by Geeta Kakade
`It’s just a matter of positive thinking,” she assured herself getting out of bed.
The doorbell rang as she finished her poached egg. Had Harold remembered? Kate went to the door, flung it open, formulating a reason not to go out with Harold.
Her breath caught in her throat. Last month the Guthries had installed a security door which helped allow the fresh air in during the long hot summer days and she saw the man on her doorstep right away, through the metal screen upper half. Being Brady, he would know where she lived.
"Good morning.”
Kate shied away from those powerful eyes to wander down his body in a swift perusal. She didn’t need to get any closer to know the striped tee shirt and the navy shorts encased his body beautifully, emphasizing the lean hardness that she enjoyed looking at. Too much for her own good. Kate looked away and ran a hand through her curls.
"Aren’t you going to ask me in?” The reminder held a gently teasing note.
Kate took the door off the latch releasing the pent up breath in her body slowly. A wave of gladness surged up to take its place threatening to compress her insides with its force.
"Happy Birthday, Katie!” He held out a small square box wrapped up in elegant green foil with a silvery design on it.
"You know?” Kate said blankly. "How?”
Give yourself a ten for eloquence every time he’s around woman.
"It’s on your driver’s license.”
"Oh!” said Kate, her mind going back to their first meeting when he’d seen the item mentioned. He had barely seem to glance at it then but apparently his gimlet gaze had noticed and remembered the second of May.
Aware that he was watching her she said hurriedly, "Please sit down. Would you like a cup of coffee or something?”
What on earth had made her say ‘or something’?
But Brady had ensconced himself in her armchair.
“Coffee will be great,” he said.
Turning away to put the water on, Kate wasn’t sure but thought she heard the words `for now', added on.
A shaft of exquisite trepidation splintered within her, making her knees feel like modeling clay.
"I don’t have perked coffee,” she apologized.
"Instant will do fine.”
He had cut himself shaving. The tiny nick above his upper lip drew her eyes like a magnet. She wanted to press her lips to it, run her fingers over those sensual lips, feel them against her own, draining her very soul from her body.
Weak with longing she turned away, spooned coffee into one mug and put a tea bag in another.
"How’s Cody doing in school?” he asked after she had checked his preferences for cream and sugar and handed him a steaming mug.
"Fine. He’s a real sweetheart. You should see what he’s made for Mother’s Day.”
Cody’s mother would love the impression of her son’s little hands with the verse under it about giving her a final small print to remember. Kate showed Brady the copy she had brought home, aware that she was babbling again and not caring much about it.
Please keep talking, please. Don’t let that awful, zany hunger between us become a monster and devour us both.
"Aren’t you going to open your presents, Katie?” His warm, velvety voice slid down her spine, flicking her nerve endings like a whip and she jumped up, picking up Nan Kettle’s first.
It was a top, knitted entirely out of half inch ribbon with a scoop neckline and elbow length sleeves, in polo green, absolutely gorgeous. Kate had admired the pattern in a magazine once. Thinking of the time it must have taken Nan to make it, the fingers that were bent with arthritis, Kate’s eyes filled.
"From Mrs. Kettle,” she explained to Brady chokily, and then reached for his package missing the affection that flared in his eyes at her reaction.
The box inside told her what it was before she lifted the lid with fingers that shook. It fitted with everything she knew about this man.
"Thank you so much.” Kate said, staring at the wild violets in the glass as if her life depended on it.
He had noticed her looking at the paperweight too?
It was strange the way Brady could effortlessly get closer to her than anyone ever had in her life. Kate didn’t like the feeling. Letting someone into the secret regions of one’s heart and soul meant vulnerability. The roller coaster ride Brady was trying to tempt her on to could only end in disaster for her.
"Many Happy Returns Katie,” Brady’s voice slid down her spine again and then wandered casually through her central nervous system till every nerve ending quivered.
Picking up her mug of tea, she hid her face in it. He was doing it to her again. Reducing her to a mass of helpless frenzied need. Encroaching on the tight wall of self-control she had maintained so effortlessly in the past and toppling it, brick by weightless brick. What would happen when it all crumbled completely?
Brady stared at her moodily. He wanted to have her in his arms, tell her he loved her and ask her to marry him. Then he wanted to take her out and buy her emeralds for her birthday, to match her eyes. He had almost given in to the urge to get a heart shaped pendant, that he’d seen, set with tiny glowing emeralds, but with Katie that just might be the final straw as far as he was concerned. Used to women who recognized their feelings and demanded fulfillment as easily as a child asking for candy, this continuous war of self-denial Katie waged with herself baffled him. In his circle, kisses were given as casually as smiles. With Katie he’d felt like a trespasser the first time they’d kissed, till she’d responded to him. At times he felt like telling her the truth but something always held him back. For both their sakes, he wanted to feel it was love that melded them together. From experience he knew it wouldn’t be hard to sweep Katie off her feet and into bed with him, but then later she might hate him. He couldn’t risk losing her. No, he’d have to exercise all the caution of a tightrope walker, the skill of a surgeon, the patience he didn’t have, to win her.
"Katie, will you spend the day with me?”
