Tender Triumph

  What more could she possibly want or need to make her happy? "A man," Karen would say, as she often did.

  A faint smile touched Katie's lips. "A man" was definitely not the answer to her problem. She knew dozens of men already, so it was not a lack of male companionship that was responsible for this restless, waiting, empty feeling.

  Katie, who positively loathed anything that even approached self-pity, caught herself up short. There was absolutely no excuse for her unhappiness—none whatsoever. She was very lucky! Women all over the world were longing for careers; fighting to be in­dependent and self-sufficient; dreaming of financial security and she, Katie Connelly, had all of that, and at only twenty-three years old. "I have everything," Katie said determinedly as she opened the book in her lap. She stared at the blur of words on the page, while somewhere in her heart a voice cried out, It's not enough. It doesn't mean anything. I don't mean anything.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  They went to Forest Park for their picnic, and Ramon spread the blanket Katie brought beneath a giant cluster of oaks, where they feasted on the wafer-thin delicatessen corned beef, imported ham and thick crusty French bread he had brought.

  As they talked and ate, Katie was vaguely aware of his appreciative gaze on her animated face and his absorption with the shining tumble of red gold hair that spilled over her shoulders whenever she reached into the wicker picnic basket. But she was having such a lovely time, she really didn't mind.

  "I believe fried chicken is customary for picnics in the States," Ramon said when there was a lull in the conversation. "Unfortunately, I cannot cook. If we have another picnic, I will buy the food and let you prepare it."

  Katie almost choked on the hearty Chianti wine she was sipping from a paper cup. "What an utterly chauvinistic supposition to make," she berated him, laughing. "Why do you assume that I can cook?"

  Stretching out on his side, Ramon leaned on a forearm and regarded her with exaggerated gravity. "Because you are a woman, of course."

  "Are—are you serious?" she sputtered.

  "Serious about your being a woman? Or about your being able to cook? Or about you?"

  Katie heard the sensuous huskiness that deepened his voice as he asked the last question. "Serious about all women being able to cook," she informed him primly.

  His grin widened at her evasiveness. "I did not say that all women were good cooks, merely that women should do the cooking. Men should work to buy the food for them to prepare. That is the way it ought to be."

  Katie stared at him in speechless disbelief, half-convinced that he was deliberately goading her. "It may surprise you to hear this, but not all women are born with a burning desire to chop onions and grate cheese."

  Ramon muffled a chuckle, then abruptly changed the subject. "What sort of job do you have?"

  "I work in the personnel department of a big cor­poration. I interview people for jobs, things like that."

  "Do you enjoy it?"

  "Very much," she told him, reaching into the basket and extracting an enormous red apple. Draw­ing her denim-clad legs up against her chest, she wrapped her arms around them and bit into the juicy apple. "This is delicious."

  "That is unfortunate."

  Katie looked at him in surprise. "It's unfortunate that I like the apple?"

  "It is unfortunate that you enjoy your job so much. You may resent having to give it up when you marry."

  "Give it up when I—!" Katie giggled merrily, shaking her head. "Ramon, it's lucky for you that you aren't an American. You aren't even safe in this country. There are women here who could cook you for the way you think."

  "I am an American," he said, ignoring Katie's dire warning.

  "I thought you said you were Puerto Rican."

  "I said I was born in Puerto Rico. Actually I am Spanish."

  "You just said you were American and Puerto Rican."

  "Katie," he said, using her name for the first time and sending an unexplainable thrill of pleasure through her. "Puerto Rico is a U.S. common­wealth. Everyone born there is automatically an American citizen. My ancestors, however, are all Spanish, not Puerto Rican. I am an American, born in Puerto Rico, and of Spanish descent. Just as you are—" he leisurely surveyed her fair complexion, blue eyes and reddish blond hair "—as you are an American, born in the United States, and of Irish descent."

  Katie was a little stung by the tone of superiority with which he delivered this lecture. "What you are is a Spanish-Puerto Rican-American-male chauvin­ist—of the worst sort!"

