“Would you look in the pantry on the top shelf and get that box of dog food, please,” he asked Lynne after they finished supper. “I don’t want Caesar to think I have bad manners. There’s a dish for him right outside the back door, and tie him up out there. He doesn’t need to know everything.”
While she fed the dog and straightened up the dining room and the kitchen, he put on a CD of blues music and waited for her. “Let’s sit in the dining room,” he said when she came back to him.
Her face bore an inquiring look, but she said nothing. In the dining room, he sat in a straight-back, armless chair. “Come here, Lynne.”
The jersey top that she wore betrayed to his eyes the hardening of her nipples, and he knew she was ready for him. “Sit here, facing me. It won’t be what it could be, but I’ll make it as pleasant as I can.”
She straddled him and within seconds, he had his tongue in her mouth. The fingers of his right hand teased her left nipple and with his left, he toyed and teased at the entrance to her vagina. He was hard and hurting, and he had to bring her to climax quickly. She began moving against him, pulling on his tongue and moaning her need.
“Shh,” he said. “I don’t want Caesar to get the idea that I’m hurting you.” He slipped the blouse over her head, unfastened her bra, sucked her nipple into his mouth, and when she undulated frantically against him, he raised her, slipped off his Bermuda shorts, dispensed with her bikini panties, shielded himself and, after testing her for readiness, slipped into her. He tried not to take pride in her gasp of momentary discomfort, for he knew he suited her. With one nipple in his mouth, he pressed her buttocks to him, and she threw back her head and moved against him in a rapid rhythm searching for her own orgasm. She bucked, twisted and changed her pace at will, and he rode with her, praying for the strength to hang on until she exploded all around him as she did their first time.
“Is it all right, baby?” he asked her. “Am I hitting the right spot?”
“Yes. Yes.”
The ripples began, and as if he were being suctioned into a vacuum, she clutched and squeezed him, sending hot needles of unspeakable pleasure careening through his body, dragging him into a vortex of ecstasy, until he flung wide his arms and gave her the essence of himself as he shouted, “You’re mine! Mine, do you hear me? Mine!” She bucked against him, let out a keening cry and went limp in his arms.
He held her that way for a long time. Finally he said, “I won’t ask if you’re satisfied, because I know your pattern now, and I felt your powerful eruption on me, in me, around me and all over me.” He let his fingers stroke her back, tenderly and with all the love he felt. “What I want to know is whether you’ve thought about what you’d do with two houses?” Maybe it wasn’t the time to ask that, but he couldn’t help it. He needed to know. He couldn’t ask her to marry him because it wasn’t time for that, either, although he knew that if nothing went wrong between them, he would someday do exactly that.
She captured his lips in a long and drugging kiss. “We’ll talk about it when I’m able to think. Right now, with you locked inside of me, my brain is in recess. All I know is that I want you in my life.”
“And I want to be there. What I’m concerned about are the terms.”
“You have as much control over that as I do.”
“Really? I’m not so sure.”
Chapter 8
Lynne unpacked her bags in Toronto’s Grand hotel, undressed, put on her bathing suit and the white terry robe she found in the closet and headed for the swimming pool. Refreshed after two laps in the Olympic-size pool, she went to her room, showered and got in bed for a nap. The flight from San Antonio to Toronto took longer than a trip from New York to London. “I have to call Sloan,” she said to herself just before she fell off to sleep. Two hours later, the ringing telephone awakened her and a glance at the window told her that darkness encroached.
“Hello.”
“Hello, sweetheart. Just checking to know if you got to your hotel safely, and if you’re comfortable.”
“I am. It’s a lovely hotel. Worth the money. I meant to call you, but as soon as I unpacked, I did two laps in that enormous pool and that made me sleepy. Your call woke me up. I wish I’d stayed awake long enough to call you. How’s your toe?”
“Much less painful than it was yesterday, but I have to keep my weight off it. When do you begin practicing?”
