“Another family secret the Lightfoots haven't bothered to divulge, I gather? She was pregnant, all right. She made a major production out of it.”
“But Nick denied the baby was his?”
Victoria nodded, her attention on the small stick Jordan was uncovering amid the rocks. “I heard he refused even to discuss it when his father called him and confronted him with the news. Reed was already feuding with Nick at the time, and he was angry about the divorce. The pregnancy pushed him over the edge. He rushed into marriage with Hilary. Felt sorry for her, I guess. Or maybe he felt duty bound to protect her. I don't know.”
“Why was Reed feuding with Nick?”
“I'm not sure exactly. Something to do with the direction in which Nick wanted to take the firm. Darren explained it, but I don't remember all the details. I just recall that Nick and his father were battling tooth and nail over it while the divorce was in progress. Then came the announcement about Hilary being pregnant. Nick had already walked out by the time she realized she was carrying the baby.”
“So Hilary became Mrs. Reed Lightfoot.”
“She managed to lose the baby two months after Reed married her. Hilary's timing is usually very good.”
“Why are you telling me this, Vicky?” Phila asked quietly.
Victoria flicked a quick glance at her and then looked away again. “I just thought you ought to know what you're up against. Hilary is a manipulator. And Nick is just as clever in his own way, if not more so.”
“What are you afraid of? That I'll fall for Lightfoot lies or Lightfoot seduction techniques and decide to turn the shares over to a Lightfoot instead of a Castleton?”
“That's exactly what I'm afraid will happen.” Victoria stood up and hugged her arms around herself as she looked down at Phila. Her fine dark eyes burned with resentment. “Those shares belong to the Castletons. By rights they should have gone to Darren when Burke died, not to that cheap little trollop who wandered into our lives and ruined everything!”
Phila was on her feet in an instant, rage heating her blood. “Don't you dare call Crissie names. I don't care what you think she did, she was my friend and I won't let anyone call her names. Apologize, damn it. Right now.”
Victoria's eyes filled with hurt and anger. “Why should I bother? Crissie Masters came very close to wrecking my marriage. She enjoyed driving a wedge between me and Darren, and I hated her for that.”
“How could she drive a wedge between the two of you unless there was one sitting around waiting to be driven?” Phila snapped.
“There are things you don't know. Private matters that concern only Darren and myself. I hoped they'd been buried three years ago, but your precious Crissie found out about them and brought them to the surface again. She took great delight in throwing them in our faces.”
“You can't blame Crissie for everything, damn you.”
“Believe what you want, but I'll tell you one thing, Philadelphia Fox. Those shares you got from her are my son's inheritance. I want them back in the Castleton family.”
“Crissie had as much right to them as anyone in that family. They constituted her inheritance, not Jordan's. Burke was her father, remember?”
“She's dead.”
“Right,” Phila said tightly. “So now they're my inheritance, aren't they? Crissie was family to me, Vicky, the only family I had left in this world. No one insults her and gets away with it. Apologize for calling her a cheap trollop.”
“All right, I apologize,” Victoria said wretchedly. She dashed away the tears that had formed in her eyes. “But it changes nothing. She was a troublemaker while she was alive, and she's still making trouble even though she's dead. I'll never forgive her for turning Burke against Darren. And I'll never forgive her for leaving those shares to you. She gave away a portion of my son's future, and I want it back. If you don't give the shares to us, you're no better than she was.”
Victoria whirled around, grabbed Jordan up into her arms and stood staring for an instant at a point just beyond Phila's left shoulder. Then she burst into more tears and hurried toward the cliff path with her small son.
“Well, well, well,” Nick observed quietly from just behind Phila. “Aren't you a little ray of sunshine in everyone's life today?”
She swung around to see him leaning against a large boulder. He had one hand braced against the rock's surface, and his face was set in familiar, unreadable lines.
“How long have you been standing there?” Phila demanded, struggling to regain her self-control.
“A few minutes. You and Vicky were both so wrapped up in your girlish conversation you didn't hear me arrive.”
Phila sank wearily back down onto her towel and picked up her book. Her fingers were trembling. She was fighting her own tears. “I didn't mean to upset her,” she said. “But I won't let her or anyone else call Crissie names.”
“Even if Crissie deserves them?”
Phila nodded resolutely. “Even if Crissie deserves them.”
“I can understand that. Family is family.” Nick sat down beside her and leaned back against the warm boulder. He drew up his jeaned legs and closed his eyes against the sun. “Ever made love on a beach?”
CHAPTER NINE
“No, I certainly have not made love on a beach and I don't intend to try it now, so don't get any ideas.” Phila picked up her book and buried her nose in it.
Nick waited. While he waited he picked up a handful of small pebbles and tossed them idly into the waves. Two or three minutes passed.
“I suppose you have?” Phila eventually asked, sounding petulant. She did not remove her nose from the book.
Nick smiled to himself and picked up another handful of smooth, sea-washed pebbles. “No, can't say that I have. But I've always secretly wanted to do it.”
That caught her attention. “Do you have a lot of weird unfulfilled desires?”
