Hold Back the Night (14 page)

His tone warned her if nothing else did. As if he had told her his intent, she knew what he was going to do even before he lifted his free hand. His words on that previous occasion had given her evidence enough that he resented interference, that he would parry it by inflicting deliberate cruelties if he must. And she knew he would not feel her face because there was no real humiliation in that, nothing to make her cry out in shock, to rise and run.

All the same, when his hand began to take its liberties she was hard pressed not to leap to her feet. He cupped one breast deliberately, his palm and his long fingers covering it completely while his other hand compelled her to stay still. Domini froze, knowing full well that he was trying to drive her into fighting free and fleeing. And that she would not do.

When his effrontery brought no instant cry of outrage, he began to fondle the curves through the cotton of her shirt, an open derision growing on his face. Domini closed her eyes, bit her lip hard, and reminded herself that in the course she had chosen for herself, all was sufferable. Surely he would stop when he realized his presumption was not having the desired effect?

'Is it my turn to play the guessing game again?' he mocked when she failed to register an immediate protest. 'Shall I go through what I detect about this... shall we say, mystery I'm feeling? First, she's wearing no brassiere. Nor was she wearing one the other day. I ask myself ... is she proud of her breasts or is she simply brazen? Is she anxious to attract sexual attention?'

'I don't actually need a brassiere,' Domini returned with as much control as possible. She hated the way he was trying to demean her, but she knew if she failed to outlast this difficult moment the clay was sure to go wasting. And so she submitted with what dignity she could muster. 'I don't buy things I don't need,' she added, knowing he would understand that particular kind of motivation. And perhaps he did, but it did nothing to stop his cold-blooded manipulations of her flesh.

'She doesn't shrink from a stranger's touch,' he went on without pause, his use of the impersonal pronoun an intentional insult, an attempt to further degrade Domini. 'She accepts it without question. In fact, I think she must like it.'

Suddenly Domini was choked with remembrance of another time when he had felt her desire and then satisfied his own. 'Please don't,'she breathed.

'If she doesn't like it,' he murmured cruelly, 'I wonder why she submits? If she tried to run away, I certainly wouldn't stop her.'

'I'm staying because I want you to try the clay,' Domini reminded him in a low voice. The moulding of a nipple was beginning to have an effect that must have been detectable through the cloth, and much as she tried to force her body into quiescence, it would not obey. 'If I race off in indignation, you'll never try it at all, will you?'

He laughed harshly. 'No,' he conceded, releasing his grip on her shoulder. His other hand remained on her breast, temporarily stilled but by no means withdrawn. 'I see you understand my purpose very well. Perhaps you have some wit in your head after all.'

Freed from the fingers that had kept her pressed into stillness, Domini sank back on her heels, breaking contact only momentarily. Sander merely adjusted his position to come closer to her and restaked his claim with a small ruthless smile. He was leaning forward, and the lapels of the dark dressing-gown fell away to reveal the muscular sculpture of his chest. It was as powerful as before, but paled by lack of exposure to sun, so that the mat of short black hairs appeared darker, each more crisply defined than in Domini's memory.

'I know perfectly well what you're trying to do,' Domini said in a strained voice. 'You're trying to humiliate me. Well, I refuse to be humiliated. Now will you please remove your hand from my breast?'

'Will you please remove yourself from my house?' he countered as his palm began its erotic movements once again, the fingers caressing the curve, the rough thumb stroking the nipple. 'It must be clear to you that I have an intense dislike for your interference. If you insist on intruding, so shall I. If you don't like what I'm doing, I suggest you leave at once. The choice, my friend, is yours.'

'I'll leave when you agree to try the clay,' she said, maintaining control with difficulty. What did it really matter if he felt what had already been his?

'Is this the kind of woman you are?' he murmured. 'A woman who can be aroused by any man? I wonder...'

And now his other hand moved. For a breathless moment Domini thought he intended to undo the buttons of her shirt and insinuate his fingers more intimately, to test the truth of what he must have discerned through the cloth. But the brief alarm passed as his hand rose higher to her face. He brushed her mouth lightly, the fingers roughened by carpentry passing fleetingly over the soft surfaces to read what was there. A strange emotion crossed his features, replacing scorn.

'Extraordinary,' he breathed, just as he had breathed many years before.

Had he guessed? Domini's heart seemed to stop for several seconds as his other hand rose slowly from its intimate lodging place to join in the exploration of her face. But there was no recognition in his expression, only puzzlement.

While he read her features, she scarcely dared to breathe for fear he might hold some memory of the shape and substance of the girl he had known so briefly long ago. It was hard to believe he would. In his anger he had taken no time to discover the planes of her face, as a lover might have done. Moreover, since then her breasts had ripened to more womanly contours, and the length of her hair had changed. Those things would tend to mislead him.