  "Why do you use that tone of voice to me? Be­cause I believe that when a woman marries her duty is to take care of her husband?"

  Katie gave him a lofty look. "No matter what you believe, the fact remains that many women need to have other interests and accomplishments outside the home, just as men do. We like having a career we can take pride in."

  "A woman can take pride in caring for her hus­band and children.''

  Katie knew she would say anything, anything to wipe that insufferably complacent grin from his face. "Luckily for us, American men who are born in the United States, don't object to their wives hav­ing careers. They are more understanding and con­siderate!"

  "They are very understanding and considerate," Ramon conceded derisively. "They let you work, permit you to hand over the money you earn, allow you to have their babies, find someone to care for their babies, clean their houses and," he taunted, "still do the cooking."

  Katie was momentarily dumbstruck by this speech, then she flopped down on her back and burst out laughing. "You're absolutely right!"

  Ramon laid back beside her, linking his hands behind his head, staring up at the powder-blue sky dotted with cotton-ball clouds. "You have a beauti­ful laugh, Katie."

  Katie took another bite of apple and said cheer­fully, "You're only saying that because you think you've changed my mind, but you haven't. If a woman wants a career she must be able to have one. Besides, most women want nicer homes and clothes than their husbands could provide on their salaries alone."

  "So she gets her fine house and clothes at the ex­pense of her husband's pride, going to work herself and proving to him, and everyone, that what he can provide for her is not good enough."

  "American husbands aren't as proud as Span­iards must be."

  "American husbands have abdicated their re­sponsibilities. They do not have anything to be proud of."

  "Baloney!" Katie replied unarguably. "Would you want the girl you love and marry to live in some­place like Harlem because that was the best you could give her on the money you make driving that truck; when you knew that if she worked, doing something she liked, you could both have much more?"

  "I would expect her to be happy with what I could give her."

  Katie shivered inwardly at the prospect of some sweet Spanish girl having to live in a slum because Ramon's pride wouldn't allow her to work. His drowsy voice added, "And I would not like it if she were ashamed of what I do for a living, as you are."

  Katie heard the quiet reprimand in his words, but persevered anyway. "Don't you ever wish you did something better than drive a produce truck?"

  His answer was long in coming, and Katie suspect­ed that he was marking her down as an ambitious pushy American woman. "I do. I grow produce too."

  Katie reared up on both elbows. "You work on a produce farm? In Missouri?"

  "In Puerto Rico," he corrected. Katie couldn't decide whether she was relieved or disappointed that he would not be remaining in St. Louis. His eyes were drifting closed, and she let her gaze wander over his thick slightly curling black hair to his face. There was Spanish nobility stamped on his bronzed features, authority and arrogance in the firm jawline and straight nose, determination in the thrust of his chin. Yet, Katie thought with a smile, the slight cleft in his chin and his long, spiky lashes laying against his cheeks, softened the overall effect. His lips were firm but sensuously molded, and with a tingle of excitement Katie wondered how it would feel to have
those lips moving warmly on hers. He had told her yester­day that he was thirty-four, but Katie thought he looked younger now, with his face relaxed in sleep.

  She let her gaze travel down the long, superbly fit and muscled body stretched out on the blanket be­side her. The red knit shirt he was wearing hugged his wide shoulders and chest, its short sleeves ex­posing the corded strength of his arms. His Levi's accentuated his narrow hips, flat stomach and hard thighs. Even sleeping, he seemed to exude a raw potent virility, but this no longer repelled her. Some­how, having admitted to him that facially he re­minded her slightly of David, had banished all similarity between the two men banished from her mind.

  His eyes didn't open, but the mobile line of his mouth quirked in a half-smile. "I hope what you are seeing meets with your approval."

