by Sandra Brown
Joy bubbled inside her, and as she clung to him, she squeezed her eyes shut in ecstatic relief. The idea of him being with someone else had plagued her. Now her heart sang, albeit unfairly, to know he hadn't slaked the passions she'd induced on someone else's body. Feeling guilty over her selfishness, she pulled away to look up at him as she said, "You didn't have to tell me that."
"But you're damned glad I did, aren't you?"
Was she so transparent? Did he already know her that well? "Yes," she said honestly.
His finger traced her hairline as he murmured, "It wouldn't be fair to take another woman to bed, Keely, when I'd be wishing it was you lying with me."
"Dax—"
"I came back here to see if the two of you were making out all right – no pun intended – but you seem to be doing fine," Nicole teased. "Charles has magnanimously consented to see me home properly, so he'll be staying through the newscast. You're welcome to stay too."
"I need to get home," Keely said. "I have to he up at five, remember?"
"And I'll see Keely to her car," Dax said. He went to Charles and shook his hand. "Thank you for an enlightening day and a wonderful dinner. I enjoyed it all. As soon as I've firmed up someone to handle the media campaign for me, they'll be in touch with you."
"KDIX will appreciate your business. Good luck, Dax."
"Thank you. Good night, Nicole."
"Good night, everyone," she called back airily as she sailed through the employee entrance that led to the studio. She was dragging Charles behind her like a queen with a conquered foe.
Dax looked after them pensively. "They're in love with each other, aren't they?"
"Yes. Charles knows about it. I'm not sure Nicole does yet."
"What a pair! Who would ever guess they'd choose each other?"
Keely smiled, but it was a sad expression. "I'm not sure such choices are ours to make."
Dax caught her meaning all too well. "No, I guess they're not," he said huskily. "Some things just happen, don't they?"
The parking lot was eerily dark and deserted as they walked up the ramp to where their cars were parked. Besides her compact, the only other car on the lot was a chocolate-brown Lincoln.
"Is that yours?" she asked. "Yes."
Done with conversation, he slipped his hands inside her coat, settled them on her waist, and pulled her to him as he backed her against the car. Her feet were trapped between his. Touching from ankle to chest, he leaned forward and took her lips under his.
She lost all perspective of the environment under the demands of his mouth. The muffled sound of traffic below, the mist that cloaked them like an ethereal veil, the hard surface pressing into her spine, all vanished with his touch. His mouth and the sensuous way it possessed hers were her only sources of reference.
When at last he lifted his mouth from hers, it was only far enough for him to speak. "Keely, would you even consider coming to my house for the weekend?" He paused for her to respond, but shock had rendered her mute. He pressed his advantage and rushed on. "I don't want you to misconstrue my invitation. There are no strings attached. I'd just like for you to come to my house and meet my parents."
It was such a dear, desperate, appealing invitation that Keely's heart was breaking that she must refuse it. Even though his intentions were honorable, Dax knew as well as she did that staying in the same house together overnight would be torturous and dangerous.
But not wanting to turn him down outright, she waltzed around a refusal "Do you think that's wise?"
"It's positively crazy." His finger traced the delicate bones of her jaw. "I thought coming to your room at the Hilton was the dumbest thing I'd ever done. Inviting you to spend the weekend at my house outdoes that. Nevertheless, I'm asking."
"I'd like to meet your parents, but what would you tell them about me?" Suddenly she wondered how many women Dax had taken to his house for a weekend and it pained her to estimate.
"I'd tell them that you are a lady I hold in high regard. My father will exercise all his Southern gentlemanly charm on you and my mother will deluge you with recipes and antidotes for every catastrophe."
She laughed and toyed with the brass button on his jacket as she asked casually. "Does anyone live with you? A housekeeper or anyone?" Her voice was high-pitched and wobbly.
He lifted her chin with his finger and looked long and deep into her eyes. "She goes home after dinner."
"Oh."
He didn't release his hold. Rather he kept her head tilted back as he said, "Keely, I wouldn't expect you to change your mind about anything on the short drive from here to there. Nor do I want you to compromise any standard you've set for yourself for me. If it'll make you feel any better, I'll supply you with nails and a hammer and you can seal yourself into your appointed bedroom as soon as the sun goes down." He smiled, but she felt that he meant it. "I just want us to have some time alone. To talk and walk. We can work in the garden, or ride horses, or go fishing, or neck, or take a boat out, or rearrange the furniture, or—"
"Wait! Back up."
"Well, the furniture in the library needs rearranging. I've been think—"
"No, before that."
"I have a small lake on the property and we could—"
"Before that."
"Let's see." He squinted his eyes, feigning concentration. "Oh, you mean the part about necking?" His lips curled into the devilish grin she adored and he said, "I just threw that in to see if you were paying attention." She laughed and he added, "But it's a hell of a good idea."
He laid his forehead on hers while he swayed them back and forth as they hugged. "Will you come?" he asked softly.
Maintaining their position, she answered soberly, "I can't, Dax. You know that. I'd love to, but I can't."
He was silent for a while, absorbing what she had said, swallowing his disappointment. "I promise to be on my best behavior."
