Getting Some Of Her Own Read online

  “Drink this.” She took a few swallows, and he repeated the question. “Now, what was so funny?”

  That was the opening line she needed. “I guess it was the idea that I needed to protect myself from you. To tell you the truth, the suggestion seemed ludicrous.”

  His face darkened into a frown. “So I’m harmless? I’d like to know your other thoughts about me.”

  She ignored the remark. “I seem to have forgotten my manners. What would you like to drink?”

  She knew she hadn’t fooled him when a half smile eased across his face. “Usually bourbon and water, but—”

  “Bourbon and water it will be.”

  They had already begun to fence with each other, and she didn’t think that was the route to her goal. She’d have to change the mood. Susan put a dish of hot canapés on a tray along with the drinks—bourbon for Lucas and white wine for her—and went back to him.

  “I hope you like these. In fact, I’m hoping you will like everything I cooked for you and that you’re hungry.”

  He smiled again, and she was beginning to get the feeling that she would never get used to it, that his smile would always unsettle her. Maybe it wasn’t his smile, but her guilt that caused her discomfort. She almost wished she hadn’t started the charade.

  “As long as you don’t give me chitterlings and chicken livers, we’ll get along,” he said. “A good home-cooked meal isn’t something I get every day.” He tasted the miniature quiche. “If this is a sample of your culinary talent, I can hardly wait for the meal.”

  He leaned back in the chair, sipped the bourbon (she had bought the best, and she sensed he was aware of that and appreciated it), and focused his gaze on her until it seemed to burn her skin. “Why did you invite me to dinner?”

  The question came as a surprise, for she hadn’t anticipated it and had no ready answer. She did her best to give him a reasonable explanation. “In the two weeks that I’ve been back in Woodmore, I’ve met six people, four women, my married lawyer and you. I was—I didn’t feel like spending this kind of evening with any of the other five, and I suspected you’d be a good conversationalist and that you would enjoy a well presented, gourmet meal.” She ignored his slightly dropped jaw. “Am I right?”

  “You certainly are candid. Where did you live before you came here, and what did you do?”

  “I lived in New York City, where I was principal interior decorator for Yates and Crown.”

  He sat forward. “So that’s why your name is so familiar! I know that firm of architects well. Are you married?”

  “No. If I was, I wouldn’t cheat on my husband.”

  After staring at her for a minute, a grin floated over his face. “You would call what we’re doing here this evening cheating?”

  She wanted to kick herself for that slip. “Well, you know what I mean.”

  “I assume your relatives live in the Big Apple, too.” He savored another sip of bourbon.

  “No. My father died some years ago, and not long after my brother married a Swedish woman. He lives in Stockholm with her and their two children. My mother joined the Peace Corps about five years ago and, ever since, she’s been saving Africa.”

  Concern etched the contours of his face, mirroring his compassion for her. “That’s too bad. Do you ever see her?”

  “I’ve visited her twice, once in Nigeria and once in The Gambia. Right now, she’s in Sierra Leone.”

  “I see. Maybe she needs to help others. By the way, why would the chief interior decorator for Yates and Crown architects leave New York and settle in a small town like this one?”

  “Because I don’t have a life there. Usually, my workdays begin at eight-thirty in the morning and end at midnight. Most Yates clients are wealthy, and when they hire you, they think they own you. If Miss Importance gets an idea at midnight, she thinks she has the right to call me and discuss it right then. I’ve proved that I can handle the job. Now, I want to smell the flowers sometimes. My aunt’s will is what made me consider moving back here.”

  “You’ll find plenty to do here, because there isn’t a top decorator in this area. What does your mother think of your plans?”

  “Oh, she lives in a different world. For her, living quarters are a matter of providing tin rather than mud structures for poor women, so that their houses won’t be washed away in the rainy season. By the way, where’s your family?”

  He appeared to withdraw, and she wished she hadn’t asked him. “You’re not married, are you?” He’d have to be deaf, stupid or both to have missed the anxiety in her voice. She might be conniving, but she would not knowingly sleep with a married man, not even if that were the only means of realizing her body’s potential.