“As you get to know me better you'll find out, won't you?”
“I can't imagine why you would want to make love on a beach.” She turned the page in her book. “It seems to me it would be extremely uncomfortable.”
“Not for you.”
“What do you mean, not for me?”
“The way I fantasize it, you'd be on your feet most of the time.”
“On my feet!”
“Yeah. Kind of leaning over me. You'd have your legs wide apart and I'd…”
“Stop it. You're getting kinky.” She flipped another page in her book.
“Thank you, Phila,” he said gravely. “No one's ever said that to me before. It must be something you bring out in me.” Nick was not concerned by her apparent interest in the book. It was obvious she had not read the last two pages. She was as aware of him physically as he was of her. The sense of primitive masculine power gave him a real rush. He was getting hard already.
“Don't blame me for your sexual fantasies,” Phila muttered.
“How can I help but blame you? You're the subject of them. All of them.”
“Will you please stop talking like that? I told you earlier, we are not having an affair. You're using my sofa, remember?”
“I'd like to have an affair with you,” Nick said very humbly.
“Why? Because you think you could control me better if you were sleeping with me?” she retorted.
Nick heard the wariness in her voice and knew he had to move very carefully through this particular mine field. “I'm the one who should be worrying about being controlled by sex,” he said softly. “I told you that you have a potent effect on me, Phila. No other woman does to me what you do to me.”
“Hah.”
“It's true.” He paused a few seconds. “I'm thirty-five years old and I've never felt as good with anyone as I felt with you the other night when you made love to me…”
“That sounds like a line, Nick. An old, dumb, sappy line.”
“It's not. That is, it may be a line, but it's certainly the first time I've ever used it. I like to think that
I wouldn't use anything that sappy for a routine seduction. Would you at least kiss me here on the beach? My fantasies can take over from there if necessary.”
Phila finally lifted her head and studied him cautiously. There was an urgent curiosity in her eyes as she searched his face. She was visibly torn by her own conflicting needs. She wanted him, he could tell. Even when she was doing her best to conceal the fact, it showed.
The knowledge made him feel great.
Nick dropped his handful of pebbles and touched the corner of her mouth.
“Kiss me, Phila. Please.”
She hesitated, a dainty wild creature consumed by her own curiosity and a desire she did not yet know quite how to handle. Nick got even harder knowing he was the cause of her confusion. He vowed to himself he would satisfy both the curiosity and the sweet, hot desire.
“Are you laughing at me?” Phila demanded accusingly.
“No. You make me happy, Phila. Is that so terrible?” He traced the shape of her soft mouth. He felt the gathering excitement in her and knew she was practically his.
“Do I really make you happy?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He smiled again, realizing how true that was. “Why does that surprise you?”
Her shoulder lifted in a small gesture of uncertainty. “I don't know.” She looked down at the book in her lap. “I don't think of myself as a very sexy person, and I guess I just figured I'm not the type to turn a man on. The few times I've tried it things always went wrong.”
Nick was fascinated by the tension in her. “What went wrong, Phila? You didn't find any satisfaction in it? Is that what you're trying to say? Don't worry about it. Some things just take practice.”
She shook her head violently, not looking at him. “No, it's not that. I mean, what you just said is true, I don't…haven't ever experienced a…well, you know. But that's not the problem.”
“What is the problem?”
“I get turned off as soon as some man starts pawing me,” she said in a tight little voice. “It's hard to explain. I just get scared and I freeze. I can't stand to have some man on top of me, crushing me. That seems to be the way most men go at it.”
“Probably because they're usually made to feel they're responsible for taking the initiative.”
“Yes. I suppose so. And I didn't think to suggest reversing things. I just assumed I wasn't a very sensual person. But with you everything was different. You let me do what I wanted. I felt safe. I guess being in command like that, being on top is going to be the one way sex will work for me.” She paused. “It was reassuring to know there's hope for me, if you want to know the truth.”
“I'm glad,” he said simply. “Why do you think you have the hang-up about the traditional missionary position?”
“It's probably because of something that happened to me when I was a teenager.” She leaned her elbows on her knees and studied the sea.
“Tell me about it, Phila.” His insides tightened. “Did some jerk force you?”
“He tried to rape me. He was the brother of a man who ran the foster home I was living in at the time. He used to visit a lot and help out around the place. He watched the girls all the time. I think he picked me because I was the most naive. I didn't like him; none of the girls did, but I didn't know how to handle him. He probably sensed that I was afraid of him and that's why he zeroed in on me.”
“He attacked you?”
“He hung around the house until he found me alone one afternoon after school. He came into my room and started telling me how he was going to show me what women were made for. He said a lot of horrible things, mostly about how he knew that all the girls in the home were tramps and whores and how we'd all grow up to be prostitutes so I might as well get started learning my future profession.” Phila shuddered. “I was so scared I was paralyzed with fear.”
Nick touched her arm and she flinched. He started to withdraw his hand but changed his mind at the last minute. He let his fingers rest lightly on her skin and breathed a sigh of relief when she did not pull away. “You should have kicked the bastard in the balls.”