“Tomorrow morning. The tournament starts day after tomorrow.”
They spoke at length about nothing significant, but each word told of their deep caring for each other. “I really don’t have anything special to say to you,” he admitted. “I just called to...to let you know I care deeply for you.”
“I know, and it’s such a welcome and wonderful feeling to have this loving relationship with a man who feels this way about me and lets me know it. I care for you, too, hon.”
“If I could walk, I’d be there with you, but I’m with you in spirit.”
“I know. Send me a blessing.”
“I’ll do that. Blow me a kiss and say goodbye.”
She made the sound of a kiss. “Goodbye, love.”
He also made the sound of a kiss. “Goodbye, sweetheart.”
Lynne struggled out of bed, barely able to resist getting back into it and daydreaming about Sloan. She dressed and went down to the lounge to look around. She didn’t want to eat alone, but she did it for most of the six years of her marriage, so she could do it now.
A woman walked past her, stopped and looked at her more closely. “You’re Lynne Thurston? I’m Ingrid Lund from Sweden. Do you have a dinner companion?”
“No, I don’t, and I’d love to have company.”
They entered the dining room together and, as they followed the maître d’ to their table, men who they passed eyed them with frank appreciation. “Have you seen the draw?” Ingrid asked Lynne. “I doubt I’ll get past the first round. Imagine starting with Sharapova!”
“I don’t envy you,” Lynne said. “I don’t even want to know who I’ve got.”
They talked tennis talk, because that was what they knew they had in common, exchanged phone numbers and home addresses and promised to stay in touch.
“I’m glad you’ve rejoined the tour,” Ingrid told her. “You were a great player, and you will be again.”
Lynne thanked her and retired early, for she had to meet Gary at eight o’clock for practice. On the opening day of the tournament, she dispensed with Ida Craig in fifty minutes of play in a businesslike fashion, and moved on to the second round.
“You were almost like your old self out there,” Gary told her, “cutting those corners like you were cutting paper with a pair of sharp scissors. Don’t forget that the play gets harder with each round. Rest and early to bed tonight.”
She headed for her hotel, did two laps in the pool and went to her room. After dialing Sloan’s number, she dumped herself on the bed and waited for him to answer.
“McNeil.”
“Hi. How’s your toe?”
“Somewhat better, but my foot has to remain in a cast. Congratulations. You made mush out of that girl, and I was surprised at her poor showing; she’s usually better than that. Either she couldn’t figure out your game or you’re on a roll.”
“I hope I can get past Langley. She can be dangerous.”
“She’s not the player that you are. I don’t think she’ll take a set from you.”
And she didn’t. Lynne breezed into the fourth round having hardly broken a sweat, but once more, she was denied a berth in the semifinals.
“This time it was my own fault,” she told Sloan. “I got overanxious and began reacting to her rather than playing my game. But it taught me something. I have to stick to my game plan.”
“Do what you have to do in order to win honorably. I’
m proud of you.”
Hearing him say those words lessened the pain of losing. She wondered if he knew it, if he knew how important to her he had become.
“What do you think, Gary?” she asked her coach at dinner that evening. “Am I ever going to get past the fourth round?”
“You’d have done that today if you hadn’t stayed at the baseline and traded ground strokes with her. You’re a serve and volley player, and you didn’t play your game.”
He was right, and she didn’t dispute him. “All right, when we practice, see if you can challenge me the way she did. I don’t want to get into that habit.”
“You’ve climbed from the bottom up to number twenty-eight in what’s probably the shortest time on record. You done good, girl.”