"But I may not be on mine. Rather than relaxing, I think we'd both be tense and uptight, and that wouldn't be any fun."
"I won't let that happen. I promise to he relaxed."
"The risk we'd run of having someone find out I was there would be too high. We'd both be ruined should that happen."
"It's always a possibility, but I'd take every precaution to see ft was kept a secret." He pushed his fingers through her hair until they rested on her scalp.
"Please come, Keely." When he felt the negative shake of her head, he urged hastily, "At least say you'll think about it. I'll wait until the end of the week for your answer. Just say you'll consider it."
Her answer would probably be the same at the end of the week, but this was a small concession she could make. "All right," she said, lifting her eyes to his. "I promise to think about it."
* * *
She thought about it. All day. All night. All week. By Wednesday she was in an abominable mood. It seemed that asinine drivers chose that day to have an orgy of fender-benders that tied up traffic on major arteries and kept her and Joe frantically trying to keep up with them and inform commuters of the hazards they posed.
"Keely, what the hell is going on today?" the afternoon DJ asked her after he had started a Willie Nelson record.
"I'm doing the best I can, Clark," she snapped back into her microphone. "We've had five accidents reported in the last twenty minutes."
"Well, it sounds like you're rambling all over town," he grumbled.
"We are! I'm getting airsick flying around up here in circles. I don't orchestrate these accidents you know."
"Okay, okay. Sorry. Just be more concise, please. You've taken up far too much of my airtime."
Keely switched off her communicating device and Joe laughed when he heard her mumble, "Conceited ass."
At one minute to five on Thursday morning her telephone rang.
"Hello."
"Well?"
"I don't know yet."
He hung up.
At seven thirty that evening her telephone rang again, She was contemplating h
er answer over an omelet. "Hello."
"Well?"
"Give me until midnight."
During the long evening hours she pondered the dilemma. Dax had promised that he wouldn't consider her going home with him a reversal of her convictions. She trusted him. He would never force or coerce her into his bed. It was herself that she didn't trust.
During the past week she had guiltily dragged out pictures of Mark, written letters to his mother, looked through her high school yearbook and scrapbooks, trying to convince herself that she still loved him. Yet she couldn't conceive of him as anything except a two-dimensional image on a piece of paper. He wasn't flesh and blood, and light and heat, and sound and smell.
How long was she going to cling to this fond memory? It was more than remotely possible that Mark had been dead for years. Was she going to waste her life, her youth, her love, on stubbornness that she had convinced herself was honor?
She freely admitted to herself that she loved Dax. This was no adolescent infatuation, but the love of a woman for a man. It carried with it no idealistic illusions, but all the pain and heartache that went hand in glove with true loving. She and Dax weren't children, innocent of the injustices that could be handed down. Hopefully, they would have the fortitude to face them.
Her decision was made then. She would spend the weekend with Dax. She wouldn't be aggressive, nor resistant, but would respond with love to whatever circumstances presented themselves. They would both know when and if the time was right.
With that glowing thought she attacked her closet with a vengeance, looking for just the right clothing to take with her. Horseback riding, fishing, walking, all the things he'd said they'd do ran through her mind as she made her selections and set them beside her opened suitcase. Two days? In half an hour she had already picked enough clothes to last at least two weeks.
The telephone rang at ten minutes to twelve. He's early! her heart sang. He couldn't wait to hear her answer any more than she could wait to give it.
Picking up the receiver, she shouted, "Yes, yes, yes. I'll come."
There was a silence on the phone, then a woman's voice said, "I'm sorry. Is this Keely Williams?"
The voice rang familiar. "Yes," she answered cautiously.
"Keely, this is Betty Allway."
"Betty!" she exclaimed, intensely embarrassed at the way she had answered the phone and wondering guiltily how she was going to explain herself. But why should she? All that guilt was behind her now.
Before she could say anything, Betty was speaking again, and this time Keely heard the tension in her usually friendly voice. "Keely, I've got some news."
Slowly, like the balloons that were leaking their helium, Keely gradually sank down on the edge of her bed. Her eyes went straight to the picture of Mark on the bookcase. "Yes?"
"Twenty-six men have come out of a jungle in Cambodia. They made their way to a Red Cross refugee camp. The Red Cross notified our military, which received permission to go in and pick them up. They're being taken to Germany first for immediate first aid and observation. As a matter of fact, they're already there. The day after tomorrow they're being flown to Paris. We've been invited to go and meet them."
The silence was long and palpable. Betty didn't interfere with Keely's roiling thoughts. She let the younger woman digest the news and all that it portended.
When Keely spoke, it was with a hoarse croak. "Is – is Mark—"
"The army hasn't released any names yet. I'm not even sure that they've identified all of them. As you can imagine, some of the men are delirious with malnutrition or disease. All I know is that they number twenty-six."
"When were you called?"
"About an hour ago. General Vanderslice called me from the Pentagon. They're pulling together an official delegation from the United States to go over there. The State Department, the Congress, the military, you and I and PROOF, and a selected group of media representatives will be invited to go on a government-chartered plane. For the time being, until we ascertain the condition both mentally and physically of these men, they'll be kept more or less isolated."