She looked up, startled, not quite sure what he wanted, stiffening as her heightened senses guessed at the palpable danger in his suggestion.
She ought to send him away, tell him she was spending the day with Nan, tell him Harold was taking her out, anything that would put distance between them but she couldn’t. Feeling like a child atop a precarious perch, reaching for a forbidden treat, Kate knew she could no more stop herself than she could marry Harold.
"I’ve brought a picnic and I thought we could go to the beach for the day. If you want to swim bring along your things. I’m sure the water is warm enough by now.”
Kate was sure it was too. If not, it would be by the time she’d been in it a while.
"Katie?” Brady’s voice prodded her back to the present, gently reminding her he was still waiting for an answer.
"I could get some shells and sand for a craft project,” she said aloud, trying to justify accepting the invitation to herself.
“Sure,” said Brady easily.
I’ll get you the ocean if you want. Only come, he agonized silently.
“I’d like to go on a picnic, thank you, if you don’t mind waiting a while.”
Do you have to sound like someone out of Pride and Prejudice Kate McArthur?
"Take all the time you want.” Satisfaction gleamed in his eyes nestling with another expression she couldn’t define as he looked at her.
Picking up the top Nan had given her, Kate hurried into her bedroom leaving Brady to look around the apartment.
The room he was in held two armchairs, with a small end table in between, and a thirteen inch television set on a stand. He couldn’t remember when he’d last seen one of the latter. By the kitchen alcove there was a small card table and two chairs. Against one wall was a metal filing cabinet that had obviously seen better days. The card table obviously doubled as her work and study surface to judge from the pile of books lying on it. The whole place was clean, tidy, but something about it bothered him.
Carrying the mugs to the kitchen sink he rinsed them out wondering what it was about the place that he didn’t like. Then it came to him and he scowled. There was nothing in this room that betokened the warmth and love his Katie was capable of. Not a single cushion, picture or knick knack. The room was as impersonal as a hospital room. And as stark. There were none of the touches that made a place a home. Her classroom was bright and colorful, eye catching, unlike her apartment. It was as if Katie didn’t want anyone to see beyond the tough facade she chose to present to the world. As if she was scared to let go of the tight hold she had over herself even here, and express her true personality.
He had been as mad as a disturbed hornet after their last meeting but when he had dissected everything they’d said and done, and remembered the way Katie had melted against him, he had known there was nothing wrong with his first impression.
She might think of herself as cool and calculated but she wasn’t. The true Katie had revealed herself in his arms as all woman. His. He sensed the battle she was going to face in the days that followed, trying to deny her feelings and hold on to the picture she’d drawn of herself. Didn’t believe in love, was it? The lawyer in him was going to enjoy proving her wrong. And the man in him was going to be waiting for her when she came out of the cold monolith she had entombed herself in.
Kate came out and looked at Brady shyly. Nan’s gift was beautiful. It clung to her breasts like a sculpted garment and then hugged the rest of her faithfully not leaving a thing to the imagination. She saw the flare of appreciation in Brady’s eyes as he saw her. The tiny white bow in the center of the neckline drew his attention to the creamy slope of her skin above. Though the neckline wasn’t low, it was definitely suggestive. Thank goodness the Capris weren’t the leave nothing to imagination variety. His blood pressure could only handle so much.
"You look beautiful,” the huskiness in his voice affected Kate more than Harold’s polished compliments and she felt her knees quiver weakly with the longing to sag against him and beg him to kiss her.
She’d read a historical romance once where all the heroine seemed to do was flutter and swoon and had been heartily glad she lived in a day and age where she wasn’t expected to do those things. She was positive she would have been a dismal failure at it, but now she wasn’t so sure. She seemed to flutter and feel faint with the best of them whenever Brady was around. There was no sign of the twenty first century, able-to-take-care-of-myself-woman about her when he was around. The thought of swooning gracefully into those strong arms at this very moment was especially tempting.
Don’t do this to yourself Kate McArthur. The man spells trouble with all capitals. People like you never get a second chance. Blow the only one you’ll ever have and you’ll regret it all the days of your life.
Kate slipped one arm into the voluminous shirt she had brought out of the bedroom.
`What’s that for?”
“I burn easily,” she lied.
Redheads were supposed to weren’t they? Besides she needed to hide from him.
Brady plucked the shirt from her nerveless fingers and threw it on the chair he had occupied.
“Leave it,” he said tersely, unable to bear the thought that the shirt was just one more thing Katie was using to hide behind, “I’ve got a beach umbrella. You’ll have all the shade you want under it. Besides, I have tons of sunscreen too. I’ll wait in the car for you.”
So, he’s angry, Kate thought as Brady left the room. Well maybe by the end of the day he would be tired of her and never ask her out again. Which would suit her just fine.
Sliding a glance at Brady when she got into the car five minutes later she wondered if he was still annoyed. As usual he had seen through her little ruse immediately.
"All set?” His smile diffused her apprehension and she smiled back, grateful that he hadn’t held on to his anger.