  Katie's chagrined gaze flew to the rolling parkland stretching out before her. "It does. The park is beautiful today, the trees as—"

  "You were not looking at the trees, señorita"

  Katie chose not to answer that. She was glad he had called her señorita; it sounded alien and odd to her, emphasizing the differences between them and neutralizing the effect his blatant masculinity had been having on her. What had she been thinking of, wanting Ramon to kiss her? Getting further in­volved with him could only lead to disaster. They had absolutely nothing in common; they came from two completely different worlds. Socially, they were miles apart. Tomorrow, for example, she was ex­pected to attend a barbecue at her parents' elegant home on the grounds of Forest Oaks Country Club. Ramon could never fit in with the sort of people who would be there. He would feel ill at ease if she brought him with her. He would be out of place. And the moment her parents discovered that he was a farm laborer who drove a produce truck during the spring, they would very likely make it obvious to Ramon that they didn't think he belonged in their home, or with their daughter.

  She would not see Ramon again after today, Katie decided firmly. There could never really be anything between them, and her dawning sexual response to him was a solid enough reason to break off the rela­tionship immediately. It could never lead to any­thing meaningful or lasting.

  "Why have you drawn away from me, Katie?"

  His penetrating black eyes were open, searching her face. Katie made absorbing work of smoothing the blanket beneath her, then lying back on it. "I don't know what you mean," she said, closing her eyes and deliberately shutting him out.

  His voice was low-pitched and sensual. "Would you like to know what I see when I look at you?"

  "Not," she said primly, "if you're going to sound like an amorous Latin lover when you tell me. And from the tone of your voice, I think that's exactly what you were going to do." Katie tried to relax, but in the charged silence that followed her words it was impossible. A few minutes later, she sat up abruptly. "I think it's time I got back home," she announced, already scrambling to her knees and beginning to re­pack the picnic hamper. Without a word, Ramon stood up and began folding the blanket.

  The strained silence during the drive home was broken only twice by Katie who, in the hope of aton­ing for her earlier rudeness, made two attempts at conversation only to be rebuffed by Ramon's mono­syllabic replies. She was ashamed of her snobbish thoughts, embarrassed for the way she had spoken to him, and angry because he wouldn't let her smooth things over.

  By the time he swung the Buick Regal into the parking space in front of her door, Katie wanted nothing more than to end the day, even if it was only three o'clock. Before Ramon could come around the car for her, she shoved open the door and practically leaped out.

  "I will open the door for you," he snapped. "It is a gesture of common courtesy."

  Katie, who realized for the first time that he was bitingly angry, was suddenly incensed at his obstinacy. "It may surprise you to hear this," she announced as she stormed up the steps and jammed her key into the lock, "but there is nothing wrong with my hands and I am perfectly capable of open­ing a damned car door. And I don't see why you should be courteous to me when I have been abso­lutely obnoxious to you!"

  The angry humor of this remark was not lost on Ramon, but it was totally eclipsed by her next one. As she flung open the door to her apartment she turned around in the doorway and said furiously, "Thank you, Ramon. I had a very nice time."

  Katie, who had no idea why Ramon had burst out laughing, was relieved that he wasn't still angry, and suddenly very wary of the way he had followed her into her apartment, firmly closed the door behind him, and was now looking at her with an unmistak­able expression on his face.

  His smoothly spoken words were part invitation, part order: "Come here, Katie."

  Katie shook her head and took a cautious step backward, but an answering quiver was tingling up her spine.

  "Is it not the custom of liberated American women to show their appreciation for having 'a very nice time' with a kiss?" Ramon persisted.

  "Not all of them," Katie croaked. "Some of us just say 'thank you.'"

  A faint smile touched his mouth, but his heavy-lidded gaze dropped to the inviting fullness of her lips, lingering there. "Come here, Katie." When she still balked, he added softly, "Are you not curious about how Spaniards kiss and Puerto Ricans make love?"

  Katie swallowed convulsively. "No," she whis­pered.

  "Come here, Katie, and I will show you."

  Hypnotized by that velvet voice and those mes­merizing black eyes, Katie went to him in a trance that was a combination of fright and excitement.