"I see." Keely looked down at her hand and was surprised to see that it was shaking violently, as though she had a palsy. Perspiration was inching down her sides and the backs of her knees. A loud roaring in her ears handicapped her hearing.
"Will there be any problem with your going, Keely? I don't know how long we'll be gone. I would say at least three or four days."
"N-no. Of course I'm going." She knew she was about to weep and she crammed a fist against her tight thin lips. "Betty, do you think—"
"I don't know," Betty answered intuitively. "I've asked myself if Bill is one of them a thousand times already, but there's no way to know. I hated to even tell my children for fear they'd get their hopes up too high. Fourteen years is a long time to wait for this day. Now that it's here, I dread knowing. I only have to convince myself that I'll he happy for whoever is on that list of men."
"Yes. I will too, of course," Keely said disjointedly. She ran her hand over her eyes abstractedly. Every muscle in her body had contracted when Betty had told her the news and now that she was forcing herself to relax, she found it painful. "When do we leave? Where?"
"The plane leaves from Andrews Air Force Base at six o'clock tomorrow evening."
"Tomorrow?" Keely asked weakly. So soon. Not enough time to prepare oneself mentally.
"Yes. We'll be met at National and escorted to Andrews. Pandemonium will reign, I'm sure, so be ready for it."
"I'll see you there then. I don't know when I'll he arriving. I'll call the airlines right now."
"There are only twenty-six of them, Keely."
Twenty-six out of over two thousand. They were both thinking how slim were the chances that either of their husbands would be in that group. "I know, Betty. I'll try to remember that."
The older woman sighed. "I'll see you tomorrow." She hung up.
Why were they not rejoicing? Because they were afraid to. Yet. Keely's eyes stared vacantly at the clothes strewed across her bed and when it came back to her why they were there, she folded her arms over her stomach, gripping it as though in agony, and rocked back and forth. Her keening wail could have issued out of the jaws of hell.
When the telephone rang a few minutes later, at straight up midnight, she didn't answer it.
* * *
Chapter 12
«^»
The space between her shoulder blades burned with fatigue. Keely hunched her shoulders, drawing them up under her ears as far as they would go, held them there for several seconds, then let them drop again. She closed her eyes and rolled her head around on her neck, stretching it.
The room was crowded, stuffy, and overheated. A pall of cigarette smoke hovered overhead, clouding the chandeliers that dripped crystal. The long reception room in the American Embassy in Paris today looked like anything but a formal parlor. Coatless men, unshaven and grim, leaned against the walls, arranging themselves in small groups to converse in hushed tones. At intervals the groups shifted as though programmed on a timer.
Reporters checked and rechecked their recorders. Photographers fiddled with cylinders of film and flashing devices. Television news teams monitored their batteries carefully, making sure they would have power when they needed it.
Only the military men in their crisp uniforms didn't seem wilted and disgruntled. Instead they briskly entered and left the room periodically on official duties nonapparent to anyone else. Keely had guessed that their business wasn't really necessary but contrived to give the impression that everything wasn't as stagnant as it seemed.
She and Betty sat side by side on a small sofa. For hours they had been in this room awaiting word, any kind of word, on the men who were now, as rumor had it, in another part of the embassy. But rumors had come and gone. Some had proved to be correct, most had not. Keely doubted the veracity of anything she heard.
For fifteen hours, since the motorcade had rolled thro
ugh the streets of Paris from Charles de Gaulle Airport to the embassy and disgorged the official delegation, they had been sitting in this room.
Everything that could be said both privately and publicly had been said. All they could do now was wait. Reading was out of the question, as words held no meaning to them now. The view from the windows facing Avenue Gabriel had lost its fascination. Talking was an exhausting exercise. Thinking was impossible. So they sat silently, staring vacantly, praying unconsciously. Waiting.
The flight over the Atlantic had been grueling. Keely was interviewed by numerous reporters, all jealous and greedy of her time. Congressman Parker, who had been asked to be part of the delegation because of his chairmanship of the recent subcommittee hearings, had finally come to her rescue, asking the reporters to let her rest for a while. In a fatherly gesture he had patted her on the shoulder and urged her to try to sleep.
But sleep was made impossible by the presence of two other passengers on the airplane. One was Congressman Devereaux. The other was Al Van Dorf.
A television reporter had been asking her an involved question when Keely saw Dax come through the door of the aircraft. Her tongue stumbled over an answer to the question, but she didn't hear the next one over the pounding in her ears. She had had to ask the reporter to repeat it.
Dax's eyes met hers only briefly, but they communicated an encyclopedic amount of information. They told her that he was as bewildered by this situation as she. They told her that he was torn between hope that Mark was one of the few men who had made it out of Cambodia alive and distress to know what his sudden reappearance would mean to them now. His eyes wished her happiness, but selfishly admitted wanting to share that happiness. They told her he didn't want to be here but had to be here. He couldn't stand by somewhere else awaiting word and not know immediately if the name Mark Williams appeared on that all-important list. The strongest message his eyes bespoke was that he wanted to hold her.