  If he noticed her concern, he didn’t make it obvious. “If I was, I wouldn’t be here. I also don’t cheat.” He grinned at that, but a somberness quickly settled over him like fog over a mountain lake. “My mother lives on the outskirts of Woodmore, and I see her from time to time, although I make certain that she doesn’t want for anything.”

  She put her glass on the end table beside the sofa and sat forward. “Don’t you like your mother?”

  “I like her. The problem is that I resent her for not letting me get to know my father.”

  “But you’re an adult. Couldn’t you have contacted him?”

  He leaned back in the big overstuffed leather chair and draped his right knee over his left one, comfortable with himself and his surroundings. “Of course I could have, but he’s the father, not I, and if he makes no effort to have me as a part of his life, fine with me. I’m not going to beg him, and I don’t lose any sleep over it, either.”

  Without thinking, she reached across the coffee table and patted his hand. “I’m so sorry. My father was everything to me.” The raw need that she saw in his eyes startled her, and she jumped up. “I’d better serve dinner. It takes a long time to go through seven courses.”

  Lucas savored the first course, quenelles of scallops with Dugléré sauce, without saying a word. After swallowing the last morsel, he put his fork on his plate and looked straight at her. “If the rest of the meal is up to this standard, it may take the sheriff to get me out of here.”

  Susan thanked God for her brown skin; if she had been lighter, the hot blood in her face would have betrayed her. “I’m glad you enjoyed it,” she said in barely a whisper.

  “That is an understatement.” His deep, velvet baritone gave his words a seductiveness that she assumed he didn’t intend to convey.

  She was no expert at the seduction of a man, and she hoped the food and wine would do their job. After the courses of sherry-garnished cream of wild mushroom soup; peach sorbet; filet mignon, lemon-roast waxy potatoes and asparagus that followed, he rested one elbow on the table, fingered his chin and gazed at her. “If you tell me you feed every stranger you entertain this way, I won’t believe you.”

  If he could play hardball, so could she. “Did I tell you that? When I do something, no matter what it is, I do it properly. And you can write that down.” She didn’t look at him, but busied herself clearing the table. When she returned with their next course, she noticed a difference in his demeanor.

  “That was impolite,” he told her, “and I regret saying it. You didn’t have to go to so much trouble, but you did, and I’m enjoying the fruits of it.” Charm radiated from him, and she told herself to beware. She meant to be the seducer, not the seduced, whose reward for the evening was a kiss on the cheek and an invitation to dine with him in a first-class restaurant. She served an assortment of French and English cheeses, French bread and a smooth red wine. When she stood to clear the table, he said, “I can do this,” and gathered the dishes and headed for the kitchen.

  This is working too well. I hope I’m not headed for a let down. When she took the brandy Alexander pie out of the refrigerator and put it on a plate, he whistled sharply. “I guess this is where I open the champagne,” he said as he opened the refrigerator door, got the cup towel th
at hung on the oven door, wrapped it around the champagne bottle and eased the stopper out without making a sound.

  “I see you’ve opened a lot of those,” she said. “The champagne flutes are up there.” She pointed to a cabinet door, and when he reached for the glasses, his hand managed to brush her shoulder. “Let’s have this in the living room,” she said, calculating that she would have to sit beside him on the sofa. She put the pie on the coffee table, and as soon as he was seated, she said, “How foolish of me. I have to get plates and some forks,” rose and walked back to the kitchen, giving him an eye-full of her back action. Music. That would help get his mind on sex. She sat down beside him, picked up the remote control and within seconds, the haunting music of “Paradise” filled the room. She cut the pie, served it and waited while he poured the champagne.

  “Thanks for the most intriguing evening and the most delicious meal I’ve ever eaten,” he said, raising his glass. “The first course alone would have kept me happy for days.”

  “But you haven’t tasted the dessert.”