“I know but at the time I was too frightened to try it. I was afraid I'd only make him more aggressive. I tried to get out of the room, instead. He let me get almost to the door and just when I thought I was safe, he grabbed me. He had just been playing with me, you see. He wanted me to try to escape. It made the game more fun for him.”
“Oh, Phila.”
“He caught me and threw me down on the bed. I kicked and scratched and struggled and he just kept crushing me into the bed. I thought I would go mad. I felt so helpless. He was so big and heavy. Like a mountain of meat. Whenever I think about it, that's the image that comes back to me; being crushed beneath a man. I can't stand the feeling.”
Nick closed his eyes briefly. “What happened?”
“He had an arm across my throat and he was starting to tear off my clothes when Crissie came in.”
Nick took a breath. “I should have known. Crissie Masters to the rescue again, hmmm? No wonder you're so devoted to her memory.”
“She picked up a lamp that was on the bedside table and brought it down over his head,” Phila said. “Crissie could always think fast in situations like that. I was safe, but then came the real problem.”
Nick frowned. “What was that?”
“Explaining it to the foster parents and our caseworker. The man who ran the home claimed I must have led his brother on. The brother said that he hadn't done anything. He claimed he'd been fixing a light socket in the bedroom. He said Crissie and I set him up to make it look like attempted rape.”
“Hell.”
“There was no proof either way. But our caseworker was an old pro in the business, and she knew what had happened. She believed me. She pulled strings and called in a few favors and got me and Crissie and the other three kids out of the home within forty-eight hours. I think that was when I first considered social work as a career. I wanted to be able to rescue people the way she had rescued me and Crissie and the others.”
That figured, Nick thought. Thus was a sweet little liberal do-gooder born. “I wish I knew where that jerk is now.”
“The guy who attacked me? Why?” She gave him a puzzled look.
“Because I would like to tear him into small pieces.”
Phila just stared at him. “You would? You don't even know him.”
“Phila, I would want to tear anyone who hurt you into small pieces,” Nick explained carefully. “Don't you understand?”
“No. I can see where you might feel that protective toward someone in your family, but I don't see why you should feel that way about me. You hardly know me.”
“You know that's not a fair statement. You and I are getting to know each other very well.”
“Is that right?” she challenged. “What do you really know about me?”
“For openers, I now understand why you like to be on top when we make love.”
She flushed. “You make it sound as if we do it all the time.”
“I'd like to.”
“Forget it.”
“Will you at least fulfill part of my beach fantasy?”
“What part?” she asked suspiciously.
He couldn't help himself. His mouth twitched in a smile he struggled manfully to conceal. “Just kiss me.”
“If I do, will you stop pestering me about having an affair?”
“Just kiss me,” he repeated softly, his fingers sliding up and down the length of her arm. “Please. You make me feel so damn good, honey.”
For an instant he thought she was going to draw back. But just when he thought he'd miscalculated badly, she started leaning toward him, her arms going lightly around his neck. Nick exhaled in relief as her soft mouth brushed his.
“So sweet. You're so sweet.” A shudder went through Nick.
Phila began to pull away but she made the mistake of dropping a small, warm kiss on his chin and after that she could not seem to resist running
the tip of her tongue over his bottom lip.
Nick felt her tremble and knew everything was going to be all right. “Again, honey. You taste so good.”
She crowded closer and her fingers began to clutch at him. “Nick,” she whispered. “How do you do this to me?”
“I don't do anything to you, sweetheart. You do it all by yourself. I'm just lucky enough to get invited along for the ride.”
“No, it's you. Something you do. I haven't figured it out yet, but I'm sure it's dangerous.”
“No, Phila, it's not dangerous. Not as long as you're with me. You're safe with me. Remember that.” He moved his hand soothingly down her back, tracking the sensual length of her spine. Her fragrance filled his head, triggering a flood of dazzling need throughout his body. He wasn't the only one who had to learn to slow down, he thought. Phila had the knack of catapulting him into a full state of arousal almost instantaneously.
She knelt in the coarse sand and began to nuzzle him hungrily, nipping at his earlobe, kissing his eyelashes. Nick groaned, leaned back against the warm rock and let her have her way with him.
Within a matter of minutes she had worked herself and him into a feverish state. He felt her fingers fumbling with the buttons of his shirt. He swore in frustration when she got everything tangled up, but he did not offer to help. He endured the sweet torture nobly until her palms at last flattened on his bare chest.
She found his lips again and drove her tongue boldly into his mouth, pressing herself against him. Nick gave himself up to the pure sensual joy of being a sex object until he realized that Phila, true to form, was once again charging full speed ahead. It wasn't going to happen that way this time. This time she would get it right.
“Slow down,” he muttered into her ear.
She paid no attention. Her hands went to his belt buckle. She got it undone after several attempts and then she reached for his zipper.
“No,” Nick said, although it nearly broke him. He gently caught her hand. “This time we're going to find out what you like.”
“Please, Nick. I want to feel you again the way I did the other night. It was so good. I was so close.”