His hands moved to her nose, to her cheeks, to her eyes. She closed her lids beneath the gentle probing, the soft stroking movements of the abrasive but sensitive fingerpads that must serve him instead of sight. He touched the lobes of her ears, the curve of her jaw, the soft hollows of her throat. No part of her face was spared; each was subjected to the feather-light exploration. For Domini, it was more difficult to bear than the insolent handling of her breast had been.

His hand at her temples discovered the unruly tendrils that so often defied capture, and then travelled to find the clip that held her long hair in place. He removed it and ran his fingers through the freed mass, sliding through the spilling tumble to test its texture, its weight, its length.

At last he removed his hands and said gruffly, 'I think you must be a very beautiful woman.'

Domini was still searching his face to see if some spark of the past had been ignited in his mind. But his features had become closed, enigmatic, telling her nothing at all. Almost at once he stood up and moved a small distance away. With his back turned to her he said tonelessly, 'You astonish me. I didn't realize you were so upset until I felt your mouth.'

So that was what had caused his surprise. Relief radiated through Domini, causing a relaxation of the tense lines that had formed on her face. She listened while he went on.

'Until then, I was going on other evidence ... including what you said the other day about the father of your child. I thought you were beginning to . . . enjoy what I was doing. I didn't realize your nerves were tied up in knots.'

Had he felt so much in her features? Domini touched a hand wonderingly to a cheek still sensitized from the passage of his fingers, unhappy to think that her face had given away so much of her inner distress.

'If you found it so very distasteful, you should have stopped me at the start. It would have been easy enough; all you had to do was get up and leave. If you'd started to struggle free, I'd most certainly have let you go. Why on earth would you allow a total stranger such liberties?'

Domini looked at her lap to see that her hands were still shaking in the aftermath of his touch. 'It wasn't all that difficult,' she lied. 'There was a layer of cloth between us.'

'Ah,' he remarked dryly, 'so that was to be your limit. Even so, it astounds me that you allowed yourself to be handled in that manner.'

Domini shifted her jeans-clad legs to a new angle, no longer kneeling but sitting with her elbows propped on her knees. Relieved that she had survived two tests, one of mortification and one of recognition, she felt more confident now. 'I told you,' she said with some return of spirit, 'I refuse to be frightened off until you agree to try the clay.'

'Did Miranda put you up to this?' he asked tersely. 'I can think of no other reason for you to take such abnormal interest in the affairs of someone you hardly know.'

'Miranda had nothing to do with it, beyond mentioning that you were a very promising sculptor before you lost your sight, and showing me photographs of work you did some years ago. The clay is my own idea, and not a bad one, I think.'

'A do-gooder,' he said disparagingly. 'Well, please take your good intentions and leave. I don't need your help.'

'I'm not offering it,' Domini said flatly. 'If you have half the talent I think you have, there's no reason you need my help. I'm suggesting you help yourself. I think it's time you ... '

'What in God's name do you think I've been doing for all these years?' he snarled, turning to face her with a furious lift of one arm towards the toy shelves. Domini glanced at them long enough to note that they had been restored to total order, each kind of toy in its own pigeonhole, the blocks impeccably piled once again. The habits of a blind man, Domini reflected passingly; such tasks must help to fill the empty spaces in his life.

'It's time you used your talent again,' Domini finished, keeping her voice temperate despite the towering wall of anger confronting her. 'I know you must make toys; they're your livelihood. But you've got a good stock on your shelves, and until you find someone to handle them there's no point making more. Surely you could spare some hours each day to ... '

'You're invading my privacy unforgivably,' he cut in. He was shaking with fury, his whole stance tense with suppressed emotion, his hands clenched angrily at his sides.

Domini came to her feet and faced him squarely, knowing she must make a final bid before he threw her out bodily, which he seemed quite ready to do. 'And you invaded mine, very nastily too,' she returned bluntly. 'As you yourself noted, I didn't like your wandering hands at all. In fact, I thought you were boorish, insolent, and sadistic. I think you owe me something in return.'

'Do I?' he returned tightly with an arrogant flare to his nostrils. He moved threateningly closer, within inches of Domini. With apparent difficulty, he prevented himself from closing the gap; at the very last minute he jammed his hands into his pockets again, as if to prevent them from taking some measure he might regret.

'Do I . . . ?' he repeated. Perhaps she should have been warned by the brief sheen in his eyes, like silver swords catching some indeterminate source of light. But instead she listened to his words, the most moderate she had heard for some time.

