few moments, he shook his head. "I don't think he’s capable of love."
For no reason that she could explain, Viola began to feel uneasy. It was probably not a great idea to spend one's first date with the man she was crushing on criticizing the books he had written and the character he had created. What author wanted to hear that?
So she smiled and changed the subject, asking, "Did you ever manage to learn to windsurf? Your first lesson didn't go too well, if I remember correctly. I was probably a lousy teacher."
