by Webb, Peggy
“Do I tempt you, Kat?”
More than you’ll ever know.
It was her turn to prowl the room. Was she strong enough to send him out of her life? Could she survive the pain of losing him once more?
Perhaps not. Perhaps something vital in her would die if she knew for certain that he would never be a part of her life again. Always, always, she’d held on to the dreams, even while she was lying in the hospital bed begging Martha not to let Hunter and her friends know she was alive.
She braced herself against the barre, gripping it with both hands behind her back.
“You broke your word once, Hunter. Even then, I waited for you. Two years without a word, not a single letter.”
“I spent those two years in a Congo jail.”
“Why?”
“For being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“How do I know you won’t be in the wrong place at the wrong time again?”
“The dream I was chasing is dead, Kathleen.”
“Your father is dead?”
“I don’t know. I never found him. All I know is that it’s not important anymore. I am Hunter La Farge.”
The long silence screamed through her. Hunter made no move to come close. She remembered how he used to look while he waited, darkly handsome, brooding, filled with subterranean currents she could only imagine. He’d had his say. He would not try to persuade her, either by touch or further conversation.
The choice was hers. Slowly she released the barre, certain of what she had to do.
“I’ll give you six months. Just friends.”
“Just friends. Unless you ask for more.”
“I won’t ask.”
“I intend to do everything in my power to see that you do.”
“You always were a gambling man, Hunter.”
“You’re more than worth the gamble.”
Dangerous currents flowed between them, currents that threatened to sweep her off her feet and suck her under. The gamble she was taking was enormous, bigger even than her gamble to return to the stage. Her blood sang with challenge. She tipped her chin up, her eyes blazing.
“I won’t let you move in. Martha is staying.”
His chuckle sent shivers through her. How full of self-confidence he was. How full of life. How tempting.
“I like Martha,” he said. “We’ll teach her to smoke a big cigar and ride a Harley-Davidson.”
One of the things she’d always loved about Hunter was his ability to make her laugh. The laughter bubbled up inside her and spilled over, a merry peal that soon had her holding her sides and gasping for breath.
“We might even take her skinny-dipping,” he added.
She held up her hands. “Stop before I collapse.”
“I used to dream about your laughter, Kat. It’s good to hear it again.”
“It’s good to laugh again. But it’s not getting the work done.”
The Tchaikovsky ballet had ended and the room was silent.
“I’ll put on another song for you. Which one do you want?”
“No. I’ll do it. I’m blind, not helpless.” She walked to the tape player, counting her steps. “If you’re going to be my best friend, the first thing you have to do is to let me be independent.”
There was silence. When Hunter finally spoke, his voice was filled with a steely determination.
“Not only will I let you be independent, I will set you free.”
“How?”
“If you’re going to be my best friend, you have to learn to trust me again.” He walked to her and tipped her chin up with one finger. “Trust me, Kat.”
It took all her willpower to keep from twisting her hands into his hair and pulling him close.
“I’ll try, Hunter.”
Trusting him was the least of her worries. It was herself she didn’t trust.
CHAPTER FIVE
When Kathleen woke up she did something she probably should have asked Martha to do months ago: she picked up the phone and called her Forever Friends, one by one. Helen Sullivan and Maxie Corban cried at the news, but B. J. Corban, who had always been the take-charge member of their group, gave Kat a piece of her mind.
“Kathleen Shaw, I ought to fly down there and whip your butt. Do you have any idea how much we’ve mourned for you?”
“I’m sorry, B. J. I know I should have let you know I was alive. But, remember, I was fighting for my life. And I’ve only just now recovered my hearing.”
“Somebody should have called us. This is the Forever Friends you’re talking about. My Lord, Kat, we were just getting ready to plan a memorial service for you.”
“What took you so long?”
“Helen’s baby gave us all a scare.”
“Oliver?”
“No, Gloria…Oh, my Lord, you don’t even know! She was born after the explosion.”
“Four children?” Helen had been crying to hard she hadn’t even mentioned she had another child. “If I didn’t love her so, I’d spank her for not telling me. And then I’d be jealous.”
“Not me. I’ll leave the kids up to the three of you.”
Kat spent the next five minutes catching up and another ten talking B.J. out of assembling the Forever Friends so they could all fly down and stand by her side while she regained her dancing skills. By the time she finally said goodbye, they were laughing.
Kat made her way to the kitchen where Martha had a hot cup of coffee waiting.
“How’d your friends take the news?” It was no surprise that Martha asked. Kathleen now counted her as a good friend, and had discussed calling the Forever Friends with her last night.
“They were predictable. Helen and Maxie are soft touches and spent most of the time crying, but B.J. chewed my butt out.”
“She sounds like a woman after my own heart. When will I get to meet her and your other friends?”
“Not yet. I’m just not ready.”
“Mark my words, hon. You will be. Probably sooner than you think.”
Kathleen was on her second cup of coffee when the kitchen door opened. She knew it was Hunter even before Martha spoke. The electricity of his presence sent shock waves through her.