'Perhaps I do owe you something,' he agreed slowly. The passing brilliance had left his pupils and they were dark again, reflecting nothing. His voice was unrevealing too. 'What you ask of me is a damn impertinence. However, I'm prepared to try the clay if...'

The space of silence was deliberate, leaving the 'if hanging in the air to punctuate the rest of his sentence. During the pause his lids drooped so studiedly that if Domini had not known of his blindness she would have sworn his gaze was caressing the length of her body.

'If you're prepared to model for me,' he drawled. 'I need a life model.'

If Domini had any doubts that he meant in the nude, they were dispelled by the return of derision to his voice and of arrogance to his mouth. With her recent reactions to guide him, no doubt he was certain she would refuse, and that would put an end to the matter. And indeed, Domini's first reaction was emphatically negative. Her pulse began to pound at an alarming rate.

'I. . . couldn't,' she protested through the obstacle of a heart lodged somewhere in her throat.

'Exactly,' he said sardonically. 'Neither could I. Now will you do me a favour and get out of my life?'

Domini forced her breathing back to normal. What Sander suggested would be very difficult for her, for reasons that had nothing to do with prudery. Sander's hands were his eyes, and the thought of giving his hands full freedom filled her with a distress beyond the telling. Moreover, there was the matter of her freelance work; finding time during the day would mean many late nights.

But perhaps he had underestimated her after all.

She waited until her voice was ready and then said with a laudable lack of inflection, 'Which would you prefer, mornings or afternoons?'

'Pot luck,' Domini said into the telephone. 'It's a penance for turning you down last week.'

The man on the other end chuckled warmly. 'And several other times too! I thought I was getting a permanent brush-off. Some payment for giving you a chance to try your hand at our displays! Of course I accept.'

Domini hesitated. 'I think I told you about my daughter, Tasey, the day we had lunch. I hope you like children.'

'Love 'em,' the man said good-naturedly. His voice lowered to a huskier, more intimate note. 'Mind you, I'm a great believer in early bedtimes. My date, after all, is with you.'

Moments later Domini rang off, pleased that the impromptu call had paid dividends. She liked Grant Manners, a potential client who owned a jewellery boutique, not in SoHo but on Fifth Avenue. While no competition for Van Cleef & Arpels, Grant's speciality was very 'in' jewellery, rather than diamonds the size of oysters … it was an exclusive, expensive shop. Convincing Fifth Avenue that she had anything to offer was a difficult task, and Grant's boutique was the first tentative toe in the door in a planned crusade to upgrade her clientele, an impossibility prior to day-care days. In order to establish her credentials, she had offered to do the first of Grant's displays at cost, with no added fee. He had a problem window: although his merchandise was small, his display window was large. In the past the excess of space had been filled by mannequins dressed in clothes borrowed from neighbouring boutiques. Domini had convinced Grant that there might be solutions that didn't call for promoting other people's merchandise.

She had not yet dressed a window for him but would be doing so in January. And part of the reason she liked Grant Manners was that he hadn't as yet changed the business end of the arrangement, although she had turned down several invitations to dinner, including two the previous week.

There was no need for Domini to examine her motives in issuing the invitation, a spur-of-the-moment action taken immediately upon returning home after her unsettling encounter with Sander. Grant Manners was an attractive man, well-to-do because of the family business he had inherited, quite as virile and good looking as Sander, and certainly far better tempered. She'd turned down the first few dates with him only because she'd wanted to establish from the first that her favours weren't dispensed as part of a package deal. Her instincts told her he wasn't the sort to use that kind of pressure; nevertheless she had intended to keep the relationship purely professional until after the first window had been done and the work assigned on a permanent basis. And at that time, she had decided, she would see.

But this was an emergency. She needed Grant Manners now; needed some form of immunity against the potent attraction exerted by the one man of all men she didn't want to be attracted to. Much as she hoped to help Sander, she was far from anxious to become involved with him in any serious way, a reservation that had nothing to do with his blindness. No longer totally blinkered by sexual attraction, as she had been in the past, she recognized his faults ... the arrogance, the pride, the quickness to anger that had so blighted her youth. Those faults had been in him before and they were still in him now, multiplied a thousandfold by the embittered life he led. Why ask for trouble when he had such power to wound her?

And by agreeing to serve as his model, she was most certainly asking for trouble. Domini knew full well that if she didn't find another man, and fast, trouble was exactly what she was going to have. The afternoon's encounter with Sander had filled her with a great turmoil, a bodily restlessness she could not seem to control. She had become unbearably aware of the urges she had managed to suppress for so many years, at the very first because a small baby and lack of money for sitters had totally prevented dating, and lately because some men shunned women with small children, others became too importunate too quickly, and others were nice companions but she didn't feel any great love for them. Despite her unorthodox upbringing, Domini's experiences in Paris had long since cured her of the notion that sexual attraction alone was a sufficient basis for involvement.