A day hadn’t gone by in her early years that she hadn’t been exposed to anger of one kind or the other. The virulence of a man who had never accepted his own faults, his frustrated wrath when he didn’t have the money for the hard, cheap liquor that boosted his courage, the empty rages he would fly into over trifles.
Her mother’s anger had been different. A slow long burning kind against the hand she’d been dealt, that she had never voiced, allowing it to sap her life in the end.
And then there had been Kate’s own anger. How bitterly she had railed against everything as a child, in her mind. How often she had seemed to reach the end of her tether. In her teens, she had learned self-control, realizing anger was an impediment to her plans. None of her exposure to it though had ever hardened her enough not to let anger matter. It could still turn her into the quivering morass of nerves she’d been as a child, when confronted with it and in Brady’s quick relinquishment of his, she had found another facet of the man to admire.
CHAPTER 4
The powerful car purred along smoothly, trading in on its excellent condition, and Kate looked out of the window absurdly content to be in it, with Brady. The light smog inland cleared as they neared the coast, allowing a glimpse of perfect blue sky.
Ignoring the State Beach signs, Brady parked the car beside the road when he saw a likely spot. Though it was May, the Pacific could still be cold and this early in the day there was no one else about. Hoping it stayed that way, he carried the picnic basket and a huge umbrella to a spot just above the water line and set up the latter, angling it to provide shade.
Kate followed with a blanket and the two huge towels in the trunk. She hadn’t even thought to bring one of her own.
“Do you swim, Katie?”
“Yes.”
Now comes the awkward part she thought.
“Want to wade?”
Kate stared. He knew she hadn’t packed a swimsuit too? She hadn’t wanted to risk it. Every moment with Brady was taking her further out of her depth and wearing a bikini that showed more than it covered, watching his eyes catch fire, letting him rub her down with suntan oil would be letting herself get out where strong currents held sway. No, she couldn’t take that risk.
“Yes,”
Brady slipped off his jeans and tee shirt and Kate stared fixedly out at the water. From the corner of her eye she could see the corded expanse of him. She knew she daren’t turn to look at him now. Just the thought of seeing his body had her awash with a tremendous sensation of delicious danger, warning her she might be too far out of her depth already.
They walked in silence to the water’s edge. Kate guessed it must be cold. A second later she knew it. The chill of the water made her gasp and when she would have retreated Brady’s hand reached out for her.
“You’ll get used to it,” he insisted walking her further into it.
And she did.
There was something hypnotic about standing out in the water letting each wave wash up a little higher, gazing out at the sun rippled expanse. Kate looked up at the expanse of cloudless blue sky and then at the obsidian green of the water. Far away a boat bobbed as if it were painted into the scene. Behind them, the beach curved and in the distance she could see spots of color on the State beach, looking like the pieces of Legos the children played with. Except for an inquisitive gull, eyeing the picnic basket knowingly, there was no one near them.
"Brady!” A wave higher than all the rest came in and automatically she turned into him and burrowed her face against his chest as it broke over them chest high.
"I’ve done it now,” Kate thought breathing deeply of the male skin under her face. One of her hands was resting on his chest and she noted how smooth it felt under her fingers. Splaying them as if to capture more of the sensation, she stayed where she was, conscious of Brady’s hand on the curve of her hip.
“Katie.”
She lifted her head to him and his lips took hers, blanking out everything else except the two of them and this white heat inside that threatened to burst out of her and explode.
Brady’s hands came up to cup her face and h
e drank deeply of the sweet nectar that was his Katie. Her tongue came out to touch his, shyly at first then at his response, with increasing boldness flicking him over the edge of sanity.
Neither could tell how much time passed as they explored each other’s mouth with hungry abandon. It wasn’t till another large wave raced to shore and swept over them that Brady dragged his mouth from hers with an effort.
They walked back to shore too caught up in the maelstrom of passion to say anything. Kate was shivering with reaction by the time they reached the rug Brady had spread out earlier and sank onto it wordlessly.
How could she? Brady must think her a regular tease. She kept insisting she had to marry Harold and yet she had exchanged kisses with Brady that could have ignited the ocean. Kate’s well kissed mouth quivered and her eyes filled with tears of self-loathing. She was beginning to act just like some of the bubble heads at work.
"Did you bring anything to change into?” Brady’s eyes were fixed on her straw bag.
The pain in her eyes knifed through his own body, it’s intensity bringing a bitter taste into his mouth. He’d got what he wanted but he didn’t want it to be at the expense of Katie’s peace of mind.
"No.” Her waterlogged pants were clinging uncomfortably to her.
Brady passed her a towel, "Here, wrap yourself in this and take your pants off. They’ll dry quicker that way.”
Preempting the argument he knew she would start he stood up and walked towards the water’s edge again, turning his back on her.
Kate hesitated for a minute before she grabbed the towel. There was no sense in getting chilled. Besides the ginormous towel would cover more of her than the pants had. Securing it around her, tucking the ends in at her waist, she slipped her pants off wrung them out and spread them on the top of the umbrella to dry.
From her bag she removed her dark glasses and put them on. Brady was out in the water swimming and for a minute Kate wished she was in there frolicking with him. Because instinct told her Brady would know just how to frolic well.