  Whatever she expected when she walked into Ra­mon's arms, it was not to find herself crushed in an embrace of steel and swept soaring off into some thick sweet darkness where the only feel­ing was of his parted lips moving ceaselessly on hers; the only sensation, the waves of liquid heat that raced through her in the wake of his caress­ing hands. "Katie," he whispered hoarsely, drag­ging his mouth from hers and kissing her eyes, her temple, her cheek. "Katie," he repeated in an ach­ing whisper as his mouth again took possession of hers.

  It seemed an eternity before he finally lifted his head. Weak and trembling, Katie laid her cheek against his hard chest and felt the violent pounding of his heart. She was utterly devastated by what had just happened. She had been kissed more times than she could remember, and by men whose technique had been practiced and perfected until it was almost an art form. In their arms, she had felt pleasure— not this mindless burst of joy followed by fierce longing.

  Ramon's lips brushed the shining hair atop her head. "Now, shall I tell you what I think when I look at you?"

  Katie tried to answer lightly, but her voice was nearly as husky as his. "Are you going to sound like an amorous Latin?"

  "Yes."

  "Okay."

  His chuckle was rich and deep. "I see a beauty with red gold hair and the smile of an angel; and I remember a princess who stood in that singles' bar looking very displeased with her subjects; then I hear a witch telling a man who was making advances to her, that her roommates were lesbians." He laid his hand against the side of her face, his fingers ten­derly brushing her cheek. "When I look at you, I think you are my angel-princess-witch."

  The way he referred to her as "his" brought Katie's drifting spirit plummeting back to reality. Abruptly pulling free of Ramon's arms, she said with false brightness, "Would you like to walk down to the pool? It opened today, and everybody from the apartment complex will be out there." As she spoke she jammed her hands into her back pock­ets, caught the way Ramon's glance slipped to the straining fabric of her T-shirt across her breasts, and hastily removed her hands.

  One black brow arched in mild inquiry, silently asking why she objected to having his eyes on her when he had just had his hands on her. "Of course," he said, "I would enjoy seeing your pool and meeting your friends.''

  Once again Katie felt uncomfortable with him. He seemed like a dark, foreign stranger who was too in­tensely interested in her. Added to that, she was leery of him now, and with good reason. She knew when a man intended
to maneuver her into bed, and that was where Ramon wanted her. As soon as possible.

  Sliding glass doors opened off the back of her liv­ing room onto a small patio enclosed by a stockade fence that provided privacy. Two redwood loungers with thick flowered cushions were strategically placed in the center for sunbathing. Behind them, and on both sides, were scattered a profusion of Katie's lush plants, some of which were already blooming.

  She stopped beside a redwood planter overflow­ing with red and white petunias. With one hand on the door in the stockade fence, Katie hesitated, try­ing to think of how to phrase what she wanted to say.

  "You have a beautiful apartment," Ramon com­mented behind her. "The rent must be very expen­sive."

  Katie swung around, instantly seizing on Ramon's idle comment as a perfect means of drawing atten­tion to the differences between them, and hopefully, cooling his ardent intentions. "Thank you. As a matter of fact, the rent is very high. I live here because it's reassuring to my parents to know that my friends and neighbors are the right sort of people."

  "Rich people?"

  "Not rich necessarily, but successful, socially ac­ceptable people."

  Ramon's face was a mask, wiped clean of all ex­pression. "Perhaps it would be better then, if you did not introduce me to your friends."

  One look at that aloof, handsome face, and Katie again felt ashamed of herself. Raking an agitated hand through her hair, she drew a determined breath and confronted the real issue: "Ramon, despite what just happened between us in my apart­ment, I want you to understand that I am not going to go to bed with you. Now or ever."

  "Because I am Spanish?" he asked dispassionate­ly.

  Katie's fair complexion bloomed with chagrin. "No, of course not! Because...." She smiled deri­sively. "To use a hackneyed phrase, 'I'm just not that kind of girl.'" Feeling much better now that everything was out in the open between them, she turned back toward the door in the fence. "Well, shall we go down and see what's happening at the pool?"