The years had produced no man in whose keeping she wished to place her heart, let alone herself. But perhaps Grant Manners would be different.

As it turned out, he certainly seemed to be. Unlike most other dates Domini had invited to her loft, he was marvellous with Tasey. Throughout dinner he enchanted her by concocting a tale about a unicorn and a little princess, and after dinner he delighted her by fulfilling the function of a rocking horse with his own strong shoulders.

'Another piggyback!' Tasey squealed for the umpteenth time, her young fingers laced into Grant's light brown hair.

'Not on your life,' he said firmly, slinging her off his back much to the detriment of his hair. He rose to his feet and scooped Tasey off the floor, holding her high and rubbing noses with her like an Eskimo. Tasey giggled. 'Off you go to bed now, or next time I won't tell you the rest of my story. That's when the unicorn turns into a rich, handsome prince and sweeps your mummy away.'

'And me too!' Tasey protested.

'Why would I sweep you away?' laughed Grant, tossing Tasey in the air much to her merriment. 'You don't belong in a dustbin!'

Domini could quell a moment of unease only by reminding herself firmly that there was no real reason to associate Sander with the unicorn of an invented fairy tale. The rich, handsome prince was surely Grant himself...

'You will tell me the rest?' Tasey insisted.

'Promise on my honour,' Grant said, making a solemn face.

Domini took over the energetic bundle of her daughter, and within minutes Tasey had been scrubbed, brushed, and whipped out of her overalls into a flannelette nightgown. As she was being tucked into bed in the small alcove, she sighed, 'I wish I had a daddy.'

'I know, poppet.' Domini kept her voice low because the bamboo screens didn't keep loud sounds from the main part of the room. 'But you don't have one.'

Tasey sighed again, more soulfully. 'Then Marie told a lie,'she said.

'What did Marie say?'

'She said babies can't be made without a daddy.' Weariness had at last made Tasey's eyelids heavy, but even so she looked unusually pensive for this time of day. 'Matthew says they just turn up under cabbage leaves. I guess Matthew's right. If I didn't come from a daddy, I must have come from a cabbage leaf. Ugh, I hate cabbage.'

The day-care centre, Domini decided, must be having its effect; Tasey had never broached such matters before. It was hardly a good time to be covering the facts of life, but Domini didn't want to lie. 'You didn't come from cabbage at all. Marie's quite right,' she said quietly.

'Then I do have a daddy?'

'Of course you did, once. I'll explain tomorrow.'

'Will I ever have one again?'

'If I marry someone,' said Domini.

'Are you going to marry someone?'

'I don't know, Tasey. Maybe I will someday, but I can't promise.' Domini administered a final good-night hug, turned off the light, and moved to the screened partition.

'Mummy,' said a wistful voice, bringing her to a halt. 'Do you think the unicorn will really turn into a handsome prince?'

'Why? Do you want him to?'

'No,' said Tasey drowsily. 'I couldn't ride him then.'

'Go to sleep, darling. It's only a story. The unicorn won't change, not really,' Domini assured her gently before she returned to Grant.

Three hours later, as she detached herself from Grant Manners's good-night kiss, Domini was trying to tell herself that it had been the exact cure for her preoccupation with Sander Williams. If it hadn't quite recaptured the breathtaking dizziness of her very first experience, that couldn't be blamed on Grant, who had been considerate and skilful and ardent when he had gathered her into his arms. For Domini, Tasey's nearness had put a decided damper on the embrace, as it always did when she invited male admirers to her loft. Grant made it clear that he didn't consider the circumstances ideal either.

'Next time you'll need a baby-sitter,' he said firmly after Domini had ushered him to the door. 'I'm going to be away for two weeks on a skiing trip, but I'm taking you out the night I get back. I imagine you'll have my window done by then, and maybe we'll have reason to celebrate.'

'I hope so.' Domini smiled with considerable confidence. She had marvellous plans for Grant's window, plans she had not revealed; she was certain he could not fail to award her the job on a permanent basis.

'What's your favourite kind of restaurant?'

'Something with a view.'

'Tourist traps,' Grant scoffed.

'Maybe, but I haven't been to most of them. Besides, heights excite me.'

'Then heights it will be,' Grant agreed smokily as he bent for a last lingering kiss.

The magic was still elusive, despite the expertise with which he folded her into his arms. That long-ago delirium, Domini reflected ruefully as she wended her way to bed, must have had a very great deal to do with the circumstances of the moment. How could it possibly be recreated without the Eiffel Tower itself?