* * * *
Uncertainty solidified into a sharp-edged rock in Bette’s stomach when she answered her parents’ door late Saturday afternoon and found Paul Monroe staring back at her.
He hadn’t answered her twenty-four-hour-old message, but he’d come after her. What did that mean?
“Paul.” She knew her lips formed the word, but she wasn’t sure if it had any sound.
“Hi, Bette.” One corner of his mouth lifted, but it wasn’t much of a smile. “I had to see you.”
“Who is it, Bette?” Her mother’s voice grew nearer as she came down the hall.
Automatically, Bette opened the outer door to Paul, and stepped back to let him in.
“Mother, this is Paul Monroe.” What else to say about him? My friend? Too small to be the truth. My lover? Only one part of the truth. The man I love? Too much the truth. “From Chicago.”
“Oh. How nice to meet you.” Her mother glanced from one to the other of them. “It’s wonderful that you could pay Bette a surprise visit while she is with us. It’s a shame Bette’s father isn’t here right now to meet you also.”
“I know it’s a surprise visit. I hope it’s not inconvenient, but I was, uh, I was hoping to take Bette out for dinner.”
She didn’t think she could remember Paul ever stumbling over his words that way. It terrified her.
“Bette, remember the Thompsons are expecting us at five-thirty for cocktails.” Mrs. Wharton looked from her daughter to this intense-looking young man, and put together a clue or two dropped over the past few weeks to arrive at a very satisfactory conclusion. A conclusion that involved one less guest at the Thompsons’ dinner party. “So the rest of us will be leaving as soon as the baby-sitter arrives, about half an hour,” she finished smoothly.
Bette read the message in her mother’s look, and thanked her silently.
“So if we don’t see you before we leave,” continued her mother, turning to Paul, “I hope you enjoy your stay in Phoenix.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Wharton. I’m going to try.” Bette knew exactly when Paul turned to her mother and stretched out a hand, because the weight of his eyes left her for the first time. “I hope we’ll see each other again.”
Bette heard the words, but refused to admit their possible meaning. They were too dangerous. They could elicit too many hopeful, soaring ideas of “what next” if she let them free.
“I hope so, too. If you’re not in any hurry for dinner, you should get Bette to show you around the area first. There’s a lovely view from the boathouse.”
Her mother and Paul exchanged goodbyes, and somehow Bette found herself leading Paul down the twisting path to the boathouse tucked away privately by the water’s edge.
Bette went directly to the railing and stared out at the water, darkening with night and undisturbed by any human traffic. The shadows under the roofed portion were deep, but she was fully aware of Paul standing behind her.
“I had to see you—” He broke off, then started again. “There are more things that need to be said between us.” She felt him nearer.
“I know, that’s why I called you yesterday.”
“You called?” His voice was low.
She twisted to see his face, but he was too close, and she saw only her own desire reflected there. She looked back to the water. “I left a message at your apartment.”
“I haven’t been home.” His fingertips brushed her hair behind her ear, perhaps so he could see her profile more clearly. “I needed to talk to you, Bette. There’s something...Something happened Thursday. There was a fire.”
The strain in his voice chilled her. Turning, she tried to read in his face what this fire had meant to him. He wasn’t injured, at least on the outside. But inside?
“A fire?”
“Dad’s building.”
“Oh my God—”
“No.” He gripped the arms she’d instinctively extended to him. “It’s all right, Bette. He’s fine. Nobody was seriously hurt. There’s a lot of damage, and it’ll be a mess for a while. For the firm. For Dad. But it’s not much compared to what could have happened.”
His hands traveled up her arms and across her shoulders, finally coming to her throat. He spread his fingers under her hair to caress her nape with warmth while with his thumbs he stroked the line of her jaw. In the shadows, wavering with the water’s reflection, she saw his eyes just as surely caressing her lips.
“I learned something from that fire, Bette. Afterward Dad talked about his life, and my grandfather, and I started to see—I’ve been wrong. Wrong and blind and stubborn. That’s why—” he dropped a kiss on her mouth as light and powerful as a laser’s beam “—why I came here.” Another kiss. “I had—” Another kiss “—to see you, to tell you . . .” Desire flared between them without lightening the shadows around them. “Oh, God, Bette. I need you.”
He held her face between his palms and sank into her mouth. She felt the need, the tension in him. She felt confused, uncertain—Why had he come? What had this fire meant to him? What was this change in him? But those were questions for the future, because beneath the confusion and uncertainty, she also felt the sure steady beat of her love for him. He needed her now. He wanted her now. Now was the moment she had. She’d take it, and she’d give it.
Instinct led them to the wide cushioned seats that edged the back of the boathouse, because in the inky darkness they couldn’t see anything. Not even each other. But touch led them where their eyes could not, the way to ease the ache, the way to fill the needs, the way to love each other.
And even in the dark, she could see the face of the man she made love with, the man she loved. She would always see his face. It was her fantasy, more powerful than any schoolgirl could imagine. Yet it also haunted her, because it lacked one element—the love, the deep, committed love of the man making love to her.
“Bette?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t want him to know she was crying. He had come after her, but why? He might have followed one of his impulses, the desire of the moment to see her, be with her, make love with her. Or he might have felt her speech in his office had been an ultimatum, designed to close him in, trap him, bind him. Tears would only add to that impression.
“Bette, there’s something I have to ask you.”
She held her silence like a shield, protecting him from her tears, protecting herself from his questions.
No, not a shield, a restriction. She was doing what she’d sworn not to do, holding back from him out of fear.
“Bette. Do you really love me?”
The tears slipped loose.
He’d just made it all very simple. She hadn’t planned it. It had just happened. But she did love him.
“Yes. I really love you.”
Her voice flowed with love, but also with the tears. He shifted, putting a palm under her chin to lift it and levering himself above her to try to look into her eyes.
“Bette, don’t cry.” Paul’s hoarse plea made her cry more, and his fingers, gently rough, couldn’t stop the flow.
“God, Bette—”
“It’s all right, Paul.” She’d known what he could give her, and she’d risked it anyhow. She’d lost her heart, but by losing it she’d also found it. This time she had to tell him that side of it, too. “I knew...I knew . . .”
“You knew what?”
“How it would be, but it doesn’t matter now—”
“How what would be? You’re driving me crazy with these elliptical comments, Bette. I don’t know what you’re talking about, but experience tells me I’d hate it like hell. We’ve got to talk. Really talk. That’s why I came down here. To talk to you, to tell you—” He broke off as if suddenly struck by the difficulty of expressing what he was about to say.
“To tell you...things,” he finished lamely. The emphasis he put on the last word indicated it had great meaning, but she couldn’t begin to fathom it.
“Things?”
“Aw, hell. I can
’t tell you here. Not with this, and with you crying and thinking what you’re thinking. I know you, Bette, and you can’t tell me you’re not looking seven steps ahead and coming out on the totally wrong path.”
She felt slightly stunned by the spate of words, and more than a little confused. “Now who’s talking in elliptical comments?”
“I am. And it’s going to stop. Starting now, we’re going to take this one step at a time. And the first step is to tell you—No. Better yet to show you.”
“Show me?”
“Yeah. C’mon, I’m going to show you exactly what I have in mind for the first step.”