“Lordy, Hunter, I didn’t expect to see you so bright and early in the morning,” Martha said. “But you’re always a welcome sight. Do you want coffee?”
“No. I want Kat.” Kathleen stood up, her skin humming with excitement. “I have something to give her.”
His measured, relentless steps made her think of a stalking panther. When he was close, he reached for her hand. “Come with me.”
“Not like that.” She removed her hand and put it in the crook of his elbow. “Like this. That way I feel whether you are stepping up or down, turning right or left. You become my guide dog.”
“Should I bark?”
“Only if you want to.”
Breathless, filled with laughter, she waited. Tension zinged through him and made her fingers tingle.
“When the right moment comes, perhaps I’ll howl.”
He had once, standing up in their small boat in the bayou, his beautiful body naked and slick with her sweat. Involuntarily she squeezed his arm.
“Ready?” A deep, rich undertone of passion vibrated in his voice.
“Where are we going?”
“You have to learn trust, Kat. This is your first test. Are you coming?”
Intrigued, alive as she hadn’t been in years, she’d be a fool to say no.
“Yes.”
The screen door popped shut behind her. He shortened his stride because of her, but not enough to make her feel as if she were holding him back.
They were on the worn path between their houses. That much she knew. The smells were familiar, and the beaten smoothness of the ground.
“I should be dancing.”
“You’re pushing yourself too hard, Kat. You need a break.”
What he said was true. The day before, after they’d made their pact, she�
�d pushed especially hard, perhaps in an attempt to show him that she could make a comeback on her own, that she didn’t need help from him or anybody else.
He hadn’t tried to stop her. Instead he’d watched from the sidelines, calling his encouragement the way he used to when they were young.
Suddenly she felt herself being lifted off her feet.
“Hang on to your hat,” he said.
“Put me down.”
“Do you want to fall through the back steps and break your leg?”
“No.”
“Then allow me to help you across.”
Being in his arms felt wonderful. She had a weak, self-indulgent moment of hoping he’d make some lame excuse to keep holding her. She was even trying to think up a gracious way to accept without losing face when she felt herself being set on her feet.
“Here we are,” he said. “Home sweet home.”
She smelled the old wax on the linoleum and heard the distinctive tick of the cuckoo clock Janice Smith aka La Farge had kept on the kitchen wall.
“You haven’t changed anything,” she said, adjusting her veil.
“No.”
He didn’t have to explain further. She was his soul and he was hers. Neither of them dared change a shrine. The ramshackle cottages where they’d grown up together were almost sacred.
“You won’t need your hat in here, Kat. I’ve closed all the blinds.”
She reached for her hat, but his hands stopped her.
“Let me,” he said. He removed the hat, then cupped her face and slid his fingers through her hair. “At night I dream about the way your hair used to fall like a curtain around our faces when you were on top.”
She didn’t trust herself to speak, for she’d be making her own confessions, telling of how he came to her in dreams, and of how she awakened with desire hammering at her until she had to cram the pillow in her mouth to drown out her screams.
His animal heat swept through her like a brushfire as he leaned down and kissed her hair.
“Soon, Kathleen, soon, my love, your hair will curtain us once more.” Abruptly he released her. “Now, I have something to show you. Come.”
He placed her hand in the crook of his elbow and led her down the familiar hallway to his bedroom. It was filled with his scent, the spicy soap he used, the minty toothpaste, and the heady mix of air and sun and earth that belonged exclusively to Hunter. Even without the smells, she’d have known. How many nights had they lain tangled in his bed while Janice worked the night shift at the factory? How many lazy afternoons had they spent romping in the sunshine while Janice and Karen took their Sunday stroll down St. Charles?
She heard Hunter rambling around in his closet, shoving coat hangers aside and rattling boxes.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting your clothes.”
“I’m wearing clothes.”
“They won’t do. What would people say if they saw my kid brother wearing a dress?”
The simplicity of his plan struck her as brilliant. Hunter was going to pass her off as a boy: that would be her freedom.
“I don’t know why I didn’t think of that myself,” she said.
“You were concentrating all your energies on dancing.” He handed her the clothes, a pair of pants with a button-front fly, a big shirt, athletic socks, sneakers, and a soft cap like those worn by newsboys in the twenties.
“Do you think it will work?”
“All I can say is it’s a damned good thing you’ve got ballerina breasts.”
“Are you saying I’m flat chested?”
“It’s been a long time since I had the privilege of knowing. Why don’t I check them out?”
There was laughter in his voice, and more, ever so much more. She sought to hold on to her resolve.
“Why don’t you get out of here and let me dress?”
“I was hoping you needed some help.”
“Hunter...”
“All right. I’m going.” She heard him pause in the doorway. “Pick a name.”
“What?”
“We can’t be Shaw and La Farge. Pick something else.”
“Who is to know?”
“Do you want me to pick one? How about Arbuthnot?”
“How about Bearinski?” How easily they entered the old games.
“Or Cranksnow?”
“Dragonitzin?”