Praise from Gary came rarely, and she allowed herself a moment to bask in it. A peculiar thought occurred to her, and it wasn’t until she’d said good-night to Gary and was alone in her room that she understood it. “I hope I see Davenport in the clubhouse tomorrow. I want to ask her if playing is easier when you’re married or when you’re single. She’s playing better than ever, and she’s married. Maybe I shouldn’t look askance at the institution of marriage just because I did a stupid thing and hooked myself up to Willard. Sloan is nothing like him.” She did sit-ups for twenty minutes. “But I love my house. Why can’t we have two?” She thought for a minute. “I’m not going to try having my cake and eating it, too. Nobody’s ever succeeded at that.”
She answered her cell phone and considered changing the tune of its ring from “Frère Jacques” to something more romantic. “Hello.”
“Hi. This is your brother. Remember me?”
“Hi, Brad. What’s up?”
“Are you still in Canada? I happened to catch your last two matches. You should have won that last one. What happened to you? I got the feeling you didn’t want it badly enough. You can’t win like that.”
“Brad, I’ve been through the postmortem with my coach. How’s Debra?”
“Deb’s her usual self. You still hanging out with that mechanic?”
“I’m still seeing Sloan McNeil, if that’s the person to whom you’re referring. And I’m not hanging out with him, Brad. He lives at least ten miles from me.” Anger began to unfurl in her, and she took a few deep breaths in the hope of controlling it.
“Brad, you’re dear to me, and I love you, but I am not going to tolerate your berating a man you don’t know, have never seen and never spoken with just because he works with his hands and gets them dirty while he does it. And if you can’t talk to me without doing that, then don’t talk to me.”
“Are you saying you’d choose that stranger over your own flesh and blood?”
“It’s been a while since he was a stranger, Brad. My dog doesn’t even bark at him.” She laughed when she mentioned Caesar, because she knew the comment was guaranteed to infuriate Brad.
“Does he have a key to your house?”
“You are definitely not lacking in temerity, brother. He doesn’t need a key because I make it my business to be home when he’s coming there.” She soon tired of provoking him, but she refused to concede him the right to exercise his prejudice at Sloan’s expense. “My plane to San Antonio leaves early tomorrow, so I’d better get some sleep.”
“Sure,” he said in a voice tinged with sarcasm. “You don’t want to get back to your mechanic one minute later than you have to.”
She didn’t pick up the gauntlet. For Brad, winning was everything. She let him bask in the meaningless victory. Suddenly a thought occurred to her that she didn’t like, and she had to clear up the matter. “Brad, I received a call from Willard last week. Did you give him my phone number?”
“Well...yeah. He said he had to straighten out something in the divorce papers.”
“He lied. The divorce is final, and nothing in the decree can be changed. He wants me to go back to him. A woman member of his church called to badger me. That’s why I changed my phone number. Please don’t give it to anyone.”
“Sorry. What a nerd! As much trouble as you went to in order to get rid of him, how could he possibly think you’d take him back?”
“Willard doesn’t do a lot of thinking, Brad. Gotta sleep. Good night, bro.”
How could Brad have been so gullible? After all she’d told him about Willard, why would he believe anything the man said? Bradford Thurston gullible? Not in a million years! All kinds of thoughts frolicked around in her mind, and one of them was the idea that Brad would do anything to prevent her from marrying a laborer. If he only knew how wrong he was!
* * *
The day after Lynne’s return from Canada, Sloan waited impatiently for the moment when she would step into his house and into his arms again. He’d asked her to bring Thelma with her because he wanted to see his friend and especially to thank her for her kindness to him. But he also didn’t want to be alone with Lynne, lest he give her the impression that he expected sex every time they were alone together. He wanted it, but he knew that if he suggested it by word or deed, she would begin to doubt his professed feelings and his intentions.
He heard Caesar’s bark, hobbled to the door and opened it. The dog demanded to be recognized, and he complied. That done, he looked down into her face, bright and happy with a smile that said he was special. He reached for her, lifted her and hugged her, then did the same with Thelma.
“I’ve been looking forward to your visit,” he told the older woman. “And yours,” he said to Lynne in a voice that was warm and intimate.