  “Any dessert I get will be an anticlimax.”

  Her nerves seemed to rearrange themselves throughout her body. She didn’t know what he meant, and she feared the answer if she asked him. He tasted the pie. “This pie is out of sight, and I’m convinced now that you meant to seduce me to putty.”

  “Wh-why would I do that?”

  “Beats me.” He took a long sip of champagne. “Probably for the same reason you’re wearing this go-there-come-here dress. I don’t know whether to make a pass at you or recite the Twenty-third Psalm.”

  When she replied, “I’m sure you can figure it out,” he put his glass on the table, stood and extended his hand. “Dance with me. I’ve always loved this song,” he said of Percy Faith’s recording of “Diane.”

  Susan didn’t need to be coaxed, but she had begun to like the man, and she wondered if she would someday regret what she was increasingly certain would happen between them. She wanted it, didn’t she? Hadn’t she planned it meticulously? She considered backing out, but his arm eased around her, strong and masculine, and pulled her to within inches of his body. And they danced. Danced until that song and then another one ended. Danced as if they had always danced. She didn’t know when she rested her head on his shoulder and his other arm went around her, snug and comfortable as if it had a right to her body.

  “Do you realize what’s happening here?” he asked after a while. She did, but she didn’t answer. “Did that champagne go to your head?” he asked her.

  “I’m cold sober,” she told him, in a frank admission that she wanted him.

  “So am I. I don’t want to leave now, but I will if you tell me to go.”

  “I want some more champagne.”

  He tipped up her chin and stared into her eyes. “Don’t you realize that I want you?”

  With her gaze on his mouth, she wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, and he bent to them. She welcomed him with lips parted, took him in. No longer was it a matter of seducing him and using him for her own gain, to have one completely satisfying sexual experience before undergoing a surgical menopause at the age of thirty-four. No longer was he merely a tool, a means of achieving a coveted goal.

  Tall, handsome, trim, intelligent, educated, wealthy, charismatic and sophisticated, Lucas Hamilton was precisely what a woman wanted in a man. But in that evening, she had discovered strength in him, compassion, and a vulnerability that ignited in her a need to nurture him. Her arms gripped his shoulders, and he tightened his hold on her until her nipples hardened against his chest.

  He stopped the kiss. “Where do you sleep?” She lowered her gaze, lest he see the fear in her eyes. Suppose it didn’t work. But in another ten days, it would be too late.

  “Down the hall,” she murmured.

  Minutes later, he stood looking down at her as she lay on her bed clothed only in the burnt-orange bikini panties and bra. “You are one beautiful woman. I wanted you the first time I saw you.” With that, he shed his clothes and was soon holding her tightly in his arms as if he thought she would escape. He surprised her with his sensitivity and gentleness, testing and adoring until she wanted to scream for him to join them. When at last he did, it was a homecoming. She didn’t know whether the storm howled outside, in the bedroom or merely raged within her like nothing she had ever imagined. She hit bottom before he hurled her into the stratosphere and hung there with her until she thought her heart would stop.

  Half an hour later, he raised his head from her breast, stared into her eyes for a second and then kissed her. But it was a kiss meant to soothe rather than to communicate, and she knew it. He separated them, and she turned on her side, away from him, overcome with emotion as tears trickled down her cheeks. She buried her face in the pillow to muffle her sobs, but she couldn’t control the jerking motions of her body. His hands gripped her shoulders.

  “My Lord! Are you crying? Look at me!” His voice carried an urgency and something akin to fear. Or was it concern? “I said look at me, Susan.” She forced herself to open her eyes and tried to force a smile, though she failed at the latter.

  “Are you sorry?” he asked her.

  “It isn’t that. It’s . . . I didn’t know I could feel like that. I’m . . . just overwhelmed.”

  He exhaled deeply, clearly relieved. “I know what you mean.”

  “Thank you for being so . . . so wonderful,” she whispered and hugged him.