“I prefer Frankenstump.”
She fell back against the bed, laughing so hard that tears streamed down her face and she had to hold her sides.
“Oh, Hunter,” she said, gasping.
Suddenly he was there, kneeling beside her, tenderly cupping her face.
“It will be you and me, Kat,” he whispered, “two against the world. Just the way it used to be.”
She closed her eyes, seeing him better that way, picturing how he would look with the sun sliding in from the cracks in the blinds, streaming across his dark hair and touching his black eyes. Like some fine sleek animal, all taut sinew and rippling muscle and raw power. She breathed in his scent, slowly, as she would inhale the aroma of a forbidden dessert. A sudden melting sensation made her body go slack, and she felt his hands tighten on her cheeks.
Unable to prevent herself, she reached for his face and pulled it fiercely toward her. His tongue slid into her hot mouth, gathering her essence as a beekeeper might harvest honey. Her blood hummed along her veins like a river of fire, and she was totally helpless against the onslaught of passion... helpless and exultant. The blindness had stripped her of light and color. It had taken away great paintings and glorious sunsets and flower petals floating across placid waters on spring breezes. But it had not taken magnificent hunger and the delicious sense of flying.
“Yes,” she whispered, “yes.”
Still kneeling, his mouth never leaving hers, Hunter spread her legs and slid between them, crushing her against his body so that she felt melded to him. His tongue plied relentlessly, its assault fierce and tender and so highly erotic that it was not a prelude to love, but love itself, melting her bones and taking away her will.
His mouth left hers, and he licked the side of her throat, murmuring her name over and over, like music, just as she had remembered.
She caught his hair and wrapped her legs around his body.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered. “If you stop now, I’ll die.”
“I won’t stop until you tell me to.” He unfastened her blouse and slid it from her shoulders, then lifted her breasts from their lacy nests.
His mouth closed over her, and she was flung backward and forward at the same time, caught up in sensations from years gone by and sensations entirely new. She felt as if she’d been caught in a swiftly moving current that stripped her of everything except clawing emotion and screaming need.
She arched her back to give him better access, then floated on the currents, reborn.
“I don’t plan to tell you stop for a very long time.”
He drew her deeply into his mouth, not in the gentle manner of Earl Lennox but with the magnificent hunger of a rampaging lion devouring his first kill in days. Hot coals tore loose in her belly and spewed fire throughout her body, so that she writhed in the heat.
Reason told her to stop while she could, but she wanted nothing to do with reason, no part of discipline and denial. She was in the middle of a holocaust and only Hunter could save her.
“You will leave me,” she whispered as he made long, sweeping forays with his tongue down the length of her torso.
“Never.”
He shoved her skirt up and pushed aside the tiny triangle of silk that covered her. She could feel the heat of his breath against her naked thighs.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. I need you, Hunter. Ravage me.”
The first thrust of his tongue was high and hard, jerking her upward like a puppet on a string. He held her there for a screaming eternity, plying his deep magic, while she gripped the edges of the mattress and held on. Then he lifted her o
nto the bed and braced himself over her, his elbows pinning her arms to her sides.
“This is more than need, Kathleen. It’s love. I love you.”
“Don’t make me say I love you, Hunter. Don’t make me beg.”
“I would never force you to beg for something that’s yours, that has always been yours.”
She didn’t need to see the truth in his eyes; she heard it in his voice. Selfishly she shoved the truth aside. It took all her energy to deal with dancing in the dark; she had none to spare for Hunter.
“Take me, Hunter. Now. Before I die of wanting you.”
He understood what she was asking for, not the tenderness of love but the rage of eroticism that would obliterate everything except the hot invasion of swollen flesh and the brimstone that coiled and writhed in her belly. His zipper whispered in the never-ending darkness and the first velvety touch of him wrung a cry from her. It echoed around the still room like the mating call of some wild animal.
“This is not about need, Kat. It’s about love.”
And then he was in her, wringing the cry from her once more. There was something almost bestial about the way he took her, something raw and primitive that answered the pleas wrenched from her very soul. But underlying it all was tenderness, shining through as plainly as if he’d lit a beacon next to her heart.
“Don’t make me love you,” she whispered. “Don’t.”
“You will love me, Kat.” His zipper raked against her skin as he slid deeper into her, so deep, he cracked the wall that sealed her heart. “But for now, this is enough.”
She arched upward to meet him, trapping him in the cradle of her thighs and rocking with a dizzying rhythm that felt like flying. Holding her tightly around the waist, he flipped onto his back. Her skirt tangled around her midriff, and impatiently she twisted it into a loose knot.
She reached for Hunter’s shirt buttons, then leaning over, she stroked his chest with her tongue the way she would the pelt of some fine sleek jungle cat. Her long hair tumbled downward, hiding them in its dark curtain.
He kissed her curtain of hair, laughing softly.
“How did you know, Hunter? How did you know it would be so soon?”
“Because I know you, my love. You’re the same as you were when you were sixteen, unbridled and untamed.”