“I see you two have made some real progress,” Thelma said as she walked into the living room and sat down. He hadn’t realized how big that room really was until the petite woman seemed frailer, even smaller than usual and lost in her surrounding. She got up, walked to the stone fireplace that took up much of the wall at the long end of the room, stood there for a minute and then walked back to him.
“My dear husband loved fireplaces, and we always had one in at least one room of the house. You know, there’s something to be said for these modern town houses. They’re so efficient, and there’s nothing to hide. Look at these big windows, not a curtain, and the room is still elegant. Plenty of space for paintings on nice smooth walls. And I’ll bet your kitchen is a dream.” She looked at Lynne. “If you decide to settle here, give some thought to a modern house. I love your house, but when the wind blows hard, I’ll bet the noise from those crooked windows scares you to death.”
He wondered whether Lynne had mentioned to Thelma his suggestion that she wouldn’t need two houses. In any case, he hoped Lynne was paying close attention to what the woman said.
He followed Lynne’s gaze around the large, elegant living room, saw her take note of the picture windows that received the magic of the setting sun as it mated with the dark amber carpet, the beige walls, the tan leather chairs and sofas and the modern walnut furniture scattered around.
Lynne glanced up and caught him looking at her, and the smile that formed on her face said she liked his attention. “Knowing you,” she said, “I’m sure you didn’t use a decorator for this room. I think it’s magnificent.”
“No,” he said, walking toward her as if drawn by a magnet. “I shopped for and arranged everything in here, though I confess I consulted my mother about whether I could leave the windows bare. She’s a great believer in pleasing oneself whenever possible.”
Thelma looked at Lynne, and from her expression, it was clear that she knew she might be fomenting trouble but that she also didn’t care. “Do you like the upstairs, too?”
But Lynne wasn’t taken in by Thelma’s deviltry. “Haven’t been up there yet, but when I do, I’ll let you know what I think.” When Thelma’s lower lip dropped, Lynne added, “I’ll tell you what Sloan told me: ‘If you want an answer, ask me a direct question.’”
Thelma’s
hands went to the bones that passed for her hips. “I’m afraid of what you’ll tell me. Anyhow, it looks to me like he’s got your number, so I’m not going to worry.” She paused and seemed thoughtful. “Still...no point in wasting time—life’s short.”
“Let’s eat,” Lynne said. “I want to see what Thelma cooked this time.”
He did, too. He had planned to phone for their supper, but when he saw that Lynne carried a large insulated bag, he knew he was getting a home-cooked meal. Supper consisted of minestrone, an antipasto, Sicilian-style lasagna and pecan pie.
“I made enough for a couple more meals,” Thelma said. “We can freeze it.”
He stared at her. “Freeze it? Won’t it last in the refrigerator for two days?”
Thelma laughed, obviously pleased. “I can make lasagna blindfolded, so you can have some anytime Lynne’s coming to see you.”
They chatted convivially through the meal. Dining at his table with Lynne serving the food and Thelma keeping them laughing with her odd, but candid, wit seemed as natural as breathing. He was getting the feeling that Thelma was not an accident in his life, but that she somehow belonged there—it didn’t seem strange that Lynne had chosen a septuagenarian for a buddy.
He wondered how Thelma had lived as a widow before Lynne moved into the house on Corpus Christi Lane. What a lonely woman she must have been. He’d always known that most vital, sophisticated young people had no time for senior citizens, but he hadn’t guessed the effect of isolation on the aged. He moved over to Thelma, and when he put an arm around her shoulder, she snuggled closer to him.
“How’d you like to spend a couple of weeks down at Galveston on the Gulf? My mother loves company and my father’s always out on his boat fishing. Since you were an Olympic swimmer, you ought to have a ball down there. The water is fantastic all year. I’m going down there for Thanksgiving, and I want you and Lynne to go with me.”
She leaned back and looked up at him. “You can invite a stranger to spend two weeks at your parents’ house without asking them first?”
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