  He kissed her quickly, almost perfunctorily, rolled over and locked his hands behind his head. “This is a night I’ll never forget, Susan, and I have a feeling that you won’t either. I have a thousand questions, but I’m not going to ask any of them, because I don’t want to spoil this for either of us.”

  “I have questions, too, Lucas, but they’re questions that I have to ask myself.”

  “I don’t doubt it. Will you be upset if I leave? I need to come to terms with this, and I can’t do that unless I’m alone.”

  “No. I want you to know that I enjoyed every minute we’ve been together, and that I don’t regret anything.”

  “I hope you feel that way when you wake up tomorrow morning. I’ve enjoyed being with you, and I mean that. I’ll let myself out.”

  When she heard the door close, she got out of bed, locked the door and went into the living room to clear the coffee table, but discovered that he had done that. In the kitchen, she found that he put the plates, forks and glasses in the sink and the remainder of the pie in the refrigerator. She poured a full glass of wine, went into the living room and sat down.

  She got what she wanted, but would she be able to live with it? How was she going to reside in Woodmore, see that man and know he thought her different from the woman she was, that his estimation of her would likely be unflattering. He’d said nothing about seeing her again, and he probably wouldn’t because he had promised nothing. And she would rather not see him. What on earth had she been thinking? She gulped down the wine, showered and went to bed. Would she have been better off not knowing how a thorough loving made a woman feel?

  When Lucas stepped outside the four-unit apartment building in which Susan lived, he turned, locked his hands to his hips and gazed up at her windows. He didn’t expect to see her at one; he needed to assure himself that he’d been there, that he was not hallucinating, that he’d eaten that meal and then had the most satisfying sexual experience that he could recall. He walked up Eighth Street East to his car, got in it and drove to his home facing Pine Tree Park on Parkway Street. But he didn’t want to go inside where, alone and cloistered within familiar walls, events of the preceding four hours would take over his mind and emotions. After putting the car in the garage, he walked around to the back of the house and sat on the deck.

  Lucas regarded himself as a careful, cautious man who did not act impulsively, and he could find no reason or excuse for having allowed Susan Pettiford to seduce him. She attracted him, but she didn’t bowl him over. He shook his head as if i
n wonder. What was more, she had planned to seduce him, and by the time she served that stupefying pie, he suspected as much. Still, like a lemming bound for the sea, he’d let himself coast right into it. A woman with her looks could find an eligible man any day, so why had she done that with a man she’d seen once and rejected summarily?

  He got up and leaned against a post. Something was rotten in Denmark. He’d hardly gotten inside of her when he realized she had far less experience than a man would expect of a woman her age. Thank God he’d had the presence of mind to use a condom. Shivers raced through him. He hadn’t remembered to examine the condom afterwards to determine whether it broke. He flexed his right shoulder in a quick shrug. Even though he didn’t know her, he doubted a woman as accomplished and as proud as she would trick a man into impregnating her. But you never could tell. What was her game?

  The dilemma would remain with him for a long time, he knew, because he always sought to understand himself and the events in his life. He unlocked the back door and went inside. What on earth had he been thinking? He didn’t have one-night stands with women like Susan.

  “That was stupid, and it’s over,” he said to himself as he headed up the stairs. “No more of that for me.” He stripped and got into the shower. “But she sure is one hell of a lover!”

  Ever cautious, he called his friend, Mark, the next morning. “Tell me something about Susan Pettiford.” To his mind, the request was a reasonable one, since Mark invited him to his wife’s birthday party expressly to meet Susan.

  Mark’s laughter didn’t console Lucas. “What about her? You can see as well as I can, man,” he said. “All I know is that as executor of her aunt’s estate, I had to beg her to come down here and claim her inheritance. She didn’t seem particularly interested in the house, car and bank account. Said she was used to making it on her own, that she liked her job and wasn’t interested in moving from New York to a town in North Carolina. She finally agreed to come here and have a look at the place, and the strange thing is that the house and its location half a block from Wade Lake really got